In the “relocation” camp I decide to divide my time between the White school, the more or less esoteric teachings of Grand Pa Helly and Grand Madja, and the resistance teaching of Aunt Roz who repeats all Mpôdôl’s words—his ideas, his patriotic vision for the country, its revolution, and its rebirth.
Of all these lessons, I much prefer those of the White school, undoubtedly because there I am the best in every subject. The teacher has me do two years in one. I take the exams to finish elementary school and the admission test for secondary school, and pass them at the top of my class. Unfortunately, the results don’t count because my file is not valid. My parents continue their court case, one appeal after the other. They have new birth certificates with new names made for each child, so they can each prove the children are theirs, since the other “parent” doesn’t even know their names. The court of appeals has confiscated every birth certificate, and upholds the demand that my father submit to the testing.
I wonder if I’m supposed to give up my White and Yellow dreams. What is my father up to? He’d promised to help me pursue my studies as far as my aptitude would let me go, and for that reason I made it to the top of my class. Has he forgotten both me and his promise? Or is the promise beyond his financial means, so that he is no longer able to keep it? Or is he just another show-off, as his cousins claim?
Strangely enough, Grand Pa Helly defends my father, the only time I ever heard him do so. He cites “the events” that are so long in being resolved, the dangerous circumstances. He advises me to take the final year of school over again so as not to forget what I learned while I wait for my father to keep his promise. It was sweet to hear my faith confirmed: Grand Pa Helly wouldn’t lie. Soon my father would come and take me to a White and Yellow people’s school, and I’d become a test pilot just like the idol he had chosen for me in a magazine, Wou-Tchou-Ti, the little seventeen-year-old Chinese (or Korean) girl who led an entire squadron. I was in a hurry, but at the same time I felt ready to wait by taking the same class over again, at least for the three years I’d gained on the others.
Grand Pa Helly didn’t lie; my father came the following year.
A few days earlier, Aunt Roz had acquired official permission to take Grand Madja, who was very ill, to the district clinic. Actually, it was a pretext to attend a very important meeting. Some activist women wanted to study a new strategy for helping the resistance fighters, since “the events” were going on longer than had been expected, and the backlash was increasing.
SONG 5
When the devil, catching up with you, unexpectedly
Wants to see your private parts,
He causes you infernal diarrhea.
Yes, all the forces of nature are at the service
Of the destiny that is to be fulfilled,
When it is forbidden to forbid,
When fate and chance are bonded by a pact signed in blood.
When my time came to receive the blow of fate,
A thousand “accidents” occurred that caused my mother and my aunt,
Even my grandmother, not to be present
To surround me with at least a word that would have changed
The direction of my path.
Yes, when the devil, catching up with you,
Wants to see your private parts at the wrong moment,
He causes you infernal diarrhea.
• • •
While repeating my last year at school, I was more a tutor than a student. At recreation one day I discovered my legs were dripping with blood. Both embarrassed and terrified, I fled into the classroom and refused to leave my seat. Baffled by my sudden and inexplicable insubordination, my teacher questioned me in vain—not a word would break through the lump in my throat. First of all, I wasn’t hurting anywhere and I couldn’t understand where the blood was coming from; and second, I was afraid of my own explanation.
Two days before, a classmate had gone into a wild trance and was needlessly making trouble for me because she was jealous. She claimed I’d cast a spell on her and was squealing like a wounded dog, threatening to take revenge on me if something were to happen to her. Her parents had to take her to a medicine man to quiet her down. I knew I’d done nothing to her, but the mysterious blood flowing between my legs disturbed me profoundly. Surely they would now take me for a sorceress, a soul-eater.
To ward off this disaster, I swore I wouldn’t leave my seat until everyone else was gone; but a few of them kept insisting, which put my nerves on edge. I was like a cornered wild animal. As soon as anyone came near me, I showed my teeth as if I were going to bite; finally, I myself wondered if I were in the process of turning into a jackal or a panther, right there in the bright light of day in front of the entire class. My fear and shame soon reached their peak, all the more because my anger at my classmates was growing, and they were certainly not showing any understanding as far as I could see.
They were whispering idiotic things.
“You should give her a spanking, Sir, or else she’ll never stop trying to be ‘interesting’ and taunting us with how brilliant she is.”
“She already thinks she’s the teacher, Sir, and she’s always in your place in front of the classroom. That’s why she’s getting to be so arrogant.”
The teacher finally had enough of my stubborn refusal to respond, and pulled me roughly from the seat I clung to; I had to let him haul me out of class. Very excited, all the students applauded.
Outside, the teacher at last understood what was happening to me. He made all the children go back to their classroom, picked me up like a baby, and quickly brought me to his house, where he handed me over to his wife. “Madame,” as we called her formally, looked at me the same way my grandmother would, with a trace of both mockery and tenderness.
I asked her a thousand and one questions to be sure this was no sorcerer’s blood. She had a hard time keeping herself from bursting out laughing, but assured me that if this were sorcerer’s blood, I, too, would be in a trance just like my classmate. While she taught me how to wear protective cloths, Madame explained that I had just become a woman and from now on would be seeing blood with each new moon, that every woman in the world went through this, and that it was the great difference between us and men.
“You certainly are quite precocious, but you were that way with your studies, too. It’s in your nature; don’t worry about it,” she reassured me.
Unfortunately, she was too succinct. She said nothing about the connection between this blood and pregnancy, or about possible precautions to be taken. Did she even know herself? And had she known, would she have burdened my little head with it? I don’t think so. In her place, no one would have thought of alarming the frail and childlike little girl I was, without the slightest sign of a bulge on her chest or without any awareness whatsoever of her femininity and seductiveness, always half-naked among the boys as if I were one of them. I truly wasn’t aware of sexuality yet. There’s no doubt that in that area I was very backward.
A few days later, when Grand Madja and Aunt Roz returned, I had already forgotten the incident and therefore did not mention it to them. I went back to class without the other children knowing what had actually happened. They no longer dared say anything against me, fully convinced that I was under the protective wing of Monsieur and Madame. At last they all left me in peace, and I served as their tutor with greater patience and good will, waiting for my father to come soon; that was what Grand Pa Helly himself had said would happen, and he never lied.
SONG 6
My father, double human of a giant tree,
His feet at least as gigantic and threatening,
Roots buried deep down in the riverbed,
Dousing himself in the waterfall.
His arms, lianas and boughs,
Sometimes wrapping around my body and holding it imprisoned,
Sometimes defying heaven with their splinters, broken shards in the face of God,
Held up high to the sky, the knife shimmers reflections of clouds and of water,
Turbulent witnesses that, even, so will keep forever silent,
The hair of his Kamsi priests, Bami Mediums with their defiant manes,
Dense foliage of lianas and boughs protective of our secret ceremony.
• • •
My father does, indeed, come back, although in deep despair, and only three days after Grand Madja and Aunt Roz return.
He explains that he couldn’t keep his word to me in spite of his willingness to do so. In fact, he’s afraid he’ll never be able to keep it, because the court wants to deny him his paternity and demands that in the next few days he take us to a special institute for a blood test. If not, the police will come and get us and hand us over to our mother for good, assuming that his refusal is an implicit admission that she is right and that he has always known he is not our father.
“I swear to you, my little mother,” he says to me, “not only did I never doubt it before, but I’m still completely sure that I really am your father—yours, in any case. I won’t tolerate even the idea of any doubt, because I know it in the depths of my heart. You resemble me down to your very soul. Of all the dozens of children I’ve sired across the land, you’re the only one who awakens this feeling of certainty in me, and I find it diabolical that your mother’s family wants to destroy it.”
He explains to me that the test results can be contested if there is the slightest doubt, whereupon my mother’s family will make sure to have the scales tip in their favor.
“I don’t want to run any risk at all, not where you’re concerned, at least. You are my mother, my soul, the pride of my life, my only real hope for survival. I don’t know or feel for the other children the way I do you. I might be able to console myself if they were to separate me from them, but not from you. So I’ve found a solution: I’m going to put my blood into your body and then the test will have to be positive. Of course, this must remain a secret between the two of us.”
You knelt down before me, Father, and even so you were still taller. You asked me to swear I’d keep the secret. You seemed to be suffering, you seemed so frail, my heart was breaking to see you so unhappy, the victim of unbearable injustice. I hugged you tightly in my arms and for the first time felt really angry with my mother. At that very instant I thanked heaven that she was far away from me, for I could have been disrespectful to her and risked the wrath of God upon me, as Grand Madja Halla had taught me.
Yes, at that very instant I felt I inhabited Grand Madja’s skin; I was her namesake, after all—Halla, like her. I felt it was my duty to protect you as your mother, poor man. I told you that nothing could separate me from you and that I’d drink your blood; if necessary, I would bathe in it, or open my veins to infuse them with it, as you saw fit, provided that in the eyes of the whole world I be recognized as your daughter, unequivocally and forever.
“That’s good, my love. I knew I could count on you. Early tomorrow morning we’ll go to the river together for the transfusion before we leave for town, where the tests will be done.”
“Why not get it over with right now? We’ll avoid any possible problems in the morning: It might rain, or the authorities could come to check the number of people in the relocation camp, as they often do. I’m ready. . . .”
“You’re right. But we’d better wait. It’s a strange ceremony that might even seem unpleasant to you. First you have to be sure you’re brave enough and can withstand and truly want this transfusion. I want you to be sure you won’t regret it and, above all, that you won’t hold it against me later. If I hurt you, you must always remember that I love you very, very much and that I don’t want them to separate us. Will you remember that?”
He worries me with all this thoughtfulness. He doesn’t usually talk to me this much. The transfusion is bound to be dangerous. I recall the tales of sorcerers who drink the blood of disobedient and jealous children. I tell myself this doesn’t hold true for me and that, in any case, I’ll accept any pain so that my father and son will never have to suffer the way he is suffering now, here at my feet and before my very eyes. Still, I have one last question for him.
“So it will hurt a lot?”
“Not much. Perhaps you won’t feel any pain at all if you’ll just trust me and do exactly what I tell you to do.”
I can hardly sleep that night. I get up at the first cock’s crowing and slip outside. My father is already at the wheel of a jeep. I’ll never know what pretext he used to convince the head of the brigade to lend it to him. I wonder how he manages to have such a noble bearing even when dressed in a military uniform, although under normal circumstances these always look frightening to me. A double-barreled hunting rifle stands beside him and another very short rifle hangs from his right hip, suspended from a belt complete with bullets, just like the soldiers of the local command of our relocation camp wear around their hips. He drives off immediately. I’m happy and very proud to be by his side.
He quickly leaves the camp by the gate that comes out into the district’s main road and drives very fast. Then he veers off onto a road that has just opened, and is supposed to go to the Elephant Forest. The Caterpillar combines are parked on the side, obviously waiting for the workmen to arrive that morning. I’d heard about these machines, whose droning reaches as far as the camp, but I’d never yet seen them with my own eyes; absolute monsters they are, with gigantic blades and wheels taller than our car. Then we leave the road and enter the forest by a small path my father seems to be familiar with. He must know where we’re going. I’m careful not to ask questions or make any comments. I trust him, and I don’t want him to have any doubts about that or think I’m afraid.
The path stops at a dead end consisting of a pile of wooden logs. Apparently, an enormous, highly prized tree was chopped down and cut up into several pieces. They must be planning to use the Caterpillars to lift and transport these massive chunks. My father cuts a path around the log pile and parks behind it. We get out and continue on foot in silence. My father looks in every direction, stopping from time to time to listen. A thousand birds are singing. I’m trying very hard to distinguish the ones I know, thanks to Grand Pa Helly, Grand Madja, or Aunt Roz. Then we hear the sound of a waterfall. My father lifts me up and carries me on his back to move along faster.
He puts me down at the foot of another huge tree whose roots sink deep into the immense river and asks me to get undressed. I do. He hands me a small pagne to wear for the river bath, as is customary in Massébè. My father stands on the other side of the enormous roots and has also taken off his military garb and his belts with the ammunition. He, too, is wearing a pagne in which to bathe, as is proper. He places our clothes in a hollow of the tree and takes me by the hand, holding a small knife in his other hand. I say nothing, but, already thinking about the pain and imagining my opened veins, my heart is beating very loudly.
We go upstream along the river and reach the great waterfall. When the water is up to my neck my father lifts me up and carries me on his belly with my legs spread; they enfold him tightly. This makes our progress in the water a little more difficult because the current pushes us with great force, and I’m trembling both with fear and the water’s chill. We move forward until we reach a small waterhole between two rocks. A spray of water comes down on us like the pump that’s used to wash the cars in the military camp, but with much greater power. I’m afraid the water will carry us off, but my father plants himself like a tree in the riverbed. I feel his powerful legs gripping the rocks beneath us.
Now the water reaches up to the middle of his tall body, so that the lower part of mine is fully submerged as well. Still, the current weaves its way sharply between our two figures. I raise my eyes and look at my father, but he is gazing up at heaven as if in fervent prayer. The branches of the giant tree make zebra stripes, shadows threatening the milky white sky, the same color as the early morning clouds that whirl around softly and silently.
When my father’s eyes finally settle on me, they lock as if to close I don’t know what sacred door. He asks me to close mine and not to open them again until he tells me so.
“You must obey these orders strictly so that the blood transfusion will be successful,” he tells me somewhat breathlessly.
I’m dying with fear and cold, but never in the world would I let my father suspect it and have him deprive me of his trust.
I surrender to him, to the sounds of water and wind;
I try not to feel anything,
Sure that I shall suffer less that way.
And, indeed, I do not feel any real discomfort,
Not as much as I had feared, at least.
Certainly, a flash of fleeting pain cuts straight across my body
In the space of time it takes a lightning bolt to cut across the sky,
But the water, ever faster and more forceful in this time of floods,
Quickly eases it, erasing it as if by magic,
In its battle against my father’s liana arms,
Now trying to tear me away from him,
Then forcing me again flat up against him.
Our pagnes float around us everywhere,
Like the multiheaded hydra’s tongues in our ancestral tales.
My father, a tree immutably planted in the riverbed, does not move other than to keep himself in place and resist the force of the current. But some part of him has planted itself inside me like a hard living root, and vibrates somewhere inside my belly. My imagination tries to find a first sign of understanding: Perhaps his arm, made longer by the knife, seeks to deposit his blood somewhere.
Perhaps part of his hand opened earlier,
Already lets his blood flow into my belly.
Could it be that he is pouring out all of his giant tree’s sap
To make me his irrefutable double, I wonder.
I’ll have to show him everlasting gratitude for life.
For a moment he trembles as violently as I do, then he pulls me away from him, lifts me up, puts me on his back like a basket and goes back to the water’s edge. Phew! I can’t wait to get out of this hellish and terrifying riverbed.
“That’s it, my little sprite, well done, you may open your eyes now. I hope it didn’t hurt too much. In any event, you were very brave. We’ll win the case, you’ll see.”
I hug him tightly with all the strength of my love. I’m so pleased that he’s proud of me and, even more, I’m proud not to have disappointed him.
A warm liquid spurts from between my legs when my father puts me down on the riverbank. I’m terrified at the thought of jeopardizing the test results, but he reassures me. Still, I close my legs very tightly so as not to let this precious blood get lost. I wouldn’t want to have to start the harrowing ritual all over again.
We arrive at the relocation camp with the back of the car loaded with huge papayas, guavas, and mangos we have picked on our way back, in what was once an orchard. My father goes into the house and comes out with a basket that he fills up, then places in front of Grand Madja, who is sweeping the courtyard.
“That’s for Papa and you,” he tells her. “I don’t know when you’ll see such fine specimens again, because I don’t know when I’ll be back.”
Grand Madja clasps her son to her breast as if to keep him from leaving. It is barely half past six, but already spirals of blue smoke are escaping from every rooftop and mixing with the early morning mist, as fleecy as the low-hanging white clouds that enveloped us in the forest.
What a magical morning, and how different everything seems. Is it because of my father’s uniform? Strangely, even the looks given him by those people who normally throw hostile glances seem new to me, almost supportive, like the approval of a clan for its wrestlers when they bring home a hard-won victory. Their looks are filled with fear and admiration. They greet us with lowered gaze or a slight bow. Even my Aunt Roz looks at me with a touch of envy in her eyes, the way one looks at initiates who have come through their ordeals with flying colors. I take this to mean that she is well aware of the ceremony, and approves. She has prepared a bag with my things and those of my little sister. Apparently she supports her brother in his battle with my mother and her family, she who has always been my mother’s friend, and it surprises me a little.
My father goes straight to school to alert the teacher that my sister and I will be absent. The teacher is distressed to release my little sister, who is repeating the third grade and will now risk failing again. But there is no other choice; these are court orders.
As for me, I didn’t come anywhere close to making a connection between what had just happened to me and what I thought I knew about sexuality, through Aunt Roz and her husband Ratez or Grand Pa Helly and Grand Madja. Maybe it was because of our position in the middle of the river. I honestly believed it concerned a blood transfusion to make the tests work out. In fact, they were successful. I spent all my time in prayer and contemplation until the court session where we were told the results. God had to have heard my entreaty: I had obeyed my father and, what was more, I had been brave, for it is written: “Honor thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”