How Beautiful We Were(36)

Marriage and fatherhood only made my brother more of what he was.

I can’t forget one night in particular when we were in the village square, having a good time with our friends, the moon brilliant and self-assured, the sky jam-packed with stars, everyone passing around dried ecstatic mushrooms rolled up in plantain leaves, smoking and laughing louder as we got higher, bliss almost as good as a woman’s thighs—a visitor would have thought we’d never heard the name Pexton—it was then that Malabo suggested that we stop laughing so loudly, we might awaken the children sleeping in the huts nearby. Don’t worry, the children have grown accustomed to sleeping with our laughter by now, one of our friends said, to which Malabo retorted: Wouldn’t it be better if the children had a choice in the matter? This was back when Sahel was pregnant with Thula. When Thula arrived, Malabo took a break from smoking during our gatherings in the square so he could be of use to his wife when he returned home, which made us laugh even harder—what help could a man possibly offer a woman with a baby?



Despite my father’s failings, Malabo gave him the greatest gift of his life on the day Thula was born, undoubtedly the happiest day of both of their lives. Something about seeing his bloodline extend by another generation, something about holding the child of his child in his arms, a girl, something about it all brought upon my father the deepest and longest, though fleeting, moments of respite he would have from his melancholia. Yaya says that is why Thula was constantly smiling as a baby and a little girl: the first thing she saw in life was a smile her grandfather had long been saving for her.

Our hut never knew joy the way it did in the months following Thula’s birth—my father cradling her and not wanting to give her to Sahel or Yaya even when Thula cried; Malabo and I going out at night to laugh and joke with our friends in the square, my brother merrier than any of us even without smoking, laughing the loudest now that his life had been completed by marriage and fatherhood.

After we buried my father, when Thula was six, Malabo became our family head; that was when he became a new man. In a quest to be the father his father never was, the kind of father whose first thought in the morning, and last thought at night, was the happiness of his family, Malabo decided to use his authority to tell us what to do, how to be. He dictated what was best for me, for all of us. Telling me which girls never to bring to the hut again: why waste the girl’s time, she wasn’t what he envisioned me marrying. He wanted us to live his idea of a happy family, which meant that we had to do as he said, understand that his wisdom surpassed ours. He was determined, also, to give Thula the innocent delights our father’s melancholia had deprived us of in our childhood. Yaya and Sahel rarely complained—it was their duty to obey him—but me? I was a man too; I wanted to be listened to. But Malabo didn’t believe my opinions mattered—he was older than me, he’d become family head by virtue of being firstborn, so all major decisions were his alone to make. He wanted to go to Bézam, he was going: that was final. His downfall came in believing that, because he loved his family, everything he did for them was justified. Now he and our father are dead. That I’m now the head of our crumbling household is more than I can bear, but I must, otherwise of what import were their lives?



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WE ARRIVE IN BéZAM AFTER a day and a half. We get off at the congested chaos of a bus stop in the center of the city, the letter for the newspaperman in my bag. I read the directions Kumbum gave me on how to get to his nephew’s office and Tunis guides us as we cross streets, make rights and lefts, cars honking ahead of and behind us, dust flying into our eyes, people speaking in unfamiliar languages, the sun at its highest and draining us of what little energy we have left. We snacked on the bus rides, but long periods of sitting have weakened our legs, so we walk slowly and apart, so as not to call attention to ourselves—we don’t know who might be watching us. When we get to the end of the directions, after an hour of walking, there’s no office, just an empty patch of land.

We sit on the ground in silence, sweating. Did the Sick One just dupe us? How could we have been such fools to trust him? From their faces, I imagine Lusaka and Tunis are thinking likewise. How could we have trusted a Bézam man to help us? Before I can say anything, Lusaka stands up and rushes across the street to a drinking spot. He speaks to a man sitting and holding a beer under an umbrella, and he returns to us smiling; the office is not far from here, he says.

We cross an alley, go down a street, and find ourselves in front of a building as high as twelve huts stacked. It matches the description Kumbum wrote down. The first part of our mission complete, we scrape our brows with our index fingers and wipe the perspiration on our trousers. Tunis looks up at the building and asks why people in Bézam make their buildings so tall: Do they want to live in the sky? Are they afraid of something biting them on the ground? Lusaka and I say nothing in response.



I don’t think we should go into the building just yet, I say. We’ve traveled for close to two days; we’ve taken no baths, and our mouths are unwashed. Tunis agrees—he says we smell like roasted human flesh. I laugh, but Lusaka doesn’t join me. He has never been a man who participates in anything because others do, which is why he’s always been my favorite of my brother’s age-mates. In the evenings of our young-adult days, I struggled not to stare for too long at him when everyone else was loud-talking and laughing and Lusaka, always the contemplative one, observed it all with a smile so faint you could only see it in his eyes. Once, I joked with Malabo that perhaps Lusaka was our father’s real firstborn, not Malabo, and perhaps Thula was Lusaka’s daughter. My brother had laughed and said that in a village as small as ours, founded by brothers who had married sisters, it was only by the mercy of the Spirit that we didn’t all look and act alike.