No one sings for the baby; our baby never had a life. There is no processional to the burial ground. Just a dozen of us. Our baby’s body is not worth making a coffin for—one of our relatives holds it in her arms, wrapped in a blue sheet.
I promise myself that afternoon that someday I will make Woja Beki and his friends in Bézam pay for what they’ve done to my family. I know nothing about how a girl makes men pay for their crimes, but I have the rest of my life to figure it out.
* * *
—
Later that week, Bongo leaves with three men to search for Papa and the others in Bézam. Before he goes, Yaya falls to her knees. She begs him not to leave her childless, the worse curse that could befall any woman who’s ever carried a child. Bongo promises her that not only will he return, he’ll return with Papa’s body, with or without life in it.
In Bézam, Bongo and the others sit on the steps of government buildings and promise parcels of land and goats to anyone who can offer them useful information. They sleep in an abandoned roadside shack, and from first light to dusk they walk up to anyone with a semblance of friendliness and ask questions, and give descriptions, but they only get headshakes. They roam a city so massive and frenzied it threatens to rip apart and swallow them at every turn. Eight days after their departure, they return empty-handed.
Still, night after night, Mama and Yaya sit on the veranda waiting for Papa, losing more flesh to despair. They take turns being the weaker woman—some nights Yaya feeds Mama with my help; other nights Mama and I feed Yaya. Many nights I feed them both, with Bongo’s help if he’s home. I force myself to eat a banana whenever I can—one of us needs to have a basic level of strength at all times. Only late at night do I consider my own pain, when I hope everyone is sleeping; it is then that I cry, imagining how different our lives would be if our ancestors had picked any other piece of the earth but this one. Images of my dead friends enter and exit my dreams. I think about what our unborn would have looked like if it had been allowed to be a fully formed child entering a kind world, a world where Papa wasn’t gone and my surviving friends and I weren’t spending precious minutes contemplating the day our turn would come to die.
* * *
—
Three months after Papa’s disappearance, the Pexton men arrive for their first meeting with the village. Before their arrival, Woja Beki tells us that we should be thankful to Papa and his group: something they did or said in Bézam must be why Pexton has decided to come speak to us. That makes no sense to me—why would people in Bézam cause Papa to vanish if they wanted to help him?—but I hope the meeting will be fruitful.
Yaya and Mama take a break from their seats on the veranda to attend the meeting, carrying along what shred of faith they have left that, despite Bongo’s futile search, Papa might return alive, even if broken. Ours is the worst kind of mourning—not knowing if the men are dead, how they died, when they died; not knowing if there’s still a chance we can save them. Yaya says this when she cries, that if she could only take her son’s corpse and put it in the ground, then she could at least begin the journey to acceptance. But the men from Pexton offer us no information at the meeting. When one of the missing men’s fathers stands up and implores the Leader to at least confirm to us that the Six are dead, so we can offer sacrifices to the Spirit on their behalf, help hasten their voyage to be with our ancestors, the Leader says that he cannot do that, he’s not allowed to do that, Pexton cannot involve itself with superstitious matters.
For more than a year now, they’ve come to speak to us every eight weeks. On every occasion, Woja Beki dons a linen suit, and the Pexton men tell their old lies using new words. Mama and Yaya cry when it’s over. Kosawa grows weaker. We were all on the verge of resignation until a few hours ago, when Konga took away the men’s car key.
* * *
THE WEIGHT OF MY THOUGHTS puts me to sleep toward the end of the night. When I wake up, the first light of day has descended on Kosawa. I had prayed the sun would never rise, but risen it has, and now I too must rise, to face the guns.
Juba is still sleeping next to me, but Mama and Yaya are already up—I hear them whispering with my uncle Bongo in the parlor. When I enter, they stop talking to look at me, Mama feigning a smile. I want to know everything: Are the men of Kosawa ready for the soldiers? What did they spend the night doing? Are there enough machetes?
“I’m not going to school today,” I say.
“Come,” Mama says, stretching out her hand for me to walk to her. I don’t move.