Right after noon the men come back with some elders and a cow. They slaughter it right there in the courtyard, letting the blood run where it choose to run, this perhaps a message from the god of judgment and revenge. The youngest brother point to a stream of blood heading to the cookroom and say, I too tired to tell you that witchery coming from over there, but by now people stop listen. This is what the men do. After they kill the cow, they cut up the flesh, chop the bones, and cook the whole thing in three pots with neither flavor nor spice. Then every person related by blood or by law eats. They sit on the floor in the house, in the walkway, in the dirt of the courtyard, and out in the street. They hiss and frown at the awful taste, but say nothing for fear of angering the ancestors, who are watching and making judgment of both the living and the dead. Cook, slave, servants, and Sogolon just watch.
The same afternoon the women curse each other out. Send the children away, say the mistress’s sisters, for they have fewer children, even when you add Lady Mistress Morongo with her nine. And yours are the loudest, the most vulgar, the most spoiled, and the most getting into fights, the Komwono women, the master’s sisters and wives say. Lady Mistress Morongo say the dead not yet gone and when he carrying messages to the ancestors, his behavior attracting spirits. Besides, everybody know that bad spirits love funerals. But the master’s sisters reply that all of you daft, just like your husbands. Light a lamp in every window and no bad spirits will come in, that is all. Lady Mistress Morongo heave herself in front of the Komwono sisters and wives like she is about to brush back dirt with a hoof, and snort. Who you all calling daft? None of you bush pussy used to cover up your titty before your brother marry my sister’s money and property, she say. Komwono the legendary warrior clan. War done fight, oh. This appall the Komwonos, for their grand name is all they have. You all just afraid that your children still have eyes to see what they shouldn’t see, they say. A sister, seeing her across the courtyard, shout to Sogolon, the first time any of the relatives on either side so much as say a word to her.
“How old you be? Yes, you, the one covered in the grain that bitch cook make me eat. How old you be?”
Sogolon is standing by the grain keep, but now with all eyes on her, she don’t know how to be.
“Me, Mistress?”
“Then who else, girl? How old you be?”
“Ten and three, Mistress?”
“Hmph. You . . .” She let that point die before going to another. “You still a child then. Tell me, young girl, tell all these precious, intelligent ladies. You see any spirits round here these nights? Anybody bother you?”
Sogolon take a good look at the sisters and the sisters-in-law, the master’s kin and the mistress’s, and forget which is which. Four on one side, three on the other, and they all look like each other more than the master or mistress.
“No, Mistress. I don’t see nobody,” she say.
For all Sogolon do is watch. Then she watch herself watching, watching to the point of knowing deep what is not her business. So in two days she know which brother and which sister-in-law, and which sister and which brother-in-law is closer than the married couple was in this life. She spend all the time she can looking out, and with the crowd ever growing there is always somebody new to watch, to study, and to follow. But she know that is not why. After two days nothing more is curious about the people or the world. And yet still she up all night through dawn and sluggish in the day.
Sogolon watching herself for the change, for she know it coming. She know it might already be here. A change in her voice, a change in her walk, a change in how her face look when people ask her a question. She don’t know how she know, that being in the same room to see death come and leave, taking a life not yours must stain you. She feeling different. Sometimes is a heaviness like what will happen to her body in two quartermoon. Moonblood. But this is not like that, this come on like a quick sickness, linger for longer than anybody would want, then leave when it choose. She can’t describe it even to herself. Not a heat, but it feel like heat burning her head slow. Not an ache, though it feel like a hurt. More like a disquiet. A vile disquiet. A most uncomfortable thing that won’t decide if it is a thought or a feeling. Like something at the back of her head, not unlike the first time somebody give her coffee. She wish it is coffee. She feel bad at comparing it to something so light, but what there is for her to compare it to? At night it feel worse, a thing that take over a side of her head, quiver down her shoulders, and tremble on her fingertips, a thing that make her want to cut her skin open and climb out of it. She want to get out of it so bad she would peel herself to do it. That is the only way she can think of it, this creeping heat that is not heat, pain that is not pain, madness that is not mad. Just this . . . she don’t know. And thinking over and over don’t make her know any more than before. Sogolon see the flame in the cookroom and wonder if she stick her hand in it, not enough to burn her bad, but enough to hurt her so, then this night creeper, for that is what she start to call it, would creep away. Chase away pain with pain. When her brothers forget to feed her, sometimes her head would fly up in an agony as if furious with her, and all she could do is beat her head on the dirt over and over until one pain defeat the other, and sometimes both vanish. The creeper in her head make her want to beat it out. No. She know it will never go out. It come upon her every evening and steal away her sleep. Sometimes it come in the morning when she gathering grain, or when she see one of the master’s brothers, or at a thing connected to nothing, like finding a hole in her dress, or seeing a sunset deep not with orange, but purple.