Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [36]
I sat up and stared at the water. I saw my own reflection and gazed at it for a second before the movement of the canoe in the water caused my face to wrinkle suddenly. The sun glared down on the water, but here and there, where the shadows of the trees fell, it was possible to see right down into the yellowish depths to the mud and weed growing on the bottom. A shoal of tiny fish darted past, zigzagging, flashing as their scales reflected the sunlight. I watched them go. In less than a day the fishing season would start again.
The canoe floated upstream of the dam the men had built across the water. The dam was built every year during the dry season when the water was low. When the rains came the stream swelled and the level of the water above the dam rose. The fish spawned and grew fat, trapped behind the wall of logs. On the last day the men set their traps: long, conical baskets pushed into the dam wall at intervals. They stuffed the ends with rice and the fish swam down to feed and were trapped. In the morning, at the same time as the women prepared to enter the water with their nets, the men would come down and heft the baskets out of the water. Baskets brimming with fish. Fish for the evening meal. Fried fish for breakfast. Fish for smoking in giant kilns. Fish for the days of hunger, when the river was barren as the desert.
As I stared into the water I thought about my mother. I thought about the way Pa Yamba had tricked her when she was dying and I thought of all the people who chose to believe the lies because it suited them that way. I thought about her life, now overshadowed by the manner of her death. I thought about all these things. And as I sat there — just like that, I thought of a way to turn my luck around.
I crawled out of the boat and made my way through the tangle of trees to the edge of the dam. The ground was muddy. I nearly caught my foot on roots many times. Tiny crabs hanging from the branches dropped down and clung to my clothing. I worried about the water snakes that liked to disguise themselves among the roots of trees. I pulled my lappa up and knotted it up around my chest and I slid into the water on the other side of the dam. I waded in until the water came up to my chest.
It wasn’t easy. Especially with the first one. I was hampered by the water and my feet slid in the mud. So then I found a piece of wood and pushed it in between the edge of the basket and the logs, and in that way I levered the basket out. The water came gushing through the hole I had made, and with it dozens of the fish caught behind the logs.
Thrashing carp and smooth, whiskered catfish, curled eels, snapping tigerfish and snouted barbs; fish spotted, striped, scaly, smooth. Water and fish poured over me and almost knocked me over. I put out my hand and touched them as they swam past, stroking their sleek bodies with my fingertips. The next moment they were gone. I stood there breathing for a while, waiting to see if anybody who happened to be down by the river had noticed. But all was quiet except for the faint hum of insects and the sound of water pouring through the hole in the dam.
The rest came easily. And by the time I reached the other side the dam was beginning to break up. Small logs dislodged themselves and floated downstream after the traps and the fish. I pushed at the remaining heavy logs and they felt light. I thought probably it was too dangerous to swim back the way I had come, so I made my way up the opposite bank and crossed further upstream where the water was deeper but the river was narrower. And I walked back home through the rice fields and allowed my clothes to dry on the way.
Of course they all thought it was her. My mother — come back for revenge. Whatever else they did or did not believe, there was not a soul in the village who dared defy a ghost. And Pa Yamba made an offering to try to appease her. I laughed inside, especially when Ya Isatta began to tell me how much like my mother I