He roar at me and storm into the house.
Yétúnde’s doorway don’t have a door no more. He break it down when he rush into the room, and now the room full with roar and scream. I run to them thinking he full gone now, he full turn, and no kind of word can reach him. He roar again and shake the floor. In the room rugs and cushions scatter. Yétúnde in the right corner, her left arm bloody and just hanging, while her right hand swinging a torch. She screaming and screaming for Keme until she see my face, then look back at him with nothing but horror. She swing the torch at him again, but the lion don’t retreat. He leap up on two feet and try to swat away the torch. I shout his name and he turn in the quick and rush me. I stand still though every voice in my head say run, and he run right up to a hair from my face, snarl, then pull back. Yétúnde swinging the torch like she blind in the dark and attacking sound. He going to do it, I know. He going to lunge for her, knock her down, and bite into her neck until dead. I squeeze my eye and my knuckles hoping for wind (not wind), but it don’t come. Won’t come. I curse it, for several moons now it seem to be following my will. Yétúnde waving the torch too fierce and the fire is going out. Keme lunge again straight into the way of Ehede and Ndambi, who I didn’t see run into the room. They push him back with their paws and he almost swipe Ndambi. Keme try to rush Yétúnde again, but them two stand between him and her and they not moving. Keme growl, they growl, Keme roar, they roar, then Keme hiss. He turn and trot out, almost knocking me out of the way. I watch Yétúnde peel herself from the wall when Keme burst in again, running straight to her. Ndambi jump in his way and they slash at each other and tumble on the floor. Keme pull back, quiet in the quick, then leave, blood on his jaw.
Yétúnde leave at dusk, before he come back. “He know your smell, he will still come after you if you don’t make distance between you and this place,” I say to her, as I watch her bandage the arm in the kitchen, the cloth already red, even though she not done. She struggle to tie it off but I don’t help her. I say nothing, hoping she don’t say anything to me, but talk she do. She couldn’t stop herself, yelling at me that I got no cause to judge she, for a woman low like me have no fear of falling lower. But what was she supposed to call herself if she turn out to be the mother of beasts? Who she was going share those tidings with? Everybody around her saying that shapeshifters deserve better life and shouldn’t be living low like beast or witch, but nobody ever see no lion king. Or leopard knight. Or cheetah chancellor. Which suitor going come knocking for a four-legged daughter’s paw in marriage? And how must she, a woman, put a cat to her breast to watch it feed? How was she to pretend that this was not shame, especially when this same lion never bother to tell her who he be before they wed? Who going give me justice for his crime? She give him three children, three beautiful children. The rest was a curse. The rest make her stomach sick, for she would rather succor shit. “Look at them,” she say, “look at the two you drop. They don’t even look like real lions but some kind of joke to the gods.” And he wouldn’t stop giving them to her. Breeding her like some bush beast who was only here to drop his children and bring his food. Well no. That is not what was going happen to her, and even now if one of them was to come out of her, she will kill it in the quick.
“And look at you,” she say to me. “Look at you taking his word, and calling it murder. Is slaughter. No different than when I kill the goat all of you eat.”
“He didn’t say no words to you,” I say.
“None of you have no cause to drive me out of my home. I make it somewhere people would live. If it was up to him you would be crawling over shit and if it was up to you . . .”
“What?”
“Don’t have nothing to say to you.”
“So stop talking, then.”
“They have laws in Fasisi. Laws against people behaving like wild beast. And wild beast who think they is people.”
“I sure one of those laws forbid murder, but you would know more than me.”
“You think I won’t tell people that is he kill them? Me is but a poor, weak mother. Look how that beast murder my babies.”
“You gone full mad.”
“You see it yourself how he ashamed that he is lion. He is the one who kill them, that is what I going say.”
“Why would a father kill his children?”
“Because he is a beast. That is all people need to know”
“Beast only kill for survival and food.”
“Look at this, eh, gods? We agree that he is not people.”
“Think what you want.”
“I coming back with a mob, you hear me? I coming back with a mob.”
I walk right up to her face. All the windows and doors swing open, then slam shut. I keep walking, she keep stepping back.
“A mob? You sending a mob for Keme? You shitting yourself because you afraid of the lion. Listen, you dry up, swamp-smelling bitch. The one you should be afraid of is me. Anybody come for my man or my children, I come for you.
She swallow whatever she set herself to say.
I watch her look around her room, considering how to pack a life. My thoughts leave me, even though I not no stranger to making haste or to seeing my life change in a blink. But I can’t remember when I was ever the cause. The thought take hold of me and run. My thoughts shoot to moons ahead of me, wondering what would I grab if the day stop on itself and everything that I was doing have to halt, every plan I have for the moment, the day, the week get chopped, and the ground that I take for granted as mine tell me to run. Now. The new thought push away the old one, that she is a baby murderess.
“No word for you children? The ones living.”
“They your children. They your children from you step in this house and take them away from me. See it there now. All of this is yours. You come in and take it. Is yours.”
“I didn’t even want to stay.”
“Show me the chain we put around your neck to stop you from leave.”
I don’t say nothing.
“Coming in here with your eyes and your silence, thinking you can judge me. Any woman around here with a baby hyena is a woman with a dead hyena. Any woman round here with a baby leopard is a woman with a dead leopard. What you think the gods see when they look at the backwoods of Ibiku? Behind shapeshifter wife’s house is a buried carcass. I can tell you what they don’t call it. None of them call it a graveyard. At least I give each one their own grave.”
“First you say people will scream for justice. Now you say every woman around here doing the same thing.”
“Don’t talk me like that.”
“Bid your children goodbye, Yétúnde.”
“You better find a cook with no hips or no teeth. Or he going leave her with nasty cats too,” she say.