He sat down in the grass. I stooped and Smoke Girl scampered off my head like a rat.
“There is it. There is my flower.”
He picked up a small yellow thing about the size of his eye.
“Sangoma saved me from a witch.”
“A witch? Why would a witch not kill you as a baby?”
“Sangoma says that many would buy my legs for wicked craft. And a boy leg is bigger than a baby leg.”
“Of course.”
“Did your father sell you?” he said.
“Sell? What? No. He did not sell me. He is dead.”
I looked at him. I felt a need to smile at him, but I also felt false doing so.
“All fathers should die as soon as we are born,” I said.
He looked at me strange, with eyes like children who heard words parents should not have said.
“Let us name a stone after him, curse it, and bury it,” I said. Giraffe Boy smiled.
Say this about a child. In you they will always find a use. Say this as well. They cannot imagine a world where you do not love them, for what else should one do but love them? Ball Boy found out I had a nose. Kept rolling into me, almost knocking me over, and shouting, Find me! then rolling away.
“Keep eye sh—” he shouted, rolling over his mouth before saying shut.
I did not use my nose. He left a trail of dust along the dry mud path, and squashed grass in the bush. He also hid behind a tree too narrow for his wide ball of a body. When I jumped behind and said, I see you, he looked at my open eye and burst into crying, and bawling and screaming. And wailing, truly he did wail. I thought the Sangoma would come running with a spell and the Leopard would come running ready to rip me apart. I touched his face, I rubbed his forehead.
“No no no … I will … you hide again … I will give you … a fruit, no a bird … stop crying … stop crying … or I …”
He heard it in my voice, something like a threat, and cried even louder. So loud that he scared me more than demons. I thought to slap the cry out of his mouth but that would make me my grandfather.
“Please,” I said. “Please. I will give you all my porridge.”
He stopped crying in the quick.
“All?”
“I will not even taste a dipped finger.”
“All?” he asked again.
“Go hide again. I swear this time I shall only use my nose.”
He started laughing as quickly as he cried before. He rubbed his forehead against my belly, then he rolled off quick like a lizard on hot clay. I closed my eyes and smelled him out, but walked right past him five times, shouting, Where is this boy? with him giggling as I shouted, I can smell you.
In seven days we would have been living with the Sangoma for two moons. I asked Kava, Will none from Ku come looking for us? He looked at me as if his look was an answer.
Hear now, priest. Three stories about the Leopard.
One. A night fat with heat. Sometimes I woke up when the smell of men from a place I’ve been got stronger, and I knew they approached, on horse, on foot, or in a pack of jackals. Sometimes I woke up to a scent getting weaker, and I knew they were leaving, fleeing, walking away, or finding somewhere to hide. Kava’s scent getting weaker and the Leopard’s as well. No moon in the night but some of the weeds lit up a trail in the dark. I ran down the trees and my foot hit a branch. Hit my ass, hit my head, rolling, tumbling down like a boulder cut loose. Twenty paces in the bush, there they were under a young iroko tree. The Leopard, belly flat on the grass. He was not a man; his skin was black as hair and his tail whipped the air. He was not Leopard; his hands grabbed a branch, and thick buttocks slapped against Kava, who was fucking him with fury.
How much I hated Kava, and whether it was the hole of the woman at the tip of my manhood that made me hate, even if between my legs was a tree branch, and that my hate had nothing to do with the woman since at the tip of me was not a woman for that