Ancestor Stones (5 page)

We were standing in the market when my mother overheard a conversation between two women. One, a tray of smoked fish balanced on her head, claimed a
moriman
had rid her of a troublesome rival who would have put her out of business. My mother did not care what these women thought of her, the wife of a big man, and interrupted their talk. But the fish seller was flattered and answered my mother's questions. The
moriman
had instructed her to sweep up her rival's footsteps and to bring the dust. This was what she told us. And so in the amber light of evening we searched the corners of the house until we found one of Alusani's footprints. I cried easily to see the shape of his foot in the earth. I wanted my mother to comfort me, but her face was flat and she went about the business briskly. The next morning she woke me early to walk to the town where the
moriman
lived. And there I knelt and watched all that remained of Alusani go up in flames.

And so it went for months. How many magic men I could not count. One splashed a liquid in my eyes that stung for a long time — to stop me from seeing Alusani and wanting to go to him. There were times I had a powerful medicine made from boiled roots rubbed all over my limbs. The
moriman
said it would deter wicked spirits. People believed these things then. My mother believed them, too. I did not. I was miserable. I smelled like rice left in the pot for days, slimy and sour. I was ashamed.

My mother was the senior wife. There was a time when I was so pleased with myself that I was the daughter of the most important of the wives. She paid the workers their wages and held the keys to the store; she ordered the provisions and hired the servants; it was she who had the authority to decide which of the women should cook for my father, or travel with him when he went away on business. I found there was nobody to help me. My grandmother shared her daughter's fears. Even my father would not confront my mother, for she was older than him in years.

* * *

I was sitting outside our house on a stool with my tray on the ground before me, preparing
ogere
to sell in the market, wrapping the balls of fermented sesame seeds in leaves and tying the packages with raffia. I used to make the
ogere
myself, standing over the pot, stirring the seeds which boiled for the whole day. Then I would spread them out on rice bags and lay heavy rocks on top of them. After three days, I pounded the fermenting seeds into a paste with my pestle and mortar.

Ogere
tastes good, but you know how bad it smells. That's why we never cook it inside the house. Always on the three-stone fire in the yard. At that time it seemed a good job for me. I smelled so bad anyway.

Those days my chest felt bruised. I was growing breasts, though I didn't know it. Your uncle saw me. And he knew what he saw. And he stopped and talked to me nicely for a while. I watched him walk away, swinging his prayer beads in his hand, his body outlined by the wind beneath his white gown, and I let my imagination follow him down the street. I saw the power of his shoulders, the strength of his arms and the narrowness of his waist. I did not notice the weakness in the line of his jaw. The next day he came back with a gift: a bowl of scented roseapples. He ate one, and afterwards he handed me an apple and had me eat it. But with every bite I took all I tasted was the raw
ogere
, it overpowered the sweet fruit and made me nauseous. Your uncle appeared not to notice. I saw a man who was kind to me, and I saw the way to free myself from my mother. I ran from the smoke straight into the fire.

There's not much more to tell. It's a true story. You never knew my name was Yankay, the firstborn. That I was once a twin. That I had a brother Alusani, the other half of my soul. Or that I grew jealous of him and longed for my mother to look at me, without knowing what it was I wished for. And how I watched a man with skin like the shadows of the moon collecting the souls of lost children in the forest.

One day you married one of these men and brought him home. As soon as I saw him so close I could not help myself. I reached out my hand and I touched his skin. And it was warm, so warm — not
cold like sea water. But I made you ashamed and afterwards I heard you whispering, making apologies for me you thought I was too deaf to hear.

Maybe I acted like a fool — and you can call me that if you like. I don't care because, you see, for one moment I was she, that girl again and I wanted to run to your moon-shadow man and beg him: ‘Tell me where Alusani is? Tell me which one of the birds flying in the sky is my brother?'

I remember how it was when I danced with my mother. Sometimes I close my eyes and drift as though I am going to sleep. But I am not asleep. I am remembering a time when I was still a baby, before I knew how to talk or even walk.

Whirling. Whirling. Round and around. Don't feel dizzy. Eyes closed. Nose between shoulder blades. Lips against soft skin. Breathe the scent of her. We dance. Me on her back. We want to go on for ever. This is how we dance on nights we go together to the women's place — the secret place where women meet.

Supper eaten, mama binds me to her back. Holding me squashed against her breasts, bends over, twists my body round her own. On her back now. I know better than to fall off. Cling to her with my thighs, my fists. She drapes the cloth across my buttocks, holds it in her teeth. Ties two ends tight round her waist. Hitches the other corners up under her armpits — a knot above her breasts.

I'm part of her. Feel her flesh, muscles, sinews — walking, working, out in the plantation pruning trees. Feel her heart quicken and slow. I know who scares her. I know whom she loves. When my father passes she stiffens, drawing air into her nostrils — like an oribi we saw drinking at the river — and quivering beneath the stillness of her skin. We carry food to the workers at the plantation. She unwraps the pots, ladles soup on rice. Men come forward. Pa Foday, he comes close.
‘Momo'
, he says. Thank
you. Feel the creak of the cloth against her ribs as she catches her breath.

Evening time we slip away. Slip away to the secret bush. Walking quickly. Past houses, past gardens. Into the groves. She walks like a queen. Or like a woman on her way to meet a lover. Where the path from the rice fields meets the path from the stream, see the gap in the trees? See the cotton tree high above the rest? That's where we're headed. We follow an invisible path. No one can follow us.

Women are already here. So many women. Talking. Talking women's business, they call it. We don't care to talk. Not so very much. We wait to dance. When the talk is finished the drums start, the singing. And the dancing. We dance for the elders and the younger women, too. Whirling, whirling. Round and around. Round and around we go.

We dance until the light comes up and dances too, across a horizon flat and empty as a stage. And then we walk quickly back to the village, collecting sticks of firewood as we go.

Then I learned to talk. She stopped taking me with her. I might repeat secrets told, women's special secrets. Wait, she said, until your turn comes. That was one time.

Then there was another time. The time when the dancing stopped. And when I said her name, a space opened up that I could fall into. Silence. Silence after her name. Silence where the music used to be. Once women bound their hands to drum all night. Afterwards they met in secret, real secret. Silent secret. Away from the eyes of men. Away from Haidera. But when they tried to dance, they couldn't. The steps were gone. They had followed my mother when she went away.

I used to read the things written about us. These weren't the books the nuns approved of. One book was by a Very Famous Author. Oh, all the writing on the back said how good this book was. This famous man lived in our country for a short time and then he wrote a story that would make sure nobody ever wanted to come here. A story about a man who arrived on these shores and lost his faith.
Many years later I read another book by the same writer, about a woman who has to choose between her god and the man she loves. When I read that book I felt a pain, like I had been stabbed in my side. I felt this woman's terrible choice as if it was my own. Because I remembered my mother and how she was forced to deny her own faith.

A woman has no religion. Have you heard people say that here? A woman has no religion. And maybe it's true. We change our faith to marry and worship to please our husbands. But it was not always so.

In those days they were always coming to convert us. The Muslims from the North, the Christians from the South. We deserted our gods. But nobody wrote stories about that. Instead they congratulated themselves on how many souls they had saved. My own soul was saved twice. But my mother. My mother would not yield. And to this day nobody has ever come to me and said she was noble and righteous to do so.

We did not have a house of our own. No. We slept in a back room of my father's house. Small, not so light, one window. It looked out on to the alleyway where old men came to smoke. The tobacco smelled like burning flowers. Not such a quiet room either. There was the women's cooking circle behind us, too. Odours of simmering
plasass
, the scent of tobacco and talking, old men's voices and women's voices. Hush!

A plain room. But mama tried to make it into something pretty: striped country cloths on the floor, cloth dyed red with camwood on the walls. Lattice shutters over the windows. In the corner the box with her things in it, the things she brought when she came here.

1931. Yes, it was 1931. We didn't count years in those days. That came later. Who was to say where to begin? What year was the first? So we began in many places: the Year the New Chief Came Out of Seclusion; the Year We Came to this Place; the Year the River Rose and Snatched Away Houses in Old Rofathane; the Year the First Coffee Beans Ripened. The Year of the Locust
Disaster. That had been the year before. The villagers lit fires between the rows of trees and draped fishing nets over the branches to protect the beans. I was young. I thought a locust was some kind of fish that swam through the air. In the morning the trees were saved; there were crisp locusts scattered across the land and the air filled with their odour.

Yes, we remembered years by the things that happened. Important things.

So why do I say 1931? I'll tell you. Because that was the year of Haidera. That much I know. I read it in a book by a professor of history. An English professor, but who wrote our history, if you understand me. And he said Haidera came in 1931. So I said to myself, well then that is the year of my mother's story too. The man who wrote that book, he did not think much of Haidera. A fanatic. That's what he wrote in his book. That Haidera was a fanatic. He said not so many people followed Haidera. But he was wrong. There were many people who loved Haidera Kontorfili.

That year was also the Year My Teeth Fell Out. A warm evening in the dry season. My sisters were out, walking round the houses with their age mates. Arms encircling waists. Calling greetings to the people sitting at the front of their houses. ‘I pray good evening, aunty.' ‘Good evening, uncle.' ‘How are you?'
‘Thanto a Kuru.'
I thank God. ‘Remember me to your mother.' ‘Yes, aunty.' Or else they were sitting by the river, whispering into other girls' ears. I was the youngest, too young to go with them. The one who called me, he returned. And the next one too who would have been another sister. Two children missing in between, like the space in my row of teeth.

I lay at home licking my gums. That day I told my mother I was sick and she gave me mimosa tea to drink. I sipped air in with my tea, through the gap in my mouth. The tea blistered my gums, already rough from sucking green mangoes with Bobbio, the Boy with No Voice. Lying in the fields sucking green mangoes. That's what I did the day before. But I don't tell such things to mama. I let my eyes follow her. I like to watch my mother. To me she is beautiful.

Today, as on other days, this is what she does:

She goes to the box and feels among the layers of clothes. She takes a tin, a tin wrapped up in red poplin, stitched with cowrie shells and leather-bound
sassa
. Fearful amulets to protect what's inside. There is writing on the side. It says: ‘Woodbines'. Just so you know. For myself, I only knew that later. On the floor she folds her legs beside her and empties the cigarette cup. Pebbles and stones tumble on to the floor, she spreads them out with a hand like a fan.

There are seventeen of them. This I know. Because sometimes when I am left alone I go to the chest and take them out for myself. I empty them into my palm, feel their weight, listen to the noise they make, like they are talking to each other. Or to me. A pinkish pebble, curved in one place, flat on the other and inside dark and glistening like a sliced plum. A big one, flat and grey with a dimple that fits my thumb, just so. A dark stone, shaped just like a cigar and veined too, like a tobacco leaf. I hold it to my lips and copy the men outside. A cream-coloured pebble, with pale lines intersecting across its length and width: paths and a crossroads. A translucent crystal. A triangular stone, dusty like chalk. A black moon-rock. There are others. Ah, my favourite: white, five-sided, smooth as my skin, but rippled as the sand on the windward side of a dune.

Alone in her room, except for me, my mother talks to the stones. Yes, she does, and often. But first she gathers them up in her hands and throws them in the air like a celebration. She holds out her right hand and catches some, leaving others to fall. She counts them two by two. One, two. One, two. This is how she goes. And sometimes: one. She puts the single stone at the end of the line. She casts and counts and casts and counts. Two rows of stones. The road to life and the road to death. All the time she murmurs soft sounds. I know these sounds by heart. The cadence of her voice, the rhythm and sequence of the vowels, the placing of the consonants. Though not the words they make.