—
These are the things that happen. I was not counting quartermoons, so I can’t tell when it was that I go back south, but not to Marabanga. Even with so much memory gone, there was still some I was trying to forget, and the tavern at the fishing village skirting the banks of the lake was the place to do it. So there I was, my only concern being the beer in front of me. Though the thought brush me before I drop coin that a fuck would be just as useful as a drink, nobody in that room was of any interest to me. Then somebody behind me sniff as if about to sneeze, then sniff again, rapid like a dog.
“Some fool drag a wet bitch in here,” he say.
“Or somebody who lie with dogs,” say another and they both laugh.
“But now speak serious. Innkeeper, the room already stink as it is. What it be, you running pigpen around the back?”
“No, friend, the stink front and center. Watch this now. The closer you get to the bar, woi, what a funk.”
“Can’t be a . . . no . . . no woman could . . . no.”
And then the voice was right behind me.
“Wouldn’t be so bad if she smelled like fish,” he say. I don’t turn around.
“You, is you me talking to,” this man say.
I still don’t turn around, so he come up beside me.
“Friend, you not going believe is a woman. Listen, is not so much that you smell like shit, is more that you smell like . . . like what, friend?”
“Like somebody wipe her down with swamp mud?” his friend say.
“No, is not that.”
“Whatever you smell of, we suggest you go right back to it,” the other say to me.
“I just finishing this beer,” I say.
“Beer? These women nowadays, friend. Don’t want to drink what lady to drink, don’t want to smell how lady to smell.”
“I do one thing like a lady,” I say.
“Hark this now. What that be?”
“I put up with dumb shit from man whose cock so small he piss on his balls.”
The South is full of rich cities. Even this fringe fishing village make and spend more silver than a big man in Weme Witu. I know, because this bartender bring me beer in a glass bottle, and glass is still a rare thing in the North and too precious to be wasted. So is sorrow I feel, for the bottle, the bartender, and the precious glass, when this man swing his hand to slap me and I swing around quicker to smash the bottle in his face. The man fall screeching, pieces of bottle sticking out of his face like scales. I push him over a stool and down he go. The other man was beside a woman who look like his wife. She start to cackle and he slap it out of her mouth.
“Another beer,” I say.
“You done with drink tonight, bush bitch,” say this man.
I hear him rise from his stool and make for me. The wind (not wind) sweep him right up to the bar just as I spin around with the broken bottle in my hand, aiming right for his forehead. I leave it stuck in his face and tell him to thank the gods that I go for around the eye, not in it. This infect three other men in the tavern, for now they all approach me. Here is truth. I could say that I was not looking for a fight. But I was not sad that fight find me. The stool was no stick but it work fine when I grab it and smash it in the first man’s chest. The second dodge me and laugh, but the wind (not wind) trip him and I smash his balls instead. The third man kick me from behind and drop me to the floor. I try to rise on my elbow but he stoop down and punch me in the cheek.
“That make you smile, bitch? What you is, one of them northern girl?”
The wind (not wind) swoop him off me. I know the people watching, see him floating, know I am the reason. I let the wind carry him over to the edge of the bar and then drop him so his head land on it. The bartender had a knife near some fruit beside me. I grab it in the quick and throw it straight at the man who didn’t think I see him coming. I hurl straight for his eye, and the knife stop just a blink away from it and hold itself in the air. A rock he become, still as a rock. I let him stand there as I order another beer, finish it, pay my silver, and leave. Only when I shut the door behind me did the knife fall. Two days later women start coming to the forest looking for the woman who can make knives fly. We don’t care if you is a witch, I hear them say.
I look down from the trees and watch them. Sometimes I follow them to the clearing but stay in the bush. One or two time I let the gorillas scare them off. All this change one evening when an old woman come to the forest with another woman, but this woman speak Sosoli, the language of Wakadishu and Kalindar.
“Great woman of the forest, we know this is where you stay,” she say. The words shake me, even though she didn’t say nothing yet. Must be near if not over ten years that I hear a tongue that I know. They didn’t hear me coming behind them until I could hear the shorter one breathe. She turn and jump.
“Igqwirha! Igqwirha!” she shout.
“Fool, akukho gqwirha,” the old woman say. “I tell her that you is no witch.”
“Even the South don’t have many words for women,” I say.
“But if you not a witch, what them call you?”
“A princess,” I say.
“Funny.”
“No. It is not. What you want?”
“Word spreading about you, spreading among the womenfolk, for the men don’t know. You the one that little girl talk about, the one who mother think man try to spoil her. They say you chop off the men’s heads and pickle their keke.”
“If is so the women flighty, maybe I should be helping the men,” I say, just to see her shake, but the old woman done see too much for that. Two moons ago they take her, she say. The woman’s sister, a man kidnap her. A man from the Cheetah Society, for-hire warlords of the Fire Bush, the southernmost part of the South lands. Save my sister, or kill her if she spoiled, she say.
I did not tell her that I don’t kill woman, and I was not going to confirm if the woman spoil or not, for woman can’t spoil. The old woman look at me like she read my thoughts.
“Just bring back the girl,” she say.
The old woman tell me that the Cheetah Society take the girl north of Marabanga, but wait until I take half of the pay before saying that it was in Masi, the city of thieves. No house more than one floor high, because no man ever live there who want to build anything, whether home, trade, or family. No man build nor woman either, for who could tell if that man would be still living the next day, or the woman gone from whore to thief or the reverse. Everybody passing through, but people always coming, so a crowded city it was, though Masi was not even a city. If the Cheetah Society take the girl there instead of back south, they don’t plan to keep her.
“Her mother is a poor woman. She sell four hundred of her days to earn the silver.”
“Talk simple, woman.”
“She sell her freedom. Here you can sell yourself into slavery and buy the freedom back. People honor the agreement.”
“If you buying slavery, you don’t have no honor. Tell her to give the slaver back the money.”