Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [131]
A hawk dropped out of the sky and drank from a puddle of water. A superstitious person might have made something of it, otherwise nothing else remarkable happened. My granddaughter had baked black banana bread and she brought me a piece of it on a dish with a glass of water, staying to keep me company. My appetite had waned as I had grown older, and I covered the dish with a cloth, telling her I would enjoy it later. We spoke little, content in each other’s company. I liked simply to watch her liquid movements: flicking a fly with the corner of her dress, fanning her face with her hand, twirling the end of a plait. She sat on the step with one leg stretched out in front of her, the other bent, her cheek resting upon the knee, facing away from me. In the half-light of that day I gazed at the back of her neck, the soft furrow that ran from the nape of her neck down between her shoulder blades; from behind the curve of her waist belied the child she was carrying, just now beginning to show in the roundness of her stomach. With each passing week the birthmark above her navel widened and stretched.
Adama had been eleven years old when her great-grandmother died. Too young to really remember, old enough not to have forgotten. She had loved my mother fearlessly. In a way I had never been able.
When she was three, ignoring Kadie, her own mother, she strode with tiny steps up to her great-grandmother and demanded loudly to be taken to the toilet. My mother threw up her hands and stared aghast, as though she had never cared for a child in her life. Kadie quickly led the child away. But my mother had been amused. The girl called her Ya Mama and sometimes Yammy, and my mother encouraged it.
I know, it’s the oldest story in the world. The fresh spirit who frees one that has been bottled too long.
She had been away when Ya Mama died. And she had appeared to accept it as children do when they have yet to learn the meaning of for ever. Years later she began a game, which she played obsessively for a while. I came to think of it as the ‘remember’ game.
‘Remember when that bird landed on Yammy’s shoulder …’
‘Remember when I made her coffee …’ Mud and river water, mixed together in a tin cup. My mother had been fooled into taking a hearty swig. Later, in the mornings, real cups of coffee just as I had brought to my own grandmother a long time ago. Afternoons, they napped together on the four-poster bed that once belonged to my father.
‘Remember Ya Mama’s feet …’ My mother took care of her feet, soles as smooth as paper, nails dipped weekly in henna. When she could no longer bend to reach them Adama buffed the undersides with pumice.
We would sit for hours sharing memories: fleeting, brightly coloured, sometimes surrounded by darkness, passing them back and forth until I was no longer certain whose were whose. She lent me her own memories of childhood with which to remember my mother.
We had played the game the day before for the first time in a long while. Sorting reminiscences the way we had baby clothes. Storing some and putting others aside for the new baby, creating space for new things. That afternoon, though, there was no game. We sat together in a sleepy silence, I watched her head sink, listened to her breathing come in slow sighs.
I stood up to fetch a cloth to fold under her head. On my way I reached for the plate of banana bread. Hali! The plate seemed suddenly as heavy as if it was made of iron. My arm dropped. The plate slipped from my fingers, clattered and spun on the stone floor. Adama, startled, leaped to her feet. The heaviness slid down the side of my body into my leg. I tried to take a step, but I couldn’t pick my foot up off the floor. Falling, I felt myself falling. With my other hand I reached for the table and missed. Through the gathering darkness I saw Adama hurrying towards me as I toppled forward.