“Tell me. Is it the southern living that take away your humor? You behind enemy lines.”
“They not my enemy,” I say, and she laugh again, loud enough to make me ask where was the joke.
“It’s the joke of recognition,” she say, then turn to Popele. “She said that I wouldn’t believe it even if I see you.”
“Right now I not believing I am still in this room.”
The woman grin again. Annoying me.
“Sorry, when we set out looking for you, I didn’t count on finding myself,” she say.
“You looking for me too, Luala Luala man?”
“He was the one who was looking for you first,” the woman say. “My name is Nsaka Ne Vampi. And you? You must be my great-great-grandmother.”
“What?”
“Matisha, she of the wind powers, she was your daughter. My great-grandmother.”
“I don’t have no kin.”
“I know what happen to you.”
“You. A girl. You don’t know nothing.”
“Matisha left me with words. A lot of words.”
“I don’t know no Matisha.”
“She knew you. ‘I was the only one who remember,’ she used to say.”
“Get out.”
“You in our house.”
“Then watch me leave.”
“Sogolon.”
“Which man from the North set this up? You making joke before you kill me?”
“Popele know about you from before you leave for Omororo.”
“I didn’t leave with nobody.”
“No. From the first time you leave. The voyage you don’t remember,” say the old man for the first time. “You think the gods just pick you up and put you down in that city?”
“Fucking gods, who you be?”
“Is Ikede they call me. I am a—”
“Griot. Coppermouth griot. Devils all of you must be. Devils.”
“I too know of that first voyage to Omororo. It is all there in the text. The griot who sail with you was my grandfather.”
I laugh out loud. And even when the laugh done I keep cackling to drive the bitterness off my tongue.
“Every one of my arrows dip with enough poison to kill a devil.”
“You wake one morning in Omororo and from that day, your memory ever fail to tell why. Not true?” Popele say.
“And what if it is?”
“And then when you finally walk, ride, fly, and sail back to Ibiku, nobody remember you.”
“But Matisha remember you,” say Nsaka Ne Vampi.
“Quiet your mouth.”
“Great-Grandmother was the only one who remember that she supposed to know you, that you were close, maybe even blood.”
“I was blood! I was the fucking blood! All of them come out of me, all the blood of my own damn blood!” I shout. “Not a single one. Not a single . . .”
I curse the tears as soon as I feel them and wipe them before they leave my cheek. I curse them too because they quiet themselves to make space for whatever flood of feeling they expect to come. Nobody was going to see me take leave of myself, certainly not three devils who claim to know me.
“You want to know why,” Nsaka say.
“I want to leave.”
“But you don’t. Not yet,” the griot say.
“I stomp on that grief one hundred thirty and six years ago. Not that you say, one hundred thirty and six? I try ten times. Then I say goodbye to that house, and good riddance. And now come the three of you, sprite, griot, and whoever you think you are.”
“You think this is the first time we meet?” Popele say. “Here is truth. This is the tenth time I am talking to you, and the fourth city too. As for his grandfather, Bolom was with you until the day you wake up with no memory.”
“Indeed. He wake up right beside you but think you was a beggar. He didn’t remember you either. Nobody remembered nobody, you understand? But trust the gods. Trust the gods, for my name is Ikede and I am a southern griot.”
He say that four more times before I catch what he mean. Southern griots, the only clan that write the history down.
“Paper don’t forget, nor ink neither,” he say. “Paper is where I find you. And where you going to find yourself.”
EIGHTEEN
So this ship set sail for the wild sea with twelve man, one woman, and me. See us now, five days passed since we pull up anchor under a morning with a waking sun, but a morning cool also, this a trick of the gods. For gods of sea have fickle understanding and uncertain temper, and whoever sail around the south horn do so at their whim, and not from whatever wisdom a sailor could give you. But many a boatsman going tell you this. Don’t get caught in open sea if the gods change their mind suddensome and blow a wind west. Spirits of air will work mischief with spirits of water and lure you into a moonless current that throw a wave as high as fifty man-lengths, a wave that break the back of the biggest ship. Hear this, a quartermaster say to me at this inn one night. Not even six moons pass since three slave ships bound for Weme Witu take foolish wisdom from a star watcher and sail out in wild sky. Three ship, seventy crew, and four hundred slave all disappear without a whisper. Disappear in that same current we sailing to.
We push off from Kwakubioko Port in a ship that people in the South call a baghlah, and people in the North call a ganjah, but most just call it a dhow. Kwakubioko Port sit on the southwest nose of the princedom of Lish. So behold Lish, rising out of the sea, but bigger than two large kingdoms put together. Long time ago man from far lands meet with, trade with, live with, then breed with the many woman of Lish and produce their own people, who look nothing like people from either North or South. People with lips thick but pink, and skin like tamarind shell, and hair woolly but soft, and eyelash thin. People who build their life so much around the sea that some of them breathe like fish. I see it. Five day now out to sea and the smell of them still follow we.