11.15.06
it has a terrible title, its better this way, belive me
Auntie’s stiups floated, buzzing in the Friday night air.
The young men were coming home late tonight. Their pockets will be full of crisp bills and of course, in one hand they will hold a bottle of rum. They would catch any living thing Auntie said, and soon there would be the flickering of lights in kitchens late in the night and the sound of ducks stewing in tall metal pots. The smell of spice and curry, sharp and acrid, would settle across the town like an agreement.
We singe the ducks. Our fingers move deftly and the duck is pale and pink now with its feathers resting on the kitchen table. We hold it over the fire to burn off the last few feathers. With its wings spread out the duck becomes a little brown, a little less naked than it was before.
It didn’t hurt as much as everyone said it would. He had taken my basket from me, stole the groceries I was bringing home to mama. As he bit into our apple, he smiled and the juice came frothing out of the corners of his mouth like drool over his chin. I started to cry when he took my hand.
Down by the reeds he pulled off my sandals. He set them down gently and the looked like they were waiting patiently for me to come get them. Before me, I could see the sunset running over his sweaty skin in bars of warm orange light. His hands were moving so intently. In his shoulders could see the muscles moving under his skin and the rose flush of his blood moving across flesh.
I tried to stay quiet. I remember thinking that would be best, to be quiet and then to wash myself in the river. But I would hear the whimpers coming from my throat and I would begin to cry steaming tears again. As they fell, I could taste my own salt seasoning dropping onto my lips.
He didn’t chase me when I ran. The sun still had not set and over the water, it shimmered like silver foil in between the banks. I ran to it. The cool river received my body into itself, it waves lapping against my skin like a comforting touch.
But my reflection in the water shocked me. There, my eyes were large and shining with tears; my lips were full and berry red where his had pushed themselves. There, my wet hair was curling around me like smoke from a teakettle about to scream. Suddenly like this, I ran barefooted to my mother’s house.
Saturday morning the air is full of white shirts, like flags, beating against the hard riverbanks. Mothers and daughters crouch on their haunches scrubbing the fabric in their rough hands. They dunk the linen and the water splashes, froths with the action of all these women.
Mother’s hands too have grown rough from this scrubbing, hard and red in the water. My hands are soft yet.
These are father’s shirts. There are brothers’ trousers too, wrapped like snakes in big straw baskets. Mother will carry them home, rocking on her hips, and they will dry in the breeze and hot sun that will come in the afternoon. In that golden light they will turn our yard to humid mist and fog where my brothers will play now without me.
I was to make Sunday groceries. Mother’s empty straw basket on my head, no father’s shirts, no brothers’ trousers, and at the marketplace they ask after my family while filling my basket with their wares. I smile without berry lips. He smiles too as he hands me the mango with its supple skin. In my small hands, I turn it over. I inspect the yellow green skin and I can smell its hard sour meat with his eyes upon me.
We could wait for the meat to turn sweet soft, golden after a few days and eat the mango with sticky fingers in the warmth of a weekday afternoon. We could also eat it now, hard and bitter, covered with hot spices in the cool of the night. Father will take the knife and shed the seed of its flesh. We will throw the naked seed into yard to rot, for the pigs to find.
This time as we roll the reeds whip our backs with their pointed leaves. The sun has already set and now there is only the cold moon above us making his skin glow in the darkness. Our skin grows red under this crescent and I have forgotten to be quiet. Instead of curry, there is the fecund smell of earth and of the broken reeds. It too is sharp.
In the clear light of Sunday morning, we go out in our white shirts and our white dresses. The whole town makes a din of shoes clattering across the earth. Little children run together, excited at all the ceremony until they must stop, silent, under the imposing cool shadow of the church.
My family walks slowly, and the soreness of my body makes me stand up tall in the sunlight. The pain in my thighs lengthens my stride; the sting in my back pushes my shoulders downwards. Under the heat, my lips are like plump apples. My eyelashes shine like black licorice candy.
Auntie is there in her head wrap and she has her shak-shaks in hand. Mother grabs my arm, tells me not to look at her, but she comes to me. In her colorful gown, she walks around us, standing in between my mother and me. For a moment, she only looks at me with her hands (shaking with each movement) on her hips. she stiups.
Then, as she dances, the only thing I can hear is the sound of her red bean shak-shaks shaking all around me, and the sound of her stiups vibrating in my mind.
shi-ou-sama at
