Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [42]
That’s all I remember of that time.
Then came the court case.
The boy who was under the table was Soulay, younger son of Ya Koloneh. That was how it worked in those days. I mean, there are different ways of learning. You had to observe the way things were done. The boys who were chosen learned at the feet of the elders.
The elders met in the barrit. It was in the middle of the village right next to the well, where the women met. A round building with a tall, conical, thatch roof the shape of a witch’s hat, open sided so that people going about their tasks could stop by at any time to hear what village business was being discussed there by the elders.
Whenever something important was happening we children would try to see inside. Sometimes we managed to shove our faces in between the elbows of men sitting on the periphery wall. Most times they drove us away, swatting us like flies with a long switch.
I remember playing this game. Even when it was my own mother who had been shamed and brought before the elders.
Soulay was older. He had a way about him, I remember. A way of holding his head so that it rocked back on his skinny shoulders. He used to hunch them up around his chin, so his head looked like an egg in an egg cup. His smile occupied the entire lower half of his face and showed all his teeth at once. And he could pop his cheeks louder than anyone. And spit the farthest. And once a line of ducklings followed him around for weeks, thinking he was their mother.
We met at the karanthe behind the mosque, feverish with curiosity. Nothing this exciting had happened since Salifu Kamara got stuck up the breadfruit tree. He’d climbed up with a long stick to get at the fruit. I don’t know, but somehow he dislocated his shoulder. Everyone heard him hollering. The men ran and fetched a fishing net, urged him to leap. It took ages for him to work up the courage. Each time he seemed about to go he’d stop, shout down more instructions. To the right. To the left.
When he did jump the net wasn’t taut enough. Pa Kamara slammed into the ground with such a thud the earth trembled. He broke his leg. They carried him away in the net all the way to the Kroo bone-setter in Mabass.
For ages afterwards we played that game with an old lappa: Pa Kamara jumping from the breadfruit tree.
That day in the karanthe we were as eager as the other children to hear Soulay tell his story. It makes me ashamed now to think about it. I didn’t understand, I didn’t understand the consequences — for her, for Yaya, for me.
She does not call his name. She denies she is faithless. And yet, when they bring out a powerful sassa, one from the village of the accused man — she falters.
We don’t care about the accusations. We don’t understand them anyway. It is the gory details we crave. What did the sassa look like? We want hair, horns, hoofs. And there must be something red in colour we can tell ourselves is blood. Sacrificial blood. Palm oil or betel nut. Dead things and red things.
Soulay enacts my mother’s terror for us, shivering and quivering as she backed away. We watch him with glassy eyes, breathing hotly through open mouths. No shuffling. No sniffing. No nose picking or scab scratching. And afterwards we ponder the information with delighted disgust and sated bloodlust.
She refused to call the man’s name.
Now she claims her confession was falsely given. The elders looked at each other and around. One peered through empty spectacle frames. Another swatted himself with an animal tail, encased at the anus point in an ivory handle. Together they looked down at her — this woman neck deep in woman trouble. How could it be so?
An afternoon, when the new house was nearly completed, my father called her and told her he wanted to bathe. She replied she would fetch water. But he shook his head. No, he said, down to the river. The two of them, together. Her husband never bathed in the stream. That was the place for children and unmarried men, men without