MOTHERS OF THE APEMEN

Kemi C. Amusan

Chapter One: Ilu ‘birin, The Women’s Village

 

1. The Ọ̀rúnmìlà Shrine

The shrine of Ọ̀rúnmìlà was the quietest place in Ìlú’bìnrin. The women who came there knew that some questions grew harder to hear when too many voices rose around them.

It stood at the oldest end of the village, beyond the central clearing and behind a wall of packed earth, where faded symbols had been pressed by hands long since turned to dust. Dark wooden shelves bore bundles of treated leaves, strips of beaten bark, carved tablets and rolled manuscripts, and upon these were kept the verses, the genealogies, the readings of the heavens and the reckonings of old wars.

Adà had always loved that about the place. Adàmíniye was the name her mother had given her at birth, though only the angry and the formal used it now. Her twin, Mọládùn, was Ládùn to all who loved her, which was nearly everyone. While Ládùn could spend an afternoon in the water, laughing with the other women and letting the sun gild her skin, Adà could lose an afternoon to a single question. She sat now upon a woven mat across from Iyanifa, one knee drawn beneath her and a thin wooden tablet resting in her lap. A small oil lamp burned between them and cast a restless light about the room. Iyanifa had been reading from an old Ifá verse concerning a woman whose life was foretold before she was born, and Adà had been quarrelling with it for the better part of an hour.

“You speak of ayànmọ̀ as though it were a sentence,” Adà said. “If a person’s road is already laid, to what end is knowledge? Why teach a child? Why train a warrior? Why gather all this learning, if we are bound for the same end whatever we do?”

It was no idle question. For a generation the elders had kept count, setting down births and deaths, and watching the number of children dwindle in some households and vanish from others. There was a time when the tally had stirred little fear. Women bore children when they wished to, and those who did not were free to give themselves to other works. No woman owed any account of her choosing, and motherhood had never been the measure of a woman’s worth.

But the elders had begun to see a pattern that no single choice could explain. Each generation brought fewer children than the last, and among the youngest women, even those who wished for children were growing rare. Some elders feared for the future of Ìlú Obìnrin. Others held that a village built upon women’s freedom could not begin to call that freedom a fault merely because its fruits had grown hard to bear.

The council had begun to split upon it. How might they keep what their mothers had built without laying claims upon the daughters who inherited it? And if the village could endure only by asking its women to surrender a freedom their ancestors had bled to win, what, in the end, would they be keeping?

Iyanifa smiled, though there was little mirth in it. She had heard versions of this quarrel from Adà before, and the young woman’s stubbornness never seemed to dwindle. “You mistake a path for a prison,” she said. “Ayànmọ̀ does not mean that every step is chosen for you. It means there are conditions into which you are born, forces that stood before you, and consequences no wishing can undo. Wisdom is knowing what may be changed and what may not.”

“Then perhaps the fault lies in deciding too swiftly that a thing cannot be changed.”

“And perhaps the fault lies in believing that because you hold the power to act, every act is therefore wise.”

Adà leaned forward. “How convenient for the gods.”

Iyanifa laughed softly. “And there it is. The reason you are dangerous.”

“Because I ask questions?”

“Because you believe every answer is an invitation to ask another.”

Somewhere outside, a woman’s voice was reading the sky to a company of girls, as the elders did before evenings at the pool, telling them which stars stood where, which month belonged to which force, and why some evenings felt keener than others before anything had come to pass. Adà had never had patience for it, though she had heard those lessons all her life.

She looked toward the shelves along the wall, toward the records of women who had lived before her and the instruments whose purposes had outlasted their makers. “Perhaps that is what our ancestors meant to teach us. That we are not made merely to inherit the world. We are made to alter it.”

Iyanifa studied her for a moment. “That,” she said, “is àtinúdá.”

Adà nodded.

“And that, Adàmíniye, is precisely why we must be careful with it.”

2. The Evening of Ọ̀ṣun

Water fed the pool from a spring the elders swore was older than the village itself, cold even in the heat of the dry season and so clear that, in its deepest places, the women could see pale stones resting far below. Flat rocks ringed it, worn smooth by generations of bare feet, and beyond them the forest stood in a thick green wall. The women called it Odo Ẹwa, the Pond of Beauty, and every seventh evening they gave it over to Ọ̀ṣun.

By late afternoon the pool had become a world apart. Women floated with their hair spread about them like dark flowers, while others sat upon the warm stones, working shea butter and palm kernel oil into their arms and legs until their skin shone. Young girls practised their swimming, and the older women sang along the bank, their voices rising and falling in songs that praised Ọ̀ṣun’s beauty, her sensuality, her keen mind.

Ládùn belonged to the pool as though she had been born of it. She had spent most of the afternoon floating on her back and letting the water bear her, while Joko sat near, trying to braid a string of cowries into Sofola’s hair, her tongue caught between her teeth, muttering the pattern under her breath like a chant.

“You will ruin it,” Sofola complained, not moving her head an inch, for she had long ago learned to complain without disturbing whatever Joko was doing to her.

“I am improving it.”

“You have been improving it for half an hour.”

“Beauty takes time.”

Ládùn opened one eye. “That is what beautiful people tell ugly people.”

Sofola threw a wet cloth at her, and the women around them broke into laughter. Ládùn ducked beneath the water before it could strike and rose several feet away, laughing so hard she had to wipe her eyes. She swam toward the rocks where Tiwani sat with her arms folded about her knees, watching the others with the wary look she wore even when there was nothing to fear, her eyes moving from woman to woman, counting without meaning to.

“You are too grave,” Ládùn told her.

“I am watching.”

“You are always watching.”

“Someone must.”

“Then watch me.” She rested her arms against the rock and looked about the pool. Adà would have despised this part. The thought made her smile. Her sister could spend hours in the shrine of Ọ̀rúnmìlà quarrelling over destiny while Ládùn spent hours here quarrelling over which oil smelled sweetest. Adà gathered questions. Ládùn gathered possibilities.

“Tell us the dream again,” Joko said, not looking up from Sofola’s hair.

Ládùn groaned. “You have heard it too many times.”

“That is how we know you have changed parts of it.”

“I have changed nothing.”

“You made the city bigger last time.”

“It grew bigger.”

Sofola leaned closer, tilting her head just enough to break Joko’s concentration. “Tell it.”

Ládùn looked toward the western edge of the pool, where the sun was sinking through the trees. The light had turned the water to copper.

“There is a city,” she began, “raised of white stone and gold, with trees growing along every road. There are houses where no woman is given to a man because another has decided he would make a fitting husband. There are children who know both their mothers and their fathers, yet neither belongs to the other.”

Joko smiled. “You have added that part before.”

“Because it matters. In that city, women may walk anywhere without fear. They may study whatever they wish. They may build. They may fight, if they choose. And at night the stars come down so low that the roads have no need of lamps.”

Tiwani frowned, her arms tightening about her knees. “A city where none is afraid? Such a place cannot be.”

Ládùn looked at her. “Not yet.”

She slipped from the rock and floated onto her back again, her ears sinking beneath the water until the voices around her grew soft and distant. Above her the sky was turning. The blue of afternoon deepened toward violet, and the first stars came out between the branches. She thought of her city and wondered whether, somewhere beyond the forest, beyond the bounds of everything she knew, there already stood a place that resembled it.

Then the earth moved.

It was so faint that most of the women did not notice. The water beneath Ládùn’s back trembled once and was still. She lifted her head.

Joko had stopped speaking, the half-finished braid caught between her fingers. Tiwani no longer watched the sky. She was already counting again, faster now.

From somewhere beyond the trees came another tremor, deeper this time, and with it the sound of branches breaking beneath great weight.

Ládùn sat upright in the water. The laughter around the pool faded. For a moment the women only listened.

Then Joko looked toward the forest.

“They are here.”

3. The Men at the Boundary

The women nearest the eastern bank began gathering their clothes at once. The change passed through the pool faster than any command could have done. The forest had gone strangely silent.

“They have been warned,” Ládùn said. Her voice was calm, almost vexed, as though the men had committed the lesser offence of arriving where they were not bidden.

The warning was old, older than any woman now living at the pool. Ten times the men of Ìlú Àrà had come into the forest demanding the return of the women who had fled them, and ten times they had been sent back. After the tenth, both sides had bled enough to want something other than another invasion, and the covenant they swore drew a line that even a man’s hunger was bound to honour. No man’s foot might touch the women’s land save in the one week each year that belonged to Ọ̀ṣun’s own month, and even then only with the women’s consent, through the proper rites and upon the terms the women set. Any other evening, in any other season, the boundary stood absolute. This evening at Odo Ẹwa belonged to Ọ̀ṣun as well, but it was one of the weekly evenings set aside for her, not the sanctioned week in which the covenant opened the boundary at all. Outside that week no man crossed, invited or uninvited. That line had held longer than Ládùn had been alive.

Adà was not there to answer her. Ládùn looked for her without thinking, as she always did, knowing almost by instinct where her sister would be.

Joko tilted her head toward the darkening sky, the braid forgotten. “It is the month of Aries. Mars rides high.”

“That does not make men stupid,” Sofola said.

“No,” Joko said. “It only makes them more willing to behave as though they were.”

A few women laughed uneasily, but the sound died quickly.

The first men appeared between the trees. There were more than Ládùn had looked for. They stood at the forest’s edge, tall shapes against the failing light, watching the pool with the stillness of men who had already decided that what they looked upon lay within their reach. They did not seem confused. They did not seem lost. They knew precisely where they stood.

One of them, taller than the rest, stood a little ahead of the others, his arms loose at his sides, a long scar catching the last light along his jaw. He did not speak. He had no need. The others waited upon him as men wait upon one they have already agreed to follow.

“They should not be here,” Tiwani whispered, her counting gone quiet, her eyes fixed on the tall one.

“No,” Ládùn said.

More women began to leave. Others backed toward the forest path, keeping their eyes upon the men.

Sofola pulled her wrapper tighter, her voice thin. “We should cover ourselves.”

“Yes,” Joko agreed. “Else they will cast the blame upon us.”

Ládùn turned to her. “They crossed into our land.”

“I know.”

“They came to a sacred pool.”

“I know.”

“They saw women bathing.”

Joko said nothing.

Mọládùn stood in the water, her wet hair falling down her back. “Then let them answer for what they choose to do with their own hunger.”

Sofola shook her head. “Mọládùn.”

“No.” The playfulness had gone from her voice. “This is unbecoming.”

She stopped. Somewhere behind her a woman was dragging a child from the water too hastily, the child’s cry cutting through everything, and her jaw tightened before she went on, quieter now, as though the interruption had cost her something.

“Our mothers told us of such things from their days in Ìlú Àrà. Whenever a man wanted something, it was the woman who was taught to think first of what he wanted. Cover yourself for him. Uncover yourself for him. Lower your voice. Do not draw his eyes. Do not give him cause to forget himself. Or do give him cause, if that was his pleasure. Whatever he desired, the woman was made to answer for it.”

She looked toward the men.

“Our mothers came here so that we would not know that life. They led us out of Ìlú Àrà and raised us a village of our own. They marked our boundaries. After the tenth invasion, they warned the men never to cross them, save in that sacred week of Ọ̀ṣun. For all these years the men kept to their side. Until now, when they have broken the covenant born of that tenth crossing.”

Her fingers tightened about her wrapper.

“And now, after this trespass, is it we who must cover?”

None answered.

Ládùn looked around the pool. “Tonight belongs to Ọ̀ṣun.” She reached for the small wooden bowl of oil floating near the rocks and poured some into her palm. Slowly, deliberately, she worked it over her arms. “Let us raise her louder.”

Joko understood first. She smiled despite herself and reached for her own oil. Ládùn loosened her hair and let it fall freely down her back. She was not making herself ready for the men. She was refusing to make herself ready for them.

“Sing,” she said.

“Mọládùn, there are too many of them.”

“Then sing louder.”

Joko began first, her voice low and steady, taking up one of the old songs for Ọ̀ṣun. Sofola joined her, her voice cracking once before it steadied. Another woman followed. The song gathered strength as more voices entered it.

Tiwani did not sing. She had drawn to the edge of the pool, her arms wrapped tightly about herself, watching the men with a fear she could no longer hide.

Ládùn saw her and reached toward her. “You need not be brave for me.”

Tiwani’s eyes filled. “What if they come?”

Ládùn held her gaze. “Then we shall deal with what comes.”

The song went on. For a few moments the women made the pool feel like itself again. Then the men stepped out of the forest.

There were fourteen of them, and a dwarf walked among them.

They came forward slowly at first, the tall one with the scar leading, watching the women, measuring the distance between the bank and the water. Their boldness seemed to grow with every step.

The singing stopped. The silence that followed was vast.

The tall one laughed, low in his throat. Another man said something to him that the women could not hear.

Then he stepped into the water.

Ládùn did not move. Neither did Joko. Neither did Sofola.

But Tiwani did. Her body turned before she had decided to run.

And when he lunged, the evening at Odo Ẹwa broke apart.

4. The Invasion

He reached for Ládùn, and she twisted away so quickly that his hand closed on nothing but water. Joko struck the arm that came for her and drove backward through the shallows, while Sofola ducked beneath another man’s grasp and surfaced several feet away. For one brief moment the women moved as they had been taught to move, not as frightened bodies caught unawares but as women who knew how to turn their own strength, and the weight of another’s body, against him.

But there were too many men.

They came into the water from every side, crowding one another as they reached for the women. Joko vanished beneath the surface and rose gasping. Sofola screamed for someone to run. Tiwani was already fleeing, half swimming and half stumbling through the shallows, but one of the men caught the edge of her wrapper and dragged her back. Ládùn saw it and lunged toward her, only to be thrust aside by another body crashing between them.

“Run!” Ládùn shouted.

She did not know whether Tiwani heard her.

Others were running too. The women who had been farther from the center of the pool were already fleeing, and now more followed, breaking for the rocks and the dark line of the trees. Some helped a fallen sister to her feet before the press of men drove them on. Others scrambled through the mud toward the forest, slipping as they went, leaving clothes and ornaments behind them. There was no longer one battle with a beginning and an end. There were a dozen small struggles, and each woman fought only for the few feet of ground around her.

Tiwani had been near the western bank when the men came in. She had watched the first rush with the strange stillness that comes before terror, when the mind refuses what the eyes would show it. She had seen Ládùn fight. She had seen Joko vanish beneath the water. She had seen Sofola torn away.

Then someone screamed her name.

Tiwani turned. A man was coming for her. She scrambled up the bank, nearly fell, caught herself against a tree and fled on. Behind her the sounds of the pool followed her into the forest, cries rising and breaking, men shouting to one another, women calling names that might never be answered.

For several strides she thought she would turn back. Then she heard the others. They were breaking from the trees on either side of her, a gasp here, a sob there, and they would carry the tidings to the huts and the fields. But tidings alone would not rouse the defenders, nor wake the elders, nor turn a village into a host. That was a task for those who knew where to go.

The shrine of Ọ̀rúnmìlà. Adà would be there. Iyanifa would be there.

She ran harder. The forest seemed bent on holding her. Branches struck her shoulders and tangled in her hair. Roots rose beneath her feet. Once she fell hard enough to lose her breath, but she pushed herself up before the pain had fully reached her.

She ran until she saw the first path. Then she ran faster.

The trees opened by degrees, and the familiar earth of Ìlú’bìnrin lay beneath her feet. She was not alone upon it. Women burst from the forest at a dozen points along the border, some bleeding, some without their wrappers, one with a child clutched to her breast, each crying out whatever fragment she held. The village was beginning to stir, though none yet knew whose cry to believe.

Tiwani opened her mouth and screamed the first words that came to her.

“The men!”

A woman carrying a basket outside her hut looked up.

“The men have come to the pool!”

The woman dropped the basket.

Tiwani did not stop. “They are at Odo Ẹwa!”

Doors opened. Women came out. Someone shouted a question after her, but Tiwani did not stay to answer it. From the far fields another voice took up the cry, and then another, until the warning rose from every quarter at once. She ran on toward the center of the village, crying it still.

Behind her the boundary had been crossed, and the village was only beginning to understand it.