The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 7
“Go, go, go,” he said. “Don’t look behind.” We ran through the yard away from the box and triangle and towering palm trees that we once drew. I was almost out of breath and I noticed Wi’s slippers fall off her feet and stay behind in the thick grass. Papa went back to grab them, and we continued with Ma as the popping seemed to be coming from the leaves ahead. We reached the edge of the woods and ran until dense bushes that sat among the vast spread of trees covered us, and we could finally stop.
“Nah-mah. It’s okay,” Ma said, as we all panted together.
“Keep walking,” Papa said, also out of breath. He picked up K and me, one on each hip, and continued to stride through the woods.
“Where we going now?” I asked, now uncertain of what game we were playing. I thought we would run to the woods, then back to the house. Ma stood up straight, heaving as she held Wi’s hand. Torma trailed behind and the orange shirt she wore collected leaves and masses of sweat as we walked.
I stared at Papa and Ma rushing through the woods. They could not hear it, but it was there, whistling in the distance, just as I imagined from Ol’ Ma’s stories. Settled wings. They had come. A prince entered that distant forest to kill Hawa Undu. The war had just begun.
THREE
Bendu Sudan was not in the woods but she was the first face that I looked for after we entered. She scared me when I saw her on our television one night, her black face covered with clods of powder, screaming out to us from the screen. Papa said it was a foolish movie and that Bendu Sudan was just acting. But when she screamed she cried, her dress hanging off one shoulder, and it made me cry. At school some of the children said that she hides in the woods and the forests, and if you walk too far inside, she will grab you. So when we entered the woods after Ol’ Ma and Papa pulled us out of the house, Bendu Sudan was the first person I looked for.
Bendu Sudan used to kiss a man who was married to another woman, a “big big” man, they say, with plenty money. And because she used to kiss him, and leave her lips pressed against his for a long time, and even sometimes use her tongue, even though he already had a wife, she was not a good woman. Her stomach started to get big because she was going to have his baby, and the big big man was afraid and angry because he did not want to tell his wife, so he killed Bendu Sudan. Bendu’s Ol’ Ma told her that when a person whose enemies have not been punished dies, that person could return to punish the enemies. “Death is not the end of life for you” is what they said. Death is not the end. So after Bendu Sudan was gone, people would see her on the beach and around Monrovia, still a fine geh like when she was with the big big man. And if a married man ever tried to kiss her like the big big man did, she would haunt him. And she was so disappointed with the world that she would haunt others. So I searched the shadows of the trees around me for Bendu Sudan’s face. And since death was not the end, I looked for others who may have gone some time ago, who were waiting in those shadowy places to correct their enemies. I looked up at the sky, without sun, without moon or clouds or stars, but Bendu was not there. If I were not so close to Papa, I was sure the ghost would leap out from the leaves to wrap her snakelike fingers around my neck. I had been at the edge of those woods many times before, but Torma or Korkor always stopped me from going farther. The woods were not for small small girls, they would say. There were some good things there, like almond trees and a looming plum tree Moneysweet picked from during the dry season, and we would wait at the edge of those mazes for what felt like an entire afternoon until he reemerged with a netted basket full of juicy red and orange plums, each as big as two fists. But we had heard stories of the badness of the woods too. Like Bendu Sudan. Like the dragons, smaller than Hawa Undu, scaly green creatures with sharklike teeth that even the bushmeat hunters were afraid to challenge. Like the boogeyman and devils. Like the Monkey Men who they say were made by scientists from America and Europe, to see if monkeys and people could fall in love, and were set free in the jungle to live in the mental wasteland of being half monkey and half people way too poor, too joyless to be rescued from surrendering their dignity. Like the children my aunty said work all day in the woods in Harbel tapping tapping tapping the Firestone trees until rubber snailed its way out to be packed in ships and sent to America—these children with no smiles, no stories of yesterday to tell, who had not eaten for so long that she once drove by Harbel and could not tell if they were still children or still people at all. All these things I had heard of these woods, and now the woods were all around me—whispering to us at first, then laughing as the birds slapped the tree branches above our heads in hurried flight. There was a sound like a first raindrop hitting an empty bucket, the