Redemption Road is the story of Bendu Lewis, a young Liberian humanitarian aid worker who counsels survivors of the Liberian civil war. When the warlord who ruined Bendu’s own life suddenly shows up in town, her main goal is to bring him to justice. In her pursuit of Commander Cobra, Bendu finds much more than she bargained for, including the strength to finally be open about her own wartime secrets.
As people walked past to pay their last respects to Catherine May Tyler Lewis, they were either reverently silent, or they broke down and cried. Some reached up to the heavens and talked to Catherine loudly—oblivious to everyone around them. For Bendu Lewis, Catherine's granddaughter, the pain was magnified for it was she who last saw Granny May alive—she who watched her die an undignified death, emaciated legs and arms dangling over the side of a dirty, rusty wheelbarrow.
Hundreds of friends and relatives had come now to celebrate the old lady’s life and mourn her death, and the emotions were raw and intense, even though she had died almost ten years earlier. Although the remains of Catherine Lewis had never been found, the family had decided to use a casket anyway, and had placed in it a large portrait of their matriarch along with a few things that reflected what she most loved. In her casket were her Bible, a collage of family pictures, a framed picture of her husband Samuel Lewis II, who had died long before the war, a single white rose, and the red, white and blue flag of Liberia.
Bendu watched her father, Benjamin, moving steadily among the crowd comforting friends and relatives with words here, a touch there, a reassuring smile, a story to remind them of his mother’s generosity and sense of humor. Bendu’s mother, Eva, was there, too, sitting with old Cousin Rebecca, and they were glancing over at Bendu every now and then with what seemed like disapproval in their eyes.
Benjamin and Eva Lewis left Liberia in the early 1990s, not long after the civil war began, and had returned just for the memorial service. All their property had been destroyed during the war, and they were staying with Ciatta, Bendu's older sister. Ciatta had returned to her husband, Terrance Clark, a few months before the memorial and, despite sporadic rebel incursions, had decided to stay with him now that he was part of the elected government and there was relative peace.
Ben and Eva had no plans to stay for good. First the 1980 coup d’etat in which they lost political power and their only son, then the civil war a decade later. Liberia now was just too different from the Liberia they had enjoyed. They were unwilling to contribute anything to the country’s development and often joked that Bendu was their great contribution.
None of them will ever understand my pain, Bendu thought, fanning herself for some relief from the stifling heat. She slowly tuned out what the people around her were saying and fixed her eyes on the shiny, satin-lined casket at the other end of the room. Then she heard the voice, clear as day, “You girl, leave that old woman and run!”
Oh, the voices! Bendu could not forget the voices mingled with the screams as the whole population of Ray Town and surrounding villages ran for their lives. People at the memorial service swirled around her in a hazy sea of black, purple and white, the standard mourning colors, and their sounds began to mesh with the sounds in her head. That day, as they ran, with Bendu pushing her sick grandmother in a wheelbarrow, one woman grabbed her by the shoulders and shook her. “Old Ma's time is finished! She's old, you are young. Come let's go!”
The machine guns were getting louder and they could hear screaming in the distance behind them. The screams were almost drowned out though by the piercing wails of several abandoned babies and small children by the roadside. Their parents or guardians were either unable or unwilling to carry them any further, or had simply lost them in the confusion. A few of the children ran scared among the crowd, stretching out their arms and crying, in vain, to be picked up. They ran, but their little legs couldn't get them far, and Bendu gasped in horror as she saw a couple of them trampled by the frightened adults. The sheer terror on their little faces would be ingrained in her memory forever. She wanted to gather up some of the babies and put them in the wheelbarrow with Granny May, but she knew that would only slow them down.
All around Bendu saw that several elderly and sick people had also been left behind. A few struggled to follow the crowd. Others made no attempt and sat crying, praying, calling out to the able-bodied running past them. “Ay my daughter! Ay my son! Help me o, help me, I beg you!” Still others sat silently, and stared blankly as they awaited their fate.
Bendu gripped the handles of the wheelbarrow more firmly, and pushed ahead. Granny May had withered down to about ninety pounds but Bendu had lost a lot of weight and strength too, so it was not easy. Her jeans sagged on her a bit and she wished she had worn a lappa instead. The large piece of fabric would have been a better fit wrapped tightly around her waist, and would have helped her blend in with the other women. She could also have used it as a blanket for Granny May or as a head-tie to wrap up her long hair. It was so important not to stand out among the crowd; too easy to be singled out at the checkpoints that were being set up along the major roads. She thanked God now that she was dark-skinned, for that made her blend in with a majority of the people. Suddenly a gigantic explosion stunned the moving crowd. For a few seconds, it seemed as if the world had stopped. Then several people yelled at once. “RPG!!” A rocket-propelled grenade.
Dizzy. Slow motion. Confusion. Then utter bedlam as people began to get their hearing back and to run even faster. Bendu too panicked and found some energy to run for a bit.
One more person shouted at her as he ran past. “Leave that wheelbarrow, you girl! Your old Ma's looking dead already. Just leave her!”
But Bendu ran and pushed until two of the painful blisters in her hands burst and her weary legs crumpled beneath her. She fell to her knees, panting, out of breath, a sharp stabbing pain in her right side. She rested her head on the wheelbarrow and tried to catch her breath as the last of the villagers rushed by.
“Granny May? Don't worry Granny May. We will get out of here together. I promise you.” With the crowd and their noise now gone ahead, Bendu finally heard her grandmother's hoarse whisper.
“Leave me baby. Go. Save yourself.”
“No Granny May, no! I will never leave you!” Bendu scooped her grandmother up tenderly and held her in her arms. Granny May’s skin was hot and dry, and she smelled of the Vicks ointment she rubbed on her chest to ward off coughs and colds. Granny May whispered again, this time more faintly. “Go good, baby. My Lord will take care of me. He will take care of you too.” With those words her body went limp and Bendu stumbled as she placed her back in the wheelbarrow. Granny May's thin eyelids closed and a rasping sound came out of her throat.
“Granny May?” The old woman was silent and still. “Granny May?” Bendu shook her gently.
A thin old man rose up from the grass on the side of the road and limped over to look at them. “Nama, fine girl,” he said. “Sorry yah. You did well to stay with your Ma. God will bless you.”
Bendu stared at the old man for a few seconds, then shook her head slowly as she began to understand what he was saying. She stumbled backwards, eyes still on him, searching his wrinkled face.
“No,” she whispered. “No!” she pleaded, shaking her head.
The man simply lowered his head sadly before he turned and walked away.
Bendu scrambled to her feet, pushed the wheelbarrow to the side of the road, collapsed beside it and wept bitterly. She cried until she could hardly see. Her eyes were swollen and her jaws hurt. She was crying so hard she didn't see the fighters until they were standing right in front of her. The leaders wore army fatigues and berets. Most of the others with them were a ragtag bunch, but all of them had weapons. About thirty people in all, including a few very young boys and several women.
To everyone’s great surprise, Bendu looked right at them and sucked her teeth loudly. A man with wild dreadlocks stepped forward angrily, raised the handle of his gun, and was about to bring it down full force on her head when his commander grabbed his arm and stopped him. Bendu hadn’t even flinched. She didn’t care anymore. She was tired of the war, tired of running, and wanted to die herself, right there with Granny May. She wished someone would just shoot her and end the pain. Send her to heaven where she would see her beloved fiancé Jonah once more.
The commander was a tall muscular man with a moustache and seventies style sideburns.
“Stand up!” he ordered in the Kpelle dialect that most people in the region spoke. Bendu rose slowly to her feet. Her legs and arms were sore from pushing Granny May in the wheelbarrow for miles.
Still speaking Kpelle, he introduced himself. “I am Commander Cobra. Who are you?” he asked.
“My name is Bendu,” she replied in Kpelle.
“Bendu what?”
“Bendu Lewis.”
Murmurs in the crowd. “She's a Congo girl,” someone said. “Listen to her voice; she’s Americo-Liberian.”
“How come you know Kpelle?” the commander asked.
Bendu decided not to say that her fiancé was Kpelle. “I took classes at the University of Liberia.”
Commander Cobra nodded, obviously impressed. “You speak it well,” he said, switching to English.
“She sucked her teeth at us!” the angry man with the gun interrupted. “Let me strike for you Cobra!”
“Don't worry Samson,” the commander said, eyes still on Bendu. “I will strike for myself.” Samson stepped back and grinned menacingly. The commander continued his questioning. “What are you doing in Ray Town?”
“My grandmother and I were visiting relatives in Sumoville when the Baobay Bridge was destroyed. We couldn't get back to Monrovia.”
One of the boys looked over at the old woman in the wheelbarrow and asked, “Your Old Ma’s sleeping or what?” The woman standing next to him sucked her teeth and knocked him on the head with the back of her hand. “The Old Ma's dead and you’re asking if she’s sleeping?” A few of the fighters snickered.
“So, where are you carrying the body?” the commander asked Bendu. His question drew more laughter. Bendu choked on her tears and couldn’t answer.
“Fall in line! You’re coming with us,” he ordered.
Bendu stepped behind the wheelbarrow and picked up the handles with her bloody hands. It seemed like everyone started shouting and laughing at her at once.
“Where are you carrying that dead body?”
“No morgue where we going o!”
“Put that damn wheelbarrow down!”
“Look at all these bodies lying around. This is your Old Ma's graveyard right here!”
Bendu collapsed on top of her grandmother and sobbed loudly. Two men grabbed her and tried to pull her off but she gripped the sides of the wheelbarrow and would not let go.
“I will stay here!” she screamed. “I don’t care what you say, I’m staying here!”
The commander turned away from Bendu, motioned to some of the men, and they started to move forward along the road. He turned back to the others and tossing his head in Bendu's direction, ordered them to put an end to the nonsense and bring her quickly. One of the young women moved forward to try and console her, but before she could say anything Samson raised his gun again and brought it down hard on Bendu’s fingers with a sickening crack. She let go of the wheelbarrow and the men dragged her away screaming in agony. She soon fell unconscious from the pain, the hunger, the shock of what had happened to Granny May, and of what was happening to her. When she finally woke up, it was dark and the fighters were quietly setting up camp in the woods.
Someone put a comforting hand on her shoulder, and Bendu was startled out of her thoughts. She blinked and looked around her now, at the friends who had come to Granny May’s memorial service to sympathize with her. There was Agnes, a colleague from the peace education center; several of their students, including Tenneh, who had been hospitalized with malaria all week and was supposed to still be in bed recovering; and Calvin Daniels, a childhood friend.
Bendu was grateful for their presence, but in a way, she just wanted to be left alone. Although they did give her some sort of support, the fact that she could never tell them everything actually made her grief more unbearable, the pain more intense. What if they found out what had happened to her, or what she had done? Would they understand? Would her family forgive her? Sometimes it all seemed so far away, the nightmare that was the war. But sometimes the memories were so sharp they left her debilitated. A year with the fighters had changed her life forever, and she couldn't understand how so many war survivors could say so easily “forget it, let it go,” or “let bygones be bygones and don't dwell on the past.” For Bendu, forgetting was out of the question, but remembering and doing nothing about it was even worse.
