Jallah did not show up the next day. When he still did not come on the following day, I began to call the number he had given me every hour of the following day, and the day after that, beginning at dawn.
“No worry, he come,” the proprietor had said, recognizing the number in my hand every time I emerged from the room to use the telephone. “He good man. He come back.”
During my second afternoon, I used the phone to call Facia to tell her all that had happened and to ask advice, but the service was so poor that I could tell by Facia’s response that she wasn’t hearing all that she was being told.
“You are well? You made it to Bo Waterside?” Facia asked several times.
“Yes, I am well,” I yelled. “I am here.”
“Service to America not good this time. Wait for night, you try again,” the boarder said. I did not know Marta well enough to call her, and I did not want to worry her with trouble so soon.
I waited in my room for most of the day and slept with my knife by my side during the night. I heard other boarders in neighboring rooms, their snores loud. I brought a book with me but was too distracted to read. I looked over the papers in my purse, including the letter from my Fulbright sponsor that I would present to the American embassy in Freetown. I pressed my fingers against the letters, along the lines of each of my daughters’ names, my tears staining the page. I frequently took out all of the dresses from my valise and shook them for bugs, then folded them again and neatly placed them in my bag. I sat facing the wall, then stood against the door facing the window. On a few evenings I went outside and strolled up and down the street and around the market, listening for any news of what was happening on the other side. I would always hurry back, afraid I would miss the call. It had been almost one week and I resolved that if Jallah did not return by the end of the week, I would attempt to cross the border myself. I decided this while pacing my room, my slippers beating the tile floor.
“Come,” I heard the boarder yell outside. “Mam, sister come!”
I ran out of my room to the foyer, where the boarder had placed the phone on the counter.
“That him,” she said and smiled. “See, I tell you.”
“Hello? Jallah?” I asked, my nerves fluttering.
“Yes, I found the girl,” he said cheerfully.
“Good! I have been trying to call you!”
“Yes, I was trying to find her. We will come to you tomorrow morning. No worry,” he said. He had hung up the phone quickly, and I stood in the void with his tarrying words.
“Good, right?” the boarder asked, gathering her braids into a ponytail above her neck. I nodded.
“All good,” I said.
On the following morning I kneeled before my bed, resting my knees on the hem of my dress, and I prayed, murmured my thanksgiving before asking God for favor. The boarder let me borrow two folding chairs for Jallah and the woman to sit.
“Can’t we meet in the foyer?” I had asked.
“You can,” the boarder said in a low tone, lower than I had ever heard her speak. She then came close to me. “But some meetings should be private.”
“Yes,” I said. “I understand.”
Jallah and Satta arrived an hour later and the boarder knocked on my door. I stood up from my bed, where I had hidden the knives at either end of the straw mattress.
Jallah shook my hand and gestured toward the girl behind him.
“This is her. Satta,” he said.
Satta was wearing camouflage pants and a stained shirt. Her short hair was braided into cornrows with endings that jutted out from behind her ears. She had stocky shoulders for her small frame, and her eyes were red and sunken, fighting to be desirous again. She nodded toward me and took a seat on one of the chairs against the wall. I sat on the mattress.
“So, uh, as I told you, Satta, our Vai sister has family still in Liberia,” Jallah said, trying to ease us, but he sounded so unnatural that it worried me.
“You are Vai?” I asked Satta, in Vai.
“Yes,” Satta answered in English. “Where is your family?”
I looked at Jallah. He waved at me to speak, assuring me that the woman was trustworthy.
“They are hiding in a village near Junde,” I said. “You are Vai. Was your family’s village close to there?”
“I know the area,” Satta said shortly. “Yeh.”
“Yeh, it is longer to get there by foot. You have to go through the forest. The easiest way is by canoe,” I said.
“Yes, I know.”
“From Junde,” I said. I tried to speak to Satta in Vai again but I sensed that the woman did not want to talk about anything personal.
“Jallah said you have done this before? You ever had trouble?” I asked.
“No. Never trouble. Me, I just wear my full suit and carry my gun,” she said pointing to her back. “They don’t humbug me. They think I transporting.”
“A gun? You ever had to use it?” I asked.
“Not when I working like this, no,” Satta said and looked away from my face.
“And what is transporting?”
“Taking civilians someplace. To rebel leader, to town, holding them for questioning, anything,” she said. Beneath the toll the war had taken, as Satta spoke, I thought that she was beautiful, her skin and eyes once youthful and forgiving. I wondered what had made her this way, what had undone all that was remarkable about this woman.
“I do this plenty. No worry,” Satta said. “I help your family. Me, my family gone. I go bring your family, trust me, Ol’ Ma.” She looked at me. I became more hopeful.
“I don’t want to offend you, but how do I know you will not harm them? That you will not leave them somewhere?”
“How I know you na spy?” Satta asked. “Somebody working for my boss in pretty dress so I confess and you tell them to kill me.”
Her smile tiptoed onto her face but it arrived. And it was the smile and the childhood I saw underneath, stolen but still emerging at moments I least expected it, that made up my mind.
“How long will it take?” I asked. “How long will it take to get to Lai?”
“One day.”
“One day?! You know where that is?”
“Yes, we will walk, then take bus at Junde. No worry,” Satta said.
“That is so soon,” I said and could not hold in the tears. I wiped them quickly, afraid to seem weak before the rebel. “One day?”
“Aye, sister, no worry,” Jallah said, clapping his hands together. “Satta do this plenty.”
At Columbia my concentration was history. I examined Satta and remembered all those women I had read about—Helen of Troy, Cleopatra—and thought of all the times I had wondered which woman would be that for Liberia. This once nameless woman—Satta—Liberia’s unlikely heroine and her sisters, existed. I wiped my eyes again.
“How much?” I asked.
“How many people?”
“My husband and my daughters. Three daughters. Four of them in total.”
“How old your daughters?” Satta asked.
“They are babies. Four, five, and the oldest just turned seven in November.”
“Okay,” Satta said. “Six hundred American. Three hundred for the man and one hundred each for children.”
The price was higher than I expected, and what I knew was a risky choice. But. It was my only choice. Satta and Jallah waited in the silence as I deliberated to myself.
“I will go for you. I will bring them back to you. You will see,” Satta said.
“When … when would you leave?”
“I leave later today. I travel in the night and get there tomorrow morning. They will be here by tomorrow evening time.”
“Yes, she will bring them to my house,” Jallah said. “You can leave here and come wait there with me until they come. I spoke to my wives about them. Then you all take the bus the next morning back to Freetown.”
I did not need any more convincing. I grew more and more excited as they plotted. I imagined kissing my daughters’ faces again.
“Okay. I will do it,” I said. “Please leave soon.”
I asked Jallah and Satta to wait outside in the foyer while I put the money into a sheet of newspaper. I gathered my things to leave with Jallah, to wait at his home while Satta went to Lai. I gave Satta the package of money and Satta placed it into her deep pockets. She held out her hand and I shook it, then hugged her. Satta flitted uncomfortably in the embrace.
“Thank you,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
“You go now?” the boarder yelled down the hallway and hurried into the foyer. “You come back then!” She shook my hand and patted Jallah on his shoulder.
Outside, the sun, heat, and border sounds charged toward us. Satta headed in a different direction than Jallah and I did. Those who were on the road avoided eye contact with her, some quickening their pace when they noticed the young rebel.
“Where are you going?” I yelled.
“You want to see them, yeh?” Satta replied, before pressing on. I nodded and continued on with Jallah.
“No worry,” Jallah said. “She come with your family.”
“Wait!” I said, turning around, calling after Satta. I reached into my purse and retrieved a five-by-seven photograph.
“What?” Satta asked when I reached her.
“Take this. Show it to him,” I said. “He will not go unless you show him that picture.”
“Okay, okay,” Satta said and folded the photograph, stuffing it into her pocket.
“Tomorrow evening,” Satta said, leaving us again.
“Tomorrow evening,” I said. I could hear the birds again. The smell of frying food awakened me, and amid those passing by, I heard music, and hummed along to it as Satta disappeared.