FOR MY WHOLE LIFE I BELIEVED THE TINY BLUE FLOWER ON MY MOTHER’S WRIST WAS JUST AN OLD TATTOO — THEN A HOSPITAL NURSE SAW IT AND WALKED OUT TO CALL SECURITY.

So I told everyone, including you, that it was just a tattoo from my youth.

It was a tattoo from my youth.

I just never explained which youth.

The war ended. The men who hunted us are long dead. There’s no danger anymore, not really. But fear that old doesn’t listen to reason. It just makes you cover your wrist for fifty years.”

Dr. Okafor was weeping openly now.

“The woman who carried me,” he said, “I was told, by the family who raised me, that she went back. After she got me to the boat. She went back for more children. They never knew if she survived.”

He looked at my mother.

“Was that you?”

“I don’t know if it was you specifically, Samuel,” my mother said gently. “There were forty-one. I can’t remember every face — you were babies, most of you. But I went back every time. To the last day. That part is true of all of us who carried.