Musu sat on a big rock. A beige bar of caustic soap stood vertically on the pile of dirty laundry at her feet, calling to her. She was late getting to this river, and she would be late returning to her home. Her head was full of backwards sojourns, of futile attempts to reimagine a past already written in permanent marker.
The sky was without clouds, a never-ending blue canvas that had the potential to soothe her scattered brain. There was a soft breeze, a natural fan for the sun’s heat. It was quiet where she sat. Clear water flowed over pebbles and rocks in a gentle downward trajectory until, far from her, the land dropped and water fell. Some people worked under the waterfall, offering soapy garments directly to the downpour, getting wet in the backwash and not caring; singing, laughing, risking loss of clothes, or worse, loss of footing.
Musu was beautiful. She wore her hair, whether twisted, braided or loose, always the same way: in a bun at the back of her head. If she had heavy items to carry, she simply wrapped a loose cloth in a circular fashion, making a small cushion that would sit snugly between her head and her load. This was the way she planned on getting all the clothes, once washed and dried, back to her home.
She had not always had to do such chores. She used to be head of her own household, in the capital city of Freetown, with help for this very sort of thing. She had been married to a man in the traditional law. They had grown up in the same small town of Fabaina in the Sorogbema Chiefdom, he, several years older than her. Their families had come together over food and prayer and acknowledged their union. They had knelt before each other’s parents in respect, honor and submission and they had received the blessings of their communities, their ancestors and their God. They were kin and their families were kin also. The bond was too interwoven and multi-faceted to be easily cast asunder, or so she had thought.
“Who needs signatures on a paper at a registry when we are encircled by the wisdom of the elders?” her husband had said. She did, it turned out. But she was young and did not know what she did not know. Three years into their marriage, her husband, the university lecturer, started to flirt with his student, a woman who knew, with certainty, the importance of ink on paper. Her name was Memuna Kallon.
Musu had seen Memuna once, by the post office. Memuna was standing close to Musu’s husband, and Musu registered the confidence of Memuna’s proximity. Memuna was wearing a tight fitting docket and lappa; it was beautifully crafted and made an hour glass figure for her even if she did not rightfully have one. The Ankara fabric was predominantly a mixture of blues but there was a shocking pink there too. Shocking pink little flowers scattered in. And because of the angle at which the sun shined on her, Memuna’s pink earrings sparkled. Her hair was braided with extensions and long, fake hair flowed across her shoulders and her back. When she ran her hands through that hair, again, there was pink, in a perfectly done manicure. She departed as Musu approached, and even in her walking away there was the precision of the well done woman, with a purposeful sway of hips and a pace that was just so. Musu’s husband informed Musu that the lady in pink was just a student asking when grades would be posted. But Musu knew it was not yet exam season at the university.
Musu hated that woman in pink and she spat every time she saw the woman in her head, as if spitting would expunge the image. But thinking about her husband or the woman who became his new wife changed nothing. Musu was still pregnant and cast out.
***
Her husband had broken her heart and she daily revisited the past to look for the moment when he had committed to do so. What did it matter if she found that moment? What could she have done differently?
Husband of Musu used to say that Musu was a good wife. She did the things a wife was supposed to do. But then he realized she was not “educated enough.” They had grown up together in Fabaina, always familiar with each other. They had attended separate secondary schools in the nearby city of Bo, she went to Queen of the Rosary secondary school for girls while he attended Christ the King secondary school for boys. They saw each other over the summers when they returned to Fabaina. Musu saw his eyes begin to linger at her sprouting breasts and she did not turn away. He wrote her a letter that started with “I am left astounded by the magnificence of your beauty.” She pretended not to be interested for as long as it took for him to show, to her satisfaction, that he was all in. By then she was in form three and he was in upper six, the second half of sixth form and the last year before university. He went on to Fourah Bay College, in the capital city Freetown, and still they continued their courtship. When he won a scholarship to get a one year masters in the United Kingdom, he wrote her every week, telling her stories of ice on the ground and students who addressed their teachers by their first name. Musu did not get the grades she needed to qualify for a seat at university so, opting to become a seamstress, she went to a vocation school to learn this trade. Once her husband-to-be returned, they married, and she soon left her Singer sewing machine in a wardrobe, neglected and forgotten.
It came to her as she sat on her rock and the banks of this river in front of laundry that was still undone; a moment when she should have registered her husband’s dissatisfaction. They were newlyweds and her husband had started his position as a lecturer at his alma mater. They had a bungalow of their own and were in the process of buying a used Datsun cherry. They went to visit an older, distant relative of her husband’s. Musu had never met this woman before. The woman was large, wore a flowing black and white boubou, and she had a “cut-neck” or skin folds to her neck that signaled she got the good cuts of meat in any dish and the hearty helping of rice or fufu to go with it. The woman was panting in the short walk it took to come greet them at the door, but this manner of breathing seemed somehow well placed, deserving, enviable, when it came from her.
“Good afternoon Ngo,” Musu had used the salutation that one gives any elder and had simultaneously lowered one knee and bowed her head in respect. She felt her husband’s hand at her elbow, his nails, though always clipped short, somehow dug into her as he pulled her up. He said nothing but his eyes had a shadow of disgust. He did not reprimand her. He did not say it belittled him to see her bow in this way. He did not say he considered himself to already be a big man and that his wife should already act as a big madam.
But when he was ready to throw her out of their home he had many things to say.
“I need a wife who can make smart small talk at a work gathering rather than cower and smile behind me,” he said.
“But you knew who she was when you married her,” the gathered elders had countered.
“Well, you can know a thing, but it is when you experience a thing sometimes that you realize it will not work,” he said.
Their living room was full. They had acquired many things in their three years of marriage. There was the honey-colored Datsun cherry in the driveway. There was a dog, a cat that had just had kittens, and there were several chickens in the backyard. There were appliances and couches and chairs. Family, on both sides, had come, traveling great distances by vehicle, foot or both, to make a case for reconciliation. The oldest relatives sat on chairs and couches with their canes leaning against their legs. The relatives who stood were men with potbellies on which they rested folded arms, their body language registering their displeasure that everything had come to this. It was hot because the ceiling fan was not made to cover this number of people.
Even with the brain power of all the people gathered, progress was not being made. Musu’s husband did not want to reconcile. For her part, Musu did not tell them that she feared it was because her husband had acquired something else that was new, and it was not a car or piece of furniture or an appliance. It was the affections of a woman who wore shades of blue highlighted by shocking pink. She had no proof. She did not even have a name for her suspected rival. But Musu still feared that her husband looked toward a different future and, try as they did, all gathered could not make him change the direction of his gaze; it was like watering a vegetable garden whose soil was only sand; water flowed right through it, carrying away seeds, never producing fruit.
People spoke in chorus until the loudest or the oldest voice chimed in.
“Let me tell you,” Musu’s husband had finally said, loud enough that the air parted to make a path for what he had to say. He sat forward and rubbed his temples as if it physically hurt him to have the thoughts he had. “Let me tell you,” he said again, quieter, sadder now. He carried all the aura of one who was about to tell an important story and the people took note, they made themselves quiet and made certain their ears and hearts were listening.
“I was at the lecturer’s common room one night and a man I did not know came in,” husband of Musu continued. “He did not know me. He did not know I was listening. Hush, hush he was talking, but I still heard.”
Then her husband looked directly at her, and Musu could see in his spirit that he had waited a long time to say what would come next. They sat side by side, in chairs pulled away from their dining room table. They faced their family, much the same way a couple, in happier times, would sit at their table for two at their wedding reception. But her husband pushed his chair further away from her now and shifted his body so he faced her. Musu knew her husband neither smoked cigarettes nor drank alcohol but the bloodshot eyes that glared back at her made him look like a chain-smoking alcoholic.
“He described you Musu,” he finally said, pointing a finger at her, as though she were a criminal he had previously seen up close, in the light of day, and now he was making a confident identification to the authorities. And the authorities were sitting and standing in front of them. “He described you completely,” he went on. “He said he had been having sexual relations with you for some time now.”
For what seemed to Musu like a long time, her husband’s sentence filled the space that was not already occupied by family or couches or appliances or walking sticks. It filled the orifices and indentations of people’s bodies, entering at the ears and causing new sounds, louder sounds, to emerge from many mouths, all at once. Musu’s vocal cords seemed paralyzed but her hand reached for the man next to her, her husband, her only love. He pulled away from her as though she was a leper, and she saw that he believed this lie to be true. That he was, in fact, certain of its truth. And he had not chosen to make this announcement in the quiet of their bedroom; he had not pulled her aside in their kitchen nook; he had not waited until after a dinner when they both sat in front of the TV. It was a sight to behold: the face and the body language of a man boiling over with loathing; and it was a thing to know: the dedication required to so skillfully prepare this offering of a complete public humiliation.
What was true was that Musu had never had sexual relations with the man from the lecturer’s common room; Musu had never had sexual relations with anyone other than the man she had married. Her husband could not be convinced of this fact. Husband of Musu declared he had not fathered of the child Musu carried. It was now a simple matter. Their marriage was over.
“May God grant you long life, so you will live to beg for forgiveness from this woman you are throwing away like she is not God’s own creation, like your own child is not growing inside her,” Musu heard her mother say when all else had been said by anyone who had anything to say.
Musu’s mother was a habitual snuff user, and she had held on to the finely ground tobacco between her right cheek and gum. She found it proper, now, with her parting blessing, to spit it out to the ground, to have it land at husband of Musu’s feet. The spittle then curdled up, gathering free dirt to itself, forming a small ball, like excrement from a constipated toddler. Musu’s mother looked at the ball, then at the man she had once called son, shook her head, and left with her daughter.
Fabaina welcomed Musu back. It was a town of old people as the young had sought better opportunities in the cities. Those days Musu cried all the time and ate nothing so that she became like a stick and the protrusion of her gravid abdomen seemed like an unnatural add-on. The fatigue of pregnancy made her sleep at odd hours and the sorrow in her heart was grateful for it. However, on the afternoon she went to the river to wash clothes, she had acquired some energy, the night before.
Just as she did every night, Musu swept the verandah, to clear away all the crumbs and debris that bore testimony to a day lived. With her growing belly it was getting harder to bend over and use the stick-less broom, a broom made from the dried ribs of palm tree leaves that were bundled tightly together by rope on one end. Musu kept one hand on her hip and straightened up more often, beating the end of the broom against her thigh so that the ribs stood at attention and covered more ground when she resumed the sweep. This is what she was doing when Mama Matu, her mother’s good friend, arrived. Mama Matu’s dog Coco, walked ahead of her, knowing her madam’s intended destination as though dog and owner were of one mind. Coco found her usual spot at the base of the steps and lay there.
Mama Matu was like an older sister to Musu’s mom. The two had supported each other through life’s difficulties and moved outside their comfort zones to do so. Mama Matu’s second husband had been a lazy man. So many times after working on the farm all day, Mama Matu would return home to find him in his hammock. “Where is my dinner?” he would ask. And she would make it. She had been a widow with young children and she understood the role this man, lazy though he was, played in her life: a man who could speak up for her, protect her from those who would exploit her. But, one day, when she returned from the farm her husband said, “Matu, this is my friend Brima. Fix us both some food.” Maybe it was because the rains had not yet come to water all the seeds she had planted and the futility of her labor weighed heavy on her heart. Maybe it was because the sun had beaten her back all day and sweat had formed puddles underneath her sagging breasts, drooping pendulums that they were from the babies that had sucked at them for years, from the gravity that had tugged at them since they emerged and from the absence of any type of bra to ever give them the required support. Maybe it was because there was a witness: Musu’s Mom was standing next to her, the two having walked together from their respective farms. Whatever it was, Mama Matu had said, “Ngo Jibril, no.” She called him “Ngo” because he was older than her but even in his youth he had been lazy, that is what everyone said.
“I work all day with no help. I rub pennies together to put food on the table. And now you bring me more mouths to feed? No. I cannot.” The words had fallen from Mama Matu’s lips with ease, like it was only just and fitting that they be said, and it was only just and fitting that Ngo Jibril should hear them.
Maybe it was because the sun bothered him when he stepped out of the shade. Maybe it was because he was hungry. Most likely it was because there were witnesses: his friend and his wife’s friend. So Ngo Jibril did something he had never done before: he raised up his dominant arm as far back as he could and came down with great momentum, open palm, toward Mama Matu’s face.
It was Musu’s mother’s hand that grabbed the lazy man’s wrist, stopping him, mid-act. She was half his age but she dared to stand up to her elder, to put her body between him and her friend, to have her eyes say, “You will not.”
She gripped the lazy man’s wrist so tightly that his digits started to go cold and, when she finally released him, he had to shake himself repeatedly to re-establish circulation. The lazy man looked at Musu’s mom and Musu’s Mom would not do what was expected of her. She would not look away. She stood directly in front of Mama Matu, arms stretched out wide and directed backwards. It was similar to how a mother instinctively braces her child when crossing a road full of drivers that do not know the meaning of speed limits and cars in such state of disrepair that they could not readily heed the summon of a brake. Musu’s Mom was a good friend, a best friend. As passers-by began slowing their pace, the lazy man understood this moment could gather crowds and build a narrative that could never be undone. So he just walked into the house, leaving his friend Brima to fend for himself.
Mama Matu had now come to stand with her friend in this matter of Musu. The two were in the living room as Musu finished sweeping. Because of her frequent pauses, chores like this were taking Musu longer. Musu found herself hearing what her mother and Mama Matu were saying. They were talking about her, about the road behind her and the road ahead of her. It was all quite muffled but Musu heard Mama Matu say, “She will have to become the person she is not.”
Musu could not stop thinking about those words, not when she went to bed, not when she woke up, not at the river doing laundry. She knew the person she was had led her to lay prostate before her husband, begging him not to abandon her. It had led her, at a friend’s suggestion, to seek the help of a self-proclaimed prophet who had also required that she kneel before him and who had made promises that could only come to pass if she gave him money she did not have. She felt sorry for the person she was. She saw in the way others looked at her, how like a wounded animal she must appear. It was as if there was a long jagged knife and her husband had pushed it with full force into her chest, twisted it this way and that before leaving it there. She did not want to be this person.
It was Mama Matu’s contribution of money that allowed Musu to buy her first batch of Ankara fabric for the business she started on her mother’s verandah. She revived her old Singer sewing machine and started sewing with the inspiration the baby inside her provided. She sewed baby clothes. She created miniature doket and lappas with matching pre-tied baby headties, she made baby girl boubous and agbadas and matching caps for toddler boys. Parents loved seeing their children so dressed up, majestic in the now, attired as if they had already accomplished all their parents dreams for them.
In the beginning, she created on order. But as business continued to go well, she started to pre-make outfits. She was holding such a little garment on her huge belly, carefully sewing in the label: “Made by Musu,” when water burst out of her and made a loud splash onto the floor. It was time. By days end Musu brought forth twins, two girls she named Gina and Sao. Because two of her loyal customers also, not too long after, added twins to their families, the rumor started.
Buy “Made by Musu” and you will be fertile.
If you have one child now, next time you might have two.
It helped that after the twins came she upgraded her logo to include two tiny stick toddler figures.
Musu took a lot of her profits and put it in an Osusu— a woman’s micro-financial collective that pooled funds from a group and allows for each woman to collect a lump sum of funds. With the money she got, she bought two new sewing machines and hired two apprentices. People in Fabaina began to understand that Musu had built a path for young people to learn a trade. There were more opportunities that came her way because she was doing a thing well and others wanted to be a part of it. By the time her twins turned five, it was not uncommon for people to make a stop in Fabaina, or to go out of their way, just for “Made by Musu” garments and the good luck it would bring to their families.
“Please, I have been a customer and bought a lot of clothes. Can I not greet your Madam?”
This particular lady had come from Freetown. She had indeed bought so many clothes, of different sizes and for different genders; it was unclear who exactly she was shopping for. Musu, by now, had a team of tailors and seamstresses working for her. They worked out of a three-bedroom of house she had rented for her business. The verandah displayed merchandise that lured customers in to view a bigger selection in the living room-turned-boutique. Musu herself had her office in the smallest room, in the back corner, with a desk underneath a small window. She always kept her door open with her whole being facing it and so she was always aware of what was happening on the premises. That is how Musu could hear the woman in the living room and how her employees could hear Musu.
“Let her come to the office, oh. Me, I love my good customers.”
She did not get up to greet the customer. Her chair had one short leg, short by a little bit. Permanently fixing the chair was on Musu’s to-do-list. In the interim, she had found the right amount of paper, folded the paper into the correct shape and placed it at the best angle to create a temporary solution. Standing up would put everything in disarray.
These days Musu had a big smile, the kind that made it clear that she was truly happy, the kind of smile you see in women who have arrived in a place of contentment, a place where things are as they should be. She offered that smile up now and spread out her arms as if to embrace the newcomer from her seated position. “My sister, you are welcome oh. Thank you for the business. You have found us in the middle of things,” she said, motioning to the assorted papers in front of her.
Maybe if she had stood up, she would have looked more closely at this woman, seen her face more clearly.
“Good afternoon, I wanted to commend you on all you have accomplished here,” the customer said.
“It is only by God’s grace,” Musa replied, glancing at all the merchandise the woman carried, added, “we are so grateful for your support.”
The woman stood in the doorway and would not move forward or backward, as though someone had spilled the evo-stik adhesive used to repair the soles of shoes and she had stepped in it.
“There is more.” The woman straightened her neck, looked straight at Musu, the way a model would look at her photographer. “Do you not know me?”
“Should I?”
Now the woman moved forward, walking haltingly, as though she would stumble, but she did not stumble. She went directly to Musu and knelt before her.
“How now? What is this? Who are you?” Musu asked, still not getting up. Whatever this was, Musu still wanted to maintain the balance she had painstakingly achieved with the well-curated wad of paper under the slightly short chair leg.
“I have come for a blessing,” the woman said. Sensing Musu’s impatience the woman hastened with her tale.
The woman told of her hopeless situation. Just last month, and for the fifth time, her womb had defied her, refusing to hold onto any baby; letting them slip out, slimy and unsustained. She had come to Musu seeking the blessing of fertility.
“You have my blessing,” Musu said, unaware that she was speaking loudly until an employee came to the door to ask if everything was alright.
“We are okay,” the woman said, but the man looked to his Madam for confirmation.
“No problem here,” Musu said to him. Then, turning to the woman, she said, “Rest assured you have my blessing, for fertility and for safe travels.”
“And if you have cursed me, I pray you lift the curse,” the woman said, crying, and now falling all the way to the ground, belly and chest on the floor, forehead at Musu’s feet.
Musu got up then and her chair fell over. She knelt down to raise the woman off the floor and soon their faces met. There was a knowledge that passed between them, an understanding that recognition was in order, that this was someone Musu should know, did know.
“My name is Memuna Senassie, nee Kallon.”
So this was what she looked like, up close, Musu thought. This is what she looked like today.
In Musu’s mind she had built her up to be so much more, a powerful stealer of husbands. This was the college graduate who knew how to catch another woman’s man and keep him. Musu could have laughed then, witnessing the difference between the real and the imagined. No shocking pink here, no Ankara prints, no earrings that dazzled the sun. She wore a plain grey dress, as if in mourning. Musu marveled, marveled at the benevolence of her God that made it possible for her painful past be so past that she no longer recognized its chief players.
“My quarrel was never with you,” Musu said. She moved away from Memuna, went to the chair, sought to fix it.
“But it should have been,” Memuna said. “I must tell you everything. If you know everything and forgive me, maybe then I will have a chance.” Instinctively, she touched her lower abdomen.
“My husband made a promise he chose to break. It was his choice,” Musu said.
“The man in the faculty common room, the man who knew all about you, and the one who they said you slept with. That man was my friend,” Memuna explained. “I set the whole thing up. I made people believe that the baby,” she had been speaking fast, as if not to lose her resolve to come clean, but she still paused, correcting herself and saying “the babies.” She seemed filled with a great sorrow, this version of Memuna. “I made people believe the babies, your babies, were the product of adultery.”
The women stood in silence, like a priest and parishioner in a confessional booth after an awful secret had been revealed. And in the quiet was the hope that absolution would be forthcoming.
“Then, if that is the case, I have you to thank for all I have now. The past is the past. I begrudge you nothing,” Musu said, cutting through the quiet.
It was not true. She begrudged her, not for what she had done then but for what she was doing now. Like a grave robber disturbing the rest of the dead, Memuna was digging up Musu’s buried wounds. She was inviting demons into the house Musu had made. And Musu felt all the unwanted memories come alive in her spirit; the undeserved shame, the begging for forgiveness for crimes she did not commit, the brokenness, the uncertainty, the hopelessness. Once again, she was that person she was not supposed to be.
“Well, if that is all…” she said.
“Please, please, you must forgive me,” Memuna said. Her hands were cupped in front of her, and the snout and spittle and tears from her face collected in them. She was like a beggar at the side of the road, coming closer, asking for the sustenance that would make this day livable.
Seeing this, Musu pulled herself back to her present. She made her voice comforting. She declined bitterness’ request to be her shepherd. She had enough deposits of joy to allow the type of generosity others might be incapable of.
“Memuna, I forgive you. I swear on the lives of my twins, I forgive you.” Musu said.
Memuna nodded. There was nothing more to say.
Watching Memuna walk away, with her back hunched, Musu felt at peace; like a newborn, satiated on breastmilk, dosing off to sleep.
************
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