Ancestor Stones

by Aminatta Forna

  And as I left his room my father’s new wife passed me by carrying a platter of rice. Not a young girl offered to him by a humble family hoping for his patronage. Nor the daughter of a chief. A middleaged widow whose family were glad to be free of the burden! Brought here by Ya Namina to help care for my father.

  Over the days that followed I made up my mind to ask my brothers to do what my father would not. Ibrahim and Idrissa. They were successful men now. Idrissa, an Army Major. Ibrahim a businessman with a big import — export business.

  And then, as if to pre-empt my plans and prove he had never cared for me, my husband upped and left. Two days before Eid-al-Fitr. For Kabala, to where the Fula had driven their herds and work was plentiful.

  Well, I moved back to my house. And after a while, when he had graduated from school, Khalil came to stay with me. I had no reason to go to my father’s house any longer. And so I did not. Khalil’s parents were angry and they sent his brothers to complain to my father. But I didn’t care. You see, it was my own father who had exchanged me for free meat. Who was he now to criticise me for living in this way with Khalil? There were those who said I had brought shame on the family. But the truth was — we were already shamed.

  Besides — and it took me a while to realise this — there was really nothing anybody could do.

  I was happy, even though it was hard for us to make ends meet. We ate fish. Fish stew, fried fish, pepper soup with smoked fish — into each dish I poured the gladness inside my heart. I wrote a letter to my brother Idrissa who was stationed at his Army barracks further north. Well, Khalil wrote it. It was good to have a man who could write. And he signed my name on the bottom. Almost always my brother enclosed a little market money in with his reply. I sent Ibrahim a letter at the same time as I wrote to my eldest brother. I dictated my words to Khalil: ‘This letter serves to remind you of your sister, who is always praying for your success.’ Khalil signed my name at the bottom. Madam Hawa Kholifa.

  Now when I look back, through my whole life, my two brothers were the only people who looked after me. Yes. Even Khalil, in the end, betrayed me.

  My joy lasted three years.

  The problem began when I had to send the girl back to her family. I saw the half-smiles she had begun to give Khalil. Some weeks later, after a visit home, Khalil told me his mother complained she had no grandchildren.

  I said: ‘Let’s wait and see.’ I smiled and settled against him. Khalil wrapped his arms around me.

  But from that day on his mother determined to cause problems for me. The next time he returned from visiting her he repeated her words to me: ‘She says you’re too old.’

  I saw something in his face when he said this. Something that told me he agreed with his mother. It was as though a snake had bitten my heart. Yet how could I possibly tell him the truth? I couldn’t go back to the clinic to find the doctor. He had gone, closed his practice and moved to the city to make more money. Either way there could be no more children for me. No children for Khalil.

  I have to tell you why I did what I did. So you understand. You make fun of me behind my back. So glum. You pull your own mouth down at the sides with your fingers. Oh, no, Aunty Hawa has always been that way, you say when your children ask what they have done. Well, I was not always this way. I had a chance to be happy once. But let me tell you how much I loved this man. I loved him so much I sacrificed my own happiness for his sake.

  I found Khalil a wife. I even begged one of my brothers to give me the money for her bride price, convincing them that this was what I wanted. I complained there was too much work for me, what with the trading I did at my stall in front of the house. I needed somebody to cook and to mind the children.

  Zainab. I chose her myself. Her parents were dead so that made it all the easier. I watched her for many weeks before I made up my mind to approach her. Why her? Not fussy and vain like the other girls with black-lined eyes, always slipping away on any pretext when they should have been at their chores. Chattering to each other on the street corner. You could see from Zainab’s hands she was a hard worker. And for the most part she was quiet.

  My problem, my mistake, was that I was always too trusting. Too ready to see the best in people. I had to learn to think differently. Sometimes when I look at my own face I see what you see. Eyes narrowed — against the glare of the real world. Smile bent out of shape. Grooves either side of my nose — worn by tears. This is what you see. But I know I didn’t always look like this.

  At first the arrangement seemed suited to us all. Even me, I accepted it. The girl turned out to be as hard a worker as I had hoped: she could husk a bushel of rice in a morning. And the children liked her well enough. Khalil’s mother was satisfied, at least she stopped sending her complaints to my house inside her son’s mouth.

  One night in the early hours of the morning, I woke from dreaming about a puppy I once owned as a child. I was holding it in my arms, only the dog was purring like a cat. Listen, I said, holding it up to my mother. She bent her head, but before she could reply the dream vanished. I was alone in my room. I could feel a weight at the bottom of the bed. I didn’t really believe in djinnas, none that would come visiting like that, at any rate. A rat, perhaps, or a snake. I sat up. Do you know what I saw? My neighbour’s cat. It jumped off the bed, ran across the floor and leaped out of the open window, the moonlight glinting on its fur.

  The air, heavy and still, parted and closed around me as I walked through the house. At the back door I slid the bolt and stood breathing deeply. A short time later I pushed the door shut. And as I did so I heard the sound of another door closing, like an echo. I made my way back the way I had come, ears cocked, treading softly. I stood outside my door, but instead of going inside I reached out, opened the door and closed it again. A moment later and sure enough out she came. Like a mouse. Scuttle, scuttle. Along the wall and into her room.

  Twice a year I would return to Rofathane to visit Ya Isatta who remained there living in my mother’s house. This time Zainab came to help carry the provisions. Lately there had been something. Something in the air. For one the girl’s attitude had changed. The previous evening I had called for her to bring me water. She served me, tilting the bottle over the back of her hand, letting the water slide into the cup. Everyone knows this is a most insolent way to serve a person. I tried to catch Khalil’s eye, but he looked at the ground. I let it pass. But it vexed me, made my scalp itch with annoyance to think about.

  I was always a swift walker. I have my mother’s height. Not like these girls you see swinging their buttocks and slithering the soles of their feet across the ground. Gradually I put a little distance between us. They were talking; they didn’t even notice. As I drew level with a maize field, I stepped off the path and waited, hidden in the tall stems. Zainab and Khalil grew closer, I strained to hear their voices. They were speaking in murmurs. A name drifted up. Suffyan. Khalil’s father. That man who thought I wasn’t good enough for his son! What were they saying about him? Something about the harvest. That was six months away. I leaned forward to let the words reach my ears. Too far! I tipped forward, unbalanced and stumbled. I snatched at the maize, but the stalks snapped in my hands. I fell to the ground, landing back out on the path right in front of Zainab and Khalil. Their faces were still full of shock as Khalil helped me up and Zainab brushed my clothes. I straightened my headdress. Nobody spoke. We walked on.

  In the days that followed Zainab became as lazy as an overheated sow. Twice I caught her sleeping in the middle of the day. On the bamboo bench at the back of the house, lying on her side, with her mouth open and her arm across her belly. I shook her shoulder. ‘What’s this?’ I said. I watched her rouse herself, wipe her mouth and move off slow as an anteater. Of course she wasn’t sick. Too strong for that. And anyway, if she was she would have said so soon enough.

  Later, alone — I saw it. And at that moment the only thing I couldn’t understand was why I had been so foolish, so blind. Why had it taken me so
long?

  Zainab was having a baby.

  I could see it all ahead of me, plainly. Like fields of rice rolling into the distance. A mighty river winding its way through the trees. The depthless blue hovering over the thin flat line of the horizon. This woman had come to take my life away.

  A sister of mine was sick, I said. Khalil did not question me, did not ask which one. I packed a box with three of my best dresses, leaving all the rest stowed in my wooden chest. I took my small, blue teapot and the money I had from my last husband hidden in a cigarette tin. Later I sang Okurgba a song, one my mother sang to me. I sang it to you sometimes when you were a child. When you would let me. When you didn’t call for someone else to put you to bed, you preferred anyone to me. Probably you don’t remember now. ‘Why is a bump taller than a man?’ goes the chorus. ‘Because the bump sits on top of the man’s head.’ Okurgba liked to sing the reply. That night his eyes were already closed before I finished the first verse.

  My son was still sleeping when I left the next morning. By the time I reached the roundabout in the centre of town a creamy dawn sky stretched over the earth like a great canopy. Some people were already waiting at the place where the buses arrived and departed, next door to the Agip petrol station. Dusty faces and feet told of the distances they had travelled. Inside the empty buses the drivers were still asleep, stretched out on the seats.

  A child leading a blind man passed me once, doubled back and reached out his tiny hand. I found a few cents. So that one day fate might repay my act of kindness. ‘God will bless you,’ said the blind man three times, as though I had given them a fortune. I bought a pair of roasted plantains for breakfast and some oranges for later. Presently the drivers began to emerge from their vehicles. Towels slung round their necks, they disappeared to wash. On their return they climbed in behind the steering wheel and waited with the doors open.

  I took the seat behind the driver, put my box under my feet. The bus did not set off until it was full, until somebody had been squeezed into every last place. The driver removed my box and stowed it on the roof. Out of sight, so I could worry about it for the rest of the journey. Still, I was glad I had the sense to sit where I did. Whole families jammed the aisles and others sat on the roof, wedged in among the sacks of rice and livestock.

  Just outside the town we passed burning fields. The smoke blew straight through the open windows making my eyes smart, biting at the back of my throat, coating my tongue with a bitter taste. I thought of all that lay ahead of me. I had never been to the city on the coast. I cannot say I was afraid. No. The anger in the pit of my belly burned up all the fear. Whenever we hit a pothole, which was often, the bus bucked like a bull. The women around me squealed and covered their mouths with the backs of their hands. But I sat still, silent, thinking my own thoughts.

  From time to time I gazed out of the window, saw the landscape shift from red to green, as trees and bushes grew up out of the earth. Great boulders sprang up. Once we passed a deserted quarry: black, silhouetted machines like giant insects. Ahead of us I could see hills, beyond which lay the city. Otherwise there was no traffic, just people carrying firewood, or making their way to the town. A line of ducks crossed the road in front of us, the driver braked suddenly to avoid bad luck. A man on the roof was nearly thrown off, his legs dangled next to the open window as his companions struggled to pull him back up. Oh, he was cursing and spitting. People called to him it was the ducks. Then he understood and began to laugh. Another time I might have laughed too.

  The road was like a river, whose banks were lined with villages. At each stop buskers held their wares up to the windows of the bus: bananas, groundnuts boiled or roasted, jelly coconuts. I realised I was hungry already. ‘Half-half,’ I told the boy, who chose a coconut from the pile and sliced off the top with his machete, turning it into a scoop for me to use. I drank the milk, but the flesh was nothing more than a thin layer coating the inside of the shell. I paid the boy, subtracting half as a penalty. He fussed, but what could he do? The sound of the engine swallowed his protests and moments later we left him standing on the side of the road.

  I kept my eyes fixed on the hills. But as the hours passed they only seemed to recede. Finally the bus began to wind uphill, the engine whining under the strain. The driver ordered all the cheap fare passengers off the roof and made them walk. At the brow of the first hill the rest of the passengers stood around, sucking oranges and spitting the pips into the long grass, waiting for them to catch up.

  I crossed the road away from the others. Down below, here and there, single columns of smoke spiralled up above the trees. Beyond the forest I saw a river, grey and glittering, a viper winding across the plain. Further on and the viper transformed into the tree, whose branches reached upwards and outwards until they touched the sky and merged into it.

  ‘It’s so great even the birds cannot fly across it, or so they say. They drop out of the sky with exhaustion.’

  It was the driver standing at my shoulder. He was gazing at the horizon.

  ‘What is?’ I asked. He looked at me, smiled and pointed at the sky, at the place where it turned from one kind of blue to another.

  ‘The sea,’ he replied. ‘Is this the first time you’re seeing it?’ I replied that it was. ‘Then you are very lucky to have done so,’ he said.

  As we travelled across the tops of the hills, climbing and turning, I kept catching glimpses of it. Each time I turned my head, gazing at the view until it disappeared behind the next bend. I felt lightheaded, my heart lifted. For a moment I forgot my sorrows, the place I had come from. I had only one thought in my head. I had seen the sea.

  When I was a little girl and I was unhappy, when my mother was angry with me or my brothers teased me, I used to hold my breath until I fainted. When I woke up I would be in my own bed. Everybody crowded round me with big, worried faces. Happy to give me whatever I asked for. In that way I could make problems go away.

  How I wished I was still that girl, to be able to make bad things better so easily. I stood in the place where I stepped off the bus for a long time, summoning the courage to move. Dust and people and terrible noises swirled around me, lashing me to the ground like ropes. I wanted to hold my breath until it all went away.

  The first people I asked directions answered in a language I couldn’t understand. By chance the fifth person I turned to happened to be a townsmate. What luck! He carried my box on his shoulder while he showed me to the place I needed. ‘Watch yourself, sister!’ he told me as he set down my box.

  Five days I was in that city. Five days that seemed like five months! It was already late afternoon when I arrived. I sat on my box and waited as the light dwindled. Two men playing a game of chequers on an upended crate threw glances at me in between games. In time one of them came over and asked me my business. I explained to him. I pointed at the building. He turned to his friend, who shook his head. Together they made me understand the address I had been given was the wrong one.

  What was I to do? I had no relatives in the city. In those days there were no such things as hotels, and even if there were I could never have afforded to stay in such a place. I was stranded. The men seemed to understand this. One of them beckoned me to follow him. I suppose I should not have trusted a stranger so easily, but what choice had I? Besides, in those days it was different. People helped each other. Not like now. I followed him through the streets, long straight ones that soon became narrow and short. Here the houses were small and wooden, built side by side with no room in between. On the steps a woman braided another’s hair by the light of an oil lamp, a man sat in front of a python skin for sale, a thin puppy licked the dirty water from the puddles. We passed piles of stinking refuse and gutters foaming with filth. Next we were in an open space with a big cotton tree, children playing with a straw ball in the dusk. And presently we reached a small house where a woman sat next to a candle on a saucer, with a child sucking at her breast. From the way they greeted each other I did not imagin
e the man and she were very closely related to each other.

  In exchange for a sum the woman gave me a place on the floor to sleep, yams and pepper soup with skimpy shreds of meat to eat. Later I lay listening to the sound of a man and a woman arguing in the street. My nostrils were filled with the stench of the pit latrine outside my window. I lit a small stick of incense. I dreamed and woke and for a moment imagined I was somewhere else.

  In the morning the landlady taught me some words to use to find my way around. But the words were not enough. I went from one place to the next, grinding the stones of the streets into dust beneath my heels, while the sweat poured off me. Each day I exchanged a little more of my money for the woman’s food and a place to sleep, subtracting what I had spent from the little I had left.

  All the time I felt the hope in my heart growing smaller and smaller, like the first piece of ice I held in my hand and watched melt away, until the last sliver disappeared and the enchantment was gone.

  Still I persisted. You see, I had come to that city for a reason. I had to find the doctor, the one who had tied my tubes. To ask him if he might undo what he had done, so that I could bear children again. It was the only thing I could think of to stop Zainab from replacing me.

  Maybe you think I was stupid to go to a city full of strangers, in search of a man whose face I couldn’t even remember. Only his hands and the certificates on his wall and the smell that clung to his clothes. But as it happened, on the fourth day I passed a building and I smelled that same odour. Something like starch and indigo dye and wood resin all rolled into one. I followed it to the place it was coming from. I entered the building, somewhere I had never been before. I found myself in the waiting room of a doctor’s surgery. Not the same man I had come to find, but another one with clean soft-looking hands and certificates on his wall.

  Yes, the doctor told me. The operation was reversible. Not easy, but possible. Even after that there was a chance I still might not bear children. I ignored the last part of what he said. I felt the hope begin to crystallise again. I was sure after all this time I was to be rewarded with some good luck. After all, hadn’t I seen the sea?