She went back to tearing at the rabbits unself-consciously, as her daughter and the stranger watched. When she finished, she wiped her beak on the grass, gave the attractive stranger a final glance, and flew heavily around to the upper gallery outside her room. There, comfortably full, she dozed for a while giving her body a chance to digest the meal. It was good to be able to take her time, do things at a pace her body found comfortable.
Eventually, she became herself, small and black, young and female. Kane would not like it, but that did not matter. The stranger would like it very much.
She put on one of her best dresses and a few pieces of good jewelry, brushed her glossy new crown of hair, and went downstairs.
Supper had just been finished without her. Her people never waited for her when they knew she was in one or another of her animal forms. They knew her leisurely habits. Now, several of her adult children, Kane and Leah, and the black stranger sat eating nuts and raisins, drinking wine, and talking quietly. They made room for her, breaking their conversation for greeting and welcome. One of her sons got her a glass and filled it with her favorite Madeira. She had taken only a single pleasant sip from it when the stranger said, “The sea has done you good. You were right to go.”
Her shoulders drooped slightly, though she managed not to change expression. It was only Doro.
He caught her eye and smiled, and she knew he had seen her disappointment, had no doubt planned her disappointment. She contrived to ignore him, looked around the table to see exactly who was present. “Where is Luisa?” she asked. The old woman often took supper with the family, feeding her foster children first, then coming in, as she said, to relearn adult conversation.
But now, at the mention of Luisa’s name, everyone fell silent. The son next to her, Julien, who had poured her wine, said softly, “She died, Mama.”
Anyanwu turned to look at him, yellow-brown and plain except for his eyes, utterly clear like her own. Years before when a woman he wanted desperately would have nothing to do with him, he had gone to Luisa for comfort. Luisa had told Anyanwu and Anyanwu had been amazed to find that she felt no resentment toward the old woman, no anger at Julien for taking his pain to a stranger. With her sensitivity, Luisa had ceased to be a stranger the day she arrived on the plantation.
“How did she die?” Anyanwu whispered finally.
“In her sleep,” Julien said. “She went to bed one night, and the next morning, the children couldn’t wake her up.”
“That was two weeks ago,” Leah said. “We got the priest to come out because we knew she’d want it. We gave her a fine funeral.” Leah hesitated. “She … she didn’t have any pain. I lay down on her bed to see, and I saw her go out just as easy …”
Anyanwu got up and left the table. She had gone away to find some respite from loved ones who died and died, and others whose rapid aging reminded her that they too were temporary. Leah, only thirty-five, had far too much gray mixed with her straight black hair.
Anyanwu went into the library, closed the doorclosed doors were respected in her houseand sat at her desk, head down. Luisa had been seventy … seventy-eight years old. It was time for her to die. How stupid to grieve over an old woman who had lived what, for her kind, was a long life.
Anyanwu sat up and shook her head. She had been watching friends and relatives grow old and die for as long as she could remember. Why was it biting so deeply into her now, hurting her as though it were a new thing? Stephen, Margaret, Luisa … There would be others. There would always be others, suddenly here, then suddenly gone. Only she would remain.
As though to contradict her thought, Doro opened the door and came in.
She glared at him angrily. Everyone else in her house respected her closed doorsbut then, Doro respected nothing at all.
“What do you want?” she asked him.
“Nothing.” He pulled a chair over to the side of her desk and sat down.
“What, no more children for me to raise?” she said bitterly. “No more unsuitable mates for my children? Nothing?”
“I brought a pregnant woman and her two children, and I brought an account at a New Orleans bank to help pay their way. I didn’t come to you to talk about them, though.”
Anyanwu turned away from him not caring why he had come. She wished he would leave.
“It goes on, you know,” he said. “The dying.”
“It doesn’t hurt you.”
“It does. When my children diethe best of my children.”
“What do you do?”
“Endure it. What is there to do but endure it? Someday, we’ll have others who won’t die.”
“Are you still dreaming that dream?”
“What could I do, Anyanwu, if I gave it up?”
She said nothing. She had no answer. “I used to believe in it too,” She said. “When you took me from my people, I believed it. For fifty years, I made myself believe it. Perhaps … perhaps sometimes I still believe it.”
“You never behaved as though you believed it.”
“I did! I let you do all the things you did to me and to others, and I stayed with you until I could see you had decided to kill me.”
He drew a deep breath. “That decision was a mistake,” he said. “I made it out of habit as though you were just another not entirely controllable, wild-seed woman who had had her quota of children. Centuries-old habit said it was time to dispose of you.”
“And what of your habit now?” she asked.
“It’s broken now as far as you’re concerned.” He looked at her, looked past her. “I want you alive for as long as you can live. You cannot know how I have fought with myself over this.”
She did not care how he had fought.
“I tried hard to make myself kill you,” he said. “It would have been easier than trying to change you.”
She shrugged.
He stood up and took her arms to raise her to her feet. She stood passively, knowing that if she let him have his way, they would wind up on the sofa together. He wanted her. He did not care that she had just suffered the loss of a friend, that she wanted to be alone.
“Do you like this body?” he asked. “It’s my gift to you.”
She wondered who had died so that he could give such a “gift.”
“Anyanwu!” He shook her once, gently, and she looked at him. She did not have to look up. “You’re still the little forest peasant, trying to climb the ship’s railings and swim back to Africa,” he said. “You still want what you can’t have. The old woman is dead.”
Again, she only shrugged.
“They’ll all die, except me,” he continued. “Because of me, you were not alone on the ship. Because of me, you will never be alone.”
He took her to the sofa, finally, undressed her, made love to her. She found that she did not mind particularly. The lovemaking relaxed her, and when it was over, she escaped easily into sleep.
Not much time had passed when he woke her. The sunlight and the long shadows told her it was still evening. She wondered why he had not left her. He had what he wanted, and intentionally or not, he had given her peace. Now if only he would go away.
Anyanwu looked at him seated beside her half dressed, still shirtless. They were not crowded together on the large sofa as they would have been had he been wearing one of his usual large bodies. Again, she wondered about the original owner of his beautiful, unlikely, new body, but she asked no questions. She did not want to learn that it had been one of her descendants.
He caressed her silently for a moment and she thought he meant to resume the lovemaking. She sighed and decided that it did not matter. So little seemed to matter now.
“I’m going to try something with you,” he said. “I’ve wanted to do it for years. Before you ran away, I assumed I would do it someday. Now … now everything is changed, but I mean to have some of this anyway.”