Centuries of June (18 page)

“Are you deliberately avoiding me?” I asked.

He rolled his eyes and suddenly stopped to focus on a spot directly above my head. “Not to change the subject,” he said, “but do you have a small electrical fan built in to this room, of the kind designed to exhaust fumes and circulate the air?”

Petulant, I answered, “Yes. A ceiling fan.”

“Ordinarily, is it black and made of cast iron?”

I looked up. Where the ceiling fan had always been, a much larger black disk appeared to be working its way through the plaster. Instead of the usual hum of the fan, the surface began to groan and splinter.

“Would you kindly,” the old man asked, “take two steps either to your right or to your left?”

The object above expanded in size and circumference, and from the twelve o’clock position a handle emerged just as the frying pan loosened from its moorings and fell, crashing to the floor with a bang, cracking the tiles, and clattering as it bounced until it settled on a spot. The skillet, large as a hubcap and blackened with the seasonings of thousands of meals, was solid and heavy, and had I not moved, the weight might have fractured my skull or broken my neck. The old man reached out with a bare foot to assess its density, but he could not budge the cast iron so much as a millimeter.

From the direction of my bedroom, an angry voice roared some unintelligible curse, a door flew open, and someone stomped into the hallway. She arrived in a fury, gaped at the pan-shaped hole in the
ceiling and then at the skillet on the tiles, and spewed another torrent of gibberish, which sounded like swearing in the French language or some personal patois spiced with Spanish and English. Her dark brown eyes fixed upon me, and I could see the anger flare and then recede. Acknowledging the absurdity of the moment, she began to laugh in a tone rich as coffee sweetened with sugarcane.

She was a beautiful young woman of African descent, her skin shaded to rich brown, and tall and slender limbed. Like the others she wore an elegant dress, hers a royal purple wrap trimmed with a trail of golden lionesses at the collar, sleeves, and hem. Rings of gold decorated the fingers on both hands, as well as the second toe of her left foot. A thick golden chain encircled her ankle, and enormous gold hoop earrings, round as saucers, hung to her shoulders. Hiding her hair, a cloth not unlike a turban was knotted at the base of her skull.
“J’arrive trop tard,”
she said.
“Il n’a pas reçu la casserole sur la tête. Merde.”

“Ah, you are French,” the old man said, and then seeing the confusion on my face, he asked,
“Parlez-vous anglais?”

“Speak French to me. It is the universal language.”

The old man chuckled softly to himself. “Once upon a time,” he said, “but now you are in modern America.
Ce fou-là ne sait rien du français
.”

Clearly exasperated by his reply, she said nothing, but simply undid the clasp of her gown and let it fall to the floor. Naked and unashamed, she closed her eyes and reached back to untie the knot of her headdress, and as she lifted the cloth, a torrent of black ink washed down her face and covered her body like a waterfall. When the last drop dripped into the dress at her feet, a pattern remained behind on every inch of her skin. “Don’t be suddenly modest,” she said in halting English. “Come closer and have a look. Don’t tell me you have forgotten your Marie.”

Written on the surface of her body were thousands of words in a small and spidery hand. I studied the sentence running along her
collarbone before surrendering to my ignorance. “I’m sorry, but I don’t know how to read French.”

“I do!” the old man shouted, rubbing his hands gleefully. He approached and stood in front of her, his nose inches from her forehead, already inspecting the beginning of the story stamped there. “I will translate for you,” he told me, and then he kissed the first phrase inked on her skin and exclaimed,
“Avec plaisir!”

H
e began in French. “
Il était une fois
 … Are we to have a fairy tale?”

“No,” she shook her head. “This is a true story. Every word.”

From the breast pocket of his robe, the old man retrieved a pair of wire-rimmed spectacles and perched them on his nose and, peering through the lenses, he leaned in closely, inches from her skin, and translated as he read.

“Once upon a time there was a crocodile so hungry he could eat the world. Along the bank of the river, the crocodile would hide in the water and when the other animals came to quench their thirst, for it is very hot all the time in the old motherland, wham, he would catch them in his enormous jaws and chomp, chomp, eat them for his supper. First the zebra, but the crocodile did not like the taste of stripes. Then the giraffe, but he did not care for the spots. He even tried the poppo—”

The naked woman said, “Hippopotamus.”

“Ah, I see. But the poppo was too fat and the crocodile’s mouth was too tired after all that chewing. He would like to try the elephant, but no elephant ever came to this part of the motherland.

“All of the animals came to fear the crocodile with the enormous appetite, and they hesitated to go to the river, even though the sun shone brightly in the summer sky and no rain would fall. A great thirst fell upon them. We cannot be free, said the animals, until the tyrant is vanquished. In desperation they approached the king of the jungle, the lion, but he could not be bothered to leave the shade or disturb his nap. Only a pair of lionesses, who had been listening nearby, were moved to pity, and they agreed to see what could be done about the terrible crocodile.

“The two beautiful lionesses, who happened to be mother and cub, went down to the river to spy upon the monster as he dozed in the mud. A hundred daggers stood in his jagged mouth, and scaly bark, thicker than that of a monkeybread tree, covered him in armor. If those defenses were not dangerous enough, he had a tail most formidable that could knock a gnu off its feet. A dry throat overcame the daughter, and she dared take a sip. At once, the crocodile stirred from its slumber and like a flash was at her nose, the water white and churning with his fury. Just in time, she jumped away, roaring in surprise. Off they went back into the bush to discuss their strategy. He is too fast, said the mama. And too hungry, said the baby. Maman said then we shall fatten him until he becomes lazy and slow.

“So they took a share of all they hunted down to the river. Wild pigs and antelope, and he grew bigger still. And then they had the monkeys gather mushmelons and yams by the score and cook them up with spices, and the crocodile loved their recipes and ate and ate. Now bloated like a thundercloud, he slept all but one hour of the day and then rose only to eat some more. He grew so big that his belly dragged on the bottom of the river and his petite legs and feet could not touch the ground, and still
they fed him, those lionesses, more and more till he was just like a fat log idly floating on the surface. He no longer had the speed to catch so much as a turtle, and then they had him. The mama jumped on his back, but he could not even turn his head, he was so fat, and she sank her teeth into his snout and clamped shut his great jaws, and the daughter seized his formidable tail, which he could not so much as swish, he was so lazy, and stilled it with her great paws, and the old crocodile, he thought gallant thoughts, but he was no match, and so, phtt!, the end of him. When they heard the news, the animals danced in jubilee, for they were now free to come to the river whenever they pleased.”

The tale, written across her face, disappeared into the hair at the base of her skull, and the old man had to search a moment to pick up the narrative at its proper place, circling the woman as the words wound around her neck.

“This is the first story I can remember. My mother’s face appears before me when I tell it, for I heard it first at her knee, and my mother had learned the tale as a girl in Africa, before she had been stolen and transported to Senegal and sold into slavery and shipped to the new world. She was a girl herself, aboard a ship of 150 Africans, that landed first in Habana to unload half and then in Saint-Domingue to discharge the rest. So many stories my mother told, and the songs of the Bambara people were on her lips day and night whenever the Buckra folk were not around. She was a household servant …”

H
e turned to the woman. “Do you wish me to say slave?”

“This or that,” Marie answered. “In those days, we called ourselves servants, though in truth we were common property with no more rights than a barnyard hen and often not treated any better.” She chewed on her bottom lip. “Yes, slave is the bon mot.”

“And the Buckra?
Comment est-ce qu’on dit en français?
”

“The Frenchmen,” she said and turned her face so that I might feel the brunt of her stare. “The whites.”

“She was a domestic slave on the plantation of Monsieur Delhomme in Saint-Domingue, and my papa was a slave in the sugarcane fields, and he fathered me and my younger sister Louisa, though for the youngest, Claire, who knows, perhaps my papa or perhaps Monsieur Delhomme, impossible to say, though even as a baby, Claire looked lighter than the rest. Makes no difference, I suppose. The master never claimed her as his own, and my papa never treated her as anything but his. Madame Delhomme may have suspected that her husband had something to do with the pickaninny, though truth be told, when you are young the attitude of adults is difficult to measure, being so subtle, especially for a girl like me whom every adult, black or white, mystified. Their moods changed as quickly as the late summer sky, bright to cloud-dark, in a trice, and best to be neither foul nor fair yourself, but on constant alert.

“Madame had few opportunities to come in contact with Claire or Louisa, for they had no natural place in the household, while I was constantly there as the companion to the Delhommes’ baby child, a girl named Anna about my age, or a year or so on either side. In all the world, she was my only friend, and I hers. For eleven years, we grew up together, playing, sometimes eating the same meals, even bathing together, and sharing a bed on the nights when she could not bear to part with me and would beg her mother so. Under the netting, she read me fairy tales and Bible stories, and while we were alone the many years, she taught me how to read for myself, though servants were not supposed to know, but we had our school behind the privy or hidden among the canes as they grew, and it was in the dust of Saint-Domingue where I first wrote my own name and more. Anna loved me more than the little dog who followed us around everywhere, and she dressed me and
held my hand and nursed me whenever I fell ill. She treated me like a
poupée—
”

“Doll,” said Marie. “Though sometimes like a confidante, too, but as we grew older she came to realize that I was hers to do with what she pleased.”

The baby in the magazine rack fussed in his sleep and then fell back into dreamland. Finding his place on Marie’s naked left shoulder, the old man resumed his translation.

“She treated me like her doll, and I was blissfully unaware, as most children are, that things could or should be otherwise. This is the way of the world. All of that changed suddenly when Monsieur Delhomme fell ill to the fever and died in the sugarcane fields and was gone from this world without notice. He was a good man and treated us most kindly, and the slaves of the plantation mourned him not only out of duty but with some genuine affection. My mama cried all afternoon, and even my papa shed a tear, though perhaps, in hindsight, not only out of grief but with the knowledge of the change to come. Sure enough, the ranger—who is that?”

“Like the overseer,” she said, “but a slave. A slave above the slaves.”

“The ranger came to our house not one month later with the news that Madame Delhomme, now the widow, was to sell the property and return to France, for she was dearly homesick and felt also that her little Anna had missed all proper society by living in the new world. I ran straight to the big house. Anna had heard that we, too, were to be sold. Can you not take me with you to France? I cried to her, and she cried that she could not, and it was like to break our hearts, and when we parted I sobbed myself to sleep and thought life would be best to end right there. I cannot forget my mother’s face that night at supper when she told us that we would be taken to auction in Port-au-Prince, to go to the man willing to pay the highest price, and that God willing we should
not be parted, but parted we were. The auction took place in the town square. My papa went first, sold to another sugar farmer, and though I was shocked to see him go, I did not really know the man all that well for he was rarely at home. And then my mama and her three girls went on market. Louisa and Claire were still young enough that the man who purchased my mother took all three as a lot, but I was made to bare myself and be pinched and prodded by several Buckra men who kept shouting numbers, until at last a price of many sols was reached, and suddenly I was handed over to a fat man in a white suit with a waistcoat colored apricot. He asked, How old is this negress? Fifteen, the auctioneer said, perhaps seventeen years.