Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [29]
Do you know the meaning of the word in our language ores? Ores. It means co-wife. The women who share your husband with you. The women with whom you take turns to cook. The women you give whatever is leftover in your own pot. The women who are the other mothers of your children, who suckle your baby when your own milk has dried up or unexpectedly soured.
But the word has another meaning, too. Do you know it? No? Then let me tell you.
It means rival.
My mother was the sixth wife. She was tall — for a woman — almost as tall as my father. And she could even have been as strong as him. I know now she wasn’t so very beautiful, because people tell me I look like her. Her mouth was big, with perhaps too many teeth. But she was bathe, the favourite.
Yes, I dreamed about her the other week. She’s back in my thoughts again. For a few days afterwards I was able to see her face in front of my eyes — like a photograph. I never owned a picture of her. All of this was before the shop with the Kodak sign painted on its shutters opened in the town. For two days following the dream I saw her clearly. But then her features smudged. Sometimes I would be able to recall one thing, say her eyes: whites so clear, like moons against the dark night of her irises and her skin. There it is. You can picture a person easily, no trouble — right up to the time when you try to remember their face. Ah, then you can sit and stare at the wall all day if you like. Until you give up. And suddenly there they are, as clearly as if they were standing before you.
That was the way I remembered my mother: on the morning of the festival, standing in her room before it was properly day, silhouetted against a cold, new light.
Back then Pray Day was overtaking all the festival days. To meet the new year everybody swept their houses and Ya Namina ordered the servants to clean out my father’s house from top to bottom. Three of my mother’s co-wives came hurrying back from visiting their families, looking healthy and still plump for ones who had fasted all month.
The cooking began days in advance. Then it wasn’t straightforward as it is now, no radio announcements from Mecca to tell you the moon was really hovering in the sky, only you couldn’t see it because of the dust or the clouds. No. We waited until we saw it ourselves, even though that meant we sometimes began to cook too early, the food spoiled and we all fasted for an extra day or two; sometimes we began to cook too late and the feast wasn’t ready in time.
There were roasted meats and special dishes baked with coconut milk and spices. I was young and didn’t fast; even so the smell made my mouth water. On the morning of Pray Day everyone answered the first call to prayers and afterwards we would carry dishes of whatever food we had prepared as gifts from house to house.
But that was not the reason we all looked forward to the festival. In our house my father presented each of his wives with a costume specially for the day. The new clothes were delivered the evening before, ready for the last day of the fast.
That year my mother spent the whole of the day preparing herself. Finda worked on her hair for all of the morning: plaits so fine it was as though each comprised of no more than six hairs. These she wove, three by three, into thicker braids and then again, until my mother’s head was covered in shining coils decorated here and there with tiny pale cowrie shells. In the afternoon she sat for two hours with the ends of her fingers resting in bowls of lali until the tips turned red. She sent me out to pick a new loofah from the vine, and I found a fine one. On the way home I held it close to my ear and shook it, listening to the sound the seeds made, like trickling water. Afterwards I emptied out the seeds and carried it to my mother. In her bedroom I rubbed her back and her arms with it, smoothed her with shea butter until her skin glowed deeply as a garden egg.
We were on the front balcony watching the darkness, watching for my father