“I wish I were,” she whispered. She was beginning to cry.
“All right,” Doro said. “All right, that’s all.”
She got up quickly and left the room. When she was gone, Anyanwu said, “Doro, Joseph was too old for a transition! Everything you taught me says he was too old.”
“He was twenty-four. I haven’t seen anyone change at that age before, but …” He hesitated, changed direction. “You never asked about his ancestry, Anyanwu.”
“I never wanted to know.”
“You do know. He’s your descendant, of course.”
She made herself shrug. “You said you would bring my grandchildren.”
“He was the grandchild of your grandchildren. Both his parents trace their descent back to you.”
“Why do you tell me that now? I don’t want to know any more about it. He’s dead!”
“He’s Isaac’s descendant too,” Doro continued relentlessly. “People of Isaac’s line are sometimes a little late going into transition, though Joseph is about as late as I’ve seen. The two children I’ve brought to you are sons of his brother’s body.”
“No!” Anyanwu stared at him. “Take them away! I want no more of that kind near me!”
“You have them. Teach them and guide them as you do your own children. I told you your descendants would not be easy to care for. You chose to care for them anyway.”
She said nothing. He made it sound as though her choice had been free, as though he had not coerced her into choosing.
“If I had found you earlier, I would have brought them to you when they were even younger,” he said. “Since I didn’t, you’ll have to do what you can with them now. Teach them responsibility, pride, honor. Teach them whatever you taught Stephen. But don’t be foolish enough to teach them you believe they’ll grow up to be criminals. They’ll be powerful men someday and they’re liable to fulfill your expectations?either way.”
Still she said nothing. What was there for her to say?or do? He would be obeyed, or he would make her life and her children’s lives not worth living?if he did not kill them outright.
“You have five to ten years before the boys’ transitions,” he said. “They will have transitions; I’m as sure as I can be of that. Their ancestry is just right.”
“Are they mine, or will you interfere with them?”
“Until their transitions, they’re yours.
“And then?”
“I’ll breed them, of course.”
Of course. “Let them marry and stay here. If they fit here, they’ll want to stay. How can they become responsible men if their only future is to be bred?”
Doro laughed aloud, opening his mouth wide to show the empty spaces of several missing teeth. “Do you hear yourself, woman? First you want no part of them, now you don’t want to let go of them even when they’re grown.”
She waited silently until he stopped laughing, then asked: “Do you think I’m willing to throw away any child, Doro? If there is a chance for those boys to grow up better than Joseph, why shouldn’t I try to give them that chance? If, when they grow up, they can be men instead of dogs who know nothing except how to climb onto one female after another, why shouldn’t I try to help?”
He sobered. “I knew you would help?and not grudgingly. Don’t you think I know you by now, Anyanwu?”
Oh, he knew her?knew how to use her. “Will you do it then? Let them marry and stay here if they fit?”
“Yes.”
She looked down, examining the rug pattern that had held so much of Margaret’s attention. “Will you take them away if they don’t fit, can’t fit, like Joseph?”
“Yes,” he repeated. “Their seed is too valuable to be wasted.”
He thought of nothing else. Nothing!
“Shall I stay with you for a while, Anyanwu?”
She stared at him in surprise, and he looked back neutral-faced, waiting for an answer. Was he asking a real question, then? “Will you go if I ask you to?”
“Yes.”
Yes. He was saying that so often now, being so gentle and cooperative?for him. He had come courting again.
“Go,” she said as gently as she could. “Your presence is disruptive here, Doro. You frighten my people.” Now. Let him keep his word.
He shrugged, nodded. “Tomorrow morning,” he said.
And the next morning, he was gone.
Perhaps an hour after his departure, Helen and Luisa came hand in hand to Anyanwu to tell her that Margaret had hanged herself from a beam in the washhouse.
For a time after Margaret’s death, Anyanwu felt a sickness that she could not dispel. Grief. Two children lost so close together. Somehow, she never got used to losing children?especially young children, children it seemed had been with her for only a few moments. How many had she buried now?
