Read Ancestor Stones for Free Online Page B

men’s voices and women’s voices. Hush!
    A plain room. But mama tried to make it into something pretty: striped country cloths on the floor, cloth dyed red with camwood on the walls. Lattice shutters over the windows. In the corner the box with her things in it, the things she brought when she came here.
    1931. Yes, it was 1931. We didn’t count years in those days. That came later. Who was to say where to begin? What year was the first? So we began in many places: the Year the New Chief Came Out of Seclusion; the Year We Came to this Place; the Year the River Rose and Snatched Away Houses in Old Rofathane; the Year the First Coffee Beans Ripened. The Year of the LocustDisaster. That had been the year before. The villagers lit fires between the rows of trees and draped fishing nets over the branches to protect the beans. I was young. I thought a locust was some kind of fish that swam through the air. In the morning the trees were saved; there were crisp locusts scattered across the land and the air filled with their odour.
    Yes, we remembered years by the things that happened. Important things.
    So why do I say 1931? I’ll tell you. Because that was the year of Haidera. That much I know. I read it in a book by a professor of history. An English professor, but who wrote our history, if you understand me. And he said Haidera came in 1931. So I said to myself, well then that is the year of my mother’s story too. The man who wrote that book, he did not think much of Haidera. A fanatic. That’s what he wrote in his book. That Haidera was a fanatic. He said not so many people followed Haidera. But he was wrong. There were many people who loved Haidera Kontorfili.
    That year was also the Year My Teeth Fell Out. A warm evening in the dry season. My sisters were out, walking round the houses with their age mates. Arms encircling waists. Calling greetings to the people sitting at the front of their houses. ‘I pray good evening, aunty.’ ‘Good evening, uncle.’ ‘How are you?’
‘Thanto a Kuru.’
I thank God. ‘Remember me to your mother.’ ‘Yes, aunty.’ Or else they were sitting by the river, whispering into other girls’ ears. I was the youngest, too young to go with them. The one who called me, he returned. And the next one too who would have been another sister. Two children missing in between, like the space in my row of teeth.
    I lay at home licking my gums. That day I told my mother I was sick and she gave me mimosa tea to drink. I sipped air in with my tea, through the gap in my mouth. The tea blistered my gums, already rough from sucking green mangoes with Bobbio, the Boy with No Voice. Lying in the fields sucking green mangoes. That’s what I did the day before. But I don’t tell such things to mama. I let my eyes follow her. I like to watch my mother. To me she is beautiful.
    Today, as on other days, this is what she does:
    She goes to the box and feels among the layers of clothes. She takes a tin, a tin wrapped up in red poplin, stitched with cowrie shells and leather-bound
sassa
. Fearful amulets to protect what’s inside. There is writing on the side. It says: ‘Woodbines’. Just so you know. For myself, I only knew that later. On the floor she folds her legs beside her and empties the cigarette cup. Pebbles and stones tumble on to the floor, she spreads them out with a hand like a fan.
    There are seventeen of them. This I know. Because sometimes when I am left alone I go to the chest and take them out for myself. I empty them into my palm, feel their weight, listen to the noise they make, like they are talking to each other. Or to me. A pinkish pebble, curved in one place, flat on the other and inside dark and glistening like a sliced plum. A big one, flat and grey with a dimple that fits my thumb, just so. A dark stone, shaped just like a cigar and veined too, like a tobacco leaf. I hold it to my lips and copy the men