Mama and I worried for her daily. Sometimes I slipped cash into her driver’s pocket when she was leaving for a trip. “She’s my only sister,” I said. “Please, watch over her.” The driver nodded. He had seven daughters; worry was all his wife did.
I teared up in fear, with pride, whenever I watched her in front of an audience, telling them to dream with her. We traveled with her as often as we could—Mama, our new papa, my girlfriend and I. A couple of her friends from America visited; others sent cards with encouragements. She was a dove forging through a fire, burning yet soaring.
Carlos and his team of three arrived in Bézam a couple of years after Liberation Day. He told Thula, right at the airport, that there was something he’d been dying to tell her but he wanted to say it in person. He’d recently bumped into an old friend who worked at the Justice Department and told the friend about his Pexton lawsuit. The friend had confided in him that the Justice Department had a file on Pexton; they’d been gathering evidence on them since the massacre, evidence that showed Pexton breaking American laws by giving bribes to foreign officials. The department hoped to bring charges against them under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. What this meant, Carlos said, was that if the department won, the judge might force Pexton to make restitutions to Kosawa.
When Thula repeated this, while our family was having dinner with Carlos and his team in Mama and Papa’s house, we all cheered.
It was a long shot, Carlos cautioned—the odds of Kosawa’s getting anything out of it were minuscule—to which Thula, her face illuminated with euphoria, said, “You never know; impossibilities happen, that’s the great beauty of life.” We toasted that night as we ate pepper soup with goat meat, and land snails in tomato sauce with rice.
After dinner, while everyone else watched American sitcoms on our parents’ television, I sat with Carlos on the porch to finish our beers and catch the late-night Bézam breeze.
“I can’t remember the last time I saw so many stars,” the lawyer said, looking up.
“You can move here and see them every night,” I said.
He chuckled. “I’m not cut out for this kind of life,” he said.
Clearly, I wanted to say, glancing at him. If someone had told me that he’d just walked out of a movie, I would have believed it, considering his flawless profile and heavy stubble, an overwrought handsomeness highlighted by his sleek hair. He had an expensive-looking watch on his wrist, and a wedding band on his finger, though from the way he looked at my sister, and the number of times he complimented her during dinner and leaned over to rub her shoulders, it was evident to me he’d gladly forget his vows if Thula gave him a chance. He would find out, if he tried, that neither he nor any man alive stood a chance with Thula while Austin still lived. One story from Thula about an experience she and Austin once had would be enough to tell him that his cause was lost.
“I know you don’t need to hear it from me,” I said, “but I still want to thank you for taking this case. Kosawa means everything to my sister.”
“My uncle told me,” he said.
“Professor Martinez?”
He nodded. “He can’t stop talking about his star student who is going to change her country. We’re sitting together at family dinner—him, my parents, the whole family—and he says, ‘Hey, Carlos, what do you say about helping this village?’ And everyone starts talking about all the terrible things happening in the world, and how I could do something about it—‘Come on, Carlos, just help this one poor village.’ ”
“So you’re here because your family pressured you?”
He laughed. “Of course not,” he said. “Defending the big guys is what I enjoy doing, but I thought I’d fight for the little guys for once, do something different. It’ll make my parents happy. My dad drove cabs fourteen hours a day so my siblings and I could go to college, and when I got into law school he told their friends that I was going to become a lawyer to put bad guys in prison. I don’t ever intend to make a career out of that, but at least, the day Kosawa wins, my parents can show the news clipping to their friends.”
—
I didn’t see Carlos and his team before they left for Kosawa, or after they returned, but Thula told me their trip was successful—they flew to America with an abundance of videotaped interviews, and photos, and soil and water samples. Their presence had also enlivened the village. They had shared stories about the America of 2007, how a woman just became the third most powerful person in the government there; and how some men were fighting for the right to marry each other, which made the elders laugh so hard they nearly lost the rest of their teeth. The evening before they left, palm wine had flowed and the Americans had played the drums while the children danced and the adults clapped.
The next day, Kosawa began a new season of waiting. Women continued trekking for hours to find fertile lands. Mothers boiled water for babies. The forest supplied bushmeat, which brought in money for basics. Children died because of Pexton, and for reasons that had nothing to do with Pexton. Newborns arrived to replace them. Families fled. Families returned, often for the sake of grandparents who wanted to die where they were born. Days of serenity intermingled with days of despondency.
Through it all, Thula never wavered, even as years came and went and her students from her Village Meeting graduated and new students came in and graduated. Even as she received a promotion and became head of her department, which
