Ancestor Stones Read online

  Balia and Ngadie’s daily routine did not alter to include me. I had no chores. Well, I didn’t mind. Wasn’t I the lucky one? I’d heard the tales of junior wives who found themselves pounding rice late into the night, minding other wives’ small children, working long hours in the vegetable plot. With so little to do I spent my time on petty vanities. When I grew bored of those I began to look around me, searching for ways to distract myself.

  A wasp with black and yellow-striped forelegs building a nest held me captive for a long time as I watched her rolling tiny balls of mud from the edge of a puddle and flying away with them to build a nest in the branches of a tree. Another day I noticed the funnelshaped spiders’ webs that blossomed in the grass every morning, sparkling with dew and lit by the sun. On another afternoon it was the fluttering black crest and blue feathers of a plantain eater — hopping up and down next to his nest, calling for his mate to come back. ‘Kooroo kooroo ko ko ko ko.’

  Gradually I began to notice other things.

  Early in the morning I gazed out of my window. There was Ngadie walking towards the house from the direction of the grain store. The next morning I saw her again, and the next. I wondered what she could be doing there so early. The way she walked, with a great deliberateness, placing one foot in front of the other, like a person walking on the ridge between fields of crops. She didn’t notice me watching her.

  The next morning I woke before the light. I hurried down and hid behind the grain store. After a short time Ngadie passed by, eyes darting from side to side to see who was watching. I slipped in behind her, followed her along the path into the forest. She stepped off the path, I stepped quickly back into the trees opposite. Once, twice she glanced over her shoulder. I waited before I switched my hiding place and had her again within my sights. I waited and watched.

  Ngadie stepped up to a tall palm tree, reached up and scored the trunk three times with the blade of the knife. Sap poured from the wound. Ngadie dipped her fingers into it and raised them to her lips. She tied a gourd to the trunk beneath the flow. From higher up she took down a second gourd and from the way she braced her body, I could tell how heavy it was. This she lifted to her lips. She raised her head and for an instant seemed to stare right at me. I held my breath. The seconds passed. She lifted the gourd a second time and I relaxed. When she lowered it I saw her upper lip was crested with foam.

  In the days and weeks that followed I noticed how often Ngadie slipped away. And how when she came back she lifted her feet a fraction too high and put them down carefully.

  I was pregnant. I was eating a mango. The mango dripped with yellow juice and sticky goodness. I was enjoying it so much I worked my way right down to the seed and sucked the last juice from the hairy flesh that clung there. The liquid trickled down my chin. Some of the strands became caught between my teeth and I stopped to pick them out. It was then I noticed Osman watching me. Recently I had often looked up to find his eyes upon me in this way. I was sure it was because he loved me and was proud of me. I smiled at him. To show how happy I was. Osman continued to look at me. He did not return my smile. He stood up and he walked away.

  For some time Osman had not called me to his room. Because I was expecting a child, I thought. I didn’t worry. One night for no particular reason I woke from a deep sleep. I lay on my back — it was difficult to sleep any other way — and I listened to the music of the raindrops dripping from the eaves of the house, striking the leaves of trees, splashing on to the ground. My eyes were closed. The noise of the rain was immense. I laid a hand on my stomach and rubbed my belly button, imagining the baby curled up inside. I was beginning to doze again when I felt the bedclothes being dragged from my body.

  ‘Yai!’ I screamed. I was being attacked by a night devil.

  It wasn’t a djinna. It was Osman.

  ‘Get up!’ he told me. I hastened to do as he said.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked. ‘What’s happening?’ I tried to imagine what emergency had brought him here in the middle of the night. Osman came up close to me. Very close. He did not touch me. He sat down on the edge of the bed and was silent. I waited. My heart beat louder than the rain on the roof. It must be something very serious indeed. Then he told me to remove my clothes. I stared at him through the darkness. I wondered if I had heard correctly.

  I was told a woman should never say no to her husband. ‘Osman, it’s late,’ I began, ‘and I’m sleeping.’

  My husband stood up suddenly. As dark as it was I could see his features flex. He inhaled deeply. I saw the gleam of his teeth as he smiled. I relaxed a little. When he spoke his tone matched mine. ‘Please don’t disobey me. You promised you would be a good wife to me. Isn’t that what you promised?’ I was standing in front of him. He reached up and caressed my cheek.

  I nodded, yes, I wanted to be a good wife. I was a good wife. But I was tired. Also, Osman was behaving so strangely.

  He slid both hands down my arms until he had his hands in mine, whispering: ‘Come, come, little one.’ Still I protested. Osman’s tone changed abruptly. ‘I have only so much patience for this foolishness, Asana.’

  There my protests ended. Osman’s manner made me hesitate. Perhaps this was something between husbands and their wives that I did not understand.

  In one way nothing happened that night, by which I mean Osman did not touch me. He made me stand in front of him until the rain stopped. He stared at my body, at my breasts, my belly, down below. The clouds passed from in front of the moon to reveal his expression. I was reminded of a time when I was a child and we came across the stiffened corpse of a dead dog. The eyes were gone. The lips were shrivelled, baring gums and teeth. We stared at it, prodding it with sticks — as fascinated as we were revolted.

  My body was changing, it was true. My breasts were hard and taut. My nipples protruded. So, in time, did my belly button — popped out like a bubble. Veins coursed like underground rivers beneath my skin. Often I found myself flushed and covered in a sheen of sweat. I did not mind. I loved my body and its little store of surprises. Every morning I oiled my stomach and polished it until it shone, dark and round as a seed pod.

  The first few times, Osman stared at me, nothing more. Sometimes he made me turn away. A rustling sound, Osman’s breath came thick and fast. As my pregnancy advanced he made me stand for longer. My feet swelled, I nearly unbalanced. I was shivering and naked. I begged him to let me sleep. There came a time when the tiredness overtook the fear and I sank to the floor.

  ‘Get up!’ Osman’s voice was low. It occurred to me he did not want anyone to hear us.

  ‘No, Osman. It’s enough now.’

  ‘What? Don’t you answer me back. Who do you think you are? You are my wife.’

  ‘Yes. Your wife who is pregnant — with your child. If you want your child to be born healthy then leave me alone and let me sleep.’

  My tone of voice I knew was too strong. My mother had warned me of this. I had begun to feel contempt for Osman. I couldn’t help myself, I added: ‘Look at yourself Osman. What kind of man behaves this way?’

  Osman stood over me. He reached down and seized my arm, tried to haul me to my feet. I let myself go limp. My weight was almost beyond his strength. Above me I could feel his rage massing, but I didn’t care any more. Who was this man? Not the one I had married. Osman continued to tug at me as I sprawled on the floor.

  An image leaped unbidden into my mind. Of the two of us in the middle of the night, fighting like children. Maybe I was on the verge of hysteria. I think probably I was. I couldn’t help it. I laughed. A short, high-pitched shriek. The sound of the laugh sounded funny to my ears. I laughed again. I found I couldn’t stop. Osman let go of me. Good, I thought. I started up from the floor. Then he kicked me. The blow landed on my buttock and set my whole body quivering. I fell forward on to my knees. Now I was on all fours. Before I could get up, he kicked me again at the base of my spine.

  At first I was too angry and my anger made me stubborn. I clamped
my mouth shut and held on to my screams. Osman grasped my hair, swung my head around and slapped me. I tried to crawl away from him, naked on my hands and knees. There was nowhere to go. Instead I crawled around the room as he aimed blows at me. His panting grew hoarse as he wore himself out on me. In the end I allowed him to win.

  I let the tears flow. I begged him to stop.

  And I opened my eyes.

  And when they were finally open I learned a lot about my husband in a short time.

  Osman Iscandari. Only son of his mother, a woman with a cat’s cry for a voice who wore two strings of prayer beads wrapped in her headdress, a third looped around her wrist. Always sick. Always complaining her body was too warm or too cold. When she came to visit I saw the way she watched her son’s face all day, waiting for his expression to change so she could jump up and fetch him a bowl of roasted groundnuts or a sweet potato cake or offer to rub his head. When we gathered to eat in the evening she picked out all the best pieces of meat from the stew and gave them to Osman. At night she sat on the verandah with his head in her lap, braiding his hair.

  My husband had three sisters who were married and lived nearby, but in the time I had lived in that house rarely did I see them come to visit their brother. And when the youngest one of the sisters did call, I noticed the way she spoke little, only answering: ‘Yes, brother,’ and did not look Osman in the eye or stay to eat.

  And I saw how Balia flinched when Osman raised his arm just as she bent to place a footstool underneath his feet. And I saw the way Osman smirked when he looked at her and reached slowly across himself to scratch his armpit.

  Finally I noticed the way the little bitch who came to beg for scraps disappeared every time our husband was at home.

  * * *

  Ngadie brushed her mouth with the back of her hand and stepped back on to the path, casually — as though she had just been wandering around in the bush, in whatever ordinary way a person might wander about in the bush. She started when I called her name. I ran to catch her up. Not so easy, I held my belly with one arm and my breasts with the other.

  ‘Wait!’ I caught her arm and swung her around to face me. She glared at me.

  ‘Let go! What’s wrong with you?’ She sucked her teeth: a slow, sliding sound of scorn. I did not reply. Instead I reached out and touched her face. Ngadie reared back, but I had hold of her arm. I stretched out as if to wipe a fleck of froth from the corner of her mouth. There was nothing there, but only I knew that. She was close enough for me to smell the palm wine on her breath. Her eyes held mine, yet I could see she was scanning the edges of her vision, like a dog with a stolen chicken in its jaws.

  I paused. What to do next? I hadn’t thought this far. I had waylaid Ngadie without knowing what it was I wanted to ask. What had I done in marrying Osman? I searched for the words and while I did so I saw the thoughts cross Ngadie’s face like clouds drifting across the sky while she made up her mind what to do.

  In the event Ngadie spoke first: ‘So now you know. And you want to know what else there is? Isn’t it?’

  I nodded. I let go of her arm.

  Ngadie rubbed at the place in an exaggerated sort of way. Still, she made no move to go: ‘When you first arrived I looked at you. So pleased with yourself. I wondered how long it would take.’ I dipped my head. ‘Every time he brings one into our house he tells Balia how he is tired of us, we have no fire. Though only God and the three of us know how we came to be that way. Osman despises us. But he doesn’t understand anything, he doesn’t even understand the kind of man he is.’

  I learned that I was not the first. There had been others.

  Listening to Ngadie was like gazing at a landscape you have grown accustomed to. Only when you look at it properly you see something you had not noticed before: a termite mound like a silent sentry, a tree slowly dying, an abandoned colony of birds’ nests. Ngadie and Balia, so much older. Many years had passed since the youngest of their children had been weaned.

  ‘One of them he complained was disobedient. Told her family to come and collect her. Another one he claimed was not a virgin and that he had paid such and such amount for her bride price. Said the family let him believe it was the case. I don’t know. They were quick to settle with him. The shame.’ She waved a hand. Her voice was gentler now.

  I was silent. Almost as an afterthought Ngadie added that she was sure Osman had other women upline who cooked for him. Otherwise there was really no reason to stay away so long.

  ‘What am I to do?’ I asked her.

  Ngadie frowned and peered at me as if seeing me properly for the first time. She shrugged, her voice was brisk once more: ‘What you do is up to you.’ And she turned and walked away slowly down the path towards the big, empty house. Not once did she turn or look back at me.

  Oh, what a fool I had been! I had stuffed my ears with straw. I had closed my eyes, refusing to see what a bad husband I was choosing for myself. I thought about my mother. What might she say? That I had been deceived by nobody but myself. The anger between us ran cold and it sprang from a place far, far back. I could not bring myself to go to her and beg.

  Even in my despair I was not ready to own my mistake, I was caught in a swirling eddy, drowning, with nothing to clutch on to except my pride. I determined I would deal with Osman in my own way.

  I pondered these matters as I sat on the back step. In front of me Balia’s daughter caught a chicken and prepared to slit its throat with a knife. The bird was squawking, feathers fluttering. I remembered how in the village we used to wring their necks — something that had to be learned. You had to exercise a little patience, let the bird be lulled while you got a good grip. Outside the town, in a place known only as Slaughter, I had seen a Fula slay a great bull, slicing its throat with the blade as gently as if he was caressing his sweetheart.

  This house I was living in contained more than one kind of hell, and I had just thought of a way to deal with one of them.

  Several weeks passed. Osman came and went. When he was at home he would enter my room as he pleased and force me to play my part in his monstrous game. I offered no resistance. As the days passed Osman gradually relaxed, believing he had mastered me.

  One night he fell asleep on my bed. I crept in next to him and we stayed that way until dawn.

  A few days later, in the early hours of the morning, I lay awake and watched Osman. Behind the lids I could see the bulge of his eyeball, the iris trembling as he dreamed. At the corner of his mouth a bubble of spit swelled and subsided. His chest rose as he drew in shuddering breaths. In his sleep his lips curved upwards.

  ‘Osman,’ I whispered. ‘Osman.’ My husband jerked slightly, his mouth twitched. He turned his shoulder away. ‘Wake up, Osman. Wake up.’

  I let a few beats pass. Gently I shook his shoulder, taking care not to rouse him too quickly. I rocked him, whispering his name until his eyes stilled and the lids cracked open. He uttered a groan and softly sighed.

  Again: ‘Osman, Osman!’ His eyelids opened a fraction further.

  ‘Asana? Eh, Asana. What is it?’ he mumbled, his lips struggling with the effort of forming the words, wanting to stay in the dream. The next moment his eyelids began to flutter and close as he slipped back under.

  ‘Osman,’ I said. ‘Wake up and see. See what I have for you!’ I groped the floor until my fingers closed around the handle of the knife. I held it up, allowing the blade to glow in the silver light. I put my lips very close to his ear, brushing the lobe. I made my voice gentle, coaxing. Osman’s eyes opened. I put the blade up under his chin: the tip made a soft indentation in the flesh. ‘You see what can happen, Osman? So strong but what good do your muscles do you now?’ I felt his body slowly stiffen.

  I laid my cheek on the pillow, let the knife down slowly and slipped it out of sight. I lay quietly. Waiting.

  It happened just as I hoped. Moments later Osman sat bolt upright. He leaped from the bed. He was naked, flailing. A little deranged, really, when I set my mind
back to thinking about it. Next he bent over and peered at me closely. I let my eyes open, I gazed back at him, I reached up and stroked his cheek. ‘What’s the matter, husband?’ I asked, as though I was greatly concerned. All the time his puzzlement grew. ‘What is it, Osman? Is something the matter?’ I reached up, took his hand in mine and drew him back to the bed. ‘A dream, that’s all. Just a dream. Go back to sleep, now.’ Osman hesitated and then sat down heavily. I rolled over and pretended to sleep. After a while I felt him lie down, a long way from me, right on the other side of the bed.

  From that night and for the remainder of my pregnancy Osman never touched me again. I congratulated myself heartily on my cunning. I lay back on my bed and buffed my belly with Vaseline petroleum jelly.

  Osman Iscandari, I chuckled, ng ba kerot k’bana, kere ng baye erith.

  You have a big penis, but you have no balls.

  My daughter arrived, as had I, at the close of the rains. Unlike me she took her time coming into this world. I bore it. After the birth my mother praised me. Nobody would ever have known a woman was giving birth in this house. At night she took the baby to her bed to let me rest, carrying her to me when she needed to feed. Still, in the hours in between I found I missed my daughter already. I could not sleep, I could not wait to hold her again. I crept into the room and lifted her from where she slumbered in the crook of my mother’s body.

  Kadie was named for my karabom, who had gone the year before. Through two rains I stayed in my mother’s house while I suckled her. For hours at a time I might do nothing but gaze into my daughter’s deep-water eyes, at the tiny blister on her upper lip that came from sucking; feel the way she gripped my finger with her toes when I held her feet. I examined the fine, sharp creases on the soles of those same feet and the palms of her hands. What fate, I wondered, was there awaiting her that had already been decided?

  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.