The Salt Roads Page 26

  I suck at him with whirlpools, yet he only laughs. He steams my substance away to nothing. I roar at him with waters; he roars at me with flames, and I flinch from the heat. I try to drown him, but he engulfs me. I battle with him for Makandal, but I can’t get into Makandal, no matter how I push. The other one riding him is stronger.

  People would burn over there, white people and the brown slaves of Master’s house. Mama! Tell me! What to do?

  But there is another pull. A person is calling me. No drums, no dance, but she calls. And then there I am, in her head. Mer, this one is. I float in the streaming story of her, and I know her. Good, I have a body now. I can act in the world.

  I felt the world going away from me. I staggered. Eh. So odd it felt. Like being a visitor in my own body. Like I was watching myself. Noise all around me, and fire, and drumming. People dancing and crying. Makandal dancing. The dirt crumbling beneath my feet. The smoky scent of burning wood, the musk-sweat of the Ginen all around me. My feet began to stamp, my body to twirl. Marie-Claire let go of my hand. Her eyes were big. The other Ginen backed away. Could hear, me; voices whispering, “Mer? Who’s that? Matant?”

  Twirled and stamped, me, till I broke free of the crowd. I rushed like tidal waters to where Makandal stood, grinning his berserker grin. “Ogu!” My voice crashed, the way the breakers smash against the cliffs. Salt sea that I was smelling?

  Makandal turned, looked at me. “Yes, wife?”

  Wife? I am no wife to you!

  “Go back to the bush,” I heard myself say.

  There is a smile that certain fighters get in the thick of battle. Ogu rides them, and they know their cause to be righteous, and they fear nothing. See nothing but the fight. Feel no pain. And they smile, smile. Skin their lips back from their teeth like they’ve already drawn back their blades to deal you their death blow. And they are not there behind their eyes. That was the smile that Makandal turned on me now. “I belong here,” he said. “By the fire. With iron in my hands. Stay out of my way, old woman.”

  He is like me, Makandal’s rider. So we are not alone in our land of aether, Hathor and I. Ogu, they call this one. I call him usurper. Outrage fills me, but no time, no time! This battle is happening in the mortal world of time, and time is flowing away, like water poured on desert sands. Ogu is pitched for battle. Makandal wouldn’t listen to Mer my horse, but in the many flowing strands of the Ginen’s story, I could see a thing I could do. Mer could warn the slaves in the great house of the fire. She could protect those my people. And she could mislead the whites, send them away from this bush meeting. She could take me to them, and I could beguile them as I had before. I could speak to them through a white woman’s body. I turn Mer’s body to run, tumble, flow through the bush to the great house, to save, to save.

  I turned to run; there were Ginen in the great house, sleeping. “Stop her!” Makandal shouted. I heard the rifle shot, but I wasn’t hit. I took two more steps, but screaming stopped me. I turned. Marie-Claire lay on the ground, her chest covered in blood. It was Patrice screaming Marie-Claire’s name over and over again. Hector was the one with the gun. He looked so stricken, it was as though he’d shot himself, not sweet Marie-Claire who’d thrown herself in the way to protect me.

  Makandal looked at her, griefstruck, then staggered. Stood again. He pointed at me. “She was going to warn the blancs! Hold her!”

  Ginen bodies grabbed me, dragged me to the ground. I landed so hard, all the breath was pushed out of me. They had shot Marie-Claire. Tipi, I thought, I’m sorry.

  Ginen hands turned me over on my back. I tried to make the air come back in my body. Ogu was standing over me in Makandal’s body. He grinned his terrible grin. “Hold her good there,” he said. He knelt by my side. “Going to talk our business, Mer?”

  I tried to tell him no, but I couldn’t speak, just listen to the singing in my nose as my chest tried to suck air.

  “That tongue won’t wag any more,” he told me. “You. Hold her head. You. Open her mouth.”

  He reached his good hand into my mouth and took hold of my tongue. His hand tasted of ashes and rum. Mama, no! Mama! I struggled, but too many held me. He drew out my tongue until it stuck from my mouth, slimy in his hand, but still he held it.

  What will you do to this body? No!

  Too much egg punch, and made with the last of our eggs, too. In the morning I woke to the drums banging in my head. Oh, my soul. Too much rum. I ventured a hand out from beneath my warm covers. The glass was on the night table, overturned. The drink that had spilled out of it was frozen.

  I needed to piss. I clambered out of bed, shivering. Thought I would swoon with the pain from my head. Did my business on top of the piss ice already in the chamber pot. Filled up the chamber pot. Must go and empty it.

  My head spinned when I stood up. Thought I would vomit. I tried not to let my mind run on the three raw eggs I had drunk.

  I clattered out into the living room. My head, my head. And suddenly, there it was again, like that time before. Something struck me down with a great blow. A light exploded behind my eyes.

  Blow

  Ogu in Makandal’s body used his good hand to draw my tongue out from my mouth. Then, smiling, he used the arm that was not there and sliced the spirit machète across my tongue.

  Pain exploded like light in my head. I tried to scream, but with no air in my chest, it came out a gurgle.

  With that axe slash, the river, the mighty rolling river that is one Ginen story crashes full tilt into a dam. Its waters boil and boil, angry; and go nowhere. That story is stopped dead in its bed. The pain of it throws me back in time, back into living Jeanne.

  Another lightflash of agony felled me. I saw the chamber pot flying from my hands, the yellow piss leaping out in a curve from it. Everything was happening slowly. Felt my knees hit the carpet.

  And then nothing.

  Hole

  Pain. Pain; so bad I thought I would vomit. I begged Mama to let me faint. So bad that my flailing threw off the Ginen holding me. They went to pin me down again, but Ogu motioned them back. Pain. I rolled on the ground. I could breathe again, but when I cried out, no sound came. I reached to touch my tongue. It was there. I tried to say, What did you do, but no words came.

  And Ogu only smiled. “Your tongue will never talk Ginen business again,” he said.

  The roaring dammed waters grew quiet and stagnant. Home for mosquitoes and cholera. Pushed out of Mer’s head, of Jeanne’s, in shock, insensible, I floated.

  I hoped I’d never go back to that sanatorium. I didn’t remember the nuns taking me there. Didn’t remember anything after I’d fallen to the floor, unconscious. Joël found me that morning, got a doctor to see to me. Had Charles pay for it. It was Charles had given the money to take me to the sanatorium. But two weeks of the nuns’ disdain of my black body was enough for a lifetime. I was glad to be going home.

  It was dark when I got back to Neuilly from Paris. The money Charles had sent was enough for the train, but I had to walk the rest of the way. So cold! By the time I made it to the front door, my hands were fair frozen. It took likely ten minutes before I could breathe enough warmth into them that they would grasp the key so I could turn it in the lock.

  No lamps lit in the house. Maybe Joël was truly gone, then. I stepped inside. Had to be careful not to bump into the furniture. So cold it was in here! But here I was now, arrived on the other side of the room, yet my cane had hit nothing. Didn’t strike the table, like it usually does, nor the armchair. Why did my cane make a sound so hollow when it tapped? I turned to look back the way I had walked. Slack as an old woman’s mouth when she sleeps, the front door creaked open. It gave me light from the streetlamps to see by.

  Oh, you gods. The room was empty. Not a stick of furniture. All gone. “Joël,” I whispered. “How you could do me so?”

  A small, snuffling noise came from the depths of the apartment. Then a whimper. Tati, my Tatiana limped out, not so much flesh on her as on a rat. She
looked, and when she saw it was really me, wagged her precious tail. Ran haltingly over and begged to be taken up. She was nothing but hair and bones in my hands. I kissed her. “Oh, my little girl, I’m so sorry. When last did you eat?”

  She just licked my face. The salt from my skin was all the comfort I could give her, for I had no food.

  Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses,

  O thou, my pleasure, thou, all my desire,

  Thou shalt recall the beauty of caresses,

  The charm of evenings by the gentle fire,

  Mother of memories, mistress of mistresses!

  —From “The Balcony,” by Charles Baudelaire

  Not even a bed that bastard Joël had left me; not even a quilt. In my room, my clothes were all tumbled out onto the floor. He had tossed them out of the dresser, then taken the dresser. He would get plenty money for Charles’s furniture.

  I wadded up as much of the clothes as I could carry in the weak arm and the strong one. Went back to the living room. Tati followed me.

  One half-burnt log had been left in the fireplace. I found matches. Stuffed the clothes into the fireplace, and put the log on top. My gowns took the flame right quickly. They spat, throwing off beautiful sparks of blue and gold. Damned log took forever to catch, though, and the dresses burnt to ashes very soon. I was trembling from the cold before the log began to glow. I threw more gowns on top of it. I took another gown, the warm silk one with the pink stripes that Charles had made fun of. I had made the customers cheer when I danced in that gown. I pulled it on over my dress, not caring how I looked. I made myself a bed of gowns on the floor. Tati climbed into it and looked at me, her eyes shining. Not a morsel I had to give her, yet she loved me still. It made me weep. Clumsy, I got into our bed. I curled up beside her, drew my coat over us both and closed my eyes, praying for the room to heat up soon.

  As Gypsy Mary knelt and prayed in supplication at the foot of the statue of the Virgin, she felt a presence come upon her. She swooned and fell insensible to the ground. She heard the voice of the Virgin Mary, forgiving her sins and telling her that she could enter the church. Gypsy Mary stood, and this time was able to pass within the church without any difficulty. Inside, she adored the Holy Cross and kissed the floor of the church. She then returned to the statue of the Virgin.

  —Adapted from various Catholic texts about the life of Saint Mary of Egypt, the “dusky” saint

  Thais?”

  “Ah?” I responded.

  Judah scrunched back a little further into the cave, where there was some shade. I was sitting just inside the cave mouth. Red rock and dirt as far as the eye could see. Away at the horizon, low down, light shimmered on the ground. I’d learned that though it looked like water, it wasn’t. No sense in walking towards it, hoping for a drink. It only disappeared. I wasn’t thirsty, anyway.

  It was peaceful out here. I had left my bed in some nun’s cell that was attached to the Church of the Sepulchre, and just walked, away from people. Well, not Judah. I let him follow me. We went for hours, past the river Jordan, out into the desert where it was quiet. I guess it was hot out here. I couldn’t seem to feel it. “What were you saying, Judah?”

  “I just want to know . . .”

  I touched my belly, rubbed it. The baby had been growing in there. “Well? What do you want to know?”

  “Gods,” he said, “I hope there aren’t any more scorpions in here.” He shuddered and pulled his knees up to his chin. “That last one was the size of a donkey, I swear. How much longer are we going to stay here, Thais?”

  I wonder if it would have been a boy or a girl.

  “Thais?”

  I wonder if it would have looked like Antoniou, or like me.

  “Pretty Pearl?”

  Maybe like both of us. Brown, but not so brown as me, and with big, black eyes, and a mass of thick, soft hair like spun wool—the best kind of wool—and lips like pomegranates.

  “We could still go to my uncle’s place,” Judah said. “There’s a man in town who says he’ll take us there, for a fee. We could bed a few soldiers and earn the money that way.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Or maybe I could work the soldiers by myself, you know? Maybe you’re still not feeling well.”

  I think it would have been a girl. I’m sure of it, as if someone had whispered it in my ear. I could have named her Meritet, like Little Doe’s always calling me.

  “Or maybe we could go home, Thais? To Alexandria, I mean?”

  “Meritet.”

  “What?”

  “Call me Meritet.”

  “Meritet?” he said.

  “Yes?” I patted my belly. I’d never even felt a swelling there. Nothing to warn me. There’d been too much noise around me, and I couldn’t hear.

  I looked at Judah. Looked like someone had dipped their finger in the river and traced a line down each of his cheeks in the dirt that covered them. It got everywhere, this Capitolina dust. “Why are you crying?” I asked him. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Nothing.” His face was so sad. He crawled past me out of the cave. He stood. “I’ll go and get us some more water.”

  The river wasn’t so close. We’d really come a long way out of the city. I looked at the sun. “You won’t be back until sundown.” I crawled to the back of the cave, where we’d stored our stuff. I could tell that my knees were grating on stones, but I just couldn’t feel it. I found the amphora, the one that had held the olives we’d stolen from Tausirus, those weeks ago. I went back to the mouth of the cave and handed the amphora to Judah. “See if you can get some beans, too, okay? The green ones, still in the pods.”

  He sighed. “Don’t you want anything else, Thais?”

  “Meritet.”

  “Okay, you’re Meritet. You sure you only want beans? That’s all you’ve eaten since we came here.”

  “That’s all I want.”

  I heard him trudging off over the desert, but I didn’t pay much attention. They told me at the church that I was full, and now I’m empty. But if the baby’s gone, why do I still feel like someone’s living in me?

  There were tiny pebbles embedded in my knees, because I’d crawled on them. Some of them were ringed in blood. I scrubbed the pebbles away, sucked at the red smears left on my thumb.

  I didn’t like going to the river, anyway. I’d look at that running water and I’d feel the blood come running out of me again, the wet, rushing blood that had carried my unborn baby away.

  Full. I was so full. I lay back on the narrow rag of carpet that Judah had found for the floor of the cave. I closed my eyes. It was quiet here, and dry. No rushing.

  Gypsy Mary knelt once more at the feet of the Virgin, and prayed for guidance. Our Lady appeared to her again, and told her to cross the river Jordan and go eastward. This she did the following day.

  —Adapted from various Catholic texts about the life of Saint Mary of Egypt, the “dusky” saint

  Gods,” Patrice whispered. “I don’t want to see this.” Father had set up his altar outside, here where they were going to burn Makandal, right in Cap Haïtien’s square. He was standing over the altar, mumbling. Me, I was praying, praying, for the burning not to happen. Makandal was half djinn. I was praying for him to use his power. Why hadn’t he gotten away from them?

  There were blans milling around. White men sweating in dark wool. They whispered together, then talked in loud voices, in France French. They looked angry, frightened. So did the Ginen. The book-keeper was supervising two of our men as they beat a pole into the ground. They had no choice, those two. They were going to kill one of us. Kill the man who’d helped them fight for freedom. What had I helped my Ginen fight for?

  Little Ti-Bois stood by, watching, his mouth open. Mama, I’m sorry. I hadn’t fought, hadn’t cleared your roads to freedom for your people. I got no answer from her. Shamed, needing comfort, I reached for the glass whale knotted into my skirt. Just held the knot in my hand.

  I feel
Mer’s hand tighten around the knot of me. Glass me. No body, no colour. I didn’t help her that night when Ogu cut her. I can’t help them, any of them. I am no use. I will leave her limbs under her own control.

  Patrice kept stepping a little way forward, a little way back. His feet wanted to pace and pace, I could see it. Tipingee took his hand to still him. He glanced at the backras standing over us with guns, and he held quiet. Let his arms hang long at his side. Tipingee held one hand to her neck and closed her eyes for a little bit. I saw her other hand go even tighter around Patrice’s own. There were roads in Saint Domingue lined with African heads on poles. The blans wouldn’t call it war, but they were killing us. Every day more of us. Hundreds by each sunset, we heard. The Ginen in the great house told us. They heard it from our master, who spoke freely with his friend in front of them, for he thought the Ginen too stupid to understand the France French. Master Simenon was sickly a lot nowadays, and his woman too. Marie-Claire was no longer there to season their food with Makandal’s poison, but another cook had taken over the task.

  Patrice was rocking little bit from side to side now, frantic for his friend. Hold still, Patrice. Hold still, and keep your head.

  I stood where I was, just a silent nègre woman. My tongue wouldn’t speak since Ogu took my voice from me. Tipingee had more lines on her face now. But Marie-Claire had lived. They had sent her home to her brown man, and he was having her tended. She was healing. Hope somebody watching her knew to bathe her wound every day with hot water, to give her garlic tea to drink.