The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (23 page)

My mother went to live with one Thomas Bartleby soon after landing in Barbados. The child she had carried in her womb from England was stillborn. She had been contracted to a family named Ligon, a man in his early fifties and his wife and their three children. But there were several settlers on the island, male and single, who saw a better use for my mother and who, while by no means wealthy, had managed to store away some Peruvian gold and English pounds. My mother was young and well-shaped and had chestnut-brown hair that fell like a wave to her waist. Not that this bought her any currency of choice, save that Ligon sold her contract at a far higher price than he had purchased it. Tom Bartleby was twenty years her senior and owned six hundred acres on which he grew tobacco, cotton and indigo with the help of five Christian servants, three Negroes and a donkey. Yet, when my mother came to live in his thatched wooden house, his total household furniture consisted of an old chest, six hammocks, some empty barrels, a kettle, a sieve, five pewter dishes, three enamel cups and a book of poetry. I know this because 'twas a list my mother always reeled off during their frequent quarrels. But Bartleby was, I suppose, the best of a bad lot, for many of these colonists had come to Barbados to escape debt or imprisonment or, the better among them, because they were not first-born sons. Life on the island was not easy for anyone, let alone a young woman who had grown up in comfortable circumstances. I would have liked to know what it was about the Globe actor that had caused my mother to risk all for love, but she never spoke of him.

Bartleby and my mother lived as man and wife, but he did not tear up the contract he had bought. I was born in the first year of their marriage. I think I was a disappointment to Bartleby. He wanted a son. Nor, I feel, did he ever really consider me his child. When he drank and beat my mother, he would always accuse her of going with other men. I remember his red nose and black beard and the way spittle strings stretched between his teeth when he shouted. And to be sure, there was nothing of Bartleby in me. I had my mother's oval face and surprise-curved eyebrows, but my emerald-green eyes seemed all my own and as I grew older my hair, which was the colour of dried leaves, became all crinkly, as though burnt by the tropical sun. Yet I was paler than the other English people, many of whom had painfully red complexions. So Bartleby's instinct may have been correct. I hope so. Since he never let my mother off the estate by herself – once, when she went into town on her own without his permission, he brought her before the court and had her contract extended by two years – I believe my rather prominent nose came from the stablehand, a Spanish Jew around my mother's age who had intense eyes and very black hair. And she did name me Sarah, after the wife of Abraham who posed as his sister. Bartleby did not read the Bible but he may have noticed my nose when I grew out of infancy, for he released the Jew from his contract two years before it was due. (Of course he gave him only two acres of land in compensation instead of the five to which he was entitled.) My mother received a terrible beating that day and blood ran in two bright-red trickles from her nose. When Bartleby saw that, he stopped hitting her and started to weep, kissing my mother's bloody face and pulling off her clothes, saying that he only hit her because he loved her so much. I was behind the muslin curtain in my hammock pretending to be asleep. My mother lay on her back on the packed dirt floor, white legs raised and bent, staring with blank eyes at the wooden roof beams, while Bartleby grunted and puffed over her. But it was not long before her expression changed and her face twisted in that pain that was really pleasure. She and Bartleby usually did their business on the wide bed behind the cotton curtain. But I sometimes saw them in the act, when the strong breeze off the nearby sea blew through the house parting the curtains with its salty breath. 'Twas my mother who interested me more, her intent but lost expression if I could see her face; or the sinuous dance of her milk-white buttocks when she was on top of Bartleby and his veined thing was planted within her like a root; or, once, Bartleby kneeling between her thighs kissing there and she looking down complacently at the top of his head. I liked these glimpses because they showed me, though in a way I could not understand, that Bartleby was my mother's servant.

I always thought of my mother as strong. But I do not think she was ever quite healthy after I was born. The strain of childbirth, the climate, and the constant toil all took their toll. It seemed to me that she was never at rest. I remember her always sweeping the house, scrubbing clothes, weaving cloth or making buttons, or working in the garden. Even her sleep was restless. She would only have been seventeen when I was born but, save for her thinness, she looked like a woman who had lived a hard thirty years. The constant sun in the dry season, the sapping humidity in the rainy season, and the insects – tiny black flies that had a bite as large as themselves, the ants that meant all the food had to be put on top of pans of water, the woodlice infesting the walls of the house, the gulping lizards, the cockroaches and beetles crawling everywhere and, especially, the mosquitoes. These last were a constant torment to my mother. Even in the dry season, she could never bring herself to sleep in a hammock slung between two trees, where the constant breeze prevented them settling. So she slept indoors with a sheet pulled to the top of her head, but the top of her feet and the backs of her hands almost always had small red swellings. The mosquitoes took her blood and her sleep. She was never able to ignore their annoying whine around her ears. In the wet season, when they were especially plentiful, I remember often being awakened by the sharp slaps of her hands in the midst of the night and I often saw her grabbing at the air, hands working like scythes as she tried to crush them in her fists. She had the habit of muttering to herself when she was in a bad mood and I remember that she always muttered more bitterly about the mosquitoes than anything else, including Bartleby's beatings.

I got my share of beatings from my mother, but Bartleby himself never laid a hand on me. I have a memory of why that was, but it may not be a true memory. I was very young, perhaps not even three, and Bartleby for some reason – I believe I was playing with his boot – clubbed me on the side of the head and knocked me flat. My mother was sitting at the rough wooden table cutting vegetables and her head snapped around at my rising bawl. It seemed to me that she literally flew across the room at Bartleby. I even heard the sound of wings, which was really the thick flapping of her skirts, as she flung herself bodily at Bartleby. He crashed down with my mother on top of him and the knife she had been cutting vegetables with pricking the white column of his neck where the big vein ran down the side.

‘Never touch my child!' said my mother. ‘Do you understand me? Never!'

Bartleby, his gray eyes milky with terror, couldn't even nod. But my mother saw his assent and, after a few moments, got off his body. I remember how she looked at him cautiously as she did so, but quite indifferently also, as though she didn't really care what he did to her now. But Bartleby only pulled on his hat and his boots and went out without saying a word. My mother took me up and held me against her breast. She was trembling. I could feel her heart fluttering against my ear and I think I asked her if there was a bird inside her. My mother laughed and said no, it was only her heart, and I was pleased that I had made her laugh.

All this I think I remember. But, as I say, I was very young. All my memories of my mother are good ones. She beat me often but I know I was a stubborn child who grew up wild. And, though it was my stubbornness which caused my mother to beat me, I believe 'twas a trait which she in some manner encouraged. Often, she told me not to do things – small things, like not use a particular cup or not touch the pies that cooled on the window sill or not play farther than the tall tree that stood down aways – and when I disobeyed she simply laughed, laughed as gaily as the wind flapping the white sheets on the clothesline. While she went about her never-ending chores, she always sang to me and told me rhymes and spoke to me in that special mother voice which she never used with anyone else. When she put me to sleep, if Bartleby was not there, we had long conversations which seemed filled with import but whose content I cannot now recall. Sometimes, she swept me into her arms and hugged me so tightly I could barely breathe. But I never complained. I always thought that my mother was two separate people. Her love for me was fierce and wonderful, but around Bartleby or the few other people we sometimes met she was always mild and quiet. I loved her even more because of this.

I have said that my mother was not healthy. Yet she never showed any signs of weakness until I was a toddler. I can recall actually seeing the changes she underwent: her white skin coming to look papery, bags appearing under her eyes to replace the dark circles that were usually there, her cheekbones suddenly jutting. So the change was relatively quick. I think my mother was far more ill than she ever let on and that she held on through sheer willpower for my sake alone. The very time she began to go down was the time I began exploring the world around me on my own. I was at the age where a child's mother stops being the continuous centre of the world. I became aware of how big the sky was above me and how, beyond the curve of the green land in front of me, there was the dazzling blue of the sea. Mother became pushed to the back of my mind in these forays, when I lay on my stomach in the dirt watching ants carry leaves three times their size or poked holes in the earth with a stick to throw in magic seeds for my magic garden or stood in fascination as a hummingbird poised on whirring wings, its beak dipped forward into the red bell of a flower. My days were very full.

The clabber-mouth jaws of the other settlers would have flapped ceaselessly about what a bad parent my mother was. My clothes were always torn and, during the day, my face was always dirty. There was a great scandal in Jamestown when a farmer saw me chasing the wispy-winged cotton seeds with some Negro children, all of us naked as the day we were born. Bartleby came home completely enraged, roaring to my mother that her damned child had shamed him before everyone. He beat my mother and she beat me. I did not understand what all the fuss was about. I thought it unfair that the Negro children should have the privilege of running about everywhere without clothes, while I had to wear shirt and breeches. Years later, when I became the island's wealthiest and most unrespectable woman, the same old biddies said that they had always known what I would become (not the wealthy part). I did grow up wild. This was partly because of my mother's illness: she simply did not have the energy to see about a tireless six-year-old. But I think she also wanted me to learn to be independent as young as possible. She must have known she would not live to see me grow up. So she deliberately distanced herself from me. She let me go off on my own and I do not remember any hugs after I became a big girl. Of all the hard things my mother had to do, that must have been the hardest. And she failed. Outwardly, I seemed to be in my own little world; and I was. The servants were only vague presences. Bartleby was a little more solid, but only in the sense of a big rock that one must always walk around. My mother alone was completely real to me, and no matter how far I wandered or how absorbed I became, she remained the centre to which I always returned. So when she died, the centre could not hold.

It was I who found her. I came into the house before sunset. She was sitting in her chair, folded over the table as though napping. Her arm was outstretched on the table, her head pillowed on it. I didn't look at her when I came in, going into my ‘room' behind the curtain, pretending to be busy, waiting for her to talk to me. After a while, I peered around and noticed that her eyes were half-opened and were the colour of burst cherries. There was a stiff black trickle from one nostril. I did not scream. I did not cry. I knew something was wrong, but I did not understand death. So I sat on the pallet that served as my bed and waited for my mother to talk to me. I did not look at her face while I waited. Instead, I looked at her hand lying palm-upward on the tabletop, the fingers curled. She had nice hands. Bartleby came in at dusk, cursing my mother because no lamp was lit. When she did not move, he peered closer and called her name. She did not answer, and he saw that she was dead. He leaned with both hands on the table, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and put his face upwards and howled like an animal. His face worked, like water rippling, and the cords stood out in his neck. The sound brought the servants running and they also saw that the mistress was dead. They gathered round Bartleby. Someone lit the lamp. But no one saw me, sitting on my bed behind the curtain. Only much later, when they lifted my mother to put her on the big bed, did anyone notice me sitting in the corner. It was one of the Negroes, peering curiously through the door, who said, ‘De chile dey.' But nobody knew what to do with me. The same Negro who had noticed me took me up and carried me outside. His name was Hamilcar and he walked with me cradled in his arms in the yard under the yellow moon and I fell asleep against his breast. I remember his smell, musky and warm, different from Christian people's smell.

They had the funeral on a small hill on the edge of the island. Many people came. It was an event. The strong salt wind pulled at my dress and I heard the boom of the surf sounding like a giant drum. The day was very bright. Bartleby, red-eyed, wore a baggy black suit and sweated. He had bought me a new cotton frock. The people, dressed in their Sunday best, were mostly quiet, though some chatted and chuckled on the outskirts. There was a small, pale man who stood apart from everyone else and seemed always to be watching me. I did not look at anyone. I saw everything. The sky was a clear, insistent blue; the sea rippled like a mirror too bright to reflect; the red and yellow flowers shouted against the endless green. I hated the world for being so alive when my mother was dead. She was buried in a plain wooden coffin. There was no headstone, just a wooden cross with words carved into it. I could not read the words. When the diggers finished filling in the grave and the preacher intoned ashes to ashes, dust to dust and the people started to move off, I stayed where I was. The preacher spoke to me but I did not answer. Hamilcar came and knelt before me and looked into my face. His eyes were wet. My eyes were dry. He said nothing but he stroked my cheek with his finger. He could do so because all the people had left except for the small, pale man. He came up to me now. Hamilcar made to move away but I held his hand. The pale man was dressed like Bartleby in a black suit, but closefitted. His hair was thick and he had a soft face.