CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

1829, Monrovia, Liberia

IN THE FOURTEENTH MONTH after their arrival, Little George, who had waited what seemed like hours for his mother’s breathing to become deep and even, roused his older brother from sleep.

“What?” Big George hissed, brushing off his brother’s prodding hand.

Little George glared at his brother and pointed over the pallet Lani and Nolan shared toward the mound curled up on the floor that was their mother. The last thing they needed was Mama listening in. Ever since that fever that nearly took her, Little George felt like she watched him even more than before. A moment like this, where her eyes weren’t on him, was too precious to waste.

“They’s fixing to fight, then?” he whispered.

Big George hurrumphed. “Who you talking ’bout now?”

Little George sucked his teeth. It was one thing to be forbidden to go to the meeting. To be denied the details of it by his own brother was too much. “You know who!” he hissed. “The menfolk, of course.”

Big George sighed deeply, then sat up. “Man can’t get no good sleep even in his own house,” he lamented.

Little George punched his brother’s arm.

Big George recoiled, holding his bicep. “Why you do that now?” he demanded.

Little George shushed him again, more forcefully this time. “You tryna get us both in trouble?”

Big George rubbed his eyes. “Actually, I just trying to sleep. Strange thing to do in the dead of night, ain’t it?”

Little George shook off his brother’s sarcasm and continued to press. “What you know about the attacks? By the savages? I heard they getting ready for something big.”

Big George frowned. “I ain’t about to—”

“Jo Jo?” a small voice said beside them. Lani sat straight up, blinking slowly at each of them. She smiled. “Jo Jo.” Her baby name for both of them.

Little George scowled at his brother. “Now see what you done.”

“What I did? Now look here—”

But Big George was cut short by the sturdy palm of a toddler caressing his face. Lani had plunked herself down in Little George’s lap, but had reached over to touch the short beard Big George was growing. It fascinated her. “Jo Jo bird,” she said, in that angelic little voice that never failed to disarm him.

“Jo Jo beard,” he said, moving her hand around his cheeks.

Little George grew impatient. It seemed that ever since Big George had become old enough to attend meetings with the other men, he’d grown distant from his younger brother. “I know the governor tried talking reason into them dark, dark brains.” He crossed his arms. “And I know some a them brutes dead set on raiding villages and stealing their enemies to sell into slavery—say we got no rights here. Say this their land we on, even though Governor and them negotiated fair and square for it. Jack Banks tell me so.”

Big George hurrumphed again. “Well, if Jack Banks tell you so much, what you need me for?”

Lani sat quietly, turning her head to face whoever was talking. She pulled Little George’s arms around her tightly. Little George looked at his brother pleadingly.

Big George sighed and finally relented. “Jack Banks ain’t wrong. They sure is fixing for something. But so is we. We ready for whatever may come to pass.”

“What that mean?”

Big George met his gaze, unblinking. “It mean we got extra men and weapons ready.” He pulled at the ends of Lani’s short ringlets. She giggled in delight. “We killed two savages in skirmishes, and wounded two. They wounded two of ours. When the governor try to talk to the village chief about it, he just do one of these,” Big George sat up regally and waved his hand. Then, mocking the accent and demeanor of the chief’s translator, he said, “‘They are a rebel faction. They do not speak for us, or any Bassa on these lands. The white man gave them guns, taught them how to use them, and paid them handsomely for bringing enemies to take across the water.’” Big George shook his head in disgust. “That village chief’s even more scared than we are. Like Mama always say, we the only men in this jungle.”

When Big George looked over at his brother again, Little George was leaning forward in anticipation. “Do Mama know all this?”

Big George laughed. “Of course she know. Mama know everything go on in this sad little outpost. She the one burst into the meeting all uninvited, righteous with anger ’cause ‘who are they to think they run things ’cause they just men,’ and all other kinda nonsense.”

“What?” Little George blurted out, incredulous.

Big George laughed again, getting caught up in the energy of the story. “Yep. Useless old Sam Longsten tried to stop her from coming in and you know what she do? Put a knife to his chest.”

“What?” Little George hissed.

Big George nodded. “Oh yes. She your mama now, Brother. Longsten tell her no women allowed, and you know what she tell him?”

Little George shook his head, completely mesmerized by the story. He stole a glance at Mama, to make sure she was still sleeping. Her eyes were pressed shut, her breathing still deep and regular.

“‘I think you need to see what a woman can do. I don’t see no kind of proper ’preciation in you,’ she say, all cold-blooded and dark-like. Sound like she got some kind of devil in her.”

“No, she did not,” Little George said, eyes as big as saucers.

“Oh, she sure did, Brother. It was like she been practicing those words for some time, just waiting to say ’em.” Big George shook his head. “Forget about them savages; I’m sure she got at least one Christian man plotting to kill all of us right about now.”

Little George could feel the steady up and down of Lani’s rib cage in his arms, hear the small staccato of her snoring. “So . . . ?”

Big George just blinked.

“So what you do?” Little George demanded.

“What I do? What you think I do, Brother? I took the knife from her, gentle-like, the best way I could before somebody see what she done. On the way out, I tell Longsten ‘I sorry, but my mama ain’t well these days. This life done turned her on herself.’”

“He believe you?”

Big George shrugged. “Didn’t have much choice. Either that or admit a woman got the best of him. No man likely to do that.”

Little George cocked his head, contemplating all Big George had told him. It was too much. It was all too much.

“We gotta get to sleep now,” Big George told him, pulling his blanket around his shoulders. “Dawn be here before you know it, and Mama be at our backs, yelling why we moving so slow in that damn field.”

Little George nodded. He carefully lifted up his sleeping sister, and set her down on her quilt. Only a few minutes later, his older brother was unconscious too, but despite his own overwhelming exhaustion, it was a long time before Little George could let go of wondering if there were any men at all in this jungle.