The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 56
“Take care of your aunty, big boy,” Ol’ Pa said.
Facia hugged Ol’ Pa as if she were five years old again. She sobbed into his chest.
“Come, come now,” Ol’ Pa said. “This will be over soon. Go to New York. You have Mam’s number?”
“Yes,” Facia said.
“And you have your papers?”
Facia nodded.
“Then go and come back in time for Christmas.” His smile was hers.
Facia took Bom’s hand and they ran into the man’s jeep. In the rearview mirror, through the dust made by those running on the road, she saw Ol’ Pa and Alice stand together on the porch, crying and waving until they disappeared.
I made Facia and Bom pepper soup. Stirred the water and tomato sauce and peppers and fish and bouillon and onions and salt into the pot with all my love. I watched as they drank, gripping their spoons as they sat together on my living room couch, still rattled from their journey.
“I should be feeding you,” Facia said, and I could not stop crying. “Aye, Mam.”
“It’s just that I thought everyone was—I didn’t hear from anyone for so long,” I finally admitted.
“I can’t imagine,” Facia said.
“Before coming, you said you heard nothing from them?” I asked again.
“Everybody was running and rushing. Pa called and called but nobody in Caldwell picked up. He say Gus will take care of them. He say they will go to Lai until the war stop.”
“But Caldwell so far from Cape Mount. So far from Lai,” I said.
“Just pray,” Facia told me.
Facia was able to come with Bom to America as his guardian, someone who could take care of him because Alice was far away. There were still American citizens in Liberia who were being airlifted to safety. Liberians tried their luck crossing into Guinea, Ghana, and Sierra Leone as men fought over who would be the next king.
“Sam Doe is saying he will not step down,” Facia said after drinking her soup. “The rebels them all over Liberia just like roaches, spoiling everything trying to force him out of the presidency.”
“What?”
“Buildings, cars, even pipes. They’re digging up pipes to go sell. Destroying everything until he leaves.”
I imagined the Liberia I had left—the sprawling beaches, the roads bending into markets.
On Saturday mornings in Liberia, I woke up my girls with music. With Miriam Makeba, Sunny Okosun, and Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Mary Kiazolu, and George Gozi. On Saturday mornings I would play these singers, these magicians, and dance to them while I cooked in my Caldwell kitchen.
“Pata Pata,” one of Makeba’s most popular works, was only one of a collection of around fifty songs that embedded themselves into the mold of that house. I danced there. I moved my feet and hips as though I were a part of the music. My girls rolled their pelvises around, then jerked their bottoms back and forth. I could still hear their laughter. Gus would sometimes join me, and they watched us, each step bringing us closer to Liberia’s full story, the dancing and funky hiccupping beats that moved the junctions of their bones. The merging cultures and origins, all trying to make sense of a place they all wanted to call home.
That night I pressed Play on an old tape player, and inside there was a Miriam Makeba cassette. Makeba sang “Suliram,” a song she recorded in 1960, an Indonesian lullaby whose title means “go to sleep.” The song floated through the walls of my apartment and over me as I lay on my couch beside the phone and looked up at the ridged ceiling.
“Suliram, ram, ram,” Makeba sang as I cried. “Suliram yang manis.” The lyrics weighed me down. “Go to sleep,” Makeba sang. But I could not. I walked to my bed, where Facia slept beside Bom, in the dark.
“You sleeping?” I asked, as if we were children, little girls again at Ol’ Ma’s house in Logan Town.
“No,” Facia said, sniffing.
I found my sister’s hand and held it. “Suliram, ram, ram. Suliram yang manis,” Makeba sang. And I swore I heard Facia sing along, hum and wail those prayers in the night, just as our mother would.
TWENTY-THREE
My baby was due at the end of September and my second school year had just begun. With Facia and Bom in the apartment I was more comfortable leaving, and I questioned them about phone calls as soon as I got home. Facia had found a job to help with the living expenses my scholarship could not cover. I had trouble paying attention in class, and if anyone asked me about Liberia or my family, I tiptoed around the truth, careful not to step on broken glass.
I had not heard from them since May, and Facia and I had no way of knowing where anyone was or if the family in Logan Town had all successfully made it to Lai. On September 9, a BBC news desk reported that Johnson had wounded and captured Doe and had declared himself president until elections could be held. Not even one week later, Prince Johnson and Charles Taylor were now fighting against each other. Prince Johnson ordered his men to seize the rest of Monrovia at all cost, even if it meant leveling the city.
When I was not at class I was in my apartment, the telephone an arm’s length away. I hoped the baby would wait just a little while until the war outside was over, so his father would not miss his birth.
On a Thursday morning while I waddled and paced around the rooms of the apartment to the accompaniment of CNN, the phone rang.
“Hello?” I asked, out of breath after rushing to the phone.
“Hello? Hello, Mam?” I was asked. There was static, white noise on the other side.
“Hello?” I yelled into the phone. “Can you hear me?”
The white noise continued but I held the phone close to my face, refusing to hang up.
“Hello?” I yelled again.
“Hello?” I heard again, and the white noise