The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 52
“Make sure you read to the girls in the night,” I said, stopping at the gate.
“If one of them gets sick, you call me, yeh? Even if it’s just a cough, call me. Visit the Ol’ Ma’s house when you have time. They still want to see you. She says she will come visit plenty and help you with the girls. And be careful what you eat now that I’m not here. Don’t get sick. You get sick this time, I won’t be here to make pepper soup. You won’t have my pepper soup and you will have to drink some other dry thing with no taste. You better call me, yeh? Anyway, if you don’t call me, I will call you.”
I looked into his face and he looked like he was waiting for me to cry, because that is all I had been doing that day. He hugged me and told me that he would be all right with the girls in Liberia, and that I could trust him. But I did not cry then. I looked into his face, that nervousness now trapped. Before I could say anything else, he wrapped his arms around my shoulder and squeezed.
“I love you, yeh?” I said in his ear, and I hugged each of my daughters, pulling them in.
My sadness was there also, and the same nervousness as his, but I kissed his cheek and hugged him tightly.
“Bye, Mam,” he said, and those would be the last words I heard from him for some time. They watched my plane until they could no longer see it—a container to my weeping, my regret.
TWENTY
“Mam.” I heard a low voice outside my bedroom door, followed by a series of knocks.
I sat up in bed and lifted the drapes of my window to let in some light. But it was cold there, so my drapes never stayed opened for long.
“Happy New Year, roomie,” Yasuka, my roommate, said, smiling when I opened the door. She always brought me tea, so when we saw each other for the first time that year, she carried a tea set on a tray.
I let Yasuka into my room and returned to my bed to lie down. Yasuka, also an international student at Teachers College, was my closest friend. Yasuka left to visit her family in Japan on the same day I left for Liberia. She was my height and shared my slender build, my sense of humor, and my love of rice. We studied together, ate together, and the only time I didn’t care for her was when I had to pull leftover strands of Yasuka’s long black hair out of the bathroom drain so I would not have to shower in a puddle.
“What did you do for New Year’s Eve?” she asked me.
“Nothing,” I said. “I haven’t been feeling well since getting back.”
“That was a week ago!” Yasuka asked.
“Just a bit homesick,” I said. Yasuka was clumsy at responding to sadness, so in the first days she got back to America, we spent a lot of time in silence. She took care of me, and made sure I had medicine. She did things like tie the drapes with a string on the sill, so that the sunlight could fill the room.
“It was good to be home,” Yasuka said. “I miss my family too. They are proud of me, like your family, and your daughters are proud of you. They want you here to finish,” Yasuka said. I appreciated her words and encouragement.
“Any news about your president?” Yasuka asked, drinking from her cup.
“It’s still the same,” I said, and my head ached to think about it. “The president does not want to step down and they say rebels are coming to remove him. But my husband says it will be quick and everything will be back to normal.”
“When will you go back again?” Yasuka asked.
“During rainy season. Summer. June,” I said.
“That’s good!” Yasuka said cheerfully. “It will come soon. You will see.”
I changed the subject to talk about school, and I always did this when my body became cold from the thoughts of war. We talked about the program, classmates we were looking forward to seeing when school resumed the following week, how we would use our degrees to affect our countries. There were so many words that I wanted to share instead of what we spoke of, things I was afraid of, thoughts creeping in dark corners, waiting quietly for their time.
The city was less and less foreign to me each day. I would visit the Statue of Liberty, the Twin Towers, and Carnegie Hall. I liked New York, although everyone seemed to move quickly here, fighting the concrete for time and money. Passing faces on the street, I would imagine the homes they had come from, the daughters they were going to see, to read to, the aging mothers to whom they had just fed soup.
What I liked least about the city was that, although I spoke English, people acted as if they did not understand me. I eventually learned to speak slowly, becoming patient, so that people would understand.
“You must not lose yourself there, that’s all,” Ma had told me before I left. “Look into your mirror in the night and when you start seeing you not the same, come home.”
I did look different, but I felt different after that December visit.
It was in New York that I first felt invisible, as if nobody could see me. People did not look at my neck or eyes as they did in Monrovia. Outside my classrooms I was hardly looked in the eye. People in New York walked like they were in a dream. When I was out at restaurants with classmates who were white, waiters talked to my classmates before they talked to me. And if I went to the store with a white friend to look for something, the