The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (25 page)

I do not mean it was the fear of punishment that stopped me running away, although that was part of it. But, mostly, it was just that my days seemed fated. I worked all day and went to bed in my small dark room at night weary to the bone. There was no leisure – ‘The Devil finds evil for idle hands!' said Widow Simmons – and so I never had energy or time for thought. Even on Sundays, when she allowed me to rest, the day was spent in prayer and in her reading to me from the Bible. And to not think was better than to feel the pain I knew was buried deep within me. I did not miss the sunny, open days. The widow's shuttered house was always dim, always quiet. The sounds of voices on the street outside, grinding of cartwheels, snort of horses, squealing pigs and mooing cows on market day – all sounded far away, as if the town's main street did not pass right outside the widow's mahogany door. Inside, the house was different to what I had known: ordered and well-kept. Every item, big and small, was neatly finished, like the mahogany dining-table and matching chairs; like a writing desk that stood tall against the wall with its pigeonholes and rolled-top – an adventure in itself (each time I wiped it, I wondered when the pigeons would be coming to nest in it) – and little knickknacks, like pewter animals kept in a cupboard with ornately carved doors and knobs; fine pewter dishes; and a silver tray in which my strange reflection stretched and fattened as I cleaned the drawing-room. All these items the widow had brought with her from England, and I thought that the Mother Country must be a land as strange and as wonderful as the undersea world of coral plants and brightly-coloured fish I used to see when I went swimming beyond the breakers. I wondered about the English people who made these beautiful and clever items, and I felt that they must be very different from the dull and foolish persons I saw around me every day. Yet, since the colonists were mostly also English, I was puzzled: there must be, I felt, two different kinds of people in England and the worst were sent to Barbados. I never wondered why the widow had left that world to come to this one – I was not very curious about anything in the three years I worked for her. But I did once ask her if the English people were better than the Barbados people and she boxed me on my ear and said she was a proper English lady, thank you very much, and there was no such thing as a Barbados people and I had better mind my mouth. That was the first and last question I ever asked Widow Simmons.

So the days hooked into weeks and the weeks clasped months and the months nailed into years. Time means nothing when every day is the same and every day is without meaning. But I think three years had passed when I was rudely reminded that Time overlooks no one. One morning, I was in the garden tending the widow's tomato plants, my lower stomach feeling strangely warm and heavy, when I felt a stickiness flowing down my thigh. At first I thought I had peed myself. But when I pulled up my dress I saw that my knickers were stained hibiscus-red. My breath caught in my throat and, pulling off my dress and my underclothes with frightened haste, I sat naked in the vegetable bed with my legs spread. My first panicked thought was that Bartleby had wounded me within with his thing long ago and only now had the festering injury expressed itself from my guts. The smell was fresh, almost fishy. But I felt no pain from this inner wound and I wondered if I was dying and therefore numb to hurt. But I remembered the night I had swum after the flying cotton seeds; and I remembered how all my cuts and bruises had always healed quickly and without scars despite my very pale skin; and finally I remembered my mother telling me when I was seven years old that this exact thing would happen to me one day. The memory rose very clear in my mind. She had been putting me to sleep one night and it had just been the two of us. She must have been in an unusually gay mood, for she had taken several beautiful silk scarves out of a trunk which was usually kept locked and draped one, bright green like the high grass of the hills, over her shoulders and used another, scarlet like the flowers of the flamboyant tree, to tie up her thick hair. Three more scarves, of parrot-feather blue and sun-bright yellow and royal purple, she spread across my pallet and my small body. The feel of the material on my skin was unlike anything I had ever known – the closest I knew to it was the brown hair of the corncob. I was amazed when my mother told me that this slippery-smooth cloth was made from the threads of worms and I swore never to fish again, at which she laughed and said not those kinds of worms. I watched how her eyes sparkled and danced like the sea and I said I hoped I would be beautiful like her when I grew up. And she told me that being a woman meant more than being beautiful and described what seeing my menses would be like.

This was the first time I had thought of my mother since going to work for the Widow Simmons and the grief was suddenly there, as though a giant fist had struck me in the very core of my being. I sat naked in the garden and wept for I do not know how long, before I was roused from my belated misery by the widow's outraged shriek. She hauled me up by my hair, beating me with her other hand and, when she saw the slow blood coursing down my thighs, beat me more. ‘The curse is upon you, you stupid girl, and you sit there like a cow, naked as a peeled orange, instead of hiding yourself away and praying to Jesus for forgiveness!' And so on and so and so on.

My menses lasted only one day. And it occurred to me on that day to ask the widow if my service to her was not up. She seemed surprised at my question and seemed about to beat me. But then a sharp gleam came into her eye and she went to the writing desk and pulled out a rolled piece of paper. ‘Come here,' she told me. I went across and she pointed to the paper and said, ‘As you see, I bought your services for three years which expired five weeks ago. However, this clause says I can retain your services until you pay off any debts incurred by you during the course of your service.'

I could not, of course, read the words written on the paper, but I said, ‘But I have never borrowed any gold from you.'

She boxed me on the ear and said, ‘Have I not fed you every day for the past three years? Didst I not clothe thee? Didst thou not break many of my dishes, including my best mixing bowl? Hath not thy carelessness ruined many of my best produce?'

Her speech became more puritan and self-righteous as she reeled off her list. Finally, she turned over the paper and I saw a stiff, spidery handwriting which I knew was hers without ever having seen it before. ‘Only when you pay off all this shall you leave my service. I have already been to a magistrate to see about it.'

I knew the magistrate, Justice Wilkins, was a Puritan like Widow Simmons. I said, ‘What will it cost to pay what I owe thee?'

She told me and smiled grimly when I gasped. I had not imagined such sums existed. I realized that I would be in bondage to this woman for the rest of her life – indeed, in bondage for the rest of my life if she willed me to another master. But, as it turned out, I was a free woman in less than a year.

After I saw my period, my body ripened to womanhood quickly. I developed small, round breasts. My nipples puckered and changed from pink to brown. The light down at my crotch grew into coarse brown hairs. The folded lips there, once neat and hidden, pouted rudely even through its unvirgin forest. I became aware of my now fleshy buttocks. I became aware of everything about my appearance. At night, I lay on my corn-cob mattress in my small, dank room and, by the flickering light of a candle and a small hand-mirror I had sneaked from the widow, I looked at myself. I noted all the changes I have mentioned. And I saw too that my face had changed, though not in ways that anyone but I would have noticed: my nose, which I had just thought big and curved, now seemed to blend better with my high cheekbones. I looked haughty. My lips and my skin seemed softer. Even my gaze looked different to myself: more direct, more knowing. The realization was sharp, but not regretful: I was no longer a child.

I have said that only I would have noticed these changes. But that is not correct. The widow noticed, and she made sure I dressed even more decently in loose dresses that brushed the ground and laceless sleeves that reached halfway down the backs of my hands. She insisted that my hair was always covered with a cap or bonnet in public. Even more: I had been in the habit of sleeping in my underclothes or, on hot nights, naked. Now the widow gave me a flannel nightdress to sleep in and stood beside my bed to make sure I put it on and said my prayers.

All these efforts were for naught, because even covered so entire and with my face demurely downcast, I could not help but observe the fresh glances that came from the men. I had got taller, and that was one reason for the new intentness of their gaze. But their glances were so close, so intimate, I felt at times as though they looked right through my clothes to the new body beneath. And when they stared at me full in the face I had a most unaccustomed feeling: that what they were seeing was beauty.

There was a freckle-faced lad named Sean O' Flannery, a few years older than me, with red hair and twinkling blue eyes. He was indentured to an old man who lived just on the outskirts of town. We often passed each other on our various errands and he had always hailed me out with a smile and a cheerful, ‘How're ye?' But now he stopped to chat awhile and one day he commented, off-handed, ‘My, but ye're growing up well' and I went home with my heart singing.

We began meeting. Sean's master was half-blind and did not make too many demands of him. It was more difficult for me to get away, but I managed to steal some time during the day and I would often sneak out after dark when the widow had gone to sleep. Although she worked me even harder now, I was never as tired as I had been when I was a child. Being in love with Sean filled me with vigour. We met in hidden corners of the town or in the private hills or in the hidden forest. We spoke of our days and the funny habits of our masters and other people we knew. We spoke of ourselves. And we kissed. I let him touch my breasts. He told me I was pretty and that he would buy me away from the Widow Simmons when his service ended in two years and he got his land. He brought me little presents: a pretty shell, flowers he had gathered, a piece of cake he had stolen from a house – once a silver coin his master had dropped. We made love for the first time one night at the top of a hill under a blaze of stars. The dewy grass made my back itch but I did not mind. I felt Sean's body with exquisite delight: the hard blades of his back, the soft hollow of his waist, the smooth curves of his thrusting buttocks. He fitted perfectly into my own body. When I felt him shudder and gasp I felt, for the first time, perfect satisfaction. I held him within me, my legs wrapped over the back of his thighs, until his breathing slowed.

When he came off me, kneeling between my legs, he said, ‘Ye're not a virgin.'

I sat up and shrugged. I said, ‘My father had a go at me some years back, before he sold me.'

Sean was silent for a bit, then said, ‘Oh.'

I was disappointed. I suppose he was, too, though I did not understand at what. We went back to the town in silence, careful in the darkness. Sean held my hand and I knew there was a new thing between us. But I also knew that perfection, though possible, is always fleeting.

Despite that – or perhaps because of that – I found perfection to be seductive. It seemed to me that I now lived two lives. There was my accustomed, everyday life as servant to the Widow Simmons. That was grey and dull. It had always been so, but I had not known it was so. Now there was my other life with Sean. As I went about my accustomed tasks, he always was in my mind, adding to my life a beauty like the gorgeous silk scarves hidden in my mother's trunk. We met rarely. But those stolen times overwhelmed the long hours or days in between. We made love at every chance. I was not concerned about conceiving a child. My menses never came more than one day for the month. The widow must have noticed my new joy which, though I tried to hide it, must have shone in my face like sunlight. Her mouth seemed always pursed now, she beat me more, and made me pray four or five times a day. I did not mind. My hidden life nourished me. It seemed to me that I had achieved my natural state.

Perhaps this was why I did not at first notice that, though he still attended to me, Sean talked less after that first time and brought me presents less often. He never spoke again of buying my contract from the widow. Then the settler who lived a few houses from him got a new maidservant, Irish like Sean, and I saw him talking to her several times. We met less often – he said the old man was working him more because his service was coming to an end. I asked Sean if he was in love with the Irish girl and he said no, course not, but she was from the Old Country so naturally he would speak to her. 'Twas around this time that Captain Ketteridge took an interest in me.

The captain was one of the older settlers of the island. He lived alone in his stone house and owned an estate some miles out of town which was run by an overseer. His wife had died some years before and his children were in England. He was an important man, who ruled on disputes between the settlers and was said to have an entire shelf of books in his home. I often saw him walking about, always well-dressed in his brocaded weskit, swinging a silver-topped cane, his leather boots with their wide turned-down tops always well-polished. But I did not know he had noticed me until one day I passed him in the street and he glanced at me so intently that, startled, I curtsied.

‘You are the Widow Simmons's girl?' he said.

‘Sarah, yes sir,' I said. He was shorter than I had imagined, seeing him in the distance. His beard was well-clipped, almost severe, and his lips very red. His face, though lined, was ruddy.

He said nothing more but merely nodded, and I went on my way with a vague feeling of confusion. After that he always nodded at me in the street and, one day, he came into the widow's shop when she had stepped out and conversed with me for a short time. It was that day that I saw Sean with the Irish girl.