My Soul to Keep (21 page)

1844

A shock of cold water droplets against Dawit’s cheek makes him cringe and claw at the dirt to retreat farther into the sawdust-filled corner. He has spilled water on himself after batting his arm against the sudden appearance of a corroded tin cup in front of his face. The cup clanks, a hollow sound, against the packed dirt floor. He does not know where the cup came from. He does not care. His senses are drowned in agony.

A woman’s voice. “Damned if he ain’t—”

Next, a gruff man speaks. “Can’t make him drink if he don’t want to.”

“He gots to drink, Ben. He been bound up in the sun two hours. Miracle he ain’t bleed to death.”

Be quiet
, Dawit’s mind screams.
Go away and leave me alone.
He would strangle the voices with his bare hands if he had the strength to move or to even open his eyes again. His back is raging with pain, as if it is on fire. He is curled against the wooden wall, but he cannot move even to relieve the suffering of his tender skin against the wall’s rough texture.

The smell of blood fills his nostrils. His own blood, he realizes. His stomach lurches, and suddenly his mouth is running over. Unable to turn his head, he begins to cough uncontrollably, swallowing back the warm, meal-like vomit.

“Lawd, now he’s gon’ choke hisself,” the woman’s voice says, and he feels his head pushed to the side so he can cough his mouth clear. A sour-smelling dry rag moves across his lips.

“Damn,” the man says, sounding more distant than before, “I ain’t seen nobody take a hunnert with the cowhide in a long while. And him hollering like a girl. Bet you he can’t talk from raising all that Cain.”

“Talking ain’t gon’ be his problem. You hush and fetch me that balm I keep in the washbucket. Lord Jesus, look at how his back’s cut to pieces,” the woman said.

“I ain’t gon’ look at him no mo’ myself. Turns my stomach. What he try to run from Ole Master for? Nigger ain’t got no sense. Wonder where he from. Sound like he was hollerin’ in African.”

“Uh huh. Wild as can be.” The woman sighs. “But he won’t try to run no mo’. He sho’ ain’t.”

Dawit feels a flame of pain across his back and writhes weakly, trying to scream. He can make no sound. His throat is raw and tattered. The woman’s voice is close to his ear, soothing. “Hold yo’self still, now,” she says. “I ain’t no roots woman, but this the best I can do. It hurt now, but yo’ back ain’t never gon’ mend without it.”

“Ain’t gon’ mend noway,” the man mutters.

Another blaze of pain. The woman’s fingers are smearing something sticky on his back, across the open wounds. Dawit grits his teeth so hard together he is certain they will dislodge from the pressure. He longs to strike out at this woman, the one who is bringing him renewed pain, but he knows she must be a friend.

“Shhhhh. That’s right. Just hush. Don’t know what p’ssessed you to run like that, straight from the block. You ain’t even seen the farm, don’t know nothin’ ‘bout Ole Master. There’s lots worse than him, when you get sold this far south. You could be in the rice swamp, you ain’t careful. Mason Farm ain’t so bad.”

“He crazy, like I say,” the man says. “You all right here, Clara? I’ma go eat ‘fore it’s all gone.”

“Bring him some corn pone back?” the woman calls after him, her own voice sounding far away, like an angel’s.

The man laughs. “He ain’t gon’ be eatin’ for a long while. Shoot, Ole Master might’ve done outsmarted hisself this time. He finally git some luck at the poker table, and what he do with it? He buy this crazy nigger. Ole Missus say he set down some fifteen hunnert for this one, and then whips him so bad he might not last the night. She fit to be tied. Would serve Ole Master right, too.”

“Hush, Ben. He can hear you.”

“He ain’t hearin’ a thing I got to say, or no one else,” the man says. “Not for a long while.”

Suddenly, Dawit hears nothing. He is in Lalibela, sitting at the ashen bare feet of Khaldun, who smiles warmly and touches the top of his head. Then Khaldun is gone, and Dawit is scaling the slopes of the great Kilimanjaro mountain with Mahmoud—exhausted, laughing, goading each other to be the first to the top. No, it’s Ife; he and Mahmoud are guests of a chieftain, delighting him with the stringed instruments they have made. To win his favor and access to his lovely daughters, they join his people in fighting off the neighboring rivals who have raided the village in hopes of capturing them to sell to white traders as slaves.

Slaves.

Mahmoud, Dawit says, I’m very curious about America. Let’s go there.

America? Nonsense, Mahmoud retorts. They are barbarians. They slaughter natives and Africans there for sport.
Believe what I say,
Mahmoud warns with a finger close to Dawit’s nose,
America will be worse than death for you, Dawit.

Dawit tours Philadelphia first, where his love for music leads him to a hall to hear a Negro orchestra as fine as any in Europe. The founder, a free man named Frank Johnson, offers to grant him an audition. What a discovery Mahmoud has missed!

But Dawit is not ready to settle. He has a keen curiosity to see how Africans live in the South. Dawit has never visited a slave plantation, to see what became of the children of Africans he has seen sold, traded, and kidnapped over so many years. In Europe, he read claims that the North American slaves are pampered and content. Can that possibly be so?

And so he goes. At the dock on the river in Missouri, the steamboat
Carlton
blusters toward Dawit. A white man on the ramp blocks Dawit’s path.”Hold up there, nigger. You can’t purchase a ticket for passage on this boat.”

“I have money,” Dawit says, displaying the coins in his palm.

“We don’t have room for no free niggers,” the mate says, and Dawit watches the powerful boat thrust a lather in the water as it inches away from him. Dawit is amazed. He has been refused seating in train cars and theaters, and glared at by whites offended by his fine dress in the marketplace, but his money has always served him in some capacity until now. He has tried to adopt the manner of other North American blacks, addressing whites with what sounds to him like a comically condescending deference. But he had forgotten himself with the steamboat mate, failing to call him “Sir”—a mere ship’s mate!—and gazing at him straight in the eye as he tried to board. Servility does not suit him, Dawit decides.

Perhaps he has seen enough.

Then … what?

That is the last he knows. Much of the rest is gone.

Dawit awakens stripped of his fine clothes and his papers, shirtless, and wearing soiled breeches. The back of his head is throbbing. Has he been robbed? Abducted? He is locked in a dark room, pinched from hunger, as though he has not eaten in days. There are chains at his feet, binding him to dozens of other brown- skinned men and women of all ages in a cargo hold with him. He feels the motion of a steamboat.

Everyone is waiting, stone silent. Their fright is palpable. “Where are we?” he asks them.

This Louisiana.We goin’ to auction.

Dawit opens his eyes, confused by the distinction between memory and the present. He is at the threshold of both. He is alone, shivering beneath a coarse blanket on a dirt floor. There is no motion, so he is no longer on the water. Brilliant daylight streams through the cracks in the wooden walls. He is in a corner. There are barrels all around him, and yokes and bits and other farming supplies: hoes, shovels, plows. The smell of manure is strong in the air. Where is he now?

Lowell Mason. The name comes to his mind, but Dawit has no memories attached to it. He reflects, straining his dulled mind. Soon, he can visualize a white-haired man with a moustache who raises his cane into the air, bobbing it, a face in a crowd.

Fifteen hundred. Sold.

Then, Dawit remembers. He remembers shackles bound so tightly that his ankles are rubbed raw. He remembers a bumpy ride in back of a horse-pulled wagon. He remembers running as soon as his ankles are free, as soon as his feet touch the ground. The impulse to run is all his bewildered mind knows.

Then, his wrists are bound, suspending him from iron hooks on the side of a long wooden building. He dangles, his toes barely reaching the dusty earth. The sun beats against his back. A younger, bigger man with pale skin is calling him names. He has rarely heard this odd English word:
nigger.
He hears a whip snap behind him, and then he feels it bite sharply into his back, tearing away his flesh.

Dawit cries out, sitting up straight, full of rage.

He is no longer bound to the hooks. He is beneath a blanket in this crowded farm storeroom, tortured by memories only. He is breathing hard, his body gleaming with perspiration. Instinctively, he swings his arm around to touch himself between his shoulder blades.

The skin itches, but the bloody gaps are gone. His skin is smooth and familiar.

He is tired, so tired.

Dawit hears a creak as an unseen door opens, and the room is flooded with sunlight. He crouches in the corner, hiding behind a barrel, to see who comes. He is determined to kill the intruder. No one will whip him again, not ever.

A silver-haired dark woman appears in front of him. She is old, with teeth missing and skin wrinkled like a raisin. She wears a dress with frilled sleeves that looks as though it might have been very pretty once, but it is so grimy with dirt that it is a mockery of what it was. She offers him a tin cup, standing at a distance. Dawit realizes she is afraid of him.

“You must have an awful thirst by now. You didn’t want it last night,” she says, barely keeping her voice steady.

Dawit studies her and decides to trust her. He remembers, in a remote way, that this woman has been kind to him. He nods at her and takes the cup, hurriedly slurping the tepid water.

“Couldn’t steal you no food, so you gon’ have to wait ‘til evening,” the woman says. “I’m Ole Master’s cookwoman. There’s meat tonight.”

Dawit does not speak. He has so many questions for her, but he cannot bear to hear her answers. And she must have as many questions for him, he realizes. Dawit scratches his itching shoulder blade, and he sees the woman’s eyes following his motions. He drops his hand away from his healed back.

“Look here,” the woman says, speaking softly, her eyes probing into his, “I’ma keep you out of sight long as I can. Ole Master know you got to mend, so he prolly won’t call after you for some days. I’ll tell him you getting better, by and by. And I’ma find you a shirt to cover your back with. But you gots to keep covered. Else, everyone can see.”

She reaches toward him to take the cup back, and Dawit sees the violent trembling of her fingers. He must kill her, he thinks. He has no choice. She knows he has healed. But he does not move. He wants to hear what she has come to say.

“My name Clara,” the woman says. “I’m too old for fieldwork and ain’t no mo’ babies to tend after, so I’se the nurse for coloreds in these parts. Ole Master known me since he was a boy. We was raised up together on this farm.”

Dawit gives the cup back to her, wiping droplets of water from his lips. Clara goes on. “I saw yo’ back from last night, and then from today, when I brought the blanket. I saw how all the blood is gone, ‘cept from on the wall.”

At this, she swallows hard, and she is so nervous that Dawit expects her to spring backward at any moment. She holds the tin cup in one hand, but extends her other palm for inspection. “Week ago, I drew blood on this hand cutting some cane Ole Master say I could have. Cut was awful deep, hurt me bad. Balm didn’t help much, so I beared my pain. Can’t do much else. Last night, I still had a red cut sore as could be, swelled up. Big one. You can see the mark for yo’self.”

Dawit leans slightly closer, and he can make out a closed, dark scar on her palm. It is small, the length and width of a blade of grass. The scar looks old, and he sees no swelling.

Clara is breathing faster as she goes on. “This mornin’ I wake up ’fore sunrise and first thing comes to my mind is, ‘Clara, something different today.’ And it’s my hand. I look at my hand and see the cut all mended, not nearly sore as it was, and I thought it was a miracle from God. Then I came in to see if you made it through the night, to put some balm on your back. But when I come in, all your marks is gone. Like you ain’t never been whipped a day in yo’ life.

“Then I look on the wall and I see your blood, and it’s still red, ain’t dried up like blood do. I touch it, and it feel warm to me. I knew it, then. It’s in your blood. That’s how your back mend itself. My hand touched your blood last night, so my hand mended and my pain is less. Maybe you a devil. Maybe you got some voodoo. Don’t know which. You got healing in your blood.”

Dawit’s thoughts are overwhelmed by the quick analysis of this old slave woman. Her claim intrigues him: Can it be that the Living Blood has healing properties outside his body? The Life gift is only attainable through Khaldun’s ritual—the blood-giving at the moment of death—but this old woman’s tale seems to be proof that the blood can function at some small level even without a ritual. Naturally, Khaldun has forbidden experiments to understand the blood’s effect on mortals.

By accident, it seems, this woman has discovered in one night what Khaldun himself has not learned in hundreds of years. The thought makes Dawit’s heart’s pace quicken. He wonders if he should share with Khaldun what he has learned.

Then, Dawit is overcome by grief. He cannot share anything with Khaldun, he realizes. Khaldun is many miles from here, and Dawit is a prisoner on a slave plantation in America. And this old woman, for what she has learned in innocence, must die.

Clara’s eyes widen, as though she can hear his thoughts. She holds up one bent, wizened finger. “I ain’t gon’ say nothin’ ‘bout you, voodoo man. Ole Master would have you sold for sho’. I know why you’se come. You’se come ‘cause I prayed for it.”

With that, tears brimming in her eyes, she tells Dawit that her young great-grandson lives on a plantation two miles from Mason Farm. At night, she travels there to try to tend to him because his foot was crushed beneath a wagon wheel and nearly severed. The wound is not healing, she says. His foot is turning black, and he has a terrible fever. He no longer recognizes anyone. She is afraid he will die soon, and a boy of only ten.