I didn’t want to hear that from Oriwia. Silly thing. Listen to me, Oriwia. This is for you, my sister. You and I grew together and we are inside each other’s hearts. We don’t have to explain. We know. We understand. You changed towards Ela over time, just as you have changed towards my son. I knew you would. Eventually you took time to look into their faces just as you had to look into your daughter’s face in the days before her wedding, and in so doing you remembered about love. Ela’s illness was nothing to do with you. Of course not. It couldn’t be. Let’s hear no more of that.

But now, since the subject of Ela has come up, I’ll speak of her.

There are reasons we become ill or dispirited. It’s what Oriwia was referring to. There’s always a cause. Sometimes we bring sickness or punishment upon ourselves through carelessness, distraction, transgression, or failing to dedicate the day or the task. Weak moments may invite wrong forces.

Sometimes sickness is caused by a vengeful person such as Oriwia describes. I have seen those affected by the spite of others become ill, go mad, become lame, turn black, drop dead, die slowly. I have seen their children born with ailments and deformities.

It was natural for me to dwell on these matters when Ela became ill.

But what I knew was that my Ela had never hurt anyone and had not broken any old laws. So far as I knew, there had not been any curse from way back put on the family which could now be affecting her.

What I did not put enough thought to at the time were the effects of underlying anxiety or hurt – the invisible distress that people live with every day. This is grief and loss, or the threat of it, which works its way through whole communities down through decades. It’s a communal distress, which lodges somewhere in the communal mind. It hides unnourished until somewhere, in someone or some people, it dislodges to live in the physical body. Once there, it is fed. It has roots within it which begin to seek out their own life blood. It has tendrils which branch in every direction in search of light. Everything, everything, is a search for light.

In listening to myself speak like this, I hear the voices of my mother and elders. I tell it their way because there’s truth in it.