The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 70
“Wait, I still have to go through checkpoint?” Papa asked.
“Yes, but no worry,” Satta said. “No worry. It’s for your travel pass. I talk to them. You don’t have trouble.”
“But my girls,” he said. “If anything … just in case. You will—”
“—yes I take them to your wife,” Satta interrupted him. “But no worry, nothing happen. We must hurry. I talk to them.”
Papa nodded and Satta led us to a place in the line as promised. We strolled with the others while ahead the rebels interrogated those escaping, asking the same questions we had heard during our rainy season escape. Before we arrived at the front of the line, Papa stood us side by side and kissed each of us. He looked into our faces, his pupils widened, and beads of sweat straddled the hairs on his face.
“Papa loves you,” he said. “You know that, yeh?”
“Yeh,” we answered together.
Papa met the rebels at the front of the line with grace. He was calm and quiet, and we hid behind him.
“Your children?” one of them asked.
“Yeh,” Papa answered.
“Tell them come from behind you.”
Papa pulled our arms and we stood side by side, facing the men on the other side. They were bigger than Papa and smelled like the boys on the bus. Not too far away from them, other rebels lingered.
“Where your ID?” the rebel demanded. Papa took out his university identification from his wallet and handed it to the man.
“Let me see your bag,” another said. Papa handed him the backpack he was carrying and the man opened it, sifting through our change of clothes, the documents, and Bible therein.
“Birth certificate for the girls them?” the rebel asked.
“In the bag,” Papa said pointing to the bag. The man searching it threw it back at him and he rummaged through the contents for our papers.
The rebel looked at us closely and endlessly. Papa studied the bodies of those beyond the checkpoint for Satta. His hands trembled along the ragged handles of his bag. The watchfulness of the rebels burdened him, I could tell, but Papa had never let me down before. The months had withered his spirit, but he was still a giant, our giant, with hands strong enough to armor my ears when the drums echoed loudly in the night.
The man behind the table waved toward a group standing nearby on his right and another rebel approached, holding a clipboard. The man handed Papa his bag and the rebel gestured to us to follow him. Papa took our hands and we shuffled behind him. The rebel turned to Papa, his eyes cutting and frigid.
“What you do here?” the official asked.
“I am meeting my wife here,” Papa replied.
“Where she?”
“She here,” Papa said. “In Bo Waterside.”
“Yeh, what you do here?”
“I am professor. Teacher,” Papa said.
“You teacher?”
“Yeh.”
He looked as though he did not believe Papa.
“Let me see your ID.”
Papa again revealed his identification.
“Give me the girl papers,” the official said.
Papa gave him our birth certificates from the bag. The man reviewed the documents and wrote something on his clipboard, each written word sounding like knives slicing stone. He then took a circular wooden knob out of his pocket and pressed it against the clipboard. When he was finished, he handed the papers to Papa, along with what he had written.
“Here,” the official said. “Your stamp laissez passer.”
He handed Papa the flimsy sheet of paper and nodded toward Satta, who stood on the side of the road, not too far from the checkpoint, waiting.
“Thank you,” Papa said and we rushed to Satta.
“Come, follow me,” she said as soon as we reached her, declining to show any emotion toward us in that company.
“Thank you,” Papa said to Satta, under his breath as we hurried past the checkpoint. She did not turn to face him, but she nodded, her eyes fastened on the road.
And there, alongside Satta, we passed the Sierra Leonean border. Papa exhaled after we crossed that invisible line, and I felt his relief as the grip on my hand loosened, little by little with each step. For twenty minutes after passing the checkpoint and border, Satta led us to the outskirts of Bo Waterside’s bustling market, where a wooden house sat on the crown of a hill. The sun was almost gone, yet the sky remained blue into the early evening. Untended fields with overgrown grass were on either side of the narrow road to the house. There was a water well in the front yard, not far from the porch. Its bucket sat on the rim and a sturdy rope was tied to the handle, suspending into the abyss below.
“She is inside there,” Satta said. “My job is done.”
“Wait, you are not coming?” Papa asked.
“No, this what I was paid to do. I must go now. I been gone long and other things to do tonight.”
“But what if they’n there?”
“They there, no worry.”
“It’s just up the hill,” Papa protested.
“So you go alone then. I finish,” Satta said. “Go now. She wait for you.”
Papa looked toward the house. He knew that he would not be able to convince Satta to continue with us.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Yeh,” Satta answered and turned toward the way we had come, her certainty unwavering, her life again, if just for a moment, redeemed.
“We go see Mam?” Wi asked.
“Yes,” Papa said.
He lifted K to his shoulders and she sat, her hands resting on his head. Wi and I held his hands.
“Come,” he said.
We had left everything and run from Caldwell, the pockets of Papa’s trousers now emptied, the copper from his change gleaming in the sun. Like the zokenge crab that had fought each other to the top of his bucket during those months he fished for food in Lake Piso, now so were his thoughts, it seemed, all climbing. Maybe we were safe and Mam was