Ancestor Stones - Aminatta Forna [89]
I was always a swift walker. I have my mother’s height. Not like these girls you see swinging their buttocks and slithering the soles of their feet across the ground. Gradually I put a little distance between us. They were talking; they didn’t even notice. As I drew level with a maize field, I stepped off the path and waited, hidden in the tall stems. Zainab and Khalil grew closer, I strained to hear their voices. They were speaking in murmurs. A name drifted up. Suffyan. Khalil’s father. That man who thought I wasn’t good enough for his son! What were they saying about him? Something about the harvest. That was six months away. I leaned forward to let the words reach my ears. Too far! I tipped forward, unbalanced and stumbled. I snatched at the maize, but the stalks snapped in my hands. I fell to the ground, landing back out on the path right in front of Zainab and Khalil. Their faces were still full of shock as Khalil helped me up and Zainab brushed my clothes. I straightened my headdress. Nobody spoke. We walked on.
In the days that followed Zainab became as lazy as an overheated sow. Twice I caught her sleeping in the middle of the day. On the bamboo bench at the back of the house, lying on her side, with her mouth open and her arm across her belly. I shook her shoulder. ‘What’s this?’ I said. I watched her rouse herself, wipe her mouth and move off slow as an anteater. Of course she wasn’t sick. Too strong for that. And anyway, if she was she would have said so soon enough.
Later, alone — I saw it. And at that moment the only thing I couldn’t understand was why I had been so foolish, so blind. Why had it taken me so long?
Zainab was having a baby.
I could see it all ahead of me, plainly. Like fields of rice rolling into the distance. A mighty river winding its way through the trees. The depthless blue hovering over the thin flat line of the horizon. This woman had come to take my life away.
A sister of mine was sick, I said. Khalil did not question me, did not ask which one. I packed a box with three of my best dresses, leaving all the rest stowed in my wooden chest. I took my small, blue teapot and the money I had from my last husband hidden in a cigarette tin. Later I sang Okurgba a song, one my mother sang to me. I sang it to you sometimes when you were a child. When you would let me. When you didn’t call for someone else to put you to bed, you preferred anyone to me. Probably you don’t remember now. ‘Why is a bump taller than a man?’ goes the chorus. ‘Because the bump sits on top of the man’s head.’ Okurgba liked to sing the reply. That night his eyes were already closed before I finished the first verse.
My son was still sleeping when I left the next morning. By the time I reached the roundabout in the centre of town a creamy dawn sky stretched over the earth like a great canopy. Some people were already waiting at the place where the buses arrived and departed, next door to the Agip petrol station. Dusty faces and feet told of the distances they had travelled. Inside the empty buses the drivers were still asleep, stretched out on the seats.
A child leading a blind man passed me once, doubled back and reached out his tiny hand. I found a few cents. So that one day fate might repay my act of kindness. ‘God will bless you,’ said the blind man three times, as though I had given them a fortune. I bought a pair of roasted plantains for breakfast and some oranges for later. Presently the drivers began to emerge from their vehicles. Towels slung round their necks, they disappeared to wash. On their return they climbed in behind the steering wheel and waited with the doors open.
I took the seat behind the driver, put my box under my feet.