Miss Azora’s words come to pass soon after, and the first time make Girl’s nipples sore, swell her belly, pain her head, and leave traces of blood everywhere she sit for three nights. Her lower belly punching her from the inside when it feel to, and the pain echo across the pit of her back and down her thighs. Girl don’t stop crying. Me never see anybody have it so heavy, Miss Azora say, before they lower her in a tub and pour warm water over her shoulders. Miss Azora smooth the back of her head with her hands and sing the girl to sleep. Don’t despair, Girl, you are woman now, she say.
A half moon later Miss Azora move her to the smallest room in house, the one they call the Cupboard. Is her first bed, a thick sheet stuff with feathers, and in the corner a basin and a jug of water, not for drinking. The same night one of the ten women climb into her bed from the window right above it. Is me, Yanya, she say. The woman look at her, sigh loud and long, then say, Don’t mistake what Azora doing for charity. She only grooming you to be the next forbidden lily. Forbidden lily is for the man with peculiar needs, but nothing peculiar about these men, other than a huge purse. The kind of man who see the friends his young daughter playing with and can barely control the lust to grab one and drag her to the back bush. But first she going wait, watch you grow a little, fatten you up little more. Then what she going do is this. One night she will send a man in on you with no warning. She prefer it that way, to set them loose on you, then explain afterward that if you don’t take to it, you can always leave. That is what she going do, for she do it to all of we. But this is what you can do, Yanya say, even as she say nothing about what happen to the last forbidden lily. Instead she slip Girl a pouch and say, Mix only as much as your fingertip in that bowl, and make sure they take a drink.
The first four men all leave a fat pouch and a big smile with Miss Azora, saying that lying between that one is like lying on a cloud. That cloud is not between her legs, but the pillow on which all sort of man fall asleep. But the fifth man rape her for as long as two songs humming in the back of her head before he take a drink. The men always wake up spent and proud, thinking surely they leaving bastard twins inside her. But after the fifth man, she start robbing them.
Her sack is getting full. Gold, silver, iron, cowries, and ingots. And earrings, nose rings, finger rings, necklaces, kola nuts, miracle berries, talismans, charms, a dried heart, animal bones, Bawo pieces, jade gemstones, wood fetishes, kaolin, and a small figure cut from onyx. The man tell his wife it must have fallen out on the road, in the river, lost to sea, or got picked from their robes. Far easier to let them go, even if they knew who took them, for the only thing worse than saying something precious is gone is to explain how it come back. They still come calling and ask for the girl with the cloud between her legs. Azora thinking something strange is afoot, for this girl don’t have anything about her to entrance a man, but can’t hiss at the coin she bring in.
Certain things come to pass. Maganatti Jarra, the twentieth night of the Cikawa moon. Man is doing what they feel they must do, and woman is making do. And at the house of Miss Azora, the mistress is cursing about the slow night. Most of them in the hall where Miss Azora greet the men and settle accounts. Yanya and another woman seated facing each other, two other women standing together by the right window, Girl sitting on the floor at the far end of the room and out of Miss Azora’s slapping hand. As for her, she can’t stop walking up and down the hall while cursing. Superstition about the night sky, one of the women say, but this don’t please Miss Azora. She began to wonder if there is a new rumor about the women, one stronger than all the ones before that never stop any man, but make their wives feel better. They saying we have nasty woman disease again? She ask, but nobody there can answer, for none of these women keep the company of women other than themselves. If man not coming to the koo, then the koo must go to the man, Miss Azora say and ordered Yanya to go out on the street and pull down her gown so that any man passing can see her breasts.
“Why me, Miss Azora?”
“Why you think, girl? Because Dinti’s titty lanky like goat, and because I not saying it twice that’s why. Now go—”
Slow yet quick it happen. One long black finger wrap around Miss Azora’s neck, then two, then three, then four. Before any of the women scream, it grab Miss Azora, yank her off the floor, and fling her into the wall across the room. She on the floor and still. Now the women scream and run. Nobody hear it coming, nor see nor smell it either. Two steps in, one can see it is a male one, one that shriek so loud that some women’s ears bleed. He look like something that would move slow, but in a blink he grab another woman trying to run and fling her away too. He shriek and mash a chair. He, the thing. So high his head scrape the ceiling, one hand thin and weak looking, the other thick as his body and touching the floor. Two legs tall as trees but one shorter than the other. He shift and scramble like a spider, slamming down his big hand and smashing tables and urns and vases, and throwing whatever he wrap his long fingers around. Then he see the girl and shriek again. He go straight for her. She climb the ladder fast—she never climb anything so fast—and run to her room. The smashing, the shrieking, the screaming moving closer until the little door get rip off. The beast, still screeching. The girl is shaking so hard that each blink scatter tears.
“Better thank the gods you’re not a boy thief. Or I would be calling ten men to pull the Ukundunka out of your little shithole,” this woman say.
She, a lady looking like somebody of great nobility and importance. Her dark lips and wide nose in a frown, her annoyed eyebrows sitting below a pattern of white dots that run down her left cheek. An ighiya on her head like a large black flower, and a long white Basotho blanket around her shoulders with the black pattern of a warrior with spear and shield. A tall woman, and wide, though she is not fat. She look like she can hold all her children at once. Cheeks of a woman who laugh without warning, without joke. The little girl is still trembling. The Ukundunka pawing at her sleeping sheets, as if trying to pull her in.
“Where is it, little girl?”
The little girl can’t get the words out. “Where . . . where . . . where . . .” she say.
“The talisman, little fool. My little figure in onyx. Don’t make me ask for it again, or I will let him search you.”