Family Portrait
My father had not advanced far in his schooling. Just two years of primary school, like many men and women of the generation before Independence. Yet most of the time he made us speak French at home. And each time we would make fun of my mother: she herself had not gone to school at all, but she played along with my father in speaking a garbled approximation to French.
Roger Iloki has a stern face and short gray hair with a parting in the middle. He smiles little and talks a lot. Not especially tall, always dressed in a traditional abacost suit, he prides himself on having raised his three children by virtue of his occupation and on owning a huge house built of durable materials. He was born in Oweto, the home village of his late parents. He thought that the world stopped here, that other parts of the country were degenerate, especially Mapapouville and Pointe-Rouge. He was close to Monsieur Bayo, the local chief, who we called “Chief Bayo.” My father was a member of the District Council, along with other Oweto notables. He gave us a strict upbringing. My brothers and I were punished severely whenever we bickered. He wasn’t interested in the reason for our arguments. He demanded silence the whole time.
I’m the eldest in the family. My two brothers still live in the North. Neither they nor my parents ever left the region, not even to come visit us in Batalébé. Since the events I’ve had no word from them. The inhabitants of Oweto do not know telephones or electricity.
Paul runs a small grocery shop in the district. Placide, the youngest, helps Father, who is a respected local mason. The plan is for Placide to take over the business from Father, who taught him the science of the trowel and the set square.
Mother sells smoked fish from a bowl that she carries on her head. She does the rounds of every house in the morning and in the evening. She’s a plump woman with very dark skin. Her grandparents were originally from Central African Republic. She doesn’t speak Sango, the national language of that country, because she was born in Oweto.
My father would never have agreed to a southerner, even one with the coveted status of teacher, courting his daughter. In fact teachers are respected in this country. At the start of each school year they’re given sheep, roosters, vegetables.
Kimbembé was a skilled strategist who was able to win over my father through my mother, to the point of making him forget his apprehensions and his prejudices concerning the South. Every evening, when my mother would come to the teachers’ compound to sell her wares, Kimbembé would spend a long time talking to her. He would pay for fish that my mother wanted to give him for free. He even gave her books to bring home for me. My mother was the first to change her opinion of the man from the South.
One day as we were eating, Lizabeth (we called her by her first name) said in her amusing French: “That Kimbembé, it unbelievable! You think he not even southern man. He is like us, very, very nice. He always buy from me lots, lots fish and give so big book for Hortense.”
Private Lessons
Kimbembé was no longer the monster that my parents found so objectionable when he first arrived in the district. People had gotten to know him better, along with his colleague Ngampika, who was from neither the North nor the South and could choose his camp according to what suited him. Aside from our furtive meetings in the bushes, I would visit Kimbembé at his place, as discreetly as possible, whenever he asked me to. The house closest to his was Ngampika’s, but the latter’s front door and windows were on the other side. Ngampika didn’t suspect a thing. I could go to Kimbembé’s without his colleagues knowing. In class I hid our relationship, which was taking shape day by day. I concealed it so well that my classmates thought my behavior strange. They found me calmer, more at ease.
To begin with, Kimbembé and I worked on my deficiencies. He even taught me physics and chemistry! He would open the textbooks, read them to me, and explain. But with time his way of looking changed. It stopped being that of a teacher looking at a student and became that of someone who has intimate feelings for another person. He revealed his sentiments one day when he slipped a note in my history book. He wanted me to come to his place after school . . .
Stolen Kisses
I arrived at his house around five in the afternoon. He talked to me about past participles and their agreement. Two places were set at the table. We were going to eat.
After thirty minutes of a private lesson, we took our seats at the table. I sat opposite him without his having to ask me to, like he did the first time I’d set foot in his house. We ate saka-saka-moukalou, a local dish made with cassava leaves and smoked fish. Afterward he made tea. He was nervous; his movements became clumsy. I’d never seen him so much on edge.
He walked around the table, abruptly stood behind me, and placed his hands on my shoulders. I wanted to run away, to shout. It was as if I were hypnotized. I could hear his breathing. I turned around and our eyes met.
Encouraged no doubt by my lack of protest, he knelt down in front of me. It was the first time I was going to be kissed by a man. I was ashamed of the desire I was discovering inside myself, which was rendering me passive and voiceless. My senses were alert and I had trouble swallowing my saliva. I didn’t notice at which moment my dress fell around my feet. I closed my eyes as his hands began to follow the contours of my burning body, opening me to the life of a woman. I sank into his arms, somewhat complicitous in this game that I was beginning to enjoy.