—
Then go find woman who love fuck beast,” I overhear one night, not loud, but clear enough that it reach the person she intend it for. He don’t seek my bed that night, but he come after, and I say that it is indeed true, that this is the only way I will take him. Poor Yétúnde thinking that as a lion he would maul her, when he is even more gentle. And he lick every single thing. Indeed one night he didn’t even see that his tongue was fucking me to the point where tears set loose. True it is indeed that I never could get my fill of him that way, the crown of hair glowing in lamplight, the whiskers against my neck, the breath waking up my skin in the cold night, the field on his chest, the twin mountains of his bottom, and the tuft of tail between them that I grab as I look down in the shadows to see his cock going in and out, up and down inside of me. Perhaps he is too gentle, for I want him to roar when he cum but he never do. And Yétúnde find reason to burst into flame over anything. If you want raw meat, go eat from your mother, she shout at the cubs when they spit out the cooked lamb, but to tell true none of the children, not even hers, like cooked flesh much, and is not because she couldn’t cook. Yétúnde is the kind of woman who would never say anything to a grown woman’s face, so she say to the children instead and hope the message get back to me. One time Lurum, for he speaking now, ask me what his name be. I say silly boy it is Lurum. Lurum from who? he ask and I ask why.
“Miss Yétúnde say we can’t take our father’s name. Take it where, Mama?”
“I don’t know where she want it to go,” I say to him and smile. “Anybody ask you, you is Lurum of Adu, just like your daddy. And listen to me. Anything you want to know about yourself, you ask your mama.”
He nod and run off, the matter rolling off his back like water. My fury take me all the way to outside her chamber when I remember that she is the first wife and I am no wife. I leave her to her ways but shout so much louder when Keme and me fuck that night that Matisha, my young girl, start shouting that a bad dog is in Mama’s room.
Which is to say that a day would surely come when this woman turn so stink with malice that the whole house decide it have to get away from her, her own children included. First I am thinking, What luck of the gods is this that today of all days there is ceremony in the streets? But right before we leave I realize that is not luck at all, but Yétúnde sensing laughter and light, and pleasantness in the sky, and deciding to be all things opposite, for that is how she is now, hunting down smiles like prey and mauling everyone. “Come, children, who want to see the great hornbill?” Keme ask and they all jump and hop and tumble and shout.
So, the Nanosi. This, the day where they reconquer Fasisi, is also the day of the Doro, the initiation rites that happen once every seven years for their boys and men. Hearing this wipe the smile from my face, for I long gone tired of ceremonies for only boys, but when I say that to Keme, the words vanish in the crowd. That look rush over him again, and I can see it even in his lion face, his open mouth and wide-open yellow eyes. Something about the Nanosi make him hunger for their ways, perhaps, or their thinking. Meanwhile this crowd reach hundreds upon hundreds and more after that of man, woman, beast, shapeshifter, ancestor in the form of smoke, ghost in the form of dust, and some another people would call monster. They line both sides of this Ugliko street, and who is not in the street is in a tree, or terrace, or rooftop, most of them with children and old people trying to get a look, but there is one littered with rugs, grand umbrellas in red, white, and gold, and a big chair waiting for the King. But you never know with this King, Keme say. The street, bouncing up and down with chatter, just then drop to quiet all around me.
“This is no longer a street. This is the sacred wood, one time the holiest place in the kingdom before it was a kingdom,” Keme whisper.
Lurum is on his shoulders and the two cubs are standing between him and me. Matisha already asleep on my shoulder, and Yétúnde’s children plant themselves in front of us after I warn them of a beating if they wander off. Only one line of people stand before us and the street, the sacred wood. This is Keme whispering to me.
“And coming down the sacred wood you soon see the children who will become boys, boys who will become young men, and young men who will become men. By those means they rebirth the way of the universe. First you will see the Nyara, boys who start at seven going on to twelve. After them watch for the Nigogo, who begin at ten and two, and end at ten and eight, but you will know them when you see them. After them come the Comoro, the final class, the ones finally ready to reach Iologo.”
“Iologo?”
“Manhood. Every boy go through three ceremonies, Iologo being the final one.”
I wish it was for me what it is for him, but I done tired of every kingdom making ceremony for boys. None of them coming from any kill or any war, so this ceremony look like nothing more than a salute for just swinging a cock. But Keme is looking at the whole thing the way Commander Olu would marvel at a falling star. The rumbling music drown him out, so he stop whispering, and along come players beating little drums for the bap, and big drums for the boom. Right behind them come boys, some younger than Yétúnde’s youngest, most older and taller but still far from man. All walking naked except for some white and red spots on the chest and rattling anklets on the right foot. Each boy passing have six more behind him and is not until they all pass that I notice that they moved as batches, all marching the same, and looking in the same direction, even in the quick. It come to me right there how many they be, and that right outside Fasisi live a people who all but forsake Fasisi, and not just the place, but the way they live. You watching? Keme ask me, and I want to slap him.