So Long Been Dreaming (47 page)

At last Walker purchased a small piece of salt pork and they were on their way to her home, four miles from the market, which they walked in well under an hour. Walker’s name was appropriately suited, Essence decided as they made their way to her little round cottage, built with bamboo vines and covered with a thatched roof from coconut boughs and secluded in a grove.

Before they were inside the one-room cottage, Carmen de Walker reached for Essence’s hand and said to her. “Yu nuh tell me eberyting. Yu know yu can trust me.”

“Are you free or are you enslaved?”

“We claim freedom two years now. Whe yu been hidin out? Yu is one of de Maroon dem?”

So that was why she had smelled thyme. What had her mother told her about thyme again? “If you rub thyme into your joints, and behind your knees and under your arm-pits, it will make you invisible to the enslavers and the enslaved.” Her mother’s words seeped into her consciousness. Now she had to decide how much to tell Carmen the Walker.

“Yesterday evening you saw me at the cotton tree,” Essence began, observing Carmen closely. “I was just coming up and had not filled my lungs with air yet.”

“Yu is duppy?” There was alarm in Carmen’s voice.

“I am still among the living,” Essence hastened to assure her. “But you are right about me being a Maroon. There is a whole group of us Maroons who live underground.” Before Carmen the Walker could interrupt, Essence pulled off her turban and shook her hair, which fell around her like tall, brown grass. “We breathe and survive through our hair. I am a reconnoiterer. I come up to learn how those who are enslaved are making out to gain their freedom. A few of us who came up were captured and enslaved when our hair, the source of our power and transformation, was cut off.”

Carmen also pulled off her head-wrap, and her finger-length dreadlocks stuck up on her head. “We is indeed cousin, and me heard oonuh chatting plenty, but me moda tell me me a gu mad cause nu body kyan live inna ground like yam root.” Carmen clapped her hands and the balls of her feet tapped the ground. “Yu can neva know how it feel fi know me nuh mad,” she said, embracing Essence, who immediately licked her arms in joy. Carmen pulled away.

“Mek yu lick me like puppy?” she asked.

“That’s how we greet each other down there,” Essence apologized, remembering that this was not the way of the enslaved.

Carmen took hold of Essence’s hand and pressed it to her stomach. Essence felt the child growing in Carmen’s stomach. Both laughed, then held each other and danced around the small room. Essence realized she was suddenly tired. She yawned.

“Yu tired. Tek a likkle rest while me cook.”

Grateful, and sensing she was safe, Essence stretched out on the small cot and pulled the colourful sheet, made from the scraps of many different cloths, up to her neck. Some of her hair, falling to the impacted dirt floor, instantly drank the nutrients. Her dreams connected her to her grandmother who was sitting on a hill looking down on a valley in which people, who appeared to be the size of ants, went about their daily chores. Her grey-roped locks were pulled over her shoulder almost to her ankles.

As Essence approached her grandmother, the old woman caught hold of her hand and licked her fingers. Essence returned her grandmother’s greeting by licking her shoulder as both a sign of respect for her age as well as a symbol of deep affection. Essence sat beside the elder, who did not avert her eyes from the valley, but spoke as if she was merely continuing a story.

“Your mother has told you how I, along with six others, came to find Piliferous Layer and how I came to lose my claim to it. It has taken more than ten years, fifty in the world of the enslaved, to grow back my hair. Now it almost brushes the ground; this way I am always connected to the soil that sustains us.

“When I was on that slaver’s ship, cuffed and chained, bewildered and bereft of hope like all the others, I heard the voice of my great-grandmother saying to me over and over, ‘All is not lost, all is not lost.’ I was trying to shut out her voice when I raised my own to ask who else beside me was a priestess in training. Others replied, and they too were being sustained by their grandmother’s voices, telling them, just like my own who had already made her transition from our world, that all was not lost, and together we had the knowledge in our wombs to forge a new way to live.

“I cannot tell you how we did it, except that once the ship docked and we were relieved from our chains, we each ran, and to keep from being detected we buried each other, and in our desperation to be quiet, to keep from being detected, our bodies transformed and we found ourselves being pulled more deeply into the earth, as if through quicksand, until we sank to a latitude that had a floor.

“From there we learned what we had always been taught, that we could become whatever the occasion demanded, and the season of hostility and geographic realignment slated for our people required that some of us transmute and become one with the yams that had historically sustained us. We grew roots and dug more securely into the ground and gave birth, then one by one, rose to the surface to claim men and teach them to live like us.

“Our numbers increased and we learned to slow down our aging process considerably because we surmised that this season would be a long one, and our role was not only to be way-makers, but to survive it, as we were the keepers of memory and purveyors of tradition.

“At first we didn’t think we would survive, partly because we were ambivalent. Our continent, that would become divided up and renamed Africa, was not perfect, but it was ours. Our needs were met. Like most people, we sometimes fought among ourselves, and often had to contend with kings who wanted to expand their territory, but it was home.

“The tears I shed for that place and the people lost to me is in the ripple of each wave. But every time I wanted to give up, my grandmother’s voice would pound inside my head, ‘All is not lost, this is a great journey-way that you are making. Go on and make of it something new.’ And so I did with the help of Arrora, an Arawak woman, who did not die with the rest of her people, but stayed to help us who were coming. She was a mother to me; she had been a high-priestess of her people. She taught all of us how to breathe underground, how to become soil and use our hair like roots. She delivered our babies and showed us how to wriggle like worms to the surface of the earth. Mostly, she taught us the smell of the white man and how to stay safe from becoming one of his slaves. Arrora is your grandmother, too. You are a woman now, soon will be sleeping with a man. You must put water out for Arrora just like how you put water out for me.

“You are as good a scout as I was, better in fact. Once again the wind has changed course, but there are still battles ahead. Always remember that you are a purveyor of memory and tradition. You must always be able to live and survive anywhere. That is our claim. We survived when others did not. I was fifty, the age of your mother now, when the enslavers captured me and cut off my hair. I had been visiting several estates over the years, speaking to the women, teasing out their memory, helping them to set fire to the fields, showing them which herbs to grow to strengthen their and their men’s bodies, which to use to weaken the bacras and make them worthless without killing them. I was doing well, but then I took up with a man on one of the estates. The woman I took him from got jealous and told the overseer that I was telling the cook how to kill him. I was too wrapped up in this man’s love to be vigilant. I was tight in his arms, our legs intertwined when they caught me, and right there before him, my hair was cut off and my head shaved clean. That was true bewilderment; that and the sting of the whip. Thirty lashes with the cat-o’-nine-tails, but not a sound escaped my mouth or a tear watered my eyes. I knew my responsibility and kept my focus on the colony underground and on our people. I knew I would see them again.”

Essence turned on the small cot and the back of her hand wiped the tears that spilled from her eyes. She was still asleep, but mumbled, “Fifty in our years, but 250 in theirs. Oh grandmother, you were such a warrior.”

“We all are warriors, child, especially those who were enslaved and did not succumb to death, but kept believing and working to break the chains of slavery. My child, some of the greatest warriors simply kept faith.”

While Carmen de Walker hummed a mento and cooked, Essence slept deeply, her grandmother dreaming her the memory she needed to fulfill her duties. She woke after the day had gone to rest. Her mother always cautioned her to wait until day was chasing evening before entering the enslaved world. She woke feeling powerful, and immediately her eyes located Carmen sitting just outside the cottage on a low stool and a man standing behind her massaging her shoulders. Essence rose quietly and walked to the door, but even before her feet were over the threshold, Carmen called to her.

“Yu was well tired. Yu sleep sound.”

“Yes, your cot is very comfortable,” Essence replied, her eyes scanning the man, the father of Carmen’s unborn child; she detected that he was safe.

“Dis be Joint, also known as Sammy.”

Joint smiled at Essence, and his eyes fastened on her like burr-burr, that thorn-like weed that easily attached itself to cloth.

“Me did know yu,” he declared, moving from behind Carmen and walking towards Essence. “Me did know you from another time when memory flowed like river water.”

“Joint was here before,” Carmen interjected. “Him was here two times more dan me, but de both of we been here before.”

“And are you free also?” Essence asked.

“Slavery days done!” Joint declared, spittle spewing from his mouth, his nostrils flaring.

A rush of excitement flushed Essence’s skin. She wanted to rush back to the colony and tell Tuba and the others that they could come up now, that they no longer needed to live underground, but first, she had to hear the full story. She had to confirm what Carmen and Joint told her, and had to decipher the smell that clung to the colony. Essence walked up to Joint and licked his cheek and then his arm. She had to be sure; taste was the ultimate confirmation. Carmen reared up and Joint brushed Essence away gently.

“Dat’s me oman dere,” Joint said, pointing to Carmen who had her arms akimbo. “We be family. Me no want no more oman.”

Realizing that her action was misinterpreted, Essence hastened to explain.

“It’s only through taste that I can verify what you say. It is the language of the Starch people.”

“Is who oonuh be?” Joint asked.

“Whe oonuh live fah real?” Carmen followed on the heels of Joint, now insinuating herself between Essence and Joint, and linking her arms with his.

Essence smiled at this gesture of ownership. How would Tuba react if she were to openly declare her intention to posses him by licking his soles and tracing his spinal cord with her tongue at one of their weekly public gatherings? Would he in turn circle her navel with his tongue and lick her eyelids to indicate consent and signal their union?

“Tek me whe yu live,” Carmen de Walker stood in front of Essence, demanding of her. “Tek me; mek me see cause me is one of oonuh.” Her voice was determined. Both feet were planted firmly on the ground and her arms were akimbo again. Essence could see that she would not be dissuaded easily, yet dare she take an outsider into their free colony?

“I cannot take you. You do not know how to transform and become a root.”

“Me can become whateva me want. Jus tek me and show me how,” Carmen de Walker insisted.

Essence knew she was cornered, but her mind quickly reviewed the first tenet of Piliferous Layer: Safety is the responsibility of all, from the youngest to the oldest, and no outsider must be allowed into Piliferous Layer without the approval of the leader, an elder, and two other members of the community. Essence respected this rule and knew that the colony had been protected all these years because everyone, including her great-grandmother who had been captured and made to live like a slave, honoured that code. She could not and would not break it, even though she believed Carmen de Walker was one of them, and wanted to show her how they lived. But before she could explain to Carmen why she could not take her, she felt a cool wind on her arms and legs, and knew instantly that someone else from the Maroon colony was approaching. Almost immediately, she smelled the sweet potato and smiled. So Tuba had come after her as she had hoped.

“The leader of my colony is approaching. You can make your request to him.”

Tuba strode into their midst, his skin rich like wet soil, his muscles taut. Essence moved quickly to him and licked his knuckles in greeting as he ambled through the gate leading to Carmen de Walker’s cottage. Immediately Joint stepped forward, his hands fisted at his side. With her peripheral vision, Essence glanced at Joint and smiled at the folly of men, free or enslaved; they amused her with their need to always lay claim, to establish their territory. Apparently Carmen was equally aware, because she moved quickly beside Joint and placed her hands over his fist, massaging it. “Him is not here to cause trouble,” she said to Joint, although her eyes were on Tuba, drinking him in.

Essence felt like someone was yanking on her dreadlocks and her scalp prickled. She had not experienced this sensation before, but she knew enough to know it was her way of wanting to claim territory, indicate to Carmen that Tuba was hers, even though she had not yet made such declaration to him or the colony. “Tuba, I am glad that you have come after me. Slavery is over. Everyone is now free. This is Carmen de Walker and her man, Joint. They are free and she is carrying his child.” She knew she had said more than she needed to by way of introduction, but she felt the need to establish Carmen and Joint as a couple.

Tuba nodded to the couple, but his eyes were fastened on Essence: she read both irritation and desire.

“I had to come, and for defying your order I will submit to your punishment,” Essence said more coquettishly than she had planned. It was the general rule that when the leader was disobeyed, the violator had to spend every minute of two weeks shadowing the leader.