But after seven hundred fruitless years and countless human believers in her service, it dawned on River that she might never see her twins again. She collapsed where she stood, and every emissary lay down as well. Dust settled on them, then grime and so much debris that they became part of the earth, hills of hips and buttocks and woe.
All but one. The only one who felt the rage of River, multiplied by that most powerful feeling that won’t let a person rest: guilt. River’s sister, not quite goddess. The guilt turned in her belly like a ship in a storm. She’d slept while her sister’s children were taken. Blame, so like a god itself, shadowed her, occupied her bed like a lover, whispered to her like a dearest friend. Her name was eventually forgotten. Soon all called her She Who Betrayed River, a name that over the years degenerated to Betrayed River, then Bereaver, which stuck, and eventually even Bereaver forgot she had ever been anyone else. Guilt crushed every milestone in her life to dust so that she knew only Before and After. And Before seemed like the unfathomable dream of a foolish woman.
Long after River and her women collapsed, Bereaver searched alone, turning every crust of earth to find Ant and her nieces. Whenever a kind wind caught a whisper and blew Ant’s name into her ear, she would follow it to the city, town, village to which he had run and pluck the man, woman, child who had seen him last. She pulled every secret from them, things they didn’t even know they knew, and afterward she’d pull out their eyes, tongue, heart, so they’d never know a thing again. Sometimes she just missed him. Other times, the trail was so stale it crumbled to nothing when she walked it, the people who had known the human Ant long dead.
Ant tried to live quiet lives, but eventually someone would sense something about him, be it his wickedness or his divinity, and he would be run out of town—or become so highly acclaimed he feared catching the attention of a god who would recognize him. Much as it galled him, he knew he would have to set his godhood aside if he wanted to keep his life. He would also have to separate himself from the stone that held his secrets.
So into the stone Ant whispered everything he’d ever been and sealed it with the human name he’d taken for this earth. He kept only his immortality, so that he could one day live to be restored, no longer hunted. He tried to bury the stone, but animals circled the spot and began to dig. He gave it to a boy, but the boy ran to show his friends, so Ant snatched it back and buried the boy instead. In his despair, he carved a cave into a hill and thought to hide there for eternity. He pulled in a large rock and made it his bed, as penance. But a hundred years went by and he became bored with piety and regret. Poking his head out of the cave, he saw a girl hauling a pail of water. The water wasn’t hers, he was sure, and yet she bore it on her head with grace and little complaint. He watched her for days, carrying water back and forth, back and forth, but for whom? To do what? Boys sometimes danced around her, trying to distract her from her task, but on she went, day after day. It dawned on Ant then that one could ask almost anything of a girl. He stepped out of the cave to block her path and, holding out the pretty blue stone, said, Can you keep a secret?
The girl took the stone, so accepting that it sank into her palm, lodging itself at the base of her fingers. She was filled with a terrifying knowledge—a child bled to bones, a mother who thought it alive and well—and certainty that she must never, ever tell.
So Bereaver still wanders, not knowing that Ant is lost to her. The girl will carry his secret, and when she is no longer a girl, she will give it to another girl, and this sorrow stone will be stolen away in uniform pockets and hidden under the pillows of marriage beds, secreted in diaries, guarded closely by the type of girls who, above all else, obey.
And while Bereaver wanders, River and her women lie catatonic with heartache, dreaming of their children. And when, in the place she is hidden, the surviving god-child cries, their bodies hear her, and their breasts weep, and that, since you asked, is a volcano.
REDEMPTION
The day after we met, she sent a missile of shit wrapped in newspaper like a gift. It exploded on the side of the house, scattering chunks and leaving a streak of brown. My mother, furious, railed about the neighbors (never at them, mind you) and lamented that they just didn’t make house girls like they used to. I, on the other hand, fell in love.
Mayowa was thirteen going on whatever age it is that women find themselves. Mr. and Mrs. Ajayi took her on to replace Abigail, who had worked for them as long as we’d lived next door. My mother said it was about time, a woman that old should be the madam of her own house, not cleaning up someone else’s.
“They need an energetic young thing, but not one of those ambitious ones. They never last long.” Mother recited the virtues of young workers nonstop—malleable, easily intimidated, unlikely to seduce the man of the house or turn up pregnant. Then she met the young worker in question. The Ajayis had brought Mayowa over to get us used to seeing her. Prodded by Mrs. Ajayi, she curtsied stiffly to my mother, as though her knees rebelled. My mother noticed.
“And this is the young madam,” Mrs. Ajayi teased at me, and Mayowa’s curtsy was even more reluctant. Understandable, as we were the same age, but my mother wasn’t having it.
“See this one. Nancy, you are going to have trouble with her,” my mother said, adding, “You are too kind,” when Mrs. Ajayi explained that Mayowa was the child of a third cousin who couldn’t afford to send her to school. As though to confirm my mother’s predictions, Mayowa raised her bowed head and met my mother’s eyes straight on.
“So bold. And look at that.” She waved a hand to indicate Mayowa’s backside. Mayowa was small for her age, with a compact muscular frame that promised to blossom into something interesting.
“This one will be bringing boys around soon, if she hasn’t started already,” my mother said, calling Mayowa’s virtue into question. The answer arrived the next day, wrapped in the contested results of last week’s election.
Grace, our house girl, who had to clean up the mess, took to sneering whenever she saw Mayowa or heard her name. Grace was nineteen, far older than what my mother considered prime house girl age, and prettier than my mother would have liked, but my father was long gone, so she kept her. When anyone asked where my father was, my mother would say he was traveling, which was true if traveling meant “I prefer my mistress’s cooking, so I’m going to live with her now.”
—
I began to spend most of my time outside, knocking lemons out of the tree, swirling the dirt on my mother’s car, shading with the lizards. When the Ajayis’ gate creaked, I’d run to our gate and peek through a crack in the metal. Sometimes it was the husband or wife leaving, sometimes it was the man who cared for their dogs, but most of the time it was Mayowa, strutting on her way to school or the market or just down the road to the pharmacy. She walked as though the earth spun to match her gait. I liked to think that if she’d known I was there, she’d have turned around and waved.
Mrs. Ajayi was very old, creeping on that age when life begins to lose all meaning, fifty, I think. I would go and sit with her because everyone knows how old people enjoy the company of young people. They suck at us like vampires, or wilting flowers that require the sunshine of our youth. Whenever Mrs. Ajayi saw me she sighed, and it wasn’t till I was much older that I realized it wasn’t a sigh of relief.