Homegoing(14)

Just as she left, Little Dove began to stir. Esi fetched her water, and helped tilt her head back so that she could drink it. The wounds on her back were still fresh, and the salve that Maame had made stank of the forest. Esi wiped the corners of Abronoma’s lips with her fingers, but the girl pushed her away.

“Leave me,” she said.

“I—I’m sorry for what happened. He is a good man.”

Abronoma spit onto the clay in front of her. “Your father is Big Man, eh?” she asked, and Esi nodded, proud despite what she had just seen her father do. The Dove let out a mirthless laugh. “My father too is Big Man, and now look at what I am. Look at what your mother was.”

“What my mother was?”

Little Dove’s eyes shot toward Esi. “You don’t know?”

Esi, who had not spent more than an hour away from her mother’s sight in her life, couldn’t imagine any secrets. She knew the feel of her and the smell of her. She knew how many colors were in her irises and she knew each crooked tooth. Esi looked at Abronoma, but Abronoma shook her head and continued her laugh.

“Your mother was once a slave for a Fante family. She was raped by her master because he too was a Big Man and big men can do what they please, lest they appear weak, eh?” Esi looked away, and Abronoma continued in a whisper. “You are not your mother’s first daughter. There was one before you. And in my village we have a saying about separated sisters. They are like a woman and her reflection, doomed to stay on opposite sides of the pond.”



Esi wanted to hear more, but there was no time to ask the Dove. Maame came back into the room, and saw the two girls sitting beside each other.

“Esi, come here and let Abronoma sleep. Tomorrow you will wake up early and help me clean.”

Esi left Abronoma to her rest. She looked at her mother. The way her shoulders always seemed to droop, the way her eyes were always shifting. Suddenly, Esi was filled with a horrible shame. She remembered the first time she’d seen an elder spit on the captives in the town square. The man had said, “Northerners, they are not even people. They are the dirt that begs for spit.” Esi was five years old then. His words had felt like a lesson, and the next time she passed, she timidly gathered her own spit and launched it at a little boy who stood huddled with his mother. The boy had cried out, speaking a language that Esi didn’t understand, and Esi had felt bad, not for having spit, but for knowing how angry her mother would have been to see her do it.

Now all Esi could picture was her own mother behind the dull metal of the cages. Her own mother, huddled with a sister she would never know.

—

In the months that followed, Esi tried to befriend Abronoma. Her heart had started to ache for the little bird who had now perfected her role as house girl. Since the beating, no crumb was dropped, no water spilled. In the evenings, after Abronoma’s work was done, Esi would try to coax more information from her about her mother’s past.

“I don’t know any more,” Abronoma said, taking the bundle of palm branches to sweep the floor, or straining used oil through leaves. “Don’t worry me!” she screamed once she’d reached the height of her annoyance.

Still, Esi tried to make amends. “What can I do?” she asked. “What can I do?”

After weeks of asking, Esi finally received an answer. “Send word to my father,” Abronoma said. “Tell him where I am. Tell him where I am and there will be no bad blood between us.”



That night, Esi couldn’t sleep. She wanted to make peace with Abronoma, but if her father knew what she had been asked to do, surely there would be war in her hut. She could hear her father now, yelling at Maame, telling her that she was raising Esi to be a small woman, weak. On the floor of her hut, Esi turned and turned and turned, until finally her mother hushed her.

“Please,” Maame said. “I’m tired.”

And all Esi could see behind her closed eyelids was her mother as house girl.

Esi decided then that she would send the message. Early, early, early the next morning she went to the messenger man who lived on the edge of the village. He listened to her words and the words of others before setting out into the forest every week. Those words would be carried from village to village, messenger man to messenger man. Who knew if Esi’s message would ever reach Abronoma’s father? It could be dropped or forgotten, altered or lost, but at the very least, Esi could say that she had done it.

When she got back, Abronoma was the only person yet awake. Esi told her what she had done that morning, and the girl clapped her hands together and then gathered Esi into her small arms, squeezing until Esi’s breath caught.

“All is forgotten?” Esi asked once the Dove had released her.

“Everything is equal,” Abronoma said, and relief rushed through Esi’s body like blood. It filled her to the brim and left her fingers shaking. She hugged Abronoma back, and as the girl’s body relaxed in her arms, Esi let herself imagine that the body she was hugging was her sister’s.

—

Months went by, and Little Dove grew excited. In the evenings she could be found pacing the grounds and muttering to herself before sleep. “My father. My father is coming.”

Big Man heard her mutterings and told everyone to beware of her, for she might be a witch. Esi would watch her carefully for signs, but every day it was the same thing. “My father is coming. I know it. He is coming.” Finally, Big Man promised to slap the words out of the Dove if she continued, and so she stopped, and the family soon forgot.