But the Sweet One hadn’t come to tell us that Thula might be getting married.
After clearing his throat, he told us that the young man had written to say that he was worried about Thula—she wasn’t eating well, she wasn’t sleeping well, she was spending too much time helping organize fights against governments and corporations and not enough time thinking about her own well-being.
The young man said Thula had recently traveled with some friends to another area of the country to be part of a human wall meant to prevent government workers from throwing poor people out of their homes and taking their land; the poor people and their supporters believed the money the government was offering for the land wasn’t enough. Some days, he said, Thula did not go to class, instead spending long hours in one of the city’s squares, chanting words of outrage. The young man said he admired Thula for what she was doing, there was nothing wrong with it, he had done some of it himself at Thula’s age; he was actually the one had who introduced Thula to the organizers of some protests. The problem was that Thula did not seem to have a sense of balance. She appeared to have forgotten that she came to America to go to school, not to involve herself in matters that might undermine her well-being. There were nights when she and her friends stayed out in the cold protesting. She’d gotten sick once; right after she got well, she went back to doing it, to show her anger about the fact that a small group of people in the country had too much money while millions of families barely had enough food to eat and it just wasn’t right. Once, the newspaperman said, Thula had spent a night in jail for her actions; he was the one who went to the jail and paid for her release.
Sahel and I were drying our eyes by the time the Sweet One was done talking. We wished we hadn’t heard what we’d heard, that Thula was going around America tempting death. Is that why she wanted to go there? To bring upon herself the same fate that had befallen her father and uncle? Did she care nothing for what we had already endured?
The Sweet One wanted Sahel to dictate a letter to Thula to beg her to stop doing what she was doing, implore her to focus on her schooling and return to us safely. Sahel had to touch Thula’s heart in a way only a mother could.
And could Sahel also ask Thula to stop writing letters to her friends encouraging them to break and burn Pexton’s property? Sonni added.
Before Sonni was done saying this, Sahel had jumped off her stool.
“What are you talking about?” she said.
Sonni seemed taken aback, as if he’d only made the simplest of requests.
“How dare you suggest Thula has anything to do with that?” Sahel said.
“Everyone in this village knows it, Sahel,” Sonni replied.
“Shut up.”
If someone had told me Sahel had such rage in her I would never have believed it, but I saw it that evening. It was as if she was finally ready to scream out her pain for the world to hear. Her eyes alone could have sliced open Sonni from the top of his head to the part where his thighs join. She was pointing, pumping her fist, yelling, telling Sonni to get out of her hut, never come back into it if his intention was to accuse her daughter instead of recognizing his own uselessness as a village head. Sonni was too stupid and blind to see what his son was doing, too weak to do anything about it, and he thought it easier to blame Thula. Thula was not the problem. Sonni was the problem.
Sonni stood up and quietly walked out of the hut.
The Sweet One followed him.
It was then that Sahel sat down and wept.
Watching her, I knew I could never tell her that I agree with Sonni; that, like everyone else, I believe Thula has a hand in Kosawa’s new wave of woes. The entire village knows that Thula sometimes sends money to her friends through the Sweet One. She sends us money too, whatever little she saves from working at school, which isn’t a lot in America but a great deal to us. Sahel never keeps all of the money—there are too many people in Kosawa who need it. That may be why nobody ever talks about Thula’s role in the destructions around her mother. But Sahel has to know it. A mother knows her child, even an enigmatic one. If Sahel refuses to believe the whispers, it’s only because certain truths are too bitter to swallow.
Sonni hasn’t come to visit me since that day, but Manga, having recovered from a recent fall, came two days ago to see how I was feeling. He didn’t ask me if it’s true that Sahel swore she would never speak to Sonni again. If he’d asked, I would have told him that Sahel’s anger wasn’t at Sonni, or at anyone among us. I would have told him that Sahel is angry because there’s nothing else a woman in her position can feel besides fury. Which was why, that evening, I begged her once more to move to Bézam.