Master Komwono cough. He say he don’t know nothing about bartering with whores. Sogolon listening from the entry hall, out of sight. Nobody hear her giggle. This is a cunning woman, even if all she ever say to Sogolon’s face is what she doing wrong. Girl, you eating wrong. Don’t chew your cud like a cow. This is how you eat. Consider the piece of bread before you tear it, and don’t tear any piece wider than the palm of your hand. Scoop a piece of goat stew no bigger than a fingertip. Chew slow and don’t make nobody hear or see what you chewing, for that is how you disgust whoever looking. Girl, you clean yourself wrong. Which is to say that you don’t clean yourself at all, except for when I threaten to kick you and your stink out of me house. This is how you clean. Go in the water stall by the grain keep and scrub your skin with sand. Scrub between your breast, scrub under your foot, scrub your elbow so it don’t look like chicken heel, but dab your koo gentle, with just little water or you going ruin it. Girl, your head wrong. Don’t even try the ighiya—you not from no dignified family. Take this cloth and make the cleaning woman teach you how to wrap a gele. You don’t have plenty hair and that little hair not pretty. Girl, you walking wrong. This is how you walk. Watch the ingxangxosi, how he carry himself, wings fold away like a man clasping his hands behind his back, chin cock out, head high like he balancing a bottle of oil. For each step regard the knee first, which rise, but not too high for a woman, and the feet when it touch the ground, do so without disturbance, like a tiptoe. You want me to be like the devil bird? Sogolon say when she see the same fowl stomp a snake to death and eat it. Mistress Komwono reward her with a slap. That is shit-hut woman talk, she say. You leaving you girl years soon enough and you need to be ready.
Ready for what, Sogolon don’t ask. As far as Miss Azora did say, she already pass her girl years. She don’t want to upset Mistress Komwono and end her kindness. But she know the mistress is grooming her, even if she don’t know what for, and that don’t sound much different from Miss Azora. Sogolon take to watching every man or woman who visit, and that is plenty. She wait in the darker hallways to hear about who lose a cleaning woman, who need a daughter, which boy just complete the manhood ceremony, or which chief disappointed in his latest wife. Or, because Mistress love to count coins, who just come into good money. Years with Miss Azora don’t make her into a fool. She know that without a dowry she is useless to a man. Unless the man want son and more son, and don’t care what hole they pop out of.
See the girl as she see the world from out her window, still rubbing her hands all around this thing called window. A wide roof, maybe a place where men meet and discuss wise things, or drink. A roof with steps to another roof, perhaps a family already big and getting bigger. Roofs sometimes no different than the wall leading up to them, with traces still of the hands that smoothed the mud out. Farther off, a tall thin tower, a prison, or maybe where the city stores sorghum in case of famine. Or perhaps the home of the thinnest, tallest people in the nine worlds. She count the floors by the windows. Three houses three floors tall with windows above windows, then a fourth house only one floor high, with no window at all. Three families rich and one poor, she guess. She wonder what kind of woman live in them. A city of roofs that she can’t judge by the height, for most of them the same. Which is why the few six floors high, and even eight, poke the sky. Same color though, all these walls. Brown, ochre, sand or hard dirt. Windows not following any master craft but seeming to pop open like a bee house.
And the city change at night. Now it look like the back of an animal, black with shadow and spikes, but in the shadows windows where orange light flicker. Several lamps in several windows all looking lonely. More with dim light because the fire is farther away, in an oven cooking meat, or a floor pot brewing coffee. Farther off, deep into the city, the lights don’t even flicker. And far north, in the center of Kongor, on top of that tallest tower, a statue of the bird perching on the pinnacle as if about to fly. The Tower of the Black Sparrowhawk, the cook call it when she take her out into the streets. All she remember is the road curling and twisting and spreading so wide that three carts on one side can pass three on the other, then squeezing so narrow that only one woman can fit through at a time. To leave Tarobe quarter, which the cook tell Sogolon with pride is the richest in the city, means to either go south to the drying riverbed, where slaves go to coax water from the mud, drenching cloths and then wringing them over buckets to separate the dirt, or it means to go north to everywhere else. We take the border road along the imperial docks until we come to another road, wide and busy, that take us deep into Nimbe quarter, where man keep records of everything that walk, breed, and shit, the cook say. Sogolon already tired, but the cook never seem to get weary. Sogolon have to shout that she not walking no more, for her to whistle down a cart, which take them across, past the Tower of the Black Sparrowhawk, into Nimbe quarter, which is where the cook plan to shop all along. We need a new oil lamp, two if we saving money, she say. And here in Nimbe was the finest lamp maker, the finest maker of everything if you must ask, she say, though Sogolon never ask. Sogolon marveling over how these walls so high that the sun can’t see the street. An argument pull her back to the cook, screaming at a merchant on the price of a lamp. They curse and threaten until the cook finally say that if she wanted to deal with thieves she would have taken her backside north. North. That is where they go next. Gallunkobe quarter, where most of the houses look fat, squat, and same. And all the people with the same frown. Don’t tell the mistress where we go, the cook say. And don’t ever come back here. The cook take her hand through the streets and frown when Sogolon say that long time pass since she is a little girl. I let go your hand in Gallunkobe quarter, you never see the mistress house again, she say, leaving Sogolon to marry the sight of selling, shopping, drinking, laughter, cloth rolling out, meat chopping up, noblewomen with guards walking behind as tall as trees, haggling over prices, with the warning that she could leave herself to danger.