How Beautiful We Were(51)
Before drying my eyes and rising, I told Malabo that I hoped his journey from this world to the next would take a hundred eternities so that he would forever be alone, never with us, never with his ancestors. I cursed him for choosing me only to make me pay for his foolhardiness, for loving me only to pass me off to a life I loathe, for giving me everything I ever wanted only to leave me wishing I’d never prayed for the things I got.
* * *
—
For most of the nights since the day Malabo refused to heed my advice and left for Bézam, sleep has lost its battle against my fidgety mind. I pass the hours waiting for the roosters to tell me it’s dawn so I can find respite from my regrets and ruminations. The past is past, and yet I can’t stop thinking that I could have stopped him if I were a better woman, a better wife, a better mother, a more persuasive person.
I try not to punish myself with such thoughts, but I can’t stop counting all the sorrows that have befallen our family because Malabo did not listen to me. I list them, from the moment I began feeling the pain in my belly though it was too early in my pregnancy for me to feel such pain, to the moment, a week later, when the baby came out and I screamed and closed my eyes because I did not want to see it, to the afternoon when the soldiers arrived with guns and I saw a wickedness worse than I’d ever imagined possible, to the evening we returned to Kosawa from Bézam with Bongo’s death notice.
“You’re acting as if this problem is yours to solve,” I said to Malabo the night before his departure.
“Whose problem is it to solve?” he said.
“Are your children the only ones drinking the water? Why do you have to do the fighting for everyone?”
“Is that who you think I am, Sahel? The kind of man who sits back and waits for someone else to take action? Is that the man you married?”
“Juba returned to us,” I cried. “That’s an omen. Can’t you see? It means he’s not going away anytime soon. Nobody dies and comes back only to die again soon after.”
“How many people have you known who died and came back?”
I did not respond; we both knew the answer.
“Juba was the first person in Kosawa in a generation to be brought back to life,” he said, as if I didn’t know. “Of all the sick children, the Spirit chose to spare ours. Why? Have you wondered? Don’t you think we ought to play a bigger role in ending all this, considering how much we’ve been favored? Have you even thought for a second about Juba’s adulthood, how his coming back to life is going to affect him as he gets older?”
“We’re not talking about when he gets older. We’re talking about now. He’s fine now. Isn’t he?”
“What about Thula? What about when she too gets sick?”
“Thula never gets sick. I’ll boil their water for ten hours if I have to. Please, don’t go to Bézam. Cocody is right now begging Bissau not to go with you. Lulu and her family are begging Lobi to stay home. There’s no saying how the government will respond if you show up in their town making demands—that city is full of wicked men.”
“I don’t understand: how can you not think about the future?”
“We’re surviving,” I cried. “By the goodness of the Spirit—”
“You want me to not fight for my children’s future because you’re afraid.”
“I’m begging you to not make a mistake….I don’t feel good about this….”
“You’re pregnant. You never feel good about anything while you’re pregnant.”
“This is not the pregnancy talking.”
“Sahel, please.”
What did Malabo ever ask me to do that I didn’t do for him? He said, “Sahel, this is what I want to eat today,” and I cooked it. He said, “Sahel, wear this dress and not that one” and I said, “Of course.” I was following tradition, yes, but between him and me marital rules were useless—my spirit yearned to please his. And then I made a single request to him, and what did he say? He said, No, I won’t do it. He went to Bézam and he failed, and Bongo tried to undo what he’d done and he too failed. Now the people of the Restoration Movement are trying to undo and redo everything.
* * *
—
I don’t know what the outcome of the Restoration Movement’s fight on our behalf will be, but Thula, from the first time she heard them talk, believed that with them by our side, we will prevail over His Excellency and Pexton.
I noticed the calm that appeared on her face days after the Restoration Movement people first came to visit us, a couple of months after Bongo was taken to Bézam. I could see from the light returning to her eyes that they had convinced her when they promised us that they would help us reclaim and restore our land and water and air. After that meeting, the other children had fought over the sweet things the American man and woman brought, but not Thula; she had picked up the books they brought and taken them home. That day was the day she began living in books and, in effect, living in America.
Six years later, on the evening after the Sweet One and the Cute One informed her about the invitation from the school in America, she came to me in the kitchen as I was boiling yams and told me again that she’d go, but only if I wanted her to go. I told her she had my blessings to go, only if she wanted to go, only if her spirit was telling her to go. We sat in silence, watching the wood beneath the iron pot turn to crimson coal.