I cannot argue or defend my choice; I’m not allowed to, for the sake of respect.
I only tell them that a mother’s love compels me.
A couple of times, Cocody’s younger cousin Aisha, who’s become like a little sister to me, comes along to help me in my persuasion. Once, when a grandfather tells us that in the olden days women wouldn’t dare walk around the village taking up the precious time of men for the sake of girls, Aisha, with only the slightest hint of humility in her voice, tells the grandfather that in the days to come the world will function the way women want it to. I’m too shocked to laugh.
After weeks of entering and exiting every hut in Kosawa, four fathers tell me they’ll allow nine of their sons to ride the bus with Thula to Lokunja. None of them share with me the reasons behind their decisions; they simply tell me, when I show up to their huts for a third or fourth time, that I don’t need to repeat myself, their sons will be taking the bus, but not for my daughter’s sake. The rest of the fathers find a reason to avoid me when they see me approaching—Papa just left to go visit his uncle, a child says; he went to the forest to check on his trap, a wife tells me, though it’s dark outside. I sit and wait while children play around me. I force chats with wives I’m not friendly with, women to whom I say little more than a hello around the village. After doing enough of these, I decide nine boys will be plenty to share the bus with Thula.
On the night I tell Thula that I went earlier in the day to the Restoration Movement’s office in Lokunja and spoke to the Sweet One and the Cute One and they agreed to start sending the bus when the school year ends and the next school year begins, she jumps for joy, wearing the biggest smile she’s worn in years. She runs over to me and hugs me, her thin arms tight around my neck. I hold her close and arrest my tears.
I think of Malabo.
That was how she used to hug him, when he walked around with a semi-smile and she was often happy, back when she was just a ticklish toddler, not a soon-to-be woman with thoughts she didn’t share, back when my life was mostly lovely and no heartache was more than I could bear and I strove daily to do what was right, to speak no unkind words, to think no wicked thoughts, so that the Spirit would not, in wrath, wreck me.
* * *
THE BOOKS THEY GAVE HER at the Lokunja school became her pillow and her blanket, her plate of food and the water that quenched her thirst. By the time I woke up in the morning, she was up, in Bongo’s room, sitting by the lamp, reading as if she lost the books in a dream and woke up to find them. She read while she was putting on her uniform and while she was nibbling on her breakfast. She read as she sat on the school bus to Lokunja.
In the evening, while she read, I looked at her and wondered what she saw in those books. She seemed to be in a trance while reading; sometimes a tear ran down her cheek. When I asked her what was happening in the books, she told me that it was hard to describe, it was more than she could put into words. When she set a book down and stepped out of the parlor, I looked at the cover. I cannot read, but I still remember my letters from school. I can recognize words like “of” and “the.” One of the books was called P-E-D-A-G-O-G-Y “of the” O-P-P-R-E-S-S-E-D. Another was “The” W-R-E-T-C-H-E-D “of the” E-A-R-T-H. The one she most liked to read was a thin one called “The” C-O-M-M-U-N-I-S-T M-A-N-I-F-E-S-T-O. I once asked her if these were books her teacher wanted her to read, if all the children at her school spent as many hours reading them as she did, and she said that no, these three were Bongo’s, the ones he brought back from his teacher-training program. She could read most of the big words in them now, something her uncle couldn’t.
Those three books were her closest friends. She loved her schoolbooks too—once, I overheard her telling Juba a story from one of them, about a young woman in Europe who commanded a bad man to cut another man’s flesh in a way that no blood would spill, and the bad man couldn’t do it. When Juba said the young woman sounded crazy, Thula said she didn’t think so—when she grew up she wanted to be like that young woman.
She still went to visit her friends, a book in one hand.
Older boys lingered around them, and Thula would sometimes converse and smile, but she did not put down her books. It was as if she was trying to send a message to the boys: If you want to get to me, you must prove yourself worthy of my putting down my book for you. Even as an early adolescent, you could see on her face that she found it all to be a sort of debasement, this desperation to be found worthy by a man whose brain was no match for hers. Sometimes I thought she would prove me wrong and be the first of her friends to get married—a woman who’s uninterested is often the one men want. On quiet days, I amused myself by fantasizing about men arriving in Kosawa to fight for her. She knew she was beautiful, because Malabo told her so every day, and I saw no sign that she shared my worries about the burden of her size. Perhaps she wanted a man to run after her and offer pigs and goats for her hand, just like girls the world over dream. Whatever it was she wanted as far as marriage was concerned, she didn’t say. All she allowed us to see was her and her books, loving each other. There was no semblance of sadness on her face during the hours she spent doing schoolwork, or reading while her friends giggled and ogled at shirtless young men. Perhaps her books sang lullabies to her at night after she put them on Bongo’s bed, right on the pillow, next to her head.