“None of them ever take to cooked flesh, not even your boy,” I say.
She nod, but I can’t say if is in agreement. “Is you going have to raise them,” she say, as she pick up her sack, balance it on her head, and leave. I not walking in her steps or seeing with her eyes, but even so, even with knowing that Keme would certainly kill her if he see her, her leaving still seem too quick. Like that bag was half-full from before, and her sandals clean and ready. None of we would ever see her again. Keme scrub her memory from his house so clean that sometimes I wonder if he did think his older children sprout from him. Nobody speak of her since then, not even the children. Here I did think forgetfulness was a spell somebody wreak on Fasisi only to see that it is also a gift, that nearly every soul here seem to have.
Either way, the woman gone. He never find her and I know many a night he go searching. Hunting. We bury the five cubs in one grave, a hole I dig. The children all but carry their father, who stagger three times, weak from grief. None of the children play in that part of the woods no more.
FIFTEEN
I am a woman with children. Hear me call their names. Ehede, Ndambi, Matisha, and Lurum children of my womb, and Keme, Serwa, and Aba children of the woman whose name we no longer call in this house. Keme wanted to name the dead children in the backwoods, but lose his voice to grief when none of us could tell who was girl from boy. Truly, the man mourn them like he watch them die one by one, and my own fear arrest me, fear that I will never show for anyone such woe. The King Sister was the only one dead that I could imagine showing sadness for, and even with her no sadness come. Anger yes, and the feeling that the gods deal with her in wicked fashion never leave me, not even now. But grief? Not once.
See me call my children’s names out in the dark when the whole house gone to sleep. In my bed lie Keme and Aba, that woman’s youngest, who take to sleeping between us and refuse to lay her head elsewhere. I say to him one morning that I done forget what it look like when it big and stiff, and he say, Woman, you can’t be saying those things around your children, which shake me, for he was the one who used to like what he call my coarse mouth. That is a lie, or it is not the whole truth. He never like my coarse mouth, he just accept it as the price for having me, but not making me the number one woman. Now that I am this woman, he want me to be more like a mother and not like one who drop out his children. I don’t bother to tell him that I was always the only mother in this house. So see me waking up when it is still dark and walking around the house calling my children’s names as if keeping a record that they still here.
Aba, the youngest of hers but still the third oldest of all, start acting like a baby ever since that woman leave. Nothing like a lion but with black hair long and wild as one, skin the closest to coffee, like her mother but not her father, and with two spaces in the front of her mouth waiting for second teeth. She soon take to screaming in the night when sleeping alone, and sucking her left thumb when sleeping between us. Two strong apes couldn’t pull that thumb from her mouth, and I know because every other night I try.
Serwa, the oldest from that woman, look like her mother too, but her wily ways are indeed of her father, though I never once see any of the cat in her. She is a big help to her kin and even to her half kin, and she be the only one that can convince them to wash themselves, but like her mother she don’t like me. A dislike that grow bigger as she get older, which make me shrug and say this must be the way. Maybe I would have been a sour little shit to my mother too. Defiance would never come from her lips, nor disrespect either, so she pound the grain when I say pound it, and set aside raw goat for those who want it raw, never wash reds with whites or blues, but I know, and she know that I know, that if I should fall into sinking sand, she would never offer a hand, or even a stick.
I walk through the house because ever since that woman flee, sleep leave me sometimes as soon as it come, never taking me safe into the morning. Is a mercy that I never wake anybody, but a curse that I can’t go back to sleep until I can see light peeking up from the ground. Sometimes that make me slug through the day, but even when I force myself to stay awake, to get as tired as I can get, not long after I fall asleep, I fall awake. So I get up and walk through the house. And when I tire of house I walk outside, and if there is a moon I lie down in the grass and watch it dodge behind clouds. My children’s names slip past my mouth as if sharing a secret.
Keme, namesake of Keme, who was a namesake of Keme who was a namesake of Keme. In these years, six now, he grow almost as tall as me, as tall and skinny as a boy can be before the changes visit him. Which mean that he is the rare seed of Keme who won’t see body hair before he reach a certain age. In this house most of them born with hair already, even the girls. He do as he is told, follow me everywhere, and carry whatever load I buy. Calm and cool, he is the walking Itutu, but a flash of the father’s temper come out whenever I say that is long time now he should be in some school. Even the lions of court can read, I say, but when he ask how I know, no answer come from me.
One day in Gardaduma month, when the sun start baking the room way too early, I rush out of door to cool my face only to see a naked boy squatting in the dirt with a dead beast, a monkey perhaps, hanging from his mouth. The scream come out of me before two things appear to me at once, that I never see this boy before but I know him all his life. I scream, he jump, and as the monkey fall out of his mouth, he catch it and clutch it close, as if I was coming to snatch it. Right before the yellow eyes flash back at me, right before he growl, right before he even bite off the monkey’s head I know is Ehede. But the way he crawl, and growl, and roll in the dirt tell me that he didn’t know he change into a boy. A beautiful boy with gold hair like his father. I shout for Keme to come look, but by the time he rouse himself, Ehede change back, his gold hair running just along the top of his head.