“No.”
“Okay den. Go sit with your granny.”
Elvis looked over to where Oye sat. He loved his grandmother, but she had a Scottish accent, picked up from the missionaries she had worked for, and he didn’t always understand what she said. She sometimes lost her temper when he asked her to keep repeating herself, threatening to turn him into a turtle like the two she kept in an earthenware bowl of water. She was a witch and he believed she would do it.
“No.”
“All right, sweetheart. I’ll be done in a minute,” Beatrice said. She had been sick for a long time and wasn’t always well enough to play with him, so she felt guilty about using her able time this way, to work on her garden. But she needed this.
Elvis, at seven, was too young to understand his mother’s obsession with her garden. Bored, he picked up a stick and began to play with it. At first it was an airplane, then it was a machine gun, then a sword. Beatrice looked up and saw what he was doing.
“Put dat stick down, Elvis, you will hurt yourself,” she said.
He ignored her and instead began whacking the tomato plants with the stick, scattering leaves everywhere.
“Stop it before I spank you!”
The leaves were still flying when she lashed out and caught him across the buttocks. The cry welled up, choking him with the shock of it for a moment, before a wail broke free. She relented and pulled him close, holding him to her breast until he calmed down.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered. “But you were destroying my plants.”
She tried to explain to him that the neat beds, the soft crumbly earth, the deep green of the okra, the red and yellow peppers, the delicate mauve flowers of the fluted pumpkin, were important to her in ways she had no words for. He didn’t understand, but was content to bury himself in the deep aloe scent of her hair and the damp of her sweaty brow.
“You should tell him about tha operation, lass,” Oye said. “He’s a strong lad, he’ll be okay. You have to prepare him. You dinna have much time left.”
Oye and Beatrice were out on the front veranda, Oye in a wicker chair that creaked and groaned with every breath she took, as though the weight of her were unbearable, and Beatrice lying on a raffia mat on the floor, a light blanket wrapped around her. Beside her, Oye had set a steaming mug of some herbal infusion. Beatrice was not quite sure what it was for or how Oye expected the herbs to achieve what chemotherapy hadn’t. She rubbed the sore scar tissue where her left breast had been, glad to be free of the prosthetic with its tightness and infernal itch.
It was late and the night was cool. Across from their compound, they could see lights bobbing about across the street as people just back from their farms prepared a late supper. It was an arduous life, complicated by the fact that they had all just emerged from a three-year civil war in which most families lost members vital to the rebuilding of their new lives. Women were missed more than men, because they made up the main work force. Beatrice was glad for the education that allowed her to earn her living as a primary-school teacher. Or used to, anyway, before she got sick.
A coconut shell of smoldering coals seemed to float by unassisted in the dark, the person carrying it lost in the deeper blackness.
“Remember when I had to carry coals from neighbors’ houses back to ours to light de hearth as a child?”
“Yes,” Oye replied. “You were so scared of tha fire,” she added with a chuckle.
“It was hot and dangerous.”
“I know, lass, but we couldn’t afford matches in those days.”
“I will miss dis place, Mama,” Beatrice said.
“Yes, lass. But we’ll call you back to be reborn into tha lineage again.”
“As a boy next time!”
“Why? They are such limited creatures.”
“But wanted.”
“I always wanted you.”
“I know, Mama. But remember de songs dat de women would sing when a boy was born? Ringing from hamlet to hamlet, dropped by one voice, picked up by another until it had circled de town. And de ring of white powder we would wear around de neck to signify de boy’s place as head of de family.”
“We sing for girls too.”
“Yes, Mama. A dirge. Mournful, carried by solo voices until all de town was alerted of de sadness of de family. And de ring of powder we wore was around de elbow to show the flexibility and willingness to work hard of de woman. When I come back, it will be as a boy. You know dat’s de only reason Sunday hasn’t taken another wife. Because I bore him a son.”
“Hush, lass, you need your strength, but tell your son tha things he should know.”
They didn’t speak for a while, the silence broken only by the call of wild dogs in hills far in the distance, the shrill of crickets, the throaty blues of frogs and Beatrice slurping the hot herbal infusion.
“Mama, do you think dere is something strange with Joseph and Efua’s relationship? Since his wife died he hasn’t been right. Why do all de wives die young in dis family?”
“Which question do you want me to answer, lass?”
“Never mind,” Beatrice said, as a shadowy figure approached, swinging a flashlight back and forth.
“Who’s tha’?” Oye called out, her hand reaching into the folds of her lappa for the knife she always carried there. Used mostly to cut herbs, its blade was a sharp enough warning to any mischief-maker.
“It is Joseph, Mama.”
“I’m not your ma,” Oye said.
“Good evening, Joseph,” Beatrice greeted him. Things were awkward between them since Joseph made a pass at her on her wedding night.
“Evening. Is Sunday home?”
“You know where he is. Since I became ill he lives at dat bar downtown.”
“So he’s at de bar?”
“Are you stupid, son?” Oye asked.
“Good night, ladies,” Joseph said, turning to leave.
Not long after Joseph left, Beatrice hauled herself up from the mat and headed inside.
“Good night, Mama.”
“You need to tell your son about tha sickness, Beatrice. You need to prepare him.”
“I am preparing him, Mama. I am teaching him things dat useless school cannot. I have taught him to sew, to iron, to cook, to read and to write at a level beyond his age.”
“Yes, lass. But it’s not enough.”
“Good night, Mama.”
“Good night, child. Be here in tha morning,” Oye replied.
When he woke from the nightmare Elvis stumbled out of bed and made his way sleepily to his mother’s room. His parents didn’t share a bedroom, though his father sometimes came to sleep in Beatrice’s room. Elvis guessed he had nightmares too, and judging from the sounds his mother made, he guessed his father’s nightmares transferred to her.
He could always tell when his father was in Beatrice’s room. His slippers, left outside the shut door, were a clear sign to stay away. When he saw them, Elvis would make his way to Oye’s room, which was outside the main house, next door to the kitchen. The short trip across the dark yard was terrifying, so he only went to Oye’s when he had to.
He opened his mother’s door and, in the dim glow from the storm lantern in the corner with its wick turned nearly off, felt his way to the bed. His fingers grazed the small blue Bible she kept on the nightstand. Next to it was her journal, bound in worked leather that smelled of things old and secret. He loved watching her write in it, and he would fetch it for her, inhaling the deep scent of it, thrilled that she trusted him not to look in it. And he never did. He lingered by the nightstand, touched the journal, rubbing his hand over the cracked leather binding.
Beatrice woke up to go to the bathroom. As she stood up, the lappa covering her slipped off, revealing her nudity. Before she could cover herself, Elvis saw the emptiness where her breast had been.