Russell Banks - The Darling

Love,

Your Hannah

My options were extreme. And few. I thought of following Charles to Libya and imagined myself in fatigues and a black beret and an M-16, a latter-day Patty Hearst without the Stockholm syndrome to cloud my mind and divide my heart. A guerrilla fighter. A liberator with a nom de guerre, Nonnie, after the famous female chieftain who led the escaped Jamaican slaves in the Maroon wars. And when Charles’s war of liberation was won, I would have a role in the new revolutionary government and would be able to protect my husband from the victors’ execution squads and would be reunited with my Liberian sons. And then I thought of moving back in with my mother in Emerson and taking care of her in her old age, becoming one of those faithful maiden daughters who, forsaking marriage and children, dedicates her life to the care and feeding of an aged, demanding parent. And to the end of her days my mother would be truly grateful to me, making my mind and heart clear and undivided, and when she died, I would inherit the house on Maple Street and my father’s fortune, which I would use to start a home for abused children from the inner city. And I thought of staying in New Bedford with Carol and Bettina until … until Carol fell in love with a man, as I knew she would, and I would no longer be a suitable housemate or fantasy aunt for her daughter and would have to move on, to where I did not know. I was forty years old and had nowhere forward I could go and no permanent place to stay. All I could do was go back. Back to Africa.

Hannah darling,

I read your letter with great pleasure and have conveyed your words of motherly love to the boys. It pleased them very much. They are fine and in good health. Jeannine has taken excellent care of them.

There is little news to report. Things here are very much the same as when you left, politically and otherwise. I have spoken about your situation to our American friend, who seems to have some influence with the president. He tells me that he can arrange a meeting between the president and the U.S. ambassador, Mr. Wycliffe, on the matter of your return. Our friend tells me that in exchange for certain favors, which he did not divulge, it may soon be possible for us to be a reunited family. This would be wonderful for all.

I am sorry to learn of your father’s passing. I too regret that I never met him, but I’m sure he was a fine gentleman and doctor of medicine. Please give my condolences to your mother.

I have enclosed several Polaroid pictures of the boys. Also, Jeannine has asked me to include herein letters from the boys to you that I think you will find quite charming indeed. Jeannine has been learning to read and write in a class taught in town by one of the Peace Corps volunteers. She tells me that she will write to you herself when she has graduated from her class. She is very proud of her newly acquired skills but is not yet ready to expose them to you, whom she greatly admires.

When I first arrived in Monrovia and through Woodrow came to know Sam Clement, I carefully avoided him. The cultural attaché at the American embassy, he was present at any official gathering that was deemed insufficiently high level for the U.S. ambassador to attend in person, but I was almost always able to slip out of the receiving line and head for the ladies’ room before he got close enough to shake the hands of the minister of health and his American wife. Then for a few years he was no longer there. Woodrow mentioned that he’d heard Sam had gone to work in Zimbabwe for the new national telephone company that the Americans were setting up. In 1980, after Samuel Doe and his cohort butchered President Tolbert and his cabinet and took over the government, Sam returned to Monrovia, once again as the cultural attaché. By this time I had become accepted in what passed for high society in Monrovia and had grown more secure in my identity as the white, foreign-born wife of the minister of health and no longer avoided Sam. He became Woodrow’s and my American friend. He loaned me books and newspapers and magazines from the embassy library. He once drank too much gin at a dinner party at our house and followed me onto the terrace and tried to kiss me, and when I gently declined, he apologized profusely and seemed genuinely embarrassed and sorry. I wasn’t at all offended. Mostly surprised. I had thought he was homosexual.

I will write to you again as soon as there is news. If you can, would you please send a first-quality video camera and VCR to me? They are very expensive here and only a few poor brands are available. Sony is the best. You should have it shipped to me at the ministry. Thanks in advance.

Your loving husband,

Woodrow Sundiata

The brief letters from the boys were in pencil on lined tablet paper a lot like the paper I had torn from Bettina’s tablet for my letter to Woodrow. I quickly read the letters and put them into my backpack and then looked at the four Polaroid photos, splotchy and already fading, as if the Liberian heat and humidity had partially spoiled the film. I merely glanced at them — one photo was of Dillon, Paul, and Willy standing together on the lawn stiffly at attention, unsmiling in their Sunday school suits, with the huge, red bougainvillea behind them; the other three were of each boy in the same spot alone. I put them into my backpack with the letters. Which is how I still have them in my possession today.

Dear Mammi,

School is very fun. My new teacher is Mrs. Mbeko and she is very fat, but I like her. She makes jokes all the time. Pappi bought two new dogs. They are named Bruno and Muhammad Ali. They are mastiffs and are both brothers, but not twins like Willy and Paulie. Bruno is bigger than Muhammad Ali. He weighs 125 lbs. Pappi won’t let us play with them yet because they are to be watchdogs and should not become friends with anyone, even the people they are watching. Jeannine is the one who feeds them. Bruno killed a cobra in the garden. I miss you. I hope you will come home soon. Love,

Dillon

Jeannine. Always Jeannine. My shadow self. It was probably she who stood in front of the boys with the camera and snapped the pictures. It was probably she who urged them to write to their Mammi, then gave the letters and pictures to Woodrow one evening and suggested that he send them to me. She was better at being me than I was.

Dear Mammi,

How are you? I am fine. We went to the beach. School is nice now. It rained every day so far. Our new dog Bruno ate a spitting cobra. It was six feet long. Love,

Paulie

Spitting cobras lurk in every flower garden. They aim their poison at the eyes of man or beast and can hit their target from ten feet away. A large, courageous watchdog can kill it, but may die itself as a result. Everything that lives in Liberia and that you kill will eventually kill you for it. Something rots beneath the soil and taints the air above it.

Dear Mammi,

How are you? We miss you a lot. What is America like? Pappi showed on a map where you live now. Is it nice there? I hope it’s not too cold! I have to go now. Goodbye! Love,

Willy

The leaves had fallen to the ground, and autumn was becoming winter. I had forgotten how unjust and autocratic the approach of a northern winter seems. I said to Bettina that the bare branches of the trees in the small park that she and I crossed every day on the walk to and from her school looked like the scrawny arms of beggars.

“Yeah, right,” Bettina said.

“They do. And they’re asking the sky for the return of light and warmth. They’re begging for the simple kindness of the sun. But it’s abandoned them for the tropics.”