Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [6]
I could walk first and even carry him. My brother barely bothered to learn to use his own legs; he knew I was there to bear his weight. One day our father informed his uncles that he had decided to leave the place where we lived to start a plantation. The land was there, you see. And so we left to found our own village. Outside the town, beyond the ring of light and into the elephant grass we went. I trailed my hands across the towering stalks, as thick as bamboo poles, grazing the tips of my fingers. And then we entered the darkness. High above us the monkeys cavorted and screamed our names. The crows laughed at our foolishness; a woodpecker darted ahead of us, rapping out a warning as it went; orchids dripped nectar on to us and it slid down the backs of our necks; we skirted great boulders and waded across pools of black water as the path closed up behind us. I looked up the dizzying trunks of the trees stretching far, far into the sky. I tried to see the sun.
Single file, we went. At the front the snake man with a long stick and a pair of dogs. After him my father and the diviner who led him to the new land. My mother walked a respectful distance behind them. My father had new wives by then. They walked behind my mother. I’ll tell you the rest of their names when the time comes, not now. Then I had eyes only for my mother. The youngest of the wives I walked alongside. She was a few years older than me — just a sprouting seedling wife. By this time I could carry nearly half a bushel of rice. We followed behind the others and shared a load. Behind us came karabom, my grandmother who had left her own house to follow her daughter to this new place.
Our belongings were carried on the heads of five indentured men. Every day my father sat in the courtroom listening to the disputes of men who laid down two coins to place their grievances before the elders. People respected him; he became chief advisor to the obai. Many of the men brought before the court were debtors. Sometimes my father agreed to clear their debts himself. And in return he took their sons from them, to labour for him until the day their fathers redeemed them. Whenever that day came.
The men toted giant baskets of clothes, a woven cage of guineafowl, a pair of piglets with their feet bound together, our great iron cooking-pots, sacks of rice, salt, groundnuts and the chest that held my father’s fortune in silver shillings — the Queen’s money — with metal locks crafted by Fula locksmiths. Last of all came my father’s iron-framed four-poster bed, carried aloft by eight extra men. Past the main foot road, the path narrowed. The bed couldn’t pass. The men widened the track, slashing at the trees on either side. Progress was slow. My father decided we must press on. A few times I turned my head and each time the bed was further and further behind us. Eventually it disappeared from my view, behind the twisted bends, the giant trunks and curtain of ropes. It arrived in our new home three days after us.
My brother walked along beside me. I was young but I knew things. I knew I was glad to be leaving the old place and the old women. My mother and father called us by the names the diviner had chosen for us: Alusani and Asana. As the sun rose Alusani fell behind. I urged him, but I couldn’t carry him. The bearers with their loads balanced upon their heads followed us with straight backs, their eyes fixed upon the horizon. Alusani trailed so far behind he became tangled in the feet of the first man. Our mother worried he was not strong enough to make the journey. So I walked on alone, under the weight of my load while Alusani rocked and slept under the canopy of the maka reserved for my father.
The sky turned to violet and the trees on the horizon dark blue. The planes of our faces faded and disappeared. After some time the path broadened again; the shadows of the trees grew