The Salt Roads Read online

  A black wave of retribution was set to crash over Saint Domingue, and its crest was François Makandal.

  I ran to tend Hopping John.

  Sometimes Mer seemed to Tipingee like the hands of Papa God himself. “People talk but do nothing,” the Ginen people said. “Papa God doesn’t talk, but he does plenty.” Mer, her words remained in her head, but her actions went out into the world. There was healing in her hands. Release.

  Standing on the factory floor with sugar cane leaves pricking her calves, Tipingee watched for Mer to come and see to Hopping John. A cockroach waddled out from under some leaves. It was longer than her thumb, fat and drunk on rotting cane. It spread mahogany-brown wings and flew towards the mill.

  “Pardon, Tipingee.” It was Jacques and Oreste, bringing in cane from the wain carts and feeding it into the crushers. Tipingee moved out of their way.

  The sugar stench was making her head pound today. The whole six months of crop time, she could never get that heavy sugar smell out of her nose, or the stupid lowing of the oxen pulling the wains, or the hammering, hammering, hammering of the wainwrights and carpenters mending the carts and the troughs the cane juice flowed along. Everything was always breaking, everybody was always working. No free time to go and sit by the clean, peaceful wash of the salt sea and pray to Aziri near her waters.

  The book-keeper, overseer of the fields, had made them carry John inside here. Then he’d sent everyone but Tipingee back to work. “Stupid, dumb black,” he’d said to her as he stared in horror at John’s leg, the flesh of John’s heel swollen and discoloured. “Why’d he go and step on that thing?” He’d bent, groaning, to lace his boots tighter. Thick leather. It came up to his calves. Hopping John was in bare feet. “Tipingee, you stay here until matant comes, then you get right back to work, hear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  He started walking out, stopped in the doorway. Looked back at John. Bit his lip. John had been making him laugh just before the centipede stung, telling him the story about the screech owl who went a-courting. The book-keeper shook his head, jumped onto a cart that was heading back to the fields that were being cut.

  Tipingee watched until the book-keeper was well gone before she went to kneel by John. Handsome, he was. Strong and tall with dark, smooth skin. Vain, too; she could smell the coconut oil he had used to make his hair gleam. “John? Hopping John?”

  No answer. John was curled up into a ball, breathing in little sips. Not good. Mer had taught Tipingee to look out for that. Nothing to do till she got here, though.

  For all that he was good-looking, John’s breath was bad, like boiled rice that had gone rotten. From eating poorly, most of the slaves lost their teeth, one by one.

  Oreste came to Tipingee with a stick of cane, hiding it in front of him so no one would see. He could get punished for helping himself to his master’s produce. Last month the book-keeper had caught Babette chewing on some cane to refresh herself while she cut, and he had put her all night in the stocks with cane juice smeared over her naked body. Mosquitoes and ants had driven her nearly mad before he loosed her and Mer could tend to her swollen shut eyes and the itchy raised bites that covered her.

  Oreste peeled back the hard rind from the cane with his knife and gave Tipingee the stick to chew. She smiled him thanks, set about gnawing the sweet juice out of the tough white fibres. He smiled back, tucked his knife away. He went and touched Hopping John on the shoulder. Hopping John never moved. “He’s going to be all right?” Oreste asked.

  “Don’t know. Mer’s coming.”

  The overseer shouted at Oreste, so he got back to loading the crushers. Before the overseer could see, Tipingee tossed the gnawed cane trash onto the floor and kicked leaves over it. She looked through the door that led deeper into the factory. The heavy odour of hot syrup from the big copper boilers climbed up inside her nose. Over by the boilers, Martinique dipped her thumb and forefinger into the smallest copper, testing the teache inside to see if it was thick enough. She was skilled at it, was training Hector. No chatter in the factory this time. Everyone was waiting to see if Hopping John would live.

  Tipingee peered outside again. There she came. Ti-Bois was dragging her by the hand, like he didn’t realise she was getting old. Sometimes Tipingee forgot too; could only remember Mer’s strong hands, her eyes deep, the muscles of her thighs as she scissored her legs around Tipingee’s waist. Mer always been there for her: shipmates; sisters before Tipingee’s blood came; wives to each other after, even when they had had husbands.

  Tipingee stepped out the door. “Honour, matant!” she called out over the racket of the sugar-making. “Hopping John’s in here!”

  “Respect!” Mer cried, returning Tipingee’s greeting. In a sudden trough of silence, Tipingee heard when John pushed out one quiet breath.

  All of the Ginen on Sacré Coeur plantation were grateful to have Mer as their doctress. Belle Espoir further down the way had only Jean Rigaud; the young, timid white man whose job it was to treat the Ginen on both Belle Espoir and Sacré Coeur when they sickened. People died faster on Belle Espoir; after six years of labour, maybe eight. Living twelve years in this land—the time it had taken for Mer to lose a child and a husband—meant that Mer had earned her place among the Ginen as one of the elders. So if she and Tipingee wanted to play madivinèz with each other like some young girls did while they were waiting for marriage, well, plenty of the Ginen felt life was too brief to fret about that. So long as Tipingee was doing her duty by her husband, most people swallowed their bile and left them be. Tipingee esteemed her Patrice for that, how he had never tried to take the joy of Mer from her. Another man would have beat her. Patrice had gotten to know that her love was bigger for having so many to love: him; her child Marie-Claire; Mer. She thought about Patrice often; hoped he was happy on his grand marronage, run away from the plantation and left her more than a year now. She missed his laugh and the feel in their bed of his strong hand on her hip. She missed dancing the kalenda too with her sweet light-footed man, but she hoped he was still free.

  Mer came in, took one look at John, shooed Ti-Bois back off to the field to pick up cane trash. He whined he wanted to stay, but she got that voice. Tipingee knew that voice well. You never thought but to obey it. She’d seen the book-keeper himself hop quick sometimes when Mer used that voice. So off went Ti-Bois.

  Mer looked around. People could see them, so she just touched Tipingee on her shoulder, quick and then gone. “Tipingee, soul.” That warm touch would stay with Tipingee till evening, when she could see her Mer again, run her hands under Mer’s dress, feel the smooth hard of her flesh.

  Mer knelt by John, called his name, put her cheek to his mouth to feel his breathing. His lids were slack. Tipingee could see crescent moons of his eyeballs, peeking out. Not good.

  Mer touched John’s cheek and his eyes fluttered, opened. He grasped Mer’s wrist, tried to lift his head. Mer helped. Tipingee could see John’s lips moving, but she couldn’t hear over the racket. What was he saying?

  He stopped talking, but didn’t close his mouth. His stare stayed planted over Mer’s shoulder. Mer lowered him back down, put a gentle hand on his chest. She stayed so a little while, then looked over at Tipingee, grinning a smile sharp enough to cut. “Gone,” she hissed. A tear oozed down her cheek; another. “Gods be praised, Tipingee! Another one has escaped.”

  “Mer! He’s dead!” Mer always had that strange way of talking about death that made Tipingee’s stomach heavy; about how it was their living souls flying back home to Guinea Land and freedom. About how it was good to leave life and flee away from this place where the colourless dead tormented them daily.

  Mer straightened Hopping John’s shirt, touched his face. “I didn’t even have to ask him if he wanted to slip away,” she said. She dashed at her eyes with her hand heel.

  Healing hands, sickened spirit. Mer, whom Tipingee loved like life, hated this living. How not to? Many days Tipingee hated it too.

  Tipin
gee looked over at the Ginen working the rollers and boilers, shook her head no, Hopping John’s not here any more. Even from where she was standing she could see some faces tighten at that head shake. The gang boss had his whip, so no one dared to stop working, but one of the men began a song, a gentle one about resting when evening came. The raggedy voices filled the air along with the sweet cane juice smell.

  Tipingee went back to the fields with Mer to tell the book-keeper the news. Hopping John’s woman Belle would be working there in the fields too, waiting to know.

  Paris, 1842

  A tiny pulse from Lisette’s thigh beat under my ear: stroke, stroke, stroke. I contemplated the thick red bush of her jigger, so close to my face. I breathed her scent in deep. “You smell . . .” I said.

  “I smell of cunt,” she laughed, making my head shake as her body shaked. “And spit, and that honey dust you wear. And I have your face powder all over my skin.” She raised up on one elbow. I hung on to her uppermost thigh for purchase. Oh, so warm, so fair, her skin! She said nothing, just reached a hand to me. I felt a tug along my scalp. She was stroking the length of my hair, spread out so all along her legs. “Beautiful,” she breathed. “My beautiful Jeanne.”

  “Mm.” I burrowed my head in closer and tunnelled my tongue into her gully hole. Lisette giggled, then sighed, my girl, and opened her knees wider. The salty liquor of her spread in my mouth. I lapped and snuffled, held her thighs tight as she wriggled and moaned. Pretty soon she was bucking on my face, calling out and cursing me sweet. All sweaty, she was, and she had her thighs clamped to my ears so that my hearing was muffled. My hair was caught beneath her. It pulled, but I cared nothing for that. I reached behind her and squeezed her bumcheeks, used them to pull her closer. She wailed and shoved herself at me, until to breathe at all I had to breathe in her juice. And she pitched and galloped like runaway horses, but I held her, held her down and sucked her button in, twirled my tongue around it. Then even her swears stopped, for she could manage words no longer, and only panted and moaned. The roar she gave at the end seemed to come from the pit of her, to bellow up through her sopping cunny.

  She collapsed back onto the bed and released my head. She was sobbing; gasping for breath. I wriggled up beside her and held her until she was still again. I licked my lips, sucking salt. I ran my hands through her cornsilk hair, blew on the wet place where it was plastered to her shoulder. She shivered. “Ah, damn,” she said, all soft. She kissed me. Our tongues played warm against each other. She broke from the kiss and grinned at me as if it was she, not me, who was the cat that had ate the cream. “So good,” was all she murmured. Then, louder: “Let me up. I need to piss.”

  “Go to, then,” I told her. I lay and admired the smooth white moons of her bum as she climbed out of the bed. Bourgoyne was away on business, so the theatre was closed. All of us girls were free for a time. In the corridors and from the rooms beyond this one, I could hear the voices of the others, high and happy with their temporary liberty. Feet scurried and there was men’s laughter, too. Lise and me had scarce been out of bed for two days now. The plates of half-eaten food on the dresser and floor were getting a bit strong, and the reek of the hashish we were smoking filled my brain.

  Lisette reached under the bed, pulled out the chamber pot, squatted over it. “What do you want to do now?” she asked.

  “Bring you back to bed,” I told her. She giggled.

  The tinkle of her piss against the pot made my bladder cramp to be emptied too. And the ache in my belly was starting back. I reached between my legs and brought my fingers away stained with red. “Fuck,” I said. “Time to change the bung. You done there, Lisette?”

  “Yes.” She flicked the last few drops off with her fingers and wiped them on her thigh. I climbed down off the bed. She moved aside so that I could use the pot. I knelt over it, reached up inside myself and took hold of the plug of wadded-up bandages. It was so soaked with blood that it came out as smooth as you please. My womb heaved with it and a gush of blood dripped out into the chamber pot. I dropped the plug in too, to be washed later. “Chérie, fetch me another, would you?” I asked Lisette. “In my purse, on the dresser.”

  She brought it back for me and sat, watching me insert it. “I could never do that,” she said. “I like the rags better.”

  “The rags smell and I can feel them wadded between my legs. I don’t like none of it. Why must women have courses?”

  She frowned. “Because we have babies, I guess. I don’t know how it works.”

  “I don’t have babies. I won’t. So why do I need this nuisance every month?”

  Lisette was combing her fingers through her hair and twisting it into a plait. She reached for the hookah by the bedside and pulled on it merrily. The pleasant bubbling noise grew and bounced between my ears. I inhaled the pungent air and suddenly came all over dizzy. I grabbed on to the side of the bed. My fingers left a red smear on the sheets. Lise took her mouth off the pipe and coughed a racking hashish cough. Face red, she said, “You don’t want babies? Ever?”

  “Never. Stillborn baby nearly killed my mother.”

  “I do. I want them. A girl and a boy.” She edged herself to sit at the side of the bed, an eager look on her face. “I know how to tell who will get them on me, too. Shall we try it?”

  I pulled myself up to sit beside her. Dried my cunny off with an edge of the sheet. Soon time to send those sheets out for washing. I took the hookah from her and sucked its dreams into my lungs. I could hear my heart pounding in my ears. “You want to see who your true love will be?” I said, amused some, and piqued some, too. “You’re sure?”

  She pouted, sighed. “Well, there’s nothing else to do. It’s hours before we meet the men at the café.”

  “Huh. I could keep you occupied, but maybe you tire of my sport.” Suddenly I was sad and dull, with that dark mood that hashish can bring on.

  Lise scuttled her bum close to me and hugged me tight.

  I turned my face away, but, devil that she was, she only took the opportunity to nibble on my ear. “We’ll do it again and once more again before the night even falls, sweet,” she said. I giggled at the tickle of her breath in my hair. “But I like to play at other games, too.”

  She always knew how to make my heart light. I kissed her. “So we shall, then. And how will you scry for your true love?”

  She reached for the wine bottle on the night table and held it up to the light. There were a few sips left. “Not enough,” she said, then tipped the bottle to her lips and drank down what little there was. She rested the bottle in the bed, and looked around her, frowning. “We need water,” she said to me. Then she smiled. Holding her plaits out of the way, she leaned over the bed and came up, triumphant and red-faced, with the chamber pot. “We can use this.”

  “What?” I looked with her into the chamber pot, at the orange liquid that swirled there, stirred by the unfolding plug; her piss and mine, my blood. “And what shall we do with it?”

  “Oh, it’s easy.” She put the chamber pot down amongst the sheets. “Hold it, make sure it doesn’t spill.” She clambered carefully out of bed and turned down the lamp wick. “Not too dark,” she said. “Can you still see the liquid in the pot?”

  I chuckled. “Yes, my pagan girl.”

  As she came back into bed, Lise told me, “Claudette showed me how to do this. Here, put the chamber pot between us.”

  I did as she said, and now we were both sitting cross-legged with the piss and blood between us. A faint, heavy smell, acrid, wafted up from the pot. Red swirled in tendrils inside yellow piss.

  Lise reached for the hookah, grinned, and sucked on it until even in the shadowy room I could see the tips of her ears get red. She coughed and handed the hookah to me. “Suck the smoke in deep,” she said. “It will sharpen your sight into the otherworld.”

  I giggled, and Lisette slapped my knee, sharply.

  “Jeanne! You must be serious.”

  So I bit on my lips until the urge
to smile had passed some. “Very well, I am sombre as a prelate.” I sucked from the hookah. The warmth of the drug spread all through my body, bringing blissful ease to my cramping belly. I felt I was floating. Here in the warm dark with my Lise, no one to bother us, anything felt possible. “What do we do now?” I asked her. My voice could have been coming from the ceiling, I felt transported so far away.

  She took the hookah from me and put it back on the night table. She kissed my fingers, then said: “Hold my hands.”

  I did. Her hot, soft little palms felt nice in mine.

  “Now we have the water in the chamber pot sealed in a magic circle,” she said.

  I was giggling again before I knew I would do it. “This is so silly, Lise!”

  She squeezed my hands in hers, not hard. “No, it is not. You simply must decide that it is not.”

  The seriousness in her voice made me sombre again. “All right. And then?”

  “While we are scrying, do not break the circle of our hands. Whatever you do, we must keep hold of each other.”

  Suddenly I was apprehensive. “Else what?” I asked her.

  “Else the vision will dissipate, and I won’t see my true love!” she said. “Do you wish to scry for yours after me?”

  I thought of my new beau Charles; of his high, pale forehead and petulant mouth, of his scribblings and his moods; his raptures and his miseries both. Truly, he filled me with wonder, that man. Made me want to know what magic there was in all those words he worshipped, that they should bring him to such extremes of feeling. “I think I have done as best as I may,” I told her.

  “So you have,” she replied. “You’ve found yourself a fine one.” Her eyes were pink from the hashish, as though she’d been weeping.

  “Oh, Lise, his family has land! He says he will take me travelling sometime! I have never been away from France.”

  She smiled, happy for me. “He treats you well. Me, I have no rich gentleman yet to buy me gowns.”