“Go back to the celebration,” Ssaiku told us. “Enjoy yourselves. In ten days, the women will Hold Conversation with Ani. Onyesonwu, you will go with them.”

I almost laughed. I hadn’t Held Conversation with Ani since I was a child. I didn’t believe in Ani. I held in my cynicism, though. It really didn’t matter. When we got back to the celebration, things were just heating up. The band was playing a song that everyone knew the words to. Eyess danced for everyone as she sang loudly. I think I’d have been like her if I hadn’t been born an outcast.

“What do you think will happen?” Mwita asked me as we stood among all the singing people. I glimpsed Luyu standing on the other side of the circle with two men. Both had their arms around her waist. I didn’t see Diti or Fanasi.

“No idea,” I said. “I was about to ask you the same thing, since naturally you should know everything.”

He sighed loudly and rolled his eyes. “You don’t listen,” he said.

“Onyesonwu!” Eyess shouted. I jumped at the sound of my name. Everyone turned. “Come sing with us!”

I smiled embarrassed, shaking my head and putting up my hands. “It’s okay,” I said backing away. “I-I don’t know any of your songs.”

“Please come sing,” Eyess begged.

“Why don’t you sing one of your own songs then,” Mwita said loudly.

I glared at him and he smiled smugly.

“Yes!” Eyess exclaimed. “Sing for us!”

Everyone quieted as she led me to the circle’s center. People avoided touching me as I passed. I stood there, aware of all eyes on me.

“Sing us a song from your home,” Eyess said.

“I was raised in Jwahir,” I said, when I realized I couldn’t sneak away. “But I’m from the desert. That’s my home.” I paused. “I sing this to the land when it is content.”

I opened my mouth, closed my eyes, and sang the song that I’d learned from the desert when I was three years old. Everyone oohed and ahhed when the brown parrot I’d seen in Ssaiku’s tent came and landed on my shoulder. I kept singing. The sweet sound and vibration coming from my throat radiated through the rest of my body. It smoothed away my anxieties and sadness. For the moment. When I finished, everyone was silent.

Then people started hissing and clapping praise. The noise startled the bird on my shoulder and it flew away. Eyess threw her arms around my leg, looking up at me with admiration. Sparks flew from her arms and several people jumped back, muttering mild exclamations. The musicians started playing again, and I quickly left the center of the circle.

“Beautiful,” people said as I passed.

“I’ll sleep well tonight!”

“Ani blesses you a thousand times.”

If they touched me they experienced pain, yet they heaped praise on me like I was their chief’s long lost daughter.

“Oh!” Eyess exclaimed, hearing the band start a tune she couldn’t resist. She ran back to the circle where she wiggled a dance that made everyone laugh. Mwita put his arm around my waist. It never felt so good.

“That was… fun,” I said as we walked back to our tent.

“Works every time,” Mwita said. He touched my bushy hair. “This hair.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m going to use a long piece of palm fiber and loop it around all the way to the bottom. That won’t be too different from braiding it.”

“It’s not that,” he said. I waited but he didn’t say more, which was fine. He didn’t have to. I felt it, too. I’d felt it as soon as Ssaiku told me what he wanted me to do. Like I was all… charged up. Something was going to happen when I went on that retreat.

When we got to our camp, we found only Fanasi. He was sitting before the dwindling rock fire, staring at the glowing stone. A bottle of palm wine sat between his legs.

“Where is…”

“I have no idea, Onye,” he said, slurring his words. “Both have deserted me.”

Mwita patted him on the shoulder and went into our tent. I sat beside Fanasi. He reeked of palm wine. “They’ll be back, I’m sure,” I said.

“You and Mwita,” he said after a while. “You’re the true thing. I’ll never have that. Just wanted Diti, some land, babies. Look at me now. My father would spit.”

“They’ll come back,” I said, again.

“I can’t have them both,” he said. “And looks like I can’t have even one. Stupid. Shouldn’t have come here. I want to go home.”

I looked at him, irritated. “This place is full of beautiful women who will eagerly have you,” I said, getting up. “Go find and bed one and stop sulking.”

Mwita was in our tent lying on his back when I entered. “Good advice,” he said. “All he needs is another woman to mess up his head even more.”

I sucked my teeth. “He shouldn’t have chosen Luyu,” I snapped. “Didn’t I say this? Luyu likes men, not one man. This couldn’t have been more predictable.”

“You blame him now? Diti refused him even after the juju was broken.”

“What do you mean ‘even after’? Do you know what the pain from that juju is like? It’s horrible! And we’ve been raised to feel that it’s wrong to open our legs, even when we want to. We weren’t brought up to be free as… as you were.” I paused. “When you were with all those older women, women like Ting, who criticized you?”

Mwita narrowed his eyes at me. “That very first time, you would have happily opened your legs to me if it weren’t for that juju. There were no Jwahir rules for women holding you back.”

“Don’t change the subject.”

Mwita laughed.

“Did you have intercourse with Ting?”

“What?”

“I know you and I think I know her.”

Mwita only shook his head, lying back down, and putting his hands behind his head. I took off my celebration clothes and wrapped myself in my old yellow rapa. I was leaving the tent when I felt a tug at my rapa, almost pulling the thing off.

“Wait,” Mwita said. “Where are you going?”

“To wash,” I said. We’d set up Luyu’s tent as a place to bathe. We didn’t have the heart to use Binta’s.

“Did you do it?” I finally asked. “With those other women before me?”

“Why does it matter?”

“It just does. Did you?”

“You’re not the first woman I’ve had intercourse with.”

I sighed. I’d known. It made no difference. My worry was about Ting. “Where did you go when you left here?” I asked.

“For a walk. People welcomed me into their homes. A group of men sat me down and wanted to know all about us and our travels. I told them some things, not all. I met Ting and she took me to Ssaiku’s tent where we all talked.” He paused. “Ting is, like everyone else here, beautiful, but the poor woman might as well have the Eleventh Rite juju on her. She’s not allowed intimacy. And… Onye you know the word I have spoken to you.”

Ifunanya.

“It applies to soul and body,” Mwita said, yanking on my rapa again, pulling it below my breasts. I pulled it up.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“You should be,” Mwita said. He waved his hand. “Go and wash.”