Temple of My Familiar (32 page)

“After her rather long, detailed, and, I felt, extremely patronizing instructions to the woman, who heard her out with bowed head and averted eyes, Nzingha turned her face up to be kissed, which Ola did with a resounding smack, and which she endured.

“‘My two Nzinghas!’ he cried, expansively, even flinging out his arms in his joy. Didn’t he feel a trace of uneasiness or remorse, I wondered afterward, introducing us this way. ‘At last you meet!’

“Coolly, for she was a woman used to welcoming foreign dignitaries, she extended her hand. We were exactly the same color, a rich, coffee-bean brown. I took it in my own.

“As she looked at me, and then at my mother, then at her father, beaming down on the two of us, a slight frown formed between her brows.

“‘Ah,’ said Ola, whose other nickname, ‘the Quipper,’ given him by the people, was well earned, ‘the frown of recognition!’

“We were both clearly puzzled. I looked at my mother. She was smiling, composed. Obviously she had expected something like this. Yes, I thought, it would have been highly unlikely for my father not to have married, not to have had other children. He was an African. Perhaps he married many times, had many wives, many children. The thought that I might have half a dozen siblings took possession of me. How did I feel about this? I didn’t know. Meanwhile, my hand clung to Nzingha’s, as hers did to mine. I felt I was looking into a mirror as an African-American (in jeans and loose blouse, sandals), and the mirror was reflecting only the African.

“‘You are sisters, my daughters,’ said our father. ‘Fanny Nzingha, meet Nzingha Anne.’ This was his big surprise, and it pleased him, as all surprises, parties, unexpected verbal exchanges with people on street corners did.

“She was first to open her arms, to embrace me, which she did carefully, as if we were both breakable, and wrapped in tissue.

“A moment later, after pleasantries about our visit to the country and compliments to my mother on her stylish blue pantsuit, Nzingha excused herself and moved off regally down the hall. Later, she told me she went to the restroom, sat on the toilet, and cried.

“She had tried to be everything for her father: beautiful, a quick-minded student without discipline problems, interested in restoring the country’s culture; she’d even married early in the hope of giving him grandsons. And then she discovered that she could not have been everything to him anyway, because he had my mother, an educated woman, and he had me, a beautiful and educated daughter. We had come before her and her mother; not so much in terms of affection, but in terms of time.

“I didn’t get it.

“Patiently, one night over drinks in her cozy and colorful apartment, near the Ministry of Culture, where every wall was hung with weavings and paintings by the women of the villages, Nzingha explained it to me.

“We had eaten, and she had put her two boys, my young nephews, to bed. I could see that caring for them wore her out and that Metudhi was no help. He had eaten and muttered something about a meeting, as he made for the door.

“‘We are trying to bring back to people’s consciousness that it takes two parents to raise a child,’ she said, wearily kicking off her shoes and sinking onto the couch. ‘It is only one of many beliefs the Africans have lost. In the old days what is happening now throughout the country would have been unthinkable; men are giving these women children, and that is all they give. Not a cent do they give for food or clothing or education. It is a scandal. Even men like Metudhi think it is enough to provide financial assistance; after they put down a part of their paycheck, they are out the door. Men who pay something,
anything
, are considered the
good
men. Every woman wants to get hold of one of these gems.’

“Her accent was charming. The way she said even this grim thing made me smile.

“‘Yes, it does no good to cry, I suppose,’ said Nzingha, ‘yet there are times when that is just the way I feel. And I feel so
frustrated,
because the men can always run on and on about the white man’s destructiveness and yet they cannot look into their own families and their own children’s lives and see that this is just the destruction the white man has planned. Meanwhile, the women are starting to crack from the white man’s blatant success and the lack of their men’s support.’

“‘The same things are happening to us in the United States,’ I said, ‘only, there it is happening to everyone; there are many more white women and children receiving public assistance than there are black ones, for example. Though the media and the government try to make it look otherwise.’

“‘Men are mangled by the system, as we are,’ said Nzingha.

“‘Yes,’ I said. ‘The difference is that they help create it. At least the part of it that oppresses women.’

“‘That is true,’ she said. ‘And I learned this from the life of my mother.’

“Nzingha went about the room and switched off the lights. ‘You haven’t seen the moon until you’ve seen it in Africa,’ she said, and, sure enough, there began to rise a giant yellow moon that soon filled the window and then the room with its cool yellow light.

“‘My mother worshiped the moon,’ she said, thoughtfully, sitting down again. ‘She had since she was a child; and she could see in moonlight as clearly as most people can in sun. Ironically, this was to mean she would grow up to become a great guerrilla fighter, always the one who volunteered to go on missions at night. But I am getting ahead of my mother’s story. Do you want some more coffee?’ she asked, pouring a bit more into my cup. ‘We grow this, you know,’ she said, raising her cup, a booster of her country’s products in all settings.

“I was enchanted by the cup, hand-thrown, a brilliant cobalt blue, with small crocodile heads decorating its sides. I turned it around and around in my hands while my sister talked.

“‘My mother,’ said Nzingha, ‘was from the village, the bush. She was illiterate, superstitious. That is to say she did not speak anything other than her own language and she knew no other ways than those of her own people. She did not know English or Christianity,’ she added pointedly. ‘When the repression became unbearable, she ran away and joined the Mbeles, the African “underground.” She was a brilliant fighter—her code name was Harriet, as in Tubman; doesn’t it make you smile?—but not a scholar or thinker or even, really, a social person. She was very quiet, solitary, spoke more eloquently with her actions than with her words, which were very few and uttered as if she were weary. She saved my father’s life, she saved many people’s lives, but she was lost without a gun in her hand or an explosive device on her belt. After the people took back the country, there was little for her to do, since the traditional society no longer functioned. Or so it seemed to her. My father married her while they were still outlaws; she became pregnant with me between battles. With the overthrow of the white regime, my father’s stock rose very high, because he’d been partially educated in Western ways by the missionaries. He was sent off to Sweden to further his studies. They even tried to send him to Russia! Oh, he went to Russia but came back after two weeks. Only Ola would have done that, come back so soon. The young students we send today are too afraid to miss an opportunity like that; no matter how cold it is, or how, sometimes, uncivil to them the Russians are; they wouldn’t think of coming home before getting what they’ve gone for. And this is good; the country needs the skills they learn there. However, too cold, Ola said. His brain and every other part froze.’ She smiled. ‘The government sent him to Sweden. He was gone several years, studying and learning for the good of our country. My mother took care of me, and waited. Right there in the little hut he left her in, the hut she’d erected herself. And when he came back, he no longer remembered how she’d saved his life or how heroic she was. If he did remember, it was in that way that writers remember things, as if they happened to someone else, and you needn’t be bound by
the facts
.’ She paused. ‘Sometimes I try to think what we must have looked like to him after his years in Sweden. Sweden was very cold, too, Ola said, but the women were beautiful and warmhearted.’

“Nzingha paused, placed her hands together under her chin, rubbed them as if
they
were cold, and frowned slightly. ‘My mother had no education but she was extremely psychic,’ she continued, ‘even politically psychic, which is rare. She knew that no matter how my father studied, emulated people of other cultures, or otherwise shaped a “modern” self, he would always come into conflict with the government here, even though it was this government that sent him and other young men abroad. It was a government she had helped—through immense risk and personal sacrifice—put into power, but that, once in power, conveniently forgot she existed. This was true of all the women: they were forgotten. This was before our men had any idea there might be a different way of relating to women, other than the one they traditionally practiced. Of course, men always suspend traditional behavior during wartime. A woman was for breeding, a woman was for sex, a woman—well, in our language the word for woman is the same as for seed granary. Women like my mother were so angry, and so hurt. And my father came back from Sweden and looked at us. I remember it clearly, though I was only five or six years old. He came in a big car, with a driver. He brought presents. For my mother he brought a china tea set, bright blue and white, with a quilted cozy, and to me he brought an enormous blonde doll named Hildegarde.

“‘Our hut was neat and, I thought, very pretty, for my mother had painted it the traditional way, with bold colors and geometric designs, but she had gone further, and painted giraffes all over it—small giraffes that seemed to float through the abstract spaces.

“‘My father looked pained. He and my mother sat on a bench in the yard and talked in Olinka, but every once in a while he said something in a different language—English, I later realized—which only the driver seemed to understand. It was as if he spoke it for his benefit; the driver had also been someone my father had known during the emergency. I played with the big blue-eyed, yellow-haired doll, and I could tell that my mother was also enchanted with it—she’d never had a doll—much more than with her tea set. We’d never seen anything like it. She’d seen white people, but not many, and only when she was in the process of trying to blow up their buildings or power stations; neither of us had seen anything so white and splendid as this doll.

“‘I noticed they looked over at me from time to time, and that my father seemed displeased.

“‘Later, I realized he was displeased because of the number of holes in my ears—three in each ear—and because I wasn’t wearing a blouse. But none of the women or children wore blouses for everyday. What was the point? Everyone knew bare skin in the humid climate was more comfortable.

“‘He came regularly after that. He was writing plays against imperialism. At that time the government really loved him, and, basking in their favor, he seemed quite content. He was at least confident that his work could be an instrument for change, a change his government would encourage, applaud, and, most of all, attempt to implement. He was a childless man, though, as far as his friends in government knew; at least, it was not definitely known he was married, and no doubt this was beginning to bother him. Each time he came and left, my mother was sadder and sadder. We’d always slept on the same mat, and sometimes in the night I’d wake up and she’d be crying. My mother was the kind of woman who could fight in the mountains or the caves or gorges for months, even years, alongside the men and blow up power stations, and at the same time accept, with obvious gratitude, the shelter of her five-year-old’s arms in the middle of the night.

“‘My father came one day and took me and Hildegarde away. My mother didn’t fight to keep me with her, for which I blamed her. She told me it was for my own good—of course I couldn’t see that!—and that I must study hard and learn to be of service to our country. She was a matriot, and loved our country, though she thought the men who ruled were all gesture and no effect.’

“Nzingha stopped suddenly and rubbed her eyes, which had begun to shine with unshed tears. ‘We left her there in the village to rot,’ she said finally. ‘I missed her terribly, at first. I didn’t know my father at all, and it was disconcerting to realize, once we arrived in the capital, that everyone else did. That he was famous and popular and lived in a big house to match the big car. He put me in a boarding school run by white nuns, some of the more curious of the citizens of our new country, which I now saw had, apparently, as many white people as black. But that was only in the cities. At that time my father was blind to the contradiction of putting me with the nuns, or pretended to be. He wanted to be sure I learned to speak English. The future of our country depended on the ability of its citizens to be at least bilingual, he always said. This view cut no ice with my mother. Once, on a rare visit I made to the village to see her, I said a few words in English to her, and she went into a rage, throwing things—not that there were very many things in the hut to throw—and stamping about. I thought she would attack me. She was drinking the home-brewed beer that she made to sell and smoking a cigarette. She was so unlike the mother I had left! It was really amazing. Her eyes were red, her hair matty and wild. There was a coarseness in her mannerisms and a slackness in her expression I’d never seen and never thought my gentle mother could have. Nor did I understand yet about changes in the personality wrought by grief. She was slovenly, unconcerned. The rain had eaten away a corner of the hut, and the giraffes, which she used to repaint each year at the beginning of the dry season, had faded, so they seemed to be ghost animals, shadows, floating round and round the sides of the hut.

“‘I went back only once after that, while she was still alive. I went, but I wouldn’t get out of the car. She came out to see me and sat on a stool beside the car door. I handed her some things my father sent. One of them, I remember, was a book about the indigenous culture of Cameroun; there were lots of photographs of the people’s houses—which were made of mud, and decorated colorfully—of their clothes and musical instruments. She was immediately interested in it, and actually looked at more than the first page before tossing it listlessly to the ground. She had that puffy, slatternly, dissipated look people get when they have no way of seeing themselves. I don’t think she even owned a mirror. I didn’t know
this
woman.