From a block away came the first call of a backyard rooster. Doves gulped and gurgled on the dew-wet grass just outside the window, and palm fronds nicked one another in the soft, offshore breeze. Up close, I saw that Dillon was awake. He stared at me through the gauzy netting, expressionless, as if he’d been anticipating my arrival and I’d arrived late. The twins in their cots lay sleeping in identical parallel positions, facing the wall away from me and from the world at large.
I drew back the netting and sat down on the edge of Dillon’s narrow bed. “You’re awake early,” I said and stroked his cool, bare arm. He said nothing and continued gazing at the spot by the door that I had filled seconds ago, as if an afterimage lingered there — my fading white shadow. Without getting up, I reached with both hands to the twins’ cots, brushed the netting away, and gently held each boy’s ankle, waking the two as if waking one. They turned, rubbed their eyes, sat up in tandem, and smiled.
Paul and William, though not delicate or fragile, were small for their age, almost preternaturally quiet, and except with one another, kept their own council. From infancy the twins had remained a mystery to me, unlike Dillon, who seemed more and more to resemble the child I had been. Paul dominated his brother William, as one twin always will, but gently, politely, and neither was shy or insecure. Paired, the two more than made up for their lack of size and loquacity and made a fiercely combative team, especially when threatened by their older brother. He, on the other hand, was tall for his age, rangy and prematurely muscled. Dillon was a natural athlete and was already, at seven, the size of a boy of ten. Woodrow had recently enrolled him in twice-a-week tennis lessons and had begun asking me about colleges in the United States where a boy could learn to play “top-level tennis.”
Princeton, I’d guessed. Probably Stanford. But how on earth would I know? I demanded. Wasn’t he being a little premature? The boy was barely seven, for heaven’s sake. Which Woodrow had laughed off, noting that his parents and mine had set us upon our paths as early as five or six, had they not? And unless we wanted our sons simply to follow in their father’s footsteps, we would have to show them right from the beginning a different and better way of life. We did not want our sons to follow the same path as their father, did we? Not that there was anything wrong with that path, of course. Woodrow simply felt that his sons should rise above their father — above their mother as well, I assumed — to the same degree as he had risen above his.
Maybe Woodrow’s dream of his handsome brown sons playing tennis at Princeton was no less realistic than any other. They had advantages he’d barely dreamed of, after all. They were the sons of an educated, high-up city man. They were half American, their mother from a “good” American family. They were half white. Sometimes, when sitting up late and in his cups, he would declare, “My sons will be very big men in the big world! Captains of industry, Hannah! Head of the United Nations! Presidents! Big men!”
It was more a promise than a prediction, as if it were up to him. I wondered what broken-promised path we were setting his sons on now. His sons? My sons. It was a faint and overgrown path, winding both into the jungle and out of it, and we had no map to give them, no way to guess where it led. I was about to abandon my boys, to leave them in the care of this weak Christian man, their poor father, confused and self-divided, who had recently become a barely tolerated enemy of the state, and his extended family, hopelessly impoverished, powerless people whose language and culture were to me so far beyond exotic as to be practically meaningless and unintelligible. What clearing in the jungle would these people find for my little boys? And what guiding role in their future lives would I play now? I had only Woodrow’s vague assurance that soon I would be able to rejoin them, either here or in the United States. But how soon? It all depended on the life expectancy, political or otherwise, of Samuel Doe, the unpredictable and treacherous president of the Republic of Liberia — an eventuality that neither I nor Woodrow could effect in the slightest.
I had never left my sons for longer than a single day and was as new at this as they. I told myself that I had no choice in the matter, none, and quickly hardened wholly into stone. To my freshly wakened, still sleepy little boys, I said, “I’m going to have to go away for a time and leave you with Papa and Jeannine.”
Dillon turned to the window, as if seeking a way out of the moment without having to push past me. The twins opened their eyes wide and made little Os with their mouths and at once turned for an explanation, not to me, but to each other. None of the three could look at me. I said that the president wanted me to go back to the United States for a visit, but he couldn’t let them or Papa go with me just yet — Papa because his work for the government was too important, and them because they were Papa’s sons and, like him, were Liberians. I knew it made no sense to them, but couldn’t think of an adequate lie. Because the truth made no sense, I wanted them to hear it, as if by punishing them with nonsense I were somehow punishing their father. “It’s not my fault,” I said. “I would like to stay here, or else take you with me. But the president won’t let me. The president is a very strange man,” I told them. “He thinks if I’m not here with you and Papa, he’ll be able to keep Papa working for him and not helping the people who are against him. That’s silly, of course, but it’s what he believes, and he’s the president. And he thinks if you go to America with me, then Papa will want to go, too.”
With his back to me, Dillon asked “Will you come back someday?”
“Someday? Of course! And it won’t be someday. It’ll be soon, as soon as possible.”
“Okay, then. Go ahead,” he said. He slipped out of his bed and in tee shirt and shorts, barefoot, headed for the door, and was gone. The twins watched him leave and began to get out of their beds to follow.
I said, “What about you two? Is it all right with you, that I have to go away for a while?”
They stopped by the door and turned back and smiled sweetly, both of them, as if they’d already discussed the subject and had reached an easy agreement. Paul said, “Yes, Mammi. It’s all right. You can go.” Both twins waved goodbye to me, and ran to catch up to their brother.
When you part with someone you love, there’s usually an aura of grief attached. But saying goodbye has never been difficult for me. I do it quickly and with little felt emotion, until afterwards, when I’m by myself and it’s done and it’s too late for any feelings that might slow or clog my departure. I sat at the foot of my eldest son’s rumpled, empty bed alongside the two empty beds of his brothers and saw that for the first time in nearly eight years I was alone again. And for the first time since the day I went underground, I felt strong and free.
The room slowly filled with hazy gray morning light, gradually bringing into sharp focus the clutter of the boys’ toys and clothing, all the defining props and evidence of their ongoing existence. Though I had been the one to clip and tape the pictures, maps, and drawings to the walls, the boys had chosen them. And though I had purchased most of their possessions, it was with money given me by their father. To my eyes, there was nothing of mine in that room, no evidence that I existed.