Where Bones Dance: An English Girlhood, An African War

Akueke

35 Akueke A dry wind is blowing, filling the house with sand from the north. Bill and I shape deserts on the window ledge. I say, “It’s from the Sahara.” “No it isn’t.” “Is.” “Isn’t.” “It’s too hot to fight. Anyway I know because I’m older than you.” Christine walks by, her arms piled high with dirty clothes. Her body pushes at the seams of her crisp white dress and between her shoulders spreads a dark slick of sweat. Her broad cracked feet grip the tiled floor as she walks. She walks down the hall proud as a ship in sail. We play grandmother’s footsteps until we are close behind her and then we pull up her dress. Dark coils between her legs. We run scared down the stairs. At the bottom I look back. She has set the laundry down. She is just standing. She isn’t allowed to hit us. Bill giggles. I hate him. 36 I run outside, across the road, into the cemetery. I am dodging through the brush, sidestepping castles of dried red mud. They are everywhere. I don’t want to. Christine has hair there too. I am giddy and out of breath. My mother is. Christine is. My name is Jake. I’m going to be an explorer. That’s a secret. When you grow up. Woman. A fat smelly word. Woman. I got a doll for Christmas . I hid it. I played football with it then it was dirty and one arm broke off so I buried it. Christine won’t tell. I didn’t see. My name is Jake. Soldiers live in the buildings past the cemetery. Dust is stuck in my nose, in my mouth. In the cemetery are mud castles. I draw my foot back. I kick one. It falls apart. Inside are thousands of little rooms and termites scurrying, I see them each alone. It’s a doll’s house with the roof off. They swarm all up my leg. I stamp like a horse. They run up my dress. I run yelping into the house. “Christine. Christine.” She pushes me into the bath and turns the water on full until there is a crust of insects floating dead. I am ashamed. I am afraid. Christine tells me a story to make me brave. She says, “This is the story of my grandmother whose name is Akueke. My grandmother, my mother’s mother, had a scar ran from her knee to her ankle. This is a scar she was dealt in fighting. This fighting took place when Akueke was young. It was a hungry year and she was gathering the yams with the other women. The British were coming next day to take away a large part of the harvest and the chief men were not stopping them because the British were giving the men the title of Warrant Chief. The British gave the men money more than cowrie shells but not to the women. As this was the case the chief women determined to hold a mikiri, a meeting of the women, and Akueke my grandmother was there. They met and they talked and they danced different dances, and one to be loyal, they spring forward, one arm high, and touch their hands. All through the mikiri should be a man C y c l e 1 bringing palm wine in a gourd in courtesy as is the custom but no man is coming and this is the way the men are behaving. So, as the women have decided, they take their machetes and the men’s guns for hunting. They go together to the shrine of the old ones of the women and they cover each other with the medicine paste that is buried before the shrine. The paste is white so they are like ghosts now and fearful to behold. “All the night they are saying to the men, ‘Fight with us. You are Ibos too,’ but the men are hiding in the huts. Shortly the British come and the women chase them away and then is high dancing. But the British return, many together, bringing guns. The women hide in the bush where there are large number of beasts, lions, jackals, et cetera and many are killed and wounded. Akueke, for example, her leg is torn in fighting, she lies in the sun for she cannot...