The next day, Kosawa began a new season of waiting. Women continued trekking for hours to find fertile lands. Mothers boiled water for babies. The forest supplied bushmeat, which brought in money for basics. Children died because of Pexton, and for reasons that had nothing to do with Pexton. Newborns arrived to replace them. Families fled. Families returned, often for the sake of grandparents who wanted to die where they were born. Days of serenity intermingled with days of despondency.
Through it all, Thula never wavered, even as years came and went and her students from her Village Meeting graduated and new students came in and graduated. Even as she received a promotion and became head of her department, which led her to suspend her party activities so she could focus on her students, who remained one of her best chances at realizing her vision.
She still traveled the country, to speak to occasional gatherings of her supporters, the young people who walked with high shoulders even in the presence of soldiers and greeted each other by raising clenched fists. She traveled also in response to letters she received asking her please to come and speak to one community or another because, emboldened by her story, they’d decided to stage protests in front of government offices and corporation factories. She exhorted the protesters never to stop believing that change was going to come. Whenever she arrived somewhere, women welcomed her with joyful dancing. “Look at what one of us is doing,” they sang. “Look at what a woman can do.”
She knew many were those plotting her demise, but she did not fret. Not even when she sensed she was being followed around Bézam by a man in dark glasses whom she’d spotted sitting in a car outside her house; shadowing her in the supermarket; lingering around her office with a cellphone to his ear. It did not surprise her—of course Pexton was going to try to scare her. But they misjudged her. They didn’t expect she’d smile at the man whenever she saw him, wave at him sometimes. She told Carlos and the Five about the man, and they all agreed that she should take cautionary measures for her safety. But my sister was never one to slow-dance with fear; she refused to hire a private bodyguard. Once or twice when I was with her, I saw the stalker and begged her to be careful. She laughed and told me to stop worrying. One day, the man stopped following her. When she told Mama that she could relax, the man was gone, Mama cried in relief.
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WHEN THULA FIRST RETURNED HOME from America, Mama often took me aside to remind me that I mattered too, that everything wasn’t about my sister, I shouldn’t feel compelled always to put aside my needs for the sake of Thula. Mama could see, as only a mother could, that around Thula I often forgot that I had a story too, that Mama and I both had stories and dreams unrelated to Thula’s vision for Kosawa and our country.
Sometimes, in her kitchen, Mama and I reminisced about the time after Thula left for America, when it was just Yaya and us in the hut, Yaya unable to get out of bed, Mama and I sitting on the veranda, enjoying our last days in our hut. We both cried the morning we closed up the hut and set out for Bézam to live with my new father. We left after we’d buried Yaya within a week of her moving to live with Malaika. We gave away our possessions to friends and relatives; the hut we abandoned was as bare as it was the day Big Papa built it, likely to stay forever vacant now that Kosawa was emptying.
We arrived in Bézam with a bamboo trunk stuffed with old clothes, smoked meats, sun-dried vegetables, and spices wrapped in leaves. Mama had carried it on her head from one bus to the next, wary of trusting the city’s food too soon. On every prison visit to see Bongo she had brought along food—never had she eaten food not from home.
Our first night in the city, after my new papa had hugged us and fed us and given us water with ice cubes in it, he asked us to tell him everything about our trip. Then he said to us: This is your home, now and forever. Mama nodded. She told me to thank my new papa, yet she whispered to me before I went to sleep, “Never forget your old papa.” I said, “Yes, Mama.” I swore to her that I’d keep Papa in my heart always. I was ashamed to tell her that I’d already begun to forget Papa, Bongo too. My memories of them were waning, much as I wanted them never to.
One week after my arrival, my new papa held my hand and walked me to my new school. He guided me around cars green, red, and yellow; bought me sweet things to eat along the way. He gave me money for lunch and wiped the sweat off my face with his handkerchief. He’d never had a child; his heart was full of love he was desperate to share.
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