Our last test began after all of Kosawa, plus friends and relatives from the sibling-villages, had gathered around us, a crowd of hundreds.
Every eye on us, we stripped down naked to walk on hot coals.
We had to take forty steps across the coals, displaying no shame or agony, because as men we would need to hold our heads high despite the world’s gaze, and channel our pain wisely. Our fathers had advised us to walk fast on the coal, but when the time came, few of us could; most of us ground our teeth with every step, and at least a couple of us leaked urine. At the completion of this test, our mothers and other female relatives wrapped loincloths around us, and our fathers and other male relatives carried us home, where our burnt soles were cleaned and bandaged after we took a bath.
When we returned to the square, dressed in red, it was to the sound of the village anthem, everyone dancing and singing: Sons of the leopard, daughters of the leopard, beware all who dare wrong us, never will our roar be silenced.
Before the eating and drinking began—the part we’d been dreaming of all night in the forest and all day sitting in silence—we knelt before the elders. They laid their hands on our heads, poured libations, and anointed us the next generation of leopards. When we arose after the anointing was when we entered manhood. We knew, though, because our fathers had told us, that the rite of passage alone did not make us men. We knew we would only become men the day we became responsible for other lives, when we acquired wives and had children and looked at them and realized we were worth nothing if we couldn’t give them everything. Now that we were men, we repeated this often to the younger generation, that the rite of passage was merely the door being opened for them to enter manhood—they would need to remind the world over and over of the blood of the leopard within them; otherwise, they’d be forever boys.
When we told Thula about the latest ceremony’s success, she was stupefied that babies she’d carried around the village had now entered manhood. “I’m glad I’m coming back soon,” she said. “I don’t want to return and discover my friends are grandparents.” In that letter, which was her final correspondence from America, she told us of an impromptu farewell party her friends had thrown for her, how her friends had made her cry as they spoke about all the adventures they’d had together, the places they’d traveled across America. For most of the letter, though, she told us about her own recent passage:
Two days ago I went to Austin’s apartment to have dinner with him. We had decided that it would be best if we stopped talking about the fact that I’m leaving in three months, better we just enjoy ourselves as if we’d always be together. Sometimes we succeeded, but I could tell from his sullen demeanor the moment I entered his apartment that it wouldn’t be so that day. While we were eating the fried ripe plantains with beans and mushroom stew he’d learned how to make in Bézam, he took my right hand and told me that he had to tell me something.
Princess, he said. I’m dying.
I scanned his face, words refusing to leave my tongue.
What do you mean, you’re dying? I asked him finally.
I’m dying, he said again. I don’t know when, I don’t know what my cause of death will be, but today, tomorrow, next week, next year, I’ll be dead.
What’s going on? I said. Were you at the doctor’s? He shook his head. My heart quieted; I decided he was just in one of his contemplative moods.
Are you writing a story about death that’s upsetting you? I asked.
Every story I write is about death, he said. It dawned on me today that life is death, death is life—what’s the point of it all?
So you’re not sick? I asked him. He shook his head. A drop of water spilled from my eyes, and he wiped it with his free hand.
We sat there for I don’t know how long, looking into each other’s eyes. Water started rushing out of my eyes, I couldn’t understand why. My body felt heavy, fatigued after a turbulent life. And yet I felt an awakening of my spirit. I began sobbing, and Austin started wiping my tears, which made me sob harder.
He said to me: You’re dying too, princess. We’re all dying. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it all week, how close death is. Doesn’t it make you want to change the way you live? It makes me want to. I want to float through life, untethered from human vanities. It’s unbelievable, you know, what a blip our existence is in the infinite expanse of the universe. It’s baffling, so humbling and liberating, don’t you think? We don’t even matter.