by Wendy Orr
I want to sing, to help,
but my thoughts whirl –
too many, too fast –
to find the one that will call
my mother’s spirit home.
There is her anger, her sternness –
and they are part of her
but not the part I want to call.
Till I remember a song
that comes with an image of Mama
singing to the toddling girl that was me,
and even though I’m not sure
the image is true,
truth swells in it as I sing:
a song of joy, of love
from mother to daughter.
A girl-child
with first hair grown long enough
to cut this day
and offered to the goddess
in the smoke of the temple fire
as promise and plea
that the goddess,
receiving this mother’s heart-gift,
will keep the girl safe
to grow to maiden and mother,
raising a line of daughters –
women to praise the goddess forever –
because without her women,
the goddess will be gone.
A song I didn’t know I knew
and I don’t know if
I’m remembering or creating
but maybe it doesn’t matter,
because at the end
Mama stirs and smiles.
‘Lei,’ she says,
and that is all
but for the moment it’s a lot –
though I want more and Mama needs it,
so I sing again,
words straight from my soul to my lips.
I sing of the memory
of riding her hip –
I know it’s hers, not Nunu
because I can see the golden necklace,
feel the longing to touch
the silver dragonfly hanging there,
and the knowing that Nunu
will slap my fingers if I do,
or if I pat
Mama’s perfectly painted face and breasts.
With small Ibi at our side,
we stand on the hill above the town
amongst other women dressed in glory:
bright flounced skirts,
and gossamer shifts laced tight
below proud, bare breasts.
But Mama is proudest of all –
finer, I think, even than the Lady –
because we are watching the fleet
process into the harbour,
every ship safe and present
at the end of the season –
with my Dada the admiral leading
on the biggest, fastest ship,
and my biggest brother Glaucus
with him for the first time.
I sing of our sailing
in his garlanded ship –
papyrus flowers in elegant splendour –
with the chief and the Lady,
all of the Swallow Clan –
around the bay –
our island’s great lake
where the goddess of fire
breathes and belches.
I sing of women at the well,
herdsmen with goats and oxen
from foreign lands
and the many strange things
that Dada has seen;
because Mama hasn’t seen them
any more than me,
but watched their creation on our wall –
images from Dada’s stories.
I sing of how I loved
to press my fingers into paints and wet plaster
but not of how Mama said no –
or of how the frescoes lie shattered
in our ruined house –
but sing of the glory
of how they used to be.
And Mama smiles again, as if she can hear.
*
On Dada’s fourth visit, when the full moon of the winter solstice has shrunk to nothing then grown to a quarter again, and I’ve just finished my bleeding in a house with no running water or privacy, he is so weary he can hardly sit up to drink his soup. He slumps by the fire, holding Mama’s hand as he tells his story. ‘We heard rustling in the ruins of a house in the craft quarter. No one answered when we called, which wasn’t surprising after all this time, but there was more rustling and a whimper, so we started to dig.’
I look at his hands, with their layers of new scabs and grazes on top of old scars. He may be admiral of our trading fleet, but he works harder than any slave. Ibi says that’s why the men go on digging when hope is nearly gone. And this time they had hope. No one knew who might be in the ruin, but they were determined to get them out.
‘We threw out enough rubble to fill the street again,’ he continues, ‘and the more we dug, the more whimpering we heard. Until finally,’ he smiles at Mama, who doesn’t notice, and then at me, and I’m nearly holding my breath because I’m so desperate to hear a story with a happy ending, ‘we pushed away a table, and found a mother dog and her pup. We pulled them out – the mother was near death, but we gave her water – and the pup was round and healthy. A good story?’ he asks, as if he were a minstrel.
‘A good story,’ I agree, and it is. The mother saved her pup. I saved my mother. The goddess spares some and takes others, and even the Lady doesn’t always know why.
The quiet moment is broken by the farmer woman shooing someone from the door. The Lady has ordered that no one asking for help should be turned away, but when my father calls out, a bone-thin, shivering black dog, with a puppy at her heels, slips through the door and collapses on Dada’s feet.
I scoop up the pup, who nuzzles and licks my palm.
‘Poor girl, brave girl,’ Dada croons, rubbing behind her ears. ‘She must have carried that pup in her mouth the whole way, following me.’
He shouts in his captain’s voice for bread and milk. ‘She kept her pup and herself alive all this time – we can’t let her die now.’
I wonder if he’s thinking what I am: If this dog can live, so can Mama.
The mother dog attaches herself to Dada; when he heads back to town after his day of rest she follows. She leaves the puppy behind – with me.
Dada’s always had dogs guarding the shipsheds and sometimes on his ships, but smelly-breathed, quarrelsome animals don’t belong in a home like ours, filled with beautiful things. But now this tiny creature is whining and twining around my legs as if I’m all he has left in the world. I have to pick him up or the noise will make Mama cry too. He tucks his head under my arm and snuggles against me – he is warm and helpless, and his breath when I kiss his nose smells like his last drink of milk from his mama.
He is black as the night sky, but that’s not what I name him. And I don’t want to call the gods’ attention to him by calling him Lucky, though he’d have to be the luckiest pup in the world. But even the most jealous gods allow hope – Nunu says it amuses them to see us hoping when there is nothing we can do against the fate they’ve chosen.
‘Hello, Chance,’ I say.
The puppy squirms and licks my face with his rough pink tongue – and unlocks something deep inside me. Tears stream down my face; I’m crying harder than I’ve ever cried before. Nunu tells me to hush and the wise-woman tells me I’m upsetting my mother, but Chance just goes on licking the tears off my face as fast as he can until I can’t help laughing. Laughing and crying together, I don’t know which one it is, but I can’t stop until I’m dry and empty as a seed husk, and Nunu makes me drink a cup of ale.
For the first time since the house fell down, I feel alive.
The Lady and Kora devote themselves to appeasing the great mother, filling the house with chanting and song to make up for missing the winter rites on the proper day.
Because the mother tore the town and temple apart in the hours before we could perform them!
I don’t say that out loud.
The Lady sings the sun to rise each morning from the shelter of the front portico, so that the farm folk can attend as well as the household; often fishers or folk from other farms come as well, their faces lighting with joy at seeing her for themselves. After the dawn ceremony they sing over my mother and the Lady talks to her of their childhood. ‘You did well to save her,’ she tells me, kissing my forehead. Kora smiles but rarely speaks except in prayer. She doesn’t seem to remember that we once played.
Every few days they command a goat to be brought for sacrifice, offering the goddess the smoke of burning bones and fat, and feeding the household with the meat. But with the farmhouse full of their household and ours, there’s not much left for the folk in the animal sheds.
I’ve been praying too, singing Mama’s spirit and beseeching the goddess to let it return – but Chance seems to have licked away a veil from my eyes. The Lady and Kora are doing the great mother’s work, but the farm men have followed Dada and the chief to help dig out the town, and there aren’t enough servants left to run the household. The farmer woman, whose belly is growing bigger every day, is so tired she can barely speak by sundown. Nunu is still weak and the wise-women are exhausted, yet they’ve all been caring for me as well as Mama.
A sudden fire burns through me. I think of Dada and Ibi, working like slaves in the ruined town, and wish I could join them. I want to rescue someone the way they rescued Chance; to pick up the shattered beams in our home and rebuild it.
That dream only lasts a moment. I’m not as strong as Ibi; I’m not even as strong as the farm girls, younger than me, who haul in buckets of water for us every day.
But I’ve got to do something – and now the wise-woman’s apprentice is rolling Mama to her side, for Nunu to wash her.
‘Let me,’ I say.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ snaps Nunu. ‘It wouldn’t be right.’
‘Nothing’s right anymore, Nunu!’
The young woman straightens, motioning for me to put my hand on Mama’s shoulder where hers is.
It feels right to be doing this. Nunu insists on taking the soilings away herself, but I go out to the spring, Chance at my heels, and refill our pitchers with water.
As the days roll on, I take over more of the water carrying. The Lady always thanks me for carrying it up to her rooms, but she doesn’t know I fetch it from the spring myself – not just for my little family and hers, but even for the farmers. I’m ashamed to tell her, and afraid she’ll stop me. I’ll be very glad when life goes back to how it should be and I never have to lift another bucket, but for now, despite the stench from the privies and the animal sheds, it’s a relief to be out of the house for those moments. I almost envy the two farm girls who are sent out to search the fields for greens. They go even when it’s raining; they’re often wet and muddy – but they’re together; friends. I know that Pellie and her family are safe, in a farmhouse not far from town, but I haven’t seen her since the day we fled here.
A terrible groan wakes us before dawn. The earthmother is trembling again! But the house is still; the scream that follows comes from the kitchen where the farmers sleep.
‘The baby is coming!’ the farmer husband shouts. The wise-women roll off their fleeces and are in the kitchen before I even understand what’s happening.
I’ve never seen a birth before. I don’t know if this is harder than usual, but it’s long and frightening; the wise-woman’s voice is calm as always but her apprentice can’t keep the anxiety from hers. I realise the farmer woman, and the baby trying to be born, could die.
A birthing room is no place for a man; her husband leaves as soon he’s woken the wise-women, taking the three small children with him. The youngest is still asleep but the two older ones are crying; I can still hear the wails of ‘Mama!’ when they disappear out the door.
My own mama stirs restlessly, as if she thinks that it’s her children crying.
‘I’m here,’ I tell her, smoothing her forehead, but she keeps on struggling to get out bed, muttering, ‘Lei, Lei!’
‘Leira’s here,’ Nunu tells her sharply. ‘Nunu’s here. Be a good girl and go back to sleep.’
She settles better for Nunu than me.
The labouring woman moans again; the wise-woman says something to her apprentice I can’t hear, then, louder, in the same tone she uses for Mama, ‘Rika, I want you to take a deep breath. The baby will be here soon.’
Rika! I’ve never known her name.
Rika, who’s taken in and cared for us. Rika, who loves her children as Mama loves hers, and whose children love her as I love Mama.
She mustn’t die!
I pull my winter tunic on over my nightshift and go out to the kitchen. Rika is squatting, panting, with the apprentice supporting her shoulders.
‘How can I help?’
‘Build up the fire,’ says the wise-woman. ‘The baby will need warmth when it comes.’
The fire is banked for the night, though a small log is glowing where the husband had poked it to light the torch. I’m not sure how to tend a fire, but it can’t be hard. I find the smaller wood stored by the door, pile it on and poke it all with a stick till it flames. There’s a lot of smoke.
When the black sky outside turns grey, then pink, and Rika is still labouring, I take our pitchers and head to the stream for water. It takes me six trips to fill the ewers for everyone, and then another two because the wise-women use theirs so quickly. The sun is up by the time I finish; I’m very hungry and don’t know what there will be for breakfast, because with Rika and the wise-women filling the kitchen, no one has prepared the usual barley porridge. But there must be barley cakes stored, and the daily cheeses and yoghurt from the goats – though even that is becoming less, as it won’t be long now till the goats have their own kids, and they are not making as much milk for the farmers.
A man is coming towards the house, wearing the rough kilt and cape of the fishers in winter, with octopuses dangling on a pole slung over his shoulder. He’s nearly at the kitchen door when I shout.
‘You can’t go in there!’
He stops, but I can see that he’s confused about who I am. He’d know there are Swallow Clan staying here, but he wouldn’t expect them to be carrying water.
‘Rika wants these octopuses,’ he says.
‘I’ll take them to her.’
‘She promised me four cheeses and two baskets of lentils.’
Something in his face tells me he’s lying. I think quickly, trying to compare the meals from the octopuses with those big cheeses that take a day’s worth of milk from the flock – and I know there aren’t many baskets of lentils left.
‘Two cheeses,’ I say.
He throws his hands to his face in horror.
Maybe he was telling the truth.
But I’ve seen the kitchen; I’ve seen how much food there is, and how many people.
‘You know that this house shelters the Lady and Kora, and the chief? If you cheat Rika, you cheat them.’
He nods, his eyes wary.
‘I will give you a bronze pot. And you will bring us octopus or other fish every day till the spring festival.’
His face lights up, though he guards it quickly as he bargains. ‘Till the moon turns.’
‘Till the spring festival,’ I insist.
He nods again, slowly. ‘Goddess watch me – you will have your fish.’
I carry my water pitchers inside, search under Mama’s bed, pull out one of our good bronze cooking pots, and take it out to the fisher. He receives it reverently and quickly disappears down the road.
I’m trembling. Dada has traded around the world for those pots, and if the fisher doesn’t keep his promise, I’ve given one away for six small octopuses.
But when I carry them into the kitchen, the wise-women are smiling and Rika is sitting up with a tiny, red baby at her breast. My worry turns to pride. Rika and her baby will live – and I’ve helped feed them.
&n
bsp; Rika’s baby and my puppy both grow. The baby can suckle, cry and almost lift his head. Rika carries him in a sling against her chest; he is always with her, and exhausted as she is, when she sits to feed him, her gaze is pure love.
That’s the same love that kept Chance alive in the ruins, I think – but unlike Rika, who loves her older children too, Chance’s mother ignores him when she returns with Dada.
‘But you have me now,’ I whisper into his floppy ear, and he licks my face as if he understands. Chance understands a lot. Rika’s husband has given me a leather collar and cord so that I can hold him back when the farm dogs are moving the sheep, but he already knows his name, and usually comes when I call him. He jumps to my shoulders with his front legs around my neck – a bad trick, says Dada, because he’ll be a big dog one day. I know that’s true, so I teach him the game of sitting still at my feet or waiting by Nunu. Nunu says he’s a dirty ridiculous creature, but strokes his head. His head is smooth, and soothing to stroke.
‘He’s not much use yet,’ she says, ‘but you might as well take him when you go out for the water or washing.’
I don’t need to be reminded. I don’t think anyone’s going to attack me, but with my dog by my side I don’t feel quite so alone when I see the farm girls walking in pairs.
He’s not big yet: I still let him jump to my shoulders. For a few minutes at a time, holding this squirming wriggle of joy makes me forget that everything else is wrong with the world. And on these cold winter nights, a warm puppy snuggled on my feet is better than a brazier or another fleece.
Not everyone is so lucky. The rainy season goes on, wetter, colder and longer than it has ever been. There’s no indoor toilet, and the little privy house behind the kitchen garden, which is really nothing but a shelter over a wooden bench with a hole dropping to a deep pit, is filling and stinking. The folk sheltering in the animal sheds are not allowed to use it, and have dug new pits for themselves, with no seats and not much shelter.
The fisher brings us octopus, shellfish or fish every day. If he misses one we know it’s because he had nothing to bring; Dada says that I made a good trade. But the goats’ milk has dried up and there are no new kids yet; the dried peas and lentils are nearly gone and the barley is getting low. Sometimes a rabbit or bird is caught in a trap; once a hunter brought the meat of a wild boar to trade, and the chief has twice shot a wild goat – but even a goat doesn’t go far for so many people.