house, Helen at his side. The man was a stranger. Some local freedman, perhaps, or even a runaway. Anyanwu always did what she could for runaways, either feeding and clothing them and sending them on their way better equipped to survive or, on those rare occasions when one seemed to fit into the house, buying him.
This was a compact, handsome little black man not much bigger than Anyanwu was in her true form. She raised her head and looked at him with interest. If this one had a mind to match his body, she might buy him even if he did not fit. It had been too long since she had had a husband. Occasional lovers ceased to satisfy her after a while.
She went back to tearing at the rabbits unself-consciously, as her daughter and the stranger watched. When she finished, she wiped her beak on the grass, gave the attractive stranger a final glance, and flew heavily around to the upper gallery outside her room. There, comfortably full, she dozed for a while giving her body a chance to digest the meal. It was good to be able to take her time, do things at a pace her body found comfortable.
Eventually, she became herself, small and black, young and female. Kane would not like it, but that did not matter. The stranger would like it very much.
She put on one of her best dresses and a few pieces of good jewelry, brushed her glossy new crown of hair, and went downstairs.
Supper had just been finished without her. Her people never waited for her when they knew she was in one or another of her animal forms. They knew her leisurely habits. Now, several of her adult children, Kane and Leah, and the black stranger sat eating nuts and raisins, drinking wine, and talking quietly. They made room for her, breaking their conversation for greeting and welcome. One of her sons got her a glass and filled it with her favorite Madeira. She had taken only a single pleasant sip from it when the stranger said, “The sea has done you good. You were right to go.”
Her shoulders drooped slightly, though she managed not to change expression. It was only Doro.
He caught her eye and smiled, and she knew he had seen her disappointment, had no doubt planned her disappointment. She contrived to ignore him, looked around the table to see exactly who was present. “Where is Luisa?” she asked. The old woman often took supper with the family, feeding her foster children first, then coming in, as she said, to relearn adult conversation.
But now, at the mention of Luisa’s name, everyone fell silent. The son next to her, Julien, who had poured her wine, said softly, “She died, Mama.”
Anyanwu turned to look at him, yellow-brown and plain except for his eyes, utterly clear like her own. Years before when a woman he wanted desperately would have nothing to do with him, he had gone to Luisa for comfort. Luisa had told Anyanwu and Anyanwu had been amazed to find that she felt no resentment toward the old woman, no anger at Julien for taking his pain to a stranger. With her sensitivity, Luisa had ceased to be a stranger the day she arrived on the plantation.
“How did she die?” Anyanwu whispered finally.
“In her sleep,” Julien said. “She went to bed one night, and the next morning, the children couldn’t wake her up.”
“That was two weeks ago,” Leah said. “We got the priest to come out because we knew she’d want it. We gave her a fine funeral.” Leah hesitated. “She … she didn’t have any pain. I lay down on her bed to see, and I saw her go out just as easy …”
Anyanwu got up and left the table. She had gone away to find some respite from loved ones who died and died, and others whose rapid aging reminded her that they too were temporary. Leah, only thirty-five, had far too much gray mixed with her straight black hair.
Anyanwu went into the library, closed the door?closed doors were respected in her house?and sat at her desk, head down. Luisa had been seventy … seventy-eight years old. It was time for her to die. How stupid to grieve over an old woman who had lived what, for her kind, was a long life.
Anyanwu sat up and shook her head. She had been watching friends and relatives grow old and die for as long as she could remember. Why was it biting so deeply into her now, hurting her as though it were a new thing? Stephen, Margaret, Luisa … There would be others. There would always be others, suddenly here, then suddenly gone. Only she would remain.
As though to contradict her thought, Doro opened the door and came in.
She glared at him angrily. Everyone else in her house respected her closed doors?but then, Doro respected nothing at all.
“What do you want?” she asked him.
“Nothing.” He pulled a chair over to the side of her desk and sat down.
“What, no more children for me to raise?” she said bitterly. “No more unsuitable mates for my children? Nothing?”
“I brought a pregnant woman and her two children, and I brought an account at a New Orleans bank to help pay their way. I didn’t come to you to talk about them, though.”
Anyanwu turned away from him not caring why he had come. She wished he would leave.
“It goes on, you know,” he said. “The dying.”
“It doesn’t hurt you.”
“It does. When my children die?the best of my children.”
“What do you do?”
“Endure it. What is there to do but endure it? Someday, we’ll have others who won’t die.”
“Are you still dreaming that dream?”
“What could I do, Anyanwu, if I gave it up?”
She said nothing. She had no answer. “I used to believe in it too,” She said. “When you took me from my people, I believed it. For fifty years, I made myself believe it. Perhaps … perhaps sometimes I still believe it.”
