Chapter 2 Visits

“Do you like digging up cassava? Is that fun for you? How about beating and grating it?”

My heart sank at Omba’s questions. I had been doing that exhausting work since my arms were first strong enough, and beaten for my failures long before that.

That morning, Omba acted like I had always lived with her. We ate breakfast together. She checked my bandages and injuries, finding no new problems. Two monorail villagers visited the dispensary, one walking up the footpath and the other coming down the stairs from the nearest monorail platform. I missed seeing the gondola, so it must have been very quiet. I did not recognize either of the villagers, but answered politely when they spoke to me.

After both villagers left, Omba handed me a hoe. “Dig up that cassava plant, the one there that is ripe.” She pointed.

The hoe was a little rusty, as if it had not been used recently. That did not make sense to me, as I could see signs of work in the cassava patch. Did someone else tend the patch for Omba, and bring their own tools?

I dug it up, and brought the whole plant to Omba, sitting on her front step. She patted the step beside her, and I sat. I separated the leaves and stalk and root, and passed the leaves to Omba when she held her hand out. She started pulling apart the leaves and dropping the pieces into a wide, shallow basket, and asked me the questions.

I looked down at my hands, covered in dirt, resting on the bundle of roots. “I do my work.” Please let Omba not give me stupid, heavy work all day, all night, every moment, as my mother did.

“LEGBA, process these cassava roots for me.” Omba put a hand on my arm, pressed down to keep me on the step.

A shiny white spider as long as my arm walked around the corner of the house. It stood on four legs, grabbed a root with the other four, and began passing it under moving mouth parts. Clean white cassava bits fell into the basket, as fine as any I had seen. The spider kept gnawing at the root until it was all in bits, then reached for another one. It worked fast!

“Abia, you are not afraid of my little helper?”

I had leaned forward to see the spider’s workings. “Is this a made thing? Not an animal?”

Omba’s smile stretched ear to ear. “Clever child! LEGBA, you can show your robots around Abia.”

The longer I watched the spider, the more questions I had. Where to begin?

Omba said, “I am pleased to see that you are not afraid of LEGBA’s robots, as some of your family are. I think fear of the robots is part of why your mother forbade you from visiting me. She is terrified of spiders; has been ever since she was a little girl.”

I heard clicks and clanks all around us. Spiders, more white spiders like the first, green and orange and mottled spiders, appeared in the jungle and under the canopy and in the cultivated patches. Some stood taller than a man. One I saw smaller than my hand, moving among the cassava plants. Another one had only six legs, but two blades like hoes or shovels in place of the front pair.

My head put things together. “All these robots work for you?” She had more helpers than my whole family back in the village!

Omba said, “For LEGBA. They are part of LEGBA, like your fingers are part of you.”

“So you do not need me to help you. Not really.” My great-aunt had just been nice. I had no value here. I would have to leave. I would have to find work somewhere else.

Omba shook her head. “Abia, we are family. You are welcome to stay here as long as you like. I do not keep you for the work you can do, I keep you so you can learn and grow.”

She waved one hand, taking in the monorail overhead, the planted fields, the footpath in front of us, her house at our backs. “This is a good place to ask all your questions. This is a safe place; I and LEGBA keep it so. And as you have so very many questions, you should plan to stay here for a long time.”

She glanced at the spider robots around us. “If you can help LEGBA’s robots with some of the chores, that is good for you to keep active. Better if you help me with work the robots cannot yet do. I think you will learn more from that.”

Learn. At that word I felt hungry again, not in my gut, not for food, but an aching in my chest. I sat and thought. My mother had me running at all hours, doing chores, earning my keep, she called it. Punished me for asking questions, called it wasting time. When my older sisters married and moved into their own homes, all my mother’s chores fell to me.

As if my thoughts had called out, at that moment my oldest sister led my mother’s sister, very pregnant, out of the jungle trail leading to the dispensary. My sister looked up and saw Omba and I, and frowned. My younger aunt paused for breath, her hands against her lower back. She looked up at Omba and smiled.

Omba smiled back and waved. “I have been expecting you.” She stood up and handed me the basket of leaves, whispered, “Stay here until I call for you.”

My sister and my pregnant aunt followed Omba into the dispensary.

I sat and watched the white spider rasp away at the roots, one after another. Not really a spider. Eight legs, yes, but the front parts not a mouth for eating. More like many small knives that cut the cassava but did not mix in spit, and did not keep any of it. A tool that did a job, fast and well.

I put Omba’s basket down on the step and watched the other robots. Tending the cassava patch, climbing trees, carrying water, cutting leaves, digging roots, delivering the useful bits to Omba’s basket on the step beside me. I craned my neck to follow one of the biggest robots as it hung under the canopy overhead, doing something I could not see to the long rails between pylons.

Who was bossing all this work?

Omba called from the dispensary, “Abia. Come here, please.”

I put off my shoes and stepped into the dispensary as my pregnant aunt adjusted her clothing. My sister looked at my clean feet and sniffed. Her own were not clean at all.

Omba was saying, “All looks well, as you have seen. A good heart, as you have heard. You are growing a healthy child, if all continues to go well.” Omba handed over a large twist of paper. “Take these, one each day with food, to help your baby grow true and whole.”

My oldest sister glared at me. She had always been the bossy one.

“You must come back with us. Our mother is worried about you!” She grabbed my arm, exactly where he had left bruises. I flinched.

Omba said, “Take your hand off Abia. Just because you are a mother now, does not make you Abia’s mother.”

I moved out of my sister’s reach and stood behind Omba. I would not be dragged back to my mother’s village. My sister glared at me again, but did not dare to argue with our great-aunt.

Omba said, “Now, tell me about your husband’s injuries.”

“He told me he had a work accident. I washed the wound. I know what those look like. He does not work with little knives.” Her eyes flicked in my direction, then away. “I put medicinal leaves over the clean wound and wrapped it up tight. It was still bleeding a little when I left early this morning. He says he cannot work, and lies around moaning and demanding more beer.”

She stood a little taller, one hand on her belly. “If he loses the hand, he will be half a husband to me. What can I do so that he keeps that hand, and can use it for work?”

Omba stood still for a long moment. “Only for your sake, niece. I do not do this for him.”

With LEGBA’s assistance, she assembled a small packet of bandages and ointments and a paper twist of pills. “Clean the wound again, and put this ointment on it and in it. Bandage the wound. Change the bandage each day.”

Omba drew one finger up her opposite forearm, from wrist to elbow. “If you see a dark line start from the wound and grow up his forearm, bring him to the dispensary. That line means he will die without serious medicine. If he says no, and goes to the sorcerers for magic, he will die.” She shrugged. “You will be without a husband, but you will also be without his whining and nagging.”

Pregnant auntie laughed. Sister’s eyes flew wide and she opened her mouth.

Omba spoke first. “Quiet, child. You are here to learn what it means to be a wife and mother. You have nothing to teach any of us, not yet. Close your mouth and think on what we have said and done.”

Pregnant auntie said, “Thank you, Omba. I will do all as you say.” She leaned forward and hugged Omba. “Come, niece. We cannot waste time if we are to be home before dark.” She waited for my sister to leave the dispensary ahead of her. I stayed where I was.

My sister’s anger. My pregnant auntie’s unwillingness to meet my eyes, to say a word in my direction. This man had made trouble between me and my family. If I went back to my mother’s village it would not get any better. I was outcast already.

Omba said, “Well, that could have been worse.”

I blinked.

She washed her hands and dried them. “Come, Abia, think it through. We learned that he is not well enough to walk here himself. His wife is worried about him, but mostly for herself and her baby. She said exactly nothing to you. She does not blame you for her husband’s injury, but she cannot be friendly toward you, either. Your sister has been told by your mother to bring you home, probably because there is no one there to do all her chores.”

I thought over her words. Sighed. “I hear you. Yes, I think what you say is true.”

Omba gathered supplies and tools into a shoulder bag while she spoke. “No one cared to send a larger group to drag you back. No one cared to try to punish you for cutting him. He is telling lies to cover for his own actions, but everyone can see the truth.”

She turned to me and held out the bag. “Carry this for me, please.”

She put her hands on her hips and looked around the dispensary, everything clean and put away again. “Abia, I think you are safe here at least until he is healthy enough to walk here on his own.”

Omba gestured for me to follow her and stepped out of the dispensary. “And there is always the chance that he will come to his senses, fool that he is, and stay as far from you as he can.”

I snorted. “And monkeys might learn to make beer.”

Omba smiled and shook her head, but said nothing. We stopped at her house long enough to put away the basket, now filled with the robot’s cassava bits.

Omba led us south on the red-brown footpath, the only ground in sight not covered in plants. The cultivated patches on both sides of the monorail grew a dense triple canopy of trees, shrubs, and low plants sharing the bright sunlight. The monorail canopy shaded the footpath now that the sun slanted to the west.

In my mother’s village, hard-packed earth surrounded every building. Only the cultivated plants showed green between the jungle edge and the dirt road. Dusty and hot and no place to rest.

A breeze moved up the line of the monorail, stirring leaves and blending the scents of green growing things, cooling my face. I tried to remember even one good reason to go back to my mother.

We walked past house after house, most tucked under the monorail between the pylons and shaded by the canopy. Some stood alone in the fields or at the edge of the jungle.

“Hello! Are you awake?” Omba called as we came up to a house with brightly colored cloth shading the windows.

“Omba! Come in, come in.”

I followed Omba inside the house and blinked. Blinked again. So many bright colors everywhere my eyes looked, all soft shapes, nothing flat and dull to say, here is a wall. A bee inside a sunlit flower might see the same.

“Cousin Abia! You have grown. It is good to see you again.” Warm arms wrapped around me. I hugged her back, trying to remember.

Omba said, “Get off that foot, you know better.”

“Just for a moment. It is not every day I see a long-lost cousin.” The large soft woman sat back among the nest of pillows and smiled at me again. “Abia, sit, sit.”

I looked around again and saw that most of the soft shapes on the floor were pillows. I picked one shaped like a red blossom and sat, carefully. Fleur, that was it!

I smiled and said, “Thank you, Cousin Fleur.” She beamed.

Omba said, “Let me see that foot. How much have you been walking on it?”

Fleur laughed and said, “Only when I have to.”

Omba sat on another pillow and lifted the bandaged foot into her lap. As the bandages unwrapped, a small, clean wound appeared. “Hmm. Healing well. No sign of infection. Good that you keep your tools clean.”

Fleur winked in my direction. “Silly me, stepped on my own scissors.”

Now I could see baskets of cloth and thread spools and wood and metal tools, most of them within her reach. On the walls, more cloth draped from hooks and frames. Some of the cloth held colorful needlework. I stared at one stitched picture of a lizard, all vivid colors and detailed textures made in thread. Wow.

“This is some beautiful art.”

Fleur said, “Why, thank you, dear.”

A small spider robot stepped out from behind a basket. Every segment of the spider’s legs and body shone in a different color, ruby and emerald and sapphire and amber and more. It held up a wooden hoop with cloth stretched across it, needles and colored thread stuck in it. Fleur took the hoop, and did her needlework as we talked.

I said, “Your spider is pretty.”

Fleur chuckled. “LEGBA makes the robots special, if they do one job or work for one person for long enough. This one suits me.”

Omba finished rewrapping Fleur’s foot. She packed her things into the shoulder bag and relaxed on her floor pillow. She showed no sign of leaving. I relaxed a little, too.

I asked, “Does everyone who lives here use robots?”

Omba glanced at Fleur, who raised her eyebrows as if to say, Well? Omba said nothing.

Fleur shrugged and said, “Abia, LEGBA does a lot for the villagers who choose to live in the concession. The robots are one way it helps us.”

I said, “Concession? I do not know that word.”

“LEGBA controls everywhere the monorail runs, and a thousand paces to either side. The concession is a promise that the government will not interfere with it. LEGBA has rules, different from the government rules. We like LEGBA’s rules better than the government’s, so we live here.”

I could feel my forehead wrinkling as I tried to think this through. “It seems so much nicer here. Why does my mother not live here, too?”

Again that look passed between Omba and Fleur. The silence stretched.

Finally Omba said, “I wish I knew. She gets upset if things are not simple. She reaches for a simple explanation, and the simplest one in her mind is sorcery.”

I thought about that. “Once I heard a man call her beer sorcery. I think he was joking, but she threw him out, and threw a pot at his head. It still has a dent. The pot, I mean.”

They laughed.

Omba said, “Unfortunately, she is not the only one. Others like the explanation of sorcery for anything they do not understand. They fear it, they get angry about it, they want to destroy it.”

I said, “Some of the villagers do not understand much.”

Fleur said, “Yes. Almost everything about LEGBA looks like sorcery to them. They would like to destroy LEGBA.”

Omba said, “So, one of LEGBA’s rules is, no accusations of sorcery. Not within the concession.”

I said, “And my mother thinks LEGBA’s robots are sorcery?”

Fleur snorted. “Your mother’s part of the family thinks anything more complicated than a ladle is sorcery. And they are suspicious of the ladle.”

Omba smiled and shook her head, but said nothing.

Fleur said, “Abia, you have family here. You have other relatives, too, farther down the monorail. Your mother chose to cut herself off from us. You don’t have to live with that. You can make your own choices.” She made a tsking noise and picked out a few stitches.

***

We stayed and talked for a long time. Omba did not seem to be in any hurry to leave. Fleur worked with her needles and thread and cloth, her colorful robot spider fetching and carrying for her.

I met Fleur’s short, round husband Mokolo when he brought their baby daughter in for feeding and changing. When I looked at his stained fingers, Fleur explained that he runs the dye shop next door. “Too many strong smells to have in the same place as a kitchen, but he’s close enough when I call.” She laughed, and Mokolo joined in. An old joke, shared many times, worn comfortable.

A dye shop. Next door to an embroiderer and seamstress. Why did I feel so surprised? It was an arrangement that made sense. So much about the monorail and the villages under it made sense. So why did my head hurt a little?

Omba and Fleur talked about the people and villages farther up the monorail line. Both of them made a point of asking me if I remembered someone, how they connected in our family tree, some important event. A few times a dim memory came to me, became clearer. Most times I had no idea who they were talking about.

My headache did not go away, but it did not get any worse. Omba and Fleur and Mokolo talking, each of them drawing me in to the conversation. Quietly going about the necessary business of caring for the baby, doing the needlework, going back to the dye pots. No shouting or arguing, only gentle laughter. It could not have been more different from my mother’s household. I had no idea that multiple adults could do a household’s work without yelling at each other or at the children. I could get used to this.

***

On the footpath outside Fleur and Mokolo’s home, Omba said, “We could walk home from here, but I think it is time you rode the monorail. We will walk a little further away, then call for a gondola to carry us home.”

I said nothing. I am sure my eyes were very wide.

As Omba had promised me, it was less than five hundred paces to the next monorail pylon with a platform and spiral stairs. As we climbed, Omba first, me following with her bag, I looked at the railing and the steps and the small pylon they wrapped around. They looked identical to the first platform Omba had shown me. Was every pylon exactly like every other pylon? How were they made so?

At the top of the stairs, I looked again up and down the monorail line. I wondered how far I would be able to see on a clear day, just after a rain washed the haze out of the air. The pylons marched off into the mist, one after another in a perfectly straight line. I had never seen anything like it before coming to live with Omba. The narrow red-brown dirt road past my mother’s village meandered around every dip or rise in the ground, so that you could not see straight as far as I could throw a rock.

Omba watched me. I wondered where she learned to be so patient.

I said, “Omba, I am ready.”

She smiled. “Then call LEGBA.”

“Call? I thought you would do that!”

“You have your LEGBA phone. You have heard me speak with LEGBA. Now you do it.”

I shook a little. “What do I do?” I remembered some of the things the village sorcerers would do, especially if people were watching.

Omba said, “Just talk to your phone. Call LEGBA by name, be polite, ask it to carry us home.”

I held up my phone on its bright red cord. Cleared my throat. My mouth had gone dry. “Hello LEGBA. Uh. LEGBA, please carry Omba and me home, uh, to Omba’s dispensary. Please.” What else should I say? Was I forgetting something?

The phone spoke, “Hello, Abia. Gondola arriving in three minutes.”

I dropped the phone, and the red cord tugged at the back of my neck. I grabbed the phone again and held it close to my lips. “Thank you, LEGBA.”

“You are welcome, Abia.”

“Th—” Omba put her hand between my mouth and the phone before I could finish the words thank you again.

Omba said, “Abia, LEGBA is very polite, so it will keep talking with you as long as you talk to it. You need to know when to stop.”

I giggled. “Sorry!” Now I sounded like a foolish little girl. Would Omba take back the LEGBA phone?

I watched for the arriving gondola in the direction of Omba’s dispensary. But the gondola glided up beside me silently from the other direction. I jumped in surprise. Omba just looked at me.

The gondola did look like a big basket, as Omba had said. The handle reached up to the pylon rails, the bottom of the basket just a hand-span above the platform. The opening of the basket faced us, with a seat visible to left and right, and a top like a second basket set above a row of slots so we’d be able to see.

Omba said, “Take the left seat, so you’ll be facing forward. That’s best, for your first trip.”

I took hold of the handle built into the side of the opening and stepped up into the gondola. I started to turn around to sit down, and found Omba’s bag in my way. I fumbled with the bag for a moment, then got myself, the bag, and the gondola sorted out and sat down with more of a thump than I had planned. I held Omba’s bag on my lap and tried not to move.

Omba said nothing, just stepped into the gondola and sat down opposite me, as if she had been using the monorail her whole life. I wished I could move that confidently.

After a moment, Omba said, “Well? You called it, you have to tell it to go.”

“What do I say?”

“Keep it simple, but polite.”

I held up my phone.

Omba said, “It can hear very well. You don’t have to hold the phone up, just speak clearly.”

I dropped my phone again, and the red cord held it against my chest. “LEGBA, please take us home now. Thank you.”

The gondola spoke in LEGBA’s voice, “Gondola accelerating in three, two, one.” The gondola began to move. I grabbed for the handle on my side of the doorway. Omba sat calmly without grabbing anything. The gondola sped up until a man running on the footpath below could not have kept pace with us. It spoke again, “Estimated time of arrival at the dispensary, five minutes.”

The breeze in my eyes made me blink. A low hum came from the roof of the gondola. Each pylon made a swoosh noise as we passed. On the other side, the trees whipped by faster than I could identify them. I had so many new questions! Omba watched me carefully.

I said, “Is anything wrong?”

Omba nodded once, as if to herself. “Some people don’t like moving so fast. It can get messy. But you seem to like it?”

“Oh, yes! This is fun!”

Omba smiled. “LEGBA, maximum speed, please.”

The gondola said, “Accelerating.”

I whooped as the gondola sped up, faster than a bird. But I did not let go of the handle.

The ride was over too soon. It did not seem like five minutes to me.

The gondola said, “Decelerating in three, two, one.” I rocked a little in my seat as the gondola slowed and stopped over the platform.

Omba stepped out of the gondola and steadied it for me. Waited for me to step out beside her. I stayed where I was.

I should keep going. Stay on the monorail, ride it as far as it could carry me, as fast as it could go. Far, far away from my mother, my sisters, the husband of my pregnant aunt. He would come for me just as soon as he could. He would never give up. The look in his eyes, the stink of his breath, the weight of his body. As if he loomed over me now, there in the gondola.

Omba’s hand on my arm brought me back. She said, “Abia, we’re home now. You can get out.”

I shook my head. Held on tighter to the gondola’s handle. “I should go.”

“Go? Where?”

I looked down at my feet. “Far. Anywhere, far away. I should go.”

Omba sighed. “This again. Abia, dear one, he is far from here, laid up in bed and pestering his wife with complaints and demands for drink. He will not be coming here any time soon.”

“But he will come! Sooner or later, he will come for me!”

“So? We will deal with him then. But now, we are at my home, your home now, too, and there is much to do.”

“I cannot think of anything else!”

“Abia. He has already taken from you your mother’s home, your mother’s family. How much more will you let him take?”

“Huh? I do not understand.”

“He is not here now.”

“But it feels like he is!”

“Is that something he does? Or is that something you do?”

I did not expect Omba’s question. I had to think about it.

Omba interrupted, “Do not say sorcery. That is what your mother would do.”

I shied away from the truth of her warning. Could Omba see inside my head?

Omba shook her head. “It does not take any special powers to predict what your mother would do or say. She has not changed her way of thinking since she was much younger than you are now, and I watched over her twice as long as you have been alive. I know her well. And you grew up in her house, with no other adult to push back against her ways, no compromise between equals. That shapes children like your oldest sister, who acts like your mother in every detail.”

Omba drew a deep breath. “So. For yourself, alone. Not for your mother. These fears of him, do they come from him? Or from within yourself?”

I bit my lip. Thought again. “He is not here.”

“True.”

“He is not a sorcerer, to work his will at a distance.”

Omba laughed, “No, he is very much not a sorcerer.”

“But I do not want to be afraid! I do not like it!”

Omba spoke softly. “He frightened you very much. You were brave, and did what you had to, to get away safely. But your body remembers your fear, and brings it up again fresh, even when that does not help you.”

I felt the truth of what Omba said. Tears dripped down my face. “Will it ever stop? Will I ever not be afraid?”

I searched Omba’s face for a sign of hope. She looked so serious. “Abia, his attack on you drove you to a deep place in your mind, a place many people never reach. That place has much power, power to help you survive, but also power to reach out for you and pull you out of the here and now.”

“I do not understand.”

Omba said, “This is all very new to you. But I tell you, Abia, you can learn to control this power. You can learn to sense it coming for you, to keep from being pulled back into that deep place, to keep your hold on the here and now. Use that power as you choose, for your own best interests. You can do this, I promise you.”

She held my eyes. I looked back into hers, saw her concern for me. I had never seen that look in my own mother’s eyes.

I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and stepped out of the gondola. “I will try.”

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