Sogolon, the last thing you have time for is fresh hate. I think this until thinking fail, then I chant it until chanting fail, then I sing it until my children think I mad, then I hum it. There must be a space in me that this hate is filling, so I take it up with housework. The clay floor never have no shine before, but it shine now. The iron shields don’t mirror anybody in years, but they look shiny and new now. The children ask for goat so I kill and butcher it myself, right down to each child-size piece. The old beds need new linen, so I saddle the horse and ride out to Baganda district before the shops even open. A band of starving Yumboes scurry among the flowers in the backyard for some nectar, so I open the cookroom window and lay out bowl of honey mixed with water and magic berry. I watch them drink until drunk, too drunk to fly straight, and when they dip and tumble and bump into the windowsill, the laugh that come out of me feel so strange that I didn’t even recognize it.
Which is to say that I was looking for anything to squeeze into the space that hate was carving out for itself. I wonder if this is how I would feel if my brothers find me. Or some disease that you think is gone, only to see that it just in the dark, waiting. Is not like the Aesi was ever gone, but my years was full—is full and with so much time passing new loves and hates take over from old ones, and all one can do with a bad memory is forget it. Like the name of the wife who used to live here. Like Olu. Whether you choose forgetting or forgetting choose you, both take you to the same place, this place of peace. A voice that sound like me say, You betray your purpose. You come back to Fasisi for only one thing, but you take everything and leave that one untaken. I hear a laugh come in from the street and can’t tell if it was loose talk from people passing or the ancestors or devils.
I search for other things to make me mad. Matisha whisper one evening, not even on purpose, that she forgetting if her father hair gold or brown, for the little time he spend here, he spend with the lions. Two things make me mad, that Keme have no eyes for his daughter and that she calling her kin the lions, like they live across town. He change full with them, and they run off in the night to hunt whichever careless antelope or wild goat stray too close to the mountainside. Then they feed on the whole thing right there in the bush, not even caring that the other children love raw meat too. Except Matisha.
Salban Dura, the twenty and fourth night of the Bakklacha moon. This is what I say to him when I go searching for them in the dark: Look here, you have five other children or perhaps you forget? I say it to him as a shout too. He can’t talk to me as full lion or won’t, so I have to wait until he remember that he can change, and watch the children watch him change halfway, before he say, I know the names of all my children.
“I didn’t ask for a roll call, I ask that you show your face. Matisha starting to wonder if she even have a father,” I say.
“Fine, woman, I hear you. No need to start snarling.”
“I look like I snarling to you?”
“Sogolon.”
“What me sound like to you? Like some beast?”
His face change in the quick, and not a shapeshift.
“And what is wrong with sounding like a beast?” he say.
“Nothing. Nothing at all.”
“Good, for you sound like my first—”
“I not your second.”
“Fuck the gods, woman, you really itching to have it out tonight.”
Ndambi long run back to the house.
“Where is Ehede?” I say. Neither of us see him leave.
“He gone down in the bush,” Keme say. “No lion foe down there.”
“He is your son. He don’t need a foe to start a fight.”
“Some bee gone up your backside, woman?”
He approach and rub his fuzzy hand on my face. I want to brush him off, but I also thinking that maybe if Ehede already in the house we can take our time before we head back.
“Ehede! Boy!” Keme shout and ruin that thought. I tell him I going back up to the house to check.
“Right now, he is stealing meat from Ndambi’s plate if I know him,” he say.
“I didn’t see him.”
“I saw him run right past you.”
“When?”
“Right now he’s making a nuisance in the house like he always do. I am sure of it.”
“I don’t know. I—”
“Woman, how many times must I tell you what I telling you?” he say with a grin, and the grin open my eyes wider. Half lion, half man, no clothes, full cock.
“It even bidding me good evening,” I say.
“It not bidding you anything so chaste.”
I meet him, and he meet me and we touch halfway. The time lost to me, when last I grab this part of him and delight in it growing bigger and bigger in my hand. No, here is truth: I didn’t lose no time—motherhood snatch it from me. Half the man and half lion, he do something between a moan and a purr. That woman who we don’t call by name used to cry disgust when he come to her like this, saying he even smell like a beast. But the smell is a road to map him, and I follow it to his lips, behind his ears, right under the arm, and the gold forest right above his cock. My nose, my forehead, even my ear I let press against this bush so it can hear the rustle.
“Women from Omororo, they take it between the lips and fuck the man,” he say.
“That must be why we call them southern women,” I say. We sneaking around the back like young boy and girl too full of sex to wait on wedding rites, and I can feel his desire grow in my hand. My dress rise above my hips, my breast, my neck, and before the next breath rush out of me, he gone inside me. Motherhood give me more breasts to grab, he say. I reach behind him and grab his buttocks, pulling into his pushing into me. Trying to stay quiet is its own kind of noise and we fucking so feverish that this quiet is all I hear.
“Keme. Keme.”
He grunt.
“Keme.”
“Busy right now . . . fucking you. . . .”
“You don’t hear?”
“I don’t hear nothing but you. Woman, the children going rush out the door soon, then only the gods know when next—”
“Is that me talking about. We not hearing nothing, Keme. It too quiet.”
He stop. We pull from each other. I turn to see him look in the direction of the house and frown. I forget how quick he be. He at the door before I even reach up the hill. But the house is still, which begin to frighten Keme.
“Matisha!” he shout, only to see her peek from under the wedding stool.
“Shhhh, we hiding,” she say.
“Hiding from who?” I ask.
“Shhhh, they coming,” she say again.