Read Online Changer's Daughter by Jane Lindskold - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Jane Lindskold
Ads: Link
traditional self, had not resisted.
There are 256 possible figures that can be arrived at in either form of Ifa divination. Each is tied to a series of stories; the wiser the diviner, the more stories he knows. All the stories are held within the diviner’s memory—though some scholars like her brother-in-law Kehinde have tried to record them. In the stories are the answers to any problem a client may bring.
So the elders say.
Yes, it’s rather like binary, Aduke thinks, remembering that lecture on computer languages. Binary is 1 0 1 0, open shut open shut. So much has been said about the abacus as an ancestor of the adding machine. Has anyone ever noticed that the Yoruba invented the computer?
She sighs. So often she is like this, a woman of two worlds. In one world she is what the Yoruba sometimes call onikaba , a gown wearer, a westernized woman. This is the Aduke who has been to the university, speaks and reads not only English but French and some German, knows history and dates, theories and theorems.
In the other world she is little better than an aróso , a wrapper wearer, like the women in the market when she was a child. This Aduke trembles at the stories of àbikú and dreads that her baby might have been one, that she is doomed to bear the same frivolous ancestor spirit back to earth again and again, suffering each time it dies. The aróso here looks upon the babalawo and his palm nuts with respect and awe, hoping he can show her the path her personal ancestor spirit chose for her before her birth, hoping that he can guide her to discover which god demands a sacrifice or what actions she must take to ensure that her next baby is born willing to dwell on the earth with her.
When her mind is torn like this, Aduke feels more like a twin than a single person. Certainly Taiwo, her husband, the firstborn of twins, does not seem to feel any such confusion. His university education sits easily on him; his only mention of the traditional ways is to make jokes about the old customs. Kehinde, his identical twin, is interested in the things Taiwo is not. He is forever listening to the old people’s stories. At first he wrote them down, now he tapes them. Perhaps that is one of the powers of twins—to split a single destiny between two people and so move into life without confusion of purpose.
And who, she thinks to herself in amusement, are you now? Are you the aróso believing that twins are born with greater power than other people or the modern student of psychology analyzing the quirks of the human psyche?
“I don’t know,” she says aloud, and her companion, the strange woman Oya, turns to look inquiringly at her.
“What don’t you know, Aduke?” she asks pleasantly.
“I...” Aduke certainly doesn’t want to tell her thoughts here, not where the babalawo might hear and be insulted. But then, if he truly is a “father of secret things,” as his title implies, might he know anyhow, might her lying block his ability to help her?
The two sides of her mind pull her in separate directions like a woman tugged by two small children ( like, her westernized mind whispers, the charioteer in Plato’s story, pulled by the two horses, the unruly black and the patient white ).
Which is the unruly side? Aduke wonders desperately. Her black side seems the more patient one, willing to accept what happens and be guided by tradition and custom. It is her “white” side, the one that has been exposed to the contradictions offered in her European-influenced education, that seems unruly.
Belatedly, she realizes that Oya is studying her, still waiting for an answer.
“I can’t say,” Aduke answers lamely, choosing neither to lie nor to enlighten.
She wonders if Oya might understand her confusion. The older woman seems completely comfortable with traditional ways, yet Aduke heard her speaking to a tourist a few days ago, speaking perfect English and using modern idiom. There is definitely more to her than first
There are 256 possible figures that can be arrived at in either form of Ifa divination. Each is tied to a series of stories; the wiser the diviner, the more stories he knows. All the stories are held within the diviner’s memory—though some scholars like her brother-in-law Kehinde have tried to record them. In the stories are the answers to any problem a client may bring.
So the elders say.
Yes, it’s rather like binary, Aduke thinks, remembering that lecture on computer languages. Binary is 1 0 1 0, open shut open shut. So much has been said about the abacus as an ancestor of the adding machine. Has anyone ever noticed that the Yoruba invented the computer?
She sighs. So often she is like this, a woman of two worlds. In one world she is what the Yoruba sometimes call onikaba , a gown wearer, a westernized woman. This is the Aduke who has been to the university, speaks and reads not only English but French and some German, knows history and dates, theories and theorems.
In the other world she is little better than an aróso , a wrapper wearer, like the women in the market when she was a child. This Aduke trembles at the stories of àbikú and dreads that her baby might have been one, that she is doomed to bear the same frivolous ancestor spirit back to earth again and again, suffering each time it dies. The aróso here looks upon the babalawo and his palm nuts with respect and awe, hoping he can show her the path her personal ancestor spirit chose for her before her birth, hoping that he can guide her to discover which god demands a sacrifice or what actions she must take to ensure that her next baby is born willing to dwell on the earth with her.
When her mind is torn like this, Aduke feels more like a twin than a single person. Certainly Taiwo, her husband, the firstborn of twins, does not seem to feel any such confusion. His university education sits easily on him; his only mention of the traditional ways is to make jokes about the old customs. Kehinde, his identical twin, is interested in the things Taiwo is not. He is forever listening to the old people’s stories. At first he wrote them down, now he tapes them. Perhaps that is one of the powers of twins—to split a single destiny between two people and so move into life without confusion of purpose.
And who, she thinks to herself in amusement, are you now? Are you the aróso believing that twins are born with greater power than other people or the modern student of psychology analyzing the quirks of the human psyche?
“I don’t know,” she says aloud, and her companion, the strange woman Oya, turns to look inquiringly at her.
“What don’t you know, Aduke?” she asks pleasantly.
“I...” Aduke certainly doesn’t want to tell her thoughts here, not where the babalawo might hear and be insulted. But then, if he truly is a “father of secret things,” as his title implies, might he know anyhow, might her lying block his ability to help her?
The two sides of her mind pull her in separate directions like a woman tugged by two small children ( like, her westernized mind whispers, the charioteer in Plato’s story, pulled by the two horses, the unruly black and the patient white ).
Which is the unruly side? Aduke wonders desperately. Her black side seems the more patient one, willing to accept what happens and be guided by tradition and custom. It is her “white” side, the one that has been exposed to the contradictions offered in her European-influenced education, that seems unruly.
Belatedly, she realizes that Oya is studying her, still waiting for an answer.
“I can’t say,” Aduke answers lamely, choosing neither to lie nor to enlighten.
She wonders if Oya might understand her confusion. The older woman seems completely comfortable with traditional ways, yet Aduke heard her speaking to a tourist a few days ago, speaking perfect English and using modern idiom. There is definitely more to her than first
Similar Books
