In two more days the families of both wife and husband arrive. The number so large that the house swell and burst, and some have to find lodging nearby, while others curse and say they going back home. Lady Mistress Morongo whine and curse because all she’s thinking about is the well-being of her sister and these people come to take everything, eat everything, and sleep everywhere. But her voice now lost in the house, this she say to the cook. Mistress Komwono have three sisters in total and they all come with their large families. But the master have three brothers and three sisters, who come with their children and their grandchildren all in dozens upon dozens. This overwhelm the cook, who have to call in two women to help, two who never see inside Mistress Komwono’s house before.
The master’s family different from the mistress’s in ways plain to see. Here is where it come clear that they are an old family, for they carry themselves that way. Head high like they don’t look down to count money. They squat despite stools everywhere and none of them is fat. But shifty, like the master, as if they all keeping secret, even from each other. The oldest brother, he who bring five children, already take it on himself to make arrangement for the rites. The youngest brother, without counsel from anyone, decide that it is witchcraft that kill the master and as soon as he find her, drag the slave girl right into the middle of the yard to flog her until she confess. He get one of the twins to tie her up with grass rope, ignoring her bawling, begging, and screaming. Talk ’bout your necromancy! Talk ’bout your malcontent! he shout. He lash her twice before his sister yell at him to stop. The brother shout that this is man business and to keep out, to which the sister say, This is business of man with sense and in all these years you never show any. The man grab the stick and march to his sister as if about to beat her too. My husband can break your back with one hand, you little piece of dog shit, she say, loud enough that the whole house hear, for now most of the house up and bored. Who else have reason to go against her master but a slave? he say and scowl. He is still thinking at the end of this argument is his victory. This little stick of a girl look like she know witchcraft? She look like she know any craft? The little thing can’t even read, his sister say.
“You all think your brother impale himself?” he ask. He let it come out, how he seem to be the only one concerned that his brother didn’t die right. “Maybe all of you been wishing for him to be dead,” he say.
“Maybe we waiting on the investigation from the magistrate, brother.”
“He already come and gone. They speak of it at the markets.”
“Maybe he solve it, then.”
“The question still unanswered, sister,” he say.
“If you still don’t know what she doing in your brother’s library before even chicken wake up, then no wonder you have only one child.”
“Must be some reckless fucking you putting on, sister, if you thinking is that cause his death. What he was fucking, a bat?”
The brother let go of the slave, but not the matter. It don’t take long for the word to leak out in the street that devilry set upon the Komwono house. Especially when the leaking is the youngest brother’s doing. One of those bitches in the house studying evil, he say to a pillar that in his drunkenness he mistake for an agreeable man. Get your stinking paw off me, he say to one of the twins, who go to fetch him.
This brother summon fetish priests and Ifa diviners to the house at his dead brother’s expense. They sweep the library with their eyes, then sweep it with a broom, collecting dust, and paper, and whatever piece of a thing they can’t identify, coin that nobody can spend, and whatever is now dry from whatever spill from when man and woman fuck. And all the dry blood on the floor. They also cut some of Nanil the slave girl’s hair, and ask for articles of her clothing, but she only have the one cloth she have on. And they take some of the master’s precious books, though they don’t say what they need those for. The library is the only room empty of people. When the brothers decide it is time for umkapho, the youngest curse and say, What is the use of sending word to the ancestors if nobody can tell them where his soul be or where it going to go? Then give no speech at the rites, the oldest brother say and the men of the house leave him.
Meanwhile Sogolon stay in the grain keep, out of the eye of everyone. Because nobody call on her, nobody see the dark swelling right below her eye. She set her mat in a corner so small that the girl have to curl in like a baby just to fit. Then she pull her dress over her head up to her waist, leaving the rest of her body to the flies and itchy grain. Nobody have need for her, most of all the mistress, who stay in her room and sleep on the floor, except for once when her sisters break into the chamber with two urns full of water, saying if you won’t do nothing at all that is your choice, but first you going to wash. Her sisters and sisters-in-law all grab her like they capture wild game, and strip her while she struggle and scream, and all Sogolon, the slave, and the cook can do is watch. Until they close the door so that no man or lower woman see how uncleanness and grief bring a woman down low.
The eighth night Sogolon jump up like something wake her. She roll on her back and look out the window. The house full, yet everybody is asleep. Everybody is able to, even the mistress, whose grief is driving her mad. But not Sogolon. See the girl. She take herself out of the grain keep and go into the courtyard to see even the chickens asleep. If you go past the corridor on the other side, stooping below the cookroom window and staying low, you will get to the same gate the back door lead out to, and from there you can run away. But run away to what? another voice inside her head ask. Not run to, run from, say another voice. Run before they find out. Run because soon they know. Wind outside slip in, like a whisper she overhear from another room in a tongue she do not know. A whisper that sound like a giggle, then a cackle, then a growl, and all around she feel the dirt start to shift and the grain shake. A rumble, a crack that open a sinkhole and swallow her full.
Sogolon wake up choking hard. She hack a cough in the dark. She is on the mat in the grain keep and can hear flames waking up the cookroom. Dawn. She remember just then that is not that she cannot sleep. Is that she don’t dare.