The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 67
“She say to bring you food. She here now,” Satta said.
“Leave here. These people don’t want trouble.”
Papa looked down at us.
“I said go in the house! Go to Ol’ Ma and close the door!” he yelled at us.
Too stunned to leave him, we instead hid behind his legs. Several villagers came to Papa’s aid as he argued with the woman. He tried to convince her to leave and she became frustrated trying to convince him that it was Mam who sent her.
It had been one year since we saw her, and the more the woman spoke, the more I wanted to just go with her to see what was on the other side of those words.
“What’s wrong?” Ol’ Ma said, reaching us in the middle of the village circle. She looked down at the food.
“Ma, please take the girls,” Papa said.
“What she want?” Ma asked.
“Ol’ Ma, if this man is Augustus, his wife say I come get him and take him and his daughters to meet her.”
“Where?!” Ma shouted.
“Ma, don’t listen,” Papa said. “Please leave.”
“She is in Bo Waterside. She say to come get her husband and three daughters,” Satta said.
Ol’ Ma glanced at Papa.
“Of course, they standing right here,” Papa said skeptically. I saw sweat on his head and I felt it against his clothes. “Listen, I don’t know how you know my name or how you knew we were here but I don’t want trouble.”
“Wait, wait,” Satta said. “She said show you this. This picture.”
She took the photograph out of her pants pocket, unfolded it, and handed it to Papa.
His body shook in my grasp and he shouted. He could have fallen to the ground in the circle if we were not surrounding him. He shouted again and laughed, in that yawning, beautiful way that laughter comes after it has been resting for too long.
“What’s there?” Ol’ Ma asked.
He held out the photograph to Ma. It was Mam sitting on a couch beside a baby that she had propped up with a pillow. On the back she had written: Gus, my love. Here is your son. Augustus Moore Jr. Born October 7, 1990.
“I have a son,” Papa said, barely audible. “I have a son!” he yelled, waving the photo. My sisters and I jumped and reached for his hand to view the picture, screaming and clapping at the little human, and our Mam, who sat smiling beside him. Ol’ Ma placed her hand over her mouth and started dancing.
The villagers ran out to the commotion. They passed around the picture, pointing at it and patting Papa on the back. I knew that it all meant that I would see Mam again. Maybe I would even see her America and find out why she had been away for so long, why she had not been in Caldwell to shield our heads when the bullets fell.
The clapping and the stomping of their feet made a rhythm we all danced to. She said that Mam was here. She said that I had a brother.
“When will we see Mam?” I asked, looking up at Papa, jumping.
“Yes, please,” Satta said. “I tell her I take you back this evening. We must leave now.”
“Now?” Papa asked.
“The only way we go back by sundown,” Satta said.
“Not much time.”
“Yes, we go through Junde walking and take bus some of the way. Long way so we leave after you eat,” she said.
“Where is she?” Papa asked.
“Bo Waterside. She stay there and wait for you,” Satta said.
“How long she been here?” my aunty asked among the crowd.
“I don’t know. I only come to take her people to her,” Satta said. “But we go today. She take you to Freetown.”
“So you going to America!” a villager shouted and they continued to rejoice, given hope by our salvation.
When Papa finally agreed, food was prepared on the smoke pot in the cookhouse and we were fed rice with gravy and chicken. We were then taken back to Ol’ Ma’s house, where she gathered the few dresses we still had and put them in a plastic bag.
“Ol’ Ma, you come too?” I asked her.
She sat on her bed and extended her hands for us to come to her. Her tears washed our faces, her kiss so familiar.
“No, I stay here,” she said finally. “But you be a good girl for your father.”
Our excitement was now corrupted by the news that we were leaving Ol’ Ma behind, and we cried.
“But you come too?” we asked again.
“No, but we see each other again soon. You go to America and become big girl and come back to see me. When all of this over. You send for me.”
Anger triumphed over my other emotions, then sadness and regret. Who would be my listener now? And who would lie beside her on the nights she cried for Ol’ Pa, wishing I was big enough to protect her, as she had so graciously protected me.
“I see you soon,” she said, wiping her face with the colors of her lappa. “Look, you must smile when you see Mam. She want see you happy. She’n see you for long, and you must smile for her,” she said in Vai. “Show me the smile you will show her.”
Ol’ Ma stood up from the bed and held my shoulders.
“Show me,” she said again.
I thought of Mam, and of the baby in the picture, and of America. It was hard to do, but I wanted to make Ol’ Ma happy. So I smiled.
“There it is!” she said.
I was relieved by the sound of her voice, her haunting face. I crashed into her, hands squeezing her waist. She hugged my sisters and me, fighting her tears, and pulled us away.
“You must go to Mam. Go and you all make Ol’