Fasisi is different. Bigger, wider, more crowded, and louder, but that is not it. For all its loud noise something about it quiet in a way that take me a while to hear. No music. Some drumming, and from temple nearby some chanting, but no kora, no kalimba, and no ngoni. No harp, no bow, no balafon either. And nobody who play them or sing. I was there when they come from the griots, I know it. I who lose music walking among people who never have, and I don’t know who the gods would call worse off.
Fasisi is different. King after king serving themselves take their toll on even the tiniest street. A land reshaping itself for war mean a land where nobody build a house to stand higher than two floors and most times not even that. A land shaped for war build a wall right around it that take at least fifty years and tens of thousands of men. A land shaped for war now have forts with lookouts at the high point of every district, even the floating district. But the house is still standing, and I am in the outer yard and don’t move until Nsaka say, Follow me.
“There used to be nkisi nkondi right there. Bigger than a small child it was,” I say. Nsaka nod but don’t say nothing. “What they do with it?”
“You going have to ask . . .” She say, but stop. I want her to continue, especially if it lead to a fight. I don’t know why, maybe because the last time I leave this house I could kill the people in it. At least that is how I did sometimes feel. Instead she turn to me and say, “I know it seem like just a few summers to you.”
“I know how much time pass.”
“I didn’t say know, I said seem.”
“First time I ever come through this door, somebody say I look underfed.”
“Still look like you never take heed,” she say, and lead me into my own welcome room.
We pass a room where I expect to hear a lion roar, but instead children squeal. Two boys and two girls, no, three, for one in the dark who I didn’t see until her eyes trap the lamplight. A picky-hair woman with thick arms also come out of the dark.
“You again, sister? Every time you say you making tracks, the tracks lead you right back here,” she say, all the while looking at me.
“Must be your fufu that keep luring me back.”
“Uh-huh. She come all the way back for mash-down cassava with no flavor. Who you, a fellow adventuress?” the picky-hair woman say.
Nsaka giggle. “No, she your great-great-grandmother,” she say.
The sister put down the bundle in her hand and approach me. She look at my hands first, then my face.
“Is that right? Mother and Grandmother and Great-Grandmother all dead, and all three look older than this one when they dead. You the one she get it from? Nsaka and some of the other relations. Her gifts, I mean.”
I turn to Nsaka. “You call it curse last moon.”
“Some things are two things at once.” Nsaka say.
“Great-Grandma never say nothing about you. She live extra long, longer than Mama, but even she never get as old as you must be. And yet you look like you could be we mother. Where you been living all this time?” the sister say.
“In the South.”
“I hear all the women there chest flat and the men fuck each other. Children, come in here and meet you great-great-great-grandmother.”
The boys and girls tumble in one after the other. One ask if I was older than a tree. Another ask what great-great-great-grandmother mean. The youngest girl and boy, twins, both touch my face and grab my hair. The boy grab my breast and I almost slap him. They look over me like they seeing a strange beast before it become their own. I look over them, searching for something in their eyes maybe, or voice, or how they feel when they touch me to see if I real. I don’t know what I looking for, but I don’t find it.
“You can cook?”
“Oseye, stop looking for a housemaid,” Nsaka say.
“She look like she need the work. At least a meal. Nobody ever take you to a fatting house?”
“So she can waddle like you?”
“There are other things you learn at the fatting house. Like how to comb your hair and stand like a woman.”
“She is your great-great-grandmother,” Nsaka say. I turn to her.
“Who else of family still live in—”
“Ibiku?”
“The North,” I say.
“Too damn many if you ask me,” say Oseye. “And none of them good for no housework. Is you they get that from? Our no-use brothers either selling contraband in Baganda or serving in the King’s corps like their fathers before them. You have a cousin who is a fetish priest in Juba, another that teach at the Palace of Wisdom, I hear. And if you never heard of your relation Dunsimi, count yourself lucky, for he rape a noblewoman and kill her husband who was a lord near ten years ago. The women holding together the family that the men keep trying to tear apart. Great-grandfather have a stone in his name in the royal graveyard. Seems he became a distinguished guard to the King. Men even recall him when they recall great men. What we get from your side of the family.”
“Woman who don’t settle,” Nsaka say.
“And where that get you?” ask the sister.
“Far away from here.”
“And look who just walk through the door.”
“Didn’t do it for me or for you, but for her.”
I want to see the room where me and Keme used to sleep. I feel like this is my house, but I also know that it is not. In this house, with these women, I can’t remember my children. They refuse to come to mind. Instead all I remember is Keme coming to me in the backyard and how us talking turn into us fucking all the time, with me twitching from him inside me, but also not being able to stop, considering the space we was in and who else was in it. And how big my grip was on his cock, and how loud we would fuck in this room and that room when the children all gone sporting, and how he smell when he was half lion, which was different from when he was full. The thought should shame me, but it don’t. It’s the living, the sweating, marking this place in my piss and moonblood and his sperm that I remember.
“I could swear that great-great-grandmother died years ago.”
“Oseye.”
“What? I only going by what I know and what Grandma remember. And I could swear—”
“Oseye!”
“What! Oh . . .”
“She was nice? Keme’s second wife?” I ask.
“She was here. At least that is what Great-Grandma say. Matisha was not one for talking about the past. You two here for supper or just passing through?”
Neither of us answer.
“You keep looking down there. If you want to go look I not stopping you,” Oseye say, after I glance down the hallway leading to the bedchamber for the third or fourth time. I don’t remember anything in this room, and don’t know why I was expecting to. Yes they are blood, but they are different people living in a different way, which make this a different house. Children’s clothes, and little girl trinkets. And sacks that smell like grain. And gold jewelry hanging from a stick, and stools and chairs all over because the house run out of space. The strangeness make me weak and I sit on a stool too low. You was looking for a welcome, say the voice that sound like me. You was looking for somebody to call you Mama, though all of them long dead. But get the truth of what you feel. That you miss the children, yes, but not as much as your man. Your lion. I bowl over as if about to cry, but tears don’t come.