Yefon: The Red Necklace (32 page)

Shamwun studied me briefly, her plastic face searching mine, and then she agreed curtly. “Fine, but you must be back by nightfall, and you will go with Loh.”

I smiled, obligingly.

“Your grooming will be postponed until tomorrow.”

It was final! We had a deal.

About an hour later, Loh and I were walking through the palace heading towards our compound. We had been given two
re’
tubers to take with us as it was considered rude to visit Ma without a bounty from the palace. After what seemed like a huge fight between Loh and I, we each carried one tuber.

As we made our way towards my compound, I saw a large group of old women with fallen breasts walking sluggishly across the fields. They were mostly in their sixties, accompanied by younger ones with perkier breasts.

“Who are those women?” I asked, my eyes glued to their breasts. I think I have a phobia for sagging breasts. First it was Suiven and now this.

Loh laughed heartily. “Are you serious?”

Looking at them to see if I was missing something, I told Loh that I was serious.

“Your highness, those are
vikiynto
,” she said, indicating towards their cowries.

My mouth gaped wide open. “All of them?”

She nodded.

I had always thought my father had many wives but he had nothing like this. I knew I couldn’t live like this. I didn’t want to be among anyone’s gang of wives. Maybe I wanted too much out of life, but I knew this life was not for me.

We arrived at one of Pa’s old properties in
Tashwer
, where my family members were planting beans. Ma had received the
re’
happily, dancing around like an ant.

“Bring me a herpan to put this
re’
in,” she called out to Yenla who dutifully returned with a rusted herpan.

They asked me so many questions about the palace but I answered them all without enthusiasm. When they were bored of my lackluster responses, they returned to planting while I crossed
a few beds till I found Kadoh in the heart of the farm. I started complaining to her about my problems.

“If you think you are too small, ask the mosquito,” she noted, after listening to my bitter tale. “It is the smallest of all, but it causes the biggest damage.”

I smiled, a little distracted. I had given Loh time off to visit her mother in the village just before heading over to see Kadoh. A little afraid, Loh tried to convince me otherwise.

“No one needs to know,” I whispered mischievously.

Feeling adventurous, she ran off while I hung out with my best friend on Pa’s old farm.

“Now you are royalty,” Kadoh had first said when we arrived. “You shall not work on this farm.”

Giving her a ridiculous look, I dug open a hole with one of her hoes, and threw a few eye beans in it.

“Maybe I don’t want to be royalty,” I said, covering up the hole.

“Oh I would give anything to be among the crown heads!” Kadoh chanted. “I hear they eat
bvey
twice a week”

“Everyday, actually,” I corrected.

As she gestured and dramatized to show her appreciation, I commented sadly, “I wish I felt the same.”

Yenla, who had been silently working on a bed nearby, was obviously eavesdropping and asked quietly, “Why are you so ungrateful?”

Kadoh dropped her hoe and gave me an I’m-going-to-leave face. “I shall go over there and bring some more seeds,” she said, excusing herself.

She carefully tiptoed past the beds until she was out of sight. I found a few brown sacks scattered carelessly on the ground. Picking one of them up, I tore it open, and started planting as if I had not heard what Yenla said. In my mind, I pondered the best way to ask my question, and then out it came.

“I don’t know? Do you want to have sex with a man who is sleeping with thirty women at the same time?”

Yenla looked unfazed. “That is every man, my sister.”

“I can’t live like that,” I responded.

Yenla stared at me for a long time. A cold breeze that stung like tattoo needles blew past us carrying some dust in the air. A little entered my eyes, and I struggled to take it out.

“Ma worries about you,” she said. I tried to roll my eyes, but they burned from the dust. I covered my ears forcefully and began to bellow loudly, but Yenla didn’t stop talking. When I took my hands away from my ears after a while, she stared at me for a minute.

“I worry too,” Yenla added gently. “You finally have a good husband. You can start a family, a good situation, and we...fear that you will mess it up with your....”

I looked at her menacingly. I wanted to hear the end of it. “My what?” I asked sharply.

“Your...ways,” she stuttered. I thought the stammering was gone. Gravely offended, I went for the kill.

“How far did your ways get you with your own husband?” I knew I should have stopped there, but I didn’t. I was very irritated by how fast they were to say something cruel to me, even though I had been my family’s saving grace for the past few years.

“Where is your own husband, I asked you?”

“Shut up!” she fired back.

“No you shut up! There is more to life than
this
. That’s what Pa taught us.”

“Well, he’s dead now!” Yenla snapped back, her pupils dilating.

I was hurt by the reality of the fact that the only sane man I knew was gone. “Thanks for reminding me.”

I left angrily, but not before adding the worst comeback I had ever given anyone in my life. “I don’t even know why I came down here to mingle with you peasants. See you at my engagement.”

There were tears in my eyes when I left that day. I should have stayed in the palace and enjoyed a perfume bath.

I had lied to them. I didn’t return to the palace, right away. I had a
mbve’
, my private place, where I could go to find peace when all else failed. See, Pa was farsighted enough to see that I would need this
mbve’
!

Sitting on the familiar rocky floor of the
mbve’
which I shared with roaches and bugs, I pushed apart the dried leaves to pull open one of the books. As I looked at the pictures and studied my words, the anger inside of me died a natural death.

Then something odd happened. A shirtless Kome walked in.

“Hey you!” he called out informally.

Alarmed, I jumped up. His body was more than toned, and he had a
ngar
in his hand, and a dead antelope loosely draped over his neck. He dropped the animal on the ground and it collapsed with a thundering sound. Moaning and massaging his shoulders, he put the rifle down. I was paralyzed...in shock, and the body didn’t help either.

“What are you doing here?” I stammered, at a total loss for words.

“I knew you would know where to find me,” he replied casually. How could he be so cool when I was burning up?

“
Souba!
, what do you mean ‘know where to find you’?”

He laughed deeply, his adam’s apple bobbing up and down as he laughed. I watched him rip a flask made of hide from his waist and wash his face.

“This is my
mbve’
,” he replied, “and I see you are very fond of it.”

Every fire inside of me came sweltering out, and I pounced on him like a hungry lion. “You must be mistaken! My father gave me this
mbve’
on my birthday, and before that it belonged to...!” I couldn’t even say the name. Maybe this fellow wasn’t that trustworthy, so I dare not spill the beans so easily.

“No...no...big-eyed one, this is my
mbve’
,” he said smiling.

“Big-eyed one? What kind of insult is that?” I attacked, losing my cool completely. He was so cocky, and what gave him the right to talk about my eyes like that?

“I am not insulting you,” Kome said, in his clear baritone. ”I am only describing you, and yes this is my
mbve’
!”

I had to calm down and show this imposter that this was the one item in my inheritance that no one could take away from me, not even a very attractive, dark stranger. Angrily, I went under the leaves and brought out the books.

“So if this is yours, then why are my books here?”

Laughing again, he looked at me, “Those are my books. You don’t even know how to read.”

He was right. I couldn’t read. My face dropped, my disappointment evident. I think he felt sorry for me. Closing the space between us, he held my hand and looked deep into my eyes. I did not fight back. It felt too natural to even attempt to contest.

“I know you don’t know me that well, but if there is one thing I’ll do, I will teach you how to read. I promise,” he said softly.

My heart was corroding, but his touch was so gentle, and reviving. “You could get in trouble, if someone found out,” I said.

“Well, then let them find out. What’s the worst they could do to me? Kill me?”

My heart jumped. I didn’t want him to die. I couldn’t understand how he could speak about death as if it was just a meal of
tu’kuni!

Slowly, a smile formed on my lips. He came closer to me and the air around us was thick and salty, but then he walked away.

“Would you care for some palm wine?” He broke open the seal of a green palm wine bottle with his teeth, and poured a horn full for me, and another for himself. His horns were not like ordinary cow horns that everyone used to drink palm wine. His were sculpted with strange objects, and I squinted hopelessly, trying to understand what it was.

“Arabic,” he said quietly.

“Huh?” I looked up to where Kome was standing.

“Arabic. I saw you looking at it, confused.”

I laughed, shyly. I had been confused. I watched him as he scratched two stones together and a spark ignited the logs.

“My people moved here from the north a long time ago. We learnt to make fire in the desert.”

He seemed truly exotic. I had no idea where the desert even was. If everyone in the desert looked like Kome, I knew I wanted to relocate there.

“Your people? You are not from Nso?” I asked, sipping from the contents of the horn in my hands.

“I am, but I’m half
Fulani
, from the
Bororo
tribe,” he clarified, and I immediately remembered my
Bororo
friends whose mother had given me milk. I smiled, fondly.

“Oh I see,” I nodded carefully, “and this
mbve’
. Eh, how long have you, erm, owned it?”

He laughed. “I don’t own it. It is yours.”

“But you said...”

“Your father was a good man.”

My eyes poked open at the word father, like a dog listening to far away sounds. “You knew my father?” I asked, putting down the horn.

My
sha
η
g
began to glow, and I held it firmly, trying to listen to this tale that might solve the puzzle of why I was so drawn to this gentleman.

Looking into the fire, in a way similar to how Pa had looked when he told me about
Ngonnso
, Kome said, “A long time ago, your father helped my Papa when he was sick. Medicines were expensive and we had no money. He eventually died, willing this
mbve’
to your father.”

I listened attentively as he spoke his tale. His handsome body glistened in the light.

“My father only ever asked me one favor—that I be of service to your father. When your father died, I didn’t even know that he was the man my Pa had talked about. I promised to do something for him. When I saw you in this
mbve’
over the years, I knew you were that thing.”

I only stared, as speechless as a person who has seen a ghost.

True to my word, I returned to the palace before sunset. Loh babbled endlessly about how happy she was, about her sister’s new baby, and so on, and even though I wanted to be happy for her and her adventures, I was thinking about Kome—his beautiful voice, his noble heart, and the possibility that I could achieve my dream through him. I talked to Pa and to the gods of the sun, thanking them immensely. This was too good to be true.

The next day, the royal carriage escorted me to oversee the labor being done at the crown ranch. It was a humungous farm filled with lots of ridges, farmhouses, barns, and animals. Spotless white sheep grazed gently near their dark counterparts, the
bvey
.

Women with children on their backs tilled the soil while some children carried produce on their heads. Everyone looked busy. A few busty girls supervised by a thin herdsman milked cattle uphill and I spotted Kome’s silhouette dashing into the barn.

Looking at Shamwun from the comfort of my carriage, I pleaded, “As the next queen of the village, I must show an exemplary attitude, and help those ladies carry a pail of milk into the barn.”

I think I impressed her because she flashed me a thin crooked smile. She was the only black woman I knew with such oddly thin lips. When I tried to take the pail, the cow almost whipped me with its tail. I hopped to safety, offering a polite smile to one of the girls whose toe I thought I had smashed.

As I carried the buckets down the path, a few women greeted me, some from my old neighborhood.

“Good morning, Auntie!” I called out.

In my village, we called all adult females auntie and adult males uncle. It was just a respectful title for grownups. I was totally surprised many years later when a seven-year-old child in London greeted me by the name Yefon. I stared at him for five minutes wondering if he was insane.

“Good morning o,” the women greeted back, cheerfully, continuing their chatter as I walked to the stable.

My pail of milk landed on the cool sandy floor simultaneously as a pair of strong hands grabbed me. I knew those hands anywhere. They were firm and muscled. Our eyes met, and we looked at each other for a long time, only smiling. I wondered if he heard the loud heartbeat thumping from my chest.

“Kome!” An old woman called from outside. “Come here and help me with this wood.”

“I am coming o,” he called back. Giving me one last look, he dashed out, leaving me with a dumb smile on my face. I took one long deep breath and followed him outside.

As I walked out, I saw him splitting wood with some other boys. I couldn’t help but stare at him. He was so handsome. Then, Kadoh jumped out at me out from nowhere to crash my private thoughts.