I’ve gone on and on, especially for a letter that I’m not one hundred percent sure will even get to you, and so I really should close now. I love you, darling, and miss you terribly. Please write back soon.
All my love,
Mother
I didn’t take the time to refold her letter and put it back into the envelope, before I was writing my answer. My hand trembled as the words scrawled across the page, and when I had finished, I did not bother to reread what I had written. I immediately sealed it, slapped on an airmail stamp — one of those famous Liberian chimpanzee stamps printed in small editions for foreign collectors — and headed straight for the little neighborhood post office, where, after a ten-minute wait for the postmistress to return from lunch, I handed it to her.
Dear Mother,
The last thing I need is for you and Daddy to show up at my door! How can you even think of doing such a thing! I’m not a post-deb taking her Grand Tour in Africa and I’m not in the Peace Corps, thank you very much, Daddy. Please understand that my situation vis-à-vis the government of Liberia and the U.S. State Department is extremely delicate, and I’m more or less free to stay here solely by their leave. And I mean that, more or less free. And by their leave. The American authorities pretty much run the show in Liberia and they know who I am. I’m no longer underground, but as you surely must remember, Mother, there is still a federal warrant for my arrest that could be acted on any time they wish, for any reason they wish. Relations between the two countries are conducted not as between equals but rather on the basis of what’s in the best interests of the U.S. At the moment, because of an acute shortage here of medically trained personnel, it’s in the interests of the U.S. State Department and probably a few congressmen from New York and New Jersey to allow me, even with my low-level skills, to be employed basically as a lab assistant for an academic front financed by some huge, politically connected pharmaceutical company. The university is doing research that requires blood from chimpanzees, an animal that happens to be abundant in this region, research that, if successful, will some day produce the patent for an anti-hepatitis drug that will generate enormous profits for the pharmaceutical company sponsoring the research and in the end will make the shareholders of the company obscenely rich. Thus the complicity of the U.S. government and thus their interest in having me employed here. (I can’t believe I have to explain this to you!)
Mother viewed people as either lucky or unlucky, Daddy saw them as overprivileged and underprivileged. He failed to note, however, that the underprivileged among us could not be eliminated without first doing away with the overprivileged. Nonetheless, in my parents’ dreamy, meandering, hand-holding march towards universal justice — where the downtrodden would be uplifted and the sick and the starving healed and fed — Daddy was a step ahead of Mother. He was a logical man, a decent and kind man, but a liberal. He believed that no one’s property need be confiscated and redistributed on the long march towards universal justice and that none of the overprivileged would have to be lined up against a wall and shot and none of the underprivileged would have to be deliberately sacrificed along the way. Thus he saw no reason why, for the duration of the Revolution and for as long as desired thereafter by him and his descendants, his own pocket could not stay filled.
Besides, I know that the American embassy has someone watching me just to be sure that I’m not engaged in any anti-American political activity. The Liberians probably watch me, too. In spite of Liberia’s willingness to do the U.S.’s bidding in Africa by turning itself into a CIA listening post and its one airport into a B-52 base, this is not an especially stable country. There are many groups and individuals who would love to see the present pro-American government overthrown and replaced by one allied with the Soviet Union or China or God forbid with the non-aligned nations of the Third World. As a result people like me (who are not tourists or Peace Corps volunteers) are viewed with suspicion by all sides. It’s as if I’m under house arrest, Mother, and if you and Daddy or anyone else from my past suddenly shows up here calling attention to yourselves by hiring guides and poking around the country “sightseeing” (and you know what Daddy’s like when he travels), I’ll very likely be extradited to the U.S. and sent to prison for a long, long time.
I’m no longer the same person I was when this exchange between me and my parents took place. But I can see how, just in telling you about the exchange, I revert, not quite to my childhood state of mind, but to adolescence, or even to pre-adolescence. Both my parents are long dead now. In the intervening years I’ve been married, widowed, and borne three children; I’ve perpetrated a hundred large and small betrayals and abandonments; perfect lovers have been replaced by other perfect lovers, men have replaced women and boys have replaced men, and Africans have replaced Americans, who have been replaced by Americans again; chimpanzees in cages have replaced a childhood pet, and Border collies, free-roaming farm dogs, have replaced the chimpanzees; and I’ve gone on alone, untouched, undeterred, unbetrothed, a woman whose essence is a white shadow, a spirit of the river, one of those mammi wattas. Yet despite all that, today, in telling of a brief correspondence back in 1977 between me and my parents, and in the process bringing my father and mother wholly back to my mind, the person I was so long ago returns to me, invades and inhabits me.
In writing to you and Daddy I took a small chance that I’d be compromising my position here slightly. All I wanted was an intimate exchange of family and personal news so that we might not feel so estranged from one another. But after reading Daddy’s letter and now yours, believe me I feel more estranged than ever. I know you mean well, and no doubt Daddy does, too, but please, please, please, try to respect the difficulty of my position here and my feeble attempt in spite of it to reach out to you. In very different ways the two of you seem unable to know me as a person. Daddy’s still addressing me as if I were one of his young, awestruck interns, and you act like I’m a troubled teenager emerging from her rebellious years. I think it would be better — since we now know that all three of us are still alive and well — if we didn’t try to communicate any farther, at least for the time being. I’m sorry to have to write that to you, but I see no useful or safe alternative.
Love,
Hannah
But there came a time several months later, after my marriage to Woodrow, when I first learned that I was pregnant, and I felt a powerful need to break my silence once again. I wanted my father to know, of course. Not of the marriage, necessarily — though I had no reason to keep it a secret. I wanted him to know of my pregnancy. I wanted both my parents to know that they were going to be grandparents. I was also motivated by a desire to shock my father, perhaps to frighten and hurt him. That was Scout operating.
Daddy,
I’m writing to tell you that I am married and ten weeks pregnant with my husband’s child. You may inscribe in the big old Musgrave family Bible that my husband’s name is Woodrow Sundiata. He is 43 years old and is the Deputy Minister of Public Health for the Republic of Liberia. We were married in Monrovia by a Methodist minister on September 12th 1977. Witnesses were Hon. William Tolbert, the President of Liberia, and my husband’s close friend and colleague, Hon. Charles Taylor, who is the Minister of Public Services. Rest assured that I’m healthy and receiving the best possible medical care here. I will let you know when there is anything more to tell you about my ongoing life. Mother keeps me well informed as to your ongoing life, so you need not answer this.