The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 71

actually inside that house on the hill; Satta had no reason to lie, and if her plan was to kill us, she would have thrown us into the lake as soon as the canoe left Lai. Papa could have been ambushed in that bus and the rebels could have stolen us. There were the facts—what we had personally experienced and the photograph Satta gave Papa from Mam. But what if Mam was not there? There was so much Papa said he had wanted to tell her while we were hiding, while we were running, but as we walked toward her now he seemed weak. There was love, then there was what he had with Mam; his wildflower, his siren, Orpheus now in the depths, the hell of war, returned for her true loves.

He grunted as we carried on that narrow road up the hill, the breeze and sunset steadfast in their wonder. I would have run if I were not holding Papa’s hand. Mam was so close and I was anxious to touch her and tell her of the things she missed.

Papa says he did not know what to expect when the front door of that house creaked its way open. He was hopeful, but he was not certain what we would see.

But there she was.

Mam.

Mam and her beauty, her glorious neck and cheeks, sitting in a chair against the wall, across the front room. She yelled when she saw us. Jallah approached Papa from the couch, but we went straight to Mam. I ran in to her waiting there, touched her skin as I buried my face in her neck.

“You came back,” I said.

She nodded, unable to speak, the familiarity of her eyes jaded by the tears.

After our embrace she went to Papa. They touched each other’s faces and backs, they wiped each other’s eyes and hugged for a long time, like those days in Caldwell when they stood so close that his arms swallowed her whole. And there was no knowing where she began. And there was no telling where he ended. Then she told us everything. How she prayed for us. Everything that had happened in her America and in the days before we saw her again.

My Ol’ Ma says the best stories do not always end happily, but happiness will find its way in there somehow. She says that some will bend many times like the fisher’s wire. Some make the children laugh. Some make even the Ol’ Pas cry. Some the griots will take a long time to tell, but like plums left in the sun for too long, they too are sweet to taste.

Suffering is a part of everyone’s story. As long as my Ol’ Ma is here, and I am here, as long as I become an Ol’ Ma myself and my children’s children become Ol’ Mas and Ol’ Pas, there will be rainy seasons and dry seasons too long to bear, where troubles pile up like coal to burn you to dust. But just like suffering makes its bed in these seasons, so does happiness, however brief, however fleeting.

There are many stories of war to tell. You will hear them all. But remember among those who were lost, some made it through. Among the dragons there will always be heroes. Even there. Even then. And of those tales ending in defeat, tales of death and orphans wandering among the ruined, some ended the other way too.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to thank the Moore and Freeman families for your examples of love, compassion, leadership, and integrity. I am grateful, especially, to Gus and Mam Moore who continue to amaze me with their love for each other and for their children. Special thank you to my husband, Eric. Thank you to Agnes Fallah Kamara-Umunna for being an invaluable resource, and to the University of Liberia. To the former child combatants who entrusted me with your stories—thank you for your lesson in forgiveness. Huge thank you to the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, to Graywolf Press, and to my agent, Susan Golomb. Thank you for Zoe Zolbrod and Martha Bayne for selecting “love/woman/thirty” for publication in the Sunday Rumpus. I am grateful to Wiande Everett and Kula Moore-Junge, Susan Henderson, Mary Drummond, Sharon Kim, Eda Henries, and Prentice Onayemi for reading various versions of this book and providing feedback. Thank you to that table of angel girls in the sixth grade who became my sisters and teachers—your magic stays. To the Liberians who read this story as their own: I feel you pushing me along. I thank you. And finally, to Satta. Wherever you are in time—wandering our vast world, in paradise or interstellar—thank you.

WAYÉTU MOORE, author of She Would Be King, was born in Liberia and raised in Spring, Texas. She holds a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Southern California and a master’s degree in anthropology and education from Columbia University, where she held a Margaret Mead Fellowship. She is a graduate of Howard University and the New York State Summer Writers Institute. Her writing can be found in the Atlantic, Guernica, and the Rumpus, among other publications. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.

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