She Would Be King by Wayétu Moore

Author:Wayétu Moore [Moore, Wayétu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-55597-868-6
Publisher: Graywolf Press
Published: 2018-10-10T16:00:00+00:00

WHEN GBESSA OPENED HER EYES, it was Safua she hoped to see. She envisioned his pitiful eyes and remembered when he had sent her away. “You must leave,” he had said. “You must leave and never come back.” She thought of the previous night and his promise to follow her. He knew her thoughts and it was this understanding of what transpired that softened his eyes. At that moment she had hoped she would prove courageous enough to take his hand to run with her—to leave their village and escape with her to the forest forever—but she obeyed him like his child or his lover and walked away from Lai. His rejection was the last thing she remembered of him, yet he was the first thing she hoped to see once life crept back.

Gbessa examined the mark where the snake had bitten her. The pain had subsided. She was in a small cave with a dried vine tied to her wrist. The thick vine was tied to a stick that protruded from the wall of the cave. Gbessa’s tongue tasted bitter, and she coughed from the bottom of her stomach. She noticed the areca palm on the ground beside her and spit on the floor. She was happy that she was able to see, since her last memory was a blind swim through moving water before fainting on the shore.

Gbessa examined the vine around her wrist. She played with it to free herself.

While she fidgeted, she heard a shifting in the corner of the cave. When Gbessa looked up, she saw a man with a bloody shirt who moved his head against the wall. He coughed and spit onto the cave floor, then rubbed his eyes with his hands. The man moved as if he was dizzy, intermittently drooping over to regain his balance. Gbessa moved at a quicker speed to relieve her wrists.

A man sat across the cave from her, and he looked as if he had had too much palm wine, dizzy and in the wilderness between dreams and morning. June Dey shouted as the sight of Gbessa struck him. His eyes trailed from her face as it obtruded from the black cave and to the clothes that hung loosely off her round breasts and hips, her dark thighs and legs. His breath was gone from him. He looked around the cave, perhaps for his friend, Gbessa thought, then June crawled across the cave toward Gbessa and tried to loosen the vine on her wrist. Gbessa kicked her legs out toward him in fear. He backed away from her.

“I will do it!” she yelled.

He did not understand.

“Trying to help you out,” he said.

She did not understand his language either.

June Dey continued untying the string.

“Stop! I will do it!” Gbessa said, assaulting him with her eyes. She wanted to run.

June Dey followed the vine with his hand to where it was tied onto the stick that protruded from the cave wall. Desperate, he then grabbed the vine and pulled it outward.

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