There is this about the children, the lions for sure but all of them too. No tomorrow. They pay no mind to it, have no stock in it at all. When I used to live in that termite hill, tomorrow was all I could think about. Something about a next day just being next make me believe that whatever come will be better than this, even if I didn’t know what better mean. But these children, all they think about is where can I play today, what I going learn today, what will I eat today, who make me cry today, what will Father bring today, Mother bring the switch so I hate her today, Mummy give me a stick with a wad of honey so I love her today. Yesterday they have no reason to remember, and tomorrow they cannot grab or squeeze or lick. First I think that this is just the province of children, but I was a child in the termite hill. Maybe they have no reason to lose faith in the day. Maybe that is it. I do know that living only for the day lead them to ask the same questions over and over, try to escape work over and over, play the same games over and over, bruise the same knees over and over, and tell the same lies again and again, no matter that it didn’t save them from the switch the last time.
Over and over they go through the Ibiku backwoods, more than I remember them going before. Ehede and Ndambi stay away at first, and both of them shudder the first time I ask them where the other children be. I don’t know what come to pass, but it soon happen when they all go to the backwoods. Truth is I did only want to see how these little children play with these already big lions, and if they heed me telling them that they have to be gentle with their brothers and sisters.
From behind a low tree with huge leaves I watch them on the five mounds playing games, rolling in the sun, and keeping peace with each other, all of which perplex me. I am here thinking that little people get away from big people so they can be more little, but there they was, acting like Yétúnde’s idea of perfect children. Matisha is the one singing something that I don’t know in a tongue foreign to me. Nothing about this feel like mirth, certainly not like childhood mirth, and the sight of them start to disturb me. And then Matisha say, “I don’t know that game.” I am thinking it was to one of the others but then she say, “Lurum, you know this game?”
Lurum shake his head, and Matisha, now sad, pat the mound she is sitting on.
“Nobody know it,” she say, and even the lions’ face downcast. But then she jump up. “But you can teach us! You too.”
Ehede shout Yes, one of the few words I ever hear him say, and Ndambi do something between a purr and a growl. Then they all play louder and harder than I ever see them play before. And also this, one or two of them would share a giggle with nobody, or whisper a secret to the space between two trees, or shout No I am the tree! to what must be the wind. Children will be children, but Yétúnde’s children not babies anymore. Then Matisha burst out crying and shout, I not playing with you anymore, which make me jump out of the bush and demand to know who trouble her. None of them take the blame, and Matisha making it look like none of them guilty. The worst part is that I did already know, for I was watching the whole time. It never trouble me that spirits could be in the bush, even spirits that want to play, but this is the first time I thinking they might be wicked. And even that thought don’t last, for if they planning wickedness, they certainly taking their time, and Matisha look like she was bawling from the stupid things that children do. Nevertheless I tell them to stop playing around and get back to the house. Whoever out here messing with them was going to have to mess with me. I sit on one of the mounds expecting to . . . I don’t know. Feel something maybe, but all I feel was tough dirt under my bottom. Smell something maybe, or wait for the wind (not wind) to send me words from a tongue near or far. Nothing.
Something wake me up in the deep night. That time for the ancestors that I have no use for. My legs now compelling me and my hands too, and I know I am doing it but I also feel myself looking at myself doing it and not wondering why. The voice that sound like me is silent, when I want her to ask me what I think I doing and to stop it. But what telling me to go outside is not a voice, is not words, is not even a message, but the demand is clear. A feeling then, or an urge, like how we know without either of us saying it that Keme is going to be inside me certain night. So I get up, wrap a blanket, go out in the welcome room, and grab a torch. I am down in the backwoods before good sense catch up with me.
The air feel wet and the ground soft, and the branches slap me gentle. The darkness start out black, but as I walk, it smooth into different kinds of gray and blue, and I can tell grass from ground, and branch from leaf. Ancestors I don’t want to see, I say this under my breath, but who among them would trudge all the way from Mitu? Rid your mind of questions, rid your mind of thinking, and walk. You know where you going. I know. But Yétúnde never once plant a living thing, so I have no tool other than my hands. It wash over me again, me coming back to myself and wondering what I doing out here in the dark, in the bush, still wild no matter how close to Ibiku it be. But the space between the trees that Matisha and Lurum speak to, the nothing that the children hold like hands, the joke they share with open space, the patting and stroking the mound as if the mound can stroke back, all leave in me a disquiet that get fierce. Disquiet is what it is, the thing that troubling my head and disturbing my sleep and even now won’t leave my mind alone, even as between my toe sticky with mud and my nightdress smelling of bush. It leading me over to what might be a mound, or a little hill, or a trick darkness playing with me.
Disquiet telling me to take my two hands and dig. The soft dirt take me by surprise. I scoop away a handful, then another, then I link my fingers together and dig. I dig until I couldn’t see my hands anymore, until I have a hole that I almost tip over into. I dig until the dirt coarsen up, and smooth out again, and stone scratch the skin off my knuckle. I dig until my hand grab a tough piece of cloth, which turn out to be swaddling cloths coming loose but still holding something.