‘Osman,’ I whispered. ‘Osman.’ My husband jerked slightly, his mouth twitched. He turned his shoulder away. ‘Wake up, Osman. Wake up.’
I let a few beats pass. Gently I shook his shoulder, taking care not to rouse him too quickly. I rocked him, whispering his name until his eyes stilled and the lids cracked open. He uttered a groan and softly sighed.
Again: ‘Osman, Osman!’ His eyelids opened a fraction further.
‘Asana? Eh, Asana. What is it?’ he mumbled, his lips struggling with the effort of forming the words, wanting to stay in the dream. The next moment his eyelids began to flutter and close as he slipped back under.
‘Osman,’ I said. ‘Wake up and see. See what I have for you!’ I groped the floor until my fingers closed around the handle of the knife. I held it up, allowing the blade to glow in the silver light. I put my lips very close to his ear, brushing the lobe. I made my voice gentle, coaxing. Osman’s eyes opened. I put the blade up under his chin: the tip made a soft indentation in the flesh. ‘You see what can happen, Osman? So strong but what good do your muscles do you now?’ I felt his body slowly stiffen.
I laid my cheek on the pillow, let the knife down slowly and slipped it out of sight. I lay quietly. Waiting.
It happened just as I hoped. Moments later Osman sat bolt upright. He leaped from the bed. He was naked, flailing. A little deranged, really, when I set my mind back to thinking about it. Next he bent over and peered at me closely. I let my eyes open, I gazed back at him, I reached up and stroked his cheek. ‘What’s the matter, husband?’ I asked, as though I was greatly concerned. All the time his puzzlement grew. ‘What is it, Osman? Is something the matter?’ I reached up, took his hand in mine and drew him back to the bed. ‘A dream, that’s all. Just a dream. Go back to sleep, now.’ Osman hesitated and then sat down heavily. I rolled over and pretended to sleep. After a while I felt him lie down, a long way from me, right on the other side of the bed.
From that night and for the remainder of my pregnancy Osman never touched me again. I congratulated myself heartily on my cunning. I lay back on my bed and buffed my belly with Vaseline petroleum jelly.
Osman Iscandari, I chuckled, ng ba kerot k’bana, kere ng baye erith.
You have a big penis, but you have no balls.
My daughter arrived, as had I, at the close of the rains. Unlike me she took her time coming into this world. I bore it. After the birth my mother praised me. Nobody would ever have known a woman was giving birth in this house. At night she took the baby to her bed to let me rest, carrying her to me when she needed to feed. Still, in the hours in between I found I missed my daughter already. I could not sleep, I could not wait to hold her again. I crept into the room and lifted her from where she slumbered in the crook of my mother’s body.
Kadie was named for my karabom, who had gone the year before. Through two rains I stayed in my mother’s house while I suckled her. For hours at a time I might do nothing but gaze into my daughter’s deep-water eyes, at the tiny blister on her upper lip that came from sucking; feel the way she gripped my finger with her toes when I held her feet. I examined the fine, sharp creases on the soles of those same feet and the palms of her hands. What fate, I wondered, was there awaiting her that had already been decided?
One morning unseen currents stirred the air beneath a troubled sky. A pale green glow lit the village. I sat at the front of my father’s house. When I was growing up I could not imagine a world beyond this one. Change came slowly to this place. My father grew ginger now, orders from the colonials. My mother counted the money, complained about the fixed prices. She brought in extra labour to meet the demand. Above the coffee trees the hills receded in shades of grey, fading slowly into the sky. A kite spiralled down. I followed its descent through the air as gently as a leaf falling from a tree. I didn’t hear my father’s footfall.
‘You’ll be going home. As soon as your husband comes.’ My father spoke in statements.
I replied: ‘Perhaps, but this is my home, too.’
‘Te ting. True. But a woman’s duty is to be with her husband in his home and any day now he’ll be here to take you back.’ I was silent. My father waited a while before continuing. ‘Of course you should make him win you again. But when he has done that you will accept him and you will go.’ This is the way things were in those days. My father loved me, but for him duty came first. I could not think of running away from my marriage. I could never come home. He added gently: ‘You will be missed here.’
I looked up at him, remembering how I used to ride on his shoulders, how I rode on his shoulders the day we came to this place to found the village. He spoiled me so much people called me his pet deer.
‘Teh, teh,’ he clapped his hands for Kadie, ‘teh teh.’ She weaved towards him, her hand reached for the piece of sesame cake he held out. He caught her and swung her into the air, grunting with the effort it cost him.
‘Yes, father.’
Sometimes I wondered how my father knew things. Only days later Osman arrived, shaking the dust out of his clothes, struggling with a cardboard suitcase of gifts: cakes of blue soap, scented hair oil, two new head-ties and many yards of the finest-grade fabric. ‘Yes, yes. Come and look! All imported,’ he called for everyone to hear. Some of my father’s younger children and even his wives gathered around, as though Osman was a travelling salesman and not a husband come to woo his wife back. Osman flung open the suitcase and showed off each item.
I didn’t mind seeing him. He was handsome, as I remembered, even sweating under the weight of the suitcase. Despite myself I smiled as I walked down the steps of the house to greet him.
Osman Iscandari. I underestimated him. Seeing him arrive at my father’s house to bring me back, the sweat rolling down from his scalp, his face shining like the moon, boasting — with that stupid grin carved into his face. When I walked up the street towards that house, that empty house lying in the shadow of the earth, I had no idea of what awaited me inside.
Fourteen, fifteen maybe. Pretty enough, I’ll say that. The girl scuttled forward, bending low. She began to gather up my luggage. And my, she was strong as a bush cow. The cardboard suitcase she balanced on her head while she squatted to reach for the other bundles.
I did not speak. A cousin of Balia or Ngadie? Someone’s ward? A servant, even? My senior wives had not come out to meet me. A drumming in my heart, in my ears. The light receded around the edges of my vision, as though I was staring down a bat-filled tunnel. I willed myself not to look at Osman. One step at a time, one foot in front of the other. My body was shaking. The house was empty. The girl emerged from my room, she smiled and held her hands out to Kadie. I kept a firm grip of my daughter’s hand. The girl’s lips trembled. At that moment I caught sight of Osman mocking me, grinning at this entertainment. Not the grin of a dullard. No, rather the smirk of a hyena.
‘Ah, but let me introduce you, Asana.’ The voice he used was offhand. ‘This is Mabinty.’ Before me the girl bowed her head and dropped into a curtsey.
And that was how I met my husband’s newest wife.
Osman delighted in his triumph. He did not call me to his room. When I saw that girl — humming, wandering about, toying with some new bauble, smiling stupidly even at the chickens — I recognised myself, the way I too had been.
I contemplated my position — the third wife of a man who was of a lesser family than my own, yet who treated me with contempt. Replaced by a peasant girl brought back from one of his trips — in all likelihood given to him for the price of a sack of rice.