Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [55]
Kadie was named for my karabom, who had gone the year before. Through two rains I stayed in my mother’s house while I suckled her. For hours at a time I might do nothing but gaze into my daughter’s deep-water eyes, at the tiny blister on her upper lip that came from sucking; feel the way she gripped my finger with her toes when I held her feet. I examined the fine, sharp creases on the soles of those same feet and the palms of her hands. What fate, I wondered, was there awaiting her that had already been decided?
One morning unseen currents stirred the air beneath a troubled sky. A pale green glow lit the village. I sat at the front of my father’s house. When I was growing up I could not imagine a world beyond this one. Change came slowly to this place. My father grew ginger now, orders from the colonials. My mother counted the money, complained about the fixed prices. She brought in extra labour to meet the demand. Above the coffee trees the hills receded in shades of grey, fading slowly into the sky. A kite spiralled down. I followed its descent through the air as gently as a leaf falling from a tree. I didn’t hear my father’s footfall.
‘You’ll be going home. As soon as your husband comes.’ My father spoke in statements.
I replied: ‘Perhaps, but this is my home, too.’
‘Te ting. True. But a woman’s duty is to be with her husband in his home and any day now he’ll be here to take you back.’ I was silent. My father waited a while before continuing. ‘Of course you should make him win you again. But when he has done that you will accept him and you will go.’ This is the way things were in those days. My father loved me, but for him duty came first. I could not think of running away from my marriage. I could never come home. He added gently: ‘You will be missed here.’
I looked up at him, remembering how I used to ride on his shoulders, how I rode on his shoulders the day we came to this place to found the village. He spoiled me so much people called me his pet deer.
‘Teh, teh,’ he clapped his hands for Kadie, ‘teh teh.’ She weaved towards him, her hand reached for the piece of sesame cake he held out. He caught her and swung her into the air, grunting with the effort it cost him.
‘Yes, father.’
Sometimes I wondered how my father knew things. Only days later Osman arrived, shaking the dust out of his clothes, struggling with a cardboard suitcase of gifts: cakes of blue soap, scented hair oil, two new head-ties and many yards of the finest-grade fabric. ‘Yes, yes. Come and look! All imported,’ he called for everyone to hear. Some of my father’s younger children and even his wives gathered around, as though Osman was a travelling salesman and not a husband come to woo his wife back. Osman flung open the suitcase and showed off each item.
I didn’t mind seeing him. He was handsome, as I remembered, even sweating under the weight of the suitcase. Despite myself I smiled as I walked down the steps of the house to greet him.
Osman Iscandari. I underestimated him. Seeing him arrive at my father’s house to bring me back, the sweat rolling down from his scalp, his face shining like the moon, boasting — with that stupid grin carved into his face. When I walked up the street towards that house, that empty house lying in the shadow of the earth, I had no idea of what awaited me inside.
Fourteen, fifteen maybe. Pretty enough, I’ll say that. The girl scuttled forward, bending low. She began to gather up my luggage. And my, she was strong as a bush cow. The cardboard suitcase she balanced on her head while she squatted to reach for the other bundles.
I did not speak. A cousin of Balia or Ngadie? Someone’s ward? A servant, even? My senior wives had not come out to meet me. A drumming in my heart, in my ears. The light receded around the edges of my vision, as though I was staring down a bat-filled tunnel. I willed myself not to look at Osman. One step at a time, one foot in front of the other. My body was shaking. The house was empty. The girl emerged