WHAT THE NANNY GOAT TOLD HER KIDS (CHAPTER 3) - B

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.