We asked for Thula’s body.
They did not have Thula’s body.
We mourned for our Thula without a body.
Some say she jumped into the big river, and, with her body bullet-ridden, sank to the bottom. Others say she ran into the forest, wanting to die alone. We went into the forest to search for her. From morning till night we called out, Thula, Thula. We never found a body. Thula, Thula. Thula never answered. Thula was gone.
The twins, Bamako and Cotonou, they went to their father, in the hut of the uncle to which their family had fled. They told their father about the child they’d put in Thula’s womb. They were a medicine man and a medium, but they were also children who’d lost homes—could they have wondered, as children are wont to do, if they were responsible for what had happened to us? Their father, he was one of us, he told us what his children and the Five had done. We did not blame them; they had done what the Spirit had commanded them to do. We cried for Thula, for her baby. Would he have grown up to be our savior? A man conceived of the Spirit—who would have dared to stand against him? Sometimes we imagine that Thula ran deep into the forest and there the Spirit caused her belly to swell, and birds and leopards tended to her, wiped her brow, and watered her lips as she pushed forth the child, and in unison, all the living things sang: For unto us a child is born. Could this child someday return to us, reclaim for us what was stolen?
* * *
—
Sahel, Juba, Nubia, and Thula’s new papa came from Bézam. We had no body for them. We buried the Five, but for Thula we only cried. We held Sahel, begged her to be strong. She fainted, again and again. She asked for a cup of poison; we refused to give it to her. Nubia told us she’d hidden all knives from Sahel when they got the news. The Spirit will restore, we told Sahel. We didn’t believe it that day, but we told it to her, in desperation. Three times in one life. Three vanishes for one woman. Juba tried to be strong for his mother, but his own heartbreak wouldn’t allow him. Nubia kept one arm around her husband, their son, Malabo Bongo, in her other arm.
Our fathers told us that Malabo Bongo was a replica of his father’s big papa—the same small, sad eyes. We cried for the child too, as we did for our own children, the burden he would have to bear for the things done and undone to those before him. His life, like the lives of our descendants, in good ways and bad ways, would be only a continuation of our story—nothing could save him from that.
* * *
—
We were refused one last chance to enter Kosawa and empty our huts. The government decided the land had become too contaminated for human presence. His Excellency ordered Kosawa burned. What once were our huts became ashes. Our mothers’ kitchens, ashes. Our barns and outhouses, ashes. Our ancestors’ pride, ashes. Nothing remained of Kosawa, except for what we kept in our hearts. Hour after hour, day after day, year after year, winds of every kind came and blew away the ashes of what used to be our home.
* * *
—
Pexton took the bodies of the overseer and his wife back to America, to their sons. It was only months later that we learned their full names: Augustine and Evelyn Fish. In stories printed in our country, there were pictures of them, smiling, with their sons. A couple that loved life: executed. Their sons: orphaned. A tragedy in every sense. No one called Thula’s death tragic. There were no pictures of her in most newspapers. Or of the Five. She was the Fire Lady. The Five, her disciples. Fire Lady, Fire Lady: how many readers of those stories cared for her real name, her full story?
The story told about her was mostly about her time in America, how she’d spent days in jail there for one misdeed or another. Some wrote of how His Excellency’s freedom-loving government had allowed her and her followers to speak out and march. She was given privileges accorded to every citizen of the republic—why did she have to turn to violence? In America the newspapers wrote that New York was where she had learned violence; she wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last to travel to New York and leave as a radical. They wrote of how she had attended meetings in a place called the Village, a gathering of people who hadn’t learned how to channel their anger positively. Others argued that violence had been in her blood long before she traveled to America: our government confirmed for those who inquired that, indeed, Thula’s uncle Bongo had been one of the men responsible for the kidnapping of Pexton workers decades before. Thula had taken it further by acquiring guns and orchestrating killings. A violent family—how sad.
* * *