Butler, Octavia - Wild Seed

He lifted the girl, carried her to an alcove bed in one of the children’s bedrooms. He did not know whether it was her bed, did not care. He undressed her, brushing away her hands when she tried to help, laughing softly when she commented that he seemed to know pretty well how to get a woman out of her clothes. She did not know much about undressing a man, but she fumbled and tried to help him.

And she was as lovely as he had expected. A virgin of course. Even in Wheatley, young girls usually saved themselves for husbands, or for Doro. She was ready for him. She had some pain, but it didn’t seem to matter to her.

“Better than with David and Melanie,” she whispered once, and held onto him as though fearing he might leave her.

Nweke and Doro were in the kitchen popping corn and drinking beer when Isaac and Anyanwu came in. The bed had been remade and Nweke had been properly dressed and cautioned against even the appearance of brazenness. “Let her be angry at me,” Doro had said, “not at you. Say nothing.”

“I don’t know how to think about her now,” Nweke said. “My sisters whispered that we could never have you because of her. Sometimes I hated her. I thought she kept you for herself.”

“Did she?”

“… no.” She glanced at him uncertainly. “I think she tried to protect us from you. She thought we needed it.” Nweke shuddered. “What will she feel for me now?”

Doro did not know, and he did not intend to leave until he found out. Until he could see that any anger Anyanwu felt would do her daughter no harm.

“Maybe she won’t find out,” the girl said hopefully.

That was when Doro took her into the kitchen to investigate the stew Anyanwu had left simmering and the bread untended in its bake kettle, hot and tender, unburned in the coals. They set the table, then Nweke suggested beer and popcorn. Doro agreed, humoring her, hoping she would relax and not worry about facing her mother. She seemed peaceful and content when Isaac and Anyanwu came in, yet she avoided her mother’s eyes. She stared down into her beer.

Doro saw Anyanwu frown, saw her go to Nweke and take the small chin in her fingers and raise it so that she could see Nweke’s frightened eyes.

“Are you well?” she asked Nweke softly in her own language. She spoke perfect English now, along with Dutch and a few words of some Indian and foreign African dialects, but at home with her children, she often spoke as though she had never left home. She would not adopt a European name or call her children by their European names—though she had condescended to give them European names at Doro’s insistence. Her children could speak and understand as well as she could. Even Isaac, after all the years, could understand and speak fairly well. No doubt, he heard as clearly as Doro and Nweke the wariness and tension in Anyanwu’s soft question.

Nweke did not answer. Frightened, she glanced at Doro. Anyanwu followed the glance and her infant-clear, bright eyes took on a look of incongruous ferocity. She said nothing. She only stared with growing comprehension. Doro met her gaze levelly until she turned back to look at her daughter.

“Nweke, little one, are you well?” she whispered urgently.

Something happened within Nweke. She took Anyanwu’s hands between her own, held them for a moment, smiling. Finally she laughed aloud—delighted child’s laughter with no hint of falseness or gloating. “I’m well,” she said. “I didn’t know how well until this moment. It has been so long since there were no voices, nothing pulling at me or hurting me.” Relief made her forget her fear. She met Anyanwu’s eyes, her own eyes full of the wonder of her newfound peace.

Anyanwu closed her eyes for a moment, drew a long, shuddering breath.

“She’s all right,” Isaac said from where he sat at the table. “That’s enough.”

Anyanwu looked at him. Doro could not read what passed between them, but after a moment, Isaac repeated, “That’s enough.”

And it seemed to be. At that moment, the twenty-two-year-old son Peter, incongruously called Chukwuka—God is Supreme—arrived, and dinner was served.

Doro ate slowly, recalling how he had laughed at the boy’s Igbo name. He had asked Anyanwu where she had found her sudden devotion to God—any god. Chukwuka was a common enough name in her homeland, but it was not a name he would have expected from a woman who claimed she helped herself. Predictably, Anyanwu had been silent and unamused at his question. It took him a surprisingly long time to begin to wonder whether the name was supposed to be a charm—her pathetic attempt to protect the boy from him. Where had Anyanwu found her sudden devotion to God? Where else but in her fear of Doro? Doro smiled to himself.

Then he stopped smiling as Nweke’s brief peace ended. The girl screamed—a long, ragged, terrible sound that reminded Doro of cloth tearing. Then she dropped the dish of corn she had been bringing to the table and collapsed to the floor unconscious.

CHAPTER 8

Nweke lay twitching, still unconscious in the middle of Isaac and Anyanwu’s bed. Anyanwu said it was easier to care for her here in a bed merely enclosed within curtains than in one of the alcove beds. Oblivious to Doro’s presence, Anyanwu had stripped Nweke to her shift and removed the pins from her hair. The girl looked even smaller than she was now, looked lost in the deep, soft feather mattress. She looked like a child. Doro felt a moment of unease, even fear for her. He remembered her laughter minutes earlier and wondered whether he would hear it again.

“This is transition,” Anyanwu said to him, neutral-voiced.

He glanced at her. She stood beside the bed looking weary and concerned. Her earlier hostility had been set aside—and only set aside. Doro knew her too well to think it had been forgotten.

“Are you sure?” he asked. “She’s passed out before, hasn’t she?”

“Oh yes. But this is transition. I know it.”

He thought she was probably right. He sensed the girl very strongly now. If his body had been a lesser one or one he had given long use, he would not have dared to stay so near her.

“Will you stay?” Anyanwu asked, as though hearing his thoughts.

“For a while.”

“Why? You have never stayed before when my children changed.”

“This one is special.”

“So I have seen.” She gave him another of her venomous looks. “Why, Doro?”

He did not pretend to misunderstand. “Do you know what she has been receiving? What thoughts she has been picking up?”

“She told me about the man last night—the torture.”

“Not that. She’s been picking up people making love—picking it up often.”

“And you thought that was not enough for an unmarried girl!”

“She’s eighteen years old. It wasn’t enough.”

Nweke made a small sound as though she were having a bad dream. No doubt she was. The worst of dreams. And she would not be permitted to wake fully until it was over.

“You have not molested my children before,” she said.

“I wondered whether you had noticed.”

“Is that it?” She turned to face him. “Were you punishing me for my … my ingratitude?”

“… no.” His eyes looked past her for a moment though he did not move. “I’m not interested in punishing you any longer.”

She turned a little too quickly and sat down beside the bed. She sat on a chair Isaac had made for her—a taller-than-normal chair so that in spite of her small size and the height of the bed, she could see and reach Nweke easily. Eventually she would move onto the bed with the girl. People in transition needed close physical contact to give them some hold on reality.

But for now, Anyanwu’s move to the chair was to conceal emotion. Fear, Doro wondered, or shame or anger or hatred … His last serious attempt to punish her had involved Nweke’s father. That attempt had stood between them all Nweke’s life. Of all the things she considered that he had done to her, that was the worst. Yet it was a struggle she had come very near winning. Perhaps she had won. Perhaps that was why the incident could still make him uneasy.