House of Rougeaux(3)

The man who carried her brought her back to the hut and told her to stay there, but she became frantic.

“Ma’a!” she wailed, and wept so piteously that he begged her to quiet, until Adunbi appeared and held her again. The man went away, toward where people were still shouting.

“Shh, Beje,” Adunbi said.

Finally when Abeje could speak she asked her brother where their mother was.

“She is sleeping,” he said. “I saw them carrying her.”

It was a very strange idea, that their mother should be sleeping at such a time, that Abeje nearly laughed. But then, as dread overcame her, she knew that everything was terribly wrong.



* * *



Now the people were going toward the Burying Place and Adunbi pulled Abeje’s hand so they could follow. Adunbi pointed to a cluster of men laying something down and said, “Iya is there.” Several others were busy digging a great hole in the earth.

Someone began singing and other voices joined in.

Back to the dust

Coming over the mountains

Like a crawling snake

My heart is in a hurry

My feet don’t walk





Abeje clung to Adunbi, smelling the broken earth. She wanted to tell Adunbi to wake Iya, but she feared to upset him. Abeje stayed quiet, even when they laid Iya down in the deep hole, folded her arms across her breast, and covered her.

The people stood by, some sang, some wept and swayed. An old woman raised her hands up and declared, “Holy One deal with him!”

And all answered, “Hear it now.”

The woman’s eyes stayed on the sky, the last stars. Tears fell over her cheeks and she said, “Sister gone on, fly away to home.” Abeje felt the wind whip her skin. She held tighter to her brother and felt his body shaking.

“Hear it now,” said all.

“Mercy on her children...”

“Hear it now.”

Old Joseph came carrying a large clay cooking pot. Old Joseph had much grey in his hair, though his shoulders were still broad, and he was lame in one leg. He worked up at the stables grooming the horses, mending harnesses, and fixing carriage wheels. Abeje once heard the older people say that an overseer had made example of him for eating a piece of sugarcane, when he was young. Joseph never walked right after that. He had to swing the whole weight of the lame leg forward to take one step, and then jump forward with the other.

Now he raised the clay pot high into the air, and swiftly brought it down on a stone, where it broke into many pieces. One by one the people placed the shards onto the grave. The dawn came slowly. Abeje heard the tolling of the work bell, ringing as if this day were like any other. Soon she and Adunbi were left alone on the grave mound. They lay so still that vultures circled over. They could not be separated from that place.

By nightfall Abeje’s mouth was so dry she couldn’t swallow. Adunbi took her hand and they found their way back to the Quarters. As they crouched by a fire someone gave them a gourd of water. Someone else set a bowl of maize porridge before them. They looked up and saw Old Joseph. His mouth was set in a bitter line and the firelight glinted in his eyes.

“Nyam,” he said, “eat.” When they made no move toward the bowl, he said again “Eat!” so fiercely they dared not disobey. From that day on Old Joseph kept them by his side at the cooking fire, feeding them of his own meager rations. Others, when they could, gave them a bit of vegetable, salt-fish or potato.

Despite the care of the old man, in the time after Iya, the children were lost. Abeje waited for Iya to return, to wake at last from her earthen bed, but she didn’t come and so the sun no longer rose. Abeje’s terror grew and she began to see her brother behave in strange ways. His eyes, before so clear and bright, became clouded. His fresh, alert expression, confused. He sometimes sat in the hut at night, hugging his knees and rocking back and forth, or he wandered in circles around the cooking fire. Old Joseph could make Adunbi eat, but could not otherwise reach him. When Adunbi fluttered around the fire like a moth, Old Joseph would pat the ground beside him and say to Abeje, “Come, ptit. Come sit by.” Abeje would creep toward him, to lean a little against his heavy side.



* * *



One day Lise brought Abeje with her to help carry a set of baskets to one of the barns, where some women were working. A bat came loose from the rafters and tried to attack them. The creature was mad, they knew because it came out in the daylight. It would sicken and kill anyone it chanced to bite. The bat flew frantically to and fro, circling in the rafters, hypnotizing Abeje until Lise dragged her outside by the hand. The bat was like Adunbi when he circled the fire, shaking his hands, not knowing where he went. At last the women beat it from the air with their brooms and buried it in a hole.

When Abeje woke in the night to find her brother sitting up and rocking, she threw her arms around his neck and cried. Slowly he would become still, his arms would unwind from his knees and encircle her instead, and no women came to beat him with brooms.

Now and then when Adunbi was away, and when she was not pulling weeds at the Great House, Abeje still looked for colored stones. She began to venture into a little grove of shrubs and trees near the Quarters, wondering what lay behind that green curtain. It was a different place. The plants were unlike those in the Great House garden, where the green things grew tame and limp, and unlike the cane fields where the cane stalks bent together in the wind. The shrubs and trees and vines of the Grove grew in a great mix-up, threading roots and branches together with leaves that rattled or caught pools of water or pierced other leaves with spines. Birds hopped and called and argued like women. Insects hummed and bore tiny trails.