Wild Seed (13 page)

With less experience at absorbing change and learning new dialects if not new languages, Anyanwu thought she would have been utterly confused. She would have been frightened into huddling together with the slaves and looking around with suspicion and dread. Instead, she stood on deck with Doro, waiting calmly for the transfer to the new ships. Isaac and several others had gone ashore to make arrangements.

"When will we change?" she had asked Doro in English. She often tried to speak English now.

"That depends on how soon Isaac can hire the sloops," he said. Which meant he did not know. That was good. Anyanwu hoped the wait would be long. Even she needed time to absorb the many differences of this new world. From where she stood she could see a few other large, square-rigged ships lying at anchor in the harbor. And there were smaller boats either moving under billowing, usually triangular sails or tied up at the long piers Doro had pointed out to her. But ships and boats seemed familiar to her now. She was eager to see how these new people lived on land. She had asked to go ashore with Isaac, but Doro had refused. He had chosen to keep her with him. She stared ashore longingly at the rows and rows of buildings, most two, three, even four stories high, and side against side as though like ants in a hill, the people could not bear to be far apart. In much of her own country, one could stand in the middle of a town and see little more than forest. The villages of the towns were well-organized, often long-established, but they were more a part of the land they occupied, less of an intrusion upon it.

"Where does one compound end and another begin?" she asked, staring at the straight rows of pointed roofs.

"Some of those buildings are used for storage and other things," Doro said. "Of the others, consider each one a separate compound. Each one houses a family."

She looked around, startled. "Where are the farms to feed so many?"

"Beyond the city. We will see farms on our way upriver. Also, many of the houses have their own gardens. And look there." He pointed to a place where the great concentration of buildings tapered off and ended. "That is farmland."

"It seems empty."

"It is sown with barley now, I think. And perhaps a few oats."

These English names were familiar to her because he and Isaac had told her about them. Barley for making the beer that the crew drank so much of, oats for feeding the horses the people of this country rode, wheat for bread, maize for bread and for eating in other ways, tobacco for smoking, fruits and vegetables, nuts and herbs. Some of these things were only foreign versions of foods already known to her, but many were as new to her as the anthill city.

"Doro, let me go to see these things," she pleaded. "Let me walk on land again. I have almost forgotten how it feels to stand on a surface that does not move."

Doro rested one arm comfortably around her. He liked to touch her before others more than any man she had ever known, but it did not seem that any of his people were amused or contemptuous of his behavior. Even the slaves seemed to accept whatever he did as the proper thing for him to do. And Anyanwu enjoyed his touches even now when she thought they were more imprisoning than caressing. "I will take you to see the city another time," he said. "When you know more of the ways of its people, when you can dress as they do and behave as one of them. And when I get myself a white body. I am not interested in trying to prove to one suspicious white man after another that I own myself."

"Are all black men slaves, then?"

"Most are. It is the responsibility of blacks to prove that they are free—if they are. A black without proof is taken to be a slave."

She frowned. "How is Isaac seen?"

"As a white man. He knows what he is but he was raised white. This is not an easy place to be black. Soon it will not be an easy place to be Indian."

She was silent for a moment, then asked fearfully, "Must I become white?"

"Do you want to?" He looked down at her.

"No! I thought with you I could be myself."

He seemed pleased. "With me, and with my people, you can. Wheatley is a long way upriver from here. Only my people live there, and they do not enslave each other."

"All belonging, as they do, to you," she said.

He shrugged.

"Are blacks there as well as whites?"

"Yes."

"I will live there then. I could not live in a place where being myself would mean being thought a slave."

"Nonsense," Doro said. "You are a powerful woman. You could live in any place I chose."

She looked at him quickly to see whether he was laughing at her—speaking of her power and at the same time reminding her of his own power to control her. But he was watching the approach of a small, fast-moving boat. As the boat came alongside, its one passenger and his several bundles rose straight up and drifted onto the ship. Isaac, of course. Anyanwu realized suddenly that the boy had used neither oars nor sails to propel the boat.

"You're among strangers!" Doro told him sharply, and the boy dropped, startled, to the deck.

"No one saw me," he said. "But look, speaking of being among strangers . . ." He unrolled one of the bundles that had drifted aboard with him, and Anyanwu saw that it was a long, full, bright blue petticoat of the kind given to the slave women when they grew cold as the ship traveled north. Anyanwu could protect herself from the cold without such coverings though she had cut a petticoat apart to make new cloths from it. She disliked the idea of covering her body so completely, smothering herself, she called it. She thought the slave women looked foolish so covered.

"You've come to civilization," Isaac was telling her. "You've got to learn to wear clothes now, do as the people here do."

"What is civilization?" she asked.

Isaac glanced at Doro uncomfortably, and Doro smiled. "Never mind," Isaac said after a moment. "Just get dressed. Let's see how you look with clothes on."

Anyanwu touched the petticoat. The material felt smooth and cool beneath her fingers—not like the drab, coarse cloth of the slave women's petticoats. And the color pleased her—a brilliant blue that went well with her dark skin.

"Silk," Isaac said. "The best."

"Who did you steal it from?" Doro asked.

Isaac blushed dark beneath his tan and glared at his father.

"Did you steal it, Isaac?" Anyanwu demanded, alarmed.

"I left money," he said defensively. "I found someone your size, and I left twice the money these things are worth."

Anyanwu glanced at Doro uncertainly, then stepped away from him as she saw how he was looking at Isaac.

"If you're ever caught and pulled down in the middle of a stunt like that," Doro said, "I'll let them burn you."

Isaac licked his lips, put the petticoat into Anyanwu's arms. "Fair enough," he said softly. "If they can."

Doro shook his head, said something harshly in a language other than English. Isaac jumped. He glanced at Anyanwu as though to see whether she had understood. She stared back at him blankly, and he managed a weak smile of what she supposed to be relief at her ignorance. Doro gathered Isaac's bundles and spoke in English to Anyanwu. "Come on. Let's get you dressed."

"It would be easier to become an animal and wear nothing," she muttered, and was startled when he pushed her toward the hatchway.

In their cabin, Doro seemed to relax and let go of his anger. He carefully unwrapped the other bundles. A second petticoat, a woman's waistcoat, a cap, underclothing, stockings, shoes, some simple gold jewelry . . .

"Another woman's things," Anyanwu said, lapsing into her own language.

"Your things now," Doro said. "Isaac was telling the truth. He paid for them."

"Even though he did not ask first whether the woman wished to sell them."

"Even so. He took a foolish, unnecessary risk. He could have been shot out of the air or trapped, jailed, and eventually executed for witchcraft."

"He could have gotten away."

"Perhaps. But he would probably have had to kill a few people. And for what?" Doro held up the petticoat.

"You care about such things?" she asked. "Even though you kill so easily?"

"I care about my people," he said. "Every witch-scare one person's foolishness creates can hurt many. We are all witches in the eyes of ordinary people, and I am the only witch they cannot eventually kill. Also, I care about my son. I would not want Isaac making a marked man of himself—marked in his own eyes as well as the eyes of others. I know him. He is like you. He would kill, then suffer over it, wallowing in shame."

She smiled, laid one hand on his arm. "It is only his youth making him foolish. He is good. He gives me hope for our children."

"He is not a child," Doro said. "He is twenty-five years old. Think of him as a man."

She shrugged. "To me, he is a boy. And to you, both he and I are children. I have seen you watching us like an all-knowing father."

Doro smiled, denying nothing. "Take off your cloth," he said. "Get dressed."

She stripped, eyeing the new clothing with distaste.

"Accustom your body to these things," he told her as he began helping her dress. "I have been a woman often enough to know how uncomfortable woman's clothing can be, but at least this is Dutch, and not as confining as the English."

"What is Dutch?"

"A people, like the English. They speak a different language."

"White people?"

"Oh yes. Just a different nationality—a different tribe. If I had to be a woman, though, I think I'd rather pass as Dutch than as English. I would here, anyway."

She looked at his tall, straight black man's body. "It is hard to think of you ever being a woman."

He shrugged. "It would be hard for me to imagine you as a man if I hadn't seen you that way."

"But . . ." She shook her head. "You would make a bad woman, however you looked. I would not want to see you as a woman."

"You will, though, sooner or later. Let me show you how to fasten that."

It became almost possible to forget that he was not a woman now. He dressed her carefully in the stifling layers of clothing, stepped back to give her a quick critical glance, then commented that Isaac had a good eye. The clothing fit almost perfectly. Anyanwu suspected that Isaac had used more than his eyes to learn the dimensions of her body. The boy had lifted her, even tossed her into the air many times without his hand coming near her. But who knew what he could measure and remember with his strange ability? She felt her face go hot. Who knew, indeed. She decided not to allow the boy to use his ability on her so freely any longer.

Doro cut off some of her hair and combed the rest with a wooden comb clearly purchased somewhere near her own country. She had seen Doro's smaller white man's comb made of bone. She found herself giggling like the young girl she appeared to be at the thought of Doro combing her hair.

"Can you braid it for me?" she asked him. "Surely you should be able to do that, too."

"Of course I can," he said. He took her face between his hands, looked at her, tilted her head to see her from a slightly different angle. "But I will not," he decided. "You look better with it loose and combed this way. I used to live with an island tribe who wore their hair this way." He hesitated. "What do you do with your hair when you change? Does it change, too?"

"No, I take it into myself. Other creatures have other kinds of hair. I feed on my hair, nails, any other parts of my body that I cannot use. Then later, I re-create them. You have seen me growing hair."

"I did not know whether you were growing it or it was . . . somehow the same hair." He handed her his small mirror. "Here, look at yourself."

She took it eagerly, lovingly. Since the first time he had shown it to her, she had wanted such a glass of her own. He had promised to buy her one.

Now she saw that he had cut and combed her hair into a softly rounded black cloud around her head. "It would be better braided," she said. "A woman of the age I seem to be would braid her hair."

"Another time." He glanced at two small bits of gold jewelry. "Either Isaac has not looked at your ears, or he thinks it would be no trouble for you to create small holes to attach these earrings. Can you?"

She looked at the earrings, at the pins meant to fasten them to her ears. Already she wore a necklace of gold and small jewels. It was the only thing she had on that she liked. Now she liked the earrings as well. "Touch where the holes should be," she said.

He clasped each of her earlobes in the proper places—then jerked his hands away in surprise.

"What is the matter?" she asked, surprised herself.

"Nothing. I . . . I suppose it's just that I've never touched you before while you were changing. The texture of your flesh is . . . different."

"Is not the texture of clay different when it is pliable and when it has set?"

". . . yes."

She laughed. "Touch me now. The strangeness is gone."

He obeyed hesitantly and seemed to find what he felt more familiar this time. "It was not unpleasant before," he said. "Only unexpected."

"But not truly unfamiliar," she said. She looked off to one side, not meeting his eyes, smiling.

"But it is. I've never . . ." He stopped and began to interpret the look on her face. "What are you saying, woman? What have you been doing?"

She laughed again. "Only giving you pleasure. You have told me how well I please you." She lifted her head. "Once I married a man who had seven wives. When he had married me, though, he did not go as often to the others."

Slowly, his expression of disbelief dissolved into amusement. He stepped closer to her with the earrings and began to attach them through the small new holes in her earlobes. "Someday," he murmured, vaguely preoccupied, "we will both change. I will become a woman and find out whether you make an especially talented man."

"No!" She jerked away from him, then cried out in pain and surprise when her sudden movement caused him to hurt her ear. She doused the pain quickly and repaired the slight injury. "We will not do such a thing!"

He gave her a smile of gentle condescension, picked up the earring from where it had fallen, and put it on her ear.