disgust in me. But I did not like her speaking as if she had been waiting for years for a man she could laugh at. It was growing tiresome, men and women looking at me once and thinking they knew my kind, and of my kind there was not much to know.
“Why did Kava bring me here?”
“You think I tell him to bring you?”
“Games are for boys.”
“Then leave, little boy.”
“Except you told him to bring me here. What do you want, witch?”
“You call me witch?”
“Witch, crone, scar-speckled Gangatom bitch, pick the one you like.”
She smiled quick to hide the scowl, but I saw it.
“You care for nothing.”
“And a crone with a boy sucking a tit with no milk will not change that.”
The smile on her face vanished. Her frown made me bolder; I folded my arms. Like, I like. Dislike, I love. Disgust, I can feel. Loathing, I can grab in the palm of my hand and squeeze. And hatred, I can live in hatred for days. But the smug smile of indifference on someone’s face makes me want to hack it off. Both Kava and the Leopard stopped playing and looked at us. I thought she was going to drop the baby, and perhaps slap me. But she kept him close, his eyes still shut, his lips still sucking her nipple. She smiled and turned away. But not before my eyes said, Things are better this way, with understanding between us. You know me, but I know you too. I could smell everything about you before you came down those steps.
“Maybe you brought me here to kill me. Maybe you send for me because I am Ku and you are Gangatom.”
“You are nothing,” she said, and went back upstairs.
The Leopard ran to the edge of the floor and jumped into the tree. Kava was sitting on the floor, his legs crossed.
For seven days I stayed away from the woman and she stayed away from me. But children will be children and they will not be anything other. I found loose cloth made for children and wrapped my waist in it. Truth, I felt like the city was back in me and I failed at being a man of the bush. Other times I cursed my fussing and wondered had any man or boy fussed so over cloth. The fifth night I told myself it is neither clothed nor unclothed, but whatever I feel to do or not to do. The seventh night Kava told me of mingi. He pointed to each child and told me why their parents chose to kill them or leave them to die. These were lucky that they were just left to be found. Sometimes the elders demand that you make sure the child is dead, and the mother or father drowns the child in the river. He said this while sitting on the floor of the middle house as the children fell asleep on mats and skins. He pointed to the white-skinned girl.
“She is the colour of demons. Mingi.”
A boy with a big head tried to grab a firefly.
“His top teeth grew before the bottom. Mingi.”
Another boy was already asleep but his right hand kept reaching out and grabbing air.
“His twin starved to death before we could save both. Mingi.”
A lame girl hopping to her spot on the floor, her left foot bent in a wrong way.
“Mingi.”
Kava waved his hands, not pointing to anyone.
“And some born to women not in wedlock. Remove the mingi, remove the shame. And you may still marry a man with seven cows.”
I looked at the children, most sleeping. Wind slowed and the leaves swayed. I could not tell how much of the moon darkness had eaten, but the glow was bright enough to see Kava’s eyes.
“Where do the curses go?” I asked.
“What?”
“These children are all cursed. If you keep them here, you are keeping curse on top of curse. Is the woman a witch? Is she skilled in removing curses, curses that come out of the womb? Or is she just pooling them here?”
I cannot describe the look on his face. But my grandfather looked at me that way all the time, and all day, the day I left.
“Being a fool is a curse too,” he said.
FOUR
Kava and Leopard have been saving mingi children for ten and nine moons.
The Leopard did not sleep on the house floor, not even when he was a man. Each evening he climbed farther up the tree, and fell asleep between two branches. He