Sogolon vomit. Each time she try to cough, she hurl instead. She run to an urn and vomit again, then look up to see the King Sister in a chair, staring out the window.
“Sometimes when sorrow and anger war for space in your head, neither win,” she say. “I tell myself, Emini, you should feel sorrow, but I only come up with pity. I say, Emini, isn’t rage rising up in you? What say you to fury? But what coming out of my mouth is disgust. So much disgust I want to vomit. At least that is something. Most times I just come up with nothing. Silly, stupid cow, how did she think this would end? She do the King great service by betraying me, but doing that only get her marked as a woman who betrays. And if the princess is wrong to trust her, why would a king? Learn that lesson, girl, especially if you thinking only for yourself.”
“She have something in her hand,” Sogolon say.
“Must be her bracelet.”
“Not on her wrist. In her fingers like she holding it. It look red.”
“Must be blood.”
“Blood would look black by now.”
“Sogolon, who cares what the dead bitch have in her hand?”
But something make Sogolon care. A voice that sound like her ask, What you think you doing? when she approach the window. Then the King Sister say the same thing. Sogolon pretend she don’t hear. The curtains blow out of the way, and there is the woman, looking like she is crouching and about to rise. They leaned the stake so that she almost come through the window, and the woman look as if she is about to climb in. Sogolon tell herself she don’t want to know, but as she reach the window, she see which hole take the stake. Sogolon still herself, stop her belly from expelling through her mouth. The red thing not shining, nor glimmering, just red, like a bold fabric, like living silk, unlike everything else on her.
“Fetch it,” Emini say. Sogolon turn around and the King Sister look down on her feet. Things done change in this house and they both know.
“Do fetch it,” Emini say in the closest she is going to come to begging.
It move Sogolon, not out of pity but amazement. The King Sister use as much will to say those three words as others would to row a ship. Sogolon almost pitch herself out the window trying to lean out to grab the red thing. The stink rise up anew and make her eyes burn. The headwoman is smiling at her with her damn red teeth. Sogolon lean out the window again to see that she is not smiling, her lips are eaten off. She won’t get the red thing unless she lean far out and pry it from the headwoman’s hand. Sogolon sigh.
“Is a key. A red ribbon tie to a key,” she say.
Emini whimper a what? and jump from her seat. She rush over just as Sogolon climb back in. She stare at the key and her mouth quiver. Fear rush over her face and she start to back away slow, as if a beast about to corner her. She almost stumble, the way she trembling. Is just a key, Sogolon thinking. Maybe she don’t see that it is a key and red ribbon. Nothing else. Sogolon make one step to the King Sister, who cry out and run.
* * *
—
Only a certain kind of woman get a key with a red ribbon. It open a door that few come to by choice, and that choice no woman ever make. Sogolon still remember the King Sister crying, and how in her running she have to stop herself from falling. It perplex her, for every abuse this woman suffer so far she take it by laughing at her abuser. Her mighty mouth and savage tongue, which can wither elders, sages, priests, even her own brother, fail in the presence of just a key. Brass and not even shiny, is all she think when she look at it. And heavy. Sogolon never see one before and don’t know what it mean until the womanservant, the one who always smiling, come to the kitchen to cook. The grinning annoy Sogolon so much that she want to slap it off the woman’s face.
“You don’t see what outside?” she almost shouting.
“What outside?” the womanservant ask.
Scream at her, maybe. Or drag her to the window. Or just ask the dim-light bitch if she can’t fucking smell. Sogolon thinking all three, and they run back and forth in her head until she remember that this woman would never have a reason to see the back or even the far side of this palace. As for the stink, she can’t tell if it gone or if she get used to it. Or if the smiling woman just ignoring it. Truth, sometimes the womanservant look like she smiling by force, mouth wide in a grin though her eyes not grinning, and showing her teeth for too long. She rolling dough to bake bread on stone when Sogolon place the key on a table. The womanservant turn around with a smile that drop from her face as soon as she see it.
“W-where that come from?” she ask. Sogolon mark the stutter, and the way she shifting slowly away from the table. “How you come by it?”
“It come to the palace,” Sogolon say.
“The gods,” she whisper. “It come for you?”
“No.”
“Trust the gods. Trust the gods. You have to trust the gods.”
“I say it don’t come for me, oh.”
“Then who it come for?”
“She run when she see it.”
“You should run from it too!”
“What the key mean?”
“You really is a swamp girl.”
“Now look like a time to be rude? I ask a question.”
“Girl, if somebody get a key, you know somebody get a death.”
The woman walk over to the window, still talking but not to Sogolon.
“So it go. She is the sister to the King and the King is a death away from being a god. Who going kill the sister of a god, eh? Who?”
“Woman, make sense.”
“When a woman condemned to death but no hand can kill her. When a man tired of the old wife but she won’t make space for the new, or when a rich man hiding a bastard girl-child, or one who born slow, or deformed, or born looking like the moon. They send them there, girl. The key with the red ribbon open the door. I hear that the key can let you in, but no key can let you back out.”
“You one of them woman who when she explain something leave everybody more perplex?”
“Guards soon come to take you away. By the gods I hope they don’t take me too.”
“But I don’t do nothing.”
“But you with her.”
“So are you.”
“Trust the gods. Trust the gods.”
“Take her to where?”
“Mantha,” say the woman, looking at Sogolon with monstrous pity.
* * *