He then simply and secretly puts my share of snake, cat, or turtle aside for me. He keeps me company while I’m enjoying my treat so that no one will suspect or mistreat me. Not a soul would ever dare think that he might violate any taboo for my sake alone. There’s absolutely no reason anymore to want to be a man; I am a woman, I know and do man’s things, I am fine.
Still, inside me there’s the awful memory of the battle between the legs, floodwaters and foam, the saliva of others; but a strong sense of modesty overcomes me every time I think of it and I can’t talk to my husband about this. So I decide to watch and see how he acts with my namesake.
I discover that they’re always underneath white sheets, gently swaying face to face, as if welded together. They caress each other’s neck, they murmur sweet things, they call each other’s name, and they breathe together in the same rhythm, first fast, then gently, very gently. Afterward they talk for a long time, about the past, about today and tomorrow and beyond. I always fall asleep before they do, even though I really want to listen to the end. In any event, I can’t hear very much because they speak so quietly, sometimes muttering, sometimes whispering. When they talk they seem eternal.
I’m grateful they don’t fight. My husband doesn’t make my grandmother cry, he makes her murmur. And in the morning everything is tidy: not a trace of foam anywhere. I really am very lucky: My husband is a “most, most, and most.” “When I’m big enough to have another husband, one of my very own, he has to be another ‘most and most,’ and my sons, too,” I say to myself.
Sadly, now that I’m willing to grow up, I’ll probably die without any man close to me. Very few men accept having great women beside them. Those who are daring or crazy enough to want it often pay for it very dearly: They become the laughing stock of others and end up living outside the mainstream. I console myself by remembering that between Aunt Roz and her husband Ratez and their noise in the dammed-up floodwater, and Grand Madja with her husband Helly in their sweet whisperings, there is no middle road that I find acceptable. Merely a recollection of refusal or total abandon, no more, no less. I also console myself with the thought that this way there won’t be any man to see me completely decrepit when I’m about to die. You can only die nobly when you are alone, and do so quickly, in a blinding moment that leaves no time for self-pity.
SONG 3
Naja, my mother, thank you for my life;
And Grandmother, thank you for my education above all,
For without education a person is nothing, a void.
Humans are not born divine or even human;
They grow into it, achieving it by choosing to transform,
Achieving it primarily because of education.
What is the mystery, then? Enormous work;
The very mystery of the divine is work.
Naja, my mother,
The guitar player isn’t born playing;
The blacksmith isn’t born blowing;
The physician isn’t born healing.
Humans become what they learn,
What they practice with passion again and again.
No, Njokè, my father,
The murderer isn’t born killing,
Nor is the soldier born shooting other human beings;
The politician isn’t born telling lies,
Nor is the trader born cheating;
The wise man isn’t born holy.
Humans are transformed by thought and word,
By actions and realizations,
By time, but by education above all.
What is the mystery, then? Enormous work;
The very mystery of the divine is work.
• • •
Unfortunately, for most of us work is contradictory to pleasure. I thank God that he granted me the good fortune to weave the two together. A slave cannot make that connection. My namesake, Grand Madja Halla, always told me, “You, you’ll always know whether you are free or not as long as you’re able to link work and pleasure.”
Then she revealed to me that she was a caramel woman, and afraid of the sun. And so, at the crack of dawn she’d gather embers, put machetes and hoes in the baskets we carried on our heads, and off we’d go to the field. She’d light a fire because it was still quite cold at that hour. We worked in silence with twice the usual zeal just to stay warm and to keep the insects from stinging us. Sometimes Grand Madja struck up a song and created a rhythm, which my little sister and I would then join—a kind of regular, irresistible motor. In this way, we always accomplished a huge amount of work that earned us our husband’s praise.
We stopped as soon as the sun became too hot. We’d harvest tubers in the last field, pick leaves, fruits, and vegetables, and then go home. Our husband wasn’t like the one in the folktales who forced his caramel wife to work in the sun just to prove that she wasn’t lazy, as the malicious neighbors claimed when they sneered at her. Instead of protecting her, that husband had forced his wife to prove them wrong, something so unnatural to her that she melted completely, and her husband lost the love, sweetness, and wealth she had brought him while working in the shade.
Grand Madja, Caramel Woman, you told us:
“Sheltered from the burning sun, you can take your time,
And if you take the time to do each thing well,
Each thing well-done will provide you with its own pleasure:
“In the shade of the cocoa trees, take your time to crack the pods neatly: You’ll be rewarded and able to remove the beans without the frustration of sand and dirt on poorly maintained machetes.
“Take your time to choose carefully the most beautiful and juiciest pods by separating them from the second-rate ones, and you will be doubly rewarded. First, the cocoa wine you can extract from them will be of high quality, as will the chocolate for which your pods are used when it’s time to sell them in the market.
“In the shade of the palm trees, take your time to slice the palm leaves evenly, and you’ll have the esthetic pleasure of making prettier piles. When it’s time to pick the mushrooms growing there, you’ll have the pleasure of work well done: All you need to do is reach out and run your hand through the piles as if you’re sauntering in a dream. Then, when the mounds are completely dry, burn them carefully and again you’ll be rewarded with extraordinary compost that you’ll use to plant onions or potatoes, which will grow like a miracle.
“Take your time when you’re gathering the palm tree fruit; select the best, and the best palm oil will be yours. Keep the lesser ones dry and pound them gently to obtain half-dry cabbage palms, the only ones that produce lan, the magic oil that protects babies’ skin and the soft spot in their skulls from a thousand different ailments. Once you’ve extracted the oil, be careful to stack the bikagang, those round husks now emptied of their oil; other mushrooms will be your reward, that no waste scattered to the winds will ever produce.
“I cannot list the endless pleasures that