Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [64]
A star close to me. A spirit calling my name. Sometimes I thought too much. As if in passing he told me I would never marry.
Marie was full of questions where I had ventured none. But the moriman made as though he was deaf. He drew and scratched on his piece of paper. Eventually he looked up.
‘Somebody is blocking you.’ The words made a loud noise in the sudden silence of the room.
I looked at Marie. I could feel anxiety creeping up under the skin of my back.
‘You know who it is.’ That’s all he would say. I waited uncertainly. I wasn’t sure what was supposed to happen next. ‘Come and see me some other time.’ And he got up and left the room.
And that was it. Marie stood up. A moment later I scrambled to my feet and followed her into the light.
I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t that what these diviners always do? It was part of the entrapment. To entice you back. Persuade you to part with your money or some goods you were willing to exchange for the next part of the prophecy. And maybe it was.
An hour after we returned Marie spoke out loud the very thing I had been thinking. ‘Ma Cook,’ she said.
We were cleaning the dormitory. Marie swept. I followed behind scooping up the dirt with two pieces of wood and throwing it into an empty margarine tub. The next time we saw Ma Cook coming towards us down the corridor Marie deliberately bumped her with her shoulder. Ma Cook opened her mouth to curse her, but Marie was there first. ‘I dae nah you head,’ she said.
I dae nah you head? Well, it means, sort of: ‘I’m watching you.’ You could interpret it like that. And that is part of it. Really, it is a warning. A threat and a warning. You had better watch out, should anything happen to me. Or, if you like — wish me ill and ill will befall you.
I would wake up feeling neither happy nor unhappy, but with the sense that something was going to happen. The next moment I’d remember what it was. And the feeling would settle over me like a chill, as though a cloud had passed across the sun.
But after a month the feelings gradually quietened. The dreams and the visit to the market and the moriman all merged into one. Sometimes I really believed that I had dreamed the whole thing. And I would feel relieved. Ah, it was only a dream! Not real but an illusion. Not real but real at one and the same time. And gradually I began to live with the knowledge the same way I lived with my dreams.
The wind changed. At the end of the dry season the wind came from the north, from the desert, and blew for many weeks covering everything in fine red dust. But there were times, when for no reason whatsoever, suddenly it switched and blew straight in off the sea, breathing salt into our hair and coating our parched skin with a viscous film.
I was alone folding clothes on the bunk I shared with Marie. Folding her clothes and mine and putting them in the trunk at the bottom of the bed. Marie was on kitchen detail for the second time in a week.
There are times you know when something terrible has happened, even before anybody tells you. There is a certain stillness. Invisible currents. Strange things happen, small things. Vultures flying overhead in the direction of the sea.
A woman came running, flat-footed, past the walls of the school, clutching at the ends of her lappa to stop it unravelling. Her breasts swinging wildly under her blouse. I can see her still, freeze-frame her at the moment she ran past the gates of the school. These are the things that register in your subconscious. But if you ask me, when did I first realise? I would tell you it was before that. By the time I saw that woman running down the street with her head thrown back and her mouth wide open as though she were screaming, I already knew.
One-Foot Jombee hopped up to the iron gates and looked out. When he came back he was bouncing around, waving his arms. Fleetingly I wanted to laugh,