The Salt Roads Page 25

  I fight as another three-twist; fierce, libidinous Queen Nzingha of Matamba and her two sisters, with their harem of beautiful men. Together, we three, imbued with Ezili Je-Wouj, lead our army and our country and keep the thieving Portuguese slavers at bay for forty years until Nzingha’s death at age eighty-one. Our kingdom is finally overrun then, but while we were fighting, our blows hit home.

  And then I was awake again, on the floor of my hut. What woke me? I looked at the lamp on the floor beside the bed. It was just beginning to gutter. Only asleep a little while, then. Half the night left. Stupid Mer, to fall asleep with the lamp burning.

  Ezili’s griffonne moon-face was shining full this night. Another month gone by. It’s her light had woke me, filling my little window and making a path into my hut. I looked in that glowing path, and almost I didn’t feel surprised to see the glass whale lying in the dead middle of it. It’s not me who had taken it out from the knot of my skirt. “Mama,” I whispered, “what you want me to do?”

  The golden bar of light was a road, pointing. I knew where it was leading. The Ginen had been whispering about it all during the day, quiet, behind the book-keeper’s back.

  I stood up, blew out the lamp, reclaimed the whale by the light of the moon, and tied it into my skirt hem yet again. “Make it stay there this time,” I said to the lwa my mother. “I’m going.”

  I stepped outside my door and looked around. I could hear old Papa Kofi snoring from in his hut. And there was still a lamp-flicker of light in the window from Zelda’s. But no one abroad to see me break curfew. I wouldn’t be the only one this night, neither.

  And yes; there was the moon path, going towards the dark corner of the plantation. The blans would be asleep in their great house by now. Tonight, the Ginen were going to sing and celebrate off in the trees where the backra couldn’t see nor hear. Usually I never went to the dancing, but the moon was telling me that I would learn something there.

  But I would go to the river first. “Just to wash, Mama,” I said. “Just to feel my body clean.” I slipped off into the darkness, walking quiet.

  One summer New York night, a group of men who love men and women who love women hang about the front of a nightclub, harassed and kicked out by the police. Inside, the police arrest five women with men’s bodies and one mannish woman. As they try to leave with their prisoners, a Puerto Rican woman with a man’s body throws her high-heeled pump; the first missile of resistance. A tall, black drag queen breaks his bonds and flees free. Another six-foot black vision in sequins and glitter throws himself into the attack led by queers, faggots, transvestites, and street youth, into the victory they will call Stonewall. Black Madonna, Sylvia Rivera, and Marsha P. Johnson all teach us Ezilis more about beauty, defiance, and resistance.

  By the riverbank, it was dark as blue indigo cloth. I soaked my feet in the cleansing water and scooped up more of it into my hands. I washed the rank canefield sweat from me. Cool air on my damp skin made it prickle. Made my nipples hard. I wished if I could swim in the river, put my whole body in, but I had other business this night. Mama, your waters are a blessing. I untied the rag covering my hair and tied it round my waist to keep it safe. I bent low over the tumbling water, and took the risk. Dipped my whole head in, praying that Lasirèn wouldn’t take my head and pull me down forever into the water with her. She didn’t. My feet stayed planted firm on the riverbed. I thought my thanks at her and scrubbed my hair and scalp. A blessing. When I pulled my hair out from the stream, a little silvery fish was struggling in it. I laughed. “Yes, Mother of Fishes. I’m minding what you tell me.” I freed the fish and let it dive back into its home. Did it swim with Lasirèn in her waters, hiding in her krinkly hair? My hair was dripping water all over me. I squeezed it out, as much as I could. Tied it back up. And went looking for the moon path.

  There it was. I was far enough from the slave cabins. No one to see me but people going the same way as me. I stepped into the moonlight and followed it; followed until I could hear a soft thumping. Followed until the noise was drums. Followed till I could hear the Ginen laughing and talking. Pushed through a stand of clove trees to the clearing.

  Eh. There was Patrice, using a coconut leaf rib broom to sweep the clearing. Tipi started when she saw me. Jumped like my own heart in my breast when my eyes looked on her. How long she’d been coming to the dancing? And she never asked me once to come with her? No. She would go with Patrice instead, then come to Jesus church with me on Sunday mornings, as Simenon had ordered us all to do. And there was Fleur, squatting beside a big pot of food on a fire, stirring it and laughing. With her wood spoon, she dipped out some of what was inside. Gave it to Hector to taste. He smacked his lips, a thoughtful look on his face. Then he reached to scoop a whole handful from the pot. Fleur gave him a good shove and he fell on his behind in the dirt. Both she and he were laughing, laughing. The Ginen, laughing. Even Mathieu was there, his body not so wasted now he wasn’t trying to starve himself dead any more. Some of us called him Mamadou when the blans weren’t around.

  Mamadou was digging a small, deep hole. A long, bare tree trunk stretched on the ground beside him. He looked up, wiped his brow. Saw me. Smiled and beckoned with his chin that I should join them. I took two full steps into this magic place. Tipi smiled to see me, and Patrice too.

  “Rum, matant?” Oreste held out a calabash. I took it and put it to my lips. The smell was strong. Raw white rum. “Devil’s drink,” the blans called it. I smiled around the curve of the hard calabash rind in my mouth. So tonight, I’m a devil.

  I took a swallow. It caught in my throat, hit my chest like a blow. I coughed. Could feel my eyes tearing up. I gave the calabash back to Oreste. “No more.” He grinned at me and put the calabash to his head. By fire flame, I watched his throat work. I think he drank every drop. He went from me, over to the drummers, and took his place.

  A shadow stood up from the shadows where the trees were. Made me jump. “Honour, Mer.” He came over to me.

  “Respect, Makandal.” Eh. Thought he was up in the bush with his maroons. “What are you doing here?”

  “Come to dance,” he said. “To sing. I miss the kalenda. And you? You come to join us?”

  “Yes,” I said, “to dance.” There was more meaning to his question than that, but I would find out all that in a little bit.

  He leaned close to me and looked hard in my eyes. “You mean, you’ve seen sense finally?”

  Half a truth would maybe quiet him. “The Lady told me I must come here to learn sense,” I said. I pointed up to the moon. With every word from me, I smelt the spirit of the rum coming back out of my mouth. Strong.

  Makandal whispered, “They still talk to you, then? The woman gods of the rivers and the sea; of the moon?”

  Eh. Still this hard-ears man hadn’t learned. “Yes, for I serve them.”

  “Yes, so well you serve. Help the Ginen endure, help them accept.”

  I shrugged. “How are we going to do otherwise?” But my belly turned in me, in defiance of my own words. I hated to live this life in Saint Domingue.

  Makandal leaned in closer to me. “We can fight, Mer. We are plenty, and the blans are few. The gods will help us.”

  Is it so? When Mama couldn’t even make her power felt here in this land? “I’m not sure they will help, Makandal. Not sure they can.”

  He just laughed. “It’s all right, Mer. I’ve found who I serve.”

  “Sometimes I fear that you serve only yourself.”

  He kissed his teeth, irritated, but before he could say anything, Oreste called out, “Makandal! We going to start now?”

  Makandal turned his head. “Yes, brother! Soon come!”

  He looked back at me. “If your spirits sent you here, Mer, I’m glad of it. They’re here to witness how I fight for them too. Fight for the Ginen.” He walked towards the fire.

  The flames on Makandal’s face made him look like a thing born in fire. Tempered. It’s truth he was speaking to me just now. Makandal
wanted to clear us a path to freedom too, just like I wanted to do. We should chop that clear road together. I saw another familiar figure in the flickering dark. Eh! Marie-Claire! I went and stood by her. She smiled and took my hand.

  Plenty listening ears all around us. I didn’t want to talk her business too loud. “How you came all this way, child? Where’s your husband?”

  “He won’t miss me tonight, matant. He drank the draft I gave him, and he’s sleeping deep and hard. A horse brought me here. A beautiful lame horse, with half its right front leg missing.”

  The helpless look of love on her face made me shiver. And there was Makandal, over by the drummers, gazing back at her like she was his life. Oh, Mama! This is what you brought me here to witness?

  Oreste brought his hands down on his drum, once, hard, then started up a new rhythm. The other drummers followed. Something different to this drumming now. Makandal, he was dancing, tumpa and tumpa to the drums. No kalenda this. What was he doing? People swaying. Somebody singing now, a hoarse old voice. Bella?

  The words. The words. It’s like I almost remembered them. Remembered a hand warm on my shoulder, and me small. Standing wrapped in beautiful cloth, such bright colours. Me looking up into a face; my mother’s face. Her smooth skin, like clay. I have more wrinkles now than my mother did. Her eyes, how they gleamed when she smiled. The coils and coils of her braided hair.

  Makandal stamped the ground, leapt into the air. Landed and spun around, low. Marie-Claire cried out, “Ye-kê-kê-kê-kê-kê-kê!” Made me start. Didn’t know that little bit of girl had so much voice in her. Joy on her face, in the swinging of her body. And Makandal jerking one way, the next way. Matching her. He didn’t even know that he did it, so deeply his spirit called to hers. So Mother Sea reflected the clouds in the sky. So the wood took the shape of the axe head that bit it. Not good.

  Then he stopped, sudden, like somebody had transfixed him with a machète. I gasped. But no, there was no one near him. No blade sticking out of him. Almost he fell, but two men rushed from the crowd and caught him. They held him upright. His eyes were only whites. Drunk he looked, bad drunk, and a mad grin on his face. He looked around him like he was seeing something else; not this clearing, not these people. “Papa Oguuu!” Someone shouted.

  What was this? I took Marie-Claire’s hand in mine and held tight. “Don’t worry, matant,” she whispered. “He’s all right. The ancestor is on his head now, is all.”

  A lwa? No, no! Makandal isn’t supposed to do this; he’s not a priest, not a real one, for all he claims to be! Only the true priests of Africa should take the gods into their heads. Not for us Ginen to do! “We must stop him!” I hissed at Marie-Claire.

  “No, no, matant,” she said. The Ginen all around us were all dancing, singing, calling out. Surrounded by them I was, by pressing bodies. No way to move. “It’s right, matant. Papa Ogu began to come to Makandal little bit ago. Ogu will free us.” She smiled and patted my hand.

  The blacksmith ancestor will free us? The warmaker? Mama, is it this you want me to see? I stood and stared at dancing Makandal. My stomach churned in me, sick.

  Down

  Makandal huffed like a racing horse. He staggered. Marie-Claire screamed and tried to run to him, but the bodies around us prevented her. Makandal caught himself. Stood up straight. His eyes, his eyes; rolled back in his head till all I could see was the whites. What was his soul looking on? He smiled, a terrible smile. His lips skinned back hard from his bared teeth. “Oh,” said Marie-Claire. She looked happy. “He’s all right now.”

  “My Ginen, are you here?” called Makandal. Wasn’t his voice that. Was deeper than his and rough. He spread his arms, the whole one and the half. When the moon caught it just right, I could see his missing right hand. Was that a machète it was clutching; one with an iron blade? But I could see right through it, and sometimes it wasn’t there. “Are you here to fight for your freedom?” Makandal shouted.

  “Yes, Ogu!” the crowd shouted back.

  Oh, you gods. Not so loud. Too much noise they’re making.

  I look in the streaming possibilities, spy the forked and branching channels of Makandal’s flow. A strong man, with vision. A fierce and necessary man. He can burn Saint Domingue clean and free like brush fire clears the bush for planting. But what is he doing here tonight? It was folly to come! He should bide his time, let his generals do his work. He can rout the slavekeepers, if only he keeps himself safe! But there he is, on backra land, doing the dance, the call for me. I can help him. I will be able to go into his head. I will make him go back to the bush, to safety. Now . . .

  “Back away, back away, watery one, cunted one. This horse is mine, not for you. He’s mine.

  What? What is that on Makandal’s head? What are you?

  “I tell you, he’s not for you, O fish. He fights for me. With iron. With steel. With fire. Back away.”

  People were holding him, but Makandal’s body threw itself one way then another. He roared. Marie-Claire squeezed my hand tighter. “What’s wrong?” she muttered. “It’s never been so for him.”

  Leave him to me! It’s me he’s calling! He should not be here!

  “He doesn’t care for his own skin, for his safety. He cares for the Ginen more than himself. He’s my child. That’s our way, him and me. Souls of war, forged in conflagration. Swim away, water child, moon child. Go. LEAVE US!”

  He pushes me. That thing in Makandal’s head pushes me out. And I’m floating in the nothing, the rushing nothing between being in one body and another. It’s tossing me like waves. Nothing I can do. He handled me, pushed me into the river!

  See

  For a time I simply float, gulping in the waters, trying to comprehend that there is another power; this Ogu. Yet another! Not a fractal reflection of me, but something else, new. Male. I cannot fathom it. It is too deep. I am working so hard to take it all in, and here is yet another thing.

  I scan the branching echoes of the Ginen mind. They are supposed to be mine, those waters. Mine to travel, to mind. The springs of them feed rivers which flow into seas, which dash themselves dry, beached on the chancre.

  The cancer that blocks the waters’ flows still hunkers there in my vision, bloating. As soon as I chop some away, more grows back. Time has no past or future for me, just an eternal now. But like a human, I am now trapped in “had been.” I thought I had learned my task. I had met myselves, had learned that I must fracture in order to fight. And I was fighting well. Am fighting well. But now, here is another, fighting me, and he is a Power too.

  Well, water puts out fire. I gather my swells and eddies, suck in tsunamis, leave off chopping at the greedy chancre, and charge to spit oceans in the eye of that other, that him.

  Joël would likely be gone most of the night. So dark in here. Must buy some lamp oil. I’d kept a few sous back from him.

  Tapping the walls with my cane in the blackness, I dragged myself to the parlour, got the rum out of the cabinet. Looked on the windowsill. Yes, there were some raw eggs left. I’d been boiling them in a little pot I held over the lamp flame. Joël and I had been eating them with hard tack and cheese, but the cheese was done. We ate the last mouldy rind yesterday.

  I made a little crack in one of the eggs and sniffed. Not spoiled yet. Praise be. I was hungry as the devil, and no one to see to me. I’d let Laetitia go long since, to find someone who could pay for her services.

  I broke the egg into the rum. Beat it with a fork, watched the rum go creamy-yellow. Threw the fork onto the counter with the other dirty things. The falling fork broke a green, smelly crust off a fancy plate. The whole room reeked of rotted food. I had no heart to fetch water to wash the dishes in. Icy, the water from the well was. It made my hands burn. I needed a bath, but I couldn’t be bothered. The whole world seemed dull and dark and cold.

  The mice had been nibbling at the sugar loaf again. Little black mouse-droppings lay like raisins all around it in a circle, and I could see the marks of their teeth in
the cone of hard sugar. I scraped a handful of sugar off it. Grandmaman had liked this drink sweet. I mixed in the sugar, used a knife to chivvy slivers off some nutmeg that Achille had brought. I kept a piece of nutmeg in the corner of my mouth all the time now, like my juju woman said. Made me less nauseated.

  The sweet, sharp scent of the punch soothed me. I took the glass to my bedroom. Got awkwardly under the covers. Cold, my God, so cold. No money for more wood. Eh. Should have burned Charles’s mildewed old books and papers, instead of trying to sell them. Would have got more good from them that way.

  I put the glass to my head. It tasted creamy, and the rum bit nicely, and the nutmeg smell was a comfort. Grandmaman used to say that the egg strengthened the blood. I needed strong blood now. I was getting headaches plenty, like Charles. I sucked and sucked carefully from the glass and tried not to spill any from the side of my ruined mouth. I drank until there was no more. I pulled myself from under the covers and went and made another one. Then a third. There were no more eggs after that. Didn’t know what Joël and I would have for breakfast. Didn’t care. I didn’t finish that third drink. I remember leaning over to set it on the nightstand, and the room tilting at an angle. Don’t know when I slept.

  Look, over the treetops,” roared Makandal in someone else’s voice. He pointed the machète with his ghostly hand, his hand that extended into the other world. We looked where he pointed. Smoke! Red sky! It was coming from the great house. Oh, my mother; the Ginen had set it on fire! Marie-Claire yodelled her triumph cry, and the rest of the Ginen joined her. Mama; should I be glad?