Nowhere Is a Place (4 page)

Well, I think I want to write about our family.

I laugh and think, Madeline would have a fit, and then I think, Sonny Boy would want to star in the movie version, and then I freeze up some and wonder what skeletons might fall out of my closet.

Don’t nobody wanna read about us.

I think so. Your mother, your grandmother. It’s interesting.

Interesting?

Yeah, y’all have some real good stories.

We do?

Yeah.

Like what?

Like the one about Cora.

What you know ’bout that?

People talk. Uncle Beanie Moe, Auntie Lovey.

They talk too much, I say, and my mouth go dry.

What happened to Cora ain’t such a nice story to write down, I say. This idea not sounding so good to me anymore, I think. If she know about Cora, what else she know about?

It happened, didn’t it?

Well I ain’t seen it happen, I just heard ’bout it.

You didn’t see it? But you were there.

I s’pose.

We quiet for a time. She come back again. What about the story about your Aunt Wella and the wine and the wood chips?

My mouth kinda hinge on a smile. She was just an itty-bitty thing, had gotten into Vonnie’s plum wine and was as drunk as a skunk. Grandma caught hold of her ’fore she went into the flames, I say, already remembering.

And the one about you in Harlem with Aunt Helen and the first time you saw hail?

I laugh out loud. Lord, I’d never seen such a thing, it ’bout scared the religion outta me; I stayed under the bed till Helen came home!

See, you got plenty of stories I can put down.

Can you just put down the funny ones?

Life ain’t all fun, Dumpling, she say. And I feel she talking more about her life than mine.

We can write it together, she say.

I look at her like she got three heads. I can’t write no book! I scream. You the one been to three universities. Me, I didn’t even finish high school.

She laugh. You tell me what you remember, what you heard, and I’ll write them down, dress ’em up, and build a story filled with intrigue and mystery.

Her voice change up when she say “intrigue and mystery,” making me think of everything slick—silk, oil, okra.

I don’t know what the word “intrigue” mean, but I understand mystery.

Why you wanna know all of this stuff all of a sudden? I ask.

Sherry sigh, rest her hand on her stomach, roll her head on her neck, and say, I already told you.

Uh-huh, but why else? I push.

Well, she say, and put both hands back on the steering wheel again, Alice Walker said, “Black women can survive only by recovering the rich heritage of their ancestors.”

Alice who?

Walker. Alice Walker, Dumpling. Now, you gonna tell me or not?

I don’t know how much I remember, I lie.

Just start from the beginning.

Whose? I say.

Lou’s.

The Book of Lou

___________________

A broad valley that fanned out at the foot of a sloping hill and was enclosed by a cluster of palmetto trees had been home to three generations of Yamasee by 1836.

Green-grassed and heavily scented by the climbing yellow jasmine that wrapped itself lovingly around everything that was still. Hummingbirds, mockingbirds, and wrens flitted through the sky above the valley, and speckled trout moved lazily beneath the waters of the babbling brook beyond it.

To the west of the valley a salt marsh was home to trees heavily bearded with Spanish moss, yellow-throated warblers, and egrets. A day away to the east, the blue Atlantic Ocean roared.

Nayeli had never been beyond the trees to the open land to the south and north of her valley home, nor had she been to the swampy edge of her world where loons serenaded the stars. But she had seen the ocean, had stood on the beach and tasted its salty spray on her tongue, digging her toes deep into the white sand as she watched the sleek black ponytails of the men brush at their backs as they worked at pushing their canoes past the surf.

She and the other children, attended by the women, gathered colorful seashells beneath a beating sun that pressed a polish into their copper-colored complexions.

It had been a wonderful day. A wonderful day that turned into a comforting memory that Nayeli clung to at night when she laid herself down to sleep.

Small in stature, with large almond-shaped eyes that were as dark as wells, Nayeli wore a jagged piece of blue granite that had been fashioned into an eagle, the wing pierced and a slither of leather hide laced through it tied about her neck.

A gift from her grandfather, Sahale, the medicine man of the Yamasee village and the father of her father, Yona.

“The eagle,” Sahale told her when he presented her with the gift, “will take your prayers to the great spirit.” Then he spread his arms and tilted his head up toward the sky.

Nayeli’s older brothers, Dyami and Elan; tall and lanky boys filled with mischief. They amuse themselves by jabbing sticks into gopher holes and harassing their baby sister. They toss the severed necks of chickens at her feet, chase her around the camp with gator teeth and the stiff, dead bodies of praying mantises.

Their mother, Winona, a tall woman with sharp cheekbones, broad shoulders, and a narrow waist, swats at the boys with a switch, but the switch is slung without any real purpose and leaves a long dusty imprint in the earth. “Stop it,” she warns them, but her words are lost amongst Nayeli’s cries and the boys’ hoots and hollers.

“Cease this foolishness now,” the baritone authority of Yona commands, and the boys come to a screeching halt; their instruments of torture are quickly thrust behind their backs. Nayeli’s mouth snaps shut and she rushes to her mother’s side, wrapping her arms around her legs and pressing her face into her hip.

Three sets of young eyes climb Yona’s long limbs, creeping over the necklace of shells, beads, and copper that hang from his tree trunk–wide neck until their eyes meet his, and the piercing fierceness those eyes hold sends shivers up their spines.

Yona is as tall as the forest that surrounds them, as tall and as mighty. His face is stern. It is like the rock that sits in the middle of the valley, the one the elders go to to smoke and discuss law. The rock juts up from the earth like a boil, except it is unmovable. Yona’s face is like that rock.

He has been gone for three days, war paint still evident around his eyes, a gash across his forehead and one down his thigh. He has been to the South, fighting alongside his brethren against the Cherokee, but has returned victorious.

Winona’s eyes soften and tear and she runs to him, throwing herself into his arms and burying her face in his neck. Yona’s arms come up to embrace her, and his face softens until it no longer resembles the meeting rock, but the loving face of husband and father.

The children follow their mother’s example and rush to him too, embracing every free space on him, even the parts that are bruised and painful.

* * *

Days later, wounds tended to and healing, Yona, the other warriors, the chief, and his advisers gather at the meeting rock.

“The pale ones have sticks that shoot fire.”

“The Westo too.”

“How?”

“They are trading with the white man.”

“Trading what? Beads?”

“People.”

“What people?”

“Our people.”

“A young man for two guns. A woman for two more. A child for a pistol.”

“The last settlement they hit was just four walking days away from here.”

* * *

The men stand watch and send out Helaku to investigate. Helaku is small, but light and swift on his feet.

When he returns, he is not alone. He walks with Yamasee from slaughtered villages. Those Yamasee carry stories of torture. They talk about wild-eyed Westos dressed in the white man’s clothes, with fire shooters at their hips.

They whisper the names of suckling children ripped from their mothers’ breasts, and the old ones who were thrown down to their knees and beheaded.

“And the others?” Yona asks.

“Gathered into the backs of wagons and taken away.”

“Taken where?”

His question is met with blank stares.

A month passes and still no threat visits the calm valley.

“Maybe the worst of it is over.”

“Maybe they have all they need for now.”

“Maybe.” Yona’s eyes bore into the woods that surround them. He has a strange feeling that something out there is looking back at him.

* * *

They strike just before sunrise. Not even the cocks have stirred.

* * *

Rivers of blood bubble beneath the heat of the flames that roar and lick out from the burning dwellings.

Sahale is dead. Yona is dead.

Yamasee women scatter, snatching up small ones as they move swiftly toward the salt marsh. Their feet against the ground sound like the drums the women beat, but this rhythm is frantic and Nayeli and her brothers cling hard to Winona as they shiver inside of the earthen walls of their dwelling.

Nayeli pushes her thumbs into her ears, trying to block out the screaming that sounds like the breaking Atlantic. But she cannot mute the pounding of fleeing feet, the screams of terror, and the shots from the fire sticks that cut through the last vestiges of the dark night.

Winona wraps one strong arm around her children, pulling them closer to her, the other she extends out into the darkness, and the fading light of the moon falls onto the sharpened edge of the spear she clutches.

Minutes pass and the Yamasee warrior cries give way to the lamenting moans of the dying. The moon’s glow disappears, and Winona and her family are thrown into the purple light of dawn.

Westos rush in without warning, snatching the spear from Winona’s hand and throwing her aside. The boys throw themselves against their attackers, who knock them down to the ground and then pummel them with their fists until they fall unconscious and their limp bodies are lifted and carried away.

Winona shields Nayeli with her body, becoming like the meeting rock—strong, hard, and unmovable. The Westos laugh at her; they mock her spirit, snatch at her hands held up like spears.

Finally, having had enough, they lunge. Winona lunges too, and for a few magical seconds she takes flight, her dark hair sailing behind her, her arms fanned out at her sides like wings. Winona soars through the air like an eagle, but her flight is cut short when they slice her throat in midair.

They snatch Nayeli up by her small arms; there is no time for goodbye, just a swift tearful look at her dying mother.

* * *

The Westos herd Indians like the Yamasee men herd horses; they herd them, dozens of them. They line them up, single file.

Metal chokers are clamped around their necks. Metal chokers with long heavy-link chains that connect them together like their bloodline, like their traditions. Then they are led south across the valley and out beyond the palmetto trees to the world beyond.

* * *

When they arrive, it’s dark. Nothing much can be made of the place; the smells are different here. Strange, stinking.

They are shepherded into a stable, chokers removed, then left alone. It is night, and murmurs fill the air—frightened words, crying, and the sound of fists banging against the rotting wood walls.

Why?
thrown out like the fists that pound.

Why?
flung up to the heavens and the Creator.

Why?
passed around among them and then tossed off to the side and stomped down into the earth.

* * *

Morning light seeps in from between the warped rafters of the stall. The women begin to weep all over again, and the small ones stir from their sleep, bat at their eyes, and then frantically reach out for their mothers.

The creaking sounds of wagon wheels and the strange, stiff British tongues of the men who have gathered outside the barn seep in along with the sun.

When the doors finally do swing open, the captives are temporarily blinded by the brilliance of the day, and they shield their faces with their hands and back away from what would have been welcoming on any other day.

A man—red like them, but dressed in European clothing with a black wide-brimmed hat, an eagle feather tucked into the felt band—speaks to them in their native tongue, demanding that they begin to file out into the daylight.

Nayeli has never seen a white man, and now her eyes fall on dozens of pale faces. Some are pinched and reddened by the sun, some pocked, others smooth and round like the moon. Blue-eyed, brown-eyed, eyes the color of rain clouds.

Red hair, yellow hair like the silky threads of corn husks. Black hair like her own.

The red man—a Westo, Nayeli assumes—presses a long stick against the smalls of backs and forearms, urging them forward and off into different directions, where other Westo men dressed in the same strange clothing wait with sticks.

Soon they are separated into three frightened groups: men, women, and children.

A white man with a hefty middle and brown, ragged teeth approaches each one, examining ears, teeth, palms of hands, and soles of feet. After this they are sent off to holding pens, where they are stripped naked, a bucket of water is dumped onto them, and they are made to scrub themselves clean with black soap.

One by one they are taken to a raised wooden platform and positioned next to a man who stands behind a podium. The man circles each subject, poking, prodding, and pointing to the Westo nearby to translate: “Lift your arms.” “Open your mouth.” “Lift your leg.”