how to forget past griefs is to move from childhood to—”
“I’m eighteen, Father,” I said, firmly cutting him off. “I’ve moved past childhood. Or others have pushed me past it.”
“Your anger is misplaced, Loic,” he said, raising his voice. “Okiak killed Krika, not me. For the past year, you’ve made yourself my enemy and I suggest you study what it means to have an enemy before—”
“I have not made myself your enemy, Father.” I pointed to the approaching woman as another means of silencing him. “No, that was none of my doing.”
As the woman was only footsteps away, we put our disagreement away.
She soon stood in front of us, making a great show of studying our faces, craning her neck this way and that. A smile flashed across her face and she bent her head low. “Taer!” she shouted, her voice much too loud. “Is it really you?” Tears streamed down her face. “Has the Good Maker given my Nwaha such joy by causing me to cross paths with his old friend?”
Her joy seemed sincere enough, but I suspected this was no “accidental” meeting, that the woman had planned it somehow. Yet, her deception didn’t trouble me. Quite the opposite; for reasons I little understood then, my heart was glad of it.
The flesh on her bony arm sagged as she pointed at me. “So, First Captain of King Jaguar’s armies, is this one of your sons? Loic, is it? Your oldest boy?”
I nodded, clasped both my hands together and bowed to her. “This is a day the Creator made,” I said, giving her the customary greeting.
“It has certainly brought blessings,” she answered. “How tall and handsome you’ve become, Loic tyu Taer! You have your mother’s light eyes! You’re thin, though.” She tapped my stomach. “The son of a rich man should have more flesh on his bones. I don’t know if your father told you, but my precious daughter used to hold you in her arms. Yes, you were her favorite little doll those rare times she saw you. How she used to laugh when you crawled between her feet without so much as a breechcloth!”
“Was that the girl who stood beside you?” Father asked, sparing me further embarrassment.
“Yes, she is the joy of my life. If she had known it was her dear father’s dear friend who called me, she would not have left so abruptly. Unfortunately, she had an errand to attend to.”
She lowered her eyes and I saw that she was flirting with my father. “I’ve heard much about the exploits of the First Captain of King Jaguar’s armies, the Captain of all the armies of the three tribes! How could we not hear? Oh, and I’ve seen your beautiful wife many times in the marketplace, walking with your younger son. Unfortunately, I don’t know your other little one’s name.”
Father’s eyes widened. “You saw my servants and my wife, and you didn’t approach them to send me a message?”
She bent her head low. “Who am I that I should push myself into your life? No, Nwaha and I are unimportant people now. But enough about me. Your wife is a beauty, Taer. But—” she clicked her tongue “—only one wife?”
Father nodded.
“You’re being stingy with yourself, Treads Lightly. Most rich men spread themselves around. They don’t tread lightly when taking earthly joys. But I’m glad to see you’re well, my friend. We’ve often asked the ancestors to protect you.”
The poor are allowed their scheming, I suppose. Especially the poor who once were wealthy. I would have liked the woman better if she hadn’t chattered so much.
Father bowed his head. “I’ve prayed for your family also.”
“Waihai!” she said, “The Good Maker obviously heard our prayers, but not yours.” She followed this with a laugh so obviously meant to call the market’s attention to the fact she was speaking to the King’s Captain that if I hadn’t wanted to meet her daughter, I might have found an excuse to leave.
Father was always patient with deceptions, however. Or perhaps he was more gracious about them. Or maybe he simply didn’t recognize them as often as I did. He said to her, “Give my prayers some credit for your health and happiness.”
“You don’t want credit for something so small and puny, my friend.” Her conniving was relentless.
Wishing to stop it, I asked, “But where is Nwaha? He’s wrong not to have told Father you were settled in Satilo.”
“Your father knows how proud Nwaha is.” She pointed across the marketplace, to the other side of the Sun Fountain where a tattered banner blew before an equally tattered tent. “That’s our home. Our shop.”
Father began walking towards the shop but—she reminded me of actresses I saw once in King Jaguar’s palace—she stopped him, bending low and clutching at her chest. “Don’t dishonor us, my friend, by coming into our house. The shame would be too great. I would be doubly shamed to serve a guest the poor food we have.”
“To hold my friend in my heart and eyes is all the sweetness I need,” Father answered.
That was a common phrase in the old days, intended to free the poor from the oppression of the hospitality laws, and for a moment, I feared the old woman had overplayed her hand. If, out of respect for his friend, father declined to enter Nwaha’s house I would be deprived of seeing the girl.
Monua, perhaps suspecting she had played her role too well, lowered her head to the side. Then, crooking her hand, she said, “But if you do not mind poor fare, come and see. I know you’re kind and will not be disgusted at our lowly position.”
Waihai! My heart leaped! It seemed full of a most profound happiness. I must have been smiling like a fool, for Father gave me a questioning look and gently touched the tiny hairs sprouting on my lip. Perhaps he only smiled at his own happiness at being suddenly reunited with his old friend. Whatever the reason, we both were in good spirits.
Our smiles faded when we entered Nwaha’s three-room shop. When I was a young child, my Little Mother taught me an alphabet song:
“If ever you enter a house and find it dirty, dingy or disarrayed,
Don’t judge the dwellers of that domain.
For a dirty, disarrayed, and dingy house
Declares its owners are poor, ill, tired, or grieving.
Dinginess doesn’t imply defect or dereliction.
Dirty houses do not display dirty hearts.
Decisions decided on disarray should be disregarded.
Your heart would itself be dirty and disarrayed
To determine another’s worth on such dealings.”
I remembered the little song and restrained my mind from harsh judgment.
The public front room, where Nwaha worked his trade as a tent-maker and where Monua made and sewed dresses, was the most presentable, even though its buckskin walls were crumbling away. I didn’t see the inner room where their daughter slept or the third room, which was Nwaha’s and Monua’s, but the scattered fabric remnants and the abundance of scavenged sundries
