The Deep - Rivers Solomon Page 0,7

the past?

Yetu shook her head, calming herself down. Amaba was just worried. She had every right to be. It had only been two days since she’d rescued Yetu from sharks. The specificity of the memory may well already be fading for her, but the feel of it, the fear—that stayed.

Amaba whistled softly. Had she been feeling less sensitive to Yetu’s needs, she’d have screeched. Such a thing might’ve killed Yetu. That was the truth. “Why wouldn’t you want to answer my question? It is a simple one, no?” asked Amaba. “Do you know what the object Nnenyo and his children gave you is, or don’t you?”

“I know what it is,” Yetu said, her head beginning to tense and throb. She’d had more interaction in the last few days than she’d had in the past year. Her patience was waning. She could only be the good daughter, the compliant wajinru, and the dutiful historian in short bursts. After a time, the constant conversation and stimulation wore her patience down. She was becoming a sharp edge.

“Well? What is it, then?” asked Amaba, letting her voice get away from her. She spoke loudly enough that Yetu had to swim away several feet. “I’m sorry. Though this would be much less difficult if you answered when I spoke to you, like someone normal.”

“Someone normal wouldn’t be able to tell you that the object is a comb. Someone normal wouldn’t be able to tell you that a comb was a tool the wajinru foremothers used in their hair,” said Yetu. “Someone normal would never know these things. Someone normal couldn’t fill your hole. You are someone normal, and you don’t know anything.”

For several seconds, Yetu’s amaba didn’t speak. She had the look of something wounded, her fins moving in an agitated fluster but her wide mouth puckered shut.

Yetu should’ve felt guilty, perhaps, for her harsh and bitter words, but instead she soaked up the silence, drunk it like the freshest whale milk.

She didn’t mean to be so cruel, but what else was she to do with the violence inside of her? Better to tear into Amaba than herself, when there was already so little left of her—and what was there was fractured.

“I’m sorry,” said Yetu.

“No need. It is already in the past.” Amaba swam closer, so the two were near enough to touch. “I demand too much. Ask too much of you. I don’t even understand why I care so much about that stupid, what did you call it? Comu?”

“Comb,” said Yetu.

In one of the rememberings, there was still hair caught in a comb belonging to the foremother. Salt water had washed any hair strands from the tines of Yetu’s new comb, and now she could only imagine how the bonds of black keratin had once choked the carved ivory.

Yetu didn’t explain to her amaba further. She would not be mined for memories yet.

This one knowledge, this one piece of history, it was hers and no one else’s.

Nnenyo came back not long later with more food for Yetu, but she’d finally had her fill. Her stomach was bloated and overstuffed, so even though she was hungry, she could not bear to eat another bite.

She had become so ragged, not just since the last Remembrance but over the course of her youth and young adulthood. It all had a cumulative effect, didn’t it? She imagined a sunken ship, heavy with cargo, pieces peeling and rusting away year by year like dead scales. Yetu wasn’t as hardy as those feats of two-legs innovation, though. She would die, and corpses were not eternal.

“We are almost ready for you to join us in the womb,” said Nnenyo.

“Already? So fast?” asked Amaba.

“They are ready for the History. They’re working faster than usual, like nothing I’ve ever seen before.”

So much for three days. It had only been two. Yetu wasn’t ready.

“It will be fine,” her amaba said.

Her stomach twisted and coiled, and her heart raced. She tried to settle herself, to feel the lovely, cool water entering her gills, restoring oxygen to her blood. But she was suddenly short of breath.

“Don’t worry, Nnenyo. Like always, she will pull herself together in time,” said Amaba.

In the early years, in fact, Yetu had been much worse, unable to keep down food or do such basic things as hold her bowels for more than a few minutes.

“How are you feeling?” Nnenyo asked.

Yetu nodded her head. “I will do what is asked of me.”

“You are a blessing,” said Nnenyo.

“I am what is required,” she said,