Although they had all been born on plantations in New Ambossa, each knew of distant ancestors from the nations of Portugal, Spain and Belgium.
Some mothers kept newborns strapped to their backs while out in the fields, or they laid them down in the shade of bamboo, close enough to hear their mighty little screams for milk and a cuddle, but not always allowed to rush over to tend to their needs.
My new friend Ye Memé had given birth to thirteen children. Three died soon after birth, unsurprising considering she slashed cane until a couple of weeks before they were born and, because she lacked rest after that, her milk dried up. Four had been sold off. Dingiswayo was being raised by an older woman in the quarter, Ma Marjani. Of the five remaining—Yao, Inaani, Akiki, Cabion and Lolli—all were under ten years of age, and every night my friend prayed that her nine-vear-old, a shy boy called Yao who was at an age when he might be sold off, would not be taken from her. As Yao and his younger siblings were all over three years of age, they had found employment working from sunup to sundown in the Third Gang.
Ye Memé was one of the lucky ones with five of her children still under one roof.
But just how she managed to make sure her children were well fed, her hut spotless, her allotment thriving,
and
work eighteen-hour days during harvesttime without ever once complaining never ceased to astonish me. Born into slavery, with no name but her slave one (there was a grandfather from the Danish nation, she’d been told), it was all she knew and she had no memories of a better life elsewhere.
She got by on five hours’ sleep a night, spending early Sunday morning at the shrine and the rest of the day catching up with her chores.
No one forced Ye Memé to take me on as houseguest; Lord knows I gave nothing back in return, at first. No one told her to protect me from the advances of men who saw me as fresh meat, to raise her sizable fists to ward off those for whom No spelled Yes. Men loved her even though she was taller and broader than most of them:
“Yu tink a likkle bwoy like yu can tell a big wooman like me what a-do?”
Then she’d flounce off, rolling her hips in the exaggerated Ambossan way, chest thrust out, chin stuck up in the air, knowing the man she’d just belittled was leering after her with the most almighty hard-on.
A succession of nights and days tumbled into each other as I stumbled from the fog of work to the fog of sleep and back again.
After a while, I started to adjust to my new life of drudgery in the slave wilderness.
I began to get my mojo back.
Instead of sleeping soundly through one Sunday, I awoke at midday to a hut devoid of everything but sleeping mats, some blankets and a clothes chest. I went outside, momentarily blinded by the dazzling sunlight.
The slaves’ quarter was like another world on a Sunday: busy, lively, normal. People were caught up with household chores, sweeping out huts, sewing garments, repairing roofs thatched with twisted-millet or walls of huts made out of reed and red clay, weaving coiled baskets, putting cassava flour through a sifter, cooking stews over fires in big Dutch pots.
Everyone wore their Sunday best—a stylistic composite of Aphrika with Europa. The women wore floor-length calico petticoats, white billowy blouses and headscarfs as flamboyant as those of the Ambossans. On their ears were large hoop earrings and through their noses were small bones. Men wore calico pantaloons held up by thick leather belts.
Blind Bimbola, the local hairdresser, whose eyes were always closed—because they had never opened—was sitting on the stoop opposite ours singing a spiritual very loudly and very out of tune: “All ting brite an boot-i-fal, All creetyur grate an small, All ting wize an wun-da-ful, De lord Gahd made dem all.” All the while she was plaiting Yao’s sister Akiki’s thin, white-blonde hair into cane rows so tight it pulled back the skin on her forehead. Held in the vice of Blind Bimbola’s mighty thighs, Akiki squirmed and pushed out her lower lip in a melodramatic sulk. Upon seeing me smile at her over the way, however, she poked out her tongue.
I began to walk down the lane—to
stroll
—relishing this alien concept when the only walking I’d done since arrival had been to rush to work in a panic and stagger back to sleep.
Women returned from the allotments carrying baskets on their heads piled high with mud-encrusted yas and sweet potatoes, the serrated green leaves of aloe vera and the crinkled green leaves of callalloo. Or they set off for the river, heavy little stools on their heads on which to sit and scrub clothes in shallow water; on top of the stools were baskets full of washing. Hands swung at the side or grasped those of their little children, as they greeted me with a friendly “Y’all rite, sister?” or a “Howzit?”
Fiddle-playing came from somewhere over the roofs of the huts immediately to my right, accompanied by harmonized group singing and a joyful mess of crashing tambourines. “Happee burt-day to yu, Happee burt-day to yu, Happee burt-day dear Zikabiva, Happee burt-day to yu.” It was a song I knew from my homeland. I’d not heard it since.
Farther down the lane Yao and his brother Inaani, who was a year younger, were stuffing their youngest brother, five-year-old Cabion, into an empty barrel. They then tried to push it in a straight line, which it refused to do. They were in hysterics. I found myself laughing out loud too, which felt weird. What a miserable sod I’d become.
Looking straight ahead, I noticed for the first time a magnificent ninety-foot silk cotton tree with whitish flowers blooming. People were lounging in the alcoves of its buttressed roots, which spread out to meet the ground, smoking tobacco from long-stemmed clay pipes, knocking back rotgut liquor from tankards and rolling dice.
The slaves’ quarter was a hotchpotch of higgledy-piggledy shacks struggling to keep the aggressive wilderness at bay. In this tropical, humid climate of scorching suns and torrential downpours, everything grew rapidly and threatened to reclaim the entire settlement.
The roots of trees burrowed underneath the ground until they pushed hairy elbows and muscular forearms up through the middle of huts without a by-your-leave.
Ferns and bushes had to be continuously chopped down at the base but within days grew back longer, thicker, wilder.
Black widow spiders lived underneath innocent-looking leaves, and while their bites did not kill, they hurt like hell.
Other spiders spun webs six feet wide, trapping birds and frightening small humans who ran into them only to end up with a mouthful of stringy, powdery web.
The lime-green stinkie bug, shaped like a diamond, flew senselessly into all objects, including this one, leaving an unpleasant smell in its wake.
Red ginger proliferated, its flower like pink brushes, its leaves shaped like bananas.
Out of the halved bellies of calabashes grew yellow daffodils. Daffodils—I remembered them. The Ambossan settlers must have brought them from Europa as exotic specimens.
Hanging heliconia sprouted freely everywhere, their purple, red and golden flowers shooting sidewards out of long stems like small fishes with parrots’ beaks.
The elegant bird-of-paradise plant grew four feet tall, topped with an imperious orange crest.
Several trees bore orchids, and fences and walls spilled over with bougainvillea: white, orange, magenta.
Aware that for the first time the pain in my back seemed to have completely disappeared, I felt brave enough to reach behind and actually touch it, running cautious fingers across its sensitive grooves and cavities.
Not an inch remained of the silky-smooth skin of which I had once been so proud.
It was a wreck.
It was vile.
It was ugly.
And so was I.
No man would ever love me again.
I SLUMPED TREMBLING AGAINST a lemon tree just as a giant swallowtail butterfly flew past and landed on a leaf close by. Nearly six inches wide, with cream and black spotted wings. I stared into the strange red eyes of this creature, and it seemed to look into mine.
Framed against the pure blue sky it was so beautiful, I wanted to cry.
Such beauty on these islands. Such beauty.
As it fluttered away, my gaze wandered over to where the ground had been cleared around an old ebony tree. Even though space was at a premium in the quarter, no one had commandeered it for a drinking session; no children were using it as a maypole.
When I walked over to the tree, I saw that the trunk was as scarred as my back. Something had attacked the bark, slicing bits off. There was blood on it too. I wiped some onto my fingers. It was gooey; it was lumpy; it was red; it was fresh.
Feeling my stomach somersault, I turned away, glad to spy Ye Memé standing down a side passage underneath an ackee tree whose seedpods were bursting open like little bubbles of crimson blood. Holding court among a gathering of women, a basket of green bananas at her feet, Ye Memé was dressed up in a brilliantly white blouse and a calico petticoat with burgundy roses embroidered at the hem. Her baldness was covered by a white headscarf tied into such an extravagant bow it added another ten inches to her height, making her appear some seven feet tall. Her tanned skin had been oiled, gaily painted wooden bangles ran up her arms, big, brass disks were inserted into the flesh of her earlobes and a chicken bone was shot through her nose.
I faltered some steps away, aware that I was wearing a wrappa so old and filthy it had lost all color and design. The women in the gathering were so dressed up and seemed so confident, so at ease with each other, so at home.
Ye Memé, sensing she was being watched, turned and caught me hovering. She beckoned me over and drew me protectively under her arm.
“Laydies, dis here mi new skinnie-like-bamboo frend, Omorenomwara. Lissan, all she do iz wurk, eet an sleep. She na talk, she na laf, she don’t let none a-deze wotless brudders about here poke her in de bushes. Mi gyal here iz sofistikyated, ya hear? So-fist-ik-ya-ted. An she nyot like yu mamas at all becorze she uze her brain box and studee everyting an sayin nuttin. I know dis becorze I watch her like hawk.
“So, everybawdee, yu betta treat her nice-nice or I goin box yu in de head so hard it get mash-up an yu end up dribble like fool. Lookee hear—I know wot yu bitches all like!”
The women chortled. All heads, which had hitherto been directed up at Ye Memé with a combination of awe and resentment, now turned toward me. Their respect for her was, I noticed over time, often tinged with envy. They each offered me a traditional hand-shaking gesture.
Ma Marjani was Ye Meme’s closest friend. She stood with such a rooted connection to the soil that it was like she was growing out of it. She had the forceful, emphatic gestures of a woman used to lifting a bundle of cane half her body weight or a hogshead of rum. When she shook my hand, it was more of an assault than a greeting.
Then there was Lyani, who was petite and pretty, and played on it. Men fell for it, women didn’t. I envied Ba Beduwa’s hair, which dripped like molten oil down her back. It didn’ need cutting because she worked in the fields. Short and round, Amadoma looked doe-eyed up at Ye Memé. Then there was cool, cylindrical Kicongo, who had lost a hand, and fifteen-year-old Olunfunlayaro, a mulatto, whose prematurely enlarged breasts would ensure men treated her like a woman. Her father was a rapist, her mother dead.
Most of these women had been born on a plantation, survived the three-year seasoning period long ago and grown resilient. You either died or you survived, and if you survived you found the inner strength to thrive. They weren’t weedy like me, and it was obvious that the only fools these women would suffer were their masters. As they silently appraised me one and all, I realized I’d better shape up.
When I lived on Little Londolo as a child, I hadn’t mixed with the field slaves. There was no escape from the Ambossan world then, nor at Bwana’s. Everywhere I turned, my masters were breathing down my neck. So I diffused my resentment with downcast eyes, controlled my body language so that I never appeared sullen or threatening, monitored my speech so that my words never gave offense.
Now here I was in the all-whyte world of the slaves’ quarter, where we ran tings, more or less.
Perhaps now I could be myself—whatever that was.
Outside the quarter Massa Nonso reigned supreme with a regiment of overseers to keep his troops under control. The pecking order inside the quarter was somewhat more complicated. Masks of humility were dropped and people emerged—as themselves. At work Ye Memé bowed to the overseer’s superiority yet somehow kept her dignity. Inside the quarter she was a boss woman, a good boss woman at that, who got what she wanted through charm rather than bullying. And this boss woman filled me in on the flogging of the runaway Salehen that very morning, by the ebony tree, “Yes! Ova dere.” He had lasted two nights out in the pine forest before the bloodhounds ran him down. He was only twelve.
“Him get two hundrid an fiftee stroke, which nearly kill him but nyot kwite. Massa Nonso nobuddee fool, he know dat bwoy can mek plentee-plentee monee fer him dooring his lifetime but if Salehen try again? Him loose his foot, fer sure.
“Ten day bak, Ole Man Garai try eskape. ‘Mi born free an mi want fe die free, dat’s all,’ he told Massa Nonso dat evenin when he kaptcha, just as de sun disappear fe de nite ova de moutain an just afore Massa Rotimi put his foot on a tree trunk down by de riva, an tek it off wid an axe.
“Ole Man Garai dispenzabal, yu see. Him ded frum hemredge last week. I organize his burial ole kuntree style—in de grownd.”
There was something matter-of-fact in the telling of the tale, as if she’d become immune to it.
“Every week he flog innocent folk as precorshan nyot to do rong, him deklare, like it fe we own gud. What him call deter-ant. Prublem iz, we see his face. Massa Nonso like to draw blud. An wen I say he like it, I mean he like it. Y’understan?
“Tek woman when he feel like it too—all a-dem massas de same. Prublem iz, seems like Massa Nonso feel like it all de time.”
Ye Memé told me that he left her alone these days, but those nights when he had come to her hut to do what he did in front of her whimpering children, she knew it was to break her. Men always wanted to break her.