Читать книгу: «Who Fears Death», страница 3

“That baby is Nuru!” someone said.

“She’s mine,” Najeeba whispered as loudly as she could. Her vocal cords were straining and she could taste blood.

“Nuru concubine! Tffya! Go find your husband!”

“Slave!”

“Ewu carrier!”

To these people, the murder of Okekes in the West was more story than fact. She had traveled farther than she’d thought. These people didn’t want to know the truth. So they watched as mother and child moved about the market. As they watched, they stopped and talked with friends, speaking ugly words that grew uglier the more they were exchanged. They grew angrier and agitated. They finally accosted Najeeba and her Ewu child. They grew bold and self-righteous. Finally, they struck.

When the first stone hit Najeeba’s chest, she was too shocked to run. It hurt. It wasn’t a warning. When the second hit her thigh, she had flashbacks of a year ago, when she died. When instead of stones, a man’s body had slammed against her. When the third stone hit her on the cheek, she knew that if she didn’t run, her daughter would die.

She ran as she should have run when the Nurus attacked that day. Stones hit her shoulder blades, neck, and legs. She heard Onyesonwu screeching and crying. She ran until she burst from the market into the safety of the desert. Only after scaling the third sand dune did she slow down. They probably thought they’d driven her to her death. As if woman and child couldn’t survive alone in the desert.

Once safely away from Diliza, Najeeba unwrapped Onyesonwu. She gasped and sobbed. There was blood running from just above the child’s eyebrow where a stone had hit her. The baby feebly rubbed at her face, smearing the blood. Onyesonwu continued to fight as Najeeba held her tiny hands back. The wound was shallow. That night, though Onyesonwu slept well, the medicine having broken her fever, Najeeba cried and cried.

For six years, she raised Onyesonwu alone in the desert. Onyesonwu grew into a strong feisty child. She loved the sand, winds, and desert creatures. Though Najeeba could only whisper, she laughed and smiled whenever Onyesonwu shouted. When Onyesonwu shouted the words Najeeba taught her, Najeeba kissed and hugged her. This was how Onyesonwu learned to use her voice without having ever heard one.

And a lovely voice Onyesonwu had. She learned to sing by listening to the wind. She often stood facing the wide open land and sang to it. Sometimes, if she sang in the evening, she attracted owls from far away. They’d land in the sand to listen. This was the first sign Najeeba had that her daughter was not just Ewu but very special, unusual.

In that sixth year, a realization came to Najeeba: Her daughter needed other people. In her heart, Najeeba knew that whatever this child would become, she could only become it within civilization. And so she used her map and compass and the stars to take her daughter there. What place sounded more promising for her sand colored daughter than Jwahir, which meant “Home of the Golden Lady”?

According to Jwahirian legend, seven hundred years ago there lived a giant Okeke woman made of gold. Her father took her to the fattening hut and weeks later she emerged fat and beautiful. She married a rich young man and they decided to move to a large town. However, along the way, because of her immense weight (she was very fat and made of gold), she grew tired, so tired that she had to lie down.

The Golden Lady couldn’t get up, so this was where the couple had to settle. For this reason, the flattened land she left was called Jwahir and those who lived there prospered. It was built long ago by some of the first Okekes to flee the West. The ancestors of Jwahirians were of a special breed, indeed.

Najeeba prayed that she’d never have to tell her strange daughter the story of her conception. But Najeeba was a realist, too. Life was not easy.

I could have killed someone after my mother told me this story.

“I’m sorry,” my mother said. “You’re so young. But I promised myself that the minute anything began happening to you, I would tell you this. Knowing may be of some use to you. What happened to you today … in that tree … it’s just the beginning, I think.”

I was shaking and sweating. My throat felt raw as I spoke. “I … I remember that first day,” I said, rubbing the sweat from my brow. “You chose that spot in the market to sell some cactus candy.” I paused, frowning as it came back to me. “And that bread seller forced us to move. He shouted at you. And he looked at me like …” I touched and pressed the tiny scar on my forehead. I’m going to burn my copy of the Great Book, I thought. It’s the cause of all this. I wanted to drop to my knees and beg Ani to burn the West to the ground.

I knew a little about sex. I was even a little curious about it … well, maybe more suspicious than curious. But I didn’t know about this—sex as violence, violence that produced children … produced me, that happened to my mother. I stifled an urge to vomit, and then an urge to tear at my skin. I wanted to hug my mother but at the same time I didn’t want to touch her. I was poison. I had no right. I couldn’t quite bring myself to grasp what that … man, that monster, had done to her. Not at eleven years old.

The man in the photo, the only man I’d ever seen for the first six years of my life, wasn’t my father. He wasn’t even a good person. Betraying bastard, I thought, tears stinging my eyes. If I ever find you, I’ll cut off your penis. I shuddered, thinking how I wanted to do worse to the man who’d raped my mother.

Up to this point, I’d thought I was Noah. Noahs had two Okeke parents, yet they were the color of sand. I’d ignored the fact that I didn’t have the usual red eyes and sensitivity to sunshine. And that aside from their skin color, Noahs basically looked Okeke. I ignored the fact that other Noahs had no problem making friends with “normal looking” children. They weren’t outcast as I was. And Noahs looked at me with the same fear and disgust as Okekes of a darker shade. Even to them, I was other. Why hadn’t my mother burned that picture of her husband Idris? He’d betrayed her to protect his stupid honor. She’d told me he died … he should have died—been KILLED—violently!

“Does Papa know?” I hated the sound of my voice. When I sing, I wondered, whose voice is she hearing? My biological father could also sing sweetly.

“Yes.”

Papa knew from the moment he saw me, I realized. Everyone knew but me.

“Ewu,” I said slowly. “This is what it means?” I’d never asked.

“Born of pain,” she said. “People believe the Ewu-born eventually become violent. They think that an act of violence can only beget more violence. I know this isn’t true, as you should.”

I looked at my mother. She seemed to know so much. “Mama,” I said. “Has anything like what happened to me in the tree ever happened to you?”

“My dear, you think too hard,” was all she said. “Come here.” She stood up and wrapped me in her arms. We cried and sobbed and wept and bled tears. But when we were finished, all we could do was continue living.

Chapter 4
Eleventh Year Rite

YES, THE ELEVENTH YEAR OF MY LIFE WAS ROUGH.

My body developed early, so by this time I had breasts, my monthlies, and a womanly figure. I also had to deal with stupid leering and grabbing by both men and boys. Then came that rainy day I mysteriously ended up naked in the iroko tree and my mother being so shaken that she felt it time to tell me the repulsive truth of my origins. A week later came the time for my Eleventh Rite. Life rarely let up for me.

The Eleventh Rite is a two thousand-year-old-tradition held on the first day of rainy season. It involves the year’s eleven-year-old girls. My mother felt the practice was primitive and useless. She didn’t want me to have anything to do with it. In her village, the practice of the Eleventh Rite had been banned years before she was born. So I grew up sure that all the circumcising would happen to the other girls, girls born in Jwahir.

After a girl goes through her Eleventh Rite, she’s worthy of being spoken to as an adult. Boys don’t get this privilege until they’re thirteen. So the ages between eleven and sixteen are happiest for a girl because she’s both child and adult. Information about the rite wasn’t withheld. There were plenty of books about the process in the school’s book house. Still, no one was required or encouraged to read them.

So us girls knew that a piece of flesh was cut from between our legs and that circumcision didn’t literally change who we were or make us better people. But we didn’t know what that piece of flesh did. And because it was an old practice, no one really remembered why it was done. So the tradition was accepted, anticipated, and performed.

I didn’t want to do it. No numbing medicine was used. That was part of the ritual. I had seen two freshly circumcised girls the previous year and I remembered how they walked. And I didn’t like the idea of cutting off a part of my body. I didn’t even like cutting my hair, thus my long braids. And I certainly wasn’t one to do anything for the sake of tradition. I didn’t come from that kind of background.

But as I sat on the floor staring into space, I knew something had changed in me last week when I ended up in that tree. Whatever it was caused a slight shake to my step that only I noticed. I’d heard more from my mother than the story of my conception. She’d said nothing about the hope she had in me. The hope that I would avenge her suffering. She hadn’t been detailed about the rape, either. All of this was between her words.

I had many questions that couldn’t be answered. But when it came to my Eleventh Year Rite, I knew what I had to do. That year there were only four of us who were eleven years old and girls. There were fifteen boys. The three girls in my group would no doubt tell everyone how I wasn’t present at the rite. In Jwahir, to be uncircumcised past eleven brought bad luck and shame to your family. No one cared if you weren’t born in Jwahir. You, the girl growing up in Jwahir, were expected to have it done.

I brought dishonor to my mother by existing. I brought scandal to Papa by entering his life. Where before he had been a respected and eligible widower, now people laughingly said he was bewitched by an Okeke woman from the bloody West, a woman who’d been used by a Nuru man. My parents carried enough shame.

On top of all this, at eleven, I still had hopes. I believed that I could be normal. That I could be made normal. The Eleventh Rite was old and it was respected. It was powerful. The rite would put a stop to the strangeness happening to me. The next day, before school, I went to the home of the Ada, the priestess who would perform the Eleventh Rite.

“Good morning, Ada-m,” I respectfully said when she opened the door.

She met my eyes with a frown. She might have been a decade older than my mother, maybe two. I stood almost her height. Her long green dress was elegant and her short Afro was perfectly shaped. She smelled of incense. “What is it, Ewu?”

I winced at the word. “I’m sorry,” I said, stepping back. “Am I disturbing you?”

“I’ll decide that,” she said, crossing her arms over her small chest. “Come in.”

I stepped in, briefly noting that I’d be late for school. I’m really going to do this, I thought.

On the outside, her house was a small sand brick dwelling and inside it remained small. Yet somehow it was able to harbor a work of art that was gigantic in visual power. The mural that splashed over the walls was unfinished, but the room already looked as if it were submerged in one of the Seven Rivers. Painted near the door was a human-sized fish-man with a strikingly lifelike face. His ancient eyes were full of primordial wisdom.

Books told of huge bodies of water. But I’d never seen a drawing of one, let alone a giant colorful painting. This can’t really exist, I thought. So much water. And in it were silvery insects, turtles with green flat legs and shells, water plants, gold, black, and red … fish. I stared around and around. The room smelled of wet paint. The Ada’s hands were stained with it, too. I had interrupted her.

“You like it?” she asked.

“Never seen anything like it,” I said quietly, staring.

“My favorite kind of reaction,” she said, looking genuinely pleased.

I sat down and she sat across from me, waiting. “I … I’d like to put my name on the list, Ada-m,” I said. I bit my lip. To speak this request made it true, especially when spoken to this woman.

She nodded. “I wondered when you would come.”

The Ada knew what was happening with everyone in Jwahir. She was the one who made sure the proper traditions were performed for deaths, births, menstrual celebrations, the party thrown when a boy’s voice drops, the Eleventh Year Rite, the Thirteenth Year Rite, all of life’s markers. She’d planned my parents’ wedding and I’d hidden from her whenever she came by. I hoped she didn’t remember me.

“I’ll add your name. The list will be submitted to the Osugbo,” she said.

“Thank you,” I said.

“Be here at two a.m. a week from today. Wear old clothes. Come alone.” She looked me over. “Your hair—unbraid it, brush it out and rebraid it loosely.”

A week later, I snuck out of my bedroom window at twenty minutes to two in the morning.

The door to the Ada’s house was open when I arrived. I slowly stepped inside. The living room was decorated with candles, all the furniture cleared away. The Ada’s mural, mostly finished, looked more alive than ever in the candlelight.

The three other girls were already there. I quickly joined them. They looked at me with surprise, and some relief. I was one more person to share their fear. We didn’t speak, not even a greeting, but we stood close together.

Besides the Ada, there were five other women present. One of them was my great-aunt, Abeo Ogundimu. She’d never liked me. If she realized I was here without the consent of Papa, her nephew, I’d be in real trouble. I didn’t know the other four women, but one of them was very old and her presence demanded respect. I shivered with guilt, suddenly unsure of whether I should be there.

I glanced at a small table in the center of the room. Set on it were gauze, bottles of alcohol, iodine, four scalpels, and other items I didn’t recognize. My stomach rolled with nausea. A minute later, the Ada began. They must have been waiting for me.

“We are the women of the Eleventh Rite,” the Ada said. “We six guard the crossroads between womanhood and girlhood. Only through us can you move freely between the two. I am the Ada.”

“I am Lady Abadie, the town healer,” the short woman next to her said. Her hands were pressed closely to her flowing yellow dress.

“I am Ochi Naka,” another said. She was very dark skinned and had a voluptuous figure that she showed off with her stylish purple dress. “Market seamstress.”

“I am Zuni Whan,” the other said. Under her loose blue midlevel dress, she wore pants, something women rarely wore in Jwahir. “Architect.”

“I am Abeo Ogundimu,” my great-aunt said with a smirk. “Mother of fifteen.”

The women laughed. We all did. A mother to fifteen was a busy career indeed.

“And I am Nana the Wise,” the imposing old old woman said, looking at each of us through her one good eye, her hunched back forever pushing her forward. My great-aunt was old, but she was young compared to this woman. Nana the Wise’s voice was clear and dry. She held my eyes longer than she did the other girls’. “Now what are your names, so that we are well met?” she said.

“Luyu Chiki,” the girl next to me said.

“Diti Goitsemedime.”

“Binta Keita.”

“Onyesonwu Ubaid-Ogundimu.”

“This one,” Nana the Wise said, pointing at me. I held my breath.

“Step forward,” the Ada said.

I’d spent too much time mentally preparing for this day. All week, I’d had trouble eating, sleeping, fearing the pain and blood. By this point, I’d finally come to terms with it all. Now the old woman would bar my way.

Nana the Wise looked me up and down. Slowly she stepped around me, peering up with her one eye, like a tortoise from its shell. She grunted. “Unbraid that hair,” she said. I was the only one with hair long enough to braid. Jwahir women wore their hair stylishly short, another difference between my mother’s village and Jwahir. “This is her day. She must be unhindered.”

I was flush with relief. As I undid my loose braid, the Ada spoke. “Who comes here untouched?”

Only I raised my hand. I heard the one named Luyu snicker. She quickly shut up when the Ada spoke again. “Who, Diti?”

Diti let out a tiny uncomfortable laugh. “A … schoolmate,” she said quietly.

“His name?”

“Fanasi.”

“Did you have intercourse?”

I quietly gasped. I couldn’t imagine it. We were so young.

Diti shook her head and said, “No.” The Ada moved on.

“Who, Luyu?” she asked.

When Luyu only stared back with defiant eyes, the Ada strode forward so quickly that I was sure she was going to slap Luyu across the face. Luyu didn’t budge. She held her chin higher, daring the Ada. I was impressed. I noticed Luyu’s clothes. They were made from the finest textiles. They were bright; they’d never been washed. Luyu came from money and she obviously didn’t feel that she had to answer to even the Ada.

“I don’t know his name,” Luyu finally said.

“Nothing leaves this place,” the Ada said. But I sensed a threat in her voice. Luyu must have, too.

“Wokike.”

“Did you have intercourse?”

Luyu said nothing. Then she looked at the fish man on the wall and said, “Yes.”

My jaw dropped.

“How often?”

“Many times.”

“Why?”

Luyu glowered. “I don’t know.”

The Ada gave her a harsh look. “After tonight, you’ll refrain until you’re married. After tonight, you should know better.” She moved on to Binta, who’d been crying the entire time. “Who?”

Binta’s shoulders curled more. She cried harder.

“Binta, who?” the Ada asked again. Then she looked toward the five women and they moved in close to Binta, so close that Luyu, Diti, and I had to tilt our heads to see her. She was the smallest of the four of us. “You’re safe here,” the Ada said.

The other women touched Binta’s shoulders, cheeks, neck, and softly chanted, “You are safe, you are safe, you are safe here.”

Nana the Wise put her hand on Binta’s cheek. “After tonight, all in this room will be bound,” she said in her dry voice. “You, Diti, Onyesonwu, and Luyu will protect each other, even after marriage. And we, the Old Ones, will protect you all. But truth is the only thing that will secure this bond tonight.”

“Who?” the Ada asked for the third time.

Binta sunk to the floor and leaned her head against one of the women’s thighs, “My father.”

Luyu, Diti, and I gasped. The other women didn’t seem surprised at all.

“Was there intercourse?” Nana the Wise asked, her face hardened.

“Yes,” Binta whispered.

Several of the women cursed and sucked their teeth and muttered angrily. I shut my eyes and rubbed my temples. Binta’s pain was like my mother’s.

“How often?” Nana the Wise asked.

“Many times,” Binta said, her voice growing stronger. Then she blurted, “I-I-I want to kill him.” Then she clapped her hands over her mouth. “I’m sorry!” she said, her words muffled by her hands.

Nana the Wise removed Binta’s hands. “You’re safe here,” she said. She looked disgusted and shook her head, “Now we can finally do something about it.”

In fact, this group of women had known of Binta’s father’s behavior for a while. They were powerless to intervene until Binta went through her Eleventh Rite.

Binta vigorously shook her head. “No. They will take him away and …”

The women hissed and sucked their teeth. “Don’t worry,” Nana the Wise said. “We’ll protect you and your happiness.”

“My mother won’t …”

“Shhh,” Nana the Wise said. “You may still be a child but after tonight you’ll also be an adult. Your words will finally matter.”

The Ada and Nana the Wise barely glanced my way. No questions for me.

“Today,” the Ada said to us all. “You’ll become child and adult. You will be powerless and powerful. You will be ignored and heard. Do you accept?”

“Yes,” we all said.

“You are not to scream,” the healer said.

“You are not to kick,” the seamstress said.

“You are to bleed,” the architect said.

“Ani is great,” my great-aunt said.

“You have already taken the first step into adulthood by leaving your homes and entering the dangerous night alone,” the Ada said. “You’ll each get a small sack of herbs, gauze, iodine, and body salts. You’ll return home alone. In three nights, you’re to take a long bath.”

We were told to remove our clothing and handed pieces of red cloth to wrap around ourselves. Our tops would be taken to the back and burned. We’d each be given a new white shirt and veil, the symbols of our new adulthood. We were to wear our rapas home; they were symbols of our childhood.

Binta was first, her rite most urgent. Then Luyu, Diti, and then me. A red cloth was spread on the floor. Binta started crying again as she lay on it, her head on the red pillow. The lights were turned on which made what was about to happen that much scarier. What am I doing? I thought, watching Binta. This is crazy! I don’t have to do this! I should just run out the door, run home, slip into my bed, and pretend this never happened. I took a step towards the door. I knew it wouldn’t be locked. The rite was a girl’s choice. Only in the past had girls been forced to do it. I took another step. No one was watching. All eyes were on Binta.

The room was warm and outside was like any other night. My parents were sleeping, as if it were any other night. But Binta was lying on a red cloth, her legs held apart by the healer and the architect. The Ada disinfected the scalpel and then heated it over a flame. She let it cool. Healers usually use a laserknife for surgery. They make the cleanest cuts and can instantly cauterize when necessary. I briefly wondered why the Ada was using a primitive scalpel instead.

“Hold your breath,” the Ada said. “Don’t scream.”

Before Binta could finish taking in her breath, the Ada took the scalpel to her. She went for a small perturbing bit of dark rosy flesh near to top of Binta’s yeye. When the scalpel sliced it, blood spurted. My stomach lurched. Binta didn’t scream but she bit down on her lip so hard that blood dribbled from the side of her mouth. Her body jerked but the women held her.

The healer stanched the wound with ice wrapped in gauze. For a few moments everyone froze except Binta, who was breathing heavily. Then one of the other women helped her stand and move to the other side of the room. Binta sat down, her legs apart, holding the gauze in place, a stunned look on her face. It was Luyu’s turn.

“I can’t do this,” Luyu started babbling. “I can’t do this!” Still, she allowed herself to be held down by the healer and the architect. The seamstress and my great-aunt held her arms for good measure as the Ada took another scalpel and disinfected it. Luyu didn’t scream but she made a sharp, “peep” Tears dribbled from her eyes as she fought with the pain. It was Diti’s turn.

Diti lay down slowly and took a deep breath. Then she said something too quiet for me to hear. The minute the Ada brought the fresh scalpel to her flesh, Diti jumped up, blood oozing down her thighs. Her face was a mask of terror, as she tried to wordlessly scramble away. The women must have seen this reaction often because without a word, they grabbed her and quickly held her down. The Ada finished the cut, fast and clean.

It was my turn. I could barely keep my eyes open. The other girls’ pain was swarming around me like wasps and biting flies. Tearing at me like cactus thorns.

“Come, Onyesonwu,” the Ada said.

I was a trapped animal. Not trapped by the women, the house, or tradition. I was trapped by life. Like I had been a free spirit for millennia and then one day something snatched me up, something violent and angry and vengeful, and I was pulled into the body that I now resided in. Held at its mercy, by its rules. Then I thought of my mother. She’d stayed sane for me. She lived for me. I could do this for her.

I lay on the cloth trying to ignore the three other girls’ eyes as they stared at my Ewu body. I could have slapped all three of them. I didn’t deserve to suffer those scrutinizing stares during such a chilling moment. The healer and architect took my legs. The seamstress and my great-aunt held my arms. The Ada picked up the scalpel.

“Be calm,” Nana the Wise said into my ear.

I felt the Ada part my yeye’s lips. “Hold your breath,” she said. “Don’t scream.”

Halfway through my breath, she cut. The pain was an explosion. I felt it in every part of my body and I almost blacked out. Then I was screaming. I didn’t know that I was capable of such noise. Faintly, I felt other women holding me down. I was shocked that they hadn’t let go and run off. I was still screaming when I realized that everything had fallen away. That I was in a place of periwinkle and yellow and mostly green.

I would have gasped with terror if I had a mouth to gasp with. I would have screamed some more, thrashed, scratched, spit. All I could think was that I had died … yet again. When I remained as I was, I calmed. I looked at myself. I was only a blue mist, like the fog that lingers after a fast, hard rainstorm. Around me I could see others now. Some were red, some green, some gold. Things focused and I could see the room, too. The girls and women. Each had her own colored mist. I didn’t want to look at my body lying there.

Then I noticed it. Red and oval-shaped with a white oval in the center, like the giant eye of a jinni. It sizzled and hissed, the white part expanding, moving closer. It horrified me to my very core. Must get out of here! I thought. Now! It sees me! But I didn’t know how to move. Move with what? I had no body. The red was bitter venom. The white was like the sun’s worst heat. I started screaming and crying again. Then I was opening my eyes to a cup of water. Everyone’s face broke into a smile.

“Oh, praise Ani,” the Ada said.

I felt the pain and jumped, about to get up and run. I had to run. From that eye. I was so mixed up that for a moment, I was sure that what I’d just seen was causing the pain.

“Don’t move,” the healer said. She was pressing a piece of gauze-wrapped ice between my legs and I wasn’t sure which hurt more, the pain from the cut or the ice’s cold. My eyes shot around the room, searching. When my gaze fell on anything white or red my heart skipped a beat and my hands twitched.

After a few minutes, I began to relax. I told myself it was all just a pain-induced nightmare. I let my mouth fall open. The air dried my lower lip. I was now ana m-bobi. No more shame would befall my parents. Not because I was eleven and uncircumcised, at least. My relief lasted about one minute. It wasn’t a nightmare at all. I knew this. And though I didn’t know exactly what, I knew something terribly bad had just happened.

“When she cut you, you just went to sleep,” Luyu said, as she lay on her back. She was looking at me with great respect. I frowned.

“Yeah, and you went all transparent!” Diti quickly said. She seemed to have recovered from her own shock.

“W-what?!” I said.

“Shhhh!” Luyu angrily hissed at Diti.

“She did!” Diti whispered.

I wanted to drag my nails across the floor. What was all this? I wondered. I could smell the stress on my skin. And I realized that I could smell that other smell, too. The one that I’d smelled for the first time during the tree incident.

“She should speak with Aro,” the Ada told to Nana the Wise.

Nana the Wise only grunted, frowning at her. The Ada fearfully averted her eyes.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

No one responded. None of the other women would look at me.

“Who’s ‘R O’?” I asked, turning to Diti, Luyu, and Binta.

The three of them shrugged. “Dunno,” Luyu said.

When none of the women would elaborate on this R O, I dismissed their words. I had other things to worry about. Like that place of light and colors. Like the oval eye. Like the bleeding and stinging between my legs. Like telling my parents what I’d done.

The four of us lay there side by side in pain for a half hour. We were each given a belly chain made of thin delicate gold that we would wear forever. The elders raised their shirts above their bellies to show us theirs. “They’ve been blessed in the seventh of the Seven Rivers,” the Ada said. “They’ll live long after we’ve died.”

We were also each given a stone to place underneath our tongues. This was called talembe etanou. My mother approved of this tradition, though its purpose had also long been forgotten. Hers was a very small, smooth orange stone. The stones vary with each Okeke group. Our stones were diamonds, a stone I’d never heard of. They looked like smooth ovals of ice. I held mine easily under my tongue. One was only to take it out when eating or sleeping. And one had to be careful at first not to swallow it. To do so was bad luck. Briefly I wondered how my mother hadn’t swallowed hers when I was conceived.

“Eventually your mouth will make friends with it,” Nana the Wise said.

The four of us dressed, putting on underwear with gauze pressed against our flesh and wrapping the white veils over our heads. We left together.

“We did well,” Binta said, as we walked. She slurred her words a bit, because of her swollen mangled lower lip. We moved slowly, each step met with pain.

“Yes. None of us screamed,” Luyu said. I frowned. I certainly had. “My mother said that in her group, five of the eight girls screamed.”