Free Ancestor Stones by Aminatta Forna Page B

firmly in both hands. I let go of the tail, and watched it swim after her.
    The way she walked — no concession to the rising water. The cloth around her waist swelled with air, and for a moment dragged behind her like a giant snail shell. Her breasts bobbed on the surface and her movements were as fluid as the water itself. Below the surface the outline of her body shifted into thousands of shapes. For a brief moment the sun caught her profile. She didn’t turn once. It was as though she were entirely alone.
    The shallows turned to churning mud in the rush that followed.The women slipped and scrambled down the bank into the water like buffalo on a collapsing cliff. They jostled for the prize spots close to the bank or else midstream, where the weed grew densely along a sand spit and the fish liked to conceal themselves in the shadows. The slow ones were left to drag the bottom of the river, scooping water and fish into the open mouths of their nets.
    Almost out of sight my mother walked on, between the banks of mangrove, heedless of the presence of water snakes and crabs. The boughs of the trees growing on opposite banks formed a bower over her head.
    She kept flowers in her house. My father teased her for it, but she loved them, even the yellow blooms from the coco yams and the pale orange okra blossom that grew in everybody’s garden. She picked them and put them in water. He built her a house opposite his own; he only had to look across to see her every day. That was where I lived as a small child with my two elder brothers. When he visited he insisted that she shared his food with him. Sat down next to him, like an equal, and ate from the same dish.
    I remember the sound of my father clapping his hands loudly and me running quickly to stand in front of them both. I bowed my head. ‘Eh
bo!
Will you look at this child. Taller with every day. How about a song for us? What songs do you know?’ My father was sitting with his legs crossed, wearing a loose-fitting green gown with a trail of embroidery down the front.
    I was nervous and I felt my face growing big and hot. I thrust out my chest and pushed my shoulders so far back I felt my shoulder blades touch each other behind my back. I began a song we children sang down at the fields when we were scaring birds from the crops. We would sing across to each other, high up on our platforms above the fields. It was a song known to anyone who had ever been a child.
    My father clapped, picking up the rhythm, and joined in with the reply. I remember how surprised I was at that. It was strange to think of my own father as a child and that once there were people who could tell him what to do.
    And yet I noticed things about my father. Outside he had a sternface, which did not care to smile. He built the mosque and was inside it five times every day. He walked quickly. And people hurried around him, offering greetings, showing respect. A sober man. Yet I saw my mother do things nobody else did. He used to lie with his feet in her lap while she massaged them, pulling at his toes gently one by one. And I saw her hit him with a fan! Across his face, as though she were slapping him with the back of her hand, but using her fan instead. She touched him only lightly. Still, I had never seen anybody touch my father. For a long time I couldn’t remember what happened next. Maybe I had made myself forget. And then I realised the reason I couldn’t remember was that nothing happened. She hit him with her fan. Laughter. The conversation between them carried on.
    That evening my mother sang the next part. Where my father’s voice was heavy and rich, like the smell of the best coffee beans, my mother’s was high and clear as an empty sky.
    Then it was over. My father laughed and clapped again. He called me to sit by his side while he ate. I never could cross my legs properly, I don’t know why. My thighs ached and I was unable to take my eyes off his plate.