The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 6
“You there?” she asked.
“Yeh, Mama,” I said, wanting all of her back in Liberia, hating the sound of music so far away.
Some Saturdays later, my Ol’ Ma was visiting from her house in Logan Town and after eating breakfast, I led her to the den to watch The Sound of Music with me. I sang along, echoing their words since I did not know them, trailing behind a story that I could not fully understand. Wi and K sat in the den also. They were more entertained by the head tie wrapped around Ma’s head than by the movie. They were taking turns unfolding it from her head and wrapping it around again.
There was a loud knocking at the front door that escalated to a persistent thud. Papa walked into the den from his room, and he looked like he was ready to yell at us for jumping or tapping on the walls.
“What’s that sound?” he asked.
The thud was accompanied by a soft wailing, voices that at first sounded like singing, then rose to collective screams.
We turned toward the noise and the clamor of voices when a neighbor beat on the den window.
“Turn that down,” Papa said, pointing toward the television while he opened the window.
“Mr. Moore! Mr. Moore!” The woman was Mam’s friend, and she lived several houses past our neighbors. “They coming! The war now come! They coming!” she shouted.
“The rebels, most of them at the bridge now. Go, Mr. Moore! You all hurry and go!” she shouted and pointed in the direction of the Caldwell Bridge, only a quarter of a mile away from our house. As soon as the words left her mouth, she turned her head toward the sound down the road and ran at full speed toward a car that overflowed with clothes and disarrayed dishes and furniture. Her husband’s hand beat the driver’s door.
“Let’s go!” he yelled to his wife as she jumped into the car and closed the door. He waved at Papa and the car sped off, followed by a cloud of dust.
Papa’s eyes grew wide and he closed the window quickly. Torma and Korkor ran into the den.
“You all hear that noise? What’s that noise?” Korkor asked hysterically. I turned away from the film and wondered why Torma looked afraid.
“Go get your shoes,” Ma said to us.
“No, stay together,” Papa said, holding out his hand.
“Hawa Un-” I tried to say.
“Shhh!” Papa said. “Y’all lie on the ground.”
“Why?” Wi asked.
“We don’t want them to see us,” he said.
“Who?”
“Just stay here.” Papa got to his knees and crawled across the den toward the hallway to his bedroom. When he reached the doorway, Korkor grabbed his arm from the floor.
“Mr. Moore. The war now come. My family,” she said. She was crying now, shaking as sweat dampened her head tie.
Papa nodded and touched her hand.
“Go from the back. Hurry,” he said. Korkor crawled out of the den and got up, running past the kitchen and out of the house, crying loudly as her head tie fell from her head and lay stranded on the tiles of our hallway.
Ma unraveled her head tie and used it to shield our bodies.
“Hide and seek?” K asked. Ma nodded, though her eyes looked less and less like Mam’s as we lay there. “You all right, my children?” she whispered beneath the lappa. We nodded.
“It’s the dragon?” I whispered and my Ol’ Ma’s face froze, as if recalling our stories, blackened and still.
Papa rushed back into the den with a backpack and three pairs of slippers.
“Crawl to the kitchen,” he said, at first squatting, then he picked up K. Ma led us on our knees out of the den. When we reached the kitchen, Papa stood up and lifted us to our feet.
“Put these on,” he demanded.
We put on the slippers as the popping sound got closer.
“Let’s go!” Papa said, putting on the backpack as he raised K to his waist.
Ma picked me up and I watched Maria sing on the television screen until she was out of sight. We left the house from the back door, where Moneysweet was kneeled down peeking around the side of the house. Papa saw him and went to him, kneeling beside him.
“Come,” Papa said to him, “we going through the woods.”
Moneysweet hesitated.
“Mr. Moore, I can’t go. I can’t leave,” he said.
Without asking, Papa hugged him. There was a back street to the highway behind a house across the road. Moneysweet squinted to get a clear view of it from where he knelt. He stood up with Papa and leaned against the back of the house, periodically looking out onto the road. He took several deep breaths, took Papa’s hand and squeezed it, and ran across the yard. His shirt soared in the air as he sprinted from the back of the house, across the road to the street and highway.
“Where is Moneysweet going?” K asked softly.
“To visit his family.”
“Why is he running?” I asked.
“Why not? Don’t you like running? When I say go, we run,” Papa said as soon as he saw Moneysweet disappear behind the house across the street. Ma put me down.
“You hear? When I say go, we run to the woods, okay?”
I waited while in the background “Edelweiss” was being sung by the captain and his eldest daughter in harmony. I smiled at my father.
“What is that sound?”
“Don’t worry,” Papa hurried to say. “When I say run, we run like Moneysweet.”
Papa adjusted the straps of the backpack and the popping grew louder, and so close it sounded like the roses in Mam’s bush were exploding at the other end of the house.
“Go!” Papa yelled.
We ran past the garage apartment through the mammoth yard as the popping in the air increased above us. I was not running