A few days after this happened, a supervisor came to talk to Sonni. My brother, Manga, came to visit me after the supervisor met with his son. Manga said the supervisor believed our children were behind the recent fire and explosion. I shook my head. No, I told my brother. Not the children of Kosawa—they’re not those kinds of children. Not long after that evening, a friend came to visit me. She had lost her remaining two teeth since I last saw her, but she could still speak a hundred words to my one. She told me that the gossip going around the village was that Sonni’s wife had seen their son leaving their hut late one night, and that the next morning there had been another fire at Gardens. Someone from Gardens reported seeing Sonni’s son there, though the boy denied it and said he was in bed all night. That is how we began to suspect that these children, born the same year as Thula, were the ones burning and breaking at Gardens.
* * *
—
The American overseer sent word that he wanted Sonni to come see him.
Sonni went to Gardens with the two men who have been helping us, our Bézam friends, the Sweet One and the Cute One. They went to the overseer’s house, which stands a far distance from the houses of the laborers and the supervisors.
Manga told me that Sonni said the overseer’s house was as cold as well water in the rainy season. It had white carpet all over, and more chairs than any one house could possibly need. Three men from the district office were there. When everyone had been seated in the parlor, Sonni was given one task only—to make sure that the vandals from his village stopped what they were doing; otherwise, Kosawa would have a lot to regret. But did the young men listen when Sonni brought back the message? No. They insisted that they didn’t know what Sonni was talking about, that they’d never done anything at Gardens, that Pexton had enemies all over the world, it could be anyone.
Nobody believed these children—their intentions were evident in the ashes. Two of them had recently gotten married; their wives went to their new fathers and cried and pleaded for them to ask their sons to stop getting out of bed in the middle of the night to look for trouble. What could the fathers do? Their sons were grown men, with ownership of their own lives. My husband liked to say a man’s feet can never stand on his head, but these children, they reminded the elders that, though that might be so, the feet could go wherever they wanted, and there was nothing the head could do except come along.
* * *
—
Pexton recently hired armed watchmen, but that only seems to serve as an enticement of sorts to these children. Today it’s a pipeline break. Tomorrow it’s a fire. Two months ago, they waylaid and beat a laborer walking along the big river in the darkness; a supervisor came to speak to Sonni, because the laborer had been so pulped he needed to be taken to Bézam for treatment. The laborer hadn’t seen any faces: his attackers were wearing masks. When questioned, the young men swore they had been in their huts.
Sonni has held meeting after meeting to beg for an end to the destruction. Sometimes these young men don’t even attend village meetings; Sonni’s pleas mean nothing to them. Their mothers have implored them to stop; they’ve threatened to walk around the village naked so everyone can shame their sons for caring nothing for their mothers’ dignity. Some fathers have said they’ll bring out the umbilical-cord bundle. No parents have yet carried out their threats—aren’t we all suffering enough from our collective curse?
In one of the village meetings, the Sweet One and the Cute One begged the young men to find other ways of expressing their anger; they encouraged them to write a letter to the government, tell the government how afraid they are for their futures.
The young men laughed in their faces; they don’t care what anyone who does not share their zeal has to say. They say Sonni is an old man, and that neither the Sweet One nor the Cute One is one of us. They believe Kosawa is theirs, their heritage. They say it’s their duty to fight for its restoration any way they want. But where has all the burning and breaking gotten them? Has Pexton picked up and left? Will they ever?
* * *
EVERYTHING GOT WORSE LAST MONTH, when a child in Gardens disappeared. The soldiers were here before dawn. They went from hut to hut and dragged out every male from the age of ten, barking at them to sit on their verandas and not dare take a step. I heard mothers and wives crying out for mercy, saying their men were innocent. Before I could scream for Juba to run, the soldiers were banging at our door. Sahel opened it. They shoved her aside and pulled out Juba as he screamed. From my bed, my hands stretched out. I cried, “Juba, Juba, please don’t hurt him, he’s only a child, he’s a good boy.” Did anyone hear me? Stand up, and run to the square, the soldiers shouted. The boys and men began running. Women ran alongside their sons and husbands. I could single out Sahel’s voice, pleading for her only son’s sake.