Ancestor Stones

by Aminatta Forna

  The silence is what I remember most. Because it was not the way we did things. The silence was something different. Before then silence was something I thought that I alone understood. I knew when not to speak, when not to let myself be heard. Silence was my friend, my twin, the other half of me. Silence was my weapon. Not a blustering gun, but an invisible spider’s web.

  The men did not report for work. Instead they marched to the gates of the compound. You could see the dust on the road as they came. Feel the thrumming of a hundred bare feet, like the beating of the earth’s own heart. I remained out of sight, watching. A brass padlock dangled from the iron chain wrapped around the gateposts of the compound. Mr Blue stayed inside, alone, not counting Small Boy and me. The men waited without speaking. A thin, black line between the green of the trees and the red earth, like the colours of a flag.

  I waited for Mr Blue to rouse himself and go down to them. Mr Blue waited by his silent radio.

  Late in the afternoon the light thickened to the colour of rust. The singing began. The men’s voices carried into the compound, buoyed on the waves of silence, and poured in through the cracks around the windows of the room where Mr Blue stood. Some songs were known to me. Others were society songs I had heard but rarely. A short time passed and the men sang louder. The air began to tremble under the weight of their voices. It was as though they were calling to the thunder, which answered them, rumbling through the sky, bringing the rain.

  I came and stood behind Mr Blue. The air inside his room was heavy, it stuck to the roof of my mouth, caught in my throat and muffled the sounds from outside. The rain began to come down. Needles of sound bounced off the tin roof. The windows vibrated. Mr Blue stood, hidden by the darkness, staring at the men outside who stood in ragged rows behind the man with the mark on his lip. A firm man would have gone out to talk to him, but Mr Blue was not that man. Water streamed down the glass, distorting the faces and bodies of the men beyond. Light seeped out of the day. Mr Blue and I stood and watched, until the figures merged with the darkness.

  Much later I watched Mr Blue leave his room, quietly but not quiet enough. Down to the perimeter fence, where I saw him lay a trail of white powder on the inside, like a line of ash to ward off soldier ants.

  The light came back and the men were there. As though they had never gone, but stood like sentinels through the night.

  Mr Blue asked us to bring all the empty bottles and cans we could find. He sat on the floor filling them up with powder and nails and pieces of metal. In the afternoon he took to his camp bed with a fresh cold, rolling his aching head around on his pillow, coughing into a handkerchief. While he was asleep Small Boy slipped away and came back.

  Mr Blue was a prisoner, although none of us behaved as though we knew this. Small Boy said the men were angry because now they had learned the value of the gold they were digging out of the river and up from the former rice fields. Some of the men had been panning for themselves, trading with the Syrian traders. But this was not allowed.

  On top of that, across the land the tax had jumped up to twenty-five shillings. And now the authorities wanted to tax even more people. They wanted to tax the young men without wives or even homes, who already owed their labour to the chiefs, building their houses and working on their farms.

  Small Boy told me the railwaymen were the ones who started with this kind of trouble. The very first time was right after the first war when the men who fought in Senegal came back to find a cup of rice that used to cost one penny now cost five pence. And bread was sixpence, but their wages were the same. That was the first time the railway stopped. Small Boy, who had then barely grown into his name let alone grown out of it, remembered the great, silent locomotives. How he followed his brothers, clambering over the roofs of the carriages, like birds on a basking hippopotamus.

  In the city people accused the Syrians of hoarding food and looted the Syrian stores. By then the Syrians owned all the stores.

  The next time the railways stopped it was because the black railwaymen were made to take tests but not the white ones. Governor Slater called it a ‘fight to the death’ and called in the troops, who came with guns. And when the railwaymen went back to work some had lost their pensions, and others their jobs, and some their lives. And everyone earned even less than before. The Railway Workers’ Union was banned. But the anger didn’t die. Instead it changed shape and wore a new face, with an ingratiating smile. The railway workers said: ‘Yes, Sir. Yes, Missus,’ and doffed their caps and punched holes in the first-class tickets of the administrators and their wives with a pointed pinkie nail.

  So when the cost of a cup of rice doubled again because all the farmers turned their backs on their fields and headed east with their hoes to dig up diamonds instead of yams, the leaders of the new Artisans and Allied Workers’ Union and the Transport and General Workers’ Union asked for one shilling and sixpence more pay a day. The bosses offered them four pence. In the city they stoned the houses of the new African ministers, who should have supported them but didn’t. Small Boy had seen the pictures in the newspapers. They soon changed their minds after their windows were broken. And last year the railwaymen went on strike again.

  ‘Now everybody, he wants the same,’ said Small Boy.

  Head Office was closed. The bosses couldn’t get inside. The strikers encircled the building like a noose. That was why nobody answered Mr Blue’s calls on the radio. Small Boy said never mind. He had seen it all before. We only had to wait.

  So we waited through that day and the next. Mr Blue lay in his bed and didn’t ask for anything. I looked at him. I thought about these people who had to be carried over rivers, who fainted in the sun, drank only boiled water and slept under nets. Their skin tore like old cotton, their flesh was soft as a baby’s. They were weak, but they were strong at the same time. We outnumbered them greatly and yet they ruled us.

  The radio hissed and spat. Mr Blue sat bolt upright like a corpse struck by lightning.

  In the empty compound Small Boy picked his teeth and hummed. Beyond the gates a centuries-old anger, pricked by a new pin, bubbled and burst.

  Silence from outside. The singing had stopped. Then the blustering guns came and tore through the silence.

  And that was that. Mr Blue told me he was being reassigned. He handed me my wages and five shillings’ ‘loyalty bonus’. I gave him my thanks.

  So I packed Mr Blue’s belongings while Small Boy washed the pots and cooking things, folded the camp bed, the bed roll and the chairs. Packed them all up inside six wooden boxes. Into the boxes followed the tins of lunch tongue and sardines, jars of sandwich spread, bottles of grape juice, kerosene, matches. I heated the flat iron on the fire outside and pressed Mr Blue’s shirts one by one. Inside the trunk a fly’s corpse dangled from a web. Stains and rings of mildew patterned the bottom of the trunk. I laid the sheets and mosquito net on top of them. Then the newly ironed clothes. Shirts. Shorts. Socks. Then everything else. Belt. Brush. Boots. Gauntlets. Helmet. Helmet case.

  Outside, Small Boy scraped the razor’s edge up Mr Blue’s neck, slicing the head off the ingrown hairs, leaving a trail of red spots welling in the white froth, reminding me of the splashes of red on the ground outside the fence. The rain had come and washed them into the ground. Small Boy had been right. We had only to be patient. Somehow news of the strike had reached the chief who sent his messenger to alert the District Commissioner. By the time the strikers arrived the next morning DC Silk was waiting in front of the compound with his soldiers, ready to arrest the ringleaders. A few were wounded in the scuffle. The leader was badly injured and might even die. Some were taken away — to jail, said Small Boy. The others would be fined. The chief had wanted them all put in stocks.

  I set to work on the desk. Rolled the maps and dropped them into long cardboard tubes. The compass I placed inside its soft pouch. Underneath a bundle of papers lay the magnifying glass. I picked it up and held it out in front of me. A ring of shimmering light appeared
, dancing upon the wall. I turned to it. Just as soon as I did it shifted to the ceiling. And next to the floor. For a few moments I fancied it was a spirit’s shadow. Then I realised that the movements echoed mine. A cloud passed over the sun, and suddenly it was gone. I gasped with disappointment, but only for a moment. The sun reappeared and so did the shining, dancing creature.

  I begged Mr Blue not to forget me. I begged him to send for me as soon as he could. Mr Blue murmured, of course he would. But Small Boy’s face told me something different. I watched them leave. I went back into the hut and sat alone on the cold floor.

  In the distance, like the humming of bees, I could hear the mine machinery. I wondered who the next master would be and whether he would be as good to me as Mr Blue. I decided to wait and see.

  In the meantime I unwrapped the magnifying glass from the corner of my lappa and held it up high, where it caught the light and began to dance for me across the naked walls.

  9

  Serah, 1956

  Red Shoes

  Well, there was this one white woman. I mean she was our teacher, she was married to the District Commissioner. I think she taught, you know, just to keep herself occupied. There wasn’t much to do except run the house. A lot of those types did not bring their wives, or the wives didn’t want to come, or if they did they lost their minds and had to be sent home. That happened.

  Once when I was growing up a District Commissioner was invited to attend a palava of the chiefs. It was a grand affair, the chiefs travelled in from miles. Some important land matter was to be discussed that required the Commissioner’s approval. This man decided to bring his wife along, as a diversion for her — she was recently arrived in the country. At that time I was a young initiate, and our dancing opened the proceedings.

  The men talked for hours. You know how it goes. And while they did so, I watched the woman. She sat with her hands on her lap, head to one side. Her glance flew from face to face, settling on each for a moment, like a bird flitting through the trees. From her expression you would imagine she was paying a great deal of attention, though it must have been entirely unintelligible. Even the chiefs were using interpreters between themselves. The time passed slowly. But the woman’s face did not redden in the heat. Rather it grew pale. She was swallowing, swallowing all the time, looking in her husband’s direction. He had his back turned to her, listening closely to the words his Court Messenger was whispering in his ear. He couldn’t see her. I saw her eyelids flutter like a fledgling’s wings, her eyeballs rolled back as though she was trying to see the inside of her own head.

  Gbap! She fell off her chair.

  Well, there was silence at that. Then the chiefs, the pa’m’sum, everybody hurried over. The chiefs began waving their fly swats around her. The woman lashed out at them. I could hear her screaming. The more they tried to help her, the more she sobbed and backed away, holding her handbag out in front of her. In the end her husband managed to calm her and lead her away, his arm around her shoulders. The whole palava had to be called off and reconvened at another time. Later the Court Messenger came to explain the woman was suffering from malaria. But those close enough to see what had happened said she had made up her mind that we were all cannibals. Every one of us. And that the chiefs, in their garbled tongue, were really discussing the best way to kill her.

  Our teacher, Mrs Silk, was not this sort. Not at all. For a start there was the way she looked at you, straight in the eye. And she would ask you to look her in the face too, when you spoke. It got me into trouble with my grandmother, who slapped me for being so bold. But when you talked to Mrs Silk and saw the way she looked at you and smiled and nodded. Well, it made you feel good in yourself. Like you were saying something interesting. So I learned to look down at my grandmother’s feet, and up into Mrs Silk’s eyes.

  Every morning Mrs Silk arrived at the school in her husband’s car. And every morning we gathered at the windows to watch. Mrs Silk sat in her seat, making no move to get out. Her husband would climb down and walk all the way around the front of the car to open her door. And then he kissed her.

  Kissed her!

  On the lips!

  Just like that!

  In front of us all!

  We’d whoop and duck down out of sight quickly, before they looked up.

  What did we think? We thought: what shameless people are these? Such behaviour in public! But secretly I had another thought, and I think some of the other girls did, too. How this man must love his wife to allow himself to act that way. Yes, Mrs Silk was very lucky. Oh, and I prayed one day I would have a husband to love me like that, too.

  We used to powder our faces with chalk dust. To dampen the shine. We smuggled in hot-combs and ironed each other’s hair in the dormitory at night. I wonder the teachers never seemed to ask themselves how we had curly hair one day and straight hair the next.

  Hannah Williams. Now she was the first one to own a pair of shoes. Brought them back after she went to stay in the city with her Creole father, who had a job in the Government offices. I had never owned a pair in my life. And I didn’t know anybody who did, although my grandmother embroidered slippers for women who were getting married. So frail, with soles made of canvas. By the end of the day they were spoiled.

  Everybody wanted to walk in Hannah’s shoes. Come evening she would take them out and let us take turns up and down between the bunks. One girl walked like a duck. Another fell flat on her face. Everybody cheered the ones who walked well. My turn came early on, because I was in Hannah’s group of friends. I slipped the shoes on.

  La i la!

  It felt as though I was stuck ankle deep in river mud. I couldn’t flex my feet. It was as though a great weight rested upon each one. I could barely lift them off the ground and put them back down. Still, when everybody cheered, I tell you, I was grinning like a fool.

  The dormitory had a wooden floor. Hannah’s shoes made a slapping sound. In the corridors of the school Mrs Silk’s heels tapped out her progress to the classroom door. You could hear her swivel where the corridor divided. Kop, kap. Swivel. Kop, kap. One day I crossed the compound in Hannah’s shoes and walked with them down the school corridor to see if I could make the same noise, but I could not. Hannah was upset with me for wearing her new shoes out of doors.

  I yearned for a pair of shoes of my own. By this time I was staying with my grandmother in town during the school holidays, in the house we had once thought of as the house of treats. Well, I begged her. I volunteered for every errand and every chore and when I was finished, I invented new ones. I whitewashed the stones at the perimeter of our property. I even soaped and rinsed the nanny goat. No thanks. None at all, my efforts went unacknowledged. Then one day, when I was on the brink of giving up: ‘Wash your face and oil your legs,’ she said. ‘Makone. We’re going to town.’

  There were two shoe stores, two styles of shoes for girls. There was Bata Shoe Store on the main road near the police station. Further down the street, beyond the general store with the poster for Blue Band margarine was the shop selling Clarks shoes. I knew what I wanted. I wanted Clarks shoes. The styles were close, but Clarks were butter coloured and soft as skin. Bata shoes were made of an inferior leather, dark and stiff. Hannah Williams had Clarks shoes.

  Clarks shoes: one pound, eighteen shillings and sixpence.

  Bata shoes: one pound fifteen shillings.

  I remember the prices exactly.

  We went to Bata.

  Well, I did not want those shoes. Not at all. So I claimed they didn’t fit. I pushed my toes together and walked like a crow. I hopped up and down, as though the floor was burning. The saleswoman knitted her brow, pursed her lips and drew in her chin. She pressed at the ends of my toes with her fingertips, measured my feet a second time. Lengthways. Widthways. She brought down a second pair, then a third. Still no luck. After a while she stood back and shrugged her shoulders, turned to my grandmother and said: ‘Once they are worn in the leather will soften, you’ll see.�
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  Hali!

  What did I do? I threw myself on the floor and wept. What do you think I did? I begged my grandmother to take me to the store where they sold Clarks shoes. My grandmother was a stern woman. In the market she sent me to the stall holders to ask their best price. Once. Twice. The traders complained to me they were barely making a profit, but always they lowered their prices. Only after the third time would she come over, exchange greetings and watch them closely while they packed her purchases.

  But Bata Shoes was a shop with assistants and a ceiling fan.

  She gave in so quickly, I was surprised. My tears dried on my face. And yet as we walked to Clarks Shoe Outlet she held my arm with a grip so tight I could feel the flesh squeezing through her fingers.

  Once inside the store I was terrified my grandmother might change her mind. So I forced my foot inside the first pair of Clarks shoes I was given and jumped to my feet. I strode up and down like a soldier on parade. My grandmother ordered the shoes wrapped. She paid and we walked to the door. I tucked my new shoes under my arm and carried them home. I tried to keep a straight face. I tried not to do anything that might annoy my grandmother. And I tried not to think about the way the shoes had pinched slightly across the arch, and how I could feel the ends with my toes.

  Lord have mercy! But those shoes gave me so much grief. Even to wear them a little each evening left me hobbling.

  So I lent them to the girl who helped in the kitchen. She had broad, strong feet. Rice planter’s feet. It was her job to wash us; she used to scrub our hands and the soles of our feet using blue soap and the brush with which she scoured the floor and walls. She was silent, resolute and almost impossible to please. The loan of my shoes she regarded as a singular favour. By the time I packed them in my box ready to go back to school they were a size bigger.