Yefon: The Red Necklace (2 page)

When I brought my attention back to my group, the girls were still talking about “it”. They giggled shyly as they explained how much “it” made a man, and how many ways city boys could use “it”, and I wondered whether I had missed the definition of “it” at any point.

“What is ‘it’?” I asked, nonchalantly, playing with the wooden bottom of my slingshot or “rubber gun” as we called it. The older girls shared a confused look.
“Shut up your smelly mouth!” Benadere snapped at me, her eyes never leaving the others. Ironically, her covert nickname was “
Rim shoo Benadere
” because her mouth smelled like the rotten eggs that we once found in Ma’s firewood kitchen. Benadere was our way of saying the white man’s name Bernadette.

Rim Shoo’s friend said one of the city boys had put “it” in her mouth, and it tasted like an over-salted meal. The girls giggled loudly, clapping their hands at some points and shaking it with others at other times, while Yenla squirmed uncomfortably. Yenla eventually lied and said she was going to refill the clay pot of water.

I watched her reddish wool hair shine under the moonlight until she escaped behind Ma’s
taav
or hut. I wondered when we had drifted apart, and I longed for more favorable company, but Kadoh was not here.

“I almost vomited,” Rim Shoo’s friend said, and I exhaled deeply, becoming more bored by the second. I was startled at the way Rim Shoo’s friend’s mouth opened and closed so wide, showing different generations of cavities, and I wondered if her breath stunk like Rim Shoo’s. Wouldn’t surprise me. Birds of the same feathers flocked together. Isn’t that what Pa always said? My instinct prompted me to throw something in there, so she could stop speaking so much, but I knew better.

As stimulating as these types of conversations seemed to everyone else, I learnt early enough that this was not my cup of tea.

I usually couldn’t wait to creep out of my mother’s taav
into the tall kola nut trees that surrounded our compound when everyone else was in bed. I would then shoot youthful lovers entangled passionately with little rocks from my slingshot, which I had personally made with Pa’s guidance. I liked how smooth it felt in the small space where the Y-shape was formed, and I remembered how I had carefully attached two rubber strips to it. Holding its base gave me a sense of security as if Pa was there with me.

The heavy diesel smell of my rubber gun when combined with the chill from the gentle night breeze gave me a rush as I carefully picked a small rock from the pouch hanging on my waist.

Aiming left, right, and finally in the middle, I would slowly draw back the rubber to my squinted eye and release my right index finger from the leather pouch. Off the stone would, go travelling until it hit the girl’s bare buttocks. I usually started laughing quietly, watching to see what happened.

First the lover-girl would be startled, but the boy would persist so that she soon forgot about getting hit. Then I would take aim again and carefully shoot. This time, the girl would run away like a frightened child who had seen a masked spirit.

They would go on telling people during the next market day about spirits who lived in the tree on the road back from the stream. They usually left out what they were doing when the “spirits” attacked them. I subdued the urge to laugh as I struggled to eavesdrop from my mother’s shed in the noisy village market square while cracking groundnut shells with my sisters. The sharp crackling sound of dried groundnut shells had a way of distracting me so that I couldn’t hear all the details, and I would shift my bamboo stool an inch closer for a cleaner shot. Still, it was hard to hear everything. Yenla would shoot me nasty looks from under her brown blanket, but I pretended not to notice. What was her problem?

That type of thing riled up my blood like a monkey in heat, and I couldn’t wait to share the details with Kadoh when she came back from her mother’s village. Kadoh knew how to laugh at a good joke. How I missed her!

In the absence of any possible victim to scare at night, I would hunt for small game in the bushes, catching bush rabbits and wild birds and roasting them to sell at the village square on
Waylun
. Not that Ma approved of a woman hunting. She said it
was the most savage thing to do, but I enjoyed it, and the extra money I made from those sales gave me a surge of independence.

Yenla sometimes pulled me to the side to warn me that she knew I was the one frightening people. Her piercing eyes were the color of stained cement. I tried to focus on the mesmerizing whites and dark blue rays hidden somewhere in there, but with her eyes abnormally jumping around, it was hard to tell if she was looking at my eyes or my nose.

“Lea…leave…leave the…” she attempted to say. As soon as I caught the drift of where her choppy stuttering was going, that she was trying to ask me to leave people alone, I usually immediately covered my ears with my palms and began loudly bellowing an off-tune melody until Ma shouted from the back that I better shut up my ugly voice or pay the price. At which point I would cover Yenla with the brown blanket she always wrapped around herself and start running before she caught me and beat me up.

The blanket was her gift from Pa, I think. He told her to always protect herself from the sun. Maybe it’s because her sensitive skin couldn’t handle the hard tropical sunrays like mine could but whatever his reasons, Pa was always right, and so I made sure Yenla protected her skin.

Sometimes, we forget how simple life used to be! Though I was born in 1940, I still cannot fathom how we survived without the Internet! You weren’t woken by the gentle mouse-squeak alarm of your smartphone. Instead, your neighbor’s old rooster crackled as if boiling hot water was being forcefully poured down its thin throat. What a rude manner in which to wake a person from a mosquito-infested sleep! THAT was how we woke up each morning!

Of course, we had absolutely no way of knowing whether the time was quarter to five or half past six, because there were no clocks. Even when we spotted those wooden fixtures at the Shisong parish house up the hill, we couldn’t read them. My half sister, Kadoh, said those were special boxes where the white people kept their spare hearts, which is why that irritating strange ticking would never stop.

In our world, time was an illusion shaped by the sunrise and sunset, which was sent by the potent divinities of the sun and moon. When you looked out of your mother’s domed shaped
mud
taav
and saw the fiery furnace of the gods in the sky rising from underneath fluffy clouds, one knew the day had begun and it was time to begin your chores.

The cold harmattan winds of the Nso Mountains pierced through your dry skin like sharp needles as your already cracking bare feet trekked over five kilometers to the Ngonnso water points to fetch potable water for your family. The hot cakey stench from several unbrushed mouths slapped your nostrils from all over as agile early risers screamed salutations across the bumpy narrow path in Shisong; their bodies naked except for the dried leaves and Eucalyptus tree bark woven into
te’
garments which barely concealed their private areas.
Te’
garments were similar to ballet tutus for women and diapers for men. For special occasions, like funerals, we wore
vifam’s
, which were the same types of garments but made from woven raffia leaves. It is odd to imagine but at that time, these bits of leaves were our Gucci and Prada!

In those days, the women of Nso were sculpted like goddesses with round perky breasts and wide hips just like the Egyptian queen Nefertiti. We used to dress in a
te’
and cover our necks, ankles, and wrists with accessories made from beads, feathers, goatskin, and other materials. The women of my tribe exposed their breasts, which were surrounded with unique keloid cicatrices formed by the arduous process of
scarification
. Most of us had them, either on our chests, jaws, backs, faces, or elsewhere. The scars symbolized different things such as strength, beauty, intelligence, and wisdom. I don’t remember being cut in my face, but I already had the tribal cuts on my cheeks before I learned how to speak, and Ma told me that I started speaking relatively early. We were taught that
Nyuy
^*
had blessed us with the gifts of beauty, and I often wondered why he forgot about me when blessing the rest.

That was Sola’s favorite joke at the stream where we washed ourselves in large groups. She called everyone ugly because her beauty was not only flawless like other girls that I had heard about all over Nso, but she also had an exceptional look. Her eyes had the sparkling twinkle of a full moon and reminded me of the sky in the rainy season. Her skin was a tad darker than
Yenla’s albino pigment, and her hair was wavy like that of an Indian, but it still had the coarseness of African hair. Not even half-breeds looked like Sola. I heard that our paternal great grandfather was an albino, and so I guess the genes were present in my family since both Yenla and Sola were noticeably lighter skinned.

Thing is, Sola’s eyes didn’t wander around like Yenla’s when she spoke. Hers twinkled like beautifully shaped almonds and her long graceful neck stood firmly on one of the longest, curviest bodies that I have ever seen. Her mother’s people had a culture of wearing jeweled piercings on their cheek, and she was no different. Only hers didn’t look as clumsy as her mother’s. Hers was small and beautiful. It gave one the illusion that she had dimples like Kadoh.

Whenever we were on our way to the farm, I tried my best to admire the peaceful green shrubs on the hilltops, and the children running around bare bottomed, playing with leaves and rag dolls, but I was often distracted by Sola and her majestic gait. She looked as if she owned these roads. Why wasn’t I as graceful? Why was my own walk more of a confused, quick batting of feet on the cool mud like those dirty ducks by the stream?

As we walked, I pondered upon how I would get to Sola. I wanted to wipe away that arrogant smirk on her face. As we approached the farmlands, I saw some stick houses that were falling apart and wondered if the people living there were really content. The houses looked abandoned. Weeds were sticking out from every corner, and a muddy dog idled around the entrance of one of the houses. A strange-looking woman with a bald head and murky clothes came and sat down by the dog. She extended a small pan in her hand.

“
Ma pikin, abeg for money
,” the woman called out in a voice that sounded like a long yawn. I studied her closely as we walked to the farm. She wasn’t handicapped, and for many hours after, I wondered why a woman with two legs and two hands would sit down in front of that house and ask children like us for money. She only looked a few years younger than Ma.

“How can people live like that?” I once blurted, without realizing that I had actually said it.

“Mind your business,” Kadoh responded playfully from behind one of her ever-changing clay masks. I tried to. I wanted to
ignore it, but I couldn’t discern why any adult would live in such a shamble with their family.

When I grew up, I wanted to live in one of those brick parish houses with walls painted in vivid colors like the sunshine and walls tall like heaven. Maybe I was asking for too much.

Morning hours around the stream were busier than a town market. Several sounds co-existed amicably and somehow people managed to hear what the other was saying amidst the strident chirruping of the indigo birds that loved to sing as we bathed and the sharp fluid Lamnso language that older sisters used when telling the little ones what they had to achieve that day. A passing greeting from a neighbor or the clinking of herpans and clay pots would drown out some of the orders.

“
A sakah!”
one particular cheerful greeter with an oval face would shout as we bypassed each other on our way to do our chores.

Yenla and I usually responded with a polite standard response. “
Sakah yo dze
.” That always seemed to convey the message without wasting too many words. Yenla would then pinch me as I dragged myself behind her, half sleepy half unwilling, struggling to understand her stuttering orders amidst the hubbub.

On the other side of the trail, a group of boys, wearing khaki shorts and old shirts neatly tucked in and holding books and pens in their hands would be on their way to school. The younger ones tagged behind with overused portable black boards. Their presence would ignite a giggle or two among the maidens. While the boys were in school learning the white man’s book, we spent our hours molding farm beds and planting millet, or
saar
, and wild rice, or
saang
.

Planting
saar
was a very simple process, which took no time to master at all. One simply tilled the flat soil and sprinkled seeds on the ground allowing them to germinate. Of course, that gave birds something to feed on and led to poor harvests, so I had devised my own method, which Yenla was afraid to try, but it worked for me. What I did was bore small holes methodically in the rich brown soil and drop a few stubby seeds in them then I covered them gently with my sole. You would be lucky if a little earthworm wasn’t poking its head out to greet the sun.

I would look around mischievously until I caught a glimpse of Sola sitting on a side stool and oiling her feet as if this
farm work didn’t involve her. You couldn’t really threaten her with the usual “I will tell your mother” because as far as her mother, Ya Buri, was concerned, Sola was always right. She even excluded Sola from tedious chores at home because she was pretty and pretty girls should focus on washing their hair and treating their skin. The other wives grumbled behind her back about how she was spoiling her daughter, but no one could face the ferocity of Ya Buri’s scowl. It soon became an unspoken agreement that Sola would only weed grass.

I used to stare at her for a long time wondering how to wipe that conceited smirk off her face and it wasn’t long before I realized I could use the power of fright. I would take a wiggling worm in my hand and walk up to her. She usually snapped at me but not for long because after I threw it on her, her high-pitched screams took over the entire farm. Everyone would rush to ask what was wrong.