When the Bird Sings in Ink

The pen is heavy. 

Heavier than the hoe I swung in the sun.

Heavier than the basket of yams I carried down from the farm.

Heavier than the baby who only chose to draw breath outside this world.

This little stick of blue plastic, it has the weight of a grinding stone.

My name is Uwalaka. 

I am seventy-three seasons old.

All my life, my mouth has been a locked box, and the key was swallowed by my father, then my husband.

When I was a girl, I saw the moon split the sky in two, a silver gourd pouring light.

I ran to my mother, my voice a small bird in my throat. “Mama, Mama, the moon has broken!”

She pressed her hand, dry and cracked like old leather, over my lips.

“Shhh, Uwa. A girl’s words are like smoke. They have no place in the air. Shut your mouth.”

The bird in my throat learned to be silent. 

It built a nest of stones.

When I was a wife, I felt a pain like a hot coal in my belly, a different pain from the one that brought my children.

I tried to tell my husband, his back broad as a barn door.

“Shut up! You know nothing,” he said, not turning. “Go and warm my soup, woman.”

So I stirred the soup. 

The pain stirred with me. 

We have been stirring together for five and a seven years.

I have stories. 

The story of the chameleon who climbed the thatch roof and turned the colour of the sunset. I saw it.

The story of the song the river sings when it is angry, just before the rains fell. I heard it.

The story of my own name, the one they don’t call me, the secret name my mother whispered once before she forgot how.

All these stories, living in the locked box. 

The bird is old now. 

Its nest of stones is a mountain.

Today, I am not speaking. 

Speaking is for the wind. 

Today, I am writing.

My hand shakes. 

It is used to holding, to working, not to this delicate scratching.

But the pen bleeds onto the paper. 

It bleeds the truth.

I am writing the word for the pain in my belly.

I am writing the word for the way my husband’s eyes slid past me like water off a stone.

I am writing the word for the daughter I did not teach to speak, for the granddaughter I will not meet, so she can put this paper in her pocket and when they tell her to shut up, she can pull it out and say, “No. My grandmother’s ghost speaks through me.”

They will find me here, I think.

They will find this blue stick in my hand and my mouth, finally, closed forever.

They will say, “The old woman has passed. She was always so quiet. A good woman. She never said a word.”

And they will now know that on this paper, I am not silent.

I am a market woman shouting the price of my life.

I am the town crier ringing a bell of bones.

For the first time, they will have to listen.

Or burn me with my words. 

It is all the same now.

The pen has done its work. 

The lock is broken. 

The bird is free.