Enough. This is not what I want to talk about.
I know some women, none who I call friend, but they are women whose man gain everything from them, dowry, goats, house, land. Man whip, man beat, man threaten, man swallow all the space but still she won’t flee, for he done leave her with nothing but the need for him. Omororo take everything and leave nothing but my need to return to it. The North close ranks and banish me back down South, and for that I would kill the world. Go, they shout, every single one of them, and who couldn’t shout roar. Leave. Nobody make no space for you. Stop begging, nobody understand your tears. Stop lying, nobody hearing your voice. And this bed is not yours, nor these rugs neither. Witch. Thief. Impostor. Now you nearly kill him, monster. Leave.
Yet as soon as my sandals get within a breath of Omororo, I shift west to mountains so green they look blue. That is where I find the house that find me. Here is truth: All I was looking for was a place to lie down and never get up. When the walk to the middle of the forest finally tire me out, I sink down onto the dead leaves, close my eyes, and ponder a gorilla breaking my back, a leopard crushing my throat with his jaws, a snake coiling around me and squeezing out my life. Dying was not enough, this body was hungry for suffering too. That evening I let myself sink under rotting leaves, waiting for it to happen.
Nothing happen. Morning wake up and move on so quick that I curse out loud, for it leaving me behind. That feeling was coming, something brewing, boiling, ready to overflow, something at the back of my throat waiting to tell the gods what I think of them and their judgment. But not this day. This was the day I roll over in the dirt, pull leaves away from my eyes, and see a house looking right back at me.
Perhaps a house. Even in the morning the rain forest look like evening, and nothing is what it seem. Awake not much different from asleep, so it was a face with four or five mouths the first time I look. The second time, with sunlight cutting though with little blades, it look to be a palace, with one floor standing on another. The third time I open my eyes the full place come to me. Side of the hill to be sure, but somebody carve a grand house out of it, which make it look like the hill was swallowing it up. Trees and shrubs sprout where they will, so it was impossible to see the whole house with just one look. Right below the ridge was the ceiling, the wall, and four giant columns holding the house up. Between the columns, three dark windows at the top, with a small one on the right and left, and a middle window tall as a door. Below them an archway that was dark also. The house, looking like a face both sad and frightened. Along with the moss, and dirt, and mud, and shit, the house was the color of bone. Some of that mortar long fall away to show bricks, the muscle under the skin. No door for sure, but who need door with inside so dark? Whoever build this place didn’t spend much on the entry but on the path to it, for bricks line the ground like a Fasisi road, which make me wonder if living here was a fancy witch. But nobody was living there. Inside blacker than night and as with the blind, I had to feel to know. Posts with grooves from the last animal to scratch them. Thatch screens that you could push your hand through. Smell as well, for everywhere scent was fleeing. A rug smelling of dirt and shit, a jug with a trace of wine long ago, a stool stinking of the last beast to sit on it. I couldn’t tell if the floor was all dust or just dusty. Nothing to start a fire.
Making a home was easy. It didn’t take long for those of the forest to learn that somebody new take lodging, and she is no beast, bird, or tree. Living through a day was harder, for no matter how much I stomp one down another was always coming. Watching the little poison frog take on a day is how I learn to live through it. First rip the day in half, time to sleep, time to walk. Then tear it down more, then more, and more after that. Tear a day into pieces you can swallow and soon the whole thing will pass. Hear this about sleep. Deep in the bush when I was starting to know plant from plant, I find one to make a tea that put me to sleep, and because that sleep didn’t come from me, there was no dreaming. I do the opposite of what get done with a day. From a sleep of barely a blink, to a half day, to two days, to a quartermoon, until so long that once I wake up with mushrooms in my hair, bush sleeping between my fingers, and a colobus monkey and her child sitting on my belly. Slumber hold me for half a year—I know because summer come and gone—and in that time a tribe of them take to living in my house. I didn’t care. If I wasn’t going to forget, then fuck the gods, I would make sure that I never get to remember. The monkeys watch me with sad eyes as I brew more tea then go back to sleep.
The next time I wake up, a whole year pass. I know because summer arrive again. A plant that I last see as a shrub turn into a tree whose roots long crack the pot. The thought stagger me, though I tell myself that it was weakness from not moving for a whole spin around the sun. Two more days pass before I could stand it, the weight of what I do. Stand it until it come to me that there was no weight at all. The weight so light it threaten to fly away. Being long gone matter only if somebody counting your days. But even the monkeys raise no alarm in seeing me wake; they watching to see what I going to do. Hunger didn’t bother me, nor thirst. But I was hoping for peace in the mind and instead terror was lingering in me like somebody who won’t leave. To wake up from one year’s sleep with no dreaming feel like you rising not from slumber, but death.
The house still didn’t have no light, but dark is more than dark. In the room I count three monkeys, all male. As soon as they see me rise one approach me in some sort of dance while a fight break out between the other two. Over you, say the voice that sound like me, Over you. I barely think it before a strong wind roll into the hut and sweep them out. Wind (not wind). They didn’t stop coming over the next few days, but they did bring food, some of which I could even eat. But this is madness, I tell myself. Sleep was no cousin of death, and no death was coming from it, but I was still looking for it. I was one of them women you call haunted, but all that haunt was behind me. Think of the poison frog, the voice say to me. Nobody walk backward and forward at the same time. And the three monkeys begging, pleading, and fighting their way into a fuck make me laugh.
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