Tomorrow the soldiers will arrive, and we might be dead by sunset.
Tomorrow Pexton will surrender, and we might live to see our old age.
We tried not to think about our future. We wanted to hold on to that night for as long as we could, savor this optimism that had descended upon us, the faint promise of triumph. We wanted to be overcome with madness like Konga and relish the fleeting ecstasy wrought of fearlessness, anticipating our new lives as conquerors.
They’d proclaimed victory over us prematurely. That night, we declared war on them, and the next morning we awaited their arrival.
They should have known we’re not easily defeated.
Thula
THE HUT IS WARM, BUT my teeth chatter. My mind thrashes around, compelling me to imagine the spill of my blood after a bullet tears open my belly. I wonder how many bullets it would take to kill me—what would my corpse look like? I’ve spent my entire life around death, and yet I fear it. The mystery of it confounds me. How someone could be here and not here, in our world but also gone from it, with a nose closed off to air, eyes that won’t open, a sealed mouth, a human but just a thing. I hate this world, but I don’t yearn to leave it. I want to live long and see what life after a twisted childhood looks like, but I know death is eager to claim me—my journey to reunite with Papa might begin tomorrow. Once, after the funeral for one of my friends, I asked Papa about the crossing from this world to the next, how lonely and treacherous it would be, and he told me that it was different for everyone, it all depended on what kind of life a person had led, words that offered me no comfort. “You’re not going to die for a long time, Thula,” Papa said. A lie, we both knew it—what human can guarantee another long life?
* * *
—
Mama fastens the rope that keeps our front door closed. Her hands tremble as she makes knot after knot; she seems convinced a tightly locked bamboo door will prevent soldiers from getting to us. She hurries to do the same to the back door. Juba and I are in the parlor, sitting with our grandmother, Yaya—Juba is on Yaya’s lap, I’m on a stool next to hers. Yaya strokes Juba’s head with one hand, places the other around my shoulders. Besides the sound of Mama’s efforts, our hut is quiet. Kosawa is quiet.
“My dear children,” Yaya says, softly, “let’s go to sleep. We need a good rest so we’ll be ready to face whatever tomorrow brings.” She is wrapped by a peace I haven’t seen since the day Papa left. “If anyone comes to take something from us, we’ll give it to them, even if it’s our lives they want.”
“Bongo and all the men are together right now, sharpening their machetes,” Mama says as she re-enters the parlor. Her voice is quivering. “If those soldiers think they can just come here and…”
“But, Mama, the soldiers have guns,” I say, struggling not to cry. Papa told me, before he left, never to cry unless I must. “How will machetes help us?”
“Jakani and Sakani will take care of that,” Mama replies.
I ask no more questions. The twins—our village medium and medicine man—are capable of incredible deeds. They’re beyond human, but they’re mortals; they too can die.
“We’ll all sleep in my bedroom tonight,” Yaya says, staring afar. “We’ll dream the same dream, maybe a dream in which we see your papa and your big papa.”
Everyone is silent again, listening to the quietness outside. Yaya rises first, leaning against her cane. Juba and I follow her to her bedroom. Without rinsing our mouths or changing into our sleeping clothes, we go to lie on either side of her. Mama sleeps on the floor, no one beside her for comfort now that Papa is gone and tradition forbids her from ever sharing a bed with another man. I hear Juba and Yaya falling asleep—their breaths turning into light snores—but I know that, like me and most of Kosawa, Mama will stay up all night; life gifts easy peace only to the very young and very old. Nothing can hinder my thoughts from rushing to the moment when Mama and Yaya and Juba are slaughtered in my presence. I wonder how long I’ll spend dangling between this world and the next before finding myself among my ancestors, who I hope will welcome me and teach me how to be at home in their world. I pray they’ll help me forget the few good things of this world. Perhaps it won’t be hard for me to get used to this unimaginable land—Papa and Big Papa are already there, Mama and Yaya and Juba and Bongo will accompany me there. We’ll be together again, but first we must die.
* * *
MAMA AND PAPA CAUTIONING ME never to go near the big river is my first memory of life. Without their warning, how would I have known that rivers were not ordinarily covered with oil and toxic waste? Without our parents’ stories about their childhoods in a clean Kosawa, their days spent swimming in rivers that ran clear, how would my friends and I have known that the sporadic smokiness that enveloped the village and left our eyes watery and noses runny wasn’t an ordinary occurrence in the lives of other children our age?