How Beautiful We Were(17)

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.

“There’s no need for you to stay home,” Bongo says. “School is going to go on as usual. Nothing’s going to happen to you there.”

“How do you know?”

“Because…everything will be fine, Thula. Just ignore all the things the Pexton men said last night, okay?”

“I can’t ignore it. They meant it. They were serious. Mama, please?”

Mama does not counter Bongo. Her fake smile remains intact.

I glance outside through the door. All is calm. Why aren’t the men running around preparing some sort of defense against the soldiers? Why doesn’t Bongo appear like someone who stayed up all night getting ready for battle? It is evident from his oiled face and his kempt hair that he just took a bath. His machete is lying against a wall, sharpened and glistening at the edges. Am I supposed to trust that his relaxed demeanor is thanks to a conviction that the machete will cut down speeding bullets?

He looks at me half-smiling, his head tilted; he resembles Papa more than ever. Speaking in the deep voice they share, he tells me that there was a lot about last night that, as a child, I’d misunderstood. He says there isn’t going to be any battle because soldiers are not coming to kill anyone. Yes, the Pexton men had uttered the words I heard, but the men did not mean that the soldiers would slaughter anyone. What the Leader meant was that the soldiers would slaughter the disagreement between Pexton and us and put an end to it all. The soldiers will be coming, that’s certain, but only to have a conversation with the men of the village. Nothing more. Which is why all the children must go to school—the adults will stay home to await the soldiers.



Mama, with a genuine-sounding chuckle, adds that by the time I return home from school, the episode will be nothing more than a story I’ll one day tell my grandchildren.



* * *



—

I don’t believe Bongo and Mama, but I don’t know what to say. I can’t argue with them—I don’t have the right to argue with my elders even if I believe they’re not telling me the truth. I look at Yaya, hoping she’ll say something wise to ease my perplexity, but words aren’t my grandmother’s favorite gift for her family at times like this—silence is.

I leave to fetch water at the well. I’m not going to school, I tell myself. I’ll pretend to have a stomachache.

On my way to the well, I see some friends; it is clear from their faces that their parents just told them something similar to what Bongo said to me.

Like me, my friends are children born in 1970. We are boys and girls, age-mates and classmates. We crawled together and toddled together and now we walk together. Sometimes the girls play separately from the boys, and other times we play together, and fight each other, and when we’re done crying and tattling on each other to mothers who sigh and ignore us, we return to being friends, because we’ll never belong with another group of age-mates the way we belong with ours. I have a few girl age-mates I’m closer to than to the others; it’s two of them I see as I approach the well. They agree with me that there are things the adults are not telling us. But they’re going to school. Apparently, everyone is going to school despite everything. “Think about it, Thula,” one of my friends says. “Would our parents send us to school if they believed we’d be killed there?”



* * *



—



Fatigued from my restless night, I fall asleep in class even before Teacher Penda is done with the first arithmetic problem. Most of my classmates do too. When Teacher Penda asks us what is going on, why we all look so tired, we chirp in unison that nothing is wrong, nothing whatsoever, we’re just focused on listening to him. We know our parents wouldn’t want us telling a government man that they’ve taken our village head and three of Pexton’s men captive. One of my classmates almost says it, stammering something about a long village meeting the previous night, but the rest of us shoot him a glare so sharp we’re surprised he doesn’t end up one-eyed, like Jakani and Sakani. After this, we’re all afraid that we might inadvertently tell Teacher Penda what the village has done and in so doing put our lives in greater danger. The fear keeps us alert for the rest of the day and forces us to answer every question, so that our teacher will suspect nothing.