“You are Gangatom,” I said.
“And you don’t know who you are,” she said. She looked down at my feet all the way up to my head, which was getting wild but not as wild as the Leopard’s. She looked at me as if I was answering questions without opening my mouth.
“But what can you know, running around with these two boys?”
She smiled. Both were still playing with children. A baby was on the Leopard’s back and Kava was making noises and crossing his eyes for a girl whiter than river clay.
“You have never seen the like,” she said.
“An albino? Never.”
“But you know the name. City learning,” she huffed out.
“I carry some stink from the city?”
“Yours is the place where a child born with no colour is a curse from the gods. Disease comes to the family, and barrenness comes to the women. Better toss her out for the hyena, and pray for another child.”
“I’m from no place. Crocodiles on the hunt have more noble hearts than you people of the bush.”
“And where do noble hearts live, boy, in the city?”
“Boy is what my father calls me.”
“Mother of gods, we have a man among us.”
“Nobody delivers a child to the hyena or the vulture. You call the collector of children.”
“And what your collector do with them in your precious city? How they make use of a girl like her?” she said, and pointed at the girl, who giggled. “First they send messages with birds in the sky and drums on the ground, maybe even with note on leaf or on paper to those who would read. Saying look we have caught an albino child. Who these people? Talk to me, little boy. Do you know which people?”
I nodded.
“Sorcerers, and merchants that sell to sorcerers. For the whole child, your collector can fetch a good price. But for real fortune he auctions each part to highest bidder. The head for the swamp witch. The right leg for the barren woman. The bones grounded to a grain, so that your grandfather’s cock will stay hard for several women. The fingers for amulets, the hair for whatever a witchman tells you. A good collector of babies can make fifty more for her parts than she would by just selling the whole child. And double for the albino. Your collector even cuts the baby into pieces himself. The witches pay more if they know the baby was still alive for part of it. Fear blood sauces their brews. So that the noblewomen of your city can keep your noblemen, and so that your concubines never bear children for their masters. That is what they do with little girls like her in the city where you come from.”
“How do you know I come from the city?”
“Your smell. Living with Ku won’t mask it.”
She did not laugh, though I thought she would. That city was not mine to defend. Those streets and those halls brought nothing but disgust in me. But I did not like her speaking as if she had been waiting for years for a man she could laugh at. It was growing tiresome, men and women looking at me once and thinking they knew my kind, and of my kind there was not much to know.
“Why did Kava bring me here?”
“You think I tell him to bring you?”
“Games are for boys.”
“Then leave, little boy.”
“Except you told him to bring me here. What do you want, witch?”
“You call me witch?”
“Witch, crone, scar-speckled Gangatom bitch, pick the one you like.”
She smiled quick to hide the scowl, but I saw it.
“You care for nothing.”
“And a crone with a boy sucking a tit with no milk will not change that.”
The smile on her face vanished. Her frown made me bolder; I folded my arms. Like, I like. Dislike, I love. Disgust, I can feel. Loathing, I can grab in the palm of my hand and squeeze. And hatred, I can live in hatred for days. But the smug smile of indifference on someone’s face makes me want to hack it off. Both Kava and the Leopard stopped playing and looked at us. I thought she was going to drop the baby, and perhaps slap me. But she kept him close, his eyes still shut, his lips still sucking her nipple. She smiled and turned away. But not before my eyes said, Things are better this way, with understanding between us. You know me, but I know you too. I could smell everything about you before you came down those steps.
“Maybe you brought me here to kill me. Maybe you send for me because I am Ku and you are Gangatom.”
“You are nothing,” she said, and went back upstairs.
The Leopard ran to the edge of the floor and jumped into the tree. Kava was sitting on the floor, his legs crossed.
For seven days I stayed away from the woman and she stayed away from me. But children will be children and they will not be anything other. I found loose cloth made for children and wrapped my waist in it. Truth, I felt like the city was back in me and I failed at being a man of the bush. Other times I cursed my fussing and wondered had any man or boy fussed so over cloth. The fifth night I told myself it is neither clothed nor unclothed, but whatever I feel to do or not to do. The seventh night Kava told me of mingi. He pointed to each child and told me why their parents chose to kill them or leave them to die. These were lucky that they were just left to be found. Sometimes the elders demand that you make sure the child is dead, and the mother or father drowns the child in the river. He said this while sitting on the floor of the middle house as the children fell asleep on mats and skins. He pointed to the white-skinned girl.
“She is the colour of demons. Mingi.”
A boy with a big head tried to grab a firefly.
“His top teeth grew before the bottom. Mingi.”
Another boy was already asleep but his right hand kept reaching out and grabbing air.
“His twin starved to death before we could save both. Mingi.”
A lame girl hopping to her spot on the floor, her left foot bent in a wrong way.
“Mingi.”
Kava waved his hands, not pointing to anyone.
“And some born to women not in wedlock. Remove the mingi, remove the shame. And you may still marry a man with seven cows.”
I looked at the children, most sleeping. Wind slowed and the leaves swayed. I could not tell how much of the moon darkness had eaten, but the glow was bright enough to see Kava’s eyes.
“Where do the curses go?” I asked.
“What?”
“These children are all cursed. If you keep them here, you are keeping curse on top of curse. Is the woman a witch? Is she skilled in removing curses, curses that come out of the womb? Or is she just pooling them here?”
I cannot describe the look on his face. But my grandfather looked at me that way all the time, and all day, the day I left.
“Being a fool is a curse too,” he said.
FOUR
Kava and Leopard have been saving mingi children for ten and nine moons.
The Leopard did not sleep on the house floor, not even when he was a man. Each evening he climbed farther up the tree, and fell asleep between two branches. He changed to man mid-sleep—I have seen it—and did not fall out. But there were nights when he would go far out searching for food. One night was a full moon—twenty-eight days since I left the Ku. I waited until the Leopard was long gone and followed his scent. I crawled on branches twisting north, rolled down branches twisting south, and ran along branches that stretched flat, east to west, like a road.
When I found him, he had just dragged it up between the branches with his teeth, and his head never looked so powerful. The antelope he killed with that grip still around its neck. The air heavy with fresh kill. He bit the base of the back leg and ripped it away for the softer flesh near the belly. Blood splashed his nose. The Leopard bit off more flesh, chewed and swallowed quick, like a crocodile. The carcass almost slipped his clutch when he saw me, and we stared at each other so long that I started to think that maybe this was a different leopard. His teeth ripped away red meat, but his eyes stayed on me.