Ancestor Stones Read online

  She sang a song for my father. It was a Madingo song about love. Not a love song. You couldn’t really call it that. I knew it off by heart:

  Quarrels end,

  But words once uttered never die.

  Lovers part,

  But love lives on.

  Marriages end,

  But hearts survive.

  You leave your mother’s breast,

  For your father’s side,

  And why should this be so?

  Because love forever changes.

  When from her father’s house,

  A girl goes to a man,

  We see the same again,

  Love’s constant changes.

  And when into the night she slips away,

  To her lover’s arms,

  The same rule applies, my friend:

  Love’s inconstancy.

  My father laughed again, a different laugh this time. My mother sent to me to go and find my brothers. The sound of her voice wrapped itself around me and followed me out into the darkness of the compound where the words broke free and floated up to the stars.

  Of course my mother was not a slave. What man would treat a slave that way? Do you ask a slave advice and talk to them about how to run your affairs? Do you listen to what they have to say and then go away and do what they tell you? My mother even had a girl of her own to help her. Does a slave have a servant? So stupid. Some people were jealous of her, that’s all. Because he brought her gifts. If he went away — on those occasions when he couldn’t take her with him — he never once forgot to bring her something back. The fan — that was a present. It was the shape of a kola leaf, like an upside down heart, finely woven in different colours. Another time he gave her a real gold nugget. And when he came back from Guinea he brought her an almond tree in a pot. The tree was in flower and she had it placed next to the open window of her bedroom, so she could enjoy the scent all through the night.

  He chose her name himself. Tenkamu. I don’t know what it was before. It isn’t important. My mother was sent here by her parents to stay with relatives who lived in the village. My father saw her and he liked her. Maybe it’s true he held the mortgage on the family lands. Some people say they sent her here deliberately, in the hope that she might catch his eye. That’s just loose talk.

  The truth is Pa Yamba was the one who noticed her first. When he went to speak to my father, he didn’t realise the younger man had already decided in his own head to marry her. Pa Yamba wanted her for himself. He had a temper, he dared to challenge my father. But my father was firm. He told the older man to look for a woman of his own; this one was spoken for. Ten ka mu. Look for your own. That was what her name meant. Look for your own woman.

  Pa Yamba thought people were laughing at him every time they called her by that name. Sometimes they were. He thought my father owed him more than that, because it was Pa Yamba who had led us to this place. In all the years that passed he still had no wife of his own. He followed her with those eyes, eyes as flat and still as the bottom of a pond in the dry season.

  My father’s house had two wings. My father’s room was in one wing and it had two doors: one reached from the inside of the house and another that opened straight out on to the verandah. Anybody who had business with my father waited beyond the outside door. I’d see Pa Yamba there among the people who arrived every day with claims of being distantly related, hoping for a donation. I’d watch him watching her.

  I knew the other wives bad-mouthed my mother behind her back. They did not care that I heard them. That’s the way our people are. If it suits them they’ll not let the presence of a child constrain their tongues, though they should know better. When I was growing up I heard the things they said: calling her the ‘Madingo’, talking about how my father had never paid a bride price for her, saying she was given away for nothing like the bruised fruit at the end of market day. They were stupid women. I knew it couldn’t be true. But still somewhere inside I felt the shame burning like a coal in my belly, making me sweat with anger.

  For the most part my mother behaved as though those women were not part of her existence. She did not share their cooking, or send me across to borrow ginger or salt. She turned her face away and got on with her own life. And soon I learned from her. I acted the way she did; I learned to look through them as though they were made of water instead of flesh and blood. And I plugged my ears with imaginary mud so I couldn’t hear the things they said.

  Still, their narrowed eyes and twisted mouths surfaced in my dreams and their spiteful words seeped through the mud.

  Finda the servant told me my mother was the only one of the wives my father had chosen for himself. ‘Except for the third wife and he soon tired of her. She only lived to dance. In the end she danced so fast all the thoughts flew out of her mouth.’

  All the rest of the wives were chosen by Ya Namina. After my father brought my mother into the house, Ya Namina went out and found more wives. She didn’t like a wife she couldn’t control. Always she and my mother were polite to each other, but when Ya Namina spoke, sometimes in her voice there was something metallic inside, like a vein of iron running below the surface of the earth.

  Ya Isatta, my father’s second wife, had no children and so she always took Ya Namina’s part — forever fearful she would be sent back to be a burden on her own family. Ya Jeneba and Ya Sallay, everybody knew these two sisters were really married to each other. Ya Sallay was sent to live with her older sister. They were so happy living in that house together, Ya Sallay married my father just so as to avoid being sent away to a husband of her own. They kept to themselves. The younger wives: Balia, Koloneh, Memso, Saffie — well, they were just Ya Namina’s housemaids.

  Do you know the meaning of the word in our language ores? Ores. It means co-wife. The women who share your husband with you. The women with whom you take turns to cook. The women you give whatever is leftover in your own pot. The women who are the other mothers of your children, who suckle your baby when your own milk has dried up or unexpectedly soured.

  But the word has another meaning, too. Do you know it? No? Then let me tell you.

  It means rival.

  My mother was the sixth wife. She was tall — for a woman — almost as tall as my father. And she could even have been as strong as him. I know now she wasn’t so very beautiful, because people tell me I look like her. Her mouth was big, with perhaps too many teeth. But she was bathe, the favourite.

  Yes, I dreamed about her the other week. She’s back in my thoughts again. For a few days afterwards I was able to see her face in front of my eyes — like a photograph. I never owned a picture of her. All of this was before the shop with the Kodak sign painted on its shutters opened in the town. For two days following the dream I saw her clearly. But then her features smudged. Sometimes I would be able to recall one thing, say her eyes: whites so clear, like moons against the dark night of her irises and her skin. There it is. You can picture a person easily, no trouble — right up to the time when you try to remember their face. Ah, then you can sit and stare at the wall all day if you like. Until you give up. And suddenly there they are, as clearly as if they were standing before you.

  That was the way I remembered my mother: on the morning of the festival, standing in her room before it was properly day, silhouetted against a cold, new light.

  Back then Pray Day was overtaking all the festival days. To meet the new year everybody swept their houses and Ya Namina ordered the servants to clean out my father’s house from top to bottom. Three of my mother’s co-wives came hurrying back from visiting their families, looking healthy and still plump for ones who had fasted all month.

  The cooking began days in advance. Then it wasn’t straightforward as it is now, no radio announcements from Mecca to tell you the moon was really hovering in the sky, only you couldn’t see it because of the dust or the clouds. No. We waited until we saw it ourselves, even though that meant we sometimes began to cook too early, the food spoiled and we
all fasted for an extra day or two; sometimes we began to cook too late and the feast wasn’t ready in time.

  There were roasted meats and special dishes baked with coconut milk and spices. I was young and didn’t fast; even so the smell made my mouth water. On the morning of Pray Day everyone answered the first call to prayers and afterwards we would carry dishes of whatever food we had prepared as gifts from house to house.

  But that was not the reason we all looked forward to the festival. In our house my father presented each of his wives with a costume specially for the day. The new clothes were delivered the evening before, ready for the last day of the fast.

  That year my mother spent the whole of the day preparing herself. Finda worked on her hair for all of the morning: plaits so fine it was as though each comprised of no more than six hairs. These she wove, three by three, into thicker braids and then again, until my mother’s head was covered in shining coils decorated here and there with tiny pale cowrie shells. In the afternoon she sat for two hours with the ends of her fingers resting in bowls of lali until the tips turned red. She sent me out to pick a new loofah from the vine, and I found a fine one. On the way home I held it close to my ear and shook it, listening to the sound the seeds made, like trickling water. Afterwards I emptied out the seeds and carried it to my mother. In her bedroom I rubbed her back and her arms with it, smoothed her with shea butter until her skin glowed deeply as a garden egg.

  We were on the front balcony watching the darkness, watching for my father’s gifts to his wives to be delivered. Ibrahim and Idrissa pretended not to be interested. They were throwing the eyeless husk of a lizard at each other: dodging and ducking, laughing in their newly deep voices, forgetting that they were men. Our own garments were inside, finished by the tailor in the weeks before. I had picked out the cloth with my mother at the Fula shop. We watched as my father’s retainer came out from his room. We smothered our laughter as Ibrahim walked on the outside edges of his feet and made his legs bow and tremble, bending like the old man under the weight of the packages. We followed the retainer with our eyes as he passed through the compound, visiting one house and then the next.

  Our mother did not come out. Instead I carried the package to her.

  ‘Open it, mama!’ I cried.

  She was sitting on the edge of her bed, shoulders hunched, feet on the floor pointing straight ahead. She looked as though she had been sleeping. I did a little jig. My mother didn’t even turn to look. She seemed bored by my playful ways. The light on her skin gave a dull cast, for a moment it seemed to me she was old. She was sitting with her hands across her stomach. The air rustled in her chest like dried leaves.

  ‘It’s late now. In the morning you’ll see it. Now it’s time to sleep.’

  But it wasn’t time to sleep. The village was still awake. Out back, Finda was preparing the last of the dishes for the celebrations the next evening. My brain was whirling with excitement.

  ‘But I want to see it now. Let me see it.’ I made my voice into a whine, but with a threat. Like the noise a mosquito makes. My mother lay back and turned over, pulling the cover over her shoulders.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she repeated. She twisted herself around to look at me over her shoulder, smiled at me in a way that made me feel less bad. ‘Send Finda for me.’

  In the morning the air was cold and smelled of dust. I washed and slipped my new dress over my head. It was too long, but I had a year to grow into it. The cloth was shiny and stiff, not worn soft like my everyday clothes. I ran to find my mother.

  That moment when I opened the door: in the dream, I see her again. She is wearing her new gown, standing before the opaque light spreading through the shutters behind her. Only, in the dream we are not in the old place, but in the bedroom of the house I lived in with my husband after I was married. Everything is as it was when I lived there as a young wife, even the heavy, woven bedspread we were given as a wedding gift and the animal skins on the floor that my husband brought back from the place where he worked.

  And in the dream I am thinking, how can I be married already if this is my mother, so young?

  Nothing had prepared me that morning for the sight of her in that dress. Along dress, made of printed cloth from Europe, embroidered with yellow and blue thread across her breast. Sleeves that billowed out and narrowed into cuffs fastened with real buttons. When she walked the pleated skirt brushed the floor. In those days the women wore simple tunics and on special days, like when it was somebody’s forty days, maybe an embroidered gown or a long skirt and tamule with sleeves that stopped at the elbow. I had never seen a dress such as this.

  That day we bluffed better than anybody, walked in front of them all into the mosque. I felt the envy in their glances. I held my head so high. When we sat down at the back I could see my brothers in their new bubas practically under the alpha’s nose. My father was at the front wearing an agbada of pure white, with a red sash over his shoulder. At the back we didn’t pay much attention to the sermon; the women gossiped among each other. All talk that day was of each woman’s outfit. From the outset I knew my mother’s dress made the greatest impression of all. My mother was the very first to wear the new style like the Creole women in the big city.

  That day! The best day of my life. The day every one of my father’s wives wished she was my mother. And every one of his daughters wanted to be me. I had no fears. No cares. I did not see how life could get any better. But then my luck changed like the wind. And my life turned around completely.

  * * *

  There were so many of us — children of my father. And yet I had few friends among my brothers and sisters when I was growing up, only Idrissa and Ibrahim who were my belly brothers. Mariama and her sisters were gone. Ya Janeba and Ya Sallay’s children kept to themselves: like their mothers they appeared not to welcome outsiders. My brothers, too, preferred their own company or that of the other young men around. And although they sometimes came and boasted to me of their exploits, we spent less and less time together.

  Finda was my friend. I followed her as she went about her chores. When my brothers and I fought I ran to hide behind her. And it was she I asked the things I didn’t understand, when Idrissa and Ibrahim sniggered into cupped hands but refused to tell me what was funny. Finda didn’t tell me either, but she scolded them and that was good.

  It was Finda I turned to when I noticed my mother growing taller.

  I’ve told you my mother was a tall woman. And so she was. Only those days, every time I looked at her, she seemed higher than ever. Though my father was always telling me I had grown, I even began to imagine I was shrinking. I measured myself, scratching a mark on the outside wall of the house with a stick. One afternoon we were trapped by the rain, watching it fall out of the sky like sheets of glass, distorting the shapes of the houses and trees beyond, turning the ground into miniature rapids of red mud. I was helping Finda to husk groundnuts, breaking open the soft, steaming shells and peeling the thin membrane from each of the nuts.

  Finda set down her pan and told me my mother was sick.

  I didn’t know what she meant. I asked the only question I could think of: ‘Why would that make her taller?’

  ‘Your mother isn’t taller. That’s just the way it looks.’

  A wasting illness had stolen her appetite. And as her body drew in so it seemed to lengthen.

  ‘When will she be better?’

  ‘Soon. God willing.’

  ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  ‘Next tomorrow then?’

  ‘Soon. God willing.’

  The weeks rolled past, my mother took to her bed. The house was quiet. My brothers were out all day. I sat at home and waited for my mother to get well again. Sometimes I went to her room and sat with her. The room smelled of un-aired clothing, sweat and something rotten. My mother was a black woman, but out of the sun her skin yellowed like a dried tobacco leaf. I tried to keep her company, to tell her the things that occupied my day b
ut she seemed not to listen because too often she would laugh suddenly in the wrong place or ask a question that had nothing to do with the thing I was saying.

  My father sent for a doctor. Somebody from the town. The man arrived by bicycle and carried a battered black bag, empty except for a stethoscope. Finda was displeased when he pressed the cold metal disc against my mother’s breast, but she told me after that she did not protest because she knew my father had placed his faith in this man who was taking so much of his money. Under the doctor’s instructions we gave her one tablet, aspirin, each day and every other day Finda rubbed her body with mentholatum from the brown glass jar the doctor brought us from the pharmacist. We waited. My mother grew thinner.

  My mother was ashamed of being sick, of the sour smell that rose from her and stained the air. Finda brought star lilies and placed them in my mother’s room and their thick scent mingled with the odour of sickness. As if contaminated by my mother’s shame my father stopped his visits. Instead he arranged for her to visit the hospital in Kamakue. I was not allowed to go, though Finda went and my brothers too.

  Idrissa described the big white building, surrounded by walls built of concrete breeze blocks and lawns of spiky grass, walkways wrapped in bougainvillaea and morning glory. I imagined my mother would be happy there, among the flowers. Of course we expected miracles. Finda was the only one who had any doubts. The others of us — her children — imagined our mother would come home restored to the way she was before.

  My brother told me how they waited many hours to see the doctor. They were sent away at the day’s end with no choice but to sleep by the side of the road outside the hospital since they did not know a soul in that place. Our mother was weak and her breathing was troubling her. The dust from the road affected her greatly. Eventually a woman offered her a place to stay, though there was not room enough for Idrissa and Finda, who lay down under the eaves. In the morning they returned to resume their place in the queue. When their time came they found they did not understand the doctors’ language, nor they ours. They did not have the words to explain how my mother was so changed she had become another person. The doctors looked her over, made her open her mouth, and peered into the corners of her eyes. When the examination was over an orderly was brought in to translate. The man had a wife from our parts and could speak a little of our language. The beds were full, he explained. They should come back the next week or before that if she turned much worse.