“I going show you who is master in this house,” he shout.
“You is not my master,” I say, which enrage him more. He stomp to me again, but the wind (not wind) push him back. It drive him to shock, as the hunger come over me and I swing with the stick and strike him on the chest and the neck, top his head, and face, and he fall and I start to wail on him and didn’t even notice that the one screaming was me. He try to fight but I too fast, I whipping him until the stick come back red. He grab my foot to pull me down, and I kick him but he catch that foot too and he pull and I fall on my back so hard that I cough out the breath. He growl something about fighting him in his own house, defying him in his own house, and slap my face left, then right, then left again. He on me, pressing me down and as he rise to his knee I see an opening and kick him straight in the balls. He bawl out, drop beside, and curl like a baby still in the cowl. I jump and scream at him that no man get to call me property, no man, but then it come, another blow to my head that shatter clay. Yétúnde is yelling at me. I don’t say anything. All I do is turn to face her and she go flying into the wall and stay there. But that is not enough. My wind (not wind) pull her from the wall, then slam her back into it, pull slam, pull slam, until she stop moving. Keme get up but I scream at him and in the quick the wind grab his head, about to twist it until the neck break. Both of them rising before me as my breath race. I raise them higher, twisting her neck and wrenching his hand behind his back and bending every finger, waiting for ten snaps, then his wrist, then his elbow, which was going to bend in different way until it break, then break off, and as for she, her head drop but it wake up my anger and I slam her into the wall again and there is the ceiling so fling them up until they burst through their own roof straight toward the sun and— “Sogolon, please!” he shout, then whimper. “Sogolon, please.”
They both off the ground and I not hearing them. But then I turn around and there be two of the children, the youngest girl perplex, the older girl just looking. The wind (not wind) drop the both of them. I out of breath. The children still stare at me, following me with their eyes.
The morning birds have not yet woken outdoors and I gathering my things. By now I did save enough coin to afford a room somewhere in Baganda district, or one of those lonesome streets heading north, or anywhere that I would never see Keme again.
“No inn will have you,” Keme say. I don’t know how long he at the door, or how long he watching me.
“Who will have me is my business, not yours,” I say.
“I mean none will be open.” His right cheek have a long gash and his right eye won’t open right. It look like he is limping. Or that standing up is paining him.
“Then any street can have me until then.”
“Nobody saying you should leave, not even Yétúnde say so. You knock the memory out of her. She wondering which cow knock her down last evening. I think she think it was a dream.” Keme laugh, but it come out like a wheeze. Great pity come over me when I look at him, so I look away.
“If I was you, I would tell me to go,” I say.
“Good thing that nobody in this house is you.”
“I don’t bet on the fight. I am the fight,” I say.
“I don’t understand.”
“At the donga. I am the one fighting. The people call me No Name Boy.”
“But you are—”
“Too young. They don’t care. Since my first fight any man who lay him hand on me, I kill. Not just in the donga but out of it as well.”
“I see.”
“No, you don’t see. If Yétúnde at peace with a man who beat her, that is her mind. But I will surely kill you. Either right there or in your sleep, and I don’t care if your child sleeping with you.”
“You seem sure.”
“I don’t seem.”
He grin again, as if I was some woman saying something that was all heart, that he had to laugh off with his manly patience. It annoy me.
“You learn to fight in the donga or before?”
“What you really want to know?”
“How a woman beat me up, to be honest,” he say with a painful smile.
“Because you fight with the pride that you will win.”
“You don’t?”
“I tell myself either I leave alive or we both leave dead. Either outcome fine by me.”
“You also have spirits fighting for you. God or demon? Or do I live with a witch?”
“Witch work spells, and gods don’t care about no girl.”
“So you’re like the Sangomin.”
“I nothing like them!” I say and he jump. Then he hold his hand up as if blocking a blow. Also annoying.
“But it’s true. If a Sangoma found you as a baby, you would be Sangomin now. Very few like you ever pass their notice.”
“Nobody looking for gifts in a termite hill. They looking for somewhere to shit.”
I forgot how bothersome it be when he is correct.
Then he ask, “You don’t fight to the death, do you?”
“Yes.”
“Sogolon, no. You can’t. . . . You can’t. . . . I . . . What will I tell the children the morning you don’t come home?”
“I not going lose.”
“Because you fight with the pride that you will win? Maybe one day somebody will come with more reason to be angry than you. Maybe even a woman.”
Here is truth. I never even think about that until he say it.
“Who you really trying to kill?” he say.
“One thing don’t always mean something else.”
“One thing always mean something else in this world. You not that different, no matter how special you think you are.”
“I never say I was special.”
“I never say you say anything.”
“Something about you like having a woman around who can beat you.”
“Perhaps,” he say and smile, and I start to lose grip on what all these smiles mean. Some man seem to like it when the woman put up a fight, even when she get in some blows, but only if he hold down, overpower, and charge himself inside her koo. Keme is not this kind of man, not even in this fight.
“But don’t leave because some stupid soldier try to be overlord with you. He will never do it again,” he say.
“I won’t stop going to the donga.”
“I know. Who in this house can stop you? There is a power in you, Sogolon,” he say and for the first time this night he hit me. I wish it was a punch but it was with those words, words he say before but will never remember. Words I can’t forget. What he see in me now is what he see in me then, and he was always looking deeper, and even when he looking twice he find the same thing. I will not soon forget you, he also say to me once, before he forget it.
“What is the matter? What did I do?” he ask.
“Is nothing. Is nothing. I just tired.”
“Beating up one of the King’s warriors will take the breath out of a girl.”
This time I smile.
“If I was you I would turn me out,” I say.
“But I am not you, so that settle that.”
“I going back to the donga.”
“I know.”
“Perhaps tonight.”
“What if I want to come to you?”