Ancestor Stones (17 page)

One morning unseen currents stirred the air beneath a troubled
sky. A pale green glow lit the village. I sat at the front of my father's house. When I was growing up I could not imagine a world beyond this one. Change came slowly to this place. My father grew ginger now, orders from the colonials. My mother counted the money, complained about the fixed prices. She brought in extra labour to meet the demand. Above the coffee trees the hills receded in shades of grey, fading slowly into the sky. A kite spiralled down. I followed its descent through the air as gently as a leaf falling from a tree. I didn't hear my father's footfall.

‘You'll be going home. As soon as your husband comes.' My father spoke in statements.

I replied: ‘Perhaps, but this is my home, too.'

‘
Te ting
. True. But a woman's duty is to be with her husband in his home and any day now he'll be here to take you back.' I was silent. My father waited a while before continuing. ‘Of course you should make him win you again. But when he has done that you will accept him and you will go.' This is the way things were in those days. My father loved me, but for him duty came first. I could not think of running away from my marriage. I could never come home. He added gently: ‘You will be missed here.'

I looked up at him, remembering how I used to ride on his shoulders, how I rode on his shoulders the day we came to this place to found the village. He spoiled me so much people called me his pet deer.

‘Teh, teh,'
he clapped his hands for Kadie, ‘
teh teh
.' She weaved towards him, her hand reached for the piece of sesame cake he held out. He caught her and swung her into the air, grunting with the effort it cost him.

‘Yes, father.'

Sometimes I wondered how my father knew things. Only days later Osman arrived, shaking the dust out of his clothes, struggling with a cardboard suitcase of gifts: cakes of blue soap, scented hair oil, two new head-ties and many yards of the finest-grade fabric. ‘Yes, yes. Come and look! All imported,' he called for everyone to hear. Some of my father's younger children and even his wives
gathered around, as though Osman was a travelling salesman and not a husband come to woo his wife back. Osman flung open the suitcase and showed off each item.

I didn't mind seeing him. He was handsome, as I remembered, even sweating under the weight of the suitcase. Despite myself I smiled as I walked down the steps of the house to greet him.

Osman Iscandari. I underestimated him. Seeing him arrive at my father's house to bring me back, the sweat rolling down from his scalp, his face shining like the moon, boasting — with that stupid grin carved into his face. When I walked up the street towards that house, that empty house lying in the shadow of the earth, I had no idea of what awaited me inside.

Fourteen, fifteen maybe. Pretty enough, I'll say that. The girl scuttled forward, bending low. She began to gather up my luggage. And my, she was strong as a bush cow. The cardboard suitcase she balanced on her head while she squatted to reach for the other bundles.

I did not speak. A cousin of Balia or Ngadie? Someone's ward? A servant, even? My senior wives had not come out to meet me. A drumming in my heart, in my ears. The light receded around the edges of my vision, as though I was staring down a bat-filled tunnel. I willed myself not to look at Osman. One step at a time, one foot in front of the other. My body was shaking. The house was empty. The girl emerged from my room, she smiled and held her hands out to Kadie. I kept a firm grip of my daughter's hand. The girl's lips trembled. At that moment I caught sight of Osman mocking me, grinning at this entertainment. Not the grin of a dullard. No, rather the smirk of a hyena.

‘Ah, but let me introduce you, Asana.' The voice he used was offhand. ‘This is Mabinty.' Before me the girl bowed her head and dropped into a curtsey.

And that was how I met my husband's newest wife.

Osman delighted in his triumph. He did not call me to his room. When I saw that girl — humming, wandering about, toying with
some new bauble, smiling stupidly even at the chickens — I recognised myself, the way I too had been.

I contemplated my position — the third wife of a man who was of a lesser family than my own, yet who treated me with contempt. Replaced by a peasant girl brought back from one of his trips — in all likelihood given to him for the price of a sack of rice.

Osman did not care that he flaunted marriage customs. One, two, three nights he was with her. And then a fourth night. I began to wonder if I would ever lie with my husband again. I wanted more children, yes. But there was something else. I was ashamed to think of it. Despite myself I was gripped by a craving I could not quell. One morning I saw Osman sitting at the front of the house waiting for Mabinty to bring his shirt. Dressed only in his trousers, slippers half on his feet, naked to the waist. I found my eyes drawn to the spirals of hair scattered across his chest, the deep ridges of his stomach in which drops of sweat glistened, the dark trail that led down from his belly button and disappeared into the waistband of his trousers. He caught me watching him and quickly I looked away.

Liquid like melted moonlight: pale, opaque, translucent. Ngadie handed me the enamel mug, hitched up her skirts and sat down on a log. The palm wine had fermented in the heat of the day. It was strong and vinegary, faintly fizzy. I took a sip, and then another, felt the trickle of warmth reach my belly. All was quiet. We were far from the house in a small clearing surrounded by palm trees: raphia palms, oil palms, coconut palms. I had already tasted the wine from all three. When I was a child I had once tried the first sap, the juice collected early in the morning. It was sweet, clear and innocent to drink. Nothing like this. I sipped again.

Ngadie had once possessed a great beauty. The traces were there in the perfect symmetry of her lips; in the gap between her front teeth considered so desirable in a woman; in the dimple on her chin that was now no more than a smudge in the soft flesh. There was delicacy, too, in the turn of her wrist as she poured the palm wine. And regret in the trembling of her fingers.

I realised, watching her, that I did not know what her face looked like when she smiled. I had never heard her laugh. I took a kola nut, split it, and passed half to her. She hesitated, her eyes held mine for a moment. Then she accepted it and thanked me.

What had become of Osman's father? I asked. Ngadie paused, the edge of the cup rested on her lower lip.

‘A great man,' she replied. ‘Loved by his people.' Osman had not known his father. He had been a leader who defied the
pothos
when they came crowning chiefs. Osman's father was one who resisted. ‘He warned his brothers not to trust the
pothos
. He told them no white man ever gave anything without wanting more in return. They didn't listen.' The leaders seized the gifts they were offered, signing away their lands and their power with a thumbprint. In return they were given a wooden staff with a brass handle and an upholstered chair bearing the arms of the
potho
queen. As for Osman's father, the
pothos
deposed him and gave his position to a man from a rival clan. He was forced to leave his people and went to live on the other side of the land. He died. Osman grew up in his mother's family, working on the land while the sons of the new chief grew fat. Osman resented his family's poverty terribly.

Ngadie told me there were many people who believed Osman's father had been right and those people also imagined Osman had inherited his father's spirit. They waited for him to come and lead them. Osman's mother shared this belief, but the truth was, the people waited in vain. Osman did not have the stomach to be a leader. He accepted their accolades but shunned the challenge.

Balia was the daughter of one of his father's closest advisors who had joined him in exile, betrothed to Osman when they were still children. As for Ngadie, Osman had seen her beauty and wanted her for himself. Ngadie rejected his advances but Osman bided his time. The day after her father's store of seed yams burned in a fire, Osman arrived with a proposal of marriage. Her father used the bride price to rebuild his barns.

I wondered silently how Ngadie and Balia could tolerate this empty life.

Ngadie swilled the liquid in her cup and spoke as if in answer to
my question: ‘For me and Balia, it's over. If Osman leaves us alone — then all the better.'

In his return to form Osman made a daunting adversary. He relished my humiliation. He shamed me in public: for the way I dressed, the fashion in which I styled my hair, the expression on my face. In front of his uncles he ordered me to remove a dish of
fourah
cakes I had prepared, insisting they were not fit to serve to guests. The room fell silent. Osman's mother was quick to support her son.

‘Useless girl. No good in the kitchen!' As for Ngadie and Balia, they averted their eyes when I passed. I pretended to myself it didn't matter. Osman made people think I was a bad wife, so what?

Kadie was asleep on the bed, curled and sucking her thumb. I sat on the floor and stared into the mirror. This was what I had become — a woman who existed only as what she saw reflected in the eyes of others. I was sorry for myself and sorry for the daughter I had brought to this place.

As the days passed I tried to avoid giving Osman a reason to belittle me. I spoke only when I was spoken to, I cooked several different dishes each night it was my turn to cook — chicken rolled in spices and roasted over an open fire, yams and hot-pepper soup, fried fish and cassava bread. The time came when if he deigned to taste even one of them I sighed with relief. All day I observed his face searching for signs that might alert me to his mood.

Do you see how I was becoming like all those other women — Osman's mother, his sisters, Balia, Ngadie? All I wanted to do was to avoid the pain of humiliation. Oh, how quickly that simple wish transformed into a desperation to please, so quickly I did not even see it happening in myself. My senses were numbed, I behaved like a sleepwalker. The days passed steadily, weeks turned into months. By that time I was treating Osman as a god.

Then came the morning when Osman told me I should come to his room that night. All that day, as I waited for the evening to come, I could not concentrate on the simplest task. Twice I burned the rice until Ngadie removed the pot from my hands and gently
ushered me away from the cooking place. Kind Ngadie. The dish she cooked was one of Osman's favourites. That evening I claimed it as my own and watched as Osman ate two helpings, while I managed no more than a few mouthfuls. The next night and the next she did me the same kindness.

I lay in the bed with my arms down by my sides. The last time it had been so different. Before I was shy, yes — a new bride — and yet every movement was right. This time I reached across and touched him. ‘I'm here,' I said.

How could I have known these things happened to men? I had been brought up to believe men were always in a state of desire. Our mothers told us to cover ourselves when we came back from bathing. In case a man should see us. There was even a plant that grew, that closed up when you touched it with your fingertips, sometimes all you had to do was breathe upon it and the tiny ferns came together and sealed like a pair of fans.
Bom mompneh runi ngang ang bek
, it was called. Cover yourself, there's a man coming. A woman's modesty and a man's desire were what made us different from each other. Yet I knew that I felt desire, even lying there next to the man I no longer loved.

That first night Osman rejected me I was wretched. I cannot tell you. Later, alone, I wept bitterly. Osman was ashamed though he would not show it. The second night I slipped out of my gown and lay naked beside him, I tried to reassure him, stroking him gently. But Osman covered his own shortcomings by blaming me, I was too forward he said. No modesty. On the third and final night, when it happened again he pointed his finger at me and called me a witch.

The next night Osman spent with Mabinty. I sat on my bed. I did not sleep. I stared into the blackness, I tried to see my future but I could see nothing. In the morning my eyes were sore from lack of sleep, I breathed deeply and walked out to the cooking place to prepare breakfast for Kadie. At the door I stopped and stared. There was Mabinty, sitting on a stool, weeping and loudly blowing her nose on her head-tie.

* * *

I lost face and regained my life, but for many years I could not see it. Nor could I see who had helped me do it.

Osman thought it was his idea to end the marriage contract and so there was no question of reclaiming the bride gift. At first I was humiliated, thrown back to my family by my husband like a no-good fish tossed back into the water.

That was the way things were for us in those days. You, I hear you talking to your friends. You have so much, but you don't even know you are alive. We had to find the answers for ourselves, to fashion them out of the thin air and seize them from the sky.

I felt I had no choice but to remain Osman's third wife, to be treated by him in any way he pleased. I was a stupid girl who jumped into her marriage with her eyes closed. Afterwards I could see nowhere to run. It took somebody else to open a door and push me out. And that person was Ngadie, once-beautiful Ngadie. In her own fate she could see the future that was waiting for me.

Later I learned to be grateful to her and to love her for what she had done. But in the beginning I was short-sighted, I could not see beyond my own shame to the great vista that stretched out in front of me.

After many years news came that Ngadie had died. For the first time I travelled back to the place where I had been a wife. Shadows still covered the house, nothing had changed. Balia greeted me with some warmth — to my surprise Mabinty, too. Mabinty now with rings of flesh around her waist and her neck. I held no ill-feeling towards her. As for Osman, who rose from his chair on the verandah to meet me, brushing pumpkin seed shells from the front of his shirt and spitting the bits out the corner of his mouth, I felt nothing. I greeted him cordially and the smile he gave me in return was surely all that remained of his blurred beauty.