What Things Last

Celina Ottaway's series, continued:

MOTHERLAND TIME AND DISTANCE -- AND EVEN A WAR -- DON'T DIMINISH A PARENT'S LOVE

Sunday, May 9, 1999

CELINA OTTAWAY Staff writer

Lawuo Stevens could lose herself in the quick rhythm of her wrists, up down, up down, and on for hours in her little beauty parlor on Central Avenue in Albany, a city where it snowed in the winter and the wind blew a chill that stung her sun-soaked African bones.

She would braid her customers' hair so fast that her finger movements were a mystery. It was easier to watch her wrists. Flick, flick as braid after braid flowed from her palms, like a magician pulling scarves from an empty hand.

For seven years, she prayed and braided, anything she could do to find links to her native Liberia, where her 10-year-old daughter, Yassah Nuwolo, was trapped in a civil war.

Home. Motherland. Daughterland.

Lawuo was living in Liberia in 1984 when she met the man she still introduces as ``the guy I fell in love with,'' to which he adds, ``It was 7:30 p.m. under the moonlight.''

Aloysius Stevens had studied criminal justice in the United States and was home in Liberia for a visit when he spotted a woman selling roasted fish at an outdoor nightclub.

He ordered the fish and asked her name. ``Esther,'' she said.

``I don't believe you,'' he replied. ``But that is good enough for now.''

They talked some and learned they were from the same village in Liberia's interior.

She told him her name was Lawuo. They spent the next six months getting to know each other. They told each other about their previous marriages and introduced each other to their children. She had a son and a daughter. So did he.

Lawuo and Aloysius married in a small Liberian ceremony and made their plans for the future.

When Aloysius returned to the States to look for work, Lawuo promised to follow. He would start the paperwork for Lawuo. Then she would come and they would file the paperwork for their children.

The paperwork took two years. Lawuo joined her husband in 1987 and they married for the second time at the courthouse in Albany. Over the next few years they saved money and brought their two older children over.

Plans were falling into place. But there is no good way to plan for a civil war. And Lawuo found herself faced with a decision that would haunt her for years to come.

It was 1990, and she and Aloysius had a newborn son. Lawuo had just finished making plans to fly to Liberia and pick up the last of her children, her then-10-year-old daughter, Yassah. When the war came.

Liberia turned into a bloody battleground. Access to the United States got tight as the press of people fleeing the violence increased. Lawuo had a choice: Leave her newborn son, go to Liberia and try to rescue her daughter physically or work through diplomatic channels in the States to secure the girl's paperwork.

She figured she had a better chance of getting Yassah out if she argued her case here. She didn't count on the mess of lawyers, bureaucratic tangles and documents that would stretch for nearly seven years. Seven years of braids and prayers.

Lawuo had left Liberia when Yassah was 7, a young girl in a perfectly pressed school uniform and a little girl's cornrows and barrettes. It was the same age she'd left her own mother to move to Monrovia and live with an older sister.

In Liberia, motherhood is a bond of love and blood that often stretches over great distances. It is not uncommon for children to live with relatives in order to go to school or learn a trade. Sometimes, as in Lawuo's case, it is the mother who has to travel to find a future for the children.

Lawuo had figured that three years away from her daughter would be a worthy sacrifice for a new life in the United States. A life where if she worked hard she could send her children to college. But Liberia's civil war stretched three years into 10.

And so Lawuo braided and remembered her daughter.

In Liberia, girls must come to school with their hair braided and Lawuo had taken great pride in sending Yassah to school in fancy styles.

``The beauty of a woman starts with her hair,'' Lawuo's grandmother had always said. ``When you walk in a room, they don't look at you from toes to head, they look at you from head to toes.''

The years passed, some without even a phone call from Yassah. Aloysius' youngest child made it out in the early 1990s, but Yassah was stuck in the war.

Yassah's father died and she bounced from family member to family member. Lawuo sent money. Much of it never made its way to her daughter.

Occasionally, Lawuo got through on the phone, but the conversations were limited and Yassah didn't say much since she was never alone when she spoke with her mother.

Finally, on Dec. 12, 1996, the waiting was over. Lawuo went to John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens. She knew the girl's face instantly.

Lawuo ran to Yassah. She grabbed her daughter and hugged her close to her chest, screaming and crying and kissing her face. Then she pushed her away to arms length to look at her.

The 7-year-old in cornrows and barrettes was gone. In her place was a tall shapely figure, her hair braided with extensions and then piled on top of her head in an intricate basket-weave pattern. Her daughter was a woman.

Yassah pulled her to her chest again, tears running from her eyes, and screamed. She would bring her daughter home. Show her the little shop in Albany. Teach her to braid.

And she did.