How Beautiful We Were

admired Thula for what she was doing, there was nothing wrong with it, he had done some of it himself at Thula’s age; he was actually the one had who introduced Thula to the organizers of some protests. The problem was that Thula did not seem to have a sense of balance. She appeared to have forgotten that she came to America to go to school, not to involve herself in matters that might undermine her well-being. There were nights when she and her friends stayed out in the cold protesting. She’d gotten sick once; right after she got well, she went back to doing it, to show her anger about the fact that a small group of people in the country had too much money while millions of families barely had enough food to eat and it just wasn’t right. Once, the newspaperman said, Thula had spent a night in jail for her actions; he was the one who went to the jail and paid for her release.

Sahel and I were drying our eyes by the time the Sweet One was done talking. We wished we hadn’t heard what we’d heard, that Thula was going around America tempting death. Is that why she wanted to go there? To bring upon herself the same fate that had befallen her father and uncle? Did she care nothing for what we had already endured?

The Sweet One wanted Sahel to dictate a letter to Thula to beg her to stop doing what she was doing, implore her to focus on her schooling and return to us safely. Sahel had to touch Thula’s heart in a way only a mother could.

And could Sahel also ask Thula to stop writing letters to her friends encouraging them to break and burn Pexton’s property? Sonni added.

Before Sonni was done saying this, Sahel had jumped off her stool.

“What are you talking about?” she said.

Sonni seemed taken aback, as if he’d only made the simplest of requests.

“How dare you suggest Thula has anything to do with that?” Sahel said.

“Everyone in this village knows it, Sahel,” Sonni replied.

“Shut up.”

If someone had told me Sahel had such rage in her I would never have believed it, but I saw it that evening. It was as if she was finally ready to scream out her pain for the world to hear. Her eyes alone could have sliced open Sonni from the top of his head to the part where his thighs join. She was pointing, pumping her fist, yelling, telling Sonni to get out of her hut, never come back into it if his intention was to accuse her daughter instead of recognizing his own uselessness as a village head. Sonni was too stupid and blind to see what his son was doing, too weak to do anything about it, and he thought it easier to blame Thula. Thula was not the problem. Sonni was the problem.

Sonni stood up and quietly walked out of the hut.

The Sweet One followed him.

It was then that Sahel sat down and wept.

Watching her, I knew I could never tell her that I agree with Sonni; that, like everyone else, I believe Thula has a hand in Kosawa’s new wave of woes. The entire village knows that Thula sometimes sends money to her friends through the Sweet One. She sends us money too, whatever little she saves from working at school, which isn’t a lot in America but a great deal to us. Sahel never keeps all of the money—there are too many people in Kosawa who need it. That may be why nobody ever talks about Thula’s role in the destructions around her mother. But Sahel has to know it. A mother knows her child, even an enigmatic one. If Sahel refuses to believe the whispers, it’s only because certain truths are too bitter to swallow.

Sonni hasn’t come to visit me since that day, but Manga, having recovered from a recent fall, came two days ago to see how I was feeling. He didn’t ask me if it’s true that Sahel swore she would never speak to Sonni again. If he’d asked, I would have told him that Sahel’s anger wasn’t at Sonni, or at anyone among us. I would have told him that Sahel is angry because there’s nothing else a woman in her position can feel besides fury. Which was why, that evening, I begged her once more to move to Bézam.

The man in Bézam, he’s not a young man, but he’s younger than my husband was when he died. He is the uncle of the Cute One, who is the same age as Sahel.

It was the Cute One who said to Sahel—and I don’t know how it came up—that his uncle was searching for a new wife. The Cute One said his uncle was not a man who liked being alone; his wife had died eighteen months before. The man and his wife never had children—his wife had been unable to keep her pregnancies—but this man had never considered replacing her with a fertile wife. Now she was gone, and the man was alone in his brick house in Bézam, working at a government job.

The Cute One said that his uncle was a good man, and that when they had spoken about his loneliness and his getting a new wife, the first person the Cute One thought of was Sahel, not one of the young women in Bézam. The Cute One told Sahel, in my presence, that he’d seen how well Sahel took care of me, and he knew Sahel would take good care of his uncle too, and his uncle would take good care of her and Juba in return.

Sahel looked angry when the Cute One made the proposal, as if she deserved something better. I didn’t like the way the Cute One said it either: it sounded to me as if he wanted Sahel to move to Bézam to spend a few good years with an