What It Means When a Man Falls from the Sky(40)

They tore the world apart. Unprecedented rains. Earthquakes that ravaged every region. One godling who had come from the house of flames set an entire city on fire trying to find River’s girls. It was a dark century for humankind and godkind alike. Then the female godlings got craftier in their search. They made themselves visible to human eyes, tempting men and women, threatening men and women, building a network of spies across the globe who lit candles and prayed to them and passed this new religion on to their children. Every new convert was a new set of eyes in the world, a new set of ears to catch whispers of men who didn’t seem to fit in, or men who rose to ungodly success but never seemed to pray. Many a good man was lost to angry godlings who peeled his skin away, searching for the god that might be hidden inside.

But after seven hundred fruitless years and countless human believers in her service, it dawned on River that she might never see her twins again. She collapsed where she stood, and every emissary lay down as well. Dust settled on them, then grime and so much debris that they became part of the earth, hills of hips and buttocks and woe.

All but one. The only one who felt the rage of River, multiplied by that most powerful feeling that won’t let a person rest: guilt. River’s sister, not quite goddess. The guilt turned in her belly like a ship in a storm. She’d slept while her sister’s children were taken. Blame, so like a god itself, shadowed her, occupied her bed like a lover, whispered to her like a dearest friend. Her name was eventually forgotten. Soon all called her She Who Betrayed River, a name that over the years degenerated to Betrayed River, then Bereaver, which stuck, and eventually even Bereaver forgot she had ever been anyone else. Guilt crushed every milestone in her life to dust so that she knew only Before and After. And Before seemed like the unfathomable dream of a foolish woman.

Long after River and her women collapsed, Bereaver searched alone, turning every crust of earth to find Ant and her nieces. Whenever a kind wind caught a whisper and blew Ant’s name into her ear, she would follow it to the city, town, village to which he had run and pluck the man, woman, child who had seen him last. She pulled every secret from them, things they didn’t even know they knew, and afterward she’d pull out their eyes, tongue, heart, so they’d never know a thing again. Sometimes she just missed him. Other times, the trail was so stale it crumbled to nothing when she walked it, the people who had known the human Ant long dead.

Ant tried to live quiet lives, but eventually someone would sense something about him, be it his wickedness or his divinity, and he would be run out of town—or become so highly acclaimed he feared catching the attention of a god who would recognize him. Much as it galled him, he knew he would have to set his godhood aside if he wanted to keep his life. He would also have to separate himself from the stone that held his secrets.

So into the stone Ant whispered everything he’d ever been and sealed it with the human name he’d taken for this earth. He kept only his immortality, so that he could one day live to be restored, no longer hunted. He tried to bury the stone, but animals circled the spot and began to dig. He gave it to a boy, but the boy ran to show his friends, so Ant snatched it back and buried the boy instead. In his despair, he carved a cave into a hill and thought to hide there for eternity. He pulled in a large rock and made it his bed, as penance. But a hundred years went by and he became bored with piety and regret. Poking his head out of the cave, he saw a girl hauling a pail of water. The water wasn’t hers, he was sure, and yet she bore it on her head with grace and little complaint. He watched her for days, carrying water back and forth, back and forth, but for whom? To do what? Boys sometimes danced around her, trying to distract her from her task, but on she went, day after day. It dawned on Ant then that one could ask almost anything of a girl. He stepped out of the cave to block her path and, holding out the pretty blue stone, said, Can you keep a secret?

The girl took the stone, so accepting that it sank into her palm, lodging itself at the base of her fingers. She was filled with a terrifying knowledge—a child bled to bones, a mother who thought it alive and well—and certainty that she must never, ever tell.

So Bereaver still wanders, not knowing that Ant is lost to her. The girl will carry his secret, and when she is no longer a girl, she will give it to another girl, and this sorrow stone will be stolen away in uniform pockets and hidden under the pillows of marriage beds, secreted in diaries, guarded closely by the type of girls who, above all else, obey.

And while Bereaver wanders, River and her women lie catatonic with heartache, dreaming of their children. And when, in the place she is hidden, the surviving god-child cries, their bodies hear her, and their breasts weep, and that, since you asked, is a volcano.





REDEMPTION




The day after we met, she sent a missile of shit wrapped in newspaper like a gift. It exploded on the side of the house, scattering chunks and leaving a streak of brown. My mother, furious, railed about the neighbors (never at them, mind you) and lamented that they just didn’t make house girls like they used to. I, on the other hand, fell in love.

Mayowa was thirteen going on whatever age it is that women find themselves. Mr. and Mrs. Ajayi took her on to replace Abigail, who had worked for them as long as we’d lived next door. My mother said it was about time, a woman that old should be the madam of her own house, not cleaning up someone else’s.

“They need an energetic young thing, but not one of those ambitious ones. They never last long.” Mother recited the virtues of young workers nonstop—malleable, easily intimidated, unlikely to seduce the man of the house or turn up pregnant. Then she met the young worker in question. The Ajayis had brought Mayowa over to get us used to seeing her. Prodded by Mrs. Ajayi, she curtsied stiffly to my mother, as though her knees rebelled. My mother noticed.