by Keisha Bush
“My child,” her mother said, holding Maimouna’s thin face in her hands, “forgive me for not knowing the evil your uncle would allow around you. Every time I felt something, your uncle would appear with stories of your wonderful life and small gifts he claimed were from you. I thought the feelings of worry I had were just my overactive imagination. I was young and foolish. Please, forgive your mama.”
Maimouna would find herself crying tears of joy over a simple meal of chicken and rice cooked by her mother, on her way home from the market, or in the morning upon waking and realizing that she was not in Dakar but in Guinea. In the early morning she would clean the house and it would fill her with pride to do something for the person she loved the most. Some days she would miss her cousins, but it never lasted long enough to cause her too much grief. She would cook for her mother the Senegalese dishes she learned to make so well and she beamed with joy when her mother gushed over the flavorful meals.
She found work cleaning for a French family in the area and doted on her mother. It was at the market that she met Idrissa selling wares imported from France and China. She would visit his stall twice a week, coming up with excuses to buy things like perfumes and knickknacks for her beloved mama. Eventually, he learned where she lived and called on her at home. Her mother could not understand what it was with their family and the Senegalese, but she blamed herself for Maimouna’s affection for Idrissa.
“Had I kept you here with me, you would be married to a fine Guinean man by now,” her mother lamented.
“Oh, Mama!” Maimouna playfully teased. “You know you love him too!”
Her mother smiled. “I do. He is a good boy and will do right by you.”
Their courtship lasted a year before Idrissa came back from one of his trips with the news that he was moving back to Senegal.
“My mother passed away,” he announced while they were drinking an evening tea in the yard.
“I’m so sorry,” Maimouna said as she cupped his hand into her own.
“My father has told my brother to lend me some of his land for my own. No longer will I work in trade and wares but become a farmer like my father and his father before him.”
“Oh,” Maimouna said, letting go of his hand.
“I want you to come with me. Be my wife, Maimouna.”
“Oh!” Maimouna’s eyebrows shot up. Of course, this is the direction she expected their relationship to go, but she never harbored the idea of returning to Senegal. Never in a million years. She dreamt of living in a house next door to her mother and seeing her every day for the rest of her life.
“I promise to never take on an additional wife. You are my only love.”
That wasn’t the cause of her hesitation, but she was glad to hear he would forego Islam’s allowance to marry up to four wives.
“I never imagined moving back to Senegal. I only just reunited with my mother three years ago.”
“Your mother can come with us!”
“I’ll ask her.”
Her mother refused, but urged her to go and create a life for herself with Idrissa.
“You have been blessed with a good man. Your suffering did not happen in vain. It was noted, and you are now reaping, and will continue to reap, your just rewards, my child.”
They married, and within two weeks she was living in the village of Saloulou in her very own five-room house.
Maimouna looks around the darkened room. Allah has turned his back on her. Her sufferings of youth were not enough penance to offer lenience in the face of her present crimes: sending Ibrahimah away to live the life of poverty, pain, and hardship. She flips over to lie on her other side, leaving her back to the door. She has no blessings.
Night arrives, concealing all that is wrong in the world. Fatou walks into the bedroom for the second time that day and shakes her awake. Maimouna wrinkles her nose in disgust. She finds the smell of food disgusting.
“Take it away.”
“Mama, it’s rice and lamb, just like you do it. You have to eat something. Please.”
For a moment Maimouna feels bad for her daughter. She is trying her best, but the truth is the effort means nothing. Life is still suffering, pain, and disappointment. She never should have brought these children into this life. She should have known better. What a fool she has been all these years.
Fatou walks around to the other side of the bed and sits on its edge. She places the candle on the dresser and attempts to put a spoonful of rice into her mother’s mouth. Maimouna knocks the spoon away and spills rice on the bed. Fatou puts the tray on the dresser, rolls her eyes, and walks out of the room.
Fatou joins her father and sisters in the living room to eat. Gone are the days of family chatter and discussion. Dinner by candlelight casts shadows across solemn faces as the rolling power outages continue. Idrissa looks over at his daughter and sees the pain in her eyes.
“Fatou, the food is very good. Isn’t it, girls?”
“Yes.”
“Delicious.”
Idrissa reaches over and pats Fatou on the shoulder. “You’ll make a good wife one day, my daughter.”
Fatou hangs her head as she nibbles on a piece of chicken. “I wish Ibrahimah had never been born,” she mumbles.
Idrissa looks up with surprise on his face. “Fatou! How could you say such a thing? Our family is going through a hard time, but there is still hope. Allah blesses those who have faith.”
“But Papa, how much more can we take? Why is Allah testing our faith? We are good people. Me, Aisha, and Binta are good in school. We do our chores without complaint. You and Mama work hard. Ibrahimah is just a baby and look at what has happened! Nothing we do is working.”
“It’s not fair,” Aisha mumbles, her shoulders slouching in unison with her sisters’.
“Girls, you know your mother has had a hard life. She and I met three years after she had escaped from her uncle and yet I had never met a woman with a more gentle and loving heart. I knew that no matter what life dropped at our feet, we would conquer it, together, with love.”
Tears well up in the corners of Fatou’s eyes and she struggles to hold them back. “How will we conquer this? Mama has given up. She is too tired to fight. We are tired. And Ibrahimah—is he still fighting?”
“Fatou, you are right. Your mother is tired. I am tired and I know you, my children, are tired. It does seem like your mother has given up hope, but I believe a part of her has not, or we would not be having this discussion right now. She refuses to leave the bed and eat, but she is still in the bed, in the house, with us. I thought perhaps this phase would pass like all the others but you have awakened me to realize that I need to try again. Perhaps I have given up hope these last days because of my fatigue, and I am sorry. I promise you; we will get through this.”
Binta, Aisha, and Fatou get up and embrace their father.
The next afternoon Idrissa’s older brother visits with his wife and children. Cousins meet one another at the door and run off to play while the adults discuss matters. Fatou serves a drink that is a mixture of sweet bissap and spicy gingembre on ice, and lingers close by, more interested in the adult conversations than playing with ten- and eleven-year-olds.
“How is she?”
“Not good, brother.”
“Perhaps she needs to see a doctor?”
“Nothing is working.”
“I mean a real doctor, not one of those heebie-jeebie witch doctors. Perhaps she has a tumor or cancer.”
“More like cancer of her senses,” Idrissa’s sister-in-law interjects. “You should have continued to give her the tea I sent.”
Idrissa looks over at his sister-in-law with tired patience.
“The teas are not working, and at this point she refuses to drink any more of them, and who can blame her. She’s tired. We’re tired,” Idrissa says.
Idrissa waves his hand toward their bedroom and his robust sister-in-law hoists herself up out of the chair. She bumps into Fatou along the way.
“Fetch me another glass of that bissap-and-ginger drink. Did you make that?”
“Yes.”
“It’s absolutely delicious, my dear.”
“Thank you, ta-ta,” Fatou says.
“You’ll have to make me a special batch this week,” she says, walking into Maimouna and Idrissa’s bedroom.
The brusque woman squints as her eyes struggle in the dark, her nose contorting into various angles at the stench. She walks across the room, pulls the curtains back, and opens the window, allowing anxious sunlight to burst through.
“Close it.”
“I cannot see without light and cannot breathe without fresh air.” She grabs a chair and drags it over to the window. “It stinks in here.”
Fatou returns and hands her aunt the drink.
Ice cubes clink as she takes a long, greedy gulp from the oversized plastic cup. “Go, I’ll call you when I need you.”
Fatou takes to aimless sweeping outside the bedroom door.
“You plan to lie there until death? Leaving your husband and children to fend for themselves?”
Maimouna turns her back to the window in an attempt to block the assault of sunlight through her closed eyelids.
“You think you are a good woman?”
“I’m not.”
“You’re right,” her sister-in-law scoffs, “you’re not. A mother doesn’t abandon her children and husband. You have a good husband. He’s not taking additional wives or sleeping with other women. He hasn’t divorced you and taken the children, though he has every right to do so!”
“Perhaps he should.”
“You scorn what Allah gives you. You spit in his face as you lie here refusing to care for your family. Understand that ungratefulness redeems no bounty in this life or the hereafter.”
Maimouna scoffs at the intrusion of this pompous woman in her space; her bleached skin gives off a smell of the dead as she attempts to cover it with talcum powder and body spray. Maimouna wishes death would release her this very moment.
“Look at me and my husband. We sent our Étienne away to be a Talibé more than six years ago and Marabout Ahmed says he’s one of the best boys in Dakar. Children should not be burdens to their elders once they are brought into this world. They’re here to serve their parents, to bring them honor.” She pauses a moment and looks over at Maimouna. “I admit, I missed my Étienne dearly at first, but then we were blessed with another child. That new child was a gift from Allah. You disrespect our traditions when you behave this way. People whisper and gossip about this all through the village and the next; you bring our entire family shame.”
What does this stupid woman know of honor or tradition? One does not abandon their child for the sake of blessings from a marabout. Death will put her out of this misery soon enough. The question that begs to be answered is when will this old wretch leave and go back to dallying in someone else’s business?
“Go ahead, turn your back to me but you cannot make me leave. You’ll listen to me. Life is difficult for us all. There’s nothing you can do to spare your children the disappointment and pain of life. You dishonor the Muslim brotherhood of the Talibé with your sorrow and self-pity.”
“Leave my room.”
“Perhaps your guilt has to do more with the distance you have created between yourself and Allah. What woman mourns a child who is alive and well? It’s absurd. You have lost your mind for sure.”
“Say what you may. You will pay for abandoning your child, as will I.”
Her sister-in-law clucks her tongue. “You’re an insolent woman. I pity your husband and children, for they’re the ones who pay for your stupidity.”
She gets up from her chair to leave but stops midstep.
“Fatou!” she calls.
The young girl scurries into the room.
“Yes, ta-ta.”
“Help me get your mother up. We’ll bathe her and clean this room once and for all. The stench in here is unbearable.”
“Na’am.”
“Pull these sheets off and go put them in the back for washing. Is there water up here or do you have to fetch some?”
“We fetched water earlier.”
“Good. Fill the pail inside with water to bathe your mother.”
Fatou begins pulling the sheets back off the bed. Maimouna tries to hold on to them but she is no match for the healthy teenager. Her sister-in-law shoves Maimouna’s body to the left and then to the right as Fatou pulls the fitted sheets off. When Fatou returns with the water, her aunt is in her brassiere and underwear, waiting.
“I don’t want my clothes getting wet,” she says, before turning her attention to Maimouna.
“Don’t touch me.”
“Shut up, woman. You’ve caused enough trouble. The least you can do is bathe your body. You’re disgusting.”
Fatou lowers her head in shame.
“Help me raise her up.”
Fatou and her aunt hoist the hard, bony shell that used to house Maimouna’s voluptuous and curvy figure. Irritated, she shakes their hands off and walks hunched over in short strides toward the bathroom. The house has no running water, but the drain in the middle of the tiled bathroom floor works fine.
“We’ll need more water; her hair needs to be washed also.”
Fatou runs outside and instructs her sisters to go fetch more water from the well.
“Why? We’re busy. Do it yourself,” Aisha says, placing her hand on her hip and pursing her lips.
Fatou grabs the girl by the ear and drives her nails into it. Aisha tries to pull away but is no match for her older sister. Fatou looks over at Binta.
“You want the same?”
Binta shakes her head.
“Then take these buckets and go fetch more water.”
Fatou releases Aisha, who steps away frowning and rubbing her ear.
“Auntie is bathing Mama and we need more water. Plus, we have to wash the sheets and cook.”
The girls raise their eyebrows.
“Mama’s up?” they ask in unison.
“Don’t ask questions, do what I say now,” Fatou yells over her shoulder, returning to her mother and aunt.
“Woman! Close your eyes. I have to rinse the soap from your hair!”
“Leave me,” Maimouna says, her teeth chattering and body shivering beneath the cold water assaulting her skin.
With Fatou helping her aunt, Maimouna eventually gives up her fight and allows the water to flow over her body. She cannot say for sure that what she went through as a young woman, living as a servant, was easier or harder than what is happening to her now. She does not know where she found the resilience to survive such a harsh and unrewarding life. She did love her cousins back then and she often focused solely on them, tending to their needs and desires, so perhaps, it was through caring for them that she found solace. Perhaps life’s struggles are easier to bear when one is young. Perhaps God did love her back then and that is how she survived, but she is certain he does not care for her now.
Fatou and her aunt’s coordination is sloppy and water splashes in every direction, leaving Fatou and her aunt sopping wet. Fatou hands her aunt a towel and the woman pats herself dry while grumbling under her breath about what a foolish woman Maimouna is, and now look at how wet she has gotten herself doing charity for her husband’s brother. Fatou grabs another towel and pats her mother dry.
“Come, Mama,” Fatou coaxes. She slips Maimouna into a bra and panties then rummages through
her dresser for a wrap skirt and matching top. Maimouna sits hunched over with limp arms on the edge of the bed. Her sister-in-law puts her elaborate outfit back on and sits down in the chair.
“You are going to put her in those old clothes?”
“They’re clean and comfortable,” Fatou says defensively.
Her aunt rolls her eyes and looks out of the window.
“Mama, sit on the floor. Let me braid your hair.”
Maimouna slips down to the floor and Fatou sits above, her legs dangling over the side of the bed. Fatou makes neat parts and braids tight cornrows from the front of Maimouna’s head to the base of her neck.
Her daughter is such a mirror of herself. If only the love of her children and husband were enough to wake her out of this wicked dream, Maimouna thinks to herself. Fatou wraps her mother’s head in a scarf.
“Well, that’s better! You almost look presentable again, thanks to me. Let’s go sit in the living room with our husbands,” says Maimouna’s sister-in-law.
Maimouna shakes her head. She cannot bear sitting in a room with her husband and brother-in-law, becoming a spectacle to be discussed, or a problem to be fixed, each seeking to triumph over the other, convinced their solution is the right one.
“It’ll be good for you.”
Maimouna shakes her head again and slaps at the hand of her sister-in-law. The only reason she tolerates this woman is because Fatou is present, but if she never saw her sister-in-law again, she’d lose no sleep.
“I have to wash the sheets. Mama can sit with me while I do that. She could use the fresh air.”
“Sure,” she says curtly.
Outside, the sunlight hits Maimouna’s eyes like lightning. Her hand rises to shield her face. How’d she ever leave the house in such harsh conditions? Fatou drags a chair over to a shady part of the small yard and Maimouna sits down. She covers her face with her hands before her sister-in-law moves them down to her lap.
“You need the sun,” she scolds.
“I have an idea!” Fatou says, dashing inside the house, returning within moments with the straw hat her father wears while working.