Holding on to Water – Shingai Kagunda

Now…

The baby is found wailing next to her mother near the top of the hill. She is a pathetic, puny little thing. The wormy cord still connecting her to her mother has to be cut. The mud encroaches on her wrinkly skin so one cannot tell which brown is her and which is the ground. The rain recedes, turning into a light drizzle. The baby is cold. The mother colder… Silent… Dead.

Then…

Of course, Mama and Baba Nakuti had wanted a son. In fact before Nakuti, they conceived a boy. It was their first child. It was the first drought. He died coming out of the womb. When mama Nakuti realized what her husband had done she pulled out her hair behind their house. She did not scream or shout. The rains came back and they stayed. Mama Nakuti’s womb remained empty for ten seasons.

The first time Mama Nakuti felt her womb shift and move for Nakuti, she was hunting hare in the forest for the evening meal. It started to drizzle. She felt a little flutter in her stomach. Something was kicking. Mama Nakuti immediately knew. She shed tears that intermingled with the water falling from the sky. Her husband found her like that: soaking wet and crying.

“We will have another,” She told him.

Mama Nakuti knew she was carrying a boy. The process felt the same as her lost firstborn. The baby kicked and raged within her, fighting wars inside her womb. In the last month before coming to term, Mama Nakuti could not move. The baby was weighing her down. She told her husband, “This one will be a warrior and a rainmaker. This one will specialize in lightning and thunder. This one will make us proud.”

Nakuti was born during the heaviest rains without anything between her legs. She was a heavy baby who did not stop screaming after she started. Mama Nakuti shed tears with her daughter. No one could tell if the mother cried for sadness or joy. She loved Nakuti but she wanted a boy.

Now

The villagers carry the mother on a cloth wrapped around two bamboo sticks. Her eyes are half closed as if she is merely sleepy and not dead. A new mother from the village lifts the wailing baby. She wraps her in several clothes to warm her and ties the last one around her waist. She gives her a wet breast to suckle as she half runs to catch up with the rest of the villagers. There is a wail in the air – the villagers mourning. Every so often a woman falls to the ground. Screaming. It is tradition. Even if the woman is not close to the dead mother.

The baby stops suckling on the new mother’s breast. The baby listens to the mourning. Eyes staring up. Searching. There is something she is missing. The villagers are crying for something she is missing.

Then

The baby remover told Mama Nakuti that her womb was healthy and there was no reason she could not have another child. Mama Nakuti found a new preoccupation. She made love to Baba Nakuti as soon as she recovered from giving birth. She sang songs to her daughter about great warriors and legends as she plaited the fistfuls of hair that stuck together on her head. “You will be a great big sister my Pendo. You are beautiful enough that you will marry well. Maybe you will marry the chief’s son and you will bear your own children. They will have an uncle. One day your little brother will be a powerful rainmaker like his father. I will have borne the chief’s wife and a rainmaker.”

When Nakuti was four, the village of Ollu was in the middle of a second drought. The land was dry and the planted crops withered in a desperate plea for water. When Nakuti was four she saw her mother weep. She found her behind their mud hut on the ground screaming at the sky.  There was blood on her skirt. She had lost the third baby in her stomach.  Nakuti had never seen so much red soiling the earth. The rain came back.

After that day, something dark descended over their home. Baba stayed away. He said the villagers needed him more after the drought but Nakuti had always been able to tell when something was not right. Mama tensed when she asked her about it. “Leave the situation alone Nakuti!”

“But mama…”                                 

“Just leave it!” Her once firm skin looked looser, more fragile.  The medicine man came and gave mama crushed plants. Nakuti was not allowed in the room. She did not see what happened to Mama. She was too small to understand but she remembered after that day mama stopped calling her Pendo. Her mother’s withdrawal was even harder than watching the screaming on the ground.

After that, Mama stopped telling Nakuti about the younger brother she would one day have. Her hugs became crisper and her eyes became distant… 

Now

The villagers walk down the hill, past the biggest baobab tree, to the river. They carry the makeshift cloth between four people. The new mother places the baby in front of her grandmother. The grandmother spits on the ground. “What is that?”

“It is your grandchild, Nyanya.”

The grandmother screams. “No she is not! Where is my child? Bring me my child!”

“Nyanya, she is dead.”

The grandmother walks to her daughter in the cot. She touches her face softly with the back of her hand. “Pendo. Pendo wake up. Wake up my love. Stop sleeping. Who has made you fall into such deep sleep?”

A villager steps forward with apprehension, “Nyanya?”

The grandmother screams. “Do not call me that! I am not your Nyanya! I am not anyone’s grandmother!”

“The baby?”

There is fury in the grandmother’s eyes. “That is no baby! It is a curse! It killed my daughter!” She carries earth to where the baby has been put to lie on the ground. She lets it seep through her fingers onto the baby’s face.

A soft wail lifts into the air. It picks up momentum as the handful of soil enters the baby’s nose and mouth. The new mother steps in front. The child is not hers but her maternal senses cannot be helped.

The grandmother holds her hand up, “Do not! You think I am crazy? You?! All of you killed my daughter!”

The grandmother falls to the ground and heaves. She covers herself in the mud and screams. She rolls and rolls and rolls…

Then

The ancestors of the village called Ollu have always had a special connection to water. Everybody in the village was connected to it but not everybody could use it. Nakuti descended from men and women who could call on the water. Her father was the chief rainmaker.

Baba Nakuti treated his daughter like one who knew her own mind from the time she was little. He reasoned with her, he asked her questions as if he truly wanted to know the answers, he affirmed her growing knowledge, and he taught her to think for herself why she believed what she believed about everything. After he knew there would be no sons Baba Nakuti started training his daughter in the making of rain.

He took her out to the river, taught her to breathe slowly; to feel the air filling her lungs. He showed her to taste the wetness or the dryness of the air: to understand how she must call for more wetness or how to tell the air “enough”.

In the evening she would sit on his lap and he would tell her stories. These would be stories of the ancestors who saw villages far away. Stories of how the pot makers and the rainmakers used to live side by side, trading daughters and gifts. Stories of the seed planters and the light bringers. Baba Nakuti would tickle his daughter and tell her that the she would be the greatest rainmaker of all time.

“You are spoiling her,” his wife said.

“You do not spoil her enough,” he responded. She sucked air through her teeth.

“You fill her mind with ideas of the gift but you do not tell her what it will take from her,” She spit. “You are selfish.”

“When did you become so bitter?” He reached out to touch her. “Why do you not call your child love anymore? I know you hold me responsible for our unborn ones but Nakuti has done you no wrong.”

Mama Nakuti stared at him but did not answer. When she had lost the child after Nakuti, the villagers had talked about her womb. She knew they called her cursed. She called the medicine man. She never asked to go through that pain and humiliation. She told him to close her womb; to make it so that she could not conceive. She would never have the son to take after his father.

Mama Nakuti had the genes of the rainmaker. She had always felt it was not her gift to use, yet she was the one who had sacrificed for this gift. She was the one who had conceived and lost because of the gift. After the medicine man, she was unsexed; not fully woman anymore. There were days she would remember and she would shudder. As much as he loved her, Baba Nakuti could never fully understand and for that she could never fully forgive him.

Baba Nakuti saw through her. He was a complicated man. He hated her resentment. He received her silent anger at herself and at him but he was attached to her like he was attached to water. Unlike the other chiefs and elders, he never picked a second wife. Though, he was more than entitled to, seeing as his first one bore him no sons and could bear him none. Baba Nakuti feared and loved his wife. They fought but he never once looked at her as disposable or replaceable. No other woman in Ollu could survive the sacrifices she had endured for her people. He loved her through the silence, and on days when tears would fall from her eyes for no reason, he would whisper in their tongue, “You are enough.”…

Now

Blinding flashes appear. Lightning. Deafening claps of thunder. The sky darkens as the grandmother wails. She has screamed at the sky once before… in another lifetime. An old man limps out of a hut, his cane guiding him. The grandfather. He coughs specks of blood onto his palm. He knows one of his own is gone. The rain tells him. His wife stands and faces him. The grief distorts into rage.

Then

Nakuti was veiled in dusky skin; skin that consumed the men of Ollu. They wanted her.  As she grew, her body filled out. Some men tried to win her but they were all the same. Nakuti entertained their interest and grew bored easily.

When Nakuti met Muyanze the rain was still coming: not as frequent but still present. Muyanze was different. He came into Ollu like the desert wind. He was unfamiliar and axiomatic. His and Nakuti’s love story was not complicated. It was the endless push and pull of lust and love in nature. He was a traveller with a thousand stories on the tip of his tongue. He came into the village as a spare part. He ran errands, and helped men chop down big trees with his muscular arms. His skin was the colour of splintered wood.

“Where are you from?” Nakuti found him swinging at a big tree in the forest. She had been sent to kill soft game to dry and store.

“Here and there. Everywhere and nowhere really.” Sweat glazed his skin, dripping down the sides of his face. She took in the sight of his broad shoulders. She shivered a little. She could not understand what drew her to him. The force of it scared her.

“That answers where you are and where you were but not where you are from,” he stopped swinging his axe and studied her, contemplating his answer.

“What does it matter, if I am here?”

“Baba used to tell me where a person is from will tell you a lot about who they become,” Nakuti moved closer, reaching out to touch his back. “You have scars that carry where you are from on your back.” He flinched as she made contact with his skin. He dropped the axe, turned around and grasped her wrist, making her gasp.  Fear. She called the sky involuntarily. The sun disappeared.

“My scars are my stories.” The clouds gathered together forming shadows of darkness. She felt his breath on her skin. “I tell my history only to those I trust to not use it against me.” It started to rain. He looked up, perturbed. He let go of her and the rain immediately receded. He cocked his head.

“What is your name?”

“Nakuti,” she breathed.  He laughed a deep low laughter.

“Ohh. You are the famous rainmaker’s daughter. No wonder the sky listens to you,” he looked her up and down. “The boys in the village have told me you are trouble.”

“Firstly, I am not merely the rainmaker’s daughter. I am a rainmaker. Secondly, I only reciprocate what I am shown. Your boys in the village may be the ones who are trouble.”

“Well then why don’t you make me some rain, rainmaker?”

“Why don’t you tell me where you are from, story teller?” Nakuti moved back and folded her arms across her chest. He laughed.

“That is a fair response. Okay rainmaker, I will tell you my story if you come to me again tomorrow,” Nakuti shrugged, acting unbothered but she knew she would return.

Muyanze’s eyes were beautiful. They were a lighter shade of brown than his skin and when he told a story, they turned almost green. She kept asking about where he came from. He only mentioned the Bahari people in passing.

“The way you can speak to the water in the air and the sky, the village of Oshena have those who can speak to the water in the ground and the sea,” she had never seen the sea but she felt it in him. Whenever he pulled her into himself and kissed her she tasted it too. She was clear. He was salty. Delicious. But like salt, he left her thirsty. Craving… needing more.

Nakuti figured it out. The pull to him. She was drawn to the water in Muyanze. She was ready to drown in him.

Now

“Is it worth it? She is gone! The only one I had! And she too has been taken from me! Is it worth it? Are these people worth it?” The grandmother screams and thrashes out. She staggers and stumbles. The villagers part from her madness.

“Quiet, woman!” He has never raised his voice at her but on this day he claims his right to his loss. He looks at the cot and releases a quivering breath. There she lies; still. How cruel are the ancestors? His child looks as beautiful as every other day she breathed life. It is supposed to be him, not her. He hears the soft sound and sees the baby on the ground. She is the reason.  He passes the grandmother whose eyes follow him bitterly. He walks to the baby whose whimpers have stilled.

He lifts the child and falls to the ground. He does not have the strength to carry both his and the baby’s weight. He holds the little one close to his chest. Her skin is fading. She must survive. For her mother’s sacrifice she must live.

Then

Muyanze left with the rain. He had become restless. When the sky first turned dry, nobody thought anything of it. The sky was unpredictable. Sometimes it roared. Tumbled threats. On other occasions it burned the sun’s fury. But this time it was different.

“Come with me?” he whispered in the dark. Nakuti thought about it. Everything within her propelled her towards him but she couldn’t.

“My father. He is sick. You know I love you but I cannot leave them,” Muyanze sighed at this.

“He has your mother. Can I not have you?”

“Without him the villagers do not have a rainmaker. I need to be here for them.”

“And who will be here for you Nakuti?” she felt the water sliding down her face.

“You could remain. We could have a family,” Even before he answered she knew it would not happen. Muyanze was not one to stay. He was a wanderer. He collected stories and moved on. She was simply a story he had collected.

“I do not belong here.”

She held his face and brought his forehead down until it touched her own, “Then go storyteller, and bring back sea-salt laced stories for me.”

He left on a night in the year of Nakuti’s twenty second born day. Ollu was in its third draught. Muyanze had not left Nakuti without evidence of his presence. Two weeks after he was gone she found herself with life inside her. Her mother was too preoccupied with her father’s health to notice.

Then the rumours started. Whispers behind village huts as she walked down the road. No one knew for sure who the father was. When Mama Nakuti heard the rumours and it was too obvious to hide she pulled her daughter aside.

“Strip!” They were standing outside her father’s hut.

“Excuse me mama?”

“You heard me. Remove those wraps you are wearing and let me see you,” Nakuti’s hands trembled. Her father coughed in the darkness of his room. Her mother reached out and roughly undid the knot that tied Nakuti’s loose ensemble together. Her breasts fell atop her rounding belly. There was no mistaking it. Her mother looked in disgust.

“We will call the medicine man. He will remove that thing.”

“Mama, no!”

“I am not asking Nakuti. You will not bring dishonour upon this family after everything that has been sacrificed for you. You cannot keep this.” She pointed at the protruding stomach.

“Mama I cannot give it up! This is all I have left of him!”

“Left of who? Is it that foreigner who came to our village? It is him, yes? Ollolo! What have I done to deserve this? If only your father had not been sick I should have known you are still too immature to think for yourself! You are naïve,” she shook Nakuti in anger. “How could you let him exploit you like that? Nakuti!” Nakuti trembled.

“You think it is a coincidence? Your pregnancy and the drought? The sky gods are cruel Nakuti! The ancestors have cursed us who are children of rainmakers. It is all a joke to them. We are pieces on their game boards; players to be used. You have just played right into their hands.” Nakuti moved away from her mother, off balance.

“Mama what are you talking about?”

“Your father filled your head with foolishness and I allowed it. No more. You must grow up on your own. So here it is; the truth. When there is drought, the sky must be appeased. It is not merely the rainmaker’s pleas to the water. There has to be sacrifice. The giving of a life to restore life. This is why the other children of my womb could not live. Your father allowed them to be sacrificed.” Mama Nakuti was crying now. Her voice grew softer.

“My babies. The lives inside me. I lost them. He allowed us to lose them for the village to live,” she reached out and felt Nakuti’s shoulder. It was burning. The sun was seeping into her pores. “Pendo, if you want to do your duty as rainmaker, if you want the village to survive and the drought to end you must sacrifice this unborn one,” Nakuti wrapped herself with her arms and shook her head.

“No. No. No. You are lying,” Mama Nakuti cradled her daughter in her arms and hushed her.

“It is okay my love. It is okay my Pendo. Tomorrow I will call the medicine man and we will put this all behind us. Tomorrow it will be over.”

That night before the medicine man came, Nakuti ran away.

Now

Trying to keep those who have left is like holding on to water. No matter how hard you try to grasp them, they slip through the spaces between your fingers.

The grandmother is guided by her rage. She has lost everything. They are blind. They cannot see it. The sky must have a sacrifice. She must have her daughter back. She looks at the child. The answer is patent.

Then

Nakuti felt the sharp pain slicing the inside of her womb. She lay prostrate on the ground next to the river. It carried the nostalgia of her past. Here was where her father would bring her to call the water. It was drying out. It could no longer be called a river. She chanted and prayed. She spoke to the skies.

“Save the life inside me. You are not as cruel as my mother thinks you. I know you are not. I have felt you inside me. I have called and you have answered. Now I am begging you.” Nakuti’s voice was hoarse. She had been screaming and cajoling the sky. Her throat was parched. She cried to the ancestors. She prayed fervently.

She felt detached from the water in the air. She could not sense it. When her womb clenched into tight fists she screamed. The baby inside was fighting to live. It also wanted to survive. “Take me!” She screamed. Something wet hit her arm. It cooled her burning skin. This was what it had been waiting for. “You want a sacrifice. Take me instead! Take me but leave my child.”

More drops. The rain was coming. She stood up and started walking towards the hill: towards her people. She slid on the mud and fell. She would not make it back to Ollu. She stripped her wraps and felt herself expanding. Her body was shifting and moving, creating space for the creature coming out of her.

“Take me instead.” She whispered, the strength draining from her muscles. She pushed one last time and heard the wail floating into the air. She pulled the child to her. The last thing she felt was the warm water leaving her, sliding between her thighs. It mixed with the fresh water falling from the sky.

She imagined it was salty. She tasted him on her lips. She wanted her child to know him. Whispered words… prayers. This one would always find the water. Her last breath released life.