We should have known.
Well, don’t put words in my mouth, but in life, there are things you know without ever having tasted them. It’s in the very nature of human beings to imagine. When a man can no longer imagine, he is already no longer a man.
When thinking of that time, for some reason, it comes back like a laugh in your throat. You have to spit it out fast if you don’t want it to choke you.
This evening, the rain spirit is in my hut, spreads healing water on my raw wounds. The laugh is gone now, and I feel good. Smile, thinking of our victory.
We survived. In spite of the deaths, the shame, the hunger. In spite of the ship’s hold.
The day it all began.
IT’S THE RAINY SEASON, the earth is hoping for rain. Inside, life is drowsy, sleep is seeping in. Beneath the hut’s roof with its central hole, we’re lying on a mat, my husband’s head pressed against my shoulder. Pain is at work on the floor of beaten earth. Once again, my lower back has grown stiff, presaging the coming rains. Soon, drops. Rain patters on the straw. Outside, bodies are up. Women pounding, scrubbing, carping. Flames blazing under large cauldrons with lids dancing. A hand comes close to the fire. It’s Afi. That girl is always sticking her nose where she shouldn’t. Not even six years old and she wants to know everything about the world. Why are stars smaller than grains of rice? Where does the rain go when the earth drinks it in?
I was just like her at that age, it’s not for nothing that I’m her grandmother. My Little Sweet, she calls me. Because I can refuse her nothing, and all I need is one of her smiles to boil my oil and prepare my dough. She’s wild about the long snakes of honey. Claims that eating them will protect her from real snakes. I believe it, too.
One hour more and the millet will be ready.
Even here, I sometimes hear her voice. At first, I thought I was losing my mind, but now I know it’s not that at all. Nothing has happened back there: the women are still pounding their grain, the millet is still cooking, the old women are still tossing animal flesh into the oil. All has remained. You can’t kill life. I learned that when they emptied the ship. My word! What a stench! It was the first time I’d really taken it in. But in a way, it was good. Smelling meant not seeing. Forgetting the corpses we were leaving behind. Before us stood tomorrow. The other country, with its trees, huts, flowers. Just enough to nourish my heart. Wipe away the sea, never again fear its fury, the angry jaws that closed around us one midmorning in the dry season.
Inside the hut with its roof open to the sky, I hear the voice of Akissi. She’s after Afiba. Why won’t her six-year-old daughter listen? A hundred times, she’s told her to stay away from the fire. One of these days, she’s going to hurt herself and too bad for her. The little one pulls away from her mother and runs outside to play in the rain. Of my five children, Akissi is the most hardheaded. Stubborn as a mule, that one! I sometimes think there are too many stones in her body. It will take more water to make her a woman. The man who married her showed up too late; some things should not be delayed.
I was thirteen when I met the man who is sleeping. He taught me all and I gave him all. That’s why the children came quickly. Abla, Totou, Afoué, Akissi, I won’t name the last one. The dead don’t belong to us.
I have been a good mother. I am proud of my children, even if I don’t always agree with them and Kissi sometimes worries me. My mother says that we must let nature take its course, that we’re nothing much, and that only the gods know. I do as she says, but still think my daughter should be more gentle.
Until blood flowed onto the mat that morning, I swear I felt nothing. Just another day, the women were doing. It was the silence that woke me, then suddenly a shout, my name. Someone outside, screaming.
Despite all the red on the mat—the man sleeping was dead—I find the strength to raise my old body and go see what Akissi wants. Who has brought death into my hut this morning?
I was the last to be captured. Work had begun at dawn. I was sleeping. There are things that must be done early.
*
I didn’t think I could hold out. Drag my body all day long, keep it clear of the whip that lashes out because we have to move quickly, they have no time to waste on the weak. The worst is not knowing where to go. All my life I’ve known where to set down my feet, which path, of all the paths to take, was the right one, the one that leads back to the village. I was the mother of five, I knew how to avoid getting lost. The trail of pebbles you leave behind you, the bits of loincloth you hook on branches. The wind rustling through the grass tells you what you need to know: the direction. Before, there was always a path. What your eyes can’t see, your heart knows. So I stopped searching. Stored my country in my head and continued forward. At the end was Badagry. A small town with nothing around it. In town, a wide plaza. Noise. Never seen so many people! Black people but also Red people, men whose skin was so thin, it showed their blue veins. The way they acted was also curious. Strange words fell from their mouth. Sharp angles sunken in their faces made them look angry all the time. And they were angry, for sure. They were, when they started shouting at us and then threw us into the hole.
*
In the beginning, we were only ten, women from all parts of Africa, packed on top of one another in this room where just closing your eyes made you think death had come for you. With the pain that coursed through my bones, being unable to lie down in the cramped space tore cries of pain from me, it took all the tenderness of another one’s hands to loosen my knotted muscles and stop the tears. Morning came, thank god. A new day when, busy with tasks, the body forgot the soul. Stored it somewhere far off, secretly hoping it would lose its way. Outside was so vast and inside so small it would surely forget to return. When there were too many of us, we heard sounds. Coming from outside. Filling the night. The whole universe seemed to be pounding. Pounding so hard that one woman said they were digging our graves.
From that moment on, we stood guard. Each night, in turn, we kept watch, so that when the noise ceased, the door opened, we would be ready to leave. We’d have to act fast, like the wind. Push far, all the way to the great silence.
We never got there.
One evening, everything stopped. The door opened. Armed with firesticks, the men drove us out of the hole and into a barn. Some kind of hut, reminded me of the pen where we kept our animals. So, this was our new house! From there, we would set off for the great land called TheSea.
TheSea, a thousand times, I’d heard the name. Dreamed of it for entire nights. The end of the journey. How could I have known that after TheSea would come the land? That on this land grew water. Water that emptied into the sea, and that this would never end?
The new cage never stopped filling, either. From ten we grew to twenty, then forty, until we could no longer count, until the weary eyes stopped looking up each time the door creaked open. I never dared meet the gaze of the other women. Even at the end, I couldn’t. Afraid to see in their eyes my own decay, the shame of still being here, I, the useless old woman, wrinkled skin, hanging breasts, sagging buttocks, captured weeks ago, whose life would likely end here.
NIGHT FALLS.
Inside our cells in Badagry, the women have started talking. In all directions. Searching for truths to exchange.
Some come from nearby, others have made a great journey. Many are silent, don’t trust memory. To the one at my side, struggling against death, I feel the need to tell all. Where I’m from, what kind of woman I am, what I know of life after, beyond the shore, on that land they call TheSea.
The colors of the country come back to me. Straw-yellow noon. Red dawn. Tawny sunset. At these words, the woman sobs, fingers digging at her head, desperate to unearth her own story. The suffering has taken up so much space inside her that she has to search, dig deeper to find its source.
“I don’t deserve to live,” she says at last. “What mother can be cruel enough to watch and do nothing as her child dies?”
“We don’t always have a choice,” I say. “I was a mother, five children I had. I understand.”
“My son was so beautiful,” she says, when . . .
When a pounding on the door. Angry guard. Fall silent. If he catches us scheming, we’ll have him to deal with. We can tell what they’re saying from their face and their eyes. Their face, it’s like a mouth.
My hand rubs the mother’s back and belly, just like it used to stroke Afi. She won’t let me stop, cries again. “Again!” Squeezes her eyes shut to hold onto the pleasure. A smile crosses her lips. A voice speaks in my head. A question: “Is this like love with a husband?” I have to laugh. At age six, Afi talks like a grown-up. Has more water in her body than any of us.
In our cell, where night is taking hold, the little mother eases, rests her head on my thighs, listens to me tell her my stories.
“My people, the Baules, were not always known by this name. In times long ago, they called themselves Ashanti, people of a fabulously rich kingdom far away, to the east of the river, where the sun is born each day. After conflicts split the family, they fled their kingdom, taking with them their cattle, their gold, and their children.”
The mother’s eyes open wide, as if watching the convoy pass.
“At the head of the procession is a mother. Unquestionably, the queen. Firm stride and proud eyes that never look back at this people of blind followers. Does she know where she is leading them? She walks. Her young son on one side and an old sorcerer on the other. Time slows. The sun presses down. Bodies collapse. From thirst or impatience. When will we arrive? The queen is now no more than a seed rolling along the ground. A tiny black dot that people’s feet struggle to follow. Lose sight of, each time a yellow ray dazzles their eyes. Slices through their attention. Does she know it, she who advances in silence? Without fear, dreams of the new kingdom, the still-hostile land to be taken.
“Day has broken. Once more. Already on her feet, the queen studies the horizon. On her right, the sorcerer relates his dream telling that their journey will soon come to an end. The queen looks worried. Her lips tremble, tears in her eyes. ‘It is time to move on!’ she calls to her troops, ‘Today, we will find our country.’ All rise, the able and the infirm, faithful to this mother queen who has promised to guide them. The sun is blazing high in the sky when a river appears before them, so wide, so turbulent that, short of a miracle, no one will be able to cross.
“‘Oh queen, the gods require of you a sacrifice. Your most precious possession, you must give.’ The queen pulls out her strongbox, but the old man halts her. ‘Mother Abla, you must offer your son. That is what the gods seek. I was told in my dream.’”
In the Badagry jail, the young mother trembles. Her hand grips mine. Her mouth says no. No!
“The gods have spoken and the queen obeys. Pitches her child into the river, as a tree leans over the water, joining the paths on the two riverbanks. ‘Baule people, a few hours more and we shall be home,’ she declares, finally, in muted voice, before leading the way.”
The young mother sits up straight and stares at me, her face bathed in tears.
“Komwé. This is also what my people call the sacred river,” she murmurs.
Silence takes us. Emotion. We come from the same land. And this discovery, as paradoxical as it seems, shakes us to the core.
What, now, is left of the land? How much longer before we’re swallowed up by history? Are we nothing more than a small mouthful?
In this unthinkable saga, I had hoped to be alone. The only Baule captured. The exception. The error. But I was wrong in my thinking, there were many coming from where I lived. An entire people placed in irons and chased from their land.
Our voices hang in the air; we avoid each other’s eyes. I lower my head and think of that morning in the hut. The day Akissi’s breasts moved freely in the wind.
The thought that my dead might not be dead haunts me. Have they also been torn from their roots? Driven by force, chains at the ankles, and spiked collars at the neck, all the way to the shacks rumored to lie along the flowing blue waters? Even here, even all these years later, I sometimes think I’ll see them again.
One day, I was surprised to find myself following a woman. Akissi’s spitting image. The untidy hair, the backside that shifts right and left when she walks or when she’s annoyed. “Kiki!” I whispered, “Kissi!” The girl turned around, but it wasn’t Kiki. Just some black woman who declared her name to be Marie-France, lived on this or that estate.
*
The fear of falling even further is really what led me to go through with the plan.
It was morning. The sky had a white skin, like warm breast milk. It was the day of our departure. We knew it; some woman had announced it. We would board this large wooden boat, which stalked its prey like a vulture. Soon, we would be no more than carrion. Bones. Nothing.
On my own, I likely wouldn’t have dared, but the women had started talking. Hope had returned to haunt us. Anything was better than slavery.
What would happen after we jumped? The question never came up. You have to be free to see the horizon.
The day has arrived.
In single file, we walk, climb into the dugout canoe that takes us to the ship. Heckled by the waves, the boat wobbles. The sea spits. I taste. Who could have put so much salt into so much water?
In the country of TheSea, the whole village is in a state of activity. Shouting, rushing about. My old body grows still. The wrinkles are a second skin. Armor. Everywhere young people protest their innocence. What have they done to deserve this? Deaf to the pleas of the Negroes, the Red men get our attention and sort us like grains of rice.
Males with males, females together. Pregnant Negro women and children in one corner. Everyone to the middle deck, a chaotic space, where the hatch beats like a heart. For a long time it goes on.
*
The water had left me when the boat touched earth.
Like a sponge, the sea had sucked everything, our tears, my blood, the water that discharges to express and take pleasure. Turned me into an old stick, the sea. A mute-breasted shadow that no one could have said for sure if it was a woman, a man, or a dog.
That first night at my new masters’ house, I remember bleeding. It was the first and only time. A scrap of red cloth between my thighs, I lay like that for hours. Retracing from memory the path of the ancestors.
For a long time, I kept the red rag under my pallet. At the time of the moons, I pulled it out, smiling at the memory of what I had been. Girl, woman, mother. That wasn’t nothing, I had reason to be proud. I touched it for a long time, until my masters caught me with it and grew angry with me.
A few years later, I left that estate and began my service with Madame.
It was not out of goodwill that she purchased me. Those people have no blood. It was because of my advanced age. What master would be crazy enough to ride an old woman?
And yet, on certain nights he’d end up at my door, three sheets to the wind. “Knock, knock!” he’d bray before turning away, unsatisfied, to empty himself wherever the wind took him. I never opened the door. I had too much hate and no desire to lock horns with their law.
*
The world has changed. I am different because of the evil that resides within me and, since the time it found me, has refused to leave. Evil. We think it’s far away, and then one day, there it is. Everything started on the island after Jason, son of Maripo, made his escape. Jazz, that’s what we called him, was a wonderful boy. Not a braggart. Always a smile. Never a harsh word. And yet, I can tell you, the child had been through so much! Hardly out of his mother’s belly, he had to be taken to the hospital. For weeks lay there because of a problem with his jaw, that cursed illness that eats the heart of little people. On the thirtieth day, the illness had been turned away. Jazz was saved.
But bad luck took root again. At two years, the child started spitting up blood, coughing like the devil and vomiting worms. He was bathed, fed herbal teas, given massages, purged. Tchip. Poor thing. The other science was consulted. Prayers, sacrifices. Vice versa, tchip, before calling for Balba, the strongest papa-feuille on the island.
The child survived but a melancholy shadow hung in his eyes, nostalgia for a country from before, imagined but unknowable. Who would have been able to talk to him about it?
Time took its time and he grew. Jazz had just reached the age of twelve. One Saturday, right after evening roll call, he left the hut. The country was dark, but he could see well enough to take the mountain path, the road he’d taken so many times in his mind. We all dream of the mountain.
For a month, they hunted him. Long nights shaking up the island, until dust rained down, turning our headscarves red.
On the thirty-first day, while we were cutting cane, a gunshot echoed in the sky. The machetes trembled. All eyes fell on the horses galloping across the plain, dragging behind them the corpse of a boy.
That’s not all. The master, crazy with fury, makes the mother come identify the body. She runs over, looks at the White man, tells him this is not her child, this supposed son, this is not Jason. The master loses patience. Twenty-five lashes of the whip. The woman continues her denials. Fifty. He orders her to finish off this Maccabean, since he is not her son.
I was there, I saw it all. She did everything and returned to the field with a light step. I even think she was whistling.
Ten days later, she cracked. A madness that had danced about her like a top, before coursing through her body. When the steel thread snapped, we knew nothing could be done. Soon would come death.
It wasn’t content just to strike, it hung around. Roamed about. One morning, sat down right in the middle of the field, right out there, I’m telling you, as if it had been invited!
Nothing was ever the same after that. The cane, the dogs, the men, all seemed to be haunted. Seized with a desire to sing. A melody unlike anything here. Put dark thoughts in your head.
IT WAS LATE. Already pitch-black in the hut when it came over me. Because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut, I got up. Silently, I crept away from the Black people’s huts and walked toward the light.
The master’s house lies at the end of a path lit with torches. It’s a long, light-colored wooden structure surrounded by a veranda with floors scrubbed clean.
Upstairs, two large bedrooms. The White woman’s room separated from Monsieur’s by the toilets. Downstairs, the children are sleeping. A little brother and his sister. Redheads, both of them, with spots scattered all over their skin, which makes them look sick or dull.
Because of the sweltering heat, they’ve left open the door. Up close, the little girl looks like her mother. Same softness in her features, same complacency, as if the whole universe were her due. The skin is so white, I taste. Smells of soap and bright-colored flowers. Sugar with nothing, sunlight without cane. I think of the whip that this skin has never felt, and this thought, though idiotic, is more than I can stand.
My hand draws close, brushes the cheek, pauses, hovering over the neck.
I’m going to do my best, wring as hard as possible. Clap a hand over her mouth to smother the scream. If it’s the same as with animals, should be over soon. I know how to slit a throat.
But something has broken inside my head.
The song is gone now, I back away to the railing, race back to my hut, as if the devil were at my heels.
In the morning, I went to see Madame and asked her to change my duties. I preferred the cane fields, my sick old body needed fresh air, was beginning to stiffen. A young Negro girl like Sabine would be of more use to her. An old woman couldn’t be depended on to keep a clean house.
She lifted her eyes to the sky, just like each time she was irritated, and with smothered anger declared that she would not tolerate a slave interfering in the organization of household work. What should or should not be done.
“Do I make myself clear?”
“For three years, I’ve done what I was told. But today . . .”
“Today will be like yesterday. Nothing has changed. I will not have a slave revolutionizing anything here. If you have a bad back, it is no doubt from spending too much time dancing. You all think of nothing but your feasts.”
The evil song takes over again, but I act as if I hear nothing. Not the right time. Wait a little longer. Soon.
*
The sun has gone down. Passions, life itself. I have more than a century behind me and every morning, at the same hour, heat my water for coffee. It’s here that I caught this habit. I drink it without sugar, better for the heart. With a loaf of bread on Sundays, the only day I have an afternoon to myself. Off work, I bustle about, tidying up my hut from top to bottom. Crush a dozen cockroaches and get rid of them, quick. Horrible things! They stink. Remind me of the old days, that woman in the ship hold, who fed on them.
The other time, I encountered the girl. On the path that leads to the river, she was running through the cool night. Butterfly wings attached above her bottom.
I would have followed her, but I had an errand to run, it was late. The mambo had told me seven o’clock.
The mambo claimed she was from Benin. There, she’d acquired her science from a priest, in a place far from people. Ageless, she seemed to have lived the whole history of humanity. Knew the position of the stars, the depth of the seas, the color of a man’s heart. “The end of the Negro’s ordeal draws nigh,” she was always saying. “Will come a time when you all walk as you did in the past, with light step, your body straight and tall as a silk-cotton tree. A rifle cannot kill a rifle, we must arm ourselves from within.”
Her body bent over, she was tracing strange symbols on the ground in her hut. Paid me no mind, she was engaged in conversation with the invisible, spitting her saliva from time to time, moaning with pleasure whenever the spirit made its presence known to her. Water began flowing from under the white dress hastily slipped on, forming a puddle, a lake, a sea. Swelled, emptied herself, pouring out thousands of bodies. I was tempted to slip away, but the priestess’s gaze dissuaded me, and instead, I approached her, humble and submissive, holding out a flask of my own urine. The water of a very old woman is what the spirit required.
“The great day is coming,” murmured the mambo. “The ceremony will soon take place.” She said no more about it, but wished me a good trip back, then disappeared into the sea.
MY FAULTY old memory fails me. Yet, I swear that I’m making none of this up. It all happened just as I’ve told you, the hut, the water, the mambo . . . It happened, like so many other things.
The day after my visit to the priestess, it was as if the weather had decided to change. It was hard to believe, Diantre! Roaring waves of swollen drops rushing down from the sky, pounding and pulling down banana trees and sugarcane. Every day, downpours somewhere, swallowing the earth and tearing the roofs off huts. Riverbeds shifted, cattle washed away. The roads? No more roads! The paths? Furrows where bodies got stuck and foundered. When downpours come, I’m warning you in the name of all that is sacred, do not leave your hut and venture beyond the gate!
ONE MORNING, the day after the Artibonite River had receded, we saw bits of cloud falling from the sky. Working in the kitchen, I saw Madame grow pale, call to Monsieur three times, telling him to come see. “It’s snowing! Look at the snow!” they stammered, terrified as if they’d seen a ghost. And it fell. Morning, noon, and night. So much that all the green disappeared from the country. Everything turned white. Gray, mud.
A week later, the sun shone again. The master gave orders. The church bells rang. Back to work! In that month, there was plenty to go around. The big hut empty, I was left to myself. I was old. They didn’t dare put me down.
In the garden, partly destroyed, labored all kinds of Negroes. The wheelwright sweated, the infirm wore themselves out, the children, usually excused from heavy tasks, stumbled along, hoeing rows, tearing up roots, gathering cane into small bundles for shipping.
Hard at their labor, the men no longer kept their eye on the sun. Gave up hoping they’d be able to rest their hoes and machetes with the sun’s last rays. Night fell on their backs. Under a late afternoon runaway sun, the Negroes toiled on in the cane under the threat of the whip, marking each gesture with a grunt. A collective, muted unh hunh, which far from the result of the effort expended, voiced all the power contained in these men, the violent strength they would soon put to use.
Certain events had to unfold before that day arrived.
One morning, when the slaves, called by the bell, were lining up in the courtyard, a flash like lightning lit the sky, thick, dark clouds boiled up, and the earth trembled under their feet. By noon, the wind seemed to have taken its leave. The air was dry, nature stock still. Not a hint of a breeze, nothing that could cool. The White men turned their gaze to the sky, but the great dryness triumphed. Cane stalks dropped their arrow-shaped leaves, supply deliveries lagged. No new life. Everything was dry, even the big river, so deep in the past, lay dry with its bed exposed.
More arid mornings, more nights followed, inflicting all sorts of ailments on people. It hit you all at once, the malady, gave you worms, scabs, vertigo, whitened your tongue and swelled your feet. It was slow to leave. Sent you to the hospital. To take herbal teas, camphor rubs, tar-water, hot baths. Sometimes stayed at work to avoid too much scratching.
With most of its Negroes down, the estate fell quiet. Only the furnaces rumbled on to keep making sugar in a final symbol of colonial resistance.
*
Man is word, his silence cannot endure.
Then, came the rumors from the big white country, which feverish hands rushed to glean. Smuggled into houses, the rumors took on a life of their own. The masters, faces red with anger and fear, outdid one another in a rush to swear oaths and cross themselves.
Abolition. I was out on the veranda, waging war on chicken droppings when I heard about it. Something was happening. A new day was coming.
I was sure of it, the evening Monsieur and Madame had people over for supper. Judged too old and slow to perform table service, I’d been replaced by Cécile, a young Negro woman they just called Nulpar (nulle part, or nowhere) because nobody really knew where she was from. Arriving at the estate a few weeks earlier, she’d been noticed quickly. A green coconut makes you thirsty. Upon seeing her, the Black men went dry on the spot.
They could chase her all they wanted, but Nulpar was not a woman who would let herself be sown. Did what she wanted with men, including the master who, according to wagging tongues, had been seen creeping around outside the hut where she slept. Ears closed to the gossip, I opened my heart and watched over Cécile as I would my own daughter. For sure, she was no ordinary being, but carried within her what slaves and masters alike had been forced to abandon: our humanity.
One day, when Nulpar was beating the laundry, Madame erupted into the courtyard and planted herself in front of her. A frown on her face, hands set nervously on her hips, she announced that one of her dresses had disappeared, the white one with a wide ruffle at the neck. Someone had stolen it.
“Really?” said Cécile, to indicate that it wasn’t her problem, but it could well become her problem if . . . The other woman would not let it go. Suddenly, Nulpar leaped to her feet. Stepped closer to Madame and shot her a look . . . a look that would blow up their steeples!
Terrified, Madame looked, she who never saw her dress again until the night when, awakened by the voice of the assoto drum outside, she ventured out of her room. Half-naked, stepped into the sea of sugarcane.
Had she dreamed those dancing Negroes? That woman with flour-white skin, dressed in a hat, jewels, and a ruffle?
*
In the house at the end of the path, the guests had arrived on time. Madame had rung. “Bring the soda water and liquors!”
Then things had happened quickly. Nulpar had sung, the ladies were chatting gaily. One of them, a tall, thin woman with red hair suddenly felt ill, had to go lie down. What a shame!
I was bathing the little one the next morning when I heard the news. Rushing into the room, Madame threw herself on the child. Hugged her tight to her chest like a doll. Paying me no mind, she sobbed, repeating over and over that the redhead was dead. The redhead. Found dead in her bed that morning.
Out in the sunny courtyard, Nulpar was again singing the song. Washing, beating the laundry. Gazing deep into the gathering dusk.
That was the last time we saw her on the estate. The next day, her hut was empty. Nulpar had disappeared.
It was the day of rest, but that didn’t stop the White men. Armed with rifles, dogs, and Negroes, they strode across the fields until the eye could no longer distinguish between black and white lines. Two masters perished in the chase, another was seriously wounded from a bad fall. It seems his horse had suddenly bolted.
While the island, still turned upside down, wore itself out trying to get some sleep, waves could be heard lashing the rocks and with heavy breath, racing along the shore of this possessed land.
Never had night seemed so dark, never had dawn been so anxiously awaited. At sunup, people’s faces were coated with a fine white film. Powder of salt, flour, or shadows of forgotten stars.
Months after Nulpar’s disappearance, I caught myself humming her song. Gathered around the fire, we sometimes hummed in chorus, lowering voices when the grasses rustled, signaling the master’s arrival.
What became of the woman, only the spirits know. Only the very old, who know the tangled way of trances, sing her fate. In 1779 (five years after our arrival on the island), some say they crossed her path. On a moonlit night, a few hours before the great massacre.
Parlor Negroes, garden Negroes, Negro children, old people, all had fled sleep, put one foot in front of the other, guided by the echo of drums. Upon reaching the clearing on the riverbank, they’d joined hands and wound their way around the drummers like creeping vines. Into their circle entered I-All-Alone. Sweaty skin bearing no scars or wrinkles, fluttered about like a clean sheet dangling on a line. A thunderous rumble brought forth a djinn from a drum. Perched on his head like a crown, Nulpar gazed down at the crowd, her mouth white with foam, eyes flaming. Some of the Negroes swooned. My eyes popped wide and I stumbled into the filthy wall of my hut.
A dream?
A sure sign that the time had come.
Today, Monday, will be a great day. A great Sunday for all Black people.
*
Heart light, I arose and left my hut.
The compound, usually full of activity, still slumbered, plunged in a strange torpor. Around the residence, which had been abandoned, nature had taken over. Dog and nanny goat droppings carpeted the porch, two mares ruminated near an uprooted tree fallen from the sky by some miracle. I approached the building, hesitated, then pushed open the heavy front door. A shiver ran through me; in place of the parlor was a shimmering pond edged in tall grasses.
Bounding down from a mountain, a laughing waterfall invited me to bathe. I plunged in and instantly, a delicious feeling of freedom. Never, oh never again would Madame ring her bell. Never again would mornings taste of soap. Black soap wash-White. White soap soil-Black. Like Madame, I would put on a petticoat, pin tight curls in my hair, wear dainty slippers for tiny feet. Walk tall, speak without tripping on my words.
Emboldened, I went upstairs where a couple of young bougainvillea were lounging. Intrigued by my presence, the bushes paused in their caresses, opening up their blossoms like ears. I just smiled and entered Madame’s bedroom.
What a mess!
Banana tree roots spilled out from a layer of soil, taking advantage of the joyous disorder to defy nature and bear guavas, mangoes, and coconuts. The mattress, a disgorged animal, sprawled, its feathers giving off a rancid odor of urine. Only the armoire, crowned with its cornice, had preserved its dignity. Servile, awaiting the usual scrape of a key in its lock.
I was heading toward it, when my eyes met those of a woman.
Right in front of me, barely an arm’s length away, stood an old Black woman, staring at me. I’d never seen her before. She must be new among us. The last of the Bossales, slaves born in Africa and come all this way to die. As my eyes took in her body, running over wrinkles, scabs and sores, I silently questioned this stranger. How, but how had she survived? What master could be so cruel as to spare her? Those looks were intolerable! As I stretched out my hand to touch her, I flinched and recoiled. The thing was stirring! I could swear I’d just seen her hand move!
A breath.
The thing was crying. Her whole face was streaming. Nothing left but her mouth, her lips, almost-lips. A shapeless forehead. A pelt.
I stared at this person, and then it was my turn to sob. This woman had lived. Been through death a hundred times. I knew it, could feel it. A shout. I just realized. She, I, we were like each other. Were the same.
It’s after that everything came back to me. The ship hold, the deck, the anger. How had I lived with all that horror inside me? The shame, the stench!
The memory works when it wants to.
BY JUMPING, I’d thought I was putting an end to it. I’d let myself sink with no regrets. To those who hoped to swim back to land, I said nothing. I knew things, I was an old woman. I’d seen my man and my daughter depart.
So I thought I had died when I came to, little by little. A man was leaning over me, rubbing my chest hard, jabbering away in his strange language of dogs.
I wanted to tell him to be quiet, but the juices of the sea were smothering me.
I must have died for real because all daylight was gone when I opened my eyes.
No one left on deck, none of the other women who had jumped. Where had they gone? They never returned.
Back in the hold, I lay down and prayed.
May a great fire be lit to tell the heavens that death has passed through. Some of the sisters are broken! Let this be told to the uncreated, the great creator. We must wait for the wawe to open a path to the land of the ancestors. Up there, in Blolo, it is said that those women no longer have shadows. No wawe for dead branches who cut themselves off from the village when they left. No shadow for those who jumped.
They said that I’d lost my tongue, that I must have lost it when I jumped.
They said that I would never make it to the end, that my heart would give out right after TheSea. That’s what they thought, but they were wrong. I endured. The sea held me.
*
They say she is still prowling. They say she is still roaming. When the great aster is snuffed out, she still goes on her way. Coming ashore to catch her breath. Using the moonlight to shake off men, blinded.
They say that she has no memory, remembers nothing. Unconcerned, she carries bottles into which the dead have slid their prayers. Their last wishes.
But I, I believe that she knows more, that she carries and records history. Holds onto us forever. Hypocrite, the old woman.
The sea.
I never saw it again. Made sure to avoid it. On an island, that’s not easy. It took cunning but I managed.
I learned to walk head down. To flee the day, the trees, the sun.
I stuffed my ears with sand to stop hearing the drone of the waves.
They call me sequel. I’m the one who remains, the eye that has watched others depart. In 1804, only two of us still spoke of the country. The others celebrated. The island of the other: first Black republic, a big deal. What good does it do for me? They beat me, bruised me. Killed me.
Learned to swing a pitchfork. Pray to the Virgin. Speak the language right.
They put salt in my memory. Exposed it to the sun. They burned it. My mind smells scorched.
Haitian? Can someone tell me what that means? Someone to remember? Someone dead to talk to? Really.
Enough talking, my tongue is worn out. Tomorrow is another day. The first day.
Everything is ready. The dugout, the oats, the demijohn. It’s all there, my old woman is just waiting for me.
Tomorrow. I’ll shove off. No compass, map, or sail. Just the echo of Afiba’s laughter.