Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [66]
In the morning scarcely a sign that anything had happened: some bloodstains in the sand and the butt of a candle rolling in the waves.
Nothing in the coroner’s report contradicted what everyone already knew. Kassila had caused the boat to capsize. The coroner was only able to tell them how he had used his powers to alter the currents. He could not tell them the reason.
But nothing happens for nothing.
And I knew. And Marie knew — we knew the reason. She had been spared and Ma Cook had perished. What other proof did we need?
I waited for Ma Cook to appear in my dreams. After a while I began to will it. But Ma Cook refused to appease me. From time to time I would become absorbed in the task of solving a maths problem or I would be weeding between the rows of wild greens in the garden, only to find myself looking up in answer to the silent call of my name. Or I would glimpse a fleeting movement out of the corner of my eye, turn and find whoever had been coming was gone. Ma Cook’s spirit was taunting me, playing spiteful games. I walked all the way to Tihun and lit a candle for her in the church there. And I did that every week through the whole of Lent.
For a while Marie slept alone in our bed. The time came when we shared again. I lay in bed and listened to the wind. I could feel her breath faintly on the back of my neck, and the cough that for weeks after the accident wracked her body with spasms and caused the bed to judder. I wanted to reach behind and pull her close to me, but my arms could not reach across the space between our bodies. Ma Cook had wedged herself in between us, I imagined her there lying on her back and giggling to herself.
After heaven and earth Kuru made people. He called his angel and told him to separate the people into black and white. The angel did so. Then Kuru told the angel to bring all sorts of tools. When these were gathered in a pile in front of him, Kuru gave to the black people the plough, the hoe, the hammer and the anvil. And he sent them to live in the hills and the forests to be farmers and blacksmiths. They hoed the land and planted crops, and built themselves houses from earth and thatched them with palm leaves. To the white people he gave a compass, a ruler and a sextant. They built ships and sailed the seas. They traded and grew wealthy. Then Kuru saw that he had divided the gifts unfairly. So he gave the black people something that nobody else had. He gave them the power of divination.
The black people could have used their gift to make themselves rich, but they didn’t. Instead they talked to the spirits and the ones who had gone before. They sought their advice and consulted them on what to do. This was the way they lived their lives.
I learned that story before I left the village to go to school. And I wondered at the meaning of it. Everything in those days was education, education. We wanted to learn the Europeans’ ways. At first I thought the story was supposed to act as an encouragement to learn. And a warning not to be like the foolish black people who failed to use their gift to make themselves rich.
But now I don’t think that at all. Now I think maybe we were so keen to copy others that in so doing we forgot who we were.
On the wall of the room in which Father Bernard held our catechism classes was a sampler by some of the senior girls. It was only a few years old, but already it had yellowed in parts and bleached in others. It was the air, you see. It caused everything to rot. The First Commandment read: ‘I am the Lord your God. You shall not have strange Gods before me.’
I remember because I memorised all Ten Commandments in preparation for my First Communion. And also because