Ancestor Stones (19 page)

Marie was put on slop duty for a week. I felt badly for her, and so every morning I collected the night-time slops from the dormitory
myself and poured them down the drain, even though to do so sometimes made me retch.

Marie won her revenge the very next week. The last class of Friday was needlework. We had made samplers. God Bless this Home. Surrounded by cross-stitched borders of differently coloured threads. Sister Anthony canvassed suggestions from the class about what we should do next. Marie raised her hand.

‘Let's make a present for Ma Cook's baby,' she said.

Sister Anthony asked what she meant and Marie pointed at the window. There was Ma Cook, waddling just like a woman who is about to give birth. Or like a python that has swallowed a goat. Kitchen contraband, all of it. A whole snapper strapped round her waist.

Ma Cook was given a warning and the next day she was back serving. When Marie held out her plate Ma Cook gave her an extra-large helping. I was surprised at that. Marie laughed with satisfaction. Only when we sat down and began to eat did we discover the meat had a rotten taste.

Marie told me about the soothsayer who had set up near the marketplace, who could read the future. Even the white woman had been seen visiting his place. I felt the fear already beginning to seep cold through my blood. Of course Marie wanted to go. ‘Just because,' she said and shrugged her shoulders, head to one side. Just because. Just because it was something to do. Just because we were bored. Just because the sisters would be sure to disapprove. Witch doctors. Pagan antics. Satan's pastimes. So said Sister Eadie.

And so we went. I was afraid, it's true. But equally I could never have refused her.

‘Try not to look so scared,' said Marie as we made our way through the marketplace. But somehow, alone, the place was different, more disorientating. The traders called attention to their wares in scornful voices. Colourful cries of red and yellow and green flew in the air above my head. The bright sun made it hard to focus. I swerved to avoid a basket of oranges and almost fell into a glistening pile of garden eggs that had transformed into a great hole that
would have sucked me inside. The market was busy, full of people but only a small number of them seemed to be selling or buying. The others were busy doing nothing.

I lowered my eyes and kept them on the ground, following Marie's heels kicking up the dust in front of me.

The room was dark and thick with smells I did not recognise, not the common smells of the marketplace but desiccated, stale smells. The figure of the fortune-teller was hidden by the darkness like smoke and gradually he emerged out of it. Oh, so much is gone. I'm trying to remember. Perhaps that isn't how it was. No, perhaps it was light and the room smelled of nothing but the cardamom coffee that brewed over a metal brazier in the corner. I do remember one thing though. His mouth. A tiny child's tooth grew out of his upper gum and he had a huge lower lip that the words spilled over, to roll around the edges of the room.

And I remember that from the moment I entered that place I felt lost.

‘What do you have for me?' asked the
moriman
, who wore a Western-style suit.

For once Marie was silent. We had no money. We had not thought of that.

The
moriman
busied himself, rearranging objects around him. He did not ask us to leave and we, in turn, made no move to do so. ‘You belong with the white women. The ones whose husband wears black and comes to visit them once a week like a stranger.'

I had to think for a minute what he meant by that. Presently I replied: ‘That's not their husband. That's Father Bernard.'

He was the priest who came to hear our confession. From the dormitory we could see him coming down the lane from the direction of the boys' school. He would grind his cigarette out in the mud before he reached the gates and enter the convent chewing on a sprig of sorrel freshly plucked from the gardens.

‘Ah, so this is why they have no children of their own. What do they want with you, then?'

‘We are being educated. It is a school.' said Marie, pompously.

‘A school?' the man considered this for a moment, letting the
word slide around his mouth for a moment or two, before it slipped over his lip.

‘And they are married. The nuns. Actually. They're married to God,' added Marie.

‘Ah yes. They have a spirit husband,' nodded the
moriman
. ‘A very powerful spirit. One day I would like to visit this school and see these witches for myself.'

‘They're not witches. They're nuns. I told you.'

The
moriman
shrugged. ‘Then tell me, where did they come from and how did they get here? And what of all those things they possess? Beyond the knowledge of mortal man. Such things were not made on this earth.'

The nuns didn't have a great many possessions, still they had more than any of us. In the library were picture books and old magazines. Among the pictures of giant cities, of men in hats and women holding dogs like babies there were some I remember more than the others. Pictures of men in uniform, of aeroplanes filling the night sky like bats. A ruined city. Some years later I saw a photograph of a great cloud the shape of a cotton tree. An image of a scorched pocket watch with the time: a quarter-past eight. And another one, a strange photograph of the shadow of a man on the steps of a building, except most of the building was gone. And so was the man. Only his shadow remained. It was the first time I realised there had been a war.

‘And so they are bringing you up to worship that spirit too. That's good. It is a powerful one. But, tell me, do they teach you their witchcraft? Or keep you just to work for them?'

Upon the floor he spread a few bits of metal, some nails and little pieces of scrap. From his pocket he took another piece of metal and this he rubbed between the palms of his two hands. Eyes closed, face tilted upwards, he muttered some words in another language. Not Temne or Mende or Creole. Arabic, maybe. He blew across the surface of the ground in front of him and then on to the lump of metal in his hand. Then he extended his hand, palm down, over the objects as they lay on the ground.

Before our eyes those dead pieces of scrap came alive. One by
one they leaped from the floor. Flew through the air into his hand, his fingers closed around them.

It was a cheap trick. But I'm telling you now — other things happened in that dark room. Things that truly came to pass. That I can never explain. The
moriman
told us to close our eyes and to imagine the person we most wanted to see. Behind my eyelids I saw my mother and I walking together when I was very small. I smelled the scent of her, felt her squeeze my hand. ‘Open your eyes and tell me what you see,' said the man. Right there behind him, I saw her. Standing in the shadows of the room. Her eyes rested on me for a moment. Then she took a backwards step and slipped through the wall.

There were no trances, no mirrors or bowls of water through which a diviner communed with the spirits as we had been led to expect. There was a piece of paper with some markings, dots. Questions. My mother's name. I looked up then, expecting to see her once more. At times he counted up the dots. One or two he circled.

A star close to me. A spirit calling my name. Sometimes I thought too much. As if in passing he told me I would never marry.

Marie was full of questions where I had ventured none. But the
moriman
made as though he was deaf. He drew and scratched on his piece of paper. Eventually he looked up.

‘Somebody is blocking you.' The words made a loud noise in the sudden silence of the room.

I looked at Marie. I could feel anxiety creeping up under the skin of my back.

‘You know who it is.' That's all he would say. I waited uncertainly. I wasn't sure what was supposed to happen next. ‘Come and see me some other time.' And he got up and left the room.

And that was it. Marie stood up. A moment later I scrambled to my feet and followed her into the light.

I know what you're thinking. Isn't that what these diviners always do? It was part of the entrapment. To entice you back. Persuade you to part with your money or some goods you were
willing to exchange for the next part of the prophecy. And maybe it was.

An hour after we returned Marie spoke out loud the very thing I had been thinking. ‘Ma Cook,' she said.

We were cleaning the dormitory. Marie swept. I followed behind scooping up the dirt with two pieces of wood and throwing it into an empty margarine tub. The next time we saw Ma Cook coming towards us down the corridor Marie deliberately bumped her with her shoulder. Ma Cook opened her mouth to curse her, but Marie was there first. ‘I
dae nah you head,'
she said.

I dae nah you head?
Well, it means, sort of: ‘I'm watching you.' You could interpret it like that. And that is part of it. Really, it is a warning. A threat and a warning. You had better watch out, should anything happen to me. Or, if you like — wish me ill and ill will befall you.

I would wake up feeling neither happy nor unhappy, but with the sense that something was going to happen. The next moment I'd remember what it was. And the feeling would settle over me like a chill, as though a cloud had passed across the sun.

But after a month the feelings gradually quietened. The dreams and the visit to the market and the
moriman
all merged into one. Sometimes I really believed that I had dreamed the whole thing. And I would feel relieved. Ah, it was only a dream! Not real but an illusion. Not real but real at one and the same time. And gradually I began to live with the knowledge the same way I lived with my dreams.

The wind changed. At the end of the dry season the wind came from the north, from the desert, and blew for many weeks covering everything in fine red dust. But there were times, when for no reason whatsoever, suddenly it switched and blew straight in off the sea, breathing salt into our hair and coating our parched skin with a viscous film.

I was alone folding clothes on the bunk I shared with Marie. Folding her clothes and mine and putting them in the trunk at the
bottom of the bed. Marie was on kitchen detail for the second time in a week.

There are times you know when something terrible has happened, even before anybody tells you. There is a certain stillness. Invisible currents. Strange things happen, small things. Vultures flying overhead in the direction of the sea.

A woman came running, flat-footed, past the walls of the school, clutching at the ends of her
lappa
to stop it unravelling. Her breasts swinging wildly under her blouse. I can see her still, freeze-frame her at the moment she ran past the gates of the school. These are the things that register in your subconscious. But if you ask me, when did I first realise? I would tell you it was before that. By the time I saw that woman running down the street with her head thrown back and her mouth wide open as though she were screaming, I already knew.

One-Foot Jombee hopped up to the iron gates and looked out. When he came back he was bouncing around, waving his arms. Fleetingly I wanted to laugh, to stop the clutching in my stomach. I feel bad now when I think about that. Moments later he was back at the gate again, this time accompanied by one of the kitchen women. He opened the gate and closed it behind her.

You've seen the way birds gather, landing in ones and twos and threes, until there is a whole flock where a short while ago there had been an empty patch of land. People were making their way down to the wharf like seagulls gather to greet the fishing boats as they come in. The noise from the direction of the wharf gradually thickened and swelled until it reached our ears as we sat in class. Until the nuns rose and closed the shutters telling us the sun was too bright that day.

By mid-morning Marie wasn't yet back from the market.

Lunch was late. I left the girls waiting outside the dining room and slipped away into the road. Not through the main gate, but at the back of the latrines as though I were going to the garden. By now the number of people in the lane was not so great. I joined them on their way, not quite running, not quite walking, as afraid of what was ahead of them as of being left behind.

The sea was laden with bodies. A shoal of strange fish. Those not dragged down by the currents rolled face down in the water. Except one fat woman who floated face to the sky, as serenely as a maiden bathing in a lake. Men in canoes were dragging them out one by one, until somebody had the bright idea of casting a fishing net and landing them all in to shore at once.

Marie!

I pushed through the knots of people gathered on the beach and on the quay. I felt like I was rushing through a dream too fast, waiting to fall into wakefulness. Anybody who had anybody still out there was standing staring out to sea, the water licking at their ankles. The spectators and ghoul-mongers stood up on the new wharf.

I ran down to the shore where the bodies were laid out on the sand. I searched for Marie among the faces of the dead. How ashamed I am now to remember my relief as I gazed at each body and did not recognise Marie. I passed weeping fathers, husbands, sisters, mothers, without a second thought. And after I had trawled the dead I searched through the living. I ran this way and that in the dimming light, peering into the smudged features of strangers' faces. I found her in neither place.

In time I walked back to the convent and there she was. Lying in our bed. Sister Anthony was bent over her, rubbing her chest with brandy.

Over the days that followed the corpses bobbed up like corks. People had been trapped under the hull of the boat when it capsized. Young men with cloths wrapped around their faces loaded the bodies into barrows and wheeled them up the lane, past the convent. The dead were mostly market women. The water had bleached their skin. The motion of the waves had gently stripped them of their clothing. Hungry fish had nibbled away their fingers and toes. A terrible, sickly perfume arose from the corpses; it invaded the island for many weeks to come.