Roots_ The Saga of an American Family - Alex Haley [11]
Kunta continued sleeping in Omoro’s hut for the next seven nights—not that anyone seemed to notice or care, in their concern for the new baby. He was beginning to think that his mother didn’t want him any more—or his father, either—until, on the evening of the eighth day, Omoro called him before his mother’s hut, along with everyone else in Juffure who was physically able, to hear the new baby given his chosen name, which was Lamin.
That night Kunta slept peacefully and well—back in his own bed beside his mother and his new brother. But within a few days, as soon as her strength had returned, Binta began to take the baby, after cooking and serving something for Omoro’s and Kunta’s breakfast, and spent most of each day in the hut of Grandma Yaisa. From the worried expressions that both Binta and Omoro wore, Kunta knew that Grandma Yaisa was very sick.
Late one afternoon, a few days later, he and his kafo mates were out picking mangoes, which had finally ripened. Bruising the tough, orange-yellow skin against the nearest rock, they would bite open one plump end to squeeze and suck out the soft sweet flesh within. They were collecting basketfuls of monkey apples and wild cashew nuts when Kunta suddenly heard the howling of a familiar voice from the direction of his grandma’s hut. A chill shot through him, for it was the voice of his mother, raised in the death wail that he had heard so often in recent weeks. Other women immediately joined in a keening cry that soon spread all the way across the village. Kunta ran blindly toward his grandmother’s hut.
Amid the milling confusion, Kunta saw an anguished Omoro and a bitterly weeping old Nyo Boto. Within moments, the tobalo drum was being beaten and the jaliba was loudly crying out the good deeds of Grandma Yaisa’s long life in Juffure. Numb with shock, Kunta stood watching blankly as the young unmarried women of the village beat up dust from the ground with wide fans of plaited grass, as was the custom on the occasion of a death. No one seemed to notice Kunta.
As Binta and Nyo Boto and two other shrieking women entered the hut, the crowd outside fell to their knees and bowed their heads. Kunta burst suddenly into tears, as much in fear as in grief. Soon men came with a large, freshly split log and set it down in front of the hut. Kunta watched as the women brought out and laid on the log’s flat surface the body of his grandmother, enclosed from her neck to her feet in a white cotton winding cloth.
Through his tears, Kunta saw the mourners walk seven circles around Yaisa, praying and chanting as the alimamo wailed that she was journeying to spend eternity with Allah and her ancestors. To give her strength for that journey, young unmarried men tenderly placed cattle horns filled with fresh ashes all around her body.
After most of the mourners had filed away, Nyo Boto and other old women took up posts nearby, huddling and weeping and squeezing their heads with their hands. Soon, young women brought the biggest ciboa leaves that could be found, to protect the old women’s heads from rain through their vigil. And as the old women sat, the village drums talked about Grandma Yaisa far into the night.
In the misty morning, according to the custom of the forefathers, only the men of Juffure—those who were able to walk—joined the procession to the burying place, not far past the village, where otherwise