*
Martin chews his pen and stares at the latest version of his latest sentence: “The Isono practice an agricultural expressionism at odds with their usual social constraints.” Where should he go from here? Barbara’s swift clacking at the computer behind him sounds like the collective scraping of hand hoes against the ground, and when he closes his eyes he could still be sitting at the edge of those clearings in the forest, unable to enter, watching lines of men and women scraping and piling soil into small pyramids where yams would soon grow.
Occasionally Martin had touched a sandaled toe to a tiny corn stalk for a secret thrill when no one was looking. Why couldn’t that have been enough for him—when he did manage to sneak into those fields, what good had it done him?
If only someone had answered his questions! “Why plant corn here, yams over there?” he once called out to Busu, a frail- looking elder who somehow worked harder than anyone else. But the old man merely said, “You would only understand if you were an Isono,” adding with a wry smile, “and then there would be no need to speak.”
Martin tried Kwamla, hoping he would be as talkative as his wife, Yani. “Why do you arrange your fields differently from Goli and Aia?” he asked. Kwamla averted his eyes, staring down at the soil, and said, “That’s our custom.”
At Martin’s exasperated frown Kwamla grinned and put down his hoe. The elaborate scarification marks on his stomach were dark sweaty beads, and he looked so healthy then. He mimicked holding a notebook and wagged a finger across an invisible page. “Why do you always make marks on paper?”
Martin laughs quietly now, as he did then. He picks up his pen, murmurs, “It’s our custom,” and tries another sentence: “The crop organization of the farming fields is an unusual form of individual expression in a society of such tight social constraints.” But wait, he thinks, didn’t I just write something like that?
He looks over to Barbara. Her head is bent toward the computer, all those little green words shining back at her on the dark screen—how easy it is for her to write.
“Barb, I’m going to stretch my legs outside for a bit.”
She barely nods, keeps clacking away.
He wears a jacket this time, zipped up tight before he hits the sidewalk. Intent on walking nowhere in particular, Martin continues block after block, past clusters of shops and apartments. Down a side street, he stops: near the back of a restaurant an old man in a frayed, dark coat is poking through a dumpster, dropping who knows what into a plastic garbage bag. What will happen to him when it’s really cold—isn’t there a shelter to go to?
Martin backs up, turns down another street, and sees a shining movie marquee. He realizes with some surprise that he and Barbara still haven’t been to a movie since their return. But no one’s in the ticket booth, and he can see through the glass door that the concession stand is deserted, too. The last show must be ending and the employees are puttering around in the office. He slips inside and can just make out muffled car squeals and gunshots, a pulsating soundtrack. Why not take a quick peek? He hurries through the empty lobby, glancing back and forth nervously.
“Hey, you!” someone shouts behind him. Martin pushes through swinging doors into the darkened theater and a spectacular, technicolor car crash. Half stumbling down the aisle, he ducks into the first empty seat.
As his eyes adjust to the darkness he watches an usher pace halfheartedly with a flashlight. The minimum wage certainly isn’t worth any possible trouble from finding me, Martin thinks, and anyway, for all he knows I’m just a homeless guy looking for a little warmth. All around him faces are turned up to the giant screen. Martin can’t imagine what an Isono villager might make of the swift pace of images: cars give chase, cars collide, cars overturn. Martin eases into his chair and breathes in the salty essence of popcorn.
*
Still awake in bed, Barbara listens to the click of the front door, then Martin’s footsteps to the edge of the bed—he’s back from wherever. She’s insulted that he assumes she’s asleep: it would be nice if he said Hello, or at least whisper Good Night. But when he lies down beside her his palm cups a shoulder blade, squeezes. His fingers slip along the smooth bumps down the ridge of her spine, and this reminds her of the Isono scarification marks: those little raised knobs of flesh forming unpredictable swirling patterns, interwoven arcs and circles. Martin traces patterns against the tight muscles of her back and she stirs, slowly pressing her ankle up the length of his leg.
In the morning Barbara pages through her folder of the Isono scarification designs, laughing when she thinks that at first she and Martin called them beauty marks, a kind of jewelry that lasted a lifetime. How lucky she’d been one morning, when during her route of greetings she came upon a tense village meeting. The elders sat upright in a semicircle of wooden stools, wearing colored robes slung over the shoulder, facing two young men she had never seen before, dressed in sleek, well-tailored shirts and pants.
Something secret was up, because just as one of the young men began speaking rapidly to the elders—the cigarette dangling from his mouth obviously an act of bravado—an old woman came up to Barbara and offered to show her a stash of traditional cloth. To refuse an invitation was extremely impolite, so Barbara pretended she misheard. “Tomorrow? Yes, I’ll come, then. Many thanks,” she said. But before she could ease away, a thin, firm hand was on her shoulder: the old woman spoke slowly and clearly, determined to be understood.
When Yani came by later that day for more medicine—her frail daughter was ill again—she sat down by the desk under the palm frond veranda and anxiously watched Barbara spread cream over Amwe’s rash. “I’m afraid that my cousin is bewitching my child. Her own child was born breech and died—she’s surely jealous…”
Yani recounted her fears while Barbara made careful notes on what types of relatives could bewitch each other. Yet when Yani was done, Barbara couldn’t help asking, “Who were those two men at the trial this morning?”
Yani was silent. She cradled her child and stared off at the huge wall of trees surrounding the village, until finally Barbara said, “Yani, we’re friends. How can I truly understand you if I don’t understand your people?”
Yani stood up. “I don’t think I can talk with you any more,” she said sadly. “Our farm isn’t strong this season, and I need to work in the fields more.”
It was true that the sporadic rains might not produce the best harvest, but Barbara would not let herself lose Yani. She took a handful of bills from her pocket, blushing at her own bravado. “This won’t make the rains come, but it can help pay for medicines and divinations for your daughter’s illness. Take these,” she pleaded. “In my country, words are valuable.”
Yani hesitated, glancing about her, and then, with perhaps an admiring smile at Barbara’s argument, took the money and slipped it under the waistband of her skirt. She sat back down on her stool.
“Who were those men?” Barbara asked again, but still Yani sat mute, though now she fixed her eyes carefully on the battered manual typewriter on the desk. Barbara understood: the Isono considered the clatter of typing ugly—the noise kept most villagers from the courtyard. She slipped a piece of paper in the typewriter and began pounding away Yani’s name, the date, and the question she had just asked, and then she tapped comma after comma across the page while she waited.
Yani flinched at the sound, but it was her protection. “They were born in this village, and their families worked hard to send them to the university.” Yani spat, one of those marvelous arcs the villagers were so good at. “Now, because they live in the city and work in a government office, they think they aren’t Isono.”
Barbara typed this out and asked, “Why do you say that?”
Yani looked away, tucked her baby closer to her breast. “They have told the elders they won’t allow themselves to be scarred in this year’s ritual.”
“Oh. But why is that so terrible?”
Yani hesitated. Marking time, Barbara banged
away plus and minus signs until Yani said, “They won’t be able to marry an Isono girl.”
“Why?”
“Because they will never become Isono.”
“Really? What will they become?”
“They will become no one.”
“Why?” Barbara asked again. She pressed the space bar until the bell pinged and Yani finally said, “Every Isono has a spirit living within.” Avoiding Barbara’s startled gaze, Yani looked away. Then she said, so slowly, so quietly, “When I feel an itch, it’s the spirit rubbing against me inside. Our scarification designs reveal our spirits’ paths.”
Exhilarated, Barbara typed out Yani’s answer and then a barrage of exclamation points. Listening to the happy squeals of children running down the convoluted alleyways of a nearby compound, she wanted to join them, hooting with pleasure.
Instead she asked, “But why are the designs only on the stomach?”
“A spirit travels everywhere in the body, but its true home is here,” Yani said, gesturing from her chest to her waist. “It wants to be born, just as a baby kicks in the womb.”
Again Barbara clattered away, asking, “What happens during the ritual?”
“The diviner sees, from the points that itch, the hidden design. But why ask any more questions? You can see the women’s initiation tomorrow.”
Now Barbara regards the pages of this interview: a typed crazy quilt of oddly spaced questions and answers and repeated punctuation marks of all assortments. How different this looks from her sparse notes on the ritual.
She had stood among the silent crowd and watched the young girls of the village lying on their backs, eyes tightly closed, waiting. The diviner was Mokla—the same old woman who had led Barbara away from the trial—and she was dressed in white, kneeling before an animal skin and arranging a knife, small chunks of charcoal, a pile of ash. When she noticed Barbara she scowled. Barbara set her notebook and pen down on the ground and stepped back a few paces, until Mokla turned away from her.
Then the diviner moved among the initiates, murmuring words Barbara couldn’t make out. Slowly, the girls began pointing with trembling hands to this itching spot, that one, and Mokla marked the points with a piece of charcoal. When those asymmetrical, elegant patterns were done, Mokla pinched the first girl’s skin between thumb and forefinger, slit it, and applied ash to make the wound pucker and darken. None of the girls screamed despite the pain on their faces, the blood dribbling down their sides, and soon Mokla’s white gown was stained with red streaks. Without her notebook Barbara had to watch carefully, but it was hard, so hard.
After the ritual, Barbara stayed in their hut for days, dizzy at the thought of that bloodletting. Martin sweetly stayed with her and claimed she had malaria, thanking all the villagers who wished her good health. But she knew her husband was anxious to return to the fields. He wanted to puzzle out a recent mystery: even though the corn crop had suddenly become infested with caterpillars, the elders declared that no one could kill them.
Finally one morning Martin said, “The Isono may not have a word for privacy, but I’ll bet before long they’ll have one because of us.”
Ashamed of her weakness, she told herself the ritual wasn’t mutilation—no, not at all—it was art. In a culture where the women improvised patterns on manioc cakes before baking them, and even children sliced designs into orange rinds, the diviners were the supreme artists. When Barbara finally left the hut, determined to overcome her squeamishness, she began to ask villagers if she could draw their scarred designs.
Now Barbara leans back from the computer and peers out the window, hoping to see Martin. He’s left her alone again, off on another errand. Why don’t I go out? she wonders—It’s not as if I’m confined to an Isono compound. Sighing, she rests her hands on the keys, then types, “The scars are maps of the interior: the body is a spirit’s abode, and a spirit is a guest each Isono must accommodate.” She glances down at her drawing of one of the designs, can almost see blood flow out from the scarred points.
*
Martin sets the bags of groceries down on the counter. Barbara’s sketches of Isono body decorations are everywhere, littering the walls, the refrigerator, the kitchen cabinets—they’re even taped up on the backs of the chairs. I suppose I deserve this, he thinks. Pulling cheese and packaged tomatoes from a bag, he wishes that he had the luxury of using his maps of the Isono farm plots. But how could he ever explain to Barbara why he’s kept them from her?
She walks in and without a word helps carry bottles of juice to the refrigerator. Martin approaches one of her sketches threateningly. “Where’s my pen?” he asks. “I have a sudden urge to play connect-the-dots.”
“C’mon, stop. They’re for inspiration,” she says.
“Oh really? Are you thinking about starting up an Isono beauty parlor?” And now he just can’t help himself, he searches through a drawer and says, “Let me get the knife sharpener….
Barbara slams shut the refrigerator and leaves the room.
“Hey, only kidding,” he says, shaken, his voice small.
Frustrated that he can’t use what he’s not supposed to know, Martin pushes pork cutlets into the oven, chops away at vegetables, and then stirs and stirs them in a pan. If only he hadn’t lingered behind at the end of that workday, at the edge of the already damaged fields. Because of the sparse rain the corn was barely waist high, the yam vines were just beginning to poke up from the dirt mounds, and everywhere were signs of the caterpillars’ hunger. Martin watched one of those voracious creatures efficiently chew a path through a corn leaf. Fascinated, he drew closer, and the caterpillar, at the end of the leaf, reared up briefly. Along its pale underbelly were dark, convoluted patterns, and then Martin finally knew why no Isono would dare touch one.
“You’re lucky you were born with those beauty marks, bub,” he whispered. He took out his notebook, listened to the distant cries of a flock of birds, the flutter of corn leaves in the wind—no, it sounded like something was creeping through the stalks. Martin crouched down: maybe this was some foraging animal he should warn the Isono about. He peered in.
Kwamla, hunched down, was crawling along with a sharpened stick. He flicked a caterpillar from a corn leaf and then impaled it against the ground. When he turned to slip the crushed insect into a cloth bag he saw Martin.
Kwamla sat up, the broad green leaves waving in the wind around his shoulders, his face filled with something like terror. “No one must know,” he said, “no one must know.”
Martin almost whispered back, “No one will,” but instead he waited, curious how Kwamla would react to his silence.
A few long moments passed, and then quietly, with a resigned gesture of his hand, Kwamla said, “Come.” He motioned to his fields, to those private, winding paths, and Martin understood this was a gift for his silence.
Martin hesitated, accepted. He took out his notebook and, carefully counting the number of steps he took along each little trail, quickly roughed out the arrangement of crops. But he needed two, maybe three more maps for a decent comparative study. So when he finished his map he stared off at Goli’s neighboring farm, turned to Kwamla and said, “No one will know.” Kwamla winced at this echo of his words, then took a few steps into Goli’s field, and Martin followed, his shame rising.
“What’s that burning?” Barbara shouts from the living room. Martin looks down—the vegetables are scorched in the pan. He hurries the mess over to the sink, leaving a trail of smoke behind him.
They eat what’s left of dinner in silence—Barbara must still be annoyed at him for his nasty little joke. By way of apology, knowing she hasn’t been out of the apartment for days, he asks, “Hey, you want to catch a movie tonight?”
“No,” she says, barely looking up, “I have to work. I’m in the middle of something right now.” And you’re not, he imagines her thinking.
While she washes the dishes he slips out for another of his nightly tours. He walks faster now through the cold air,
ranging from street to street, but when he skirts a small lot he stops, surprised to see two bundled figures—a man, a woman—crouching against a fence, beside a shopping cart stuffed with clothes. Why aren’t they at the shelter? He imagines a large room, rows and rows of cots: maybe it’s not quite cold enough to venture to the common misery, the lack of privacy.
Martin would like to talk to them, even offer some help, but he’s also afraid somehow, and he marches off in another direction. Curious to see if he can actually become lost, he wanders down one street after another, through neighborhoods he’s never seen, until he approaches a busy bar, a line of motorcycles parked beneath the neon signs advertising different brands of beer. A rough crowd lounges by the door: leather jackets with sewn patches of skulls, sharks, lightning. Interesting iconography, Martin thinks, but such a limited repertoire of acceptable images. He slowly passes by a man with long dark hair framing a pockmarked face: on his leather jacket are pictures of two bloody fists, and there’s a tattoo on one of his wrists—the end of a snake’s tail, perhaps, or a dragon’s.
The man grins at him. “Hey, you staring at me?”
Martin tries to smile back. “No, not at all.”
“The hell you’re not.” He flicks out a knife.
Martin runs away from the sudden laughter behind him and turns swiftly down one side-street, then another. But he’s not sure if the steps he hears are merely the echoes of his own. Looking back, Martin sees nothing, but it’s dark—Who can tell, he thinks, who can tell? He stops short and crouches beside a mailbox, waiting for the sound of pursuing footsteps.
*
Barbara listens to Martin close the door behind him, his faint steps down the stairs—every night now he goes out, sometimes for hours. Why won’t he tell her where he’s off to, why can’t she simply ask him? Maybe she should follow along, take a break and not work so hard. But Barbara hesitates, remembering ruefully the Isono’s two phrases for marriage that Yani taught her: the men’s phrase, “To offer a road,” and the women’s, “To follow behind.”
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