We believed Liberation Day needed another year or two of preparation. It had become wholly evident to us that, deep as hatred for His Excellency ran, desperate as many were for change, few, if any, would join a movement led by a woman, worse still an unmarried, childless woman. We couldn’t ask people to look past her lack of a family. We couldn’t tell them that it meant nothing—it meant everything. It meant her deficiencies were many, too many for a man to take on. We hoped that, with time, she’d find a husband, someone with whom she’d have a child so that she could become a real woman, because nothing could make her respectable besides motherhood and marriage.
We couldn’t hurt her by telling her this, nor could we tell her that we were having enough of a struggle explaining why we were followers of a woman—we’d already come to terms with the mockery—but neither could we let the resistance fail because our leader was determined to remain unfathomable. Still, after listening to her argue that we couldn’t keep waiting for the perfect moment, it might never come, we agreed to her date after consulting with the twins, Bamako and Cotonou.
Though they were still boys, the twins were already in possession of skills almost as good as those of Jakani and Sakani, and we knew we couldn’t proceed with Thula’s plan without going to them to seek the Spirit’s favor.
After we made a payment of smoked bushmeat to them, they agreed to intercede on our behalf. Days later, they came to us with the message that the Spirit was in agreement with the date Thula had selected for Liberation Day. The Spirit had also instructed them on the ritual they would need to do to prepare Thula.
—
On Thula’s subsequent visits to Kosawa, we started putting together the groundwork for Liberation Day. Now that our belief in the movement had been renewed, thanks to the hope given to us by the Spirit’s approval, our enthusiasm grew as the day neared. The elation that carried us through those weeks enlivened all of Kosawa. Without our asking, our families began disseminating the news across the other villages. Old and young alike were talking about Liberation Day, counting down to it, to the day when the light we’d long been dreaming of would begin emerging. Word spread to towns and villages in the surrounding districts. We busied ourselves thinking of the speeches we would each make, organizing our children into a choir for entertainment, persuading friends to bring their drums so that, after Thula had declared a new day, we would all dance till the stars came out and the crickets joined our chorus and we had nothing left with which to rejoice.
Thula returned to Kosawa six days before the Day, having taken off time from her job to be present in the area and be of help with the final details. She was sleeping in one of our huts, late one night, when the twins arrived and told us the time had come for the ritual.
The twins began by sedating her, spraying something in her room, and closing the door. After that, one of us carried her on his back into the twins’ hut and exited with no memories of what he’d seen. He did not need to see anything—the twins had told us what they’d do to her, and we’d agreed to help them do it, though only after a quarrel.
It was the worst argument we’d ever had: two of us were against the idea, three were for it. The night we met to decide on the matter was laden with pleas and blames and threats. The two of us opposed to the idea believed that it was not our place to make a decision about her body—we were neither her father nor her husband. Though we trusted the twins that the ritual would be for the best, that it would fortify the movement, we nonetheless thought it best that she be informed about the procedure so she could decide whether she wanted it to be performed on her. We were adamant that we would not partake in doing such a thing to her. But one of the three of us who supported the idea, in a long talk two nights before the ritual, argued that we had to help the twins. He said we couldn’t trust Thula to make the right decision on this matter; Thula was willing to die for a better country, but she’d never give up her right to control her body. We needed to make the choice for her, for her sake, for her dreams.
By the time the night of the ritual arrived, we were all in agreement that we had to do it for her sake. It brought us no joy to have to do such a thing to her, but sacrifices had to be made—hadn’t she often said so herself?
The twins, speaking to us as if we were children and they the adults, had told us what they would do to her. The semen would be that of a young man in the village, someone the Spirit would cause to sleepwalk into the twins’ hut, spill his seed into a bowl, and return to his bed still
