The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 54
“I just want you to know that I am from Liberia,” I said. An assistant at his side handed pamphlets to us. Yasuka shook her head and looked away and I took the pamphlet. “This is very, very offensive,” I said, raising my voice. The presenter stopped smiling. “I am very offended,” I continued, but before I could say all that I had rehearsed in line, my body grew warm. I rushed out of the sanctuary and through the hallway to the nearest bathroom, where I quickly pushed open a stall and vomited—heaved all I had eaten that morning and everything from the previous day.
“Hello?”
“What happened? I’ve been so worried,” I tried not to shout that night. My roommates were still asleep. It was morning in Liberia and the middle of the night in New York. “I’ve been trying to call every day after you missed last week’s call.”
“I know, I know, sorry,” he said. “The people say the phone lines them spoiled.” He sounded hasty and it worried me, but I was happy to hear his voice.
“I have so much to tell you. I went to Calvary last weekend and this man—”
“Mam—the phone is breaking. Mam?”
“Hello? Hello, Gus?” I shouted. I would apologize to my roommates in the morning.
“Okay, I can hear you,” he said.
“Good. I know it won’t last long then, enneh? Did the girls get the shirts I sent?” I asked.
“They did,” he answered.
“Oh good,” I said, missing his scent.
“I am going to go see a doctor. There is something wrong, I just don’t know what. I thought maybe I was pregnant but I’ve been menstruating. It’s light but there’s still something,” I told him.
“Be sure to let me know what happens,” he said. It was late and I was sleepy, and I knew he would say that he had to go soon, but I wanted to sit there a bit longer.
“The Chens left,” he said.
“What? Why?”
“They scared. The rebels still here and they scared. He say they will be back when things settle down.”
The end of his sentence was broken, and the line was full of static.
“I love you, Mam.” I heard that clearly.
I left Harlem early one morning with only one hard-boiled egg in my stomach. My stomach began to cramp and bend, and I was not sure if it was because the egg did not suffice or if I was suffering the same discomfort that finally led me to set an appointment.
In the waiting room I read the outside of a pamphlet held by the woman in front of me. I was alone again with my uncertainty. My friend Rose had called me the night before to tell me of a cousin who had recently left Liberia and made it to safety, calling her from Sierra Leone. “He said the people now start fighting,” Rose had said. “Have you spoken to Gus?”
“Not for two weeks,” I had told her. “I can’t reach him.”
She told me not to worry, as everyone seemed to be doing lately, as if Liberia’s worst-case scenario had not finally come.
“Mrs. Moore?” I heard.
I walked toward a woman with blue-rimmed glasses and large dramatic curls, who looked more like she belonged in an optical ad than in that office. It was a standard “woman’s clinic” room—curtain, armchair, posters, white counter with gloves.
“Everything will be fine,” she said before leaving me alone. I undressed and lay on my back in the chair, waiting for the doctor.
“Mrs. Moore?” The doctor entered the room, followed by the nurse.
“Hello,” I said.
“So you haven’t been well,” he said. “We’re going to take some basic blood work but I’m going to get an ultrasound just in case. How regular have your cycles been?”
“They have been light,” I said. “But they’ve come.”
“Okay, well, let’s get you set up here. You can relax. It’ll be over before you know it.” He smiled and proceeded to inquire about my health and family history. He told me to lean back, and everything seemed to be going well after he began, but then his hand stiffened.
“Everything all right?” I asked.
The nurse kept writing in my file.
“Well, Mrs. Moore, it looks like there’s a baby in there.”
“What?!” I asked.
“You see the screen?” he asked.
I saw the baby’s head. It was perfect.
“You’re going to be a mother again,” he said, smiling, and my eyes swelled. I imagined the faces of my daughters, and how they would react once they found out.
“Light bleeding happens in some pregnant women, usually when the fetus has trouble attaching to the uterine wall.”
“Is the baby okay?”
“We’ll continue to monitor you, but it looks like it. Just continue to take care of yourself.”
He may have explained things further. I may have thanked him. I must have shaken his hand and taken a business card from the nurse. I sat alone in the room. I felt alone in the world, having not heard from Gus and the girls for two weeks, and I cried.
TWENTY-TWO
I was not able to return to Liberia in June during rainy season as I had promised. By July there were no planes flying in or out of the country. Instead, I moved into a small apartment through on-campus family housing and spent my days and nights waiting by the phone in hopes of a call from Gus, or news that they were safe. A month had passed since I had heard his voice. When I tell them the story, I tell them that