GOING to MEET the MURDERER : EVELYN

A WEEK AGO I WOULD NOT HAVE EXPECTED M’Lissa to still be alive. But yes, according to a year-old Newsweek, she was not only alive but a national monument. She had been honored by the Olinka government for her role during the wars of liberation, when she’d acted as a nurse as devoted to her charges as Florence Nightingale, and for her unfailing adherence to the ancient customs and traditions of the Olinka state. No mention was made of how she fulfilled this obligation. She had been decorated, “knighted,” the magazine said; swooped up from her obscure hut, where she lay dying on a filthy straw mat, and brought to a spacious cottage on the outskirts of a nearby town, where she would be within easy commute to a hospital, should the need arise.

After being brought out of her dark hut and into the sunlight of her new home--with running water and an indoor toilet, both miracles to the lucky M’Lissa--a remarkable change had occurred. M’Lissa had stopped showing any signs of death, stopped aging, and had begun to actually blossom. “Youthen,” as the article said. A local nurse, a geriatrics specialist, ministered to her; a cook and a gardener rounded out her staff. M’Lissa, who had not walked in over a year, began again to walk, leaning on a cane the president himself had given her, and enjoyed tottering about in her garden. She loved to eat, and kept her cook on his toes preparing the special dishes of lamb curry, raisin rice and chocolate mousse she particularly liked. She had a mango tree; indeed, the photograph showed her sitting beneath it; she sat there happily, day after day, when the crop came on, stuffing herself.

In the photograph M’Lissa smiled broadly, new teeth glistening; even her hair had grown back and was a white halo around her deep brown head.

There was something sinister, though, about her aspect; but perhaps I was the only one likely to see it. Though her mouth was smiling as were her sunken cheeks and her long nose, her wrinkled forehead and her scrawny neck, her beady eyes were not. Looking into them, suddenly chilled, I realized they never had.

How had I entrusted my body to this madwoman?

TASHI-EVELYN

A FLAG FLEW ABOVE HER HOUSE, THE RED, yellow and blue vivid against the pale noonday periwinkle sky. I was not her only visitor; there were cars parked in the postage-stamp parking lot, neatly screened from the house by a rose-colored bougainvillea, and a tour bus was halted by the road. The passengers were not permitted to disembark, but were busy taking photographs of the cottage from the windows of the bus.

I was met on the porch by a young woman who had not been mentioned in the Newsweek article: slender, with smooth dark skin and shining eyes, as lovely as a freshly cut flower. I explained I’d known M’Lissa all my life; that she had in fact delivered me into the world, having been a great friend of my mother and in fact mother of the entire village. I explained I had come from America, where I now lived, even though Olinka by birth, and that I hoped to spend time with M’Lissa, perhaps after her other guests had gone.

What is your name? she asked softly.

Tell her it is Tashi, Catherine’s, no, Nafa’s daughter, who went to America with the son of the missionary.

She turned. Out of habit I glanced down at her feet. As she moved away, I saw she had the sliding gait of the “proper” Olinka maiden.

Within minutes all of M’Lissa’s guests poured out of the house, as if scattered by her cane. They scrutinized me as they passed. Perhaps they thought me an important dignitary. As their car motors were turning over, shattering the quiet, the young woman returned.

You may go in, she said, with a smile.

What is your name? I asked her.

Martha, she replied.

And your other name?

Mbati, she said, her eyes twinkling.

Mbati, I said, why do the people come here?

The question surprised her. Mother Lissa is a national monument, she said. Recognized as a heroine by every faction of the government, including the National Liberation Front. She’s famous, she said, shrugging her shoulders and looking at me as if puzzled I didn’t know.

I do know that, I said. I read Newsweek.

Ah, Newsweek, she said.

But what do they talk about with her?

About their daughters. About the old ways. About tradition. She paused. It is mostly women who come. You may have noticed this by the people who just left. Women of a certain age. Women with daughters. Frightened women, often. She reassures them.

Oh? I said.

Yes. She knows so much and says such bizarre things. Why, do you know, Mama Lissa claims there was a time when women did not have periods! Oh, she says, there may have been a single drop of blood, but only one! She says this was before woman’s capture.

I couldn’t help laughing, as Mbati was doing.

She just sits and talks; holds court. It hardly matters what she says. She is probably a hundred; everyone wants to have been in her presence before she dies. So much, as you know, has fallen apart here: Independence is killing us as surely as colonialism did. But then, she added, sighing, that is because it isn’t really independence.

Mbati takes my hand and pulls me slowly forward, still speaking quietly. She is a link with the past for us; especially for us women, she says. She is the only woman honored in this way by the government; she is an icon.

How is it possible, I think, as Mbati leads me into M’Lissa’s sparkling hallway and pushes me into M’Lissa’s room and toward a snow-white bed, that my mother has lived and died; I myself have lived and died--in and out of my mind--many times. World wars have been fought and lost; for every war is against the world and every war against the world is lost. But look, here lies M’Lissa, propped up like a queen in her snowy bed, the open window beside it looking out into a fragrant garden, and in the distance, above the garden, there is a blue mountain. She is radiant, and her forehead, nose, lips, teeth, cheeks smile at me. I bend to kiss the top of her head, her white hair a resistant brush against my lips. I take her hand, which has the feel of feathers, and stand a moment looking down at her. Her whole body is smiling her welcome; except for her eyes. They are wary and alert. I had thought when people aged, their eyes went bad. But no, she sees me clearly. Hers is an X-ray gaze. But then, so is mine, now. What is that shadow, there in the depths? Is it apprehension? Is it fear?

TASHI-EVELYN

THE VERY FIRST day after Mbati left, and I was required to wash M’Lissa, I saw why she was lame. Not only had her clitoris, outer and inner labia, and every other scrap of flesh been removed, but a deep gash traveled right through the tendon of her inner thigh. That was why, when walking, she had to drag her left leg. It was supported by the back tendon and the buttock muscles alone. Indeed, the left buttock was far more developed than the right, and even though she hadn’t really walked with vigor in many years, there was a firm resilience in her flesh on that side.

Yes, touch it, my daughter, she exclaimed, as she felt my fingers exploring the keloidal tissue of the old wound, as hard as a leather shoe sole. It is the mark, on my body, of my own mother’s disobedience.

Since this was the day on which I had earlier resolved to kill M’Lissa, I was unsure whether to appear interested in her life. But she was remembering, and I had not completed her bath. Trapped, I listened.

M’LISSA

SINCE THE PEOPLE of Olinka became a people there has always been a tsunga. It was hereditary, like the priests. Before the people became a tribe they lived too. But that was considered an evil time, because although everyone knew they had a mother, because she had given birth to them, a father was not to be had in the same way. You could not be sure. And so, your mother’s brother was your father. The house always belonged, in those days, to the woman, and there were never children without parents or a home. But somehow this was seen as evil. Anyway, from the time of memory, always, in my family, the women were tsungas .

But why is that? I asked my mother.

Because it is such an honor, she replied. And also because it is the way we fill our bellies.

She was a sad woman, my mother. I never saw her smile.

Can you imagine the life of the tsunga who feels? I learned not to feel. You can learn not to. In this I was like my grandmother, who became so callous people called her “I Am a Belly.” She would circumcise the children and demand food immediately after; even if the child still screamed. For my mother it was a torture.

Then, one day, my mother had to circumcise the girls in my age group.

Prior to that day, for weeks, she prayed to the little idol constantly. And when my turn came she tried to get away with cutting lightly. Of course she took the outer lips, because four strong eagle-eyed women held me down; and of course the inner lips too. But she tried to leave me a nub. She barely nicked me there. But the other women saw.

What my mother started, the witch doctor finished. He had learned all the healing and cures that he knew from women, which was why he was called a witch doctor, and he wore the witch’s grass skirt, but the witches who taught him had been put to death, because they refused circumcision and were too powerful among the women to be left free, uncircumcised. He showed no mercy. In fright and unbearable pain my body bucked under the razor-sharp stone he was cutting me with . . . .

I could never again see myself, for the child that finally rose from the mat three months later, and dragged herself out of the initiation hut and finally home, was not the child who had been taken there. I was never to see that child again.

TASHI

AND YET, I SAID, hardening myself against the sight of M’Lissa’s heaving chest, expecting tears, you saw her over and over again, hundreds, thousands of times. It was she who screamed before your knife.

M’Lissa sniffled. I have never cried after that, she said. I knew in the moment when the pain was greatest, when it reached a crescendo, as when a loud metal drum is struck with a corresponding metal stick, that there is no God known to man who cares about children or about women. And that the God of woman is autonomy.

Cry, I said. Perhaps it will ease you.

But I could see that, even now, she could not feel her pain enough to cry. She was like someone beaten into insensibility. Bitter, but otherwise emotionally inert.

Why did they make us do it? she asked. I never really knew. And the women, even today, after giving birth, they come back to the tsunga to be resewn, tighter than before. Because if it is loose he won’t receive enough pleasure.

But you taught them this, I said. It is what you told me. Remember? The uncircumcised woman is loose, you said, like a shoe that all, no matter what their size, may wear. This is unseemly, you said. Unclean. A proper woman must be cut and sewn to fit only her husband, whose pleasure depends on an opening it might take months, even years to enlarge. Men love and enjoy the struggle, you said. For the woman . . . But you never said anything about the woman, did you, M’Lissa? About the pleasure she might have. Or the suffering.

I am weeping now, myself. For myself. For Adam. For our son. For the daughter I was forced to abort.

There is Caesarean section, you know, the aborting doctor had said. But I knew I could not bear being held down and cut open. The thought of it had sent me reeling off into the shadows of my mind; where I’d hidden out for months. I watched from a lofty distance as Adam packed for his twice-yearly visits to Paris; I watched Benny, my son, struggle with all his might to be close to me, to melt into my body, to inhale my scent; and I was like a crow, flapping my wings unceasingly in my own head, cawing mutely across an empty sky. And I wore black, and black and black.

EVELYN

MY HEART GOES OUT to Adam, physically stout, emotionally frail; perspiration beading on his upper lip. It is hard to believe this gray-haired and gray-bearded old man is my husband, and has been my dearest friend for over 50 years. And was my lover.

He looks condemned, simply to be present in the jammed court. He stares up disconsolately at the recently oiled, slowly whirring ceiling fans, or out the open windows, awaiting the thrust and parry of the attorney’s questions.

I remember when his body was slender and firm, and how I used to kiss from nipple to nipple across the smooth expanse of his beautiful chest.

He is saying I am a tortured woman. Someone whose whole life was destroyed by the enactment of a ritual upon my body which I had not been equipped to understand.

As soon as he utters the word “ritual” there is a furor in the court. Male voices, and female voices, calling for Adam’s silence. Shut up, shut up, you disgraceful American! the voices cry. This is our business you would put into the streets! We cannot publicly discuss this taboo.

Adam looks weary. About to weep.

Mother Lissa was a monument! the voices hiss. Your wife has murdered a monument. The Grandmother of the race!

I feel the furies, the shrieking voices, wrap their coils around my neck. But rather than allowing myself to choke, I become a part of the shrieking and rise from around my own neck exactly as if I were wind. I blow and blow about the court, building toward explosion.

The judges call for order, over and over. The other furies and I subside. At last order is restored.

ADAM

THEY DO NOT WANT to hear what their children suffer. They’ve made the telling of the suffering itself taboo. Like visible signs of menstruation. Signs of woman’s mental power. Signs of the weakness and uncertainty of men. When they say the word taboo I try to catch their eye. Are they saying something is “sacred” and therefore not to be publicly examined for fear of disturbing the mystery; or are they saying it is so profane it must not be exposed, for fear of corrupting the young? Or are they saying simply that they cannot and will not be bothered to listen to what is said about a tradition of which they are a part, that has gone on, as far as they know, forever?

These are the kinds of questions my father taught me to ask, alas. Adam, he would say, what is the fundamental question one must ask of the world? I would think of and posit many things, but the answer was always the same: Why is the child crying ? There had been a crying child even in Old Torabe, whose filth and age and illness so disgusted me. Before he died, I saw it. He had not loved the majority of his wives; in fact, he didn’t even hate them; he thought of them as servants in the most disposable sense. He barely remembered their names. But the young woman who ran away, the wife who drowned herself, he had at least thought he loved. Unfortunately, for him, “love” and frequent, forceful sex were one. And so he lay, finally, wounded and wet with his own tears, lamenting his life but knowing no other. Women are indestructible down there, you know, he’d said to me, lewdly, more than once, his eyes alight with remembered lechery and violence. They are like leather: The more you chew it, the softer it gets.

If every man in this courtroom had had his penis removed, what then? Would they understand better that that condition is similar to that of all the women in this room? That, even as we sit here, the women are suffering from the unnatural constrictions of flesh their bodies have been whittled and refashioned into? Not just Evelyn. But also the young woman from the paper shop; the old woman who sells oranges. The bourgeois women in their elegant robes, fanning themselves and powdering their noses against the humidity. The poor women packed tight against the back doors. The beautiful, daughterly woman, Mbati.

How wearying to think nobody in this courtroom has ever listened to them. I see each one of them as the little child my father was always so concerned about, screaming her terror eternally into her own ear.

We are aware, says the prosecutor, that Mrs. Johnson, though Olinkan, has lived in America for many, many years, and that American life is, for the black person, itself a torture.

I stare at him blankly.

Is it not true, Mr. Johnson, that in the United States, with its stressful whites, your wife is often committed to an insane asylum?

My wife is hurt , I say. Wounded. Broken. Not mad.

Evelyn laughs. Flinging her head back in deliberate challenge. The laugh is short. Sharp. The bark of a dog. Beyond hurt. Unquestionably mad. Oddly free.