—
Many moons come and go and take with them years too. She is bigger now, with hair in dirty clumps that hang until she tear them off and a voice that sometimes trick her brothers into thinking they hear their mother. She learn the ways of big people for not a loose word slip past her. More than twice the youngest go to slap her but she catch his hand and slap him back. Nobody teach her songs, so she make her own, and start to see a sky beyond the end of her rope. Yet still she is living in the termite hill, still she is plowing dirt and goat shit, still she is getting the whip for sport, and still she is having the youngest kick her to the ground and stomp on her back and push her deep in the mud. For if you are going to kill our mother, at least you should have come out a boy, he say. She feel herself moving through many moons and summers, but the brothers still at the day she was born, the day her mother die.
Whenever the two older brothers would travel east, for they say no woman would have them in their own village, the youngest would come for her. His face would tell her that he’s been thinking evil the whole day. My older brothers are lucky they have the ceremony before we mother die, he say. They lucky that they both turn man. But you take my luck. No elder will circumcise me and make me a man, for all of we cursed. After stomping her in the ground every day for eight days, on the ninth, he stomp her down in thornbush.
She know why they hate her for they tell her every night. Little demon, motherslayer, when will Mama stop bawling, they ask. When will she stop bawling in the otherworld about the little devil who slash and burn through her koo and kill her. The girl listen for her mother’s cry from the land of the dead but hear nothing. Silence, then. She is silent as they beat her for asking for more food with less rot. She is silent when they say, Don’t make us go to the otherworld and beg its lord to take you and give us back our mother. She is silent, for she already know that they try. So say the middle brother to the python woman on another night.
Three brothers, all wicked. The oldest whip her, leaving two marks on her face. The middle one starve her, saying she think she is woman, so let she cook her own food. And the youngest, he is the worst, because nobody will give him the ceremonial circumcision to make him a man, and is all because of her. I will kill you before you become a woman, he tell her. He say this also. I will take a knife and cut out your koo head myself for no woman will dare touch you. With it still in your slit, you neither boy nor girl. You is a monster.
The girl take it to mean a different thing each time. When they first call her a monster she scratch her skin until it bleed, angry she could find no scales to scratch off. She bite her nails to stop them growing into claws. When an itch come between her eyes, she think a third one is growing. Or that hair is going to sprout all over her like the tokoloshe, the black, bushy hair demon that oldest brother say will attack her while she sleep. One day she poke her head out of the termite hill to see a woman passing by the hut and laughing at her brothers for they in such a bad way that somebody must did put a curse on their curse. Maybe she is a monster. Little demon. Motherslayer. Girl who the python lady say grow up without knowing breast milk. No wonder her little titties don’t grow. Her brother say plants grow the yield of their namesake, so surely if they say she is a monster, then a monster she will be. And when years fall away and she see how loose people use that word, the girl come to think that if she is not a monster, then she is a curse that her mother give birth to. Not even pretty, the middle brother say. The little girl run her hands over skin, feeling every harsh bone poking up, the hip bones being the biggest and the worst, and ugliness move from what she fear to what she know.
But her brothers lie too. Watch the boys, how middle brother steal a necklace that oldest brother win at the donga, then whisper that it is the youngest who steal it. Then two nights hence a giant python will slither away with a brass necklace around her neck. And oldest brother beat youngest brother, and the youngest beat the little girl in turn, but he not done. Youngest brother set poison in the creek where the python woman always drink and she get overcome with so much sickness that under the wind’s breath come the messenger of death. The middle brother shout, Who is this poor, sick stranger, for he cannot tell anybody, not even his brothers, that every night he do a forbidden thing, and that he smash the eggs that the woman sometimes give birth to in the tallgrass down by the riverbed. And the oldest, always when he is under palm wine, talk of the man he murder and the woman he rape, and the man he rape and the woman he murder. Moons pass and years pass before this little girl see that nothing that come out of the mouth of these brothers could ever pass as true, not even if they say the water is wet and the fire is hot.
So there. Decided. She decide ten and two moons ago. Around her neck is a shackle and tied to that shackle is a rope. That rope is long enough for her to leave the hut, walk the yard, edge to the fence, slip past grass, hogs, chicken, mouse, and whatever other animal live in the pen. So from ten and two moons ago and at every dawn she chew at the rope near her neck, the end they never see for nobody want to see her up close. Only a little at a time, sometimes only a bite, and between chew and spit she gnaw through the rope. Then she put up pretense to be still bound, tying a weak knot and wincing as if they pulling her too hard. But planting season is nigh, and the brothers would soon be coming, shouting, Little one, dirty one, time to plow. No. This is time to run.
The day she pick get dark, and the sun turn black overhead. Dark like night. The shackle is still around her neck. But she crawl out of the hill and wrap the long rope around her waist until it look like a squeezing snake is killing her. The little light trick her into thinking the sun done gone, but it is still high in the sky, still not far past noon, a ring burning around a black center. She look at it for too long, and when she try to run, her eyes blind with light. There is glow in the air, a glow on the dirt. Everything bright and burning into white. The chickens squawk, stunned as she kick them out of the way, and as she run for the gate, the girl run right into his chest.
“But this not looking right, little dung.”
Youngest brother.