The House at Sugar Beach by Helene Cooper

Author:Helene Cooper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

14

Samuel Doe and his bodyguards

MONROVIA, LIBERIA, APRIL 22, 1980

The morning after the rape, Mommee moved on autopilot. She walked stiffly, almost like a robot. Eunice, Marlene, and I tiptoed around her, not knowing what to say.

There was a bruise under her eye, which she tried to cover with makeup. When that didn’t work, she resorted to her trademark Christian Dior sunglasses, which she kept on in the house, as well as in the car on the drive to town. She was silent in the car, her hands gripping the wheel each time we came to newly set up military checkpoints, where soldiers stopped the car and waved their guns into the windows.

I had finally gotten my wish: my family was moving from Sugar Beach to Aunt Momsie’s house in Sinkor.

When we got to Aunt Momsie’s house, Mommee immediately told Uncle Mac and Mama Grand, who had been released from the army barracks and was also ensconsed at Aunt Momsie’s, what had happened. Aunt Momsie was out of the country at the time, and Mommee, Mama Grand, and Uncle Mac went out onto the front porch to talk. Captain Stevens, a U.S. embassy attaché who was a friend of the family, was there, too. The four of them sat outside.

Eunice, my cousin CeRue, Marlene, and I monitored them from the living room window. In the distance we could hear the Country People singing and celebrating.

“The soldiers told me that if I didn’t go downstairs with them, they would rape my daughters,” Mommee told Captain Stevens. “There were three of them. At first, one soldier tried to stop the others, but he gave up soon. The last thing he said to me before he raped me was ‘You think the Americans are going to come and help you? Well, they back us.’”

When she said that part, she looked straight at Captain Stevens. He looked back at her for a moment, and then he looked away.

That night, Eunice, Marlene, CeRue, and I watched The Exorcist on TV. We were all sleeping on the floor of the same bedroom as Mama Grand, who snored all night. Her snoring sounded just like the girl in The Exorcist right before her head started spinning around.

The next day, we all went to school. ACS seemed shockingly normal, except some of the Liberian kids had bruises and several of the girls had been raped, according to murmurs in the classrooms. But even the ones who had been raped still went to school.

Students whispered in the hallways:

“Soldiers came to Ronnie’s house and messed with them.”

“I heard they beat Joseph’s pa with the butt of their guns, then they used the same guns to rape his ma.”

“They took Jackie on the beach behind their house and seven of them raped her.”

“They took John’s whole family to BTC.”

I wasn’t sure how much to tell. I didn’t want any of my friends knowing soldiers had raped my mother, but at the same time, it seemed pointless to pretend nothing had happened to us when so many students suddenly had their fathers locked up at BTC, waiting for military trials.

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