How Beautiful We Were(44)

They told me about her new home. They said she would be living at school. When I asked how this was possible, they said the school compound was many times the size of Kosawa, and that at the school there would be houses with books and houses with beds and houses with food, and that once she got there she would simply walk from one house to another, she would no longer need to take a bus to school every morning, like she’s been doing the past five years. They promised me that this school was worth her crossing the ocean for, that this was one of the few schools in the world where all knowledge available to man could be found, and that by the time she returned she would have more understanding of everything-worth-understanding than she would need for the rest of her life, which meant that we would all have more understanding too—what could be more important than that? Our people were dying for lack of knowledge, they said, and if a child of ours could go to America and bring knowledge back to us, someday no government or corporation would be able to do to us the things they’ve been doing to us.



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I stood up from my seat and told her that I needed to go check on the meat I was smoking in the kitchen, but I really just wanted to go cry alone. I had no comfort to offer her. I only had my own tears. What use are a mother’s tears to her child?

When they came to tell me that she’d been selected to attend this school, I had stared at the news bearer as he spoke—at his huge, chapped lips, made even bigger by his small head. He has a name, but the children call him the Sweet One, since he can’t seem to wipe off cheerfulness from his face. He has been the representative from the Restoration Movement to Kosawa since our story reached America and people who share no blood with us arrived, determined to save us.

I’d listened to him speak in the village square on countless occasions, I’d sat down with him to talk abut Malabo’s disappearance, I’d watched him help Thula with her homework, but I’d never looked at him like I did that day when he entered my hut, beaming. I said nothing for minutes, gazing at his lips as they moved, incapable of finding comfort in the glow of his eyes. He repeated the news, louder. Maybe he thought I’d detect in the volume what he couldn’t say for the sake of respect: How wonderful for you, Sahel; how utterly marvelous that your child will get to travel to America.

When I still didn’t respond, he looked at his companion, a man the children aptly call the Cute One. The Cute One asked me how I felt about the news, and if I wanted to share what was going through my mind. I shook my head, avoiding his eyes—being around him and his fine face filled me with longing for things I had no right to long for.

In one of the first meetings these Restoration Movement men had with our village, the Sweet One told us that he was one of us. His grandfather was from one of our sister-villages, he’d said; his father grew up like one of our boys, playing with rubber balls and dreaming of marrying and fathering children and growing old in his own hut. But his father’s father wanted a different life for his only son—a life among those who allotted the fortunes of the country, not among those who waited for their portions to be allotted. So the man had found a way to get his son out of his village and into the nation’s capital. It was there the Sweet One’s father finished his schooling before returning home to get a wife from among his people, and it was there the Sweet One was born. “Still,” the Sweet One said, “my father taught me to never forget where I’m from.” On the day he came with the news, as I listened to him detail the reasons why Thula’s going to America would be good for her, for me, for all of Kosawa, I wanted to ask him how his grandfather had done it, how he’d gotten his child not only to leave his village but also to find a place in Bézam and climb so high that his grandchild now had a job speaking on behalf of kind American people. I wanted to know what all this had cost his grandfather, and if he was asking me to pay the same price too, but I couldn’t find the words to ask.



“It’s okay, you don’t need to say anything today,” the Sweet One finally said, as he and the Cute One stood up to leave.

“Sometimes sleep can help you to come up with the right questions,” the Cute One added. They wished me a good afternoon and left, promising to return the next day.



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That evening, after Thula returned from school, I told her nothing about where they wanted to send her, but in the morning—as the Cute One had suggested—my questions were fully formed. When the men returned after midday, at a time when Kosawa was quiet except for the faint rumble of gas flaring in Gardens, I sat with them again in the parlor and started talking.

I asked them who would take care of my child in America, who would cook her favorite meals, wash her clothes, make sure she wakes up on time for school. They told me there would be people to cook for her, and that the meals there, though nowhere near as delicious as ours, were edible, evident in the fact that most of the children who attended the school got fat in their first year. They said the school had machines that would wash her clothes, and machines that would wake her up in the mornings, and if she got sick, every kind of medicine to cure every kind of sickness was available in America.



I wanted to know what the city she was going to live in looked like. They told me that it was a marvel of a place, a city more wondrous than any other that has ever existed or will ever exist. They said that these were not their words, they said men and women of vast knowledge, many of whom had traveled around the world and seen other cities, had said this—they were only repeating what was known.