Yefon: The Red Necklace (26 page)

The commanding bark from an unexpected thunderclap interrupted my thoughts, causing me to shiver, and I looked around. The nimbus clouds in the sky were parting and it was beginning to rain. I laughed as I remembered how Kadoh had told me that the rains were the pee of the gods. I stuck my tongue out, lifted my head up, and tasted the cold hard rain on my tongue. It tasted like
ngwv
∂
v
on Christmas. Small hailstones fell and an ice block melted on my tongue as one hailstone hit my head hard. Ouch! I laughed playfully, still refusing to be intimidated by these cold objects.

The
calabar
smell on the ground was like a drug, and as I inhaled it deeply, I felt free and wonderful. The next thing I knew, I was dancing barefoot in the rain, kicking and splashing muddy mounts and pools of water. Little bugs were running for their dear lives, at the mercy of my cracked soles. There was no stopping me now, Ma wasn’t here to tell me to get out the rain.

Kadoh’s words spun into my mind. “If you play in the rain, Yeh, one day you might just be taller.” A little height wouldn’t hurt my prowess, even though I made up for my height with my giant personality. I ran into the rain. The cold water washed over me, my clothes hugging my body. Laughing to myself, I made faces and stuck my tongue out at the god of thunder as another loud thunderclap was fired at me. Laughing gleefully, I ran towards the entrance of the
mbve’
. My
sha
η
g
began to glow and I felt heat in my chest. Touching it, I looked around.

I perceived a man’s figure from the corner of my eye.
Running faster, I looked back to make sure he was there. He was tall and handsome. There was something familiar about him, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. He seemed as though he was going to say something. The rainwater was blurring my vision, and I wiped my eyes with the back of my hands and looked again. There was nothing there.

Was I seeing things?
Souba!
A little afraid, I ran back into the
mbve’
. Once inside, I leaned carefully at the edge of the wall and peeked outside, examining the mystical forest and grass. I couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Maybe I was delusional. Didn’t a native doctor already say so?

But something else caught my attention. Two blue birds flew right over my head, waltzing their way into the
mbve’
, and touching at the beak. They were whistling a heavenly tune and it was the most beautiful thing I had ever heard in my life. I followed them into the hollow and this time, the
mbve’
looked absolutely magical as soft sunlight washed its walls. I smiled at my inheritance. Could it get better?

Shockingly, it seemed way more beautiful and organized than it had been years ago. This was not how I remembered it at all. The floor was spotless as if someone swept it every day and I was flabbergasted. That was impossible. Pa had been dead for almost two years now and this was our little secret. Maybe I was delirious or perhaps it was really dirty and I was just imagining it to be clean. My imagination has been known to be colorful!

Either way, I lay on the floor running my hands through the sand as the raindrops dropped on my nose through a small leak from the wall. I wagged my tongue like a happy dog.

The stony floor pierced my skin, and it may have bled, but I didn’t care. This felt prodigious. A short while later, I shifted myself to an upright position as some black ants crawled on my palm. As ticklish as it was, I didn’t budge. I just admired them as they marched in a group heading for the wall. I found peace in stillness. The rain began pouring down heavier and the droplets from the crack turned into a heavy flow of water, so I rushed for more coverage, hitting my leg against the wall and falling.

I began to laugh hard, so hard that my ribs moved, and then I heard a thundering sound from behind me. When I looked up, a ton of loud objects came crashing down. Eyes closed, hands covering my ears, I lay there in silence wondering what just hit me.
A few minutes later, I didn’t feel any bite or sting; all I could hear was the loud lashing of rain against the rocks.

I opened my eyes, slowly at first, and before me were five hard cover books! I remembered that Pa had shown them to me, but my first instinct as a woman was to run. Books were prohibited to us. People said if you opened a book, you would go blind. A life without sight was not one I wanted. I knew those were lies! I had touched them myself. Yet, somehow, I wanted to leave, but my
sha
η
g
began warming up on my chest again, so I didn’t.

Looking around, making sure no one was watching, I squeezed my eyes shut, and inhaled deeply then very slowly, I flipped open one book.

After one minute, nothing happened. I opened my eyes slowly again, and then flipped to another page. Nothing happened again.

Relaxing my humped shoulders, I turned another page and examined the uniformed writings neatly typed in several paragraphs.

I couldn’t read what the book was saying, but the photos of the city fascinated me. One of the books had many pictures. Kadoh was right. The buildings were very tall. I flipped the page. I saw a picture of four city women. If I thought the city girl I had seen was gorgeous, these ones were even better. My eyes widened, and my
sha
η
g
shone! I liked books. I wanted to read what they said, but how? Pa had said books brought freedom of the mind, and I wanted to know what he meant by that!

For the first time in months, I was shaking with excitement. This was better than anything I had ever felt before. Something new had caught my fancy again!

I came back to the
mbve’
every other day after work, not caring that ma thought I was spending too much time at “work”. I had told her my hours had been increased, and I suppose she didn’t feel the need to argue.

When I got to the
mbve’
, I usually opened my books, and admired the pictures inside or did some cleaning and left for home.

Sometimes, I spent a vast amount of time, studying the drawings that Pa had made on the wall. Running my fingers lightly over them, my
sha
η
g
burned against my chest, filling me with hope
and life.

“Don’t worry, Pa,” I said to myself. “I will make you proud”.

Two weeks later, I had built a small sitting area, with old clothes and leaves, and beneath the leaves, I hid my books.

Keeping a secret is one of the simplest, most stirring things in the world, whether it is holding yourself back from blurting it to your sister, or it’s looking around to make sure no one is watching before going into a secret place.

I had a new dream, and this one was stronger than any dream I had ever had. I wanted to be able to read what was inside those books that Pa had left for me. If it was the last thing that I did, I would read.

I don’t remember much of early 1959, except that our currency changed. The pound, sterling, and pence were replaced with francs, and our money looked weird on payment day. I looked at the new note. It had a Bantu face instead of the face of the British scientist Isaac Newton, whose face had been there for ages. It really went to show that change was possible. I felt inspired, and I spent most of my time in my
mbve’
.

By the end of that year, I learnt about one hundred short new words. Some of the words I learned were boy, man, woman, school, God, and Jesus. To absorb words, I often went through the books so many times that a few short words would stick in my memory. If I saw that word again in one of the parish books, I would ask Father Tony what it was, and he would tell me what the word was and then I would spend countless hours rewriting that word on the wall of my
mbve’
until I had crammed the word into my mind. Then I would go back to the same sentence and pick another word, and so on. Father Tony never asked me why I asked those questions, but he answered them for me each time.

In September 1959, I got a wonderful surprise from Father Tony. I woke up knowing that the day was going to be different. My backache was gone, and I stretched widely as I danced to the stream to wash my body. The girls were talking about boys as usual, but today I felt strangely involved.

On the way to work, I saw a blind man intently playing a flute at the entrance of the market. He played beautifully and some people clapped and hooted to him. I dropped a coin in his
bowl and nodded my head to the blissful sound that followed me until I made my way down the hill that led to the parish.

I thought about how happy the blind man had been even though he couldn’t see, and I couldn’t wait to share it with Kadoh later. She would say it was a beautiful miracle, or something glorious in nature, and I would agree with her.

When I arrived at work, all the nuns were smiling at me. Sister Amber and Sister James even responded to my “good morning”.

“Shall I serve you some tea?” I asked politely, pride burning in my chest at the correctness of my grammar.

“That would be lovely,” Sister James responded.

The new steward, who was as dark as old bark, rang the bell and we all gathered at Father Tony’s office where he addressed us.

He was introducing something at the parish called the “Employee of the year bonus”, and I had won it. I had never come late to work, never stolen, and was always ready to work. I spoke Pidgin English, understood English well, and took orders. My reward was a pair of black leather shoes, the first I had ever owned and the finest in the village. I was so happy when I got them, that I wore them every day till the end of the year. Sola, didn’t have leather shoes, so I made sure to walk by her post in the mornings before going to mine.

By December 1959, I heard from the parish radio that English Cameroon was talking about joining French Cameroon to become independent. I had never even known there were two sides of Cameroon. It didn’t affect us much in the village even though we were all excited to hear that we were now going to be a country of our own with a black president.

Life in the village didn’t change in spite of all the upheavals going on in the cities. We still ate cold
mbu’lam
for breakfast, I still worked at the parish, Yenla and Ma still worked at the farm, more schools were still being built, and more villagers were being converted to Christianity.

1959 ended as quickly as it had come, and it was a relatively peaceful one, thankfully. No one in my family died, things were semi-peaceful, and my job was going great! Pa was at work!

-17-

SOMETHING LIKE INDEPENDENCE

It was 1960 and I was twenty years old, feisty like an angry cat, and beautiful. My frog eyes had metamorphosed into almond shaped bedroom eyes, and if I got money every time I heard how deep and enticing my eyes were, my
nkas
would be over pouring with cowries by now.

To be honest, it went to my head, and before any boy even said anything to me, I assumed they were about to ask me out to a local dance, and my answer was already no. I was going to marry a city boy. I had never seen one in real life, but the ones I saw in my books were just my style. I liked how crisp their shirts looked, and how their pearly teeth shone through the pages.

I usually walked through Squares before heading home from the parish. It was one of the well-developed vicinities of Nso with a huge cathedral, and several businesses. It was also a concentrated breeding ground for many nationalists who hung out in bars and small shops at the sides of the streets. They were growing in numbers, and a lot of young farmers were now joining them, preaching pro-independence propaganda. They looked attractive in their stripped berets and tight shirts.

Some of them noticed me, and would try to say something, but I wasn’t interested in dating them, plus I really hated the stench of cigarettes. Smoking seemed to be synonymous with nationalists.

Kadoh didn’t agree with me. She loved the nationalists and had a crush on one who smoked like a chimney. His name was Musa and he had three other girlfriends just as curvy as her.

One day, as I was returning from work, there was a huge political rally going on in Squares. Everyone there was shouting the word independence. I studied the area. Even farmers were shouting, and I couldn’t hide my fascination. I saw Musa among his friends, sharing flyers and screaming, “Freedom from the whites!” I chuckled to myself. How many of these people were literate? Why give them your propaganda to read if they didn’t know how to read? I thought it was hilarious.

“Run your affairs without any interruption,” Musa’s voice echoed loudly. Another man with a total lack of charisma talked lazily to a small group at the side.

“They suppress us in the East, but independence is imminent,” I overheard him say as I walked about casually examining other noisy groups.

“Sister, come vote!” one girl with a square head called out.

“No, sister. Thank you,” I replied, politely wondering how much her head looked like the boxes in Father Tony’s office.

A small group of boys walked into the rally. They were dressed in white cotton shirts and khaki trousers.

“We welcome the students from the new teacher’s training college....” I didn’t hear the end, because my mind identified
the guy
—the tall one I thought I saw a few months back in the forest by Pa’s
mbve’
. Was it him?

My
sha
η
g
began to glow and my chest felt warm and fuzzy as he looked at me long enough to allow me to admire his deep brown eyes. My eyes swept over his strong arms as he adjusted the strap of the bag hanging over his shoulder. For the first time in my life, I felt a deep longing for a man low in my pelvis. My face was warm like fire, and I felt as embarrassed as a thief in court.

There was something familiar about this handsome stranger, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I thought about it as I trekked down the narrow hilly Tiymenkan path that led to our compound. I couldn’t even focus on the beautiful birds that were flying and whistling amongst themselves. I felt like I knew the guy from somewhere, but where? And had he been watching me that other time? If yes, who was he and why had my
sha
η
g
been glowing? What was it trying to tell me? This time, I was clueless.