The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 27

a canoe came toward her in the water. Some villagers woke up when they heard the yelling woman and followed Ma into the clearing, holding their lappas as they ran onto the shore. But the same number of men who had left on the previous day returned, fatigued and distressed by the unsuccessful search. Ma looked like she was still looking for someone else in the canoe, long after the last man stepped onto shore. The hands of villagers covered her back and shoulders. They gave water and a helping hand to Papa and the other men who were in the canoe. When Papa reached her, Ma fell into his arms, almost throwing him over with her grief.

“Nah-mah,” Papa said, pressing her head into his chest as he held her up. “He will come back,” he said, although he did not look Ma in the eyes. And after he hugged us, he did not look me in the eyes either. Several times during that day, Ma stood up from her porch and looked across the circle to the lake. She walked across the village, past the shrubs that blocked her view, and waited on the shore of the lake for Pa. While watching her, still hoping that she did not remember what I told Pa before he left us, I thought of Mam and wondered if we made her this sad. I wondered if she was walking to the edge of her America and looking across the ocean for a ship that had us in tow, if she was crying, if she wanted us as much as Ma wanted and waited for Pa.

At dawn everyone in the village was awake. The men stood near the radio by the chicken coop, talking about whether or not to send another group to look for Pa if the most recent search came back without him. The women took turns bringing Ma soup and begging her to eat, because for the past week she had sat on her porch crying, and sometimes she even sounded like K did when she had malaria. The children were told not to run around the circle and that we should be mindful that Ma was sick and instead play quietly inside our houses. My sisters and I passed the time by her side.

In front of the lake, a bush shook, and Ma quickly stood up on the porch. The company of men had returned from the search, and when Papa saw them he rushed to them from where he sat near the radio. Before he arrived where the three men stood, one of them, a boy, took his shirt off and ran into the village circle.

“THE OL’ PA DEAD! CHARLES FREEMAN IS DEAD!” he cried before he fell in the middle of the circle, collecting his shirt in between his fingers and burying his face in it. Charles Freeman. That was Ol’ Pa’s name. My heart shook between its walls. Villagers ran out of their houses, and when they saw the boy in the middle of the circle, they started stomping the ground with their feet and yelling with their hands stretched out to God. Ma fainted onto her porch. Papa ran across the circle, picked her up, and carried her limp body inside her house. A crowd rushed in, mothers and daughters and sisters, sons and uncles and cousins, friends. Papa laid her on the mattress, and Torma used a stiff piece of cardboard to fan her. There were so many people surrounding her that I was pushed to the doorway and could only catch sight of her between their busy bodies. I had heard of death in many forms. The kind where spirits joined ancestors and lingered around us. The kind where a person went to paradise and waited for God in heaven to call them up. The kind where a soul is taken by God to a life after the one on earth. None of these seemed to be ways of bringing his body back, of seeing him walk heavily through that clearing with all of us on his mind and a smile so we would know. My Ol’ Pa was gone. I would never see his body again. I stood in the doorway, looking first at the crowd around Ol’ Ma, then toward Lake Piso and its part in it all, and I knew. There was something wrong, deeply wrong, on the other side. There were no drums, no slumber. There was something deeper. Something else. There was no savior to restore a forest full of troubles, and I wanted Mam. I only wanted Mam.

“Wake up, Ol’ Ma,” an older woman said, patting Ma’s face with dry hands. “Ol’ Ma, wake up.”

Ma’s eyes gradually opened to a looming crowd of wet eyes. What had happened, what he said, what it meant, it looked like it all came to her at once, and she tore her dress from her body, spellbound. Standing at the door, I watched Ma throw her head tie to the floor as she frayed her hair with her fingers, and her heart escaped from her mouth.

ELEVEN

The rocks and stones in the forest are plenty, but none will make a sound when they are stepped on. And the skeletons in the forest are plenty, but none will break to make a sound when they are stepped on. And the crocodiles in forest swamps, they fuss plenty and snap and tease, but not even they make sounds when they are stepped on. They just swim deeper. They hide.

When a prince entered the forest, the monkeys were already silent. There were two then—Charles Taylor and Prince Johnson—and Johnson was the prince who entered first to kill Hawa Undu and restore Liberia. Johnson stepped on the plenty rocks and stones, stepped on the skulls and crocodiles and none made a sound. On September 9, 1990, the wind stood still among the leaves and a prince finally captured the dragon. Hawa Undu clawed and howled but