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“Did you do this with me when I was a month old?” Najuma says, watching her mom brush her hair.
“Of course, Baby.”
“You said you weren’t going to call me that any more. Now we’ve got a new baby.”
“Sorry, sweetheart.”
“Will everyone be there?”
“Yes.”
“Everyone?”
Her mom smiles. “Yes. Everyone. All the Majiri, anyway.” She puts down the brush and starts plaiting back the front pieces of her hair.
“When you were a baby…“
“Yes, for me too. Though I lived in the city, so it wasn’t everyone. Just everyone who knew my family. But here that’s everyone in town.” She reaches for a hair ribbon and Najuma hands it to her. “Are you ready?”
“Yes. And I only have to say one thing?”
“Yes. You’ll be fine, Ba- sweetheart. Just say it after me. Two words.”
“Did you say it for your younger sisters?”
“Yes. It’s important. Everyone has to say it.”
Her mom sighs at herself in the mirror, then picks up the sling and ties it round her shoulder. “We’d better get goin’ or they’ll all be waitin’ for us.” She scoops Saleni out of her basket and puts her in the sling. “Let’s get over to the Temple. Come on now.”
They aren’t quite the last ones there but nearly.
“Well, they couldn’t start without us,” her mom says, but it makes Najuma anxious. Even the Mayor and the Magistrate are here, and being near them makes her nervous enough as it is. She stays close to her mom, and Chayne and the Daiyas. Delaila tells her she looks very smart and Najuma says “I brushed my hair,” and her mom and Delaila both laugh, but she’s not sure why. Then Chayne says everyone is there and they can start.
Chayne stands by the altar. Najuma and her mom, with Saleni in her arms, stand in front of him. All the other Majiri stand behind them, nearly two dozen people. The small courtyard of the Temple feels almost crowded.
Chayne talks. He talks about family, and community, and responsibility. He takes Saleni carefully from her mother and draws a symbol on her forehead with his thumb, and he asks the Dragon to watch over her and protect her. He tells her that she is loved by her people and by the world and that everyone here will watch her grow in that love and return it. Najuma tries to imagine herself as that tiny baby, nine years ago, and it is impossible, even though she knows it is a real thing that happened right here in this same spot.
“And now I ask you all,” Chayne says, smiling. “Will you welcome Saleni? Will you care for her? Raise her? Help her? Guide her?”
He looks at Najuma’s mom, who says clearly “I will.” She looks at Najuma.
“I will,” Najuma says, just like she’s been practising for three days now.
Then Chayne looks over Najuma’s head, and she hears another voice. I will. And another, and another; I will. I will. She sneaks a peek over her shoulder. Everyone is saying it, one by one, along the line; then along the line behind. Even little Auni; even a couple of people whose names she doesn’t know; even the Magistrate. All seriously, solemnly. They mean it.
Once they reach the end of the final line Chayne hands Saleni back to their mom and she tucks the baby back into the sling. He talks a bit more but Najuma isn’t really listening. She hadn’t known her mom had meant that everyone everyone would say it. All those people - all the Majiri in Kilima! - promising Chayne - promising Maji - that they would care for Saleni, and help raise her and guide her. Some of them haven’t even met her before.
The ceremony ends. They go to the inn. A few of the people Najuma doesn’t know as well have drifted off but most of the town is still there, and there’s cake and Saleni is passed around to be held by everyone who wants to. Zeki has come to this part and he shows Najuma a magic trick with a coin but it isn’t really magic, he’s just hiding it in his hand, and when she points this out he laughs and says she’s a real clever kid and gives her the coin to keep (her mom says it’s okay). After a little while Najuma finds a corner and sits with her glass of apple juice and turns things over in her mind.
“Mom?”
“What is it, Najuma?”
She almost doesn’t ask. Her mom looks so tired. But she needs to talk to him and it feels like it needs to be today.
“Can we go to the Remembrance Garden on our way home?”
Her mom sighs.
“Please?”
“..of course. Just for a minute.”
Her mom waits on a bench by the gates. Najuma walks slowly up to her father’s stone, and kisses her fingers and presses them to the top, as she’s seen her mother do. She can just about reach now.
“I was thinking,” she says. “About - about when I was a little baby. And - you said that too, right? That you would look after me and raise me and everything. And you meant it but you didn’t get to do it. Not for long. And - I was thinking. That that’s why everyone says it. If it had just been you and Mom, that would just leave her, now. And that’s not enough. Um. You need more people. You aren’t here, now. And - and all the people who said it for Mom when she was a baby aren’t here, either - I mean, some would come if we needed ‘em - like Auntie Sofe did - but she’s younger than Mom - but anyway. I was thinking. They were all saying ‘I will’ for Saleni. But they were saying it for me, too, and for Mom, and for each other. And maybe remembering the people who said it for them. That’s why it matters. Every time there’s someone new, it makes us all stronger.”
Najuma chews her lip for a minute, her brows furrowed.
“And,” she adds slowly, “I was saying it to them as well. I’m just a kid now, but one day I won’t be, and they might need someone. One day they might - like when you - passed through the veil, like the grown-ups say. My mom needed help. And one day she’ll be old, and I’ll be here for her, and Saleni will. And other people. Other people who haven’t been born yet, even.”
She glances back at her mom, sitting on the bench. It looks like she’s feeding the baby now, so Najuma doesn’t have to rush. Najuma carefully bends her legs, kneeling down in front of the stone. “I miss you,” she says quietly. “I wish - I wish you could meet my baby sister. I know - I know that’s a - complicated thing to say. That you an’ her can’t both be here. But I wish it all the same.”
“And I will look after Mom. I will. So you don’t have to worry ‘bout that. But I was thinking that it was just me and her looking after each other, and - now it doesn’t feel so much like that. I think - I think it’ll be okay. So you don’t need to be worrying.”
She stands, pulling herself up a bit on the stone, and turns to look at the town, and nods to herself.
“Mom?” she calls. “I’m ready to go home.”