The Dragons, the Giant, the Women: A Memoir

In the US, Wayetu recalls the times during her childhood when Liberians gathered at weddings, funerals, and other events to talk about what life would have been like if the war hadn’t happened. They insisted that Liberia would have become a powerhouse. Some relationships may not have ended, and some mansions would have been built in the mountains and along beaches. They talked about the time “Rawlings closed his border at Togo and Liberia became a haven to the Ghanaians, and during Biafra” was a “refuge to the Nigerians” (115). They talked about how they helped Koreans during the Korean War and Americans during World War II.

Now, Wayetu is on a therapist’s couch. She tells her therapist that if not for the war, she and her ex “would have met in Liberia” (116). The therapist asks her to talk of her dream about Satta. Wayetu isn’t sure about what it means. She then says that she’s been thinking about going back to Liberia. She hasn’t returned to her home country since the family escaped.

When the therapist asks Wayetu why she ended her relationship with her boyfriend, Wayetu insists that they simply weren’t a good match. However, he was like a member of her family, so it feels as though she’s lost a relative. The long-distance relationship was just too difficult to maintain. The therapist notes a recurring theme of loss in Wayetu’s life. Wayetu says that her childhood was happy, not traumatic. She doesn’t want “to sound ungrateful or spoiled” (117). The therapist tells her that recognizing her pain doesn’t make her ungrateful. Wayetu then mentions her grandfather and talks about how he was killed. This leads her to explain how intertribal warfare was integral to the civil war. She concludes by saying that her father and grandmother worked hard to protect her and her sisters from trauma.

The therapist listens and tells Wayetu that women of color, even those who have some privilege, often downplay their bad experiences. This leads them, she says, to put on a mask of perfection. What’s underneath this mask is real.

Wayetu thinks of Mam and the many things that her mother taught her. What her mother didn’t teach her was how to handle a broken heart. After all, her mother had married her one true love. Wayetu thinks, too, of how most of the boys with whom she grew up were white. There was one Black boy she liked. He acknowledged that Wayetu was beautiful but dismissed her for being dark-skinned. In high school, she became homecoming queen. That same boy reminded her of how he’d told her that she was beautiful. In college, Wayetu dated Black men who previously dated only white girls. They insisted that they didn’t have a type. When she lived in Harlem in her twenties, she dated Black men who told her that she was the only dark-skinned woman they’d ever gone out with. The others were light-skinned. They told her, though, that she was more beautiful than all of them despite being dark-skinned. In her thirties, Wayetu loved a man who told her that she was beautiful but dismissed her dreams of becoming an actress because she was not “physically enchanting enough for mainstream American audiences” (120). Mam didn’t understand any of this, didn’t know about how Black American women were socialized. She never instructed her daughters to avoid the sun; never obsessed over the unruliness or straightness of their hairlines.

Wayetu tells the therapist that she had an experience in Texas that was more traumatic than anything she endured during the war. The therapist insists that even that trauma doesn’t erase trauma from the war. Then, the therapist connects the traumas of loss to Wayetu’s inabilities to adjust to her new life and to relationships. She asks why Wayetu is always the first one to leave her romantic relationships. The therapist encourages her to recall her time in Texas, to talk about her upbringing there.

In seventh grade, Wayetu remembers, she instinctively sat with the Black girls in the cafeteria. There were a dozen at one table. Wayetu was the only African but still part of their group. The girls, however, hardly had anything in common aside from being Black. If they were beautiful, they didn’t know it, and they had little confirmation of Black beauty from television or magazines. When white girls wanted to befriend them, they mimicked stereotypical behavior, such as finger-snapping and eye-rolling. They never asked for help with homework or talked about anything scholastic.

Spring, Texas was a working- to middle-class suburban community. There was a horse ranch in one direction and a shooting range in another. Unlike other Black people in the community, Mam and Gus “looked for God in people before they looked to skin color for clues on how the relationship would unfold” (123).

When Wayetu entered elementary school, the other kids found it interesting that she was African. They were curious about the lappa Mam wore at school events. Wayetu never discussed the war. She attended middle school with the same children with whom she attended elementary school.

One day, she and the Blackgirls—her nickname for her group of friends—entered a corner store in their neighborhood. The two male cashiers stared at them as they came in. Wayetu couldn’t decide on which candy to buy. As the older of the two men rang up the other girls’ things, he demanded to know what Wayetu would have. Wayetu finally decided, apologized for taking so long, and placed her candy bar on the counter. She was nine cents short. The girls gave her the change. The cashier became annoyed and muttered to himself. Wi called the man racist and demanded their change so that they could leave. Her accusation of racism offended the younger cashier. The other one threw the change on the counter and demanded that they leave before he called the police. The girls left, while Wi and her friends, who were older, argued with the two men. Suddenly, Wayetu heard a crash from inside the store. Wi ran outside, her face covered in tears. She pulled Wayetu along. The younger man chased the girls with a broomstick, calling them a racist slur.  

In that moment, Wayetu wanted only Mam. She wanted her mother to explain this new country to her, though Mam never could.