by Edna O'Brien
I sat outside on the broken chair with Babby on my lap. I had not looked at sunsets in a long time, but this sunset was a ball of copper and the sky with skeins of crimson running out of it in all directions. I felt it was specially for us.
‘Look,’ I said. She pointed her finger and looked but was indifferent to it.
Just before dark, Buki came, a supply of stones in her wrapper. We watched as she struck the edge of one particular stone along the side of another as nonchalantly as if she were striking a match. She had obviously practised. One little spark appeared, too wan and wobbly to survive, yet more lay in waiting. Pinpricks of gold that as she breathed on them, whooshed into life, and were then carried across in her cupped hands to the fire that she had already laid. Ribbons of flame shot up, orange and blue and violet flames feeding off one another and spluttering.
Show me the diamonds
Show me the gold
Call me the answer
Oh yeah
Call me anywhere
I don’t have a care
This is my world
Buki is irrepressible, her face glowing with the light from the fire, her eyes big and black with a melting blackness. She is dancing a slow lazy dance, as Babby totters behind. Sparks fly about and the old blighted trees, with their straggling white beards, creak into life, from the blazing fire.
‘Oh pretty baby, oh pretty baby, oh pretty baby, yeah.’ The words come back to her, along with the excitement of those mischievous evenings. Once every six weeks or so, when her father and neighbours went off to Lake Chad to fish, she would be sent to her grandmother’s to sleep. Other cousins were also there and they slept two or three, or even four, to a bed. Faithfully, at nine o’clock, her grandmother went around the house, making sure that the latches on the window frames were secure, certain that her little charges would soon be sound asleep. Once they heard her snore, they were up. Being the youngest and the lightest, she was the one who had to jump first from the windowsill, her shoulders serving as a pedestal for the others to climb down onto. The taxi driver, who was a friend of theirs, had been forewarned never to beep his horn, just to wait until they came out. Impromptu dances happened in the out rooms of bars or in beer gardens and the driver always knew the venue to look for. Normally he drove the elderly to church, but driving young girls was his reward. He had eyes for each one of them. He was a widower and used to say to each one, ‘Maybe one of you need boyfriend,’ and they would laugh and pretend not to understand. They were skittish, sharing the one lipstick, changing into shoes, as he drove along dark rutted roads, believing that from afar they could hear the voice of the disc jockey, the Romeo in his silver bolero, with his stack of records, calling, calling especially to them. ‘Hurry, hurry, hurry.’
Show me the diamonds
Show me the gold
Call me the answer
Oh yeah
I don’t have a care
This is my world
The dance place seemed like heaven. No matter that it was just in a field, boards slung down and soaked with some oil or other, and one kerosene lamp under which a boy sat with a plastic bowl, taking the money. In one place there were a few streamers, leftovers from an election two years previous. All the soppy trappings of love had their beginnings in one of those places and where the light did not reach, they would find themselves swept up in strangers’ arms, hearing untoward things.
The driver sat at the back, making the one beer they had bought him last for the evening. He drank slowly. He basked in it. The smoochy songs, the beaming faces, the answering bodies and above all, the anticipation of the thrill that would be his when he brought them home. As he lifted each girl from the road over the fence and then from the garden over the windowsill itself, he was allowed a quick peck. She went five times in all.
Talking to the devil, talking to the Lord,
Going to heaven, going to hell.
Abruptly, her gaiety swerved into something else, something manic. She is like a dervish. I see sudden terror. A darker memory has claimed her – the pit, the horses, her father’s face, the unending sadness of never being able to say goodbye. I hold her. I tell her it is going to be alright. She can live with us. I paint a picture of my father and mother in our doorway with tears in their eyes, about to receive us, brimful of welcome. My brother Yusuf in his blue shirt and striped braces is just a few paces behind, with a shy, tentative look. The worst of the dark is behind us. The tarred road cannot be too far away. The tar will be blue and soft underfoot, the same colour as Yusuf’s eyes, a lapis blue in its depths, and soft with feeling. I called out to him, Yusuf. Yusuf. He answered with the bearing of a bridegroom. Then he vanished.
BUKI AND I STOOD outside the hut, quiet, downcast. We were snappy with one another. The sun was already up, sizzling on the plateau beneath and leaves drooped in the heat. There was nothing, no one. God has deserted us. I held Babby. Buki held Babby. You can’t soothe a hungry child in a hungry place. Buki gave her something. It was the softest part of the root that she had dug up. Babby chewed it and spat it out with disgust.
‘Cry. Cry. Cry. Cry your guts out. There’s no one here. There’s no one home. There’s no mother. Mothers all dead.’
‘Don’t, Maryam … Don’t,’ Buki said in a voice so reprimanding. I bit back tears, ashamed. What had happened to the girl I once was. She was gone. There was no love left in me. I wanted to die. I want to die, I whisper. I did not know what I was saying. I did not know that death could be so near, that it hovered.
‘I’ll go forage …’ Buki said as she went out. I did not answer.
I don’t remember much of the day, except that it passed and Babby cried and cried herself to sleep a few times, rubbing her eyes that were scalding and itchy.
It was evening time again and we were at the table, about to eat. Buki had brought water and an orange-yellow fruit that she peeled and cut up in pieces. The flesh clung to the oval of the stone and she saved it, to make a syrup with.
It happened so suddenly. The malice of the morning had come back. This food was manna to us. We were starving and yet we had not touched it. Instead we were having an argument as to what it was called. She said one thing and I said another. We both got so headstrong and het up that neither would yield. Because whoever yielded would have conceded power. But what power had we, cast out in some hinterland. Vengeances flew.
‘You do not love your child enough, you scream at her,’ she said suddenly.
‘You’re jealous,’ I replied.
‘It’s you who are jealous … and it’s you who converted,’ she said spitefully.
‘I did not convert, nor did he ever compel me to,’ I said. She resented him because he had separated us and she would never understand that he had joined the Sect to save his family from starvation.
‘He saved our lives,’ I screamed, so loud that even Babby cowered.
Then Buki did the cruellest thing. She picked up the bowl with the pieces of cut fruit, went to the door and tossed the contents out into the pitch-black night.
‘I hope you’re satisfied,’ she said and went out.
*
I am hungry. My saliva thickens and drools. I want to go out and find where she has thrown it, to wipe the earth off it and bring it back and eat it. Why shouldn’t I. I am ravenous. There is dirt on me and in me, the dirt of their deeds.
She is taking her time to come back, to show her mastery. Buki, Buki. We are nearer than any two people and also further. Why don’t you come in and bury the hatchet. My mind runs between feast and vomit. Oh the pity of it. You are the only one I loved, along with my mother and father and my brother Yusuf. The last I saw of my mother was her handing me clean underwear before I left to set out on that bus, to take my exams. I had had my first menses but it had finished. When they burst into our dormitory we did not know who they were, but very soon we did. We had heard of them and their brute ways, but until you know something you do not know it. They had burnt and looted villages and slau
ghtered the innocents in Borno, in Gwoza, in Maiduguri, but we had been saved, or so we thought. I had a clean wrapper. I had my diary. It was a little notebook. These entries would one day be our witness, or so I used to think. Buki, we are each other’s lifeline. Come back in. I do not want this ghastly suspense. Night is so fearful.
*
She comes in like an apparition, her hair wet, holding some root for us to eat.
‘I got this,’ she said, but barely were the words out than threads and spools of vomit were spilling from her mouth. Little black bubbles appeared on her lips. Her eyes were full of tears. Then she laughed, a hideous laugh and fell back. I see her black leg in front of me and I know at once. A stump getting blacker and blacker, like the rotted post in the garden. It weighed heavy. I fetched the blanket so that she could rest on it, but she is too feverish. She is struggling for words. Then I see the two cavities of red on her ankle, where the snake had bitten and where the venom had gone in.
‘You’re not dying,’ I said as if the words could heal her.
She sat up, half smiling and lucid, then looked at me with the tenderest look and said, ‘They are calling … they are calling me.’ I knew what she meant. I had heard it once in my father’s house, when his mother came to us, towards her end. They named it the death rattle and so it was, a sound beyond speech.
*
Under the moon, she looked so peaceful, like an effigy, her eyes closed and Babby next to her on the ground, weirdly quiet. I was digging as if she was telling me how to do it. There was no time for mourning. It had to be done promptly. I had chosen a spot a bit away from the hut. The earth was crumbling at first and I was reeling off the foods we would one day plant – spinach, onions, sorghum, rice, millet, nuts, Irish potatoes, gum Arabic. Halfway down I feel a ridge of stone under the spade and I scrape and scrape determinedly, but it will not shift. Buki, I am not able to dig deeper. I put leaves around her waist, as was the custom of long ago and I looked for the last time on her dark, golden, emaciated body. Then I lift her and lay her in. The grave is not deep enough. She is sitting half up, like a floppy clown. I did not cry. Neither did I fool myself that that grave would go unpillaged. I shovelled more clay over it and patted it and then I gathered some big stones, by way of protecting it. I had not said a single prayer. Then I picked Babby up and dreaded going back into that empty hut. I think she dreaded it also, because she kept pointing to where the stones were, so ugly and plaintive in a heap, under a ripe moon.
*
She bawled ceaselessly, drinking in my despair, my helplessness. The clay walls began to reverberate with her cries. I bring her outside. I sit on the chair and trace the ground with a bit of stick, begging for deliverance. I cry out, to Buki, to God, to the saints that I used to pray to as a girl, especially the little flower garlanded with pink rosebuds that fell onto her chest bone. June was her month. I wonder what month it is. I give her the breast, but there is nothing there. Then the answer came to me. Before my very eyes, identical to when we first saw it, lake water shimmered in the sun. I pick her up and go out. I am chatty. I will never know what I said on that walk and I will never want to know.
*
The old words were back that we learnt at the Feast of Pentecost. I had brought the basket. Up at the far end of the lake, away from the long-legged birds, there was a cascade of water that ran down from the springs in the hills above. The music it made! It would draw anything to it, even a basket. I placed her in it. The words were on my tongue – ‘When the mother of Moses could no longer hide her child, she took for it an ark of bulrushes and daubed it with slime and with pitch and put the child therein and she laid it in the flags by the river bank.’
Babby was in the basket, her hands dabbling the water at either side. I talked to her as I walked backwards. I talked so she could hear me. Big evergreen boughs jutted halfway across the lake and had embedded themselves there. They were good cover. They got between me and her. The moment I was up on the bank I scooted.
*
The mute spell of darkness had fallen but it was not mute in that hut. It was bedlam. I heard things. I stuffed the holes of the wall with leaves, certain that enemies were lurking. I put the stick to the door. It wobbled. I wedged it so that it no longer shifted. Then I saw her, in a wide pink bonnet, just sitting there on the ground. I tried to put a blanket around her but she refused to be contained. I had something to tell her, a revelation: I have given you a name. I have called you Maryam. Same name as me. Two Maryams, like the mother of Jesus, except we are the Black Madonnas. We are descended from trees, they are our mother flesh. There are ebony icons that represent us. We are associated with miracles. That is why you and I are here. We have been in bondage, imprisoned in slime and mortar and made to do all kinds of hard service in the fields and elsewhere. Why are you looking at me like that? I am not crazy. Our black skins glow. Our heads are haloed. Don’t go to sleep. Don’t. I want you to hear me out to the very end. I want you to acknowledge your new name, Maryam, and to give me a little smile. That’s better. We will be out of here by morning, on our way. Black Madonnas with diadems of gold.
She had fallen fast asleep. I could not wake her. I lifted her, blanket and all, onto the bed, but I kept up the charade. Talking, talking. Somewhere, during that unruly night, I fell into a ravelled sleep.
*
Through the cracks in the door I see women’s feet. There are three of them. One carries firewood, the second has a gaily painted calabash on her head and the third is holding my child. My child. She is wrapped in a clean blue cloth and is making sounds of contentment. The woman hands her to me as though it is a gift. I want to explain. I want to tell them how well she slept all night, not a whimper. They know this can’t be true. They saw. They saw everything, the basket wending its way towards the cascade of water. They must have been gathering firewood at the very same moment.
I invite them in and the woman takes the calabash from her head and sets it down. She gives me a drink. I begin to take slow sips, but the vessel is shaking in my hand. They do not judge me. I think they guess that I have escaped captivity because of my mad, startled appearance. One of them speaks a little English. She has a big smile and when she smiles, I see friendly gaps between her teeth. I am not afraid of her. She tells me they are a nomadic people, but have a settlement some distance away. They are wood gatherers and they come in groups, so as to feel safer. Their men are away herding. They have been gone now for many days. It is like that, herders having to go greater distances each time, as the forest itself is being stripped of water and pasture.
There is nowhere for them to sit, so we go outside and sit on the ground. We touch each other’s hands to compare how cold we are and to establish friendship. The woman lays small laths of wood over the dead ash from the fires that Buki made. She has a lighter. She uses it so adroitly. She wishes me to have it. Sparks sputter up into the grey blankety dawn and we sit without conversing. There is something exceedingly calm and safe about them and they are reticent, because of the crime they know I have committed. It is very cold.
Babby has come awake and is again mesmerised by red and violet sheets of flame, but still nervous of it. I take her to feed, but she is not hungry. How much does she remember. How soon after I ran did they find her. Seconds, even less. They see that I am sad and the woman tries to reassure me, says they will come with milk next day, because I must get stronger before I set out. But where can I set out to. I ask if trucks go by, because the previous night I heard sounds of vehicles. I tell them I watched over her. They look at me and see that I am lost. The woman who speaks for all says that it is not good for the baby and me to be alone here, but first they must take the advice of their men.
‘We will try,’ she says and I know that she wishes she could say it with certainty.
Then they leave.
Alone with Babby, I kiss her. Her eyes are full of something I call reproach.
‘I’m not old enough to be your mother,’ I say cravenly.
Her expression is blank, aloof, her finger pointing into the distance with a kind of questioning thrust. I begin to cry. I cry from the pit of my belly. I cry from wherever the root of my love for her should be. She had never seen me cry so openly. She drops her finger and buries her head in my chest, the thumping of my heart the only sanctuary she has.
*
I have barely come out of sleep when I see the fidgety beams of a torch on the wall. Two men, wild men, in fur-trimmed hats and wadded jackets, stand above me. They carry a long pole, stretching from one shoulder to the far shoulder of the other, with animals tied to it. Hares, rabbits, a monkey with a grinning look and one big animal, its hind legs jutting out and black hairs sprouting from its hooves. It is an antelope. I saw one once in a picture. They are talking rapidly to one another in their own tongue. The torchlight twitching on the mud walls is making Babby quiver. Have they come to kill us? At least we will die together.
Then they lay the pole on the floor and look around hoping for food, except there is none. The younger one sat on the bed and the other on the broken chair. The young one took out a cloth full of eggs. He cracks them on the tin plate and they swallow them and grunt with satisfaction. Then I am offered one and I take it, being so afraid of them. It is a big egg and a very big bird must have laid it. The yolk is almost too much for my swallow and I retch, but get it down somehow.
The young one wants his reward. His eyes are dancing in his head. The older one goes out lugging the pole, the animals bobbing ridiculously on it. The young one begins to touch my hair and make loops and ringlets with his little finger. I know what he wants. Better to get it over. I put Babby on the floor next to the wall, as her basket is no longer there. I open my wrapper. The moment he sees my body, so raked and scabby, he draws back, gapes one more time and runs from there, shouting, ‘Kola kola kola,’ which I know to mean Crazy crazy crazy.