Ancestor Stones Read Free

that is not so easy as you think. I have been known by many names. Not the way you are thinking. You people change your name the way you change your hairstyle. One day braids. Next day hot-comb. You marry and take a stranger’s family name in place of your own. A
potho
name, no less. But us, we never change the names that tell the world who we are. The names we are called by, yes. These ones may change.
    I had another name once, before I had even seen the light of this world. My name was Yankay, the firstborn.
    Sakoma:
the month of emptiness. The women were making ready, whitewashing their houses, plastering façades streaked by the rain and stained with mould. Soon the doors of every home would be thrown open. Soft, new rice to eat instead of bulgur and mangoes. The hungry season was nearly over.
    My mother’s hands were dipped in white, her face and arms flecked. That was how she was always able to remember I was born the week of the last rainfall before the dry season began. I had an appetite, she used to say, such an appetite because I was born at the start of the feast. That day she worked and felt her insides convulse. Pain seeped into her limbs, trickling out of her centre like juice from a lemon. With her right hand she went on smoothing the plaster in arcs like rainbows. The fingers of her left hand she began to click.
    I was the firstborn of my father. Not my mother. My mother was a praying wife. My father inherited her from his uncle. After she was widowed she could have returned to her own people as the other wives did. But she stayed and chose a new husband from the younger brothers. She chose my father. It goes without saying that she must have admired him. Not because he had life, was vigorous with ambition, though he had and was those things. But because she didn’t stay a praying wife for long. Within a year she had conceived.
    My mother was my father’s first wife. Well, it’s true there was one other praying wife before her, but that one went when my father brought my mother into the house. My mother’s status was high, you see. She had been the wife of a chief. The other woman had lived long enough. She wanted to be mistress in her own house. So she packed her baskets and walked back to her own village where she had sons.
    So there was my mother, plastering her house. Alone and painting, no need for anyone else. This is the way she was. When the job was complete she laid the block of wood on the steps of the house and set off to the birth attendant’s hut. By the time she reached the end of the village she was clicking fast. Both hands. It was early morning. The women were sweeping their compounds and the front of their houses. Dust devils danced across the ground. They looked up when they heard the sound of her fingers. Mine was an auspicious birth: my father was already a big man. Every woman who was already a mother laid down her broom and walked. Their fingers picked up her rhythm, until ten, fifteen, twenty women clicked their fingers as one.
    I wanted to come to this world, to the place where things happen, I didn’t want to stay where I was. I always had big eyes for this world and I was born with them open. My mother never feared for me. There are some children — you can tell the ones — born with a hunger for life. I was in such a hurry my mother didn’t even have time to drink the infusion of lemon tree leaves. I was born, to the chorus of their fingers, like the sound of crickets announcing the rain.
    Afterwards the midwife prepared to bind my mother’s stomach. But my mother kept on clicking her fingers. The midwife pressed ten fingertips into her stomach. Shook her head. Click. Click. My mother asked for some of the tea, and they poured the cool liquid into her mouth. She arched her back. Click. Push. Click.
    My brother slid into this world: small, still and silent. At first, they thought he’d gone with the leaves. My mother cradled him