Yvonne Vera

A Novel

The Stone Virgins

Marion

Independence, which took place only three years ago, has proved us a tenuous species, a continent which has succumbed to a violent wind, a country with land but no habitat. We are out of bounds in our own reality.

INDEPENDENCE IS THE COMPROMISE to which I could not belong. I am a Loman who is set free, Sibaso, one who remembers harm. They remember nothing. They never speak of it now, at least I do not hear of it. They do not state that we gathered handfuls of honey each of us. We placed our arms among bees. These scarred hands, the flesh missing, are scented hands. An inch burnt from every finger. The smallest of my fingers no longer bends. Something went quiet inside my head. I heard it stop like a small wind. First, my entire left arm stopped moving, or moved but I did not feel it

Unless you know too much about spiders, a dead spider crushed between paper is neither male nor female. This sort of weightlessness should be experienced at least once by each human being, and all the time by all nations.

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