The Dragons, the Giant, the Women, стр. 9
“They shooting in the woods,” she said.
“Shooting what?” I asked. “What is shooting?”
“No, not in the woods,” Papa said, standing up from where he knelt. “No shooting. I told you, drums—”
And before he could finish what he was saying, those drums came crashing loudly around us. “Let’s go!” he shouted and ran between the trees as K and my head bobbed over his shoulders and by his side. Torma’s arms swung beside her as she followed, and the cracks fell onto us and the surrounding woods.
“Run!” Papa said, and Ol’ Ma led Wi across the uprooted stems as the trees around me came alive. Up from the darkest greens and roaring howls, square faces and sharp teeth appeared in the crevasses of the branches. The boogeyman and Bendu Sudan, Monkey Men and Firestone’s children with scowls so convincing that I shouted. The whisper and echoes of the trees changed to laughter and mourning, and the eyes of the forest stretched open, and its limbs reached out to grab me from Papa’s tight grasp. I closed my eyes tightly and my head bounced against his chest and shoulder.
“Run!” he said again, encouraging Torma and Ol’ Ma not to stop, no matter how painful, no matter how far the earth stretched its hands from the tree stumps to pull their legs and lappas back.
“I coming,” my Ol’ Ma said with the hardness of a rainy season storm, past Papa, with eyes too focused on the end to cry, and a story that meant too much to her to risk ending now.
FOUR
Before the dragon came—a thing, not a person—before Hawa Undu was born, humans ruled the forest. Gola people and Kissi people and Loma people and Gio people. Vai people and Kpelle people and Kru people and Mano people. Bassa people and Krahn people and Grebo people and Gbani people. And these groups, they all ruled in their own way, prayed in their own way, told stories in their own way, loved in their own way. The people had many chiefs and each group had one prince to lead them. But the dragon said the forest was too small, and the ways of the people were not correct, not what the dragons did on the other side of Mami Wata’s shoulders. So. They said no more chiefs no more princes. No more praying no more speaking in those ways. There is one correct way to tell a story, the dragon said. The people fell in line, but those princes never stopped being. Death is not the end. And after that dragon had spent a long time ruling the forest, telling the people the correct ways, princes began to fight. None of them won, but soon a man who used to be a dragon’s soldier rose up. One from the Krahn people. This man promised that the forest would be for everyone again. That there were many different ways to tell a story. Some believed him and were glad, but the faith did not last. Those promises broke into tiny pieces. Papa said it would not be long until this man was gone and order would be restored. Others, like our neighbors, like my schoolmates, like my uncles, believed the forest would die and it was time to find another home, so they left. This soldier man who entered the forest had become a dragon himself, but the most curious kind, one who did not understand the fire within. So when the dragon heard that yet another prince was entering the forest, this one with his own soldiers, this one of Gola blood whose family had come long ago from America, the dragon used the fire too much. The Krahn people from which the dragon came were ashamed. And those the dragon hated most, whose princes had opposed him, the Gio people and Mano people, were also ashamed, were afraid.
Outside of the woods that day as we hurried to Pastor’s house, it was suddenly clear who was Krahn: those most afraid of rebels. And it was clear who was Gio and who was Mano: those most afraid of the dragon’s soldiers, the ones wearing army uniforms in the distance. The Gio and Mano walked faster, gazed at the ground, eyes as though they had been crying, avoiding the gaze of those who could have been the army men sent to kill them.
Papa led us to Pastor’s house immediately after departing the woods. The house—like all of the houses in Caldwell—sat on its own separate hill with a cement porch in the front, a wooden deck in the back, and a garden on both sides visible from the main road. People rushed past his house, some the dragon’s people, some running, as we entered.
A man and a woman ran across the porch and into his house, with a pace as urgent as Papa and Ol’ Ma’s after the drums made us run through the woods.
“What were those?” I whispered to Torma.
“Guns.”
“What are guns?”
“What the rebels fight with. How they beat the drums.”
“For how long?”
“Until the war finish.”
I imagined the rebels were walking around pounding the drums with their guns and sticks and sugarcane. I wondered who was at the front of the line as they marched to fight. Did he have to beat his gun the loudest?
Inside the house, Pastor’s living room was filled with people who sat on his sofas and blue rugs. Against the wall there was a large bookcase with books and pictures of memories with his family and friends. A few children sat against the bookcase with sandwich bags of Kool-Aid that were tied at the opening. A small hole was cut in the corner of the bag where the children sucked the juice out.
Pastor’s wife met Papa at the front door as she cradled and rocked her young daughter, who cried because of the sound of those drums outside. Pastor’s wife was a tall woman with a pretty face who walked like her shoulders were trying