Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [46]
Jagged silvery lines glimmer in the thickening gloom, across her hip bone and in the curve of her that dips from the peak of her hip down and out again towards her stomach. Some years after my brother was born she became pregnant again. She was asleep in the house; I heard the sound of her calling and ran inside. Water! Soaking the sheets, leaking through the straw mattress, dripping on to the floor where it formed tributaries and ran across the uneven floor into the corner of the room. And my mother clutching her stomach with one hand and waving at me with the other. I lurched forward, but she wasn’t beckoning. She was waving me away.
‘Out! Out!’ And Ya Memso running in behind me. My mother’s closest friend among the wives. A tiny woman, so short I once asked my mother if she had grown up yet. Ya Memso went to her, as I backed out of the door.
No more children, then. Just us two. And only many years later, when I was sitting in front of my own husband, on the far side of a table and a silence that neither of us could cross, I sat and stared into the corner of the room at the fluff, the angled shadows, the dark seam where the floor met the walls. Fatigue made my skin hurt, my teeth ache. For a few moments I gazed into that corner, forgot he was there. And the memory came back to me then. Not in a flash. Rather it fluttered down like a feather.
I stay awake and watch her until gradually the outline of her body withdraws into the darkness.
Orange robes. Bright against her skin. I notice my mother is beautiful. This is the first time I have seen her since we came back. I don’t know how many months ago that was. It is harvest time. Out past the fields the rice is hanging in bundles on frames to dry. In the plantation the red coffee beans in their new red skins shimmy and shine. It makes your eyes ache to look at them for too long.
I had almost forgotten the village existed, and yet in no time I have assumed old habits, returned to the places I consider my own. The water has closed over those weeks. Memories of our time away slipping down the sand, red mud and threadbare curtains and lizard eyes being washed away. The tide of the present rushes in to fill the space.
One difference. Our mother has no longer been with us. She left us. She didn’t stay. And in that time everything has changed.
Now, from where I stand blocking the light from the door, I watch her. She looks different and the same. Oddly familiar. Like a feeling of déjà vu. We have embraced. A spontaneous rush forward transformed into an awkward clutching. And now we face each other from opposite sides of the room.
Not so Yaya, who sits by her feet, refuses to leave her surrounds like a dog by the warmth of a fire.
Yaya remembers nothing of the journey home. We wrapped him in all the clothes we possessed. He was shivering, his insides pouring out like brown tea and the colour leaching from his face as though his spirit were draining out. And the other passengers in the mammy wagon complained, but then said sorry. Again. Sorry, Ma. When they saw how ill the woman’s son was. And might die. That would bring them bad luck, without a doubt. So they became solicitous and offered us the food they had wrapped in cloths and banana leaves, pieces of sticky sweet rice bread and pepper chicken. It was the first real food I had had in days; I crammed it into my mouth. Afterwards I felt nauseous and had to hold on to the sides of the truck. One lady who knew about herbs made the driver stop by a guava tree. She picked the leaves and made some tea for Yaya. We were let down at the footpath