Wilma Stockenstrom - The Expedition to the Baobab Tree

She was some years older than me. Had been through the same as me.

She and I had been through the following:

Caught young, not yet circumcised, for just that reason sought and caught. Among screaming women and old men, among the corpses of able-bodied men who had fought to the death or could not flee in time, among the burning huts, the beaten-down kraal fence, the destroyed millet containers, in the thick grass that offered no hiding place, in vain pulled behind a broad trunk by someone who wanted to save you, it was in vain. It was a vain scream of fear. It was a small commotion in a wide forest. It drew no more attention than the noise of a troop of apes. After the interruption the birds went on twittering. The hesitant bongo stepped into the open patch, cautiously smelled the odor of ash and decay and violence and the sweat of fear, and made an about turn, noiselessly. It rained. Slime and mud remained, black pools of putrefaction, of a sunken history. How hugely sighed the storms. How ceremoniously rocked the trees. Rose the sun. Turned the stars.

My friend told: How she first saw the sea, and she was afraid of the blue wall, the bank that rolled over and crashed.

I told: Here too I first saw the sea, but I was not afraid at all. I ran towards it.

My friend told: The man with whom she then went to live was very friendly. He was like a father.

I told: It was the same one. He bought the very youngest at the market. He cracked them as one cracks young pods. He was considerate and permitted you to have your firstborn under his roof, then he sold you.

He bought the very youngest. He broke the soft membrane like a blister. You were the spread-out one from whom blood flowed. You caught your breath, from pain and from what was surely ecstasy.

I told: He promised me a present. He gently pulled me closer, where he sat, till I was standing between his legs. He undressed me himself and let his hands roam lightly over my body. Then he licked me. Then he pointed to his headrest with the pretty snake bean and mother-of-pearl intarsia and promised me just such a one if I was good. Yes, I would be good. The women in his household had taught me what to do and what to answer; I nodded. He was out of breath and in a hurry.

I got my present; what about yours? I asked my friend.

Yes, she said.

Where are our headrests now? we laughed.

Mine was too big for me. My neck was still too short.

Mine too, I said.

Do you miss it?

No.

Does he still buy the very youngest ones?

He is dead.

No! When?

Long ago — long ago. His heart stopped.

What a pity! He is dead. He was actually quite kind-hearted.

Yes.

Yes, he was. Really. Funny and kind-hearted. And we could really stay with him till after the first confinement.

Oh, I was the sweetest little mother, I remember. Played at swelling for nine months, assiduously helped to make preparations, clumsy but very willing. I sucked a tamarind stone and spat it out. A mother-child, that’s what I was. From my young mouth the rotten laugh of the fruit-bearing woman sounded. Full blown from now on, now I knew everything. I carried myself. I grew tired from the carrying, I could no longer, I pulsated from inside, I became more and more. How I sat on the beach lost in dreams and played with my shells, my black shell and my white shell. How nice the other women were to me. How they looked after me, like a trinket. The time I coughed so nastily, one of them went specially to the market women to buy bush willow roots, which she could luckily get, and gave me an infusion to drink. And if I complained of the slightest headache I was made to swallow a brew of horn-pod leaves and they said it was good for stomachache too, since the head caught it from the stomach. Well cared for and ringed around and protected and words became knowable and I felt happy but too clumsy, and I felt everyone had to get out of my way.

No one could or would tell me to whom I called when the child’s skull made its appearance out of me. It was a scream back to my place of birth. There it echoed. There it echoes.

My baby was so greedy. He had only to say ee and I fed him. Soon he was almost too heavy for me to carry. To my owner I no longer existed. Already there was another little thing in my place. I did not speak to her.

I was sold off a second time on the square near the sea where even then the raggedy castor-oil trees were standing. Was sold secondhand. I was a damaged plaything, my bundle of baby and myself bid for separately and disposed of separately. Simply playthings. Useful, certainly. My owner thought he had wasted his money. Someone unknown grabbed my child. What was spoiled? Another examined my head, the inside of my mouth, my pelvis, my arms and legs. He was dubious. What was skew? A merchant sent an agent to buy as many slaves as the fingers of one hand. Where did it leak? Where was it cracked? What was botched about it? The sun baked down on my head. I wanted to faint. Items of everyday use of feminine and masculine gender. One by one. I was left. On one leg. On the other leg. Biting my nails. What was missing? What had been twisted? I no longer saw my child. I spun around. Nothing to see. I screamed within myself. If I could cut open my belly, draw out my guts. I looked for a knife. If I could spit myself out of myself. My heart froze. Who was buying me?

Hateful one. You are loathing like me. Come and kindle your ill in me. I am evil and dangerous. I am dried-out ape dugs and fresh slippery ox eye and peeled-off human skin and the venom of the deadly sea slug with the sucker mouth. I am hatred and hatred’s mask. I am deformed. There is a snake in my blood. I drink my own blood. I kick in my swoon. I flounder.

Men came and sang like girls to lay the spirits, but the fires would not flare up. Timbila players from all over the city gathered around me in a circle of clinking slats whose water sounds, sounds like water stars, star drops, dew of bitter stars, were supposed to cool me and, sprinkling down, extinguish my rebellion. But what was I if I was no longer my child? How could an afflicted person feel regret?

Finally the gora player. Tap the single string, a flow of thoughtful sounds gradually moving down the string, a continuous tapping of sounds, each of which immediately fell to earth and became sand and remained lying in the sand never to germinate. Down and down slipped the sounds, deep into the sand. Deeper than taproots ever go.

Deeper than the kingdom of the earthworms. It was enough. It was buried. It was done. I was picked up and, apparently for a risible sum, disposed of. The gora player stopped playing, pushed the stick into his thong belt, put the gora over his shoulder, and left.

That day my new owner bought a glittering cock with bright yellow feathers on head and throat, the neck purple-brown, the back impressively speckled yellow-brown, the wings magnificently black-green with rust-colored tips, the breast a glitter of dark grey and green-gold, a cock with a kick and a crow, and me.

The cock walked around the yard as he wished and mounted the hens whenever he wished. He crowed us awake in the mornings but also crowed in the evenings to predict good weather, upon which it poured. We threatened him with the pot. Cock, cock, we want to eat you. Cock, cock, fly onto the roof ridge of our hut and crow the day red. Your owner is stingy with his chickens. I mean our mutual owner. You and we, cock, cock, your crowing and shitting and our chatting and our excretions and secretions, our babies, our ornaments of pod mahogany seeds and our body cloths, and the house and the warehouse full of baskets of spices and the rats there, all his. The cooking equipment, the eating utensils, our lice, the cockroaches, the ants in the cracks of the walls and the earth around the house, all his. My labor his. My sleep his. My coming and my going. My sweat. My hair. The soles of my feet. The ant can hide away. So can the cockroach. And the rat. Not I. I do not know where. You and I, cock, we are trapped.