Anna was an anagram of Nana. I was close to the fire. Its smoke filled my lungs and fogged my mind. My eyes stung with tears.
“Daasebre, wait outside until I call you. Come, let’s go,” she said to me. She stood up slowly but without assistance.
“Go where?”
“Kofi, you didn’t tell her?”
“Remember when I said that girls here undergo an initiation rite to become women? You are a woman already, of course, but you are not yet a woman in this culture.”
“Let’s go,” she said again.
“I want my father to come with me.”
“Men cannot take part. It is taboo. But do not be afraid. I did the rites for Kofi’s other daughters. Are you coming?”
I could not refuse her. I could not refuse any experience offered to me in Bamana. There were multiple doors leading off from the courtyard and I followed her through one, into a room empty except for a bed.
“First, you must change.”
A white cloth was laid out for me. There were no holes for my head or arms.
“I’m afraid I don’t know how to wear this.”
“Why are you afraid? Just wrap it like a towel and remove your shoes.”
She sat down on the bed.
“Is there somewhere I can change?”
“What is wrong with here?”
“I’m not used to changing in front of people.”
She laughed. She didn’t have many teeth but the sound was not unpleasant.
“What do you have that I haven’t seen before? Okay, I am closing my eyes, o.”
I changed with my back to her. The cloth stopped at my knees and bunched under my armpits. I felt exposed.
“Wuyo Ama,” I said when I was done. There was no answer. I drew close to her. She sat very still, like a statue in a game. Her eyes were closed. Her lips had withered away into lines as fine as wrinkles. They stretched into a faint smile. “Wuyo.” I touched her arm. Her flesh was cold. She opened her eyes and looked at me blankly. I felt her body grow warm under my palm.
“Sorry, my daughter. I shouldn’t have traveled. Come with me.”
We stepped through another door and into a forest. It was morning. The air was fresh and crisp. Birds twittered in the canopy, piercing the silence. The grass was damp with dew.
“What’s going on?”
“What do you see, my daughter?”
“Is this a trick?”
“There is no trickery here. Describe what you see.”
“We’re in a forest.”
“What type of trees?”
“Just trees. Very tall. They look old.”
“You are in Abbana’s land. Abbana reveals what he chooses to reveal. We must go to the stream.”
There was no stream when we arrived, only a carpet of short grass and wildflowers. Now there was a stream, freshly sprung from the earth, running fast and clear. Wuyo Ama waded up to her knees and motioned to me.
“Come, my daughter.”
It was some sort of hallucination. The fire in the courtyard, the thick smoke: there must have been a drug released by the flames. I stepped in the stream. The water was cool. There were tiny pebbles on the streambed and they slid between the gaps in my toes.
“Come deeper, daughter.”
It was too shallow to float but with each step I felt lighter until, when I stood in front of Wuyo Ama, it seemed I would drift away.
“Don’t travel, daughter. Stay with me.”
She bent and scooped water in her palm.
“Bend, please.”
She drizzled the water over my head. It ran down my face like cold tears.
“Water for the washing away of childhood. We thank our mothers for bearing us, for suckling us, for teaching us strength.”
She splashed water on my shoulders, on my arms, on my chest. It seeped through the cloth to my skin.
“Thank your mother,” she said.
“What do you mean?”
She motioned with her head in the direction I should look.
My mother stood behind me. My mother as I had never seen her, light and unworried, on the verge of breaking into laughter. She wore a red dress, fitted at the waist, with a full flared skirt. She gave a twirl, one full revolution, so I could admire her, so I could see the pearl buttons that ran to the base of her spine. It was the dress from Francis Aggrey’s diary.
“Is she real?”
“Am I real? Thank her.”
“Thank you, Mum.”
“For what?” Wuyo Ama asked.
“For the time you came into school and told Ms. Fenton that she couldn’t stop me from auditioning to be Mary in the nativity, and you came home and cried because you were scared to do it. I didn’t get the part but you stood up for me. And thanks for leaving me the flat. You did your best, Mum.”