Moon Witch, Spider King by Marlon James

Author:Marlon James
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

FIFTEEN

I am a woman with children. Hear me call their names. Ehede, Ndambi, Matisha, and Lurum children of my womb, and Keme, Serwa, and Aba children of the woman whose name we no longer call in this house. Keme wanted to name the dead children in the backwoods, but lose his voice to grief when none of us could tell who was girl from boy. Truly, the man mourn them like he watch them die one by one, and my own fear arrest me, fear that I will never show for anyone such woe. The King Sister was the only one dead that I could imagine showing sadness for, and even with her no sadness come. Anger yes, and the feeling that the gods deal with her in wicked fashion never leave me, not even now. But grief? Not once.

See me call my children’s names out in the dark when the whole house gone to sleep. In my bed lie Keme and Aba, that woman’s youngest, who take to sleeping between us and refuse to lay her head elsewhere. I say to him one morning that I done forget what it look like when it big and stiff, and he say, Woman, you can’t be saying those things around your children, which shake me, for he was the one who used to like what he call my coarse mouth. That is a lie, or it is not the whole truth. He never like my coarse mouth, he just accept it as the price for having me, but not making me the number one woman. Now that I am this woman, he want me to be more like a mother and not like one who drop out his children. I don’t bother to tell him that I was always the only mother in this house. So see me waking up when it is still dark and walking around the house calling my children’s names as if keeping a record that they still here.

Aba, the youngest of hers but still the third oldest of all, start acting like a baby ever since that woman leave. Nothing like a lion but with black hair long and wild as one, skin the closest to coffee, like her mother but not her father, and with two spaces in the front of her mouth waiting for second teeth. She soon take to screaming in the night when sleeping alone, and sucking her left thumb when sleeping between us. Two strong apes couldn’t pull that thumb from her mouth, and I know because every other night I try.

Serwa, the oldest from that woman, look like her mother too, but her wily ways are indeed of her father, though I never once see any of the cat in her. She is a big help to her kin and even to her half kin, and she be the only one that can convince them to wash themselves, but like her mother she don’t like me. A dislike that grow bigger as she get older, which make me shrug and say this must be the way.

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