Some of the women chose suicide, but not her. “Afta, I cut mi eye at him an mek shure he see it. Mebbe he like mi spirit becorze he shift mi frum First Gang to factrey kwarta afta dat.
“Biggez prublem fe us iz our gyal-chiles. Soon as dey ole enuf, dey forced a-do nastee-nastee tings wid de massas. Yu can imagin. We try to protec our gyal-chile. Truth is, we cyant.”
She paused, looked up at the sky. All the women stayed silent too, lost in their own thoughts, eyes turned every which way except into someone else’s.
“All a-we hart so brukken-up on dese islands, Miss Omo.
“So brukken-up.”
OUT HERE IN THE ISLAND OUTBACK, away from the towns, hidden between mountains, it was as if we were at the ends of the earth, and with no law but the master’s, and in the absence of a restraining hand, it was indeed hell on earth.
Bwana’s children were all spoilt rotten, including Nonso, except that as his father’s heir, he was expected to be more serious and responsible than the others. He was often reprimanded, even beaten. He became timid.
Bamwoze, however, was allowed to develop a mischievous personality, which endeared him to his parents.
Nonso hid his resentment well.
But I had watched him snap off lizards’ tails. Watched him pluck the legs off spiders, slowly. Once he swung a puppy by its tail in the orchard, checked that no one was watching and bashed its brains out against a tree trunk.
Something stopped me letting on that I knew Nonso. It seemed distasteful to admit a deeper acquaintance with him and reveal my formerly elevated position at Bwana’s. It might complicate my burgeoning friendship with other slaves. Instead, I found myself asking about escape routes. What lay beyond the pine forest?
There was a palpable bristling. Kicongo’s eyes narrowed in blatant suspicion. Lyani let out an artificial giggle. Ma Marjani tchupsed slowly and loudly.
My cheeks burned.
Ye Memé came to my rescue.
“We don’t talk about dat here, Miss Omo. Iz dangyrus. All yu need to know iz dat Massa empliment Nayborhood Watch on dis here plantashun. It protected by guards against Maroon invashun. So, it hard to git out an it hard to git in an dose dat git out git fetched rite back in again. I ask meself, why de heck dey forkin bodder, enh?”
The women concurred with a chorus of
Dat’s
right and Yes’m.
Hang on
a minute
—
who
were the Maroons?
“Come-now.” Ye Memé led me away by the arm. “We’ll go bak home an brew some nyice tea wid fresh molasses to mek it sweet-sweet.”
We began to walk back to her hut.
She—straight-backed, loose-hipped, soft-kneed, so that she bobbed and floated, even with the basket of bananas on her head.
Me—stiff-hipped, awkward.
While we walked, Ye Memé warned me to watch what I said in company, even among the ladies. Did I notice that Lyani wore a silver chain?
“Well, sumbuddy wid-a lotta-lotta monee must-a give it her, which probablee onlee mean one purson—Evil Inkarnate Hisself, Massa Rotimi. An I don’t trust dat Olunfunlayaro eever. All-a-we look afta dat gyal becorze a-fore her mudder ded we promise. But tings so bad on dis here plantashun, sum folk do anyting to get favar wid de massas an she wurk up at de house. So be cyaful what come out yu mowt, yu hear?”
I did hear, but I had to pluck up the courage to ask about the Maroons. Ye Memé would read between the lines.
“So, Miss Omo, yu nyot let dat one rest?”
“I can’t.” I was surprised that my reply came out with no negotiation in it.
“Well, all right den. Just dis once. Maroon is runaway dat live free ina de hills long time. Folk say sum settelment goin bak almost one hundrid year. De massas hate dem becorze dem rade plantashun an burn crop, steel animal an farm tools. Hambush folk on de road too. Most a-dose dat run away to join dem is new slaves, com drektly frum Europa, and cyant stand dis plantashun life. Anyhows, as I told yu a-fore, most a-dem runaway git kort an git ponished, so why budder, enh?”
She turned to look at me, but I kept my eyes on the lane ahead, swallowing hard.
“Beside, yu skinnie self nyot last out in de forest one nite an even if yu find Maroon camp, which is hiley unlikely, dem nyot accept wooman like yu. Mi hear dey want strong men an yung breedin woman an dem iz suzpishus of strange runaway. Any-ways, I need yu here wid me becorze yu mi frend. Dis yur home now. Git uzed to it, like me. Dis mi home, betta or wurz. Onlee one I know.”
Ye Memé, the feistiest woman I’d ever known, had admitted that she needed me, and now I knew for sure that there was indeed a route to freedom on this sorry island in the middle of nowhere surrounded by sharks.
I couldn’t ask her how to escape, though, not then, and deep down I knew I wasn’t yet ready to run the risk of suicide, because it was either freedom or that. I’d never let those bastards flog me ever again.
If I could help it.
Instead I asked if she knew of anyone who had joined the Maroons.
“A few. Magik iz one dat reach dem. He com from ova da wata long time ago, same place as yu. Beaten-up bad-bad like yu too. A melankoli fella, but oh bwoy, dat man so tall an criss an respecful all-a de wooman fall fe him, but he fall fe none-a-dem. Not even Ba Beduwa git her vampish claws into him an dat sayin sumting! Him put to wurk strate off in feelds a-fore dem realize him karpenter an he sent to wurk up at de big house afta dat.
“Sundays him carve tings fe folk in de quarter an don’t charge nuttin but just aks to join famlees fer dinner. Yu see how we all love dat man? Magik, we call him. Magik Fingas, becorze everyting he mek so bootifal. Den, soon as he feel betta he just tek off. Four year later he return on rade as leeder of group-a Maroons call demself Maroon Guerrilla Armee.
“See dat bench yu sit on in mi yard? One dat heavy an shinee an simmetrikal an look like it goin last ferever? Magik mek it. Yes, Magik! One in a millyan man. We all miss him, still.”
“What was his real name?” I asked, my voice so measured the sentence came out as flat-lined.
Ye Memé rummaged around in her mind before replying, “Mi cyant recall if I ever did hear it.”
WE WERE NEARING HER HUT—
our
home.
“Lookee-hear, Omo-dear.” She stopped to set down her basket and turned to me. “I been meaning to aks yu dis. I want mi bwoy Yao to have more storee in his hed dan what go round in mine about dis damn place, which, kwite franklee, give mi flamin hedake all de time! Yao will neva git outa dis hellhole exept to be sold to some odder plantashun, but de wurld out dere will get into his hed if yu help him reed an rite. I have contakt in de big house who will git book fe me.
“Den yu can help de odder pikney too when dey get older an can keep sekrit. Dat why yu stay in mi yard lawng time. Furz, dem always send newcomer to me to look afta becorze I iz boss-woman, but den mi feel so sorree fer yu when yu come ina de mill, so mawga an mizerabel an unda fizzikal suffrance, dat mi decide a-tek yu on. Now yu git betta, yu must mek world bigga fe mi pikney. Hagree?”
It would be a rebellious act. The masters didn’t want literate slaves. Yet I had been taught by Little Miracle, and not only got away with it, but it had been to my advantage.
Of course I would teach Yao and maybe, some day, it might be to his too.
In any case, how could I refuse?
It was payback time.
I was glad to earn my keep.
LOLLI, YE MEMÉ’S YOUNGEST, was outside the hut holding hands with some playmates while skipping in a circle singin—“Ringa ringa roza, Pokat fulla poza, A-tizzoo, a-tizzoo, We all fall down”—whereupon they all collapsed on the ground in hysterics. Upon seeing us, Lolli jumped up and charged, leaping into her mother’s arms, letting her sweep her up and throw her so high into the air that she squealed, knowing that when her mother caught her it would be with large, safe hands.
Lolli had sun-kissed ginger curls, freckles and lime-green disks for eyes, which started spinning when her mother planted wet, noisy smackers on her cheeks, neck, stomach, bare arms, her tiny legs. All the while Lolli was squeaking, “Do more, Mama, do more!”
Even in hell there was such love.
The hole that my children had left and Frank had once filled never felt more hollow than at that moment.
As I was coming alive, my memories of what I had lost became more acute.
It was so long since I had been loved by another that I couldn’t imagine ever being loved again.
A
hand beat slowly against a goatskin drum. A second drum went against the beat. A third added to the mix and then a fourth and a fifth until suddenly tambourines began to crash and rattle all around me, the demented bow of a fiddle leaped and scratched, sticks ran up and down the wooden pegs of a xylophone, and the sound of a buffalo horn blasted long, bombastic flattened notes until the whole cave resounded with the truncated rhythms and rib-rattling reverberations of Aphrika.
The congregation got into the spirit too, flinging their arms and legs all over the place, as if wet, heavy rope had replaced muscle and bone. People spun on the spot, heads rotating faster than the bodies to which they were (theoretically) attached, and everyone broke out into a babble of tongues—the product of overactive imaginations (if you ask me) rather than divine intervention : “Ferttia! Amanop! Agapopopop! Tububibi! Lelelele! Lawqum! Papzaraz! Peetimo! Chewe! Ququq! Bbezaal!”—and so on and so forth.
There was so much noise in the cave it must have been heard all the way from the overseers’ quarters up to the Great House, which, I quickly understood, was the whole point.
It was my first Sunday morning at the shrine, and amid the ruckus of this lively communal therapy session I stood tight-lipped. I had always pretended to talk in tongues at Ambossan services but as this shrine was only used by whytes, with none of the blak masters present, I didn’t have to. All that rhythm and vitality was simply too nerve-racking and exhausting at any time of the day, let alone first thing in the morning.
It hit me just how much I longed for the good, old-fashioned church organ of my homeland: the drawn-out mumble and rumble of its pipes, which produced the kind of somber, soothing music the Ambossans despised, but which I, nonetheless, considered to be the sound of the soul of my people.
I missed it.
Carved deep into the hillside next to the Dong River Falls, the cavernous shrine had painted wooden effigies of the gods inserted onto rocky ledges and murals painted onto walls. Embroidered cloths hung as tapestries. On the altar were bundles of dried herbs, heaps of powdered glass, phials of rum, plaits of hair, chalk, stones, bananas, palm wine in gourds, candles.
The high priest was a slave called Father O’Reilly (we sometimes got away with it), who wore a flap of colored beads and a headdress of three tall plumes. White pointillist dots were speckled all over his tanned, hairless, lithe body. He’d just delivered a sermon in the melodramatic oratory of the Ambossans, his tremulous voice oscillating among at least three octaves: from a belly-rumbling lower register to the more hysterical nasal shrieks of his head voice. He preached how the Great God Obulattanga had molded humans out of clay and, when he had completed the task, gave them to the equally Great God Olaranjo, who brought them to life through breath.
His speech was perforated by the enthusiastic cries—“Praise be de Arishans! and Tell it like it iz, Fadder O!”—of the righteous standing around me.
It never ceased to shock me that people believed these stories to be a true and accurate rendition of how we humans came into being. Granted, my own religion featured disconnected ribs and talking snakes, but at least we began life as a human part, not as flipping clay statues.
I stood with Ye Memé and her brood at the front, Lolli’s warm hand fidgeting about in mine like a trapped little mouse.
Ye Memé appeared to speak in tongues too, trying to project such uncharacteristic piety (head dropped, shoulders sloped forward) that I had to suppress giggles from rising to the surface. She didn’t entirely convince as one of the humble devout.
Sweet Amadoma had sewn a white Sunday outfit for me—a lovely, floaty, feminine blouse that covered up my disgusting, butchered back, and the kind of ankle-length, swishy gathered skirt worn by the ladies to Percy’s balls up at Montague Manor back home. I hadn’t worn a skirt since I’d begun my new career as a slave, and what with my shaved head covered up by a pretty cream headscarf, I looked, for the first time in years, I admit, quite fetching. Going into the service I had even received one or two admiring glances.
Amadoma had also sewn a new Sunday outfit for Ye Memé, patterned with the orange crest of the bird-of-paradise plant embroidered around the border. Earlier in the week she had approached the stoop, almost tripping over it, hugging the bundle of material to her chest. Ye Memé and I had been enjoying the last few hours of a Sunday evening, the bloodsucker sun finally going down over the mountain having drained us of every ounce of moisture.
The children were playing Wha de time, Mista Wolfee? over by the silk cotton tree.
“Oh! Anudder one?” Ye Memé had exclaimed. “Why, tank-yu kindly, Likkle Miss Amadoma.”
Amadoma then rolled off down the lane with the slow, satisfied demeanor of a mission accomplished, hands crossed over her stomach. It was as if delivering her gift was enough. Ye Memé was unreadable, but when she saw me sneakily observing her (as was my wont), she slipped into a lopsided grin and rolled her eyes into a
Wha cyan mi do, enh?
Now back at the shrine, Father O‘Reilly suddenly ceased his preachifying, turned his back on the congregation, dipped into a basket, draped himself in a white cassock with a large red and gold cross appliquéd onto the front, and strung a rosary of red coral beads from his neck. I heard the shrine doors shut and looked behind to see them barring it with a plank of wood. A boy stepped out of the congregation, gave the priest an effigy of Christ on a wooden cross, lit a chalice filled with incense and returned to the suddenly stilled crowd, swaying the chalice as he wandered among us.