“What? What now?”
“You call it a form. A shape like any other. Who is me to tell you who is you?”
“You know the work, being me? You know how you never have to think about breathing, but you have to think about how you dress, or what you say? That is me wearing the skin of a man. I have to will my own skin to settle.”
“Is it so as a lion?”
“No.”
“Shame can never settle.”
“Is not shame, woman. I know . . .”
“You know what?”
“Quit this talk, I say.”
“You have three others,” I say, and he hop over to the other bundles, while this cub find my breast again. Keme grin so wide as he look inside each bundle, his brand-new children. Is the first I seeing it, but the feeling come to me that many women see it before me, the look in his eyes and his grin that say, These come from me.
“Look at the hair on this one, and he not even the lion!”
“Not yet,” I say to myself. He is cradling all three now, shushing the first girl as she start to cry—I know her cry already—and there it is on his face, a new look I never see before, that I can’t find words for. Like surrender, but not, or like sweet bliss that come after he cum, though it is not that, or like relief, or satisfaction maybe, though I don’t know what that look like. Or maybe it is a look that only fathers get when they see their pride—the word just come out of me, as if I was already accepting all this. He is grinning and grinning, and cooing and making a sound that take me too many blinks to see is purring. Who is this man before you, the new man who come to the house for the first time in three years? say a voice that sound like me. Here is truth. With his other children he really is the lion, now that I think about it. He play with them as be his pleasure, he tell them which street not to walk on, and which men not to trust, and jump in front of them when a snake slither into the yard, but most day he don’t even see them.
“Show him to me,” I say.
“Which one?”
“Not the baby, you. Show me he that you hiding.”
It take him a while before he see what I mean.
“Here?”
“Listen to you, you sound like a virgin around a boy.”
“You don’t know a thing about that.”
“Stop delaying it and let your children see you as you.”
“This is me.”
“That is how you want people to see you. Them two things not the same.”
“Girl, I tell you I don’t change for—”
“This not the army, and I not your commander. Children should see their father, even if is just once.”
He look at me with a battle-loss face and place the children down. I sit up, not expecting anything, but expecting everything. He clutch his stomach and start retching so quick that I jump, thinking he is going to fall or vomit. He cough and choke and cough, then jerk, and jerk, and jerk again, then do a drunk sway, about to topple, then fall hard on one knee, his back to me. He heave again, and moan something low and death-slow. I try to get up, but he wave his hand behind at me fierce, telling me to stay. This thing come over him like waves, reminding me of me only this morning. He start to huff and huff, blowing out whatever punching him down inside. I regret that I ask him. In all these three years I never see so much of a whisker, which mean if he ever did change, it was from a time even further from that. Not true, my voice say. He been changing every day since before I know him. The Keme that I see every day, that is the change, that is the form that never can settle. He throw off his chain mail and pull off his tunic so hard that it tear. His buttocks I see first, spread wider and long, as if water is rushing under his skin, filling out his thighs and his legs and packing muscle upon muscle and sinew upon sinew. Then hair rush down his lower back and race down him past his cheeks into a tail while he growl and howl. Hair burst from his head, lighter and straighter than his usual hair, a grain field growing wider and wilder. Not hair, mane is what to call it, and it ripple across his back and meet his hip, while his skin burn off the brown for gold and his back widen like the head of cobra. Keme turn to me as his neck turn into a tree trunk and his ear pop open big, and round, and furry. The black in his eyes vanish and his forehead rush over his face, shoving his nose down as it widen and he snort out of it. Whiskers sprout above his mouth and gold hair sprout below. His little belly, which come after three years of two women taking care of him, vanish in a washboard. He try to stand and stagger at first, for he was still changing, but stand he do as a fire of gold hair break out on his chest, spread to his belly, and gush above his cock. Twice the man he was before and the most beautiful of anything I ever did see, woman, man, or beast, considering that Keme’s looks give me fire from before he first forget me.
“Bigger,” I say and look right between his legs. For a blink I think he is Beremu and without voice.
“Trick of the hair,” he say.
“Such things never trick a woman,” I say.
He stand up before me, fearless looking, but fearful too. He look around twice, though this room have no window. He scratch his chest but the hand stay there and I know he is unsure what to do with it, what to do with himself.
“You don’t change into a full lion.”
“I am a full lion.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Some people neither night nor day, Sogolon. Some people not—”
“Set-out point or destination, some people is journey.”