“You know words like that would never come to me. What you looking at is the only way I don’t feel like being me is labor, like I holding myself together all the time.”
His words making sense to me. I want to say I understand, though some people can’t abide by or afford staying in the middle, for that too costly, but I push that away. Besides beast or man, perhaps the problem really is or. The hair, the tail turn his buttocks into a tease. I wish right there that I was friends with Yétúnde so I could ask her woman things, like how it is that I lying here torn open from what this man do to me, and all I want is for him to come over to me right now and do that whole thing again. I want him to rush me and smell like me like prey, and lick all the way around me neck. I come this close to whispering that there is more than one hole to a woman, and more than one use for such a kingly cock. The thought make me laugh out loud and then wince in pain for letting my head run wild when I know not a thing going happen to this body for at least six moons if not longer. Nothing other than sleeping, crying, avoiding death, and surrendering milk to four who know nothing but hunger. That first moon, the suckling also bring on a pain that make me almost scream for goat milk. Here is truth, one night of birthing leaving me so spent that I thank gods that these babies too young to know that sometimes I so tired that I think twice about feeding them. And the pains from my body trying to decide what shape it will be in from now on, is enough to make me feel that thinking about fucking is foolish. The lion standing in my doorway all but make me forget that this was a mighty day and nobody more surprised that I survive it than me.
“You making me forget that this night is about you,” he say.
“I going own many more nights. This one can share.”
“No clothes fit when I look so.”
“Cowskin will stretch. Besides, you see no lion in clothes? Call your children.”
“For what, for them to see me like this?”
“They little, not slow. The way they crawl, scratch, and romp, you likely wasn’t fooling them neither.”
He turn to the doorway, still unsure. He still buckling a little. He still the young boy who decide one day that only way he could show himself was to hide himself.
“Keme.”
“By the gods, woman, wait,” he say. Even his snap has the mark of a lion. “Children,” he shout.
“No, not like that. Call them, I say.”
He turn to me again, and I smile, hoping that it will wash the doubt off his face. Then he lift his head, and roar.
FOURTEEN
I see the Aesi. Two times now it come to pass.
The first was the day of the Nanosi, the eldest of the elders, the oldest people of the North, who still live in the dry plains between Fasisi and Luala Luala. Kwash Kagar decreed it so, that those who first broke stone to build the North should have one day where they take to the street and conquer the city once more. In dance and drum of course. And even if they did sharpen the dull spear, switch the ceremonial sword for a real one, and take the string from the kora and return it to the archer’s bow, they would have no use for this kingdom anyway. At some time in the age, three or four dynasties before Akum, the Nanosi abandoned the city they build, and returned to the dry plains to hunt, gather, and run with the oryx.
“To this day, nobody knows why,” Keme say, except I can hear the wonder in his voice and the envy in his sigh. He looking like himself as we wait with the crowd for the Nanosi, but still take to soldier form when he head to the royal enclosure, or when his men come for him. I forbid him from wearing anything but himself around me or his children since that first day, and the last time he approach them as a man, they all scream. Even his older children grab and tug any hair they can grab, and squeal when he growl and pretend to gnaw them. Sometimes he greet them as lions do, rubbing neck to neck. My shaggy son, who we name Lurum, now have hair the color of wheat. One of the cubs, who we name Ehede, sometimes speak one word, sometimes two, but two years later neither cub change in any way other than growing bigger, and a two-year-old lion no woman would call small. Lurum’s eye grow from brown and white to white and brown, and he stop hiding that instead of fingernails, he have claws. The children have that sweet blindness to each other where they don’t care how each one look, even if playing rough with a lion soon lead to scratches upon scratches, bawling because a tail get yank too hard, and crying because one child’s pet turn in to another child’s meal. I start to wonder if there be any chance of schooling for any of them, for who will take to teaching a child that could kill her with one bite? The house continue as the house do, for all but one.
“You take him looking like that?” Yétúnde ask me one time, almost a year after my children born. Surprise me she do, for other than to ask about grain or if I going to kill a fowl for dinner, she stop talking to me. I don’t know how to answer her.
“Well you know what them say. Silence mean consent,” she say.
I want to say to her that only man who force woman say words like that, but she is the first wife and I not even a wife. She snap at Lurum once, and when I say to her, Don’t snap at my boy, she go and tell Keme that I call her sour. Twice she scream at the cubs to take their nasty stinking self out of her kitchen for they bound to piss and shit on her floor, and she wonder which of their parents they get that from. Ever since that night, Keme take to walking like the man he is, even reporting to the barracks, where he say some don’t speak to him anymore, some speak to him for the first time, and some asking if he can still drink masuku beer. No complaint come to him in word or rumor. If anything my eyes, ears, and nose even more keen, he say. But walking out in the city like a true lion was another hump to climb over. I say to him that leopards walking tall in Taha district, and everybody know how loose and without morals they be.
“I can’t stop thinking I am naked,” he say.
“Be like the lion,” I say.
“Stop thinking I naked?”
“Stop thinking.”
He look at me with the face that say, Only you like to think so crazy. But I watch him stand up straight and catch himself in the underside of his shield. You not taking off clothes, for nothing should be on you, I whisper to him, which somehow make him listen better. So many questions come to my head that I stay myself from asking, including one about his balls that make me laugh. Furrier than before, the voice in my head say, and he look puzzled when I giggle.
“Whose permission you waiting on?” I ask him.
“Permission? I don’t need permission. I am the lion.”
“Then go be the lion.”
When he finally go outside as himself, Beremu jump him in surprise. Half lion and full lion they lunge at each other in love, rubbing head and neck and side together before they both frighten the whole street by running off. And the house continue as the house do, for all but one.
* * *