“He knows nothing of this?” Laki asked, turning back to Wife Strabaha.
“He barely remembered that he had given away the belt.”
“You are asking me to help you force your son into marriage?”
“He chose to put his marriage belt on you, I did not force him to do it.”
“That is true, but…”
“There is no other interpretation of what it means when someone places their marriage belt on another.”
“Do you know how many marriage belts I’ve tried on for fun?” Laki asked.
“Well who decides when it’s fun and when it’s serious?” Se-se snapped.
Wife Strabaha took Laki’s hands in hers. “Let’s focus on the facts. Your maturation is tomorrow. You have to leave home. Are you ready to enter a mother-unit?”
Images of Mahini flashed through her mind. She saw her own mothers, felt them beaming at her with pride, remembered the hole she opened in the cloak, and smiled.
“Maybe I’m not ready but that doesn’t mean it’s not time for me to enter. I can wear the veil, I can be a good mother.”
Se-se looked at Laki like she had grown spotted skin. Laki refused to look at Se-se. Instead she sat regally, radiating a powerful calm.
“I am offering you a different future. A future in which you will be able to see your sister, even your mother-unit again.”
Laki paused. Exhaustion was pulling at her. She closed her eyes for a moment. “I understand your offer Wife Strabaha. I will have a way out of the mother-unit. You will have a wife for your son. But what will Fogo get?”
“His inheritance,” Wife Strabaha snapped. “He will never marry if it is up to him. I refuse to pass the family money on to…” Wife Strabaha stopped speaking. She took a deep breath. “I see you are every bit as honorable as your sister promised. Will you accept my offer if Fogo accepts?”
“I have been trained to wear the veil of motherhood. I know nothing of being a wife,” Laki said.
“I will teach you everything you need to know.”
Laki’s eyes slid closed again. It was becoming painful to stay awake. Her thoughts kept slipping away, and her body begged for rest. For the first time in months, the impending mother-unit was not a buzzing pain in her head or a throbbing fear jolting her with insomnia. Tomorrow was simply her future, and she had ceased to resist it.
“I’m afraid there is no time for me to change tomorrow, Wife Strabaha,” Laki said, her eyes still closed.
“I will be your wife mother,” Wife Strabaha burst out. “I will pay your school fees, I will help you start a business. Please allow us to visit your home tomorrow.”
Laki’s eyes popped open. Wife Strabaha’s face was stricken with desperation. Se-se’s face was twisted in tortured pleading. Was this what being in a mother-unit would be like—watching the excitable passions of her children from a calm, peaceful distance?
“I have to sleep,” Laki said. She stood and stumbled to her pod. She sat on the floor and paused. Wife Strabaha’s offer lay in front of her, dazzling with portent and promise. She eyed it warily. It was a magical stroke of luck that could manipulate the contours of her destiny. Yet she did not feel the desire to collapse in gratitude, instead she saw the offer for what it was—a departure from one mysterious path to another.
Laki leaned away from Se-se and Wife Strabaha. As her pod began to separate, she realized that she had not given Wife Strabaha an answer.
“Wife Strabaha, you may come to my home tomorrow, but you will have to speak to my mother-unit as I have no wife mother or father.”
Wife Strabaha did not flinch at Laki’s offer. She gracefully accepted it as if the idea of speaking with a mother-unit was not an insult to her.
“And Wife Strabaha, please tell your son that I will enjoy seeing him again. He will be needed to remove the belt should I decide not to accept your offer. I’d hate to destroy such a beautiful family heirloom.”
Laki nodded to Wife Strabaha, as if dismissing her, and winked at Se-se. The glow of admiration spread across Se-se’s face. Laki had done the impossible: she had shed the ugliness that had been weighing her down and was entering maturation luminous and triumphant. Even her pod was majestic in its shimmering crown of starlight.
As Se-se watched Laki’s pod bobbing in the dark stillness of the Stretch, wisps of loss began to unfurl in her chest. She felt the echoes of yesterday tugging at her heart. She had spent an entire childhood chasing after Laki. Even now, after she had restructured Laki’s future, Laki had blown her a kiss and was hurtling away without a backward glance.
Se-se’s vision went blurry as the pain of it broke in her chest. She smiled a quick goodbye to Wife Strabaha then sped away. As she blazed through the Velvet Stretch, the silence of her solitude loomed, mocking her with Laki’s absence. After so many years of living in the shadow of Laki’s brilliance, Se-se was still struggling to hold Laki’s gaze. She soothed herself by pretending that she and Laki had arrived home together, and were running through the halls with twined fingers, breathless with triumph. The need to be at Laki’s side, to share in the glory of the news, urged her to push her pod to move a faster. But even as she raced to catch up with Laki, she knew it was too late. Laki was already gone. All that was left of her was a flash of light, plummeting toward home.
Author Biography
Kiini Ibura Salaam is a writer, painter, and traveler from New Orleans, Louisiana. After being paid $100 for the publication of her first story, she proclaimed herself a “serious” author at the tender age of eighteen. Kiini’s work is rooted in eroticism, speculative events and worlds, and women’s perspectives. Her fiction has been included in such publications as Dark Matter, Mojo: Conjure Stories, and Dark Eros.
Kiini’s creative nonfiction speaks to her two passions: the freedom of women and the freedom of the creative spirit. In essays about date rape, sexual harassment, and the power of the word no Kiini explores the complex layers of societal norms that negatively impact women’s lives. In addition to having been published in Essence, Ms., and Colonize This! her creative nonfiction has been included in college curricula in the areas of women’s studies, anthropology, history, and English.
For the past ten years, Kiini has written the “KIS.list,” an e-column that explores the writing life and encourages readers to fulfill their dreams. She works as an editor in New York and maintains a site dedicated to her work at www.kiiniibura.com. She and her daughter live in Brooklyn.
Publication Acknowledgments
Ancient, Ancient: First published in African Voices, 2002, Cetera Press.
At Life’s Limits: First published in Dark Matter: A Century of Speculative Fiction from the African Diaspora, 2000, edited by Sheree R. Thomas, Warner Books
Bio-Anger: First published in Tumbarumba, 2008, http://www.turbulence.org/Works/tumbarumba/, edited by Ethan Ham and Benjamin Rosenbaum
Tumbarumba is a 2008 commission of New Radio and Performing Arts, Inc., (aka Ether-Ore) for its Turbulence web site. It was made possible with funding from the Jerome Foundation.
Debris: First published in Ideomancer, 2006, Volume 6, Issue 1, Twenty-three Small Disasters, http://www.ideomancer.com/main/vol6issue1/rosenbaum_et_al/debris.html
Desire: First published in Dark Matter: Reading the Bones, 2004, edited by Sheree R. Thomas, Warner Books
Ferret: First published in Infinite Matrix, 2003, edited by Eileen Gunn, http://www.infinitematrix.net/stories/shorts/ferret.html,
K-USH: The Legend of the Last Wero: First published in FEMSPEC, 2005, Volume 6, Issue 1, edited by Batya Weinbaum
MalKai’s Last Seduction: First published in Dark Eros: Black Erotic Writings, 1997, edited by Reginald Martin, St. Martin’s Press
Of Wings, Nectar, & Ancestors: First published in Fertile Ground: Memories & Visions, 1996, edited by Kalamu ya Salaam and Kysha N. Brown, Runagate Press
Rosamojo: First published in Mojo: Conjure Stories, 2003, edited by Nalo Hopkinson, Warner Books
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Aqueduct Press, PO Box 95787
Seattle, WA 98145-2787
www.aqueductpress.com
This book is fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Print Copyright © 2012 Kiini Ibura Salaam
Digital Copyright © 2012 Kiini Ibura Salaam
All rights reserved.
Digital ISBN: 978-1-61976-010-3
Cover Design by Nneka Bennett
Cover Illustration, “Woman in the Sea,” courtesy Niko Guido
Book Design by Kathryn Wilham
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