Stephanie C. Horton

One Small Long Death

They were given new names. Mary, David, Esther, Paul, James, Rebecca . . .

But she began to remember. It was the women sellers who came to sit outside the school that helped her remember. She watched them. She heard them.

The market women carried their babies on their backs. The babies’ soft feet and hands swung free from the long cloths the women wrapped them in around their upper bodies and knotted over their breasts.

Fat babies with glossy skins shiny with nut oil. She remembered being carried that way. She remembered being oiled.

Inside the school, in class, outside in the yard, in chapel, she could hear those women’s voices teasing, laughing, crying out, from the roadside market. She heard her true name come out of their mouths, the way her grandmother called her. Oneku. Spirit of Beauty.

One of the women carried her name. She sucked on that teat, hearing her real name spoken out loud. Happiness began to shine on her face.

The market women sold oranges, bananas, coconuts, sugarcane, guavas, pineapples, mangoes. They laughed in chorus, ahaha aaye yee yeee heeee! The market women slapped their hips. Gaps flashed between their teeth.

The market women fired charcoal and roasted groundnuts, cassava, corn, peppered fish, chunks of bush meat speared on sticks, rubbed with salt and pepper. Those smells and sounds gave rise to perfect memories.

When it was almost dark one Saturday night, instead of watching the Disney movie video, she slipped outside with ten hot cents gripped in her palm. It was her church offering money. Money she earned working inside the garden, weeding. Sunday school money.

It wasn’t stealing from Jesus, she told herself. Jesus must know how much she wanted to be close to those women. She needed to hear them better. She had to be in their presence. And, she wanted groundpeas.

The fire the market women sat beside spilt warm light over their skins, over their patterned lappas and head-ties. Each one of them to her was majestic. Each one of them stood out.

She loved their blunt toes powdered with red dust, their iron feet, the seams on their faces, their smoky wise eyes, the deep laugh lines around their moving lips.

“A’nua nane. Na jla grou nutte.”

The words poured out of her just like that from someplace deep. After months of strained English, the words felt like sun filling her mouth.

Greetings. I want to buy groundpeas.

The women exclaimed as one, in unison, curious, all eyes fixed on her.

“Mon Klau Nye’sena!”

Are you Krao?

“Iyn.”

Shy now, she tucked her head in and smiled.

“Nyeneju, nua nane!”

Greetings, our child!

“Tana’ay ne suku?”

Is that your schoolhouse?

“Iyn.”

The women knew it was a place for war orphans. A quiet, potent moment passed.

Why was her heart beating so fast? Why were her knees trembling? Why was her mouth tight without spit? She stretched her hand out with the money, far less than the asking price. This did not matter to those women. How would she know?

One of the groundnut sellers made a cone from old newspapers, scooped up some hot, salted groundpeas with half a coconut shell and emptied it into the cone. Instead of folding some of the paper over the top, she took another scoop to fill the cone completely.

A woman asked her, “Tana de wa?”

Where are you from?

The question hit her hard. She had forgotten. It was right there, stuck on her tongue. She hid her nervousness, confusion, shame not to know. She turned her head to look behind her at the school. Her legs would not obey her. Her knees were red dirt soaked in water, soaked in blood.

Another woman looked at her with a soft, knowing expression.

“Ka na nyene ne wa?”

Our child, what is your name?

She didn’t say the name she had been given, the one she answered to both day and night, evening and morning, everyday. She spoke her true name out loud without thinking.

“Ne Nye’ne mon Oneku.”

My name is Oneku.

“Mon nyon ba ju?”

Whose child are you?

She remembered the ritual. She remembered the proper tenses for lineage, the tense for the dead. She called her grandmother’s name, her mother’s name.

“Mon Wleh Tarnyonoh ne ju’a'ju. Na di ne nyene mon’o Doe Muna.”

I am Wleh Tarnyonoh’s granddaughter. My mother’s name was Doe Muna.

The women screamed. They cried out. The women shouted in sorrow together, in chorus, some of their voices pitched low, some of their voices pitched high, all blended. The women wailed in harmony.

“Na dee’ooooo! Mun Wleh Tarnyonoh ne ju’a'ju? Nyeswa’ooooo! Wleh Tarnyonoh’oooo! Nyeswa! Doe Muna aye yah’oooo!”

O mother! Wleh Tarnynoh? O God! O Wleh Tarnyonoh, come and see your grandchild! Creator God! Doe Muna’oooo, come and see your child!

The women shook their hands as if their hands were burning. The women threw their fisted hands up in the air. The women stretched their open palms to face the heavens. The women’s work hardened hands dropped to fall like weighted burdens atop their heads. The women held their heads between their hands, elbows jutting out.

A woman with swollen ankles sitting on an upended wooden box reached for her, lifted her on her lap, enfolded her in her strong arms and rocked her. She clasped her arms around the woman’s neck and clung on tight, her small face buried in that woman’s moist, warm neck. The woman keened inside her throat. She felt the sound vibrate all through her body.

The women wailed. The women beat their open hands with fingers splayed across their thighs. The women made that grieving music. The women wept out loud until their shouts and tears milked her pain and made her cry.

The women freed that cry that had been crouching under her rib cage, trapped deep down inside her windpipe, congealed like old sleeping palm oil around her heart.