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and unexpectedly, rediscovered her maternal instincts.
    Oh, was there any way to explain what had suddenly misted Bertha’s pale cheeks and filled her sleepy breasts, except to say that he had been recognized by a mother’s body? Had he shown just a little more curiosity, this boy would have discovered in the body of this maternal latecomer the tortured story of a loss, the story of a life linked to the end of his own.
    Bertha asked the only question possible in this situation. “What’s happening?”
    She furiously wiped her hands on her rear end, as if she had just touched excrement.
    â€œWho are you?” she demanded.
    The boy whose gaze had frozen her own asked no questions. He stared at Bertha silently, desperately.
    This is what happened: Sara had gotten confused. In the darkness where she sought refuge, she had put on clothes that didn’t belong to her. Her mind was filled with thoughts of escape: escape from the matron, from Uncle Owona. Escape. Obviously, in her panic, she hadn’t realized what she had become. But Bertha saw the boy she was from then on, and she immediately recognized him as her son. Yes, the matron recognized the young girl struggling in her arms as the son she had lost in the far-off, swirling mists of her life in Foumban. Her face turned to clay. Covering her mouth with her hand, she smothered a cry; she wanted to be sure of what she was seeing.
    â€œWho are you?”
    Bertha took a step back but stopped in the doorway, thus blocking out the light that could have revealed the truth.
    â€œWhat’s happening?”
    She pressed hard on her belly to calm the kicks she had never expected to feel again.
    Bertha shivered with cold, squeezing her dripping breasts and pushing on her aching belly. She knew her questions were of no use. Sara wouldn’t answer any of them. The matron stripped this accidental boy with the violence of a disappointment felt by her alone. She raised her hand to strike but let it fall, having finally understood the limits of her anger. She didn’t ask the girl to go get the whip for her punishment. On the contrary, her eyes were filled with tears when she finally managed to stammer, “Why?”
    On that day, the relationship between Sara and Bertha was radically changed, retreating ever further into the labyrinth of lies. The matron, who for an instant had seen her son come back to her, wiped her eyes and discovered instead a terrified Sara. The shadows held nothing more for her than a mute and disoriented young girl. From then on, Sara noticed that Bertha eyed her suspiciously, looking for something only a mother can see.
    Poor Sara. She had no idea about the crazy plan beginning to take shape in the mind of a matron whose maternal instinct had been abruptly awakened. She was truly dumbfounded when, after her attempted escape, Bertha burst into tears and stood frozen in front of her, holding a whip she suddenly lacked the strength to wield. The matron’s lips were murmuring the words “my child.” Like a butterfly caught in a spider’s web, the girl collapsed against the mats of the old woman’s chest. Bertha cut the girl’s hair, leaving only one lock on the top of her head, like a boy.
    Since the Bamum prefer boys to girls, Sara had no trouble wending her way through Mount Pleasant’s courtyards in her new apparel. Only the children on the sultan’s car gave her any trouble: she distracted them from their games with the stationary automobile. As Sara passed by, they’d shout out invitations to play, but when she turned away, they’d taunt her with this annoying rhyme that hit the mark each time:
    â€œCluck, cluck, cluck! went the hen! Oh my!
    See the little boy come by!
    Tonight is the night I’m gonna die!”
    Happily, the little devils were taken in by the cross-dressing. Nothing about Sara alarmed them. And in any event, Bertha quickly set them straight: children couldn’t