The tall man ended their walk at the wooden front door of a one-story house; instead of mud, this house was built of plaster. When the door was opened, an older light-skinned woman answered. Though she wore a heavy, English-style dress, her hair was wrapped in the traditional way, in cloth that was green and patterned. She had the gold earrings and bracelets of a woman who had received her bride price from a wealthy man, but she was a Christian: she wore a golden necklace with a cross pendant.
The light-skinned woman was a signare, a woman of English and African blood who’d been given by her family as a wife to an Englishman for as long as he stayed in Africa. In this small district, this woman was the only one of her kind, but closer to the coast, there was an entire community of signares and their families. In-between women who were neither true wives nor concubines. They spoke two languages, Wolof and English, or sometimes, Mandinka and English, but were infidels who had left aside Allah and clung to the skinny Jesus that hung on a cross. Like their white fathers and husbands, the signares traded in slaves.
The signare spoke flawless Wolof to the tall man who pushed the women and girls inside the house, through the courtyard, into a large, bare room with no furniture. There were mats woven from river reeds scattered about the floor and two buckets in the corner for relief. For the next few days there was only millet for meals and no meat. There was no water for ablutions before prayer, but Kiné’s mother kept her composure. She told the women and girls that Allah would forgive them for praying with dirty feet, hands, and bodies. For now, give thanks that they were alive and surely all would be sorted out.
Yet in the time that followed, a younger woman came and whispered news, looking over her shoulder. Her head was wrapped in the traditional way, too, with lengths of patterned red cloth, though the cloth was frayed. The woman was a slave in the household. The slave woman told Assatou, may Allah bless her and her father, the marabout. Assatou’s father had once promised the slave woman that he would pray for the slave woman’s family, who had been captured in battle to the east, sold, and gone to an unknown land. She had cried many salt tears and when the marabout gave charms to the slave woman, magic that would bring her spirit peace, he had asked for no payment. And in a matter of days, the slave woman had found that peace. She had become reconciled to her lifelong role in the signare’s house, and the signare had become nicer and less sharp in her words. The slave woman was sure this was because of the marabout’s charm.
When she told Assatou that her husband had been accused of heresy against the faith, Assatou’s shoulders dropped in relief. There was no servant of Islam more devout than her husband. Yet then the slave woman reported what happened when Assatou’s husband was brought before the district’s imam. The imam had been at odds with Assatou’s father for years, and by extension, her husband. The imam had brought witnesses to lie about Assatou’s husband, and indeed, his entire family. They claimed her husband had been spied lying on his mat in the mornings instead of rising and completing ablutions for the dawn prayers. That he had been seen stumbling in the road, drunk with spirits. The men swore that her husband kept a pig in his courtyard and had butchered this meat and passed it around to his family to eat. And the witnesses said that Assatou’s husband and other mature family members ate heartily and drank many daytime cups of water during the month of Ramadan. Thus, none of this man’s family were true Muslims, and this is why they had been given over to the imam as slaves. The imam had decided to keep Assatou and the grown women as his concubines, but to sell the rest of the family, including Kiné.
Assatou slumped, weeping, and the slave woman begged, please, do not blame her. Forgive her, please. Balma, the slave woman was sorry, and Assatou replied she did not blame the woman. And she would bless the woman’s name when she was able to make proper ablutions. Her voice had none of the haughtiness from the time when she had ordered house slaves and concubines to bring her this and bring her that. Assatou pulled Kiné close to her, digging in her nails.
Come to your mother, child, she said. Come to your mother. Every few seconds, Assatou whispered this. It became a continuous chant as she rocked back and forth on the floor of the room. It became a scream the next day when the men came to the house of the signare to take Assatou back to the imam. The tall man shouted at Assatou that his master was a kind man. He had allowed her to stay with her daughter for this time, in order to make her goodbyes. Then the tall man picked up her like a sack of millet or a newly killed animal as she kicked and bit and reached out her hands to her little girl. That was the last time Kiné saw her mother.