MWINDO, CHAPTER FOURTEEN

TIME OF FEAR

During the months of the seven pregnancies, Tubondo became a troubled land.  Crops failed.  Families quarreled violently.  Traps and nets remained empty.  Sheburu’s auguries were ambivalent, and provided no comfort to those who came to him for advice.

Shemwindo remained aloof and truculent.  Only when warriors of the neighboring Bana-Biri people raided an outlying Tubondo village did the Mwami bestir himself to action.  And then he fought with a ferocity that frightened even the warriors who went into battle beside him.  The Bana-Biri soon fled as if pursued by a Bashumbu, and the Bana-Tubondo wondered whether they should have joined them.

No longer did Shemwindo visit the dwellings of his wives.  Each one slept alone, under the shadow of the spear in the central pole.  As their bellies grew, so did their fear.

In better times, they would have shared a mutual understanding of their role in the creation of new lives for their husband and Tubondo.  In the time since Shemwindo’s pronouncement, however, his wives avoided each other.  They spent most of their times consulting with midwives.  Those discussions centered on ways to determine the gender of an unborn child.

“Does your child ride low in your belly?” one midwife asked the Most Favored Wife.

“No,” Nyili replied.

“Then it is probably a girl.”

“Probably?” Nyili gasped.  “Can you not say for certain?”

“Not for certain,” the midwife replied.  “But most of the time, a girl rides high in the belly, and a boy rides low.”

Nyili could only hope that her child continued to ride high.

Another midwife spoke to Masisa.

“You are old to be bearing your first child.  And the first child of an older woman is usually a boy.”

The Eldest Wife wept for three days in her dwelling afterward.  And she spent the remainder of her pregnancy clinging to the word “usually” although it were a protective talisman.  For the midwife had said “usually,” not “always.”

Some of the other wives also visited midwives to seek reassurance.  Like Nyili and Masisa, they did not find it.  Some went so far as to visit Sheburu, the mganga.  But Sheburu had less to offer than the midwives.  For the Bashumbu no longer spoke to him through the bones.  And he had lost his influence over Shemwindo.  Times had become so difficult for the mganga that he was sometimes tempted to throw his mask into the bush and scour the markings from his skin.  But even though the Bashumbu were silent, they would never forgive such an act of transgression.

Of all Shemwindo’s wives, only Nyirare did not seek advice from the midwives or the mganga.  In the brief moments her co-wives spent with each other, they talked about her.

“She must know she is going to have a girl.”

“But how can she know, when the midwives and Sheburu are unable to tell us anything?”

“Perhaps she has other ways to know what is riding within us.”

“Then let us ask her.”

“Never!  Is she not the Least Favored Wife?”

Thus, they didn’t ask.  If they had, they would have known that Nyirare had no idea whether her child would be a boy or a girl.  But she did know the child would be extraordinary.

MWINDO, CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE MIDWIVES SPEAK

Shemwindo’s wives began their labor on the same morning.  ....Sunrise.... saw seven midwives hurrying to ascent the mountain to assist with the births.  Below the summit, the Bana-Tubondo waited anxiously.  There had been talk of deposing Shemwindo should he carry out his dire threat to slay any man-children his wives birthed.  But the hands of those who talked trembled at the thought of matching might with a man who had defeated a Bashumbu.

The seven midwives sang to Shemwindo’s wives while massaging their legs, palpating their stomachs, preparing the special knives that would cut the umbilical cords, and laying out the covered clay bowls in which the babies’ afterbirth would be stored, and later buried.  The wives sang along with the midwives, and tried to keep quavers of fear from their voices.

Shemwindo waited in his own dwelling, for among the Bana-Tubondo it was considered bad luck for a man to be present at the birthing of his children.  After each of his wives gave birth, the midwife would come to him to tell him whether the child had been born alive and whole.  Then she would inform him of the child’s gender.

The Mwami sat quiet and motionless.  His face was like that of a leopard in a tree, poised to leap downward.  The evil seed Kitundukutu had planted was about to bear fruit.

By mid-day, the first midwife entered Shemwindo’s dwelling.  Bowing low before him, she said: “I speak for Masisa, the Eldest Wife.”

Shemwindo nodded.  The midwife straightened and slapped her hands twice against her breasts.  And the sharp sound of flesh meeting flesh said: Masisa’s child is alive and intact.

Shemwindo nodded again.  Then the midwife uttered a peal of high-pitched, celebratory laughter.  And the tone of that mirth said: Masisa’s child is a girl.  Had the tone been lower, it would have meant that a boy had been born.

Shemwindo nodded a third time.  Then he reached into a skin pouch lying at his side and pulled out a butea-ring.  He handed it to the midwife, who solemnly accepted it.  And the butea said:  I accept Masisa’s child.

Bowing again, the midwife departed.  The moment she left, another appeared.

“I speak for Nyili, the Most Favored Wife,” the second midwife said.  Then she slapped her breasts two times and laughed in a high-pitched tone.  Before the setting of the sun, four more midwives appeared, each announcing the birth of a girl-child.

Dusk fell, then darkness.  But no midwife came to announce the birth of Nyirare’s child.