Every few years, Orleanna catches the scent of Africa: ripe fruits, flowers, dark spices, and other things that she's never seen. She thinks that this is a cruel trick, her body never free from the small parts of Africa, where one of her children lies in the red earth.
She thinks that she could have been a different mother, could have seen what was coming. She had thought that she could have it both ways: be one of the villagers and Nathan's wife. Yet, she realizes that she was his instrument and nothing more. She studies her daughters now for signs that they are at peace, wondering how they managed.
In the early months in the Congo, Orleanna would wake and think that she was in Pearl, Mississippi, her childhood home. Everything.....
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