“You look underfed,” she say.
I could say that a man like Keme leave you with a picture of what his wife might be, a picture that take up space in your head as soon as he talk, as soon as he walk, as soon as he emerge from the river naked, even as soon as he eat. This is not the woman I did see in my head, but now I can’t remember who I did see. Deep in the house children are squealing. Delight. The wife sigh, not from contempt, for no such look come over her face. Tired, I was guessing, until she say that she too tired for the excitement tonight with him and them, and they going want to play with you too. I still trying to steal look at her. Among the river people some women have plates in their bottom lips bigger than a dish. She have two big as the palm of my hand in her ears, her lobe stretched right around them. Skin darker than coffee ground of the deepest roast with a line of beauty scars running along her brow, which is all I see in the lamplight. She turn and walk into the house, expecting me to follow. I pass a room where Keme was on all fours growling like a big cat and mauling his children while they squeal, jump all over him, and growl too. The wife hiss. I want to say that a grown man playing is something I don’t like either, but I quiet myself, for this woman looking like she just can’t wait to tell me that I and she are not and will never be friends.
“I don’t have nowhere to go,” I say. “Is the only reason I come with him. Give me some food and I will leave.”
“Nonsense. You just say you have nowhere to go,” she say and walk to the kitchen, still expecting me to follow her.
* * *
—
How you reach this far in years but don’t have no use?” she say, Keme’s wife, who answer to the name Yétúnde. A woman he steal from Wakadishu is what she call herself, and right now in the kitchen, crouching around a steaming pot of ewa aganyin, she is telling me how every woman from Wakadishu can cook before they reach nine, otherwise how they going to find husband at ten? She see my face.
“That was a joke, girl,” she say. “No father send off his daughter to get crush by some big, smelly man until she is at least ten and two in years.”
Her laugh shake the room, and a slap on her own thigh finish it off. Right before, we both was coughing, for she tell me to watch the yam and I look away only once, to turn back to it burning and smoke filling half the room. But the question linger with her for too long.
“Woman in Mitu don’t cook?”
“Never live long enough in Mitu to become a woman,” I say.
By then I was staying under this roof for two moons. Six moons later I stop saying staying and start saying living, when I hear the wife say to Keme, You set that ship asail long time gone, she living here now. She was answering a question I didn’t hear. I am not much use around the kitchen, can’t clean the floor without leaving half the dirt behind, and don’t know what I supposed to do with dirty clothes and water to get them clean, but I can pound grain and if I stay still the children, all three of them, roll, crawl, jump, and walk all over me. Wherever I go they all scream and beg to follow even though all I do is walk, and all they do is follow behind me in a single line like little ducks. Look how they take to you, Yétúnde say whenever we come back. She tell me all the time, Look how you made for raising children. But whenever I ask what kind of raising she see me do, for I not seeing it, she just laugh. Whenever the children ask me where I come from, I tell them I sprout from the middle of a yellow bush lily.
Sometime four nights would go before I see Keme, then he appear in the room I stay at sunset. Or in the room I play with the children, or in the small field behind the house, the reason why he live in Ibiku district, though most of the Red Army live in Ugliko to be nearer to the King.
“Chibundu,” he say.
“Is not my name.”
“You the one who choose it.”
“For two moons your name was the Marshal, and I didn’t give you no fuss.”
“Mouth full of mirth even when you not trying to be funny,” he say to perplex me. I can’t think of no other reason. He shed his red armor somewhere, leaving his red tunic underneath, and I almost tell him to keep on the helmet for I like the wings. He sit in the grass while I pound corn to powder. I don’t have to look up to know that he is watching me.
“Chi . . . Sogolon. This new fetish priest send us all home with totems. Says we’re to pray to them and ask for abundance from the gods. I say to my general, What does he care about the food we eat, or the number of children we have? Beremu says to me that the general wants me to pray for abundance of soldiers, so we can go to war. Now, I would be the first to agree that peace is an ill fit for North and South. But war? Again?”
“Show of armies don’t have to mean readying for war.”
“So it go? Then what else it mean?”
“Men like showing off their weapon just for the sake of showing,” I say.
“Ha, I would take those words a certain way, if the look on your face didn’t say different.”
“What you mean?” I ask, but I know what he mean. Keme don’t answer.
“So, you want a fetish?” he ask.
“No.”
“Why not?”
“I have no view on the gods.”
“You don’t trust the gods?”
“The gods don’t trust the gods.”
“Is so it go? Which one whisper that in your ear?”
“If I was a god knowing how other gods behave, why would I trust them?”
“Girl, you sound like you’ve been thinking about this long.”
“What is any sort of god that you should spend any time thinking about him?”
He look up into the sky.
“Sango, when you send lightning please spare my house and strike only her,” he say and laugh. “What you have against the gods?” he ask.
“What you have for them?” I reply.
“Don’t answer a question with a question, girl.”
Keme sprawl himself wider on the grass, clear to me that he is enjoying himself. He beckon me to sit, but he look different in his own yard, like a master, and I not sure what I am yet.
“I don’t have no reason to pray to the gods,” I say.
“No reason? Listen to this girl. Food? Shelter? Good robes? Success in war? Rain? And that’s just for what you want. And then what about thanking the gods for all the good, and for being good.”
“No god good.”
He frown, then he smile, then he say, “Put down the mortar and speak, little miss sage,” and I try to not let it annoy me.
“I used to hear Mistress Komwono—”
“Who?”
“Nobody. I used to hear her say, Trust the gods, for in the end the gods are good. And yet she still get banished. Seem to me that the gods say they are good only because they are gods and nobody can challenge them, even if they really wicked. Or good is good and evil is evil whether there is a god or not, and if is so that go, then calling a god good is worthless too.”
Keme look at me like I say something fearful, and I look away like I say too much.
“Sorry,” I say.