Ancestor Stones

6 Asana, 1941: Bitter Kola

My mother told me: ‘Before you are married keep both eyes open and after you are married close one eye.’ But when I was young I closed my ears instead. I refused to listen to my mother. All I wanted was to get as far away from her as I could, you understand? And so I did the very opposite. I knew that in so doing I might hurt myself, but it mattered more that I hurt her.

Where to begin? I gave myself away. That’s the beginning and end of the same story, the whole story, start and finish. Not to become a first wife, no. Nor even a second. I threw myself away to become some man’s third wife. And would you think perhaps that man came from a ruling family, or was rich, or respected, or held an honourable position in the men’s society? I would understand why you might think so.

But, no. It’s true to say Osman Iscandari was none of those things.

After I married I learned a lot. I did not learn so much about men — after all, Osman Iscandari was not all men. Rather I learned about myself. I learned about us. I learned about women — how we are made into the women we become, how we shape ourselves, how we shape each other.

The day I married I rode to my husband’s home on a maka carried by four makamen dressed in tunics and trousers edged with green and round felt hats with long, black tassels. They jogged barefoot. At times lifting me up over roots and stumps, at other times raising me high above their shoulders as they waded through streams. I lay back and dreamed in the silence. The makamen were graceful as mimes. I admired this about them as I swung under the shade of the canopy towards the border of our chiefdom: away from my home and towards a new life with my husband.

Behind me came the load bearers carrying the luxuries bought with my bride gift — a bride gift so great it was the talk of the town. That was how everyone knew that this man loved me, from the day he came to put kola. For days I begged my father — out of my mother’s hearing — until I persuaded him to receive Osman. On my beloved’s second visit I wore the new tamule and lappa he had sent for me. I stood behind my father’s chair and gazed at him, unable to believe my own good fortune.

At the crossroads that marked the border the makamen lowered me to the ground. I climbed to my feet, gathering my gown up in both hands. My husband’s makamen were waiting for me. Their uniforms were a little shabby: short trousers and striped shirts like a football team. Still, I determined not to let this bother me. Instead I settled on to the bed and arranged the folds of my yellow gown in a way I thought made me look elegant. The edges of the gown were scalloped and embroidered with butterflies. My mother thought I had made a foolish decision. Still, she would never allow anyone to say she had not sent a daughter to her husband in the proper manner. Early in the morning she had roused me to begin preparations. Kaolin from the river bank had made my complexion soft and even. Oil scented with lemon grass had been massaged into my skin and left my body gleaming. The soles of my feet buffed smooth. The edges of my hands and feet painted with henna to highlight the contrast of my palms and my soles with my skin. My teeth shone white from chewing egboka leaves, so bitter they numbed my tongue and left me barely able to taste a single dish of my wedding breakfast.

And when she had finished dressing me my mother placed the brocade sash over my shoulder and stepped back, nodded and left the room.

Now I smiled to myself. I imagined the expression on my husband’s face when he saw me for the first time. No longer a girl, but a woman.

I lay back, propping myself up on one elbow so that I could see where we were going. It wasn’t easy to do. The maka rocked so vigorously from side to side. I thought nothing of it: we were on an underused path. As we neared the town the paths would broaden and the makamen find their stride. I tried not to think too much about how crushed my gown was becoming; I concentrated instead on the sky and the ever-changing patterns in the canopy of trees.

I was thrown out of my reverie by a sharp pain.

‘Be careful!’

No reply. I tried to sit upright but my arms were pinned down by the steep sides of the hammock. The rocking and jostling persisted. I began to feel nauseous, saliva flooded my mouth. I struggled so hard I all but tipped out of the hammock. The makamen came to a halt and stood watching me as I tottered to the side of the path. There, in one great heave, I deposited my wedding breakfast into the undergrowth.

And so this was how I arrived at my husband’s home: my wedding gown flecked with vomit and my breath sour. Not that I need have worried. My husband was not there, in his place a message to say he was away on business. Many days passed before he returned.

In the beginning I refused to see what was in front of my face. I saw a big house with many rooms. I did not notice that it was empty as a cave, with plain walls and no furniture. I ignored the chickens that ran freely through the house, dropping their chalky turds. I failed to notice the cockroaches hiding in the crack between the door frames and the mud walls, flattening their skeletons to fit into the tiny space. I did not see the way the hill at the back rose abruptly up out of the earth, engulfing the house in its long shadow. I let my eyes pass over the bitch that lay in the sun, with swollen teats and dried blood under her tail. And I mistook the silence of my two cowives for acceptance.

They were all signs and there would be more, surfacing one by one, floating in front of me like flotsam from a shipwreck. Even when I was drowning I dismissed them all, first with foolishness, then with pride, and finally because I had put out my own eyes with hot pokers of shame.

From the beginning my face wore a happy expression and I forced myself to act the same way. When my husband returned I knew I had been right. I saw again how handsome he was: he had only to utter my name for me to shiver — a shiver that started behind my heart, trickled down my spine, crept up the back of my neck. Any time he called me I dropped whatever I was doing and ran to him. When he praised my cooking I was in ecstasy. Each morning I woke up and told myself how lucky I was. And for a long time I believed it. The bad feeling in my heart was overtaken by another feeling, a fluttering and leaping from somewhere below my belly, like a fish jumping on a hot pan.

Maybe this is something you don’t want to hear. You pity us, not so? You think we don’t have the same feelings as you — because of what was taken away, that we are dead down there. No desire. We come together with a man without pleasure. You see how hard it is for me to talk about these things: we are sworn to secrecy. And so we bear your contempt. But there are some things that should be said. So that you, at least, understand. Because you are our daughter. Listen.

For us it was something special: the gifts, the food — delicacies to eat whenever you want — friendships made that last for ever, singing and dancing, the company of women. For the rest of your life, wherever you are, when you are lost or alone, you may start to sing one of those songs and when you hear the voice of another woman join in the refrain — you know that woman is your sister. For all of us it was the first time we had been away from our mothers. That part was hard, even for me. I missed her.

That first night: sitting in the cold stream with the other girls, chewing on bitter herbs and waiting for the moment when your name was called. The circle of holes in the earth, filling up with blood. One by one. What you remember afterwards is not the pain. That is forgotten, like the pain of giving birth. No, what I remember most was the sound of a blade cutting through my own flesh. Such an ordinary sound, like a cook cutting through the flap of a chicken wing.

My mother had said to me: ‘When it is over you stand up and you walk.’ I promised myself I would do that. I pushed a cloth hard between my thighs. My legs trembled. I gasped for air. The pain rose in waves, crashing into me. I concentrated only on one thing — walking away from that place. One step at a time. One foot in front of the other.

Twice we are made women. For the first time when we are initiated. And the second time when we go to our husband’s room. With Osman there was tenderness, yes. And pleasure, too. I wanted to go to him. I longed for it.

Osman came and went a great deal leaving me with plenty of time to myself. I was waiting to conceive. Not so easy with a husband who is never there. Balia and Ngadie, my co-wives, had their own children. Balia’s children had left home, except the youngest who was already able to help her with the cooking. Ngadie had two. A girl and a boy, who were so alike I could barely tell one from the other, they flitted about silent as shadows.

I began to dream of my own children who were waiting to be born. Of course I must have sons to take care of me when I was old, but most of all I longed for a daughter — a girl whose face I might look in to see my own secrets. I began to choose names, then worried it might bring bad luck. I picked leaves from the gbono gbono tree and stirred them into my cooking so that, with God’s blessing, I might fall pregnant the next time Osman was home.

There was less to do in this place than in Rofathane. There was a well for water and only a small vegetable plot. Osman earned money working as a road inspector. The colonials were busy building roads and railways up and down the country. To the big mines and down to the coast where ships waited to carry the loads away. Osman talked a lot about his job and with pride. The new roads were built of tar and as smooth as the floors in a house. People liked to spread their laundry out upon them to dry, as well as their rice and grain. Osman told me how he confiscated their washing, threatening to burn it, and swept the grain away.

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.

‘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.

Ngadie was already in the ground, fleetingly mourned — a woman insufficiently loved as a daughter, unloved as a wife.

But loved as a mother. And loved still. There were Ngadie’s son and daughter. Ngadie in the male. Ngadie in the female. The him and the her, the he and the she of the woman I had known. I watched them. So alike. The only difference was the way the lines of their features had been drawn, finely traced in one, the other roughly sketched in charcoal.

On a stool at the back of the house I sat next to Ngadie’s daughter, untied the corner of my lappa and took out a kola nut. I unwrapped the leaves, broke off a cotyledon — she accepted it in silence, turning the piece over and over in her hand. I glanced up at her, saw the teardrops gathering along the edge of her lower eyelid, waiting to fall.

‘Hush ya,’ was all I said. I laid my hand on her forearm.

I bit the kola nut and helped myself to a sip of water from the ladle at my side. The water tasted fresh and pure — it was the effect of the kola: even brackish water tasted as though it had sprung from a mountainside.

‘My mother once said something about you, about how you loved kola. She said that to you even bitter kola was sweet.’

The words made no sense. One time I had split kola with Ngadie. After we had become friends. Of course it hadn’t been bitter kola. There was bitter kola in the calabash containing my bride gift. Kola for the good times. Bitter kola to mark the bad.

Some days later I went home. I never returned to that place. The years slid past. I watched Kadie grow alongside the next generation of coffee trees, and I grew too. In this way slowly I found myself again. Memories of Ngadie, of her daughter’s words, fell out of my mind. Not for any reason. Only because they seemed to be words spoken at a time of grief, wrongly remembered. I did not believe they held any meaning for me.

One day, I found myself passing down a street in a part of the town I had never been to before. The houses had two storeys, the streets were narrow. Two women were leaning out of the shuttered windows above me, drawing their washing in from the line that hung from one window to the next. Wisps of conversation fluttered down. The women were careless, not worrying if they were overheard.

‘His tinder was wet.’

I heard the laughter that followed, coarse laughter. Shocking laughter. I walked on, the phrase wound itself after me, bringing back those awful nights — those last nights I shared with my husband when I had failed to arouse him. I remembered the state to which he had reduced me — so nervous I burned the rice.

Ngadie had offered to cook.

Three nights in a row.

His tinder was wet.

To her even bitter kola is sweet.

You see, if I hadn’t become lost, I never would have walked down that street. Nor heard a woman talk about her husband’s performance in that vulgar way. That started me thinking. People believe that bitter kola has the power to wet a man’s tinder. Did you know that? I thought about Ngadie, of how she had offered to cook for me on those three nights and I pondered the meaning of what she had said to her daughter.

Three nights in a row.

Maybe there was a reason things happened the way they did with Osman on those three nights.

In my seat in the poda poda I sat with my basket of shopping on my lap, crushed by other people’s bodies, all the time turning the thoughts around and around in my head, the way I examine a pawpaw before I buy it in the market.

To her even bitter kola is sweet.

And I saw that it had been Ngadie’s doing.

I laughed out loud: a laugh like the one I had just heard. I laughed until the tears poured down my cheeks. At first the people around me wondered what was my problem. But they saw my joy was real, I was no crazy person. My laughter even became infectious, people began to giggle and before long the whole bus was laughing without even knowing why.

And through the people’s laughter I heard another sound that came from far away: the strains of a simple melody. It grew louder and louder, filling my head, pushing out all the bad feelings, the anger, the resentment that had been locked inside for so many years. I became quiet, I listened. Though I had never heard it before, there and then I recognised it. And it was beautiful. The sound of Ngadie laughing in her grave.

7 Mariama, 1942: Kassila the Sea God

High on the hill, up above Old Railway Line on the road that winds down to the city. That’s where I saw her. Walking with her hand on her hip. Sashaying. Like a woman who has just seen her lover coming down the street. Her felt hat was pushed back over her head, swinging by the cord around her neck. Her socks crumpled around her ankles. She placed one foot directly in front of the other. Like so. The hips swung, the hat bounced along behind her. It was her. I knew it at once. The jolt it gave me was like an electric shock, a flicker of heat across my skin that brought me out in a momentary sweat.

I tried to turn around to see her properly, but I was caught between the women on either side of me in the taxi. I felt a twinge in my neck. The pain pulled me back, as if to say — what foolishness is this?

Of course I knew it wasn’t her. I never really thought it. Just the fleeting glimpse of a silhouette that reminded me of her. And as the taxi turned down King Harman Road I looked around, not to double-check exactly, but to see the disappearing figure just once more.

The other girls nicknamed her Marie Palaver. Over time a syllable slipped out unnoticed: Marie Plaba. She was troublesome. Cussed. She was my first friend. And I couldn’t believe my own good fortune. To some people we were an odd couple. I could see as much reflected in Sister Anthony’s smile, though she encouraged the friendship between us. She thought I was a good influence.

The mission was built on top of the old graveyard. Nobody really wanted the nuns here, or their school. But the obai was worried about giving offence, so he let them have a piece of land no one cared about. Outside the dormitory window you could see the outlines in the earth, like old flower beds. The trees with upturned candelabra blooms: there was only one place where they were planted in such abundance.

The new girls were always afraid. Afraid of what they had heard. Fearful of the nuns who were as pale as the dead. And had a way of looking at you, but not seeing you. Even when you were walking towards them, their eyes would just glide over you. Then at the last minute, just when you had convinced yourself you maybe didn’t exist, they would greet you. For most of us it was the first time we had ever seen people like that, with eyes of coloured glass and hair like saffron threads. Well, it’s true I had once seen the District Commissioner in the place where we lived. Still it was strange to be up so close to them. I didn’t know how to behave exactly. When the Reverend Mother addressed me I drew my hand up to my forehead and saluted, as I had seen the Court Messengers do. Marie sniggered at that. It was the first time I noticed her.

In the dormitory where there was a shortage of beds — when they saw the world changing the local people changed too, and decided now they wanted to send their daughters to the nuns’ school — some of the girls shared a single bunk lying top to toe. I lay in the crook of Marie’s body, sharing a pillow, and listened to the ghost stories she made up late into the night.

Marie told me stories of women and their night-husbands; women lured away from the river bank when they went to fetch water; women who were visited by bush spirits and later gave birth to their children. Marie’s mother had been a birth attendant. Once she had seen a spirit child for herself. It had two faces and four arms and legs. You could see it was part human. Born dead. It lay on the floor wrapped in an old cloth.

The school caretaker was a one-legged man. He was the only person I have ever seen like that who did not use crutches. He hopped everywhere, tall and straight, a human pogo stick. Sometimes when the wind called and the building creaked there were strange bangs and thumps. Marie said it was One-Foot Jombee, hopping through the dark on his one good leg.

I was thrilled and yet I was afraid. Afraid of the stories. And as I lay there listening to her I was afraid too that the end was near and would take with it the sound of her voice.

I would go to sleep and dream strange dreams. A palm tree with leaves of human hair. A chair made of living flesh and bones and skin that was rooted to the ground. A snake wearing a red cloth embroidered with cowrie shells. The white nuns with skin like eels’ beneath their habits and long flowing hair hidden under their wimples. I dreamed I hid behind a coconut tree and watched them cast off their clothes and slip into the sea like Mammy Wata.

These visions began to enter my thoughts even when I was wide awake. Not so I thought they were actually there before my eyes. No. More like a flashing picture that appeared and just as quickly disappeared. After it I felt weakened, and that made me know it must have been the work of some kind of devil. In morning Mass I prayed to God and to the Virgin Mary, in the hope that the dreams were messages from Heaven. The answer never came, but I noticed that when I was praying the visions stayed away.

A class in Idaho had raised the money for my baptism. They chose my new name and sent it in a letter to the bishop, who came up to the school and baptised all those girls who had new names. Mary. Not so different from Mariama. As thanks I sent them back a bouquet of prayers. Twenty Our Fathers, Thirty Holy Bes, a dozen Masses and Communions, and because they had given me her name — one hundred Hail Marys. At the bottom of the letter I signed my new name with rounded letters and a long looped ‘y’ at the end.

Pagan babies. That’s what we were. We knew our baptisms were paid for through something called the Pagan-Baby Project, only somehow we never realised we were those babies.

We were two. Marie and Mary. Mary and Marie.

In the walled gardens on the other side of the road that we tended before morning Mass and after vespers grew every kind of vegetable. We were almost entirely self-sufficient, with the exception of rice, meat, fish and palm oil which two of us were sent to the market to buy in the mornings. The school was on an island. It was quite a large island, with a small town: Tihun. And several fishing villages, a church and a boys’ school. The town was a long walk, and so we went to the market in Baiama on the big island on the other side of the inlet, crossing the water in the launch along with fishwives and petty traders. At those times I would lift my chin into the wind and taste the salt. Or else I looked down at the dark shapes: the rocks, the shoals of fish, the shadow of the boat. And I would dream of Kassila, the sea god, swimming in the depths.

There were nights the sea howled like an animal in agony and the palm trees danced themselves into a frenzy. The fishermen hauled their canoes up on to the shore. And in the morning, before they set out again, muttered prayers and platitudes to Kassila, so he might make the seas still and keep them safe.

At mealtimes we ate from tin plates and drank from empty Peak milk tins. At one time we received a consignment of cutlery from a church group in America. The first day I tried to make the grains of rice stay on my fork, to cut the meat from the oxtail and winkle out the marrow. Everybody was struggling. How hungry we were when we left the dining room. So much food gone to waste on the floor. A rota was put up on the board. Every week six girls were invited to sit at Sister Monica’s table. I was one of the first. Watch and copy. That was the way we learned. I held my fork upside down and piled food on the top, while all around me girls rolled tasty balls of rice and plasass with the tips of fingers, and popped them into their mouths.

It was the first time I saw how Europeans often liked to do things the most difficult way. The nuns preferred to carry piles of books in their arms instead of on the top of their heads, so that we were always having to run ahead to open doors for them. And once in the town I saw a white woman pushing a baby along in a pram. She was sweating and puffing, the wheels kept getting caught in the ruts and the potholes. Eventually two men ran to her assistance, hoisted the pram on their shoulders and carried it all the way back to her front door. The mother ran after them, hopping and calling, like a hen whose chick has been carried away by a hawk. And the women with their children on their backs stopped to stare at her.

I saw that woman again. Walking on the beach, all by herself, eyes streaming. Maybe it was the wind. Still, it was a strange thing to do, walk about for the sake of it. And alone, too.

Sister Eadie said that when babies are carried on their mothers’ backs it makes them grow up with bow legs. But I did not think this could be true as my legs are straight.

Every day we queued for lunch, holding our plates out to the serving women who stood behind great tureens of rice and potato leaves. At that time Marie had a feud with one of the cooks, a woman with a short neck and a sly look whom everybody knew stole the food meant for the girls. Ma Cook we called her. In the morning the girls took turns helping to wash and chop the leaves. We were supposed to be assisting the kitchen staff, but this woman sat back and made us do everything. We washed and chopped furiously, even so we were almost always late for our first class.

Once Marie and I were on kitchen detail together. I tried to move a vat of palm oil from the fire by myself. The pot was too heavy and I staggered under the weight of it. Hot oil splashed on to my arms. Marie poured cool water from a jug on to my scalded skin. Ma Cook came into the room just then and accused us of wasting time. Marie told her what had happened, but Ma Cook’s response was sour: ‘Een mamy go born orda one’ Her mother can have another one.

It’s a coarse retort. I’d heard it before. But somehow it angered Marie greatly. She gave the woman a great shove. In turn Ma Cook slapped her around the face. A moment later the fracas brought Sister Agnes to the kitchen door, and without any questions she took Ma Cook’s side. That was the way it was in those days. You couldn’t answer back, you had to do as you were told. If somebody was older than you they were always right. And besides, everyone knew Marie Plaba was trouble.

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.

Every time I heard the rumble of wheels I slipped away to stare. The other girls thought I had a sick mind. I didn’t care. I was driven by the need to know. But the state of the bodies made it impossible to tell. In the end I never knew whether Ma Cook was among them. Or whether Kassila had dragged her down to the bottom to keep her there with him.

The coroner’s report said it was an accident. The change in the wind had shifted the tides and so the position of the sandbank. The boatman had failed to navigate the dangerous new currents. Despite a life working on boats, he never learned to swim and had perished along with the rest. The account was assembled from the stories of the survivors, among them Marie.

And for three Fridays in a row there was no fish for lunch. Just boiled yams and roasted plantains.

The villagers gathered on the beach, on the cusp of darkness. Above me, on the broken boards and the few upright poles of the old jetty, seagulls alighted one by one. The beach was no more than forty yards long, a steeply curved semicircle of sand in the embrace of a row of fishermen’s huts. People holding long tapers, silhouetted against the deepening blue of the sky, made their way to the water’s edge. A ram bleated shrilly as it was led down. Food for Kassila. An hour later all I could see were a few bobbing lights on the water. And all I could hear was the final song as it faded and rose in time with the motion of the waves.

In the morning scarcely a sign that anything had happened: some bloodstains in the sand and the butt of a candle rolling in the waves.

Nothing in the coroner’s report contradicted what everyone already knew. Kassila had caused the boat to capsize. The coroner was only able to tell them how he had used his powers to alter the currents. He could not tell them the reason.

But nothing happens for nothing.

And I knew. And Marie knew — we knew the reason. She had been spared and Ma Cook had perished. What other proof did we need?

I waited for Ma Cook to appear in my dreams. After a while I began to will it. But Ma Cook refused to appease me. From time to time I would become absorbed in the task of solving a maths problem or I would be weeding between the rows of wild greens in the garden, only to find myself looking up in answer to the silent call of my name. Or I would glimpse a fleeting movement out of the corner of my eye, turn and find whoever had been coming was gone. Ma Cook’s spirit was taunting me, playing spiteful games. I walked all the way to Tihun and lit a candle for her in the church there. And I did that every week through the whole of Lent.

For a while Marie slept alone in our bed. The time came when we shared again. I lay in bed and listened to the wind. I could feel her breath faintly on the back of my neck, and the cough that for weeks after the accident wracked her body with spasms and caused the bed to judder. I wanted to reach behind and pull her close to me, but my arms could not reach across the space between our bodies. Ma Cook had wedged herself in between us, I imagined her there lying on her back and giggling to herself.

After heaven and earth Kuru made people. He called his angel and told him to separate the people into black and white. The angel did so. Then Kuru told the angel to bring all sorts of tools. When these were gathered in a pile in front of him, Kuru gave to the black people the plough, the hoe, the hammer and the anvil. And he sent them to live in the hills and the forests to be farmers and blacksmiths. They hoed the land and planted crops, and built themselves houses from earth and thatched them with palm leaves. To the white people he gave a compass, a ruler and a sextant. They built ships and sailed the seas. They traded and grew wealthy. Then Kuru saw that he had divided the gifts unfairly. So he gave the black people something that nobody else had. He gave them the power of divination.

The black people could have used their gift to make themselves rich, but they didn’t. Instead they talked to the spirits and the ones who had gone before. They sought their advice and consulted them on what to do. This was the way they lived their lives.

I learned that story before I left the village to go to school. And I wondered at the meaning of it. Everything in those days was education, education. We wanted to learn the Europeans’ ways. At first I thought the story was supposed to act as an encouragement to learn. And a warning not to be like the foolish black people who failed to use their gift to make themselves rich.

But now I don’t think that at all. Now I think maybe we were so keen to copy others that in so doing we forgot who we were.

On the wall of the room in which Father Bernard held our catechism classes was a sampler by some of the senior girls. It was only a few years old, but already it had yellowed in parts and bleached in others. It was the air, you see. It caused everything to rot. The First Commandment read: ‘I am the Lord your God. You shall not have strange Gods before me.’

I remember because I memorised all Ten Commandments in preparation for my First Communion. And also because I wondered for a long time whether I had broken it. Before me — you shall not have strange Gods before me. It did not say as well as me. Still. I worried too that I had committed a mortal sin in wishing ill upon Ma Cook. I confessed to Father Bernard. I was very much afraid. But Father Bernard assured me Ma Cook died as the result of an accident. Nobody’s fault. Not the boat boy’s. Not mine. Whatever the moriman would have me believe, Kassila did not exist. The sea god was nothing more than a story told by superstitious folk. I received no punishment save a dozen Hail Marys for going to the market without permission.

Ma Cook’s spirit continued to flit in and out of the corners of rooms like a bat. Sometimes she brushed my face or played with my hair and that made me cross. I would put my hands on my hips and shout at her, daring her to come out. But of course she never did.

At my First Communion ten months later I drank the blood of Christ. And ate his flesh. The class in Idaho had sent me a box in the post. Inside was a framed print of the Virgin. Also a second-hand white dress with a label inside which read: ‘Ages 8–9’. And although I was much older than this it fitted me anyway. I wore white shoes and white nylon stockings that twisted and stuck to my thighs in the heat. The last item in the box was a gilt St Christopher medal on a chain, which I slipped over my head and wore under my dress. After the ceremony all of us who had taken our First Communion drank orange squash and ate rice bread together with Father Bernard and the nuns.

You loved that St Christopher medal when you were a baby. You used to play with it. The way it glistened and twinkled when you held it up, rotating backwards and forwards on the chain. Once you broke the chain, but we managed to fix it. I wore it for many years before and after that. The patron saint of storms, of lightning, of mariners and travellers. I thought he would easily be a match for Kassila. Then one day the Pope decided St Christopher wasn’t a saint any more. Just like that. Now suddenly nobody knew for sure whether he had waded across the river carrying the Christ child upon his shoulders. Or if he had existed at all. It was just a legend, they said. And they stopped believing in him.

But what is a legend if not a story so great it has survived the retelling of countless generations?

I was on the ferry crossing from the peninsula to the city. By that time I could have afforded the first-class lounge easily, but the soft drinks were warm and the stink of the latrines filtered in through the air-conditioning system. So instead I stood on the lower deck and leaned over the barrier. The surface of the water was dark and greasy. I stared past the floating slick and my own reflection, deep down into what was below. And as I did so my medal fell out of the neck of my dress and dangled over the railing where its reflection caught in the water, flashing like a beacon.

And there, suddenly. There he was. Kassila! Rushing up out of the darkness. His hand was outstretched, great talons reaching for me. He wore a suit of tarpon scales, a crown of spines, coils of hair like jellyfish tentacles and a beard of bubbles. I knew what he had come for.

I slipped the St Christopher medal from my neck and threw it over the railing. It hung for a moment in the air before it hit the waves and began to spin slowly through the water. For a few seconds more I followed the shape, distorted now, as it drifted downwards. I imagined myself falling in after it, head first, plummeting down into the green. Sinking into the billowing darkness. The cool waters closing above me, shutting out all the heat and light and noise.

Then I saw Kassila seize the flimsy chain in his huge hand. He twisted his great body and spiralled back down below.

And only the tip of his tail cut through the surface of the water.

8 Hawa, 1955: Josephine Baker

They wanted water. So much water! The headwoman organised us to fetch it from the stream and we carried it up in buckets on our heads. They were using up all the water from the stream near the work site. The water we brought was for them, for baths and washing. That was the first time I saw inside the compound. A boil had welled up under my eye, tight and shiny, close to bursting. I set my bucket down and felt it with my fingertips. I saw a man looking at me, who turned away when I looked back. After that they didn’t want me to carry water again.

The men slept in tents instead of houses. And mostly washed themselves out of doors. All except one who came and went, who wore long trousers but spoke with a woman’s voice and bathed in another tent some distance from the camp. The chief assigned three dozen men to work for them. They began collecting the mud from the bottom of the river bed. We used to creep up to watch them, two or three of us hiding behind the big boulders. The white men stood on the shelf of the river bank and watched the men from the village digging, loading pans with gravel and rocks which other men carried on their heads and dumped into wooden boxes running with water. That was where all the water was going. There were times the one with the woman’s voice called for a bucket of earth to be brought over, which he spread out on a canvas cloth, inspecting the mud and rocks, crushing some and weighing the powder on a set of brass scales.

What they were looking for nobody knew, but the day they found it — what a commotion! I was washing clothes at the stream. Ever since the men had arrived the water flowing downstream from where the work was going on was too muddy to use, so we had to walk much further upstream to a place where the water was still clear. When I heard the shouts I crept along the waterside and crouched down below the river bank.

The men in charge were behaving like children. Hugging each other, punching arms and slapping backs. The one with the woman’s voice, who I now realised had breasts, they did not slap and hit, but carried on their shoulders singing a song: ‘For she’s a jolly good fellow.’ Then they set her down and spun her around between themselves, dancing like crazy people. All the time watched by the men who did the digging, who were silent, while they waited to be told what to do next.

The white men gave everybody the rest of the day off. As they made their way back along the path to the encampment, I followed them, staying parallel to their position, blending myself into the shapes of the trees, stepping from shadow to shadow, treading lightly so as not to disturb the leaves on the forest floor. It was easy. They made a great deal of noise as they went. The path was narrow and they walked in single file. I recognised the one at the back as the same man who had sent me away that first time.

He was carrying a heavy bag on his shoulders. It caused him to walk at a slower pace than his companions. I watched as the gap between them widened. For a moment he stopped, set down his bag, and wiped his brow with a cloth. Then he blew his nose on the cloth, folded it up and carefully replaced it in his pocket. At that moment I stepped out on to the path behind him, treading on a small twig to catch his attention. Naturally, he swung round, startled to see me there.

We faced each other. He did not recognise me. The boil was gone. I told you I had been washing clothes. I had stripped to enter the water, keeping just a cloth tied around my waist. Now I was wearing only this same cloth. I saw his eyes drop from my face and move down my body, like a slow dribble of sweat. I stepped forward and picked up the bag. It was heavy, but I did not let that show. I placed it on my head. And in that way I walked in front of him, all the way to the camp and back inside.

The tents were taken down, replaced by low buildings with zinc roofs. I had a job in the camp. I worked for the man, who was called Blue by his companions or Mr Blue, like the colour. In the mornings I boiled coffee and eggs for him. He would sit outside the door in front of a table that afterwards I folded and put away, on a chair that did the same. At first I went back to the village every evening, but after some time Mr Blue said this did not suit him. And so I slept on a mat at the door of the hut. In the evenings I heated water for him to bathe and in time I learned how to pour the whisky he liked to drink and how to wash his clothes and tidy them away in his trunk. In the mornings he sat with his legs stretched out in front of him, with nothing to do but watch me work.

He did not ask me my name. Instead he told me he would call me Josephine. He said I looked like Josephine Baker. I did not know who he meant. Only that it was easier for him to remember.

I liked my new job. Mr Blue had so many possessions. His brown leather belt with a brass buckle I kept polished with animal fat. The same with his boots, of which he had two pairs. I rinsed the dead bristles from his shaving brush, and wiped the bar of soap, set them both back out on a towel the way he showed me. I plucked the hairs from his comb. Long, transparent hairs the colour of sand.

Papers covered in something I thought looked like centipede tracks. Writing. How could I have known? I had never been taught to read or sent to school. A Thermos flask that kept coffee hot the whole day long. Maps. Magazines. Books. Other things I had never laid eyes on before, whose purpose I could not imagine. On the green felt table-top: an instrument made of brass, with numbers and letters and an arrow that swung around towards the same point, wherever you directed it. A glass you could hold in your hand that made everything bigger. I stared through it at the hairs on the back of my hand, at a silverfish crawling out of his trunk. I could even see the lice swarming along the vane of a chicken feather.

In that place I saw ice for the first time in my life. A great block delivered on the back of a truck. That evening Mr Blue told me to put chunks of it in his drink and in those of the others whom he invited around to his hut before dinner. While they were eating, I took a piece of it and sat at the back of the hut, feeling the unearthly coldness, holding it in the cups of my hands to try to stop it slipping away. Afterwards my fingers felt stiff, aching like I had been wringing clothes all day.

Mr Blue found me playing with the magnifying glass. He said nothing. But watched me as I replaced it and continued wiping as I had been. From then on I carried the cloth with me whenever I went to look at Mr Blue’s belongings.

Some days I watched Mr Blue. In the evenings, from the darkness outside the window while he was readying himself for sleep. He would sit down, his camp bed creaking under his weight, pull off his boots and his socks and throw them into the corner of the room. He would struggle with his braces and pull at the front of his shirt, trying to set the buttons free. His chest was covered in hair, like hog hair. Thick slabs of flesh on the sides of his body overhung his belt. He would loosen his trousers and lie down. There were times, when I was sure he was sleeping, I would creep in. The room was filled with his odour, even the walls sweated. Mr Blue slept on his back, one hand covering his penis. I stood in the darkness and listened to the sounds coming from him. Snorting as he breathed in, whistling as he breathed out. Sometimes I might stay there an hour or so. Before I went I moved his shoes, placed them neatly under his bed, picked up his shirt and vest and hung them on the peg.

One day I found some shillings and other coins in the pocket of Mr Blue’s trousers. I set them aside while I worked and from time to time I glanced at the little pile of money. There was quite a lot, enough to buy half a bag of rice. When Mr Blue came back I fetched his drink and stayed there while he took his first sip. He waved his hand at me, but I didn’t move. I bent in front of him, put my hand out to show him the coins.

‘Master,’ I said, ‘look at your money I found today.’

He took the coins and pocketed them, looking at me all the while. ‘Thank you, Josephine,’ he said. He reached out his hand and I stretched mine out to meet his. A coin dropped into the palm of my hand.

Small Boy set a penny down on the dirt between us. From the pocket on the front of his shirt he took something gnarled and yellow and placed it next to the penny. He said I could have whichever one I wanted. I reached for the penny. Small Boy laughed. He picked up the small lump of metal and tossed it in the air.

‘Take the penny. But this is worth many hundreds of pennies.’

Small Boy was the one who used to translate Mr Blue’s orders for me before I learned to understand, telling me Mr Blue was asking for this or that. He taught me everything I learned in that place. Every day Small Boy told Mr Blue that he needed four pence to buy the food, when I knew that what we bought could only come to three.

He placed the yellow metal in my hand, I felt its weight for a moment, but before I could close my fingers Small Boy snatched it away again.

The chief gave permission to the prospectors to come to our place. I was there when the chief came to the camp, accompanied by only two elders. I saw what happened.

They sat outside Mr Blue’s house, refused his whisky, instead I brought them cups of water. Balanced on a metal tray, the way I had learned. After a short time they stood and followed Mr Blue inside. Mr Blue was laughing a great deal as though something was very funny. The chiefs and the elders did not laugh, nor did they speak much. Instead they sat down and waited. Mr Blue called for Small Boy who came in bearing a tin box. I had seen it two nights before. It was full of money. Mr Blue walked around the back of the chief and leaned over him, putting his hands on both his shoulders. My eyes widened to see him do such a thing. But if he had taken offence, the chief did not let it show. Mr Blue asked Small Boy to open the box.

Well, to look at what was inside you would think it was more money than any of us had ever seen. And it was! All you could see was ten-shilling notes. The chief nodded and grunted. Waved for the box to be closed. Then he got up and left. Mr Blue said he would send the trunk down.

‘Josie! Come, come,’ he beckoned to me. I moved towards him. Mr Blue sat down on the seat vacated by the chief. He poured some whisky from the bottle into a cup and handed it to me. ‘Here you are, doll. Cheers!’ Touched the edge of his glass against mine and drank. I tipped the cup. The liquid burned my lips. I licked them and felt the heat transfer to my tongue. I stood holding the cup out in front of me. Mr Blue stared straight ahead of him for a few moments. He glanced my way, reached out and touched the back of my thigh, rubbing his thumb up and down. I did not move. Then he poured himself more and drank that, too.

I gave my cup to Small Boy in the place where we sat behind Mr Blue’s house. Small Boy laughed as he described the trick Mr Blue had played on the chief. Placing a few ten-shilling notes on the top of the box. Underneath them nothing but two-shilling notes. It worked every time.

‘Too greedy,’ laughed Small Boy, tipping the liquid down his throat like a fire-eater. ‘Too greedy. All of them. They trip up on their own greediness.’

Small Boy, who was the age of my uncles, arrived at the same time as the prospectors. He had travelled with them for many months, all across the country. Mornings, it was his job to shave Mr Blue, who sat in his chair with his head tipped backwards, coffee by his side, while Small Boy set to work lathering his chin and stroking the edge of the blade across Mr Blue’s face. I could hear the faint rasping noise of the hairs being cut, one by one.

It happened that on certain nights the miners stayed up late drinking, playing games of cards, swapping lies and stories. When one bottle of whisky was finished Mr Blue shouted for Small Boy to fetch another from the store. Small Boy’s job was to stay awake to serve them, but on this one night he fell asleep and did not hear our master calling. Mr Blue’s voice became impatient:

‘Where the hell is he?’

Footsteps in the dark. I reached across and shook Small Boy.

‘Get up!’ I whispered. ‘Mr Blue is calling.’

Small Boy jumped to his feet, forcing his eyes open, wide and round as marbles: ‘Yes, master. Yes, master. Here I am. See me now.’

Mr Blue waved the bottle in the air, jangled the store keys in his other hand like a bell. ‘Where in the hell have you been? Can’t you hear me calling you?’

‘I’m sorry, master.’ Small Boy reached for the bottle and took it from Mr Blue’s hand. He ran to the store and returned a short time after.

‘And ice. Bring ice.’ The truck had not delivered ice since two weeks before.

‘The ice is finished, master.’

I heard Mr Blue throw curses at Small Boy. They bounced off the walls of the houses. Silence. Small Boy made no reply.

‘Dumb fuck.’

‘Leave him alone, Blue. How could it be his fault?’ The woman’s voice, soft as a moth’s coat. Another silence followed, a sort of stop-start silence. You could almost hear Mr Blue wanting to speak and thinking better of it. He told Small Boy to pour the drinks. The woman refused any more, saying she was tired. I listened as she wished them all goodnight and her footsteps faded away. Small Boy must have made a move to leave then as well, because suddenly came Mr Blue’s voice:

‘You stay right there!’ He said he was hungry and told Small Boy to fetch something for him to eat. Of course there was nothing. The food had been cooked and eaten. What was left was for Small Boy and me. There was no fridge. Small Boy replied he would have to light a fire. ‘Well do it, damnit.’ Then: ‘Jesus. Oh, don’t be so bloody stupid. Do you think I’m serious? Bring that bottle over here.’

By now I was listening carefully from behind the hut, on the other side of the darkness. I heard Mr Blue’s voice: slack, slurred and yet stitched with something hard, as he set about provoking Small Boy. The other men laughed, enjoying it. From the manner of their laughter, I could tell this was something that had happened before. He instructed Small Boy to provide some entertainment, since he could produce neither food nor ice. Small Boy replied there were no entertainers to be found in the camp either.

‘Then you’d better entertain us yourself.’

Small Boy asked how he was to do so.

‘Let’s have a song,’ said one man.

‘Yes. A song,’ came another and began to sing himself.

‘No, no. We’ll sing. He’ll dance.’ Mr Blue again. ‘You can dance, can’t you?’

‘No master.’

‘Oh, come on. You lot can all dance. You’re born jigging around. It’s in your fucking blood.’

I imagined Small Boy standing there alone in front of Mr Blue and the other men. Alone in the middle of the night, underneath the stars. I wondered what was going to happen next.

Mr Blue begin to sing and the other men joined in. I heard him order Small Boy to dance. There was a small sound. Thud. Thud. Like that, the double thud like a stone being thrown. The same sound again. And then a clatter as the stone ricocheted off something in the distance. I heard the sound of Small Boy’s feet shuffling in the dirt. Of his breathing. Of the men clapping and cheering.

I stayed awake listening, for as long as I could. By the time I fell asleep Small Boy still hadn’t come back.

The next morning I brought Mr Blue his second cup of coffee. His fingers trembled as he grasped the cup and raised it to his lips. The lump in the front of his throat moved as he swallowed, like a rat under a blanket. He leaned back in his chair and tilted his chin as Small Boy started to cover the bottom half of his face with lather. Sweat drops, glistening like insect eggs hung on his forehead. Small Boy jerked the leather strap tight across his forearm and stroked the blade of the razor against it. Then he stepped forward and drew the flat side of the sharpened blade across Mr Blue’s cheek.

* * *

Mr Blue complained the workers were always breaking things. The excavator in the first pit that scooped up giant mouthfuls of soil and rocks: three days’ work lost, he said. Just like that. Every day it was something. Shovels and hoes turned to chalk. Wooden handles snapped like dried grass stalks. Steel pick heads shattered. A sledgehammer cracked like an egg. The mining had continued through several seasons. At first Mr Blue had seemed pleased. But now he was always complaining. Always complaining. These Africans don’t know how to take care of their tools, refuse to learn how to maintain machinery, he said. This to the director and his wife who came to inspect the mines.

In the clay oven Small Boy’s bread made with palm wine and baking soda swelled and rose. Small Boy fashioned chicken cutlets and sweet potato croquettes and made a salad of cucumber and tomatoes, which he dressed with oil and vinegar from the store. A table was set up in the middle of the camp. The woman draped a cloth over it, and we collected together every cup, spoon, knife and plate in the place. Small Boy showed me the bottle of wine the visitors had brought and I watched as he pulled the cork out of the neck.

That morning the water pump had broken for the second time in a month, in the middle of the rainy season. The pits filled up with water and had to be bailed out by hand. There weren’t enough buckets. Half the men stood around idle, watching the other half work. Overnight the rain would come down and fill the pits again.

The night was cool, but Mr Blue was twitching and sweating. Later, when the evening was through, I would watch him as he slept, hear the words he shouted. Orders. Names. That’s how the words sounded, anyway. I would watch him as he tried to turn in his too-narrow bed, while outside the rain subsided only to accelerate again, revving like the truck engine or a piece of machinery.

The guests had been sitting for a long time, the canvas sagged beneath their buttocks. I had already cleared the empty salad plates. Small Boy was waiting to serve the main dish. Underneath the table Mr Blue’s knee jerked up and down. Up. Down. Up. Down. Above us dark clouds crowded together like a horde of crows under cover of the blackness. The candles on the table dipped in the breeze. Mr Blue shouted for Small Boy. Once. Twice. Small Boy was arranging and rearranging, with endless patience, a dish of cooling potatoes. Every time Mr Blue shouted he replied: ‘Yes, master. Coming, master.’ The third, or maybe it was the fourth time we heard Mr Blue’s voice, he waved at me to begin carrying the plates through.

‘At last.’

‘I could eat a horse.’

‘What is it about these people? Everything takes so long.’

‘Every day. Every damn day. Now you know what it’s like.’

Somebody cleared their throat. That was the last thing I heard before the thunder tore out of the blackness.

For me, I loved the night-time storms at the start of the rainy season. Always at the same time of night. I stood still and let the water soak my clothing until I felt it trickle down the backs of my legs. Mr Blue and the visitors scattered. Small Boy stayed with me and together we set about clearing up the remains of the meal.

I was watching a fly. Smaller than a bluebottle and silent, a sort of tawny-orange colour. It was flying back and forth in a tight square, as though it was trapped, bumping into four invisible walls. Bump. Turn. Bump. Turn. On and on. I flicked it with the end of the cloth and missed. Mr Blue came in to tell me he was leaving. A few matters to sort out with Head Office. I nodded. I thought Head Office was another white man. When I went outside I discovered that all of them were gone, including the one with the woman’s voice.

Life was easy. We did not worry about our chores. Mr Blue had left without giving us any instructions. Small Boy and I slept indoors taking turns on the bed. After a few days it was as though we had lived there for ever. In the corner of the room black and yellow mould grew on the soles of Mr Blue’s work boots and a greyish fur began to climb up the leather. Much later, when I picked them up to clean them, a shadow remained on the concrete floor that refused to wash away.

Mr Blue came back, his chin stubbled with white. Small Boy went to heat water and fetch the razor and brush, but Mr Blue waved him away. Instead he sat in front of the camp wireless with the headset on his ears for many hours into the night. Listening to the voices that floated on hissing, bubbling waves. The voices carried news of the strikes into the camp.

Later I heard people say those strikes were the beginning. First the strikes. Next the rebellion. Finally the end of the rule of chiefs. Maybe that’s the way it was. I don’t know. I only know what I saw.

The voices issued Mr Blue with instructions. Flying pickets. Wildcat strikes. Trade unionists. Troublemakers. Refuse access, they said. Mr Blue was to issue notice of an epidemic if necessary and use the excuse to seal the area.

Early the next morning Mr Blue went down to talk to the workers. Rows of faces, wiped clear of all expression, like sand after wind. The men listened to the lies spilling over Mr Blue’s narrow lips: talk of quarantines and infection rates, instructions on how to avoid the spread of the pretend contagion. He gazed away above their heads at the tops of the trees as he assured them a doctor was on the way from Mile 47.

Too late! Between the wireless and the bush wire, the bush wire was the faster.

A man stepped forward and laid down his pickaxe. Others followed. A few anxious ones hopped from leg to leg, consulting the sky, not knowing what to do. But in the end they followed their brothers. Though some said: ‘Sorry, master,’ as they laid down their tools. I hid behind some fencing and watched as, one by one, the men turned their backs on Mr Blue. Barely a word had been spoken. I had never seen such a thing. Mr Blue stared straight ahead, not moving, not speaking, not blinking even. Refusing to watch them walk away from him. All the time his lips were set in a strange smile. He looked like a rongsho risen from the grave.

They passed me, they did not notice me crouching there. Their leader came first. I recognised him from the pits, he was one of the men sent to work there by the chief that first week. I remember him to this day: a tall man, with a beard like a Muslim. Well, that could have been any number of men. But he had a patch on his lower lip where the brown gave way to pink. Like a stain or a splash.

Later there was talk, scandalous talk. I was even told his name, though I don’t remember it now. And I was too young then really to remember the events of which they spoke, because those things had happened years before and the man had gone away and since returned. Later, when for a short while, this man’s name became known to all, people talked of some past disgrace. It concerned a woman, I know that much. A junior wife.

Morning and the sun rose over silence. The mine machines were stilled, their voices quiet. It seemed there had been no other sound for months. Now it was as if the birds and animals were shocked into a silence of their own. The silence crept outwards, out until it stifled everything, even the humming of the forest.

The silence is what I remember most. Because it was not the way we did things. The silence was something different. Before then silence was something I thought that I alone understood. I knew when not to speak, when not to let myself be heard. Silence was my friend, my twin, the other half of me. Silence was my weapon. Not a blustering gun, but an invisible spider’s web.

The men did not report for work. Instead they marched to the gates of the compound. You could see the dust on the road as they came. Feel the thrumming of a hundred bare feet, like the beating of the earth’s own heart. I remained out of sight, watching. A brass padlock dangled from the iron chain wrapped around the gateposts of the compound. Mr Blue stayed inside, alone, not counting Small Boy and me. The men waited without speaking. A thin, black line between the green of the trees and the red earth, like the colours of a flag.

I waited for Mr Blue to rouse himself and go down to them. Mr Blue waited by his silent radio.

Late in the afternoon the light thickened to the colour of rust. The singing began. The men’s voices carried into the compound, buoyed on the waves of silence, and poured in through the cracks around the windows of the room where Mr Blue stood. Some songs were known to me. Others were society songs I had heard but rarely. A short time passed and the men sang louder. The air began to tremble under the weight of their voices. It was as though they were calling to the thunder, which answered them, rumbling through the sky, bringing the rain.

I came and stood behind Mr Blue. The air inside his room was heavy, it stuck to the roof of my mouth, caught in my throat and muffled the sounds from outside. The rain began to come down. Needles of sound bounced off the tin roof. The windows vibrated. Mr Blue stood, hidden by the darkness, staring at the men outside who stood in ragged rows behind the man with the mark on his lip. A firm man would have gone out to talk to him, but Mr Blue was not that man. Water streamed down the glass, distorting the faces and bodies of the men beyond. Light seeped out of the day. Mr Blue and I stood and watched, until the figures merged with the darkness.

Much later I watched Mr Blue leave his room, quietly but not quiet enough. Down to the perimeter fence, where I saw him lay a trail of white powder on the inside, like a line of ash to ward off soldier ants.

The light came back and the men were there. As though they had never gone, but stood like sentinels through the night.

Mr Blue asked us to bring all the empty bottles and cans we could find. He sat on the floor filling them up with powder and nails and pieces of metal. In the afternoon he took to his camp bed with a fresh cold, rolling his aching head around on his pillow, coughing into a handkerchief. While he was asleep Small Boy slipped away and came back.

Mr Blue was a prisoner, although none of us behaved as though we knew this. Small Boy said the men were angry because now they had learned the value of the gold they were digging out of the river and up from the former rice fields. Some of the men had been panning for themselves, trading with the Syrian traders. But this was not allowed.

On top of that, across the land the tax had jumped up to twenty-five shillings. And now the authorities wanted to tax even more people. They wanted to tax the young men without wives or even homes, who already owed their labour to the chiefs, building their houses and working on their farms.

Small Boy told me the railwaymen were the ones who started with this kind of trouble. The very first time was right after the first war when the men who fought in Senegal came back to find a cup of rice that used to cost one penny now cost five pence. And bread was sixpence, but their wages were the same. That was the first time the railway stopped. Small Boy, who had then barely grown into his name let alone grown out of it, remembered the great, silent locomotives. How he followed his brothers, clambering over the roofs of the carriages, like birds on a basking hippopotamus.

In the city people accused the Syrians of hoarding food and looted the Syrian stores. By then the Syrians owned all the stores.

The next time the railways stopped it was because the black railwaymen were made to take tests but not the white ones. Governor Slater called it a ‘fight to the death’ and called in the troops, who came with guns. And when the railwaymen went back to work some had lost their pensions, and others their jobs, and some their lives. And everyone earned even less than before. The Railway Workers’ Union was banned. But the anger didn’t die. Instead it changed shape and wore a new face, with an ingratiating smile. The railway workers said: ‘Yes, Sir. Yes, Missus,’ and doffed their caps and punched holes in the first-class tickets of the administrators and their wives with a pointed pinkie nail.

So when the cost of a cup of rice doubled again because all the farmers turned their backs on their fields and headed east with their hoes to dig up diamonds instead of yams, the leaders of the new Artisans and Allied Workers’ Union and the Transport and General Workers’ Union asked for one shilling and sixpence more pay a day. The bosses offered them four pence. In the city they stoned the houses of the new African ministers, who should have supported them but didn’t. Small Boy had seen the pictures in the newspapers. They soon changed their minds after their windows were broken. And last year the railwaymen went on strike again.

‘Now everybody, he wants the same,’ said Small Boy.

Head Office was closed. The bosses couldn’t get inside. The strikers encircled the building like a noose. That was why nobody answered Mr Blue’s calls on the radio. Small Boy said never mind. He had seen it all before. We only had to wait.

So we waited through that day and the next. Mr Blue lay in his bed and didn’t ask for anything. I looked at him. I thought about these people who had to be carried over rivers, who fainted in the sun, drank only boiled water and slept under nets. Their skin tore like old cotton, their flesh was soft as a baby’s. They were weak, but they were strong at the same time. We outnumbered them greatly and yet they ruled us.

The radio hissed and spat. Mr Blue sat bolt upright like a corpse struck by lightning.

In the empty compound Small Boy picked his teeth and hummed. Beyond the gates a centuries-old anger, pricked by a new pin, bubbled and burst.

Silence from outside. The singing had stopped. Then the blustering guns came and tore through the silence.

And that was that. Mr Blue told me he was being reassigned. He handed me my wages and five shillings’ ‘loyalty bonus’. I gave him my thanks.

So I packed Mr Blue’s belongings while Small Boy washed the pots and cooking things, folded the camp bed, the bed roll and the chairs. Packed them all up inside six wooden boxes. Into the boxes followed the tins of lunch tongue and sardines, jars of sandwich spread, bottles of grape juice, kerosene, matches. I heated the flat iron on the fire outside and pressed Mr Blue’s shirts one by one. Inside the trunk a fly’s corpse dangled from a web. Stains and rings of mildew patterned the bottom of the trunk. I laid the sheets and mosquito net on top of them. Then the newly ironed clothes. Shirts. Shorts. Socks. Then everything else. Belt. Brush. Boots. Gauntlets. Helmet. Helmet case.

Outside, Small Boy scraped the razor’s edge up Mr Blue’s neck, slicing the head off the ingrown hairs, leaving a trail of red spots welling in the white froth, reminding me of the splashes of red on the ground outside the fence. The rain had come and washed them into the ground. Small Boy had been right. We had only to be patient. Somehow news of the strike had reached the chief who sent his messenger to alert the District Commissioner. By the time the strikers arrived the next morning DC Silk was waiting in front of the compound with his soldiers, ready to arrest the ringleaders. A few were wounded in the scuffle. The leader was badly injured and might even die. Some were taken away — to jail, said Small Boy. The others would be fined. The chief had wanted them all put in stocks.

I set to work on the desk. Rolled the maps and dropped them into long cardboard tubes. The compass I placed inside its soft pouch. Underneath a bundle of papers lay the magnifying glass. I picked it up and held it out in front of me. A ring of shimmering light appeared, dancing upon the wall. I turned to it. Just as soon as I did it shifted to the ceiling. And next to the floor. For a few moments I fancied it was a spirit’s shadow. Then I realised that the movements echoed mine. A cloud passed over the sun, and suddenly it was gone. I gasped with disappointment, but only for a moment. The sun reappeared and so did the shining, dancing creature.

I begged Mr Blue not to forget me. I begged him to send for me as soon as he could. Mr Blue murmured, of course he would. But Small Boy’s face told me something different. I watched them leave. I went back into the hut and sat alone on the cold floor.

In the distance, like the humming of bees, I could hear the mine machinery. I wondered who the next master would be and whether he would be as good to me as Mr Blue. I decided to wait and see.

In the meantime I unwrapped the magnifying glass from the corner of my lappa and held it up high, where it caught the light and began to dance for me across the naked walls.

9 Serah, 1956: Red Shoes

Well, there was this one white woman. I mean she was our teacher, she was married to the District Commissioner. I think she taught, you know, just to keep herself occupied. There wasn’t much to do except run the house. A lot of those types did not bring their wives, or the wives didn’t want to come, or if they did they lost their minds and had to be sent home. That happened.

Once when I was growing up a District Commissioner was invited to attend a palava of the chiefs. It was a grand affair, the chiefs travelled in from miles. Some important land matter was to be discussed that required the Commissioner’s approval. This man decided to bring his wife along, as a diversion for her — she was recently arrived in the country. At that time I was a young initiate, and our dancing opened the proceedings.

The men talked for hours. You know how it goes. And while they did so, I watched the woman. She sat with her hands on her lap, head to one side. Her glance flew from face to face, settling on each for a moment, like a bird flitting through the trees. From her expression you would imagine she was paying a great deal of attention, though it must have been entirely unintelligible. Even the chiefs were using interpreters between themselves. The time passed slowly. But the woman’s face did not redden in the heat. Rather it grew pale. She was swallowing, swallowing all the time, looking in her husband’s direction. He had his back turned to her, listening closely to the words his Court Messenger was whispering in his ear. He couldn’t see her. I saw her eyelids flutter like a fledgling’s wings, her eyeballs rolled back as though she was trying to see the inside of her own head.

Gbap! She fell off her chair.

Well, there was silence at that. Then the chiefs, the pa’m’sum, everybody hurried over. The chiefs began waving their fly swats around her. The woman lashed out at them. I could hear her screaming. The more they tried to help her, the more she sobbed and backed away, holding her handbag out in front of her. In the end her husband managed to calm her and lead her away, his arm around her shoulders. The whole palava had to be called off and reconvened at another time. Later the Court Messenger came to explain the woman was suffering from malaria. But those close enough to see what had happened said she had made up her mind that we were all cannibals. Every one of us. And that the chiefs, in their garbled tongue, were really discussing the best way to kill her.

Our teacher, Mrs Silk, was not this sort. Not at all. For a start there was the way she looked at you, straight in the eye. And she would ask you to look her in the face too, when you spoke. It got me into trouble with my grandmother, who slapped me for being so bold. But when you talked to Mrs Silk and saw the way she looked at you and smiled and nodded. Well, it made you feel good in yourself. Like you were saying something interesting. So I learned to look down at my grandmother’s feet, and up into Mrs Silk’s eyes.

Every morning Mrs Silk arrived at the school in her husband’s car. And every morning we gathered at the windows to watch. Mrs Silk sat in her seat, making no move to get out. Her husband would climb down and walk all the way around the front of the car to open her door. And then he kissed her.

Kissed her!

On the lips!

Just like that!

In front of us all!

We’d whoop and duck down out of sight quickly, before they looked up.

What did we think? We thought: what shameless people are these? Such behaviour in public! But secretly I had another thought, and I think some of the other girls did, too. How this man must love his wife to allow himself to act that way. Yes, Mrs Silk was very lucky. Oh, and I prayed one day I would have a husband to love me like that, too.

We used to powder our faces with chalk dust. To dampen the shine. We smuggled in hot-combs and ironed each other’s hair in the dormitory at night. I wonder the teachers never seemed to ask themselves how we had curly hair one day and straight hair the next.

Hannah Williams. Now she was the first one to own a pair of shoes. Brought them back after she went to stay in the city with her Creole father, who had a job in the Government offices. I had never owned a pair in my life. And I didn’t know anybody who did, although my grandmother embroidered slippers for women who were getting married. So frail, with soles made of canvas. By the end of the day they were spoiled.

Everybody wanted to walk in Hannah’s shoes. Come evening she would take them out and let us take turns up and down between the bunks. One girl walked like a duck. Another fell flat on her face. Everybody cheered the ones who walked well. My turn came early on, because I was in Hannah’s group of friends. I slipped the shoes on.

La i la!

It felt as though I was stuck ankle deep in river mud. I couldn’t flex my feet. It was as though a great weight rested upon each one. I could barely lift them off the ground and put them back down. Still, when everybody cheered, I tell you, I was grinning like a fool.

The dormitory had a wooden floor. Hannah’s shoes made a slapping sound. In the corridors of the school Mrs Silk’s heels tapped out her progress to the classroom door. You could hear her swivel where the corridor divided. Kop, kap. Swivel. Kop, kap. One day I crossed the compound in Hannah’s shoes and walked with them down the school corridor to see if I could make the same noise, but I could not. Hannah was upset with me for wearing her new shoes out of doors.

I yearned for a pair of shoes of my own. By this time I was staying with my grandmother in town during the school holidays, in the house we had once thought of as the house of treats. Well, I begged her. I volunteered for every errand and every chore and when I was finished, I invented new ones. I whitewashed the stones at the perimeter of our property. I even soaped and rinsed the nanny goat. No thanks. None at all, my efforts went unacknowledged. Then one day, when I was on the brink of giving up: ‘Wash your face and oil your legs,’ she said. ‘Makone. We’re going to town.’

There were two shoe stores, two styles of shoes for girls. There was Bata Shoe Store on the main road near the police station. Further down the street, beyond the general store with the poster for Blue Band margarine was the shop selling Clarks shoes. I knew what I wanted. I wanted Clarks shoes. The styles were close, but Clarks were butter coloured and soft as skin. Bata shoes were made of an inferior leather, dark and stiff. Hannah Williams had Clarks shoes.

Clarks shoes: one pound, eighteen shillings and sixpence.

Bata shoes: one pound fifteen shillings.

I remember the prices exactly.

We went to Bata.

Well, I did not want those shoes. Not at all. So I claimed they didn’t fit. I pushed my toes together and walked like a crow. I hopped up and down, as though the floor was burning. The saleswoman knitted her brow, pursed her lips and drew in her chin. She pressed at the ends of my toes with her fingertips, measured my feet a second time. Lengthways. Widthways. She brought down a second pair, then a third. Still no luck. After a while she stood back and shrugged her shoulders, turned to my grandmother and said: ‘Once they are worn in the leather will soften, you’ll see.’

Hali!

What did I do? I threw myself on the floor and wept. What do you think I did? I begged my grandmother to take me to the store where they sold Clarks shoes. My grandmother was a stern woman. In the market she sent me to the stall holders to ask their best price. Once. Twice. The traders complained to me they were barely making a profit, but always they lowered their prices. Only after the third time would she come over, exchange greetings and watch them closely while they packed her purchases.

But Bata Shoes was a shop with assistants and a ceiling fan.

She gave in so quickly, I was surprised. My tears dried on my face. And yet as we walked to Clarks Shoe Outlet she held my arm with a grip so tight I could feel the flesh squeezing through her fingers.

Once inside the store I was terrified my grandmother might change her mind. So I forced my foot inside the first pair of Clarks shoes I was given and jumped to my feet. I strode up and down like a soldier on parade. My grandmother ordered the shoes wrapped. She paid and we walked to the door. I tucked my new shoes under my arm and carried them home. I tried to keep a straight face. I tried not to do anything that might annoy my grandmother. And I tried not to think about the way the shoes had pinched slightly across the arch, and how I could feel the ends with my toes.

Lord have mercy! But those shoes gave me so much grief. Even to wear them a little each evening left me hobbling.

So I lent them to the girl who helped in the kitchen. She had broad, strong feet. Rice planter’s feet. It was her job to wash us; she used to scrub our hands and the soles of our feet using blue soap and the brush with which she scoured the floor and walls. She was silent, resolute and almost impossible to please. The loan of my shoes she regarded as a singular favour. By the time I packed them in my box ready to go back to school they were a size bigger.

Sundays was the single day footwear was permitted on the school grounds. Between those times I practised walking until I was about the best in the school. At the end of that term my feet had already outgrown my shoes. Still I wore them for four more months before I was ready to give them up. I knew I’d never get another pair so soon. I simply learned to live with the pain.

Now, how did it go? It went like this:

Back to back,

Belly to belly;

I don’t give a damn

‘Cos I done dead already.

After dark we used to sneak away from my grandmother’s house and gather outside the home of the half-Lebanese son of the garage owner, the only person in that place who owned a gramophone. It was he who used to play the Zombie Jamboree. Only certain kinds of women went to his house. Women who wore tight dresses and smoked cigarettes, who looked each other up and down and sideways beneath heavy lids and kept sullen faces, so they always looked like nothing around them was good enough. We called them High Life women.

A floating population of us lived in my grandmother’s house. I really don’t have any idea who some of them were, but each child arrived with a claim of kinship, no matter how fragile. Parents who were short on funds sent their children to stay. And in return, my grandmother never sent their offspring back. She raised us well, though I don’t remember any active upbringing as such. No. Rather, we were like a collection of differently coloured and shaped bottles left out to collect rainwater, some half-filled, some almost empty. You learned from being around her what would earn a nod of approval or awaken a furious rage. I don’t remember her ever touching us, not even when we cried. And certainly we could not imagine her young, no matter how we tried. Yet somehow she left us all with the impression, like the afterglow of a radiant dream, of having been thoroughly loved.

Still, we ran away from her when we could. First to watch the High Life women and strut to the Zombie Jamboree on our dance floor of dust, in the square of yellow light beneath the window of the garage owner’s son. Later, when the Lakindo clubs started to be held among the stalls of the empty marketplace, and before the elders banned them because so many men complained their youngest wives were disappearing at night to attend the dances, we used to hide and watch the couples dancing in the dark.

We didn’t celebrate birthdays. We didn’t know when we had been born. Presents came occasionally, always unannounced, which made them all the sweeter. The year I turned approximately sixteen my grandmother returned from the market with a pair of red patent-leather shoes with real heels. The choice seemed so utterly unlike her in any way I wonder if later, when she looked with a different eye, she didn’t disapprove of her earlier self in buying those shoes. But I guess at the time she thought they were as smart as I did.

I wore them to my graduation. And later to my first dance. In those days the dances began at four o’ clock in the afternoon. Yaya and I walked the three miles from home barefoot, we washed our feet at the standpipe and clumped into the dance in our shoes. The first time was a disaster. My feet sweated in the heat. Inside the plastic shoes they slipped and slid like eels in a bucket. Our dance routine collapsed, we stumbled over each other’s feet, bruises like purple and black pansies bloomed on our shins.

From then on we wore our shoes to rehearse. At the next dance we rhumba’d like professionals. And for the first time I danced with somebody other than my brother.

Janneh was five years older than me. A student at the university in the South. He had a voice the colour of deep water, tapered fingers, long legs with high calves and two scoops of muscle and flesh for his buttocks. He owned a motorbike. A motorbike! In those days few people even had bicycles, though you could hire one outside the petrol station. You couldn’t actually ride away on it, though. You sat on the back and they pedalled you to your destination.

The Honda’s engine was as loud as the roar of a forest beast, it drowned out my screams. My skirt was bunched up between my legs, I pressed my knees together and held on to the padded seat between us. I couldn’t bring myself to touch him, to actually put my arms around his waist. Going up a hill I felt myself sliding dangerously backwards. At the last moment I reached out and grabbed Janneh’s shirt, slid my arms around him. Down the other side my body was pushed against his. I felt my stomach flip. Just for a moment I pressed my nose against his shirt and breathed in. A warm, pungent smell, cloudy and pure at the same time. Like the smell of crumbled chocolate. Or new puppies.

My legs were trembling as I let myself into the house. From gripping with my thighs on to the motorbike, I told myself. Only once I was in bed did I remember Yaya, who walked all the way home alone. My brother did not dance with me for days.

The first elections were held four years before we were supposed to become independent. So the people could practise voting, I suppose. We were allowed to choose our own Prime Minister and some members of the cabinet, although the British would still tell them what to do. That way the Prime Minister could practise his new job without the burden of actually having to make any real decisions. They gave us the cow but kept hold of the tether.

The second time, though, it was for real. Janneh told me he had written a paper about the ways our constitution needed to be changed; it had been published in a newspaper. The motorbike belonged to the People’s Progress Party. Janneh travelled with a cardboard box of fliers and posters strapped to the pillion seat. The posters bore a picture of the PPP’s candidate, a man with a parting cut like a railway track into his hair and small, pursed lips. A week after I met Janneh, I stopped to look at one of the posters on a pillar box at the post office.

‘Mouth like a goat’s anus,’ said the man behind me to the albino boy shining his shoes. ‘Doesn’t stand a chance. Tell me why they even bother coming to stand here, eh?’

The albino was silent. He flexed the shoeshine cloth and pulled it back and forward across the toe of the man’s right foot. When he spoke his voice was high and light as the sound of a bamboo flute: ‘They say they have candidates all over the country. Every constituency. One people. One country.’

‘Parah!’ replied the first man. ‘Let them take this one back to where he came from. Give us our own sons first.’

The wind whipped our faces like a damp cloth, we flew through clouds of dust. At the sides of roads upon which no other vehicle travelled, we stopped to picnic. From high on an escarpment we watched a tornado spin across the plain below, watched people trying to outrun the gathering storm as it rumbled across the landscape, bearing down upon them like a snorting bull. Behind it the sky shone blue. And on the horizon a rainbow arced across the sky. On our way back down the dirt track crumbled and slid away under our wheels. In the next town we pasted the goat man’s image over the face of the candidate for the opposing party. We handed out fliers to passers-by. At the kiosk where we stopped and Janneh treated me to my first taste of popcorn the vendor took a flier from a stack on his counter, folded it into a funnel shape and poured popcorn into it. Then he sprinkled greyish salt all over the popcorn and the goat man’s crumpled features.

‘Doesn’t matter,’ said Janneh. ‘Actually, it’s a fine thing. Helps spread the word. More people than ever get to hear our name.’

I asked Janneh why people said his candidate, whose name was in fact Sulaiman Bio, would not win.

‘Says who?’ he asked, pushing his eyebrows together.

I told him about the man at the post office.

‘The decision is in the hands of the people. They know what they want. They know what is right for them. And they know their rights.’ It was something I had heard him say before. When Janneh spoke he always sounded impressive. And yet, it seemed to me, talking to him felt like chasing butterflies. The words were beautiful, but their meaning was sometimes hard to catch.

Another day Janneh asked me if I wanted to be a returning officer. I was so flattered I said yes straight away, with no idea what I was being asked to do.

My post was a rice-weighing station in a town I had never been to before. I was given a seat behind a desk upon which were heaped piles of voting papers and a long list of names. At my feet, a metal ballot box. Two more boxes, wooden this time, were placed at one end of the room next to each other. A thin curtain suspended on a wire hung between them. The officer in charge gave me the key to the metal box and said he would be back to collect it at the end of the day.

Polling started at seven-thirty sharp! I pushed at the door of the station, which was really a shed, and the sunlight streamed in, lighting up the rice dust suspended in the air. I picked up a pile of papers and stood there in readiness.

An hour later I went back to the desk and sat down on the chair. I straightened the papers, arranging them into two neat stacks. The list of names and the pen I placed in front of me. I strolled back to the door and looked out. Two men were coming down the lane. I turned and hurried back to the desk. I watched them as they strolled past the open door without turning once. I got up and stared down the road after them.

Outside the station posters fluttered faintly in the breeze. It had rained in the night. Damp patches of ground steamed gently in the sun. The leaves on the trees shone bright as jewels. Tiny black midges danced across the puddles. A man with a rolled umbrella appeared before me. I stepped aside.

‘Are you here to vote?’

‘How much for a bushel?’

I smiled. I explained who I was. I was the returning officer for the elections. The rice station would be operating again tomorrow. In the meantime he could come in and vote.

‘Now?’ he asked.

‘Today. The elections are being held today, to decide who should head the Government.’ I gestured with my hand towards the polling booths. The man hesitated and then stepped inside. I continued: ‘What’s your name? I have to mark it on the list to say you’ve voted.’

The man told me his name: ‘Abu.’

‘Abu?’

‘Yes.’

‘Abu what? What is your father’s name?’

‘Abu Kamara.’

I traced my finger down the list. There were a lot of Kamaras. Dozens, in fact. Oddly no Abu. I checked. ‘Abu, yes?’ Yes. ‘Do you have another name that you use? A middle name?’ He said he did not. Alfred Kamara. Alhaji Kamara. Maybe this man had been to Mecca. ‘Are you a Muslim?’

‘I am a Muslim.’

That seemed to me to be good enough. He had a vote, I just couldn’t find it. I did not want to disappoint him or lose my first client. I placed a tick next to the name Alhaji Kamara and handed him a voting form. I told him to go into the booth and select his candidate, and then to press his thumb into the purple ink pad to sign and again on to the bottom of the form, unless, that is, he knew how to write his name.

He had one question. ‘Who is it I am voting for?’

‘You vote for the candidate of your choice.’

‘What is his name?’

‘Your choice is your own. I can’t tell you that.’ The man stood and gazed at the paper in his hand. He moved neither forward nor back.

‘So who did you vote for?’ he asked. I hadn’t voted. I hadn’t thought about it.

‘Sulaiman Bio. The people’s choice.’ I cited the campaign literature. ‘People’s Progress Party.’

‘The people’s choice?’

I smiled, nodding. Said it again. The people’s choice. The choice of the people. That way round it sounded like a foregone conclusion. The man moved towards the booth. ‘Third one down,’ I added, to be helpful.

Minutes later he departed with a purple thumb and a purple stamp on the back of his hand to stop him from trying to vote again.

Later in the afternoon I kicked off my red shoes and rubbed the soles of my feet. From time to time I went to the door to try to encourage passers-by, such as there were, to come inside. Still no one came. I went back to the desk and gazed idly at the list of names. I felt like a hostess who had been snubbed by her guests.

I let my eyes run down the list. Name upon name.

Like ladder rungs.

Railway track sleepers.

Or a row of sleeping children.

Players waiting to be picked for a team.

First I stole Jeneba Turay’s vote. I took it as my own. I reckoned by now she wasn’t coming, whoever she was. Since I hadn’t voted anywhere else I didn’t see how it could possibly matter. I pressed my right thumb into the ink pad and then on to the bottom left of the voting slip.

With an hour to go before the election was over, two votes lay in the cavern of the ballot box, like visitors in an empty church. So I spent the remainder of the time filling it up: creating signatures and using up the fingers of one hand and then the other and finally each of my toes to create fictional thumb prints. At six o’ clock I closed the door and waited for the box to be collected. I kept my inky hands folded behind my back while the men heaved it into the back of a van along with the others.

On the Honda I clung tight to Janneh as we raced through the towns and villages. The votes were being counted. People were dancing in the streets. We were still travelling when the moon joined the sun in the sky. On the road raindrops thudded like silver bullets into the dust. We left the bike at the side of the road and ran across the fields to shelter in a kabanka. And there, for the first time, we made love. Tracing trails of shivers across each other’s skin with the tips of our fingers. Moving to the rhythm of the rain as the storm gathered force above us. Drowning in a smell like crumbled chocolate and newborn puppies.

In the morning we stepped out to shower ourselves clean in the rain. And lay sparkling on a bed of stones while the sun dried our skin. Though neither of us knew it, this was the last time we would be alone together. Soon after, Janneh headed back south where he became Information Officer of the National Students’ Union. I graduated with honours in my West African School Certificate and won a scholarship to study in England. We tried to stay in touch, but you know how these things go. I missed him, of course. But so many things were happening in my life I could not carry on minding for too long.

After much counting and recounting the results of the first election ever to be held in our soon-to-be republic were announced. On the radio the BBC World Service described it as a mixed verdict. An opportunity missed, they said. An African election marred once again by the blight of the tribal vote. In almost every ward people had voted for members of their own ethnic group regardless, it seemed, of the qualities of other candidates.

One or two of the local newspapers, however, noted one small exception: the successful candidacy and surprise win of one Sulaiman Bio, representative of the People’s Progress Party. A southerner, who had succeeded in defeating his rival candidates in an otherwise totally northern stronghold.