“Mayhaps we stand on the floor and you stand on the ceiling,” she said.
As soon as she said it, I broke from the floor and stuck out my hands quick before my head hit the ceiling. My head spun. The smoke child appeared in front of me, but I was not scared or surprised. There was no time to think it, but think I did, that even a ghost child is a child first. My hand went right through her and stirred some of her smoke. She frowned and ran away on air. The joined twins rose from the floor and ran over to me. Play with us, they said, but I said nothing. They stood there looking at me, the one striped loincloth covering both of them. The right child wore a blue necklace; the left one, green. The boy with long legs bent over me, his legs straight, in loose, flowing pants like what my father wore, in that colour I did not know. Like red in deep night. Purple, she said. The long-legged boy spoke to the twins in a tongue I did not know. All three laughed until the witch called them away. I knew who these children were, and that is what I said to her. They were mingi in the full flower of their curse.
“You ever go to the palace of wisdom?” she said, one arm to her side, the other around a child who did not wish for her nipple. I passed this palace every day, and walked in more than one time. Its doors were always open, to say wisdom is open to all, but its lessons I was too young for. But I said, “Where is this palace?”
“Where is the palace? In the city you ran from, boy. Pupils ponder the real nature of the world, not the foolishness of old men. The palace where they build ladders to reach the stars, and create arts that have nothing to do with virtue or sin.”
“There is no such palace.”
“Even women go to study the wisdom of masters.”
“Then as there are gods there is no such place.”
“Pity. One day of wisdom would teach you that a child don’t carry a curse, not even one spirit-born to die and born again. Curse come from the witch’s mouth.”
“You a witch?”
“You afraid of witches?”
“No.”
“Be afraid of your bad lies. What kind of woman you going to undress with such a salty mouth?”
She looked at me for a very long time.
“How come I miss it before? My eyes going blind from the sight of shoga boys.”
“My ears going tired from the words of witches.”
“They should be tired of you being a fool.”
I made one step towards her and the children stopped and glared at me. All the smiles gone.
“Children cannot help how they are born, they had no choice in it. Choosing to be a fool, though …”
The children went back to being children, but I heard her above the noise of play.
“If I were a witch, I would have come to you as a comely boy since that is the way inside you, false? If I were a witch, I would summon a tokoloshe, fool him that you are a girl and have him rape you while invisible each night. If I were a witch, every one of these children would have been killed, cut up, and sold in the Malangika witches market. I am not a witch, fool. I kill witches.”
Three nights after the first moon, I woke up to a storm in the hut. But there was no rain and the wind dashed from one part of the room to the other, knocking over jars and water bowls, rattling shelves, whipping through sorghum flour, and disturbing some of the children awake. On the rug, Smoke Girl was shaking out of her own shape. Moaning, her face solid as skin, then fading into smoke, about to vanish. Out of her face popped another face that was all smoke, with terror eyes and a screaming mouth, shaking and grimacing as if forcing herself out of herself.
“Devils trouble her sleep,” Sangoma said as she ran over to Smoke Girl.
Two times the Sangoma grabbed her cheeks, only for the skin to turn to smoke. She screamed again, but this time we heard. More children woke up. Sangoma was still trying to grab her cheek, yelling for her to wake up. She started to slap the girl, hoping that she would turn from smoke to skin long enough. Her hand hit her left cheek and the girl woke up and bawled. She ran straight to me and jumped up on my chest, which would have knocked me over were she any heavier than air. I patted her on the back and went right through her, so I patted again, gentle. Sometimes she was solid enough to feel it. Sometimes I could feel her little hands holding my neck.
The Sangoma nodded at Giraffe Boy, who was also awake, and he stepped over sleeping children to get to the wall, where she had covered something with a white sheet. He grabbed it, she handed me a torch, and we all went outside. The girl was asleep, still gripping my neck. Outside was still deep dark. Giraffe Boy placed the figure on the ground and pulled away the sheet.
It stood there looking at us like a child. Cut from the hardest wood and wrapped in bronze cloth, with a cowrie in its third eye, feathers sticking out of its back, and tens of tens of nails hammered into its neck, shoulders, and chest.
“Nkisi?” I asked.
“Who show you one,” the Sangoma said, not as a question.
“In the tree of the witchman. He told me what they were.”
“This is nkisi nkondi. It hunts down and punishes evil. The forces of the otherworld are drawn to it instead of me; otherwise I would go mad and plot with devils, like a witch. There is medicine in the head and the belly.”
“The girl? She just had troubled sleep,” I said.
“Yes. And I have a message for the troubler.”
She nodded at Giraffe Boy, who pulled out a nail that had been hammered in the ground. He took a mallet and hammered it into the nkiski’s chest.
“Mimi naomba nguvu. Mimi naomba nguvu. Mimi naomba nguvu. Mimi naomba nguvu. Kurudi zawadi mara kumi.”
“What did you do?” I asked.
Giraffe Boy covered the nkisi, but we left it outside. I held the girl to put her down and she was solid to the touch. The Sangoma looked at me.
“Do you know why nobody attacks this place? Because nobody can see it. It is like poison vapor. The people who study evil know there is a place for mingi. But they do not know where it is. That does not mean they cannot send magics out on the air.”
“What did you do?”
“I returned the gift to the giver. Ten times over.”
From then I would wake up in blue smoke, the girl lying on my chest, sliding down my knee to my toes, sitting on my head. She loved sitting on my head when I was trying to walk.
“You are blinding me,” I would say.
But she just giggled and it sounded like breeze between leaves. I was annoyed and then I was not and then I just took it as it was, that at nearly all times there was a blue cloud of smoke on my head, or sitting on my shoulders.
Once, me and Smoke Girl went with Giraffe Boy out into the forest. We walked for so long that I did not notice we were no longer in the tree. In truth I was following the boy.
“Where do you go?” I asked.
“To find the flower,” he said.
“There are flowers everywhere.”
“I go to find the flower,” he said, and started skipping.
“A skip for you is a leap for us. Slow, child.”
The boy shuffled but I still had to walk swift.
“How long have you lived with the Sangoma?” I asked.
“I do not think long. I used to count days but they are so many,” he said.
“Of course. Most mingi are killed just days after birth, or right after the first tooth shows.”
“She said you will want to know.”
“Who, Sangoma?”
“She said he will want to know how I am mingi but so old.”
“And what is your answer?”
He sat down in the grass. I stooped and Smoke Girl scampered off my head like a rat.
“There is it. There is my flower.”
He picked up a small yellow thing about the size of his eye.
“Sangoma saved me from a witch.”
“A witch? Why would a witch not kill you as a baby?”
“Sangoma says that many would buy my legs for wicked craft. And a boy leg is bigger than a baby leg.”
“Of course.”
“Did your father sell you?” he said.
“Sell? What? No. He did not sell me. He is dead.”
I looked at him. I felt a need to smile at him, but I also felt false doing so.
“All fathers should die as soon as we are born,” I said.
He looked at me strange, with eyes like children who heard words parents should not have said.
“Let us name a stone after him, curse it, and bury it,” I said. Giraffe Boy smiled.
Say this about a child. In you they will always find a use. Say this as well. They cannot imagine a world where you do not love them, for what else should one do but love them? Ball Boy found out I had a nose. Kept rolling into me, almost knocking me over, and shouting, Find me! then rolling away.
“Keep eye sh—” he shouted, rolling over his mouth before saying shut.