Song of Slaves in the Desert (11 page)

By flatboat, a dozen women and children made the journey west, eventually disembarking when at Ziguinchor the river became unnavigable and their captors herded them ashore. A vast flock of flamingos, disturbed by the disruption in their fishing rights, rose into the air to become a great curtain of white, their flapping wings sounding like hundreds of curtains rustling in the wind. The captives spent the night in a large sandy area that smelled of dead fish and other rotting things. Dogs barked them awake long before the sun rose, accompanied by an intermittent chorus of roosters. Lyaa stood up and walked in the direction of the river when one of the traders called sharply to her and she stopped in her tracks.

The man pointed to a scraggly row of reeds.

She shook her head.

He walked toward her, raising his rifle as he moved.

Again, Lyaa shook her head and went to do her business in the reeds in full view of the slaver and anyone else who might have been watching as the first hint of the day’s new sun inched up above the southern forest.

The man barked out a loud guffaw, but Lyaa refused to raise her eyes toward him as she walked, as proudly as she could muster, back to where the other prisoners lay.

The day passed, with more and more captives arriving from the direction of the river. Lyaa scanned the crowd chained together on the beach, longing for a glimpse of her mother. More than two dozen of the new arrivals spent the next night in that same place, and Lyaa, though she recognized some by the colors of their headdresses and some facial scarring, found that the more people who arrived, the more she felt isolated and alone.

Old Mother, Yemaya,
she raised her eyes in prayer,
help us to break free of this terrible lonely place and return up river to the forest where we belong.
But then she could not help but remember that it was her uncle/father who had sent her off in slavery. Her mother had railed against the old desert god who hovered behind the selling of human bodies. Take Yemaya to your heart, daughter, she had often said, and you will find freedom. But her uncle/father prayed to the forest gods, and he did no better than the desert traders who bought and sold human beings.

How was it that Yemaya had not cursed him and crushed him where he stood, watching as the slavers herded Lyaa and the others like cattle onto the flatboats?

How was it?

She asked this of herself, she asked this of other girls with whom she became acquainted as they continued their captive journey along the banks of the river, a passage that took many days and nights. Some spoke her language, others had a few words and many hand gestures, others she could not communicate with at all except by gestures and sometimes by drawing stick figures in the damp earth.

Three horizontal lines, one vertical--in quiet moments she copied the designs on the stone, knowing that it had something to do with where she came from, but unsure of where that was. Back, back in time, beyond the desert city where the sand blew through the streets, this she remembered from stories her mother had told her, stories her own mother had told her, stories that her mother’s mother had told her mother, all the way back into the first times. The rest of it came to her in dreams that visited her when she lay like a dead girl under the bright stars, the moon sometimes glazed with a slight corona of moisture-tinged clouds.

This she knew—

Her oldest grandmother, a slight woman, scarcely taller than a girl, with almond eyes, rough dark hair, and a flattened nose, holding the hand of her oldest grandfather, slightly taller, long arms, while behind them trailed along their first child, a creature even slighter of build than either of them, because food had been so scarce, a spouting volcano laying a fine rain of ash over the already parched country, driving away what animals it had not yet buried, and just that morning another wave of explosions from the flattened top of the peak to the east, so that they fled, along with the small beasts of the desert, those that could still scurry or crawl or fly, crossing old water holes and trailing the bank of a desiccated river, at one point feeling the moisture beneath their feet and—the grandmother glanced down to see it—leaving their tracks behind in the rapidly hardening mud.

At sundown they looked back once more and saw a faint new sun rising in the east where a great smoky fireball shot out of the volcano and soared into the air before spraying out its flowering of flame and smoke and ash. A memory blossomed in the woman’s mind, a roar of a command to put their home behind them and start walking, as a vast canopy of fire and storm hovered over what had been their first home for as long as they could remember.

Another two days, and they arrived in darkness and pulled the rafts to shore. She felt such fatigue that sleep came quickly. She awoke to the stark light of the early sun, and, as she had been learning, immediately made preparations—gathered plants for tea, some nuts, a piece of fruit—to travel. When she looked around she saw dozens of people, dozens more than she had traveled with, and still no sign of her mother. The air smelled different. It had an edge that cleared her nose and tickled it at the same time.

Onto the boats again. Behind her another flatboat with even more people crowded onto it. Silently they moved along the river, boatmen poling them slowly along. That sting in the air grew sharper, and to the west the sky brightened at the upper reaches of the air. Blue faded to white, white glared, made her turn her eyes away. She feared that if they kept pushing west they might reach the edge of the river and fall down a steep drop into a darkness where she would never see again.

Midmorning now, and those without food began to call out to their captors. The slavers paid no attention. Lyaa lay down, pretending to sleep while silently clawing about in her pack for small bits of the food she had gathered. At the sound of a child weeping nearby she turned and saw the wee thing nursing at her mother’s breast, but without satisfaction.

Lyaa offered the mother a few nuts, and the woman bowed her head in thanks. Hours passed, more flamingos floated overheard, and then someone pointed out a strange bird, with a deep pouch at its throat, and large wings, and other smaller white birds that called to each other and sounded almost as if they were laughing.

Except for crying children, silence reigned on the raft under the hot sun. At night Lyaa listened to the pole men call to each other, telling stories about girls and river adventures. She could hear the rush of the water against the wood of the raft, a shearing sound, as though water were falling over a cliff rather than simply moving swiftly along. A large empty hole seemed to open up in her the more she thought about her absent mother, and she shivered even in the heat of the rising sun at the prospect of going another day without her.

She had little time to grieve. A turn in the river up ahead, the paleness of the sky beyond caught her eye. People around her began to murmur, and some parents wept louder than their children.

“The sea, the sea!” someone called out.

She had never heard the word before, but before too long, as they rounded one more turn, she saw what they spoke of, the broad flat expanse of dark water, a solid blue-green plain reflecting back at her the light of the sun. Pale clouds sailed overhead, beyond the white birds in flight.

The sea, the sea!

Where close to an island covered with palms two large ships with broad white sails lay at anchor.

Black Jack the butler met me at the door and I told him of the need for the wagon out in the fields.

“Yes, massa,” he said. “I’ll take care of it.”

None of my relatives seemed to be about. I asked him to heat water for my bath and went up to my room. After filling the large copper tub behind the screen he left and I undressed. I gingerly climbed in and soaked a while, listening to the birdsong outside my window, but despite the prettiness of that music I felt myself sinking now and then into a dolorous state in which I allowed myself to succumb to a deep despair about life here and the indentured state into which that infant in the field had just been born. How torn I felt between my duty to my family and its business and the desire to take up my pistol, fire into the air, and declare that each and every one of the slaves on the plantation was free to go! Was I myself free to go? The soothing water soon lulled me into a worrisome nostalgia for home and the city. I found myself missing the hurly and busyness of the streets, the cry of children scrambling for goods, the smoke from many chimneys, the horns and rumble of horse-carts on cobblestones, and, quite unbelievably, even the clouds that often descended to the house tops and made gloom a palpable part of life among us urban-dwellers.

Gloom, gloom, where have you gone?

These were my thoughts, my foolish mind turned upside down, when I heard a musical sound—not birdsong—from somewhere on the other side of the screen.

“Hello?” I called out.

“Massa Pereira,” a woman said.

“What? Who is that?”

But I half-knew already, and so was not completely unprepared for the shock of Liza, the house-slave, appearing around the corner of the screen.

“I’ve brought fresh towel for you, massa,” she said, staring past me at the wall. “I’ll set it down here, sir, just next to the tub.”

“Thank you, Liza,” I said. I looked away out of embarrassment, the shock of her appearance working in my loins. “Now please excuse me.”

She gave me a half-smile, half-squint of her fresh green eyes.

And she was gone before I could upbraid her for disturbing my bath.

I lay there in the water a while longer, trying to settle down in my excitement, mulling on the aftermath. I was of two minds. Pretty as she was, she annoyed me because of the brazenness of her action. It occurred to me then the reason why—because she was a slave she had no presence and so could move across these boundaries like a ghost.

I stood up in the bath and could not but help to admit to myself that thinking about her had stirred some part of me in a way I had not considered before this. In other words, I was ravenous for her, and I had to remind myself that up in New York my dear Miriam waited for me, and I was only biding my time before I could return to her. What kind of a man was I?

***

My mood of self-abasement didn’t last very long. I reveled in the coolness after the bath and soon dressed and went down to take my first Sabbath meal with my relatives.

The scene I encountered was quite foreign and enticing. I had no sooner entered the dining room when my large uncle, seated at the head of the table, with all the rest of the family already assembled (including one I had not met), touched a beefy finger to his lips while my aunt lighted two candles at her end of the table and said a quiet prayer.

“The Sabbath Bride arrives,” my uncle said when she had finished. “Sit, and eat with her.”

A flurry of activity at the doorway, and I turned to look as Black Jack the butler entered with trays of food while once again Precious Sally watched with anxious enjoyment from the entrance to the kitchen.

“Did you notice those candlesticks?” my uncle said, gesturing toward the flickering lights.

“Oh, no, Grandfather, not that story again,” Little Abraham groaned, a portent of noise to come.

“Hush,” said my aunt. “Let your grandfather tell your cousin the story.”

“They are pure silver, of course,” my uncle said, ignoring his grandson’s complaint. “And as you can see, they tell a story.”

I squinted in the light and leaned closer to the center of the table, discerning on the slender candlesticks the etching of a tree, a man and woman beneath it, and a serpent winding itself around and around the base of the holder.

“Ah, yes, Uncle, the Temptation.”

“A fine old story.” He looked across the table and stared—at my cousin Jonathan. “A fine story to give one’s attention to,” he said.

“Ah, yes, Father,” Jonathan said. “All of us would do well to pay attention to these stories.”

My uncle turned his attention back to me.

“These candlesticks have been in the family since the days of our life in Spain, and carried with us for generation upon generation, passed along from mother to daughter. Portugal. Africa. The Canaries. Holland. And then to the Indies, where the Pereiras spent a good deal of time before coming here. But you know that, of course.”

“Yes, Uncle,” I said.

“And, if you believe the stories about them…?”

Abraham made a mock groan and touched his hands to his stomach.

My uncle ignored him.

“The silver was supposedly mined in the hills of old Lebanon.”

Abraham groaned again.

“And the model for the female figure beneath the tree—”

“May I venture a guess?” I said.

My uncle gave me the nod.

“Salome,” I said.

“A tempting answer, but not correct.”

“Bathsheba,” I tried again.

My uncle shook his head.

“There is a legend…”

“Eve!” I said.

“The very one,” he said.

Again young Abraham made a groaning noise.

“Just a story,” my uncle said.

“But with a moral,” put in my cousin Jonathan in a voice that suggested that he was already well sated with wine.

“And that moral?” His father waited for an answer.

“Never give in to temptation, of course, though it lies all around us.” My cousin gave me a conspiratorial look. “Have you ever given in to temptation, Cousin Nate?”

“I…have sometimes eaten more than I should,” I said.

“You are too polite,” Jonathan said. “But then this is the Sabbath meal.”

“Jonathan, you might be polite yourself,” his mother said.

“Yes, excuse me, I am sorry, Mother.” He held up his hands as if to show everyone at the table that they were clean. “I am sorry.”

“I am hungry,” young Abraham complained.

“Yes, yes,” said my uncle, “let us begin.” He muttered a prayer under his breath while Jonathan raised a glass of wine and all followed his example. Black Jack leaned close to the table and served while Precious Sally the cook watched with approval from the doorway.

The evening meal consisted of roasted hens and stewed tomatoes, platters full of rice mixed with herbs and piquant spices and plentiful amounts of red wine. I couldn’t help but notice when I looked up from a knife-stick of food, how the cook watched us quite carefully, interested obviously in how much—or how little—we were enjoying her meal—a little Hebrew Carolina feast fixed by this big woman born in Africa many decades ago.

There was no small enjoyment to it. The fowl, the rice, and the wine we drank in copious amounts to wash it down—it made me perspire to eat this much this vigorously, but the flavors, every tip to the tongue and buttery savor, were delicious. After the food had disappeared the wine kept flowing.

“Is this evening much the same as your own Sabbath celebrations at home in New York?” my uncle asked me, his glass raised high in his huge hand.

I shook my head.

“We live in a quiet house,” I said. “Only the three of us. And I can’t say that we pay much attention to the Sabbath other than that we attend to our prayers on Saturday morning.”

“Your aunt has not taken over the woman’s responsibilities since your mother’s death?”

The light outside had faded and the flickering candlelight at the table must have made the instant flush of blood to my face not as noticeable as I feared it might be.

“No, sir,” I said.

“She will,” said cousin Jonathan. “It is the custom.”

“Perhaps,” said my aunt, “the Sabbath in the city is more difficult to practice. Out here in our country we make it something quite special.”

“We’ve had the rabbi come out from town to speak with us all,” Rebecca said.

“And she means
all
,” Jonathan said, “Jews and pagans.”

“Yes,” my uncle added, “though I was severely disappointed in his approach to such matters.”

“In what matters exactly, uncle?” I said.

Abraham sat up straight in his chair.

“Turning the niggers into Jews,” he said.

My uncle slapped his hand on the table.

“Where do you hear such talk? Certainly not at my table.”

“He takes this from your tone,” his daughter-in-law said.

My uncle ignored her, ordering the boy from the room.

The boy sat there, head slightly bowed.

“Go,” Jonathan spoke up.

The boy made to moan and left the table.

As he did so I caught sight of Black Jack, peering at us from the doorway, a near-smile on his face, as Precious Sally stood behind him, shaking her head, as if all of us were the age of young Abraham and entirely out of order.

“I apologize, Father.”

My uncle nodded curtly.

“And I apologize, Nathaniel,” Uncle said to me, his face as red as the coat of an old British soldier.

“Sir, nothing to apologize for. I am not so far away in age from Abraham and I recall it as a time when in confusion about whether I was still a boy or becoming a man I often felt such contradictory furies in me that I would say, or I should say, could say, just about anything.”

“But you probably didn’t,” my uncle said.

“No, though I wish I had. I was a good lad, my father always said.”

My aunt, who had been silent throughout this outburst, or, rather, in the end, silently weeping, now spoke up.

“I don’t want to think of my grandson as a cruel boy. But he spoke so cruelly…”

“Mother,” cousin Jonathan said, “he spoke out of ignorance.”

“He hears the word about in the town,” Rebecca said. “Perhaps the best thing is to keep him out of the town.”

My uncle sighed a loud sigh, hissing through his large teeth like some kind of specimen from the woods.

“We have fallen down in our teaching of the boy,” he said. “We must make all the more of an effort.” He looked over at Black Jack (Sally had disappeared back into the kitchen). “I’m sorry.”

“Yes, sir,” Black Jack said.

Uncle paused, and spoke in such a way that I imagined that he knew the young boy must be listening from the other room.

“Must I say again what we take to be the truth? That we are all brothers under the skin, and that even if someone is born into the tribe of dusky Ham we must help him to recognize his worth.”

“Thank you,” said Rebecca.

“They know what they are worth,” my cousin put in, ignoring his wife. “If they listen to the bidding at their auction.”

Rebecca sat up and took in a great rush of breath.

“Jonathan!”

He turned his lips out and made a puckering sound.

“My darling, rest easy, I was simply making a jest.” He nodded to me. “For our dear visiting’s cousin’s sake.”

Rebecca remained outraged.

“I am quite sure our dear cousin from New York does not enjoy such humor.”

She turned to me, which I took to be my cue to speak.

I took a sip of wine and set down my glass, giving myself a moment’s more time.

“I do and I do not,” I said.

My answer clearly did not satisfy her.

The look it produced on Jonathan’s face seemed otherwise.

“I believe,” he said, “that we understand each other. All that you’ve seen so far is quite new to you. I expect that before too long in your stay you will come to understand exactly how much it is worth you—and your father, of course. My dear uncle, sitting up there in New York City, watching over us and judging our every move…”

“Father is not like that,” I said. “He looks fairly and equitably upon everything that comes before him.”

“Of course, of course,” my cousin said. “The fair judge from New York. Just like our God, giving us the opportunity—”

“Jonathan…”

Now it was his father, my uncle, who broke in.

“Sorry, sir, sorry,” my cousin said.

At last, I found the breath to speak up again.

“I have a question, now that we are talking about such matters as this,” I said.

“And your question?” Jonathan seemed happy that I was taking such an interest.

“You mentioned the bidding,” I said.

“Yes?” he said. “That jolly auction system of ours, I did take you to see it. But what is your question?”

“Oh, I am, to say the truth, rather fascinated with this business of putting a price on a human being. And I am wondering just how one does that.”

“Yes, you saw the handbill about one sale. Most others are like that, with particular prices for particular slaves.”

“But how, sir, do you come up with a price?” I quickly took a large sip of wine and went on with my query. “If, say, one were to ask about a particular slave. Say, the house girl, Liza—”

“Ah, the house girl Liza,” Jonathan said. “Yes. What about her?”

“Do you recall what price you paid for her…just as an example, mind you.”

“The price for Liza, hmm…”

“Just a hypothetical question, mind you,” I said, scolding myself in my old tutor’s voice, who had always expressed his disdain for hypothetical questions. The actual, the particular, that’s what he had always urged on me.

“Why—” my uncle spoke up.

But Jonathan interrupted him.

“Excuse me,” he said, “but in the case of the house girl, Liza—” and he smiled at me from across the table in such a warm way that I leaned closer and gave him my complete attention, on top of the deep interest that I was already finding I possessed—“that question is moot. She was born here, and so no one ever bid on her.”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “I should have figured that out myself.”

“No reason to,” my cousin said.