Blonde Roots (27 page)

We walked over to the cherry blossom, watched silently by the acolytes who appraised me from top to toe with spiteful looks.

But not Miss Iffe, whose expression changed from downright smug to outright shock as I got closer.

“Mi cyant beleeve it!” she exclaimed, her voice hoarse, clasping her chest as if she’d been stabbed in the heart.

“Mi reellee cyant beleeve it!” she repeated, all traces of blood fast disappearing from her face, eyes filling up.

It was those eyes that did it for me, not azure, as she’d once fancied, but a color we had no word for then—lapis lazuli.

They hadn’t changed at all.

She tried to jump up but stumbled, the young women reached out to stop her fall.

By the time we were face to face, she’d regained her balance.

And then we were in each other’s arms.

Crying into each other’s necks.

Her squashy wet-pillow of a belly convulsed against my hard abdominal muscles.

I stepped back to stop her weight crashing both of us to the ground.

“Mi cyant beleeve it.”

“Mi reellee cyant beleeve it.”

Neither could I.

“Doris, mi likkle sista!”

Sharon, my big sister.

Who’d have thought it.

Sharon Scagglethorpe.

Last known address:

Apple Tree Cottage, Montague Estate, England.

M
adge Scagglethorpe was dragged into the forest by the kidnappers who besieged our home, never to be seen again.

Jack Scagglethorpe died of dysentery in the hold of the first slaver Bwana had captained, the
Hope & Glory.

Because Eliza Scagglethorpe refused to eat, the sailors threw her over the side as a warning to others.

Alice Scagglethorpe died within a year of toiling in the cane fields of Worthy Park Estate.

Sharon was handpicked by Bwana to be his mistress, installed in her own hut, had babies and fattened up, which pleased him.

She begged for her baby sister Alice to be brought to live with her, but Bwana didn’t believe Europanes had real emotions or family ties.

THE FIRST SWELL of my grief lasted hours in Sharon’s warm, flabby, maternal embrace.

The images kept replaying themselves:

Madge raped to death.

My father dying in his own excrement.

My mother, drowning.

Little Alice’s suffering, all alone in the world.

My one surviving sister loving, or so it seemed, the man responsible for all of the above.

I cried until my lungs felt as brittle as dried tobacco leaves.

WE SAT OUTSIDE SHARON’S white-stucco home with red tiles and latticed windows, talking so late into the night that when rays of blue light shone like a flare from behind the mountains we were still going strong.

Her isolated, compact little house faced away from the Great House and toward enclosed fields where horses roamed with athletic freedom.

Her three mulatto sons stayed up too.

The eldest, Kolladao, was a notoriously tough overseer who’d never been in charge of my gang, thankfully. I could see the brute in him, the ego that needed to be stoked by the subservience of others.

I’m sure Ndewele was relieved that he’d never stripped and whipped his auntie (Christ, I was an aunt all of a sudden). He was as dreamy as his mother once was.

Ako was the truculent young man I’d seen at the warehouse when I first arrived. Too young to be promoted to junior management, he seemed to simmer with ignored-younger-son syndrome.

When the air began to chill, the boys brought us quilted blankets, which Sharon had sewn.

When we got thirsty, they fetched a pot of tea and poured it into dainty clay cups, hand-painted with the roses of our homeland by Sharon.

When we felt peckish, they returned with trays of “ole-kuntree” desserts she’d made—hedgehog puddin, molasses rolee polee, gingabred man, banbree kake.

The two older boys, in their roles as overseer and slave driver, were among the most feared and loathed people on the plantation. Yet toward me in my new role as their mother’s sister, they were polite, almost deferential.

It was very unsettling.

Kolladao was keen to make an impression on his aunt (which made me laugh).

“Mi mudda iz a diffrant purson wid yu here,” he said.

And it was true, because whatever vulgar, horrid character my sister had become, with me the facade slipped and the sister I’d once known peeked through.

The Sharon who longed to be called Sabine.

The Sharon who used to wear a garland of buttercups in her hair.

The Sharon who stood in the doorway waiting to be rescued.

(What a pity her knight in shining armor turned out to be Bwana.)

My nephews, sitting against tip stools, were hearing about their long-dead aunts and grandparents for the first time, because whatever tale Sharon had spun before, I could tell from their reaction it wasn’t this one.

Kolladao appeared incredulous at first, then he muttered something about looking to the future and letting sleeping dogs lie.

Ako took this new information into himself and kept it there, for his own private examination.

Ndewele looked curious at first, then those pretty violet eyes of his glazed over, as if it was all too much. But by the end of the night they were blazing coals.

SHARON AND I SAT shoulder to shoulder in those candlelit hours, wrapped up in quilts on her front lawn.

Our legs spread straight out in front of us like we were on our shared bed in the cottage again, wriggling our toes.

My feet were bruised, scarred, crusty, burned, battered, my toenails blackened or broken off.

Hers were smooth, creamed, plump, unblemished, her long, manicured toenails polished with blue glitter.

I struggled for words, overwhelmed at the task of painting for her the pictures of my intervening years, unsure that I could. Should I pick out the main events or start at the beginning?

Sharon, on the other hand, couldn’t get the words out fast enough and referred to our childhood as if it were yesterday.

“Member yu waz always singing dat song to git at mi? How it go? ‘Lavanda bloo, diddy diddy, Lavanda green, When he is king, diddy diddy, Yu won’t be kween.’ Lemme tell yu, Doris, it reallee did piss me off! You waz always windin mi up and getting away wid it.”

Arrested development, I think they call it.

I had put my childhood in its rightful place, as history to be revisited but not relived.

When I began to tell her about my punishment at the hands of Bwana, she winced and changed the subject.

“Lawd! Member Percy?” she said, pinching my thigh.

She told me that Percy had been enslaved too.

Percy?

Even though he was a slave trader himself.

Are you kidding?

“Dem call him Adongo an mek him wurk like a donkee at Wordee Park. De odder slaves despise him when dey find out who he iz. Ran off twice, end up krippel when ovaseer chop off him two foot. Non-a de odder slaves kould afford to feed him, or wanted to, so him starve an die.”

The mighty so fallen, it was hard to imagine.

WHEN MORNING FINALLY MADE its exhibitionist entrance in all its blazing, hazy, twittering glory, my nephews brought their mum and auntie breakfast of thick red sazda porridge with peanut sauce. Ako barely touched his before scooting off to the warehouse, as if he couldn’t wait to be rid of us. Kolladao and Ndewele, clearly fascinated by me as their reinvented aunt, set off at a more reluctant pace for the stables to saddle up.

Watching those boys disappear up the dirt pathway, dressed in clean calico loincloths, trailing whips in the gravel, I saw they had inherited my father’s gangly frame, his stoop and dogged walk. Something in their genes or the way Sharon once moved must have transferred—before she submerged herself.

With a different twist of fate, those boys would have been growing cabbages on windswept moors by now, men of integrity, serfs who would rant about the workingman having his day. They wouldn’t be carrying whips to work knowing that, in order to keep their jobs, at least one person was going to feel its licks before the sun set.

SHARON TURNED TO ME, looking as tired as I felt.

“Betta go work, Doris, or Nonso git mad or madda. He iz one crazee man dese days. Bwana nyot so bad. Bwana haz morals but dat Nonso just a hanimal.”

I coughed and almost choked.

“Sure,” I replied, clearing my throat. “I’d better go fiddle the accounts to save Nonso’s sorry arse.”

Except that was lowermost on my mind.

I took a deep breath and decided to say what was uppermost, aware that wherever my sister’s loyalties lay, she would never betray me.

I TOLD HER ABOUT Yao and Dingiswayo and their mother, Ye Memé, who had taken me under her wing when I first arrived and saved my life—and about Ma Marjani too, both good women and good friends to me.

I told her about the imminent sale of the boys to the Amarikas and how it would break their mothers’ hearts.

I told her that King Shaka would be instructed to keep the boys out of sight when Bwana arrived.

I told her that by the end of the first day of festivities everyone would be so rat-arsed I could sneak off.

I asked her, without stopping for breath, if she could, or would, help me escape with the boys?

Sharon was silent for so long that when I eventually dared look at her, I saw tears streaming down her cheeks.

“So dis iz how it go? Mi find yu onlee to loose yu, mi sista?”

I wiped her face dry, which only made her cry more. Now I was the big sister and she was the big baby.

I gathered her hands in the palms of mine.

Yes, this is how it goes.

“Wid yu, Doris, fe de furz time since I waz a-kaptcha it feel like mi git Sharon bak. I had to kill her becorze nobuddee wanted to know dat gyal. Bwana call mi Iffianachukwana an dat waz who I had to be. Sharon ded. Sharon famlee ded. Sharon home ded. Sharon kuntree ded. All I had to do waz mek shure Miss Iffe stay alive.’

That’s all we ever did.

“Mi cyant complane,” she added, sniffing. “I hav a gud life in dis place. I got it easee, parativly speakin. Yu had it harda dan me an if mi sista want fe free, she must be free. Cyant deny her dat.”

I helped her rise to her feet, slowly. She stopped midway and rubbed her knees.

Then, she stood upright, without leaning on the canes, and arched her back.

A surprise, she was taller than me, and quite imposing.

She would have been magnificent, once.

Sharon blew her nose with her thumb and spun into action.

“No use cryin in dis life. Cryin nyot help anybuddee. Mi neva cry cept today, Doris. Troolee, neva. Mi iz one bad-ass knuckle-hed. Best way, Sista.

“Now lissan carefully. We hav to move like milatree operashun so yu don’t git kaptcha. I been here longa dan anyone so I know de ropes.”

King Shaka had helped others escape, which was less shocking to hear than if I’d been told a day earlier. He and Sharon were good friends, she said, crossing her fingers—“Like dis!”

He would hide Yao and Dingiswayo in one of the mountain caves.

I would tell Ye Memé and Ma Marjani the plan, and get their approval.

I’d been thinking of Qwashee too, wondering if my man was ready for a little freedom.

“Okee-dokee,” she nodded. “Den yu must aks him, but onlee if yu trust him wid yu life.”

“Ndewele mite be ready too,” she threw in, looking up at the sky.

I was horrified. He might be my nephew, but he was also a slave driver.

She leapt to his defense.

“Yu tink say mi bwoys hav-a choice? What choice? Dem slaves too, like all a-we. If he don’t grab dis chance, he will live a-regret it. Ndewele always dreamin about bein free. De odders? Well, Kolladao like bein in charge, tek afta his poopa. Born leeder, dat one. Ako? Who knows what goes on in dat bwoy’ s head becorze him neva open up.

“Doris, yu mite tink mi iz a selfish ole sow livin it up, but dis will show yu mi iz a betta purson dan yu tink. Why? Becorze mi lov Ndewele so much. Yu tink say I want him a-go? No ways! Mi know I hav to let him go. Big diffrance. It time fe dat bwoy to eskape afore he turn out like one-a his brudders.”

What about the danger for those left behind?

“Bwana neva suspec his Iffe. King Shaka always cova his trak so he be all rite. Ma Marjani one-a de best wurkers on dis plantayshun so dey shud leave she alone. Az fe dat Ye Memé? Nonso fava dat one fe some reason nobuddee can work out becorze she iz so damned facety an stand up to him. Mebbe he admire her deep down. Oh! Don’t be surprize about what I know, Doris. I hear
everyting
—about yu too, de new arrival wid de scar-up bak dem call Miss Omo, onlee mi didn’t know yu waz mi sista.

“King Shaka will git message to Magik who always tek rekommendashun from him, so long az he onlee aks once in a bloo moon. Yu heard a-him? Leader of Maroon Guerrilla Armee, used to be carpenta at dis place.”

That floored me. Of course, she would have known him.

I had, I replied, and always wondered if he was the man who’d been my lover back in Londolo.

“What his name in dose days?” she asked.

“Ndumbo,” I replied.

Her eyes lit up.

“An his home-kuntree name?”

“Frank.”

“Guess what, Doris. Same one, dearie, same one. What a gorjas man if eva I did see one. Him neva did speak much but I’m de kinda purson who prod an pry until peepal open up.”

I almost passed out.

“Magik’s men will come down to meet yu halfway, probablee. Mebbe yu luky an Magik hisself will come all de way for his ole sweetheart.