Confession of the Lioness by Mia Couto

the mouth. To placate my raving, Sil ê ncia would place plates of food across the floor and bowls of water. Corralled in a corner of the room, my sister, sobbing with terror, would pray for me to stop licking water and biting plates.
    It’s a spell, it can only be a spell , she whimpered.
    Despairing over the cause of all this, Sil ê ncia reproduced the foundational myth of our tribe right outside our front door: In our garden, she buried a statue that had been secretly carved by my grandfather. Legend had it that a wooden statue, buried in the sands of the savanna by the first man, had turned into the first woman. This miracle occurred at the beginning of the world, but Sil ê ncia prayed night after night that the little wooden statue in our garden might receive the breath of life.
    The statue would never gain a soul, but every time Sil ê ncia sensed that an attack was imminent, she would hurriedly dig up our little wooden sentinel and bring it to me. Then I would lull the statue as if it were my daughter, and as I rocked it gently, a mother’s peace would grow within me. Afterward, I would crawl along, carrying the figurine that I fancied was my legitimate child in my mouth, like a female cat.
    *   *   *
    My legs might have been lifeless, but I never became my own prisoner. Every morning, children’s voices would erupt into the garden.
    Come on up, Mariamar, climb up on us!
    The boys would take turns giving me piggyback rides and would carry me away far from home, scrambling around joyfully. Carried on their backs like a baby, I experienced every merry little game there was. Today, I can safely say this: I enjoyed a childhood delegated to me by other children. Hanging from someone’s neck, riding on some nameless back, I wasn’t even aware when my chest rubbed against a boy’s sweat.
    If you do that, your breasts will never grow , my sister Sil ê ncia warned.
    In Kulumani, breasts are a signal: Depending on their volume, mothers know when they should subject their daughters to the ritual of initiation. What to me was an innocent game was an insult as far as the village was concerned. Women saw me riding on the backs of boys and would turn their faces away in embarrassment. It’s in the piggyback position that godmothers, the so-called mbwanas , carry the girls who are going to mutate into women to the ceremony. It was this that the women found unforgivable: I was anticipating and disrupting an occasion that they wished to keep sacred and secluded. As the daughter and granddaughter of people educated in Portuguese, I had no place in a world governed by outmoded rules. My sin became even worse because of the time of crisis in which we lived. The more the war robbed us of our certainties, the more we lacked the security of a past ruled by order and obedience.
    *   *   *
    One day, some boys went to Palma and stole an unused coffin. They brought it back at night and told me:
    We’ve got a sedan chair for you.
    From then on, they began to carry me everywhere inside the coffin. From my palanquin, I would see people stop to show me a respect that they had never given me before. Happy with this general veneration, I declared:
    Mother, I want to live in a coffin forever.
    But such deference eventually prevented me from realizing that my vanity was indeed sad: I had to cease existing in order for people to take note of my existence. I should yearn for that other carriage of flesh and blood, which had given me such pleasure before: the backs of the other children. But no. Swaying from side to side up there on my improvised throne, my heart was filled with the vanity of a queen.
    Just watch my breasts grow now!
    Don’t wish for that, sister, don’t wish to be a woman , Sil ê ncia warned.
    *   *   *
    One morning, I awoke to find the coffin in pieces. It was my grandfather, Adjiru Kapitamoro, who had broken it. The old man had