Bezila nathi. They mourn with us. By the evening of the next day, Mistress Komwono’s eldest sister put down the multitude of tasks the gods are expecting her to finish in order to offer her open bosom to her grieving sister. This sister short where the mistress tall, and fat in the front where the mistress just wide at the side, and anybody looking at her would say, Praise the gods for they bless you with another child. The mistress have no children so the sister bring nine of her own, all boys, the oldest scraping the doorway with his head, the youngest leaving the smell of baby shit in every room he enter. Three to six cry, two to three shout, eight or nine yell, four or five laugh, and at least ten times somebody bawl out, Stop it at once! None of this from grief.
But the sister make it known to everybody in the house that she come to shoulder the burden of her sister’s sorrow. And what a burden it is, praise the gods, for they know of the multitude of things she have to do. Which is why she demand fufu every day, both from yam and plantain, three kinds of soup, two chickens every morning, a fresh new goat, and millet porridge because all but one of her boys hate the taste of sorghum. And no meal too hot or you will get a slap, or too cold or you will get a pinch. The cook say to make everything the warmth of baby piss, and all ten will be happy, which prove true. The mistress eat nothing.
And Mistress Komwono. She was the second to find the body after the slave girl get up from the kitchen floor at dawn and sneak to the library expecting to do what the master always summon her to do. Instead scream and wake up the house. The mistress, coming home from her sister’s, where it had been cooler but far too noisy to sleep with all nine of her sister children waking in turn and disrupting the night, go quick to the room where the screams come from, hoping to catch her husband in the act of something awful, something he only bold enough to do when she gone, that she can hold against him. She reach before the cook and the twin boys, who arrive right in time to grab her arms before the mistress faint and hit the floor. Mistress Komwono bawl and keen and weep and scream and holler and spit, and laugh over her husband all in a manner unbecoming of a noble lady. This come from the cook, who say that only a moon ago this same mistress would have said the same thing about somebody else. Since the discovery of the master’s body at dawn, she, the cook, take it on herself to run the household, with no direction from the mistress that she is now to run the house. That running come to an end at noon when the mistress’s sister arrive yelling, What happen to my brother-in-law? Though nobody at the house remember sending word for her. The first thing this sister, who call herself Lady Mistress Morongo, do is demand they move the body from the welcome room to one of the end rooms that Sogolon can’t remember stepping foot in, after all they can’t have his body in these chambers. It have a hole in it.
Mistress Komwono take to her bed through most of the day and don’t have the will to tell her sister and her nine nephews to keep quiet, you disrupting my grief. The cook, she begin to worry about her eating less and less until two days later when the mistress eat nothing at all. Her sister say, Yes, what a shame but give the bowl to my middle child for between those above him and those below always forget him, and no food should go to waste. That night, the cook go to the mistress to check if sorrow is making her ill and find her fast asleep, not on the marriage bed, but the floor. The cook, thinking she fall off, rush to wake her and steer her back to the bed. But the mistress box away her hands and say it cooler on the floor. But the room already cold, Mistress, why you looking for colder? the cook ask. She look on the floor and see a headrest and all sort of linen, spread out like a bed.
“A spirit in the bed,” Mistress Komwono say. “He didn’t die good and now he on my bed. Last night he reach under my nightdress.”
The cook overstep her station and say perhaps it should bring her some happiness to know that even in the next world the master still have a raging desire for her in this one, to which the mistress say, “I never say it was him.”
The next day the sister waddle into the cookroom, fanning herself and asking what is to be done now, for the poor woman talking to herself. One of the twins say, “Maybe she talking to the ancestors, Mistress. Maybe she seeing about her husband’s safe passage. I mean to the otherworld.”
“Who in the name of gods wise and stupid permit this boy to talk to me?” the sister ask.
This is witchcraft and evil, the slave girl say and the thought take life in the house. The cook declare that she will never leave the mistress at her weakest, for that kind of disloyalty would get out and poison her search for new work. The slave can’t leave for she bound to the Komwono name. The boy twins refuse to leave but they never sleep in the house, but with the horses, and Sogolon don’t have nowhere to go. They close the library after the twins pull the master to the welcome room. Everybody wait in their own fashion for evil signs and malevolent wonders, but none come.
Though nobody call them, the magistrate come, along with two deputies who look like their balls still waiting on hair long past due. The mistress was in no mood for talking, except to say that the Komwono name surely buy her privacy to grieve her husband. And the cook was in no mood to watch strangers turn upside everything in the house, especially when the first thing he do, he knock over the boli, then marvel at how it didn’t break. Crime not some boat in the night. It can’t just pass by like that, he say. Good, then find the devils who hoist him up right up to the ceiling and drive them out, since you clearly of the badder sort, she say. Everybody in this quarter know the magistrate is as cowardly as his deputies are stupid. Me not done with this house, he say, but done he surely was, for he never come back.