She nods.
I tell her I’ll sleep and think on it. I wake up the next morning worrying for her.
From the day she was born, she’s wanted what she’s wanted. If Thula wanted to see her father before going to sleep, her eyes wouldn’t shut until he returned from smoking with his friends in the square. I remember one evening, when she was five, I told her that Malabo had gone to visit a sick friend in another village and would not be back till the next day, so she could come sleep with me in the bed. When nighttime came, I couldn’t find her. Yaya and I were about to panic when Bongo ran out of the hut and returned minutes later dragging Thula—he had found her on the path to Gardens, planning to catch the bus to go spend the night with her father, wherever he was.
* * *
—
I call her into my bedroom after she returns from school and ask her to sit next to me on the bed. I tell her that I understand why she wants to go to the better school—having more knowledge could never be a bad thing—but that going to Lokunja would not be good for her. I tell her how tiring it would be to take a bus for an hour every morning, an hour every afternoon. She says she would be fine doing it. I remind her that her friends would not be there in the new school, most will likely be married in no more than four, five years. And if she were to go to school in Lokunja, a town where we have no family, if something were to happen to her, who would bring us the news? She asks me what I think might happen to her there. When I don’t tell her about all of the horrid possibilities that circulate in my head every day, all the ways in which life could conspire to take my children away from me and leave me empty-handed, she tells me that I can’t think of anything because there’s nothing that could happen to her there that won’t happen here. “Who will you share the bus with every day?” I ask her. “No mother or father in Kosawa is going to allow their child to go to that school.” Did she expect the Restoration Movement to send a bus for her alone?
She leaves my bedroom, returns to Bongo’s room, gets on the bed, and turns her face to the wall. She does not rise when Juba stands at the door and asks her to take a look at what he’s drawn—does she like it? Juba enters the room, pokes her in the ribs jokingly, to force a reaction. She does not turn, not even to glance at the drawing and tell him he’s done well. Juba pokes her once more, shrugs, and returns to the parlor to draw something else.
In the morning I make her eggs and plantains before she goes off to school, but she refuses to eat. I make a dinner of sweet potatoes and pumpkin leaf sauce and she looks at it as if it’s a pile of mud. I sigh and sit on the bench in the parlor. I am tired, the child has wrung me out, I have nothing left with which to break her and remake her. I stand up and, between clenched teeth, tell her that she’s ungrateful and selfish and the most spiteful child ever born to a woman. She stares at me as if I’m an empty vessel making a loud noise, as if my disappointment is no match for her resolve. I’m about to accuse her of having neither scruples nor shame about adding to my anguish when Yaya calls for me. When I go to Yaya, she tells me to please give Thula what she’s asking for.
* * *
—
It was on that day that I began going from hut to hut, trying to convince fathers to allow their children to ride the bus with Thula to the school in Lokunja.
Over and over, I hear that a girl does not need to ride a bus to get more knowledge than what the village school is offering. I am given a summary of what the government has done to us, what it is still doing to us. I am told, lest I’ve forgotten, that the children of Kosawa are still in danger, that they’re still dying even though the Restoration Movement has shamed Pexton into providing us bottled water for the babies. I am lectured that no one in Kosawa should ever trust the government even if the Sweet One and the Cute One tell us that we can in some instances, that we should never enter a building owned by the government unless we must, and that, even then, we would need to grow eyes in our ears and eyes in the back of our necks; we should never think the government wants anything but our demise—the government is not made up of people with souls and hearts of flesh.
I listen to all this and more.
I say, Yes, Papa, to every father, and Yes, Big Papa, to every grandfather.
They ask me questions and I respond in a manner that suggests I don’t know much about what I’m trying to say. I nod while they speak, limiting eye contact. They have to see how much I revere their wisdom. They want to know why I’m doing this, why I can’t just tell my daughter no. Isn’t it time my daughter learned to understand her choices in life? Why haven’t I advised my daughter that the most important knowledge she will ever need as a woman is how to find contentment with whatever life offers her?