The Ukundunka lower his head right in front of her. A head long like a horse, eyes like a wolf, teeth like a crocodile. Breath like she don’t know.
“They are one, you understand me? The Ukundunka and the talisman, they are one. Let me tell you a story. Once after we long married, I say to my husband, Dearest husband, everybody know that you are an important man. Everybody know that is important business that keep you out late at night. The gods know how I worry. I worry so much that I ask a conjurer close in spirit to the gods to make me something to keep my husband safe. Yes husband, I say. You carry this talisman always and Ukundunka will protect you. An important man like you, with enemies everywhere, why, you could be in a ditch! So every night, if I flip the hourglass more than five times and there’s no sign of my husband, I send the Ukundunka searching for the talisman. To keep him safe, you understand me? Lo, one night he not only come home late, but he come home without it. Lost it, he say. He say don’t bother find it for I don’t know where it gone. I say don’t worry husband, I soon find it and deal with who take it. Now look at it resting in the bosom of a whore.”
“I not a whore.”
“You’re in a whorehouse. Odds not good that you’re a nun.”
“I not a whore.”
“You’re not a cook.”
“I not no whore, oh.”
“Then why this room smell of men?”
The little girl have no answer. She could have said that yes, the room stunk of men, but none of that stink is on her. But a talk of sleeping poisons would lead to Miss Azora finding out. The noblewoman eye her deep, inspecting her.
“Maybe you can give him a child. I’m certainly not about to suffer one, certainly not with him. Ha, the shock on your face. You really are a child.”
“I never whore. I never whore with none of them.”
“Never, eh?”
“I rob them.”
The little girl is getting more disturbed by the woman’s stare than by the Ukundunka hiss. But then her frown break into a smile.
“Gold? Cowrie? Money notes? Talk to me, girl.”
The little girl can do nothing but stare at her again. She wonders if this is what grown women do, unveil and unveil, surprise and surprise, until the only thing one can expect from her is wonder.
“I take whatever they have that shouldn’t be hanging loose. And I keep it, for Miss Azora give us nothing.”
“Nothing at all? Your clothes?”
“We buy. I say she don’t give us nothing. Except for one thing. She give all of us a rape the first time she sell us, and charge the man triple money. So I mix them a potion, then I rob them.”
“Eh. So they take nothing from you, but you take plenty from them? See here, girl, you in the wrong house.”
“I not leaving one user for another.”
“Who say you even have use?”
The little girl leave with the noblewoman that night. Miss Azora say nothing. Miss Azora don’t move from the spot where the Ukundunka throw her, so who knows what is the fate of her. The noblewoman ask the girl her name.
“I don’t have none.”
“What? What do people call you?”
“Little one, little dung, little girl, little whore, girl, forbidden lily.”
“Enough. You choose a name and that is what we will call you.”
“I call my mother Sogolon.”
See the girl take her dead mother’s name, one hundred seventy and seven years ago. One hundred seventy and seven times that the great gourd of the world spin around the sun.
Sogolon.
TWO
Sogolon, stop walking into walls. You not a little girl anymore.”
See the girl. She want to tell Mistress Komwono that she not running into walls by habit, nor is she seeking self-harm. But it is curious, the feel of smashing yourself against something so stiff, that don’t take in the hit like cotton, or silence the hit like dirt, or allow you to sink in it, like mud, or scoop some away, like clay. It is new to feel what will stop you no matter how hard you run. For the way forward cannot be through if the barrier is stone. No bounce, no echo, no sound, final. Yet it is not stone, even if stone help to make it. Rough and grainy, but not like dirt, more like sand, as if somebody find a way to put sand together so that it is stronger than wood. And cold, the wall is always cold, like an ax-head in the early morning that the cook would drop in the jug of wine to cool it. Two mornings, maybe three, maybe ten, she go to a wall, perhaps the dark end of the cookroom, the back wall facing the garden, the inside of the grain keep, anyplace nobody can see her, and lick it.
Walls like these, taste is not the only difference. From the first day Sogolon come through the back door, and nearly every day after that, the mistress boast that this is no ordinary house. And certainly not some vulgar Kongori house, but a dwelling fit for any great lord above the sand sea. No expense we spare to make our house look like something out of an eastern dream, say the mistress. Sogolon don’t yet visit no Kongori house, so she have none to compare it to. First, the ceiling, which is higher than a man standing on another man’s shoulder. Walls rough like stone but still shaped by hand, like a mud house from Mitu. Bigger windows than in any Kongori house, where they look like a hatch. Sharp wood support beams, high and out of reach, like whiskers on the wall and on which belts, swords, masks, fetishes, and shields hang. Lower, but still hanging high, textiles from all over the North and South Kingdoms and beyond. Right by the left window, the master’s stool, which he don’t allow nobody to sit in. A slave sit there once, the cook say. The master have a magistrate flog the boy until the little fool can’t tell water from piss. All over the house, rugs and cushions on the floor for whoever wish to sit. Everything in red and yellow and green and blue pattern.
But many a day Sogolon wander and find herself in a new room. Or rooms that look big a moon ago but small now. Rooms once hot, but now feeling cold. Rooms once right beside the cookroom, now far down the hall in the part of the house not even the master go. The room didn’t move, that she know, but it feel that way because there be too many to remember which is which. Perhaps that is why she couldn’t count how many people live there. The mistress and master. The fat cook, whose name she don’t know, and who never see the need to share it. The thin slave girl, who introduce herself as a slave before she reveal her name, Nanil. A boy who take care of the master horses, this she learn from the cook. Then one day she see this boy leading out a horse and sweeping the roof at the same time. Twins, but nobody tell her. Unless they have to, nobody talk to her.