The wind rustles through the trees, blowing acrid white smoke towards her; stinging at her eyes and creating the perfect cover for the tears streaming down her face. She pokes at the embers under the pot, shifting ash and charcoal to coax the fire alive. The compound is slowly stirring; she wipes her cheeks before prying eyes notice.

A quiet morning with easy chores is usually a solace to her but today the silence rings too loud. It bursts through her chest and clouds her vision. How could she be so careless? So forgetful?

She sprinkles fine red-ground-millet into the pot of boiling water with one hand and stirs the cooking stick through it with the other, watching the porridge thicken but only seeing her husband’s content face as she’d told him they were due another child. It had barely registered – a mere formality for him. He’d smiled softly and before she could say much more, she’d heard his breath grow heavy, his body fading into a silhouette as the light waned. She’d lain still in the dark, stretching her arm and placing her palms against the cool clay walls of their hut.

“Mama, mama, the porridge.” Her daughter’s shrill voice jolts her awake. The sleeping baby in her arms flinches; he covers her nipple with his mouth, suckles for a few seconds, stops, and rolls his head into the crook of her arm. She rubs the sleep out of her eyes; drained from tending to the children all night, and hears, pshhhh – the porridge has boiled over onto the fire. Shifting on her stool, she steadies the pot and stirs it, keeping the baby shielded from the smoke.

Her daughter is an exhausting ball of energy, bouncing about and singing silly rhymes.

“Nana, where is your brother?” she asks, her eyes darting.

“In your hands,” her daughter giggles.

“Not that one,” she mumbles, panic creeping over her.

Her uneven breathing unsettles the baby, who shifts in his sleep, threatening to wake up; she rocks him while she searches, shuddering as she hears the fire crackle.

A few moons ago, her friend Nkombo’s daughter had crawled over to the fire and grabbed hold of a scorching pot of porridge; one of the other mothers had snatched her away in time to stop the hot mush from pouring all over her, the little girl’s chubby fingers still look charred today.

She peers through the wooden poles of the thatched insaka she uses as a kitchen and sees her nosey neighbour sweeping the area around her hut. Had her son gone that way, her neighbour would already have alerted the entire compound. Taking a deep breath, she reminds herself that a crawling toddler can’t get that far; he definitely can’t have gone beyond the fence of reed mats that surrounds the royal households.

“Mama’s forgotten you,” her husband, who is somehow now standing right behind her, says as he stoops over to drop their first son onto her lap. With the deftness of a nsolo player, she pulls the baby onto one leg just as the toddler’s soft bottom lands on the other, her son beams, he gurgles with excitement and tugs on her bottom lip with his sharp fingers,

“He needs his nails cut,” her husband says as he saunters away to a job that, by rights, should be hers.

Her husband, who has aged much less than her over the course of their short marriage, is a towering figure; his smooth, dark skin contrasts with the brown antelope hide he wears around his waist. A lean man, who has not developed a round belly, despite all the honey wine he drinks after work, he is more confident now than when he and his people first came to claim her.

The heavy thuds of the porridge tell her that it is now thick enough to eat.

Her son wriggles to freedom; he lands on the ground in a puff of dust and scampers away in search of his sister, his hands and knees drawing lines in the sand.

She looks down at the baby; her nipple is inches from his mouth; she watches as a drop of cloudy milk drips onto the corner of his round lips and trickles down his cheek. Her swollen breast hangs low, drooping with the weaning of each child; it will droop further after this one, lying flat against her chest, emptied of all nourishment.

She swings the baby onto her back, holding him in place while she drapes the bark cloth around him and secures it with a knot at her chest, tethering him to her, rocking when he whimpers, shifting him from her back to her chest so that he doesn’t feel left out.

“Porridge,” her daughter says, tugging at her skirts.

“Yes,” she nods as she gets up to lift the pot off the fire.

This is what they don’t tell you, she thinks, as she feeds her first born son; they don’t tell you the absurdity of trying to keep someone alive against their will. She coaxes him to eat the porridge he has decided to keep ballooned in his cheeks, but he shakes his head in protest so that it lands everywhere except in his mouth. The only thing he doesn’t do is cry because that would mean having to swallow.

She gives up force-feeding her son; he will eat when hungry.

A group of girls skips by shouting greetings, “Can I help to collect your water?” one of them asks.

Nodding, she points towards a rounded clay pot, and watches the girls as they sashay away, swaying round hips that jut out from wasp-like waists. Her waist and hips are lined with silvery slithers, thickening as they crawl up her belly.

She wants to shout out to the girls, ‘enjoy your smooth, supple skin while you can,’ but knows it is no use.

The other women tell her how lucky she is to have a husband who has not yet married another – not yet imposed on her the need to juggle sensitive family politics.

What they don’t say is what you all know, she muses – that he will hold off marrying anyone else for as long as he can. That yours was a strategic marriage to join great families and hand over your duties. They don’t say that they see the power slipping from your grasp. Maybe they don’t know; you wouldn’t know either if you weren’t part of the inner court, the beating heart of the royal establishment, the Lukena.

A cockerel crows in the distance. The herd boys and the fishermen have long gone to work. The blacksmiths and the woodworkers are already at their stations. The hunters, who work best at night, are asleep. Only the mothers and children fill the remaining quiet, empty space.  Pounding, grinding, washing, crying, playing, repeat. The sound of domesticity.

She sweeps around her hut, raising a steady cloud of dust with each stroke; the rain is long overdue and crunchy leaves line the ground, the trees above them standing naked. A gust of wind scatters the pile of gathered leaves, undoing all her work, she straightens her stiff back, sighs, and starts again.

The palace drums fill the silence, announcing the start of the morning session; she stands for a moment, listening. The baby flips his head left to right against her back; she holds her breath and closes her eyes; he lets out an ear-piercing cry.

To her daughter’s absolute glee, her husband has decided to come home early today.

She ladles oily, red soup onto a plate and places it next to the nshima. Holding up a bowl for him to wash his hands, she invites her husband to eat. He chews noisily, gripping the game meat in one hand and tearing off pieces of it with his teeth, “I must eat my evening meal here more often,” he says between mouthfuls.

She smiles at the compliment, swallowing a morsel of food.

The little boys are asleep in the hut, and she savours the respite. A light breeze provides relief from the punishing heat of the daytime. Families dot the compound; they gather in front of huts lit with flickering orange flames. Chatter fills the air. A slither of a moon lights up the sky, and few have gone to listen to the royal orchestra playing in the background.

Her husband sighs with satisfaction when he’s eaten his fill; he stretches on his stool.

She watches him, measuring his mood,

“How was the Lukena today?” she asks, keeping her tone even.

He shifts, sharpening his eyes.

She has miscalculated. It is so much easier to speak in monosyllables to small children all day.

“Can’t a man allow his food to rest?” he complains, “Nana, bring me my pipe.” He calls to their daughter.

She puts away the pots and plates, keeping an eye on him from the corner of her eye. He fills his pipe with tobacco, takes a long drag, and leans against the wooden pole of the insaka. Her daughter is rubbing her eyes, determined to stay awake and sit with her father for as long as she can; she soon succumbs, dozing against his leg. A full day’s play got the better of her.

Being sure not to wake her, she lifts her daughter, rubbing her back as she starts to resist. She takes her in to lie by her brothers in the hut and looks at her three peaceful sleeping children; covering them with a hide blanket, she wills them to give her some time.

Outside, the water she placed on the fire has heated up; pouring it into a wide clay pot, she puts it in front of her husband,

“I thought I would rub your feet,” she says.

He nods, and their eyes lock, remembering how she would do this for him before she grew tired from tending to their offspring.

She works in silence, only the sound of their breathing between them as she washes one foot and then the other, cleansing the day’s grime off them. Placing each washed foot on her lap, she guides him to dip both of them into the warmth of the clay pot. She feels his gaze on her but doesn’t look up, focusing all her attention on his feet. Squeezing each toe and then between them, she works her way up to his calf. He sighs heavily, almost a moan. She waits for another moan and then looks up, knowing he has closed his eyes. When she rubs his other calf, she mirrors his sigh. He pries his eyes open and catches her smiling bashfully at him as he takes a long drag of his pipe and blows out a circle of smoke.

“You must be so tired,” she says.

“It was a long day,” he responds, and her shoulders loosen.

She takes his feet out of the pot and rubs oil on them. A silence that must be filled lingers.

“Kawangu is due to join the bakwetunga this month, but the negotiations have stalled because the elders believe that the bride price is too high.”

“Oh?” she says, keeping the rhythm of her hands steady.

Kawangu is her husband’s brother; he has long been betrothed to the Mwana Mwene – the Queen’s daughter. There must be a good reason why the negotiations have stalled.

“The Mwene believes our family must show gratefulness for the honour bestowed on us; there are rumblings that there has been an offer of marriage from another nation, maybe even the possibility of a strategic alliance.”

She finishes with his feet and sits next to him, “but the Mwana Mwene is promised.” she exclaims, knowing this is the right thing to say.

“Yes,” he says, warming up to his subject, “our families have a long history together, a bond that should not break. He doesn’t show it, of course, but I’m sure the Makwetunga must be very angry.”

The Makwetunga is the Mwene’s only husband and the father of all her children; this has made him so powerful that he has secured royal marriages for many in his family. Her husband is the Makwetunga’s nephew, and she is the Mwene’s niece. The bakwetunga – the royal husbands – have grown in number and stature. They are even rumoured to have a court separate from the Mwene’s; this must be why she is considering a new alliance.

“What does the Mwana Shihemi say?” she asks, displaying her full knowledge and reminding her husband that, in political matters, she is, at least, his equal.

“You know what he is like. Always eager to please. He is her prime minister, her right-hand man. Hardly likely to oppose her.”

That means that the Mwene is not isolated yet.

She sees that her husband’s pipe is empty, limp in his hand; she takes it from him, places more tobacco into it, lighting it and taking a few puffs to ensure it stays lit before handing it back to him.

“The thing is,” he says, pausing to smoke, “we need strong leadership, now more than ever.”

She nods at him.

“It’s not just the threats. We are missing out on many opportunities.”

She remembers the insupa of mboté that her mother-in-law had sent her yesterday. Her husband always says that his mother makes the best honey wine. She pours him some and hands it over, taking the pipe.

“The Mbunda have many guns, but they will only trade them for slaves. And your aunt… I mean… the Mwene refuses to sell her people. How will we become powerful if we can’t even get guns to kill more elephants?

Keeping the peace is all well and good but we’d get more from selling tusks than trinkets like axes and hoes.”

He swigs the mboté and hands it to her, taking the pipe.

She thinks fast, “do we have enough hunters?” she asks.

“Of course, we do,” he smirks, remembering that she is a woman, “Kayambila alone has a whole legion.”

There it is. She sips the mboté, giving him a chance to smoke his pipe.

Kayambila is her father, a cruel man whose violence drove her away from home to his sister, the Mwene. He ruled their home as strictly as he did his legion of hunters. The final straw came when he sacrificed her brother to gain more power. She’d refused to give in like her mother and stayed at the Lukena, learning all she could about its inner workings. She owes the Mwene her life.

Her father has long coveted the throne, scheming and plotting for many years but he has never had the right allies to help him take over.

“And the people?” she asks, holding her breath.

He shifts, scratches his head, and then takes the mboté from her outstretched hand.

“The people remain on her side,” he mumbles, “more and more strangers come to seek refuge from raiders and slave traders, but the land can’t sustain it. The Mwene believes that if we learn to grow crops, we can thrive and accommodate more people, but, with respect, she is wrong; you can’t wrestle with the ground when your enemy fights with a spear.”

She considers this, puffs on the pipe, and turns to him, “what about you?” she asks, “what would you do?”

He pauses as though he doesn’t know the answer and hasn’t already spent many nights debating it with the rest of the bakwetunga.

“We should have a new drum at court.” he says, looking into her widening eyes, “A male drum, one that will give us strength.”

She looks away.

She has heard about the practice of using male drums; some say that the military strength of other nations is down to these instruments. The royal drums play at daybreak and nightfall to announce that the Mwene is at the Lukena; they signify safety. Male drums can’t be played in the presence of a menstruating woman; if the people don’t hear the familiar drumbeats daily, they are sure to revolt. The Mwene can’t afford to have the drums lie silent for 5 days every cycle of the moon.

“Clever, right?” her husband is saying, and this time she is thankful to hear the baby crying.

That night she endures her husband’s gentle caresses, peeling herself out from under him when he slumps, spent from exertion and alcohol – the tingling in her numb hand a mere distraction from her tightening chest. Her friend Nkombo visits in the afternoon with pumpkin to share as well as her daughter. They sit on a reed mat under the shade of a tree and watch their little girls build carefully constructed mud structures that her heavy-handed son promptly destroys,

“Let him play,” Nkombo says when he sobs after the daughters attempt to block him, “Boys,” she laughs, “you are so lucky to have two of them, but I don’t know how you will manage.”

She doesn’t know how she will manage either.

Her baby moans as he suckles greedily, gripping her finger with his entire hand; she smiles at him, enjoying the intimacy; he smiles back and then, afraid to lose sight of the nipple, returns to it.

Watching him she remembers how they say you can’t get pregnant while you nurse your child. How when you had your first, you did not resist your husband as he reached out to you in the night with fervent hands; after all, you needed him to make you feel like a woman again instead of just a mother. Enamoured with your new baby, you didn’t notice the extra time between bleeding and when your proud mother-in-law remarked on your rounded belly, you disguised your alarm. That night, your husband cradled your daughter and reassured you that having another so soon was for the best; he had been born so long after his brothers that he had, had no one to play with. He was glad, he said, that his children would have each other; smiling, you looked up into his shiny eyes and placed his hand on your belly.

When it happened again, you felt embarrassed, thinking everyone would know that you couldn’t keep your hands off each other. You put off telling anyone for as long as possible and because you could not go to the Lukena with a baby at your breast your husband continued to stand in for you. He was only too happy to help and shrugged away your idea for a wet nurse, ‘A baby needs its mother,’ he’d said.

Shrugging off the intrusive thoughts she hands Nkombo the baby and smiles as she watches her play with both of her sons at once; cooing at the infant and pulling faces at the delighted toddler, who looks up at her with an adoring grin. She reaches up and fingers her thick coils; she hasn’t had time to plait her hair this week. Nkombo’s hair is braided in neat cornrows of mukule running to the nape of her neck, she wears a spotless bark cloth skirt and her well-moisturised skin shimmers with oil.

It is not fair that Nkombo had to endure gossip after the accident with the pot, she is always very attentive, and children can be so quick.

She bites her lip.

“It’s happened again,” she mumbles.

“What was that?”

“I think, maybe, I might be pregnant again.”

“Again?” Nkombo exclaims, forgetting that the only acceptable tone is joy.

She nods carefully.

Nkombo brings herself to smile and holds the baby close to her chest, “That’s great,” she manages.

She looks down to give her friend time and to avoid seeing the tears welling up in her eyes.

Nkombo and her husband have been trying for a baby since their daughter was a year old, she had a difficult birth, but everybody says there is no reason she can’t have another child. His family has blamed everyone, including her grandmother, for the long gap. Nkombo’s husband is now in marriage negotiations for a second wife.

“I don’t think I can do it,” she whispers, looking up at her friend.

Nkombo looks at her, searches her eyes, and nods, “are you sure?” she asks.

She is not sure; how can anyone be?

“I will come by tomorrow morning,” Nkombo says, “we can leave the children with mum.”

*                                              

“Mother of Nana,” Nkombo calls out cheerfully the next day, “good morning.”

She responds in kind, emphasising her health and that of her family, silencing any rumours that might arise from the early visit; her neighbour turns back to her morning chores.

She smiles at her friend’s loyalty, whose arrival coincides with her husband’s departure for the Lukena. They are in the insaka at the front of the house, which has now gone from kitchen to bathroom.

“Are you ready?” Nkombo asks.

“It’s been a long night,” she responds, handing her the baby while she washes the other two children.

“Are you sure your mother won’t mind?”

“My mother wants many grandchildren; the visit will make her happy.”

The number of children far outweighs that of the adults, and the walk to Nkombo’s mother’s house is a challenge. She and Nkombo each carry a child on their backs and herd the girls who stop and greet other children, run after butterflies and stoop to catch crawling creatures; the toddler can’t stand to miss out on all the fun and kicks about before surrendering and falling asleep. Only the baby is quiet, happy to enjoy the steady, gentle rocking.

The mood is pleasant, their conversation easy and inconsequential, cloudless skies warn of the stifling heat to come; the two friends rarely leave the royal compound, and the outing revives them.

As predicted, Nkombo’s mother is pleased to see them; she fawns over the little girls and chastises her for scolding her boisterous son.

“Why do you insist on denying me more grandchildren,” she says to no one in particular and Nkombo rushes to escape. They walk silently now, subdued by Nkombo’s mother’s words ringing in their ears, reminding them of their mission; their steps become slower, delaying the inevitable.

“Do you think I’m being selfish?” she hears herself say and is surprised to have asked this out loud, biting her lip to prevent any more outbursts.

“No,” Nkombo responds, but she sees the answer in her eyes.

“If it were possible, I would have you carry and nurse this child.”

“To carry another woman’s child and raise him as your own? We have enough trouble without adding the title witch to our names.”

They smile, feeling light from the unburdening.

“If it wasn’t for the Lukena–“

Nkombo stops and takes her hand, “truly,” she says, “you don’t have to justify yourself to me,”

But she is the one who is looking for any excuse to turn back; she thinks about her aunt, a woman who has 9 children and remains Mwene.

“We are here,” Nkombo says.

And she sees that they are – a small hut far away from any other – shells, bones, and horns dangling off its roof, swaying in the slight breeze, as soothing chants sound from within.

“What if someone has seen us,” she asks, handing the sleeping baby to Nkombo.

“There is nothing wrong with visiting a healer; besides, they will all imagine we are here because of me.”

She turns to enter the hut and thinks about the confinement before her wedding day; the singing, the dancing, the unsolicited advice from relations distant and close, all with something to say. Nobody warns you about this. None of them tell you what it will be like to sit in front of a stranger and explain that you feel incapable of doing what you were born to do.

Inside, the hut is dark and she has to blink to adjust from the bright sunlight. The healer nods perceptively when she stammers through her explanation, stalling when she hears the baby cry outside. But she takes the musano and listens carefully to the instructions even almost smiling when the healer offers a different kind of musano to prevent the need for a second visit. She places the two bundles of leaves in a fold of her bark cloth where they nudge at her conscience with each step she takes back home.

And when Nkombo offers to help with the children while she recovers, tears fall from her eyes freely.

About the Author:

Mwanabibi Sikamo is a Zambian storyteller and award-winning filmmaker exploring the real and imagined lives of Africans past and present. Steeped in the tradition of African spirituality, her magical realism and historical fiction have been published by Omenana Speculative Fiction Magazine, Shenandoah, Iskanchi Magazine, and other places. 
Twitter/X and Instagram: @Mwanabibi Sikamo and 
Substack: mwanabibi.substack.com

*Feature image by Cherry Laithang on Unsplash