WHAT THE NANNY GOAT TOLD HER KIDS (CHAPTER 3)

 CHAPTER 3

 

THE DAY FOR MILLING CASSAVA was like a tug of war. Out of seven days a week, only one was set aside for the farmers to bring out their produce and the buyers to come and get it.

The arrangement was done to favour both parties, so the buyers would not come and go back empty-handed hence wasting their fares and for the sellers to jointly bargain and get good returns for their efforts.

The evenings the peeled cassava arrived in sacks, the nanny goat knew she would not hear any other sound in the area except that of the grating milling machines mounted on trucks.

Those who had their sacks of cassava ready would go call the millers. At night the area around the Ransoms’ frontage was like a mini-market with the cassava owners pointing their torches at the sacks littering the sides of the path and haggling with the millers the amounts they would pay for their produce to be milled.

Where a bargain was struck, the machines would roar into life and the deafening sound would echo around the neighbourhood and most times, it would last till the early hours of the morning most especially if one miller was at work.

There were other spots the itinerant millers went to work too and one or two attended to the cassava owners here as their homes were close by and there was a good number of those in need of their service. One was regular, the other was not. The irregular miller frequently had issues with his milling machine.

Kasablanka (people here were fond of bearing tongue-twisting nicknames and the miller, for the sound than meaning remembering his teacher mentioned a word like that just before he opted out of school to make a quick buck with the farmers as he was doing pretty well with his muscles than brain, attached his being to it) – yes, Kasablanka was rumoured to have a big-busted large-hipped mistress resident in the big town and who was steadily sucking him dry.

After the marathon milling of cassava for fufu, the fellow would be missing from the village for days and would return broke to help mill cassava for those making garri for personal consumption or retailing in the small daily market.

People did not like doing garri as palm oil and firewood were needed in addition to the time they would be roasting themselves around the fire, their eyes and nose getting stung by smoke, to fry it. And the income for a sack of cassava used was not better than the one used for fufu. But with fufu, after milling, the buyers would just take the flour away and sell it to the end users in faraway places.

Kasablanka was liked by the cassava owners for when his machine was in good condition and he was around and ready to work, they would call on him at any hour as he would respond and while milling would assist in tasks that would speed up the process. But he was always at a loss whenever a major part of his machine packed up and would keep wondering where he would get the money to replace it. And Grace had heard again and again from the cassava owners when they were mourning Kasablanka’s unavailability to process their produce (especially when the second miller was up to his lazy and cut-throat antics) that his mistress must have made him eat kopnomi (the listen-to-me love potion).

Here, people did not believe any sensible human could fall crazily in love, giving and doing all that a partner demanded. As the men just seemed to be promiscuous all over and would go around spending heavily to sleep with the women they fancied, women too who were tired of quarrelling and fighting other women and were bent on having total control of their men were said to be sneaking to traditional doctors who would give them potions that if they successfully made the men eat, the thoughts of these men would solely centre on them. To such men, their mothers, fathers and even siblings would become far removed from their minds as their wives or mistresses (the potion givers) loomed large in their eyes.

But Mr Ransom, who had stayed in the big town before returning completely to hug the land as he said it gave him the freedom he had tried and could not get in any other work serving bossy people, commented several times to his best friends (though behind his wife’s back) that with what he had seen in the cinema (in those days, black-and-white television sets were owned by a few upwardly mobile young men and video machine was virtually not seen in his neighbourhood) he doubted not the existence of a fetish for a woman to hook a man with her small finger but pitied greatly any naïve young man who would fall into the hands of an experienced prostitute.

‘You’d only return to your senses,’ he said, ‘when you are confirmed broke and another man walks in before your eyes to enjoy her charms.’

Mr Ransom suspected that was the issue with Kasablanka and assured those who worried about him that he would one day return to his senses.

But what Grace knew and which the villagers did not know was the fact Mrs Ransom once lived in a brothel and Mr Ransom picked her there while living in the big town.

Grace knew of the secret the day their eldest daughter was caught smooching with a young fellow who had pretended to be a friend to the second son.

The father was mad that she was getting spoiled and would not properly follow the footprints he deliberately planted for them so they would become great men and women in the future.

Though she had narrowly escaped the blows he flung at her, Mr Ransom since the evening of that Saturday kept threatening her with thunder and hailstones and the wife who felt he had quarrelled enough had asked him to pipe down, that their daughter had made a mistake and with his reaction, she had learnt her lessons and would definitely not repeat the act. Mr Ransom would not condone such a permissive attitude, so he and the wife quarrelled. He had said pretty nasty things to the wife but she had avoided answering him.

As the wife saw the fight had not fully left him, she had started avoiding passing near where he stood. While trying to pass near the pen to get to the backyard instead of just moving through the living room and linking it, the husband followed and accosted her near the pen. He kept his tone low as if not wanting the neighbours to hear him and tell her she should stop interfering at any time he was reprimanding their girls.

‘I’d not have any of them live in a brothel like you did!’ he had muttered.

‘So that was the abuse all along you’d planned? Wait. Let me bring a gong and you’d become the town crier hitting it and telling the villagers the sins I’d long ago committed, dear saint! From the same brothel when you stole …’

‘I did not,’ Mr Ransom cut in, almost whispering. ‘My manager lied against me!’

‘You did! The court almost hanged you for it. But from the same brothel, I brought the money to run around and save your butt from jail. I’d give you the gong and go get a megaphone myself. We’d rove this village and tell the people what we’d been doing a long time ago in the big town.’

‘It’s enough. I’m sorry,’ Mr Ransom, completely deflated now, said. ‘It’s my fault. I should’ve known when to calm down.’

‘No, don’t. Abuse me!’ Mrs Ransom said with a withering look. ‘I forgot. I should’ve given you a machete to hack down your daughter!’

Mr Ransom hurriedly looked around and seeing he had lost the fight and wishing the neighbours did not eavesdrop, scurried to the veranda, flopped down on the bench and propping his chin and cheeks with his hands, stared across at the path. By the time he looked sideways, his wife had disappeared from view. It was the thing he loved about her. She knew how to fizzle out tension quick but the nasty issues he had raised would make her sad and quietly angry for a long time and deny him of her charms. Mr Ransom smiled wryly and sat up straight, stretching his big shirt to properly cover himself. Well, he was good at doing things to speed up reconciliation. He knew she would soon let him crawl back into her arms.

As the demon finally left Mr Ransom, he became quite remorseful over the degrading statement he made and jumped outside prowling the yard, looking at the far hedges of the compound in the hope if anyone was hiding around and eavesdropping, his searching eyes could somehow fall on such. He had even looked suspiciously at the goats and Grace was happy they were either browsing the bale of grass or on their haunches, meditatively chewing the cud, looking the other way. But she was now privy to a great secret in the Ransoms’ home.

 

*

 

At early dawn, as the sheets of polythene were peeled off the produce by the sellers for the buyers to appraise, the glistening white of the cassava flour would appeal to Grace and the other goats. But it was also the time their owners would double-check their ropes and even tighten the knots of the nooses more in the pen. They pretended to be doing that for the good of the goats, citing that goats are crazy over cassava, but cassava seems only interested and swiftly too making the goat that loves it swoon and foam in the mouth as it turns it into a carcass.

Grace licked her lips reminiscing the last time she got loose and freely ate the cassava flour.

Normally, after soaking for a few days to ferment, the tubers are then milled and sifted. The flour extracted is boiled to make fufu. But here a small quantity would be soaked and mixed with sacks of fresh cassava tubers just milled knowing the days the produce would be transported to distant destinations would see it reaching the desired point of fermentation that would make it safe for consumption as cassava is naturally rich with the poison, cyanide.

This was why Mrs Ransom seeing Grace grazing the cassava flour, screamed and chased her back into the pen, furiously dangling a log she pulled hastily from the fire.