The Salt Roads Page 28

  Lise looked into my eyes, touched my hand gently. “You’ve changed, Lemer.”

  “Have I?”

  “Do you miss me?”

  “Sometimes I do.”

  “Will you sit with me a moment?”

  I took a seat on the edge of one of the chairs. Can’t have the patrons thinking I’m swift to take my ease. I put the heavy carafe of coffee down. Lise picked up her cup again, took a sip. She frowned. “Monsieur Shephard has asked for my hand.”

  I smiled broadly as I could. “Oh, Lise! So wonderful!”

  Her lips bowed up a little at their ends. “Yes, I suppose it is. It’s what we dreamed of, you and I. Fine men and fine fortunes.”

  “And no nigger babies for you.” The words fell heedless from my ruined mouth. Her English beau was from their gentry, a wheaten-haired banker’s son.

  Lise blushed. “I was stupid that day, Lemer. I am sorry.”

  “I know, my dear.” Our friendship was deep enough to hold hurt and joy both. I rubbed my leg, the one that dragged a little. Pins and needles in it today.

  She bit her lips, looked at me. “I have something to ask of you. A big thing.”

  A wedding cake? A love spell from my juju woman? “What, sweet?”

  “It’s Stéphanie.”

  “Your daughter? Is she ill?”

  Lise looked stricken. “Henry won’t take her in when we marry. Says his family won’t stand for the scandal.” She put down the cup and seized both my hands in hers. “Oh, Jeanne, if she were with you, I’d know she still had a mother!”

  I just sat. No words would come. A child to foster. I, who had never wanted children. Stéphanie was seven now; plump and merry as a young Lise. “I . . .” I looked at my Lise, my girl. She was no longer a girl. She hadn’t had a part in the theatre for two years now. This man Shephard was solid, sensible, she said.

  Stéphanie came and stayed with us sometimes. She upset our house, me and Moustique. She painted her cheeks blood-red with my rouge, put on my dresses and my fine shoes, then got flour all over them in the kitchen, making “dolls” with the dough that Moustique gave her. The cooks tripped over her, and gave her stomachaches from feeding her too many sweets. Her loud laughter disrupted our guests’ meals. We laughed a lot with her when she was here.

  “She can stay with us,” I said, before I could change my mind. I knew Achille would love to have her live here.

  Lise gave a cry and leapt to her feet. She took me in her arms, scandalising the genteel man and woman at the nearby table. “Jeanne, thank you,” she murmured into my ear. “Henry will send you money for her upkeep. He promised he would. Stéphanie loves you and Achille, she’s told me. You’ll be so good for her!”

  I just held my girl in my arms for the final time.

  Mama Jeanne?”

  “Hmm?” I handed Stéphanie the basket so that I could pick up my cane. Ten days I’d been abed this time, insensible. I was still a little weak, but I needed an outing. To the market for greens would do. “What is it, Stéphanie?”

  She held the door open for me, and we stepped out into the spring day. Paris stank of dog shit, melting in the spring sun. “Why are boys so stupid?” she asked.

  I laughed. “What has Richard done now?” Our sommelier’s son was fourteen to Stéphanie’s twelve.

  She flounced along beside me, pouting and swinging the basket. “He keeps sneaking up on me and pinching my arm. I’m all bruised! Look!” She pushed up the sleeve of her frock to show me. I supposed that faint blush on her peach-fuzz arm might have come from a pinch.

  “He likes you, Stéphanie.”

  She sucked her teeth in the African way. She had learned that from Moustique and me. “Richard is a dolt,” she said.

  “Hmm,” I responded. “Have you told your maman about him?”

  She frowned, so like Lise. When Stéphanie first came to us, it had been months of anger and tears for Lise having left her. She still wouldn’t talk about Lise much, but I know she kept every letter from her mother in a scented box under her bed, tied about with a green ribbon. “Maman only wants to know if I’m doing my lessons,” she said.

  “Yes.” Truth to tell, I wasn’t paying much mind to her right then. That walk, that hat; I knew that man.

  “Stéphanie,” I said, fumbling in my purse. “Here’s some money. Go and get us some pommes Pont-Neuf from that vendor across the street.”

  She looked at me, confused. She’d never seen me eat from the vendors. She didn’t know there had been a time that was most of what I ate. But she went.

  The man I had seen was approaching me now, on the same side of the street. Some of his hair had gone grey, but he still walked spry. He hadn’t seen me yet. I was used to acting on the stage. It was an easy thing to slump a little lower over my cane, to limp a little more. An easy thing to let my drooping mouth go even slacker. To scowl. I was wearing an old, faded dress and run-down shoes; just good for tromping through the mess of the market. But Nadar wouldn’t know that. He would only see a beggar.

  I limped towards him, my eyes hooded, muttering. I saw him start. Now he knew me. Knew that the ailing, bedraggled old witch with her head tied in a black woman’s tignon was Jeanne Duval, named Lemer, sometimes called Prosper. I heard him gasp. I made shift not to notice my previous lover, the famous photographer. I hobbled by. I was in the life I wanted now. His world of salons and manners held no flavour for me any more. I walked on.

  “Mama Jeanne!” shouted Stéphanie, running back across the road. She held out a newspaper cone filled with steaming chunks of fried potato to me.

  I straightened tall, and smiled at her. “Thank you, child,” I said, and took the food from her.

  A few months later, she dies a happy woman, Jeanne does. At first when I got trapped in her body, I set her on the path of joy out of curiosity, but now I find that I am glad I could be of service. As she leaves the world of flesh, the fading chant of sorrow that comes is one bittersweet woman’s wet death rattle. Jeanne’s lungs have been sopping as sponges, and her heart has finally galloped its last. She’s been gasping and gasping for days before this, and me unable to get out of her as the brine bubbled out of her mouth.

  As Jeanne’s awareness melts, like foam dissolves back into the sea, I wish I could melt with her. Mer, speechless. Makandal, captured; I am being no help to the Ginen.

  But no, I’m lifting, soaring free of the swamp of Jeanne’s syphilitic body. I am in my spirit body again! When I look at the skin of my forearms, it is still ghostly pale. The images that people make of me, that they dance to when I am not there, they are pale too. Those people know that I am a being without a body. I have no colour.

  But I am free! I’m soaring, soaring. It’s like dancing, like singing, this flight. Through and through the clouds until even they dry up and burn away with the heat of my passing. I fly even faster, to make more heat. I will have no more dampness about me, no more water, no more salt tears or piss or blood; no more flesh. The dry warmth that gathers about me is all I will have from now on. I soar on, fleeing the world I have failed.

  Allelujah!” wailed old Cuba. “God be praised, Father!” She got to her feet. She tossed her hands in the air, tilted her head to the sky, eyes clenched shut. The Ginen congregation stopped its ragged singing of the hymn and turned to stare at her. “Allelujah!” she cried again, shaking her head back and forth. Beside Tipingee, Mer’s shoulders shook with silent laughter. Father León, what a look he gave Cuba! Such behaviour in his church. But of course the old woman couldn’t see him with her eyes closed. Tipingee grinned at Mer, sat cross-legged and waited to see what would happen next.

  “Cuba,” Father said, “compose yourself. That is not the way to behave in the house of our Lord!” Beside Tipingee, Fleur gave a low chuckle in her throat.

  “But I feel it, Father!” Cuba told him. “I feel the spirit of our Lord.” Still she kept her face turned to the sky, ignoring the world around her. She began to rock from side to side. Grinning, Orest
e began to clap out a beat, to belt out the hymn in his sweet, piercing voice like a bell. Pretty soon, the other Ginen joined in. Mer clapped her hands too. So nice to see some pleasure on her face. It had been long. Mer had never been one to trust too much in good feelings. Now she had almost no reason to give thanks.

  Some of the Ginen leapt up to dance. Yes. That felt like real joy, like real thanks to the gods. Tipingee began to sing along.

  “No!” Father León shouted. “Stop, all of you!” He hustled out from behind his altar, Bible in hand. He ran over to Cuba where she stood barefoot on the cold ground. Shook her shoulder. She opened her eyes and looked at him, like she was waking from a dream. She brought her hands down to her sides. “Stop this!” he bellowed at the Ginen. Everyone stopped.

  “Yes, that’s better,” Father said. Grave, he was. He straightened up and looked over all of his congregation. He shook his head. “Sometimes, God forgive me,” he said in his outlandish Spanish accent, “I fear that they may be right who say that the African is as base as the monkeys in the trees, that he will never learn to truly love God.”

  No one said anything.

  “What am I to do with you?” he asked.

  “Sorry, Father,” a man’s voice mumbled.

  Father looked out over the crowd, his mouth set hard. “I will start again,” he said. “Cuba, you will say nothing for the rest of the service. Do you comprehend?”

  Cuba looked down at the ground, then nodded, sullenly.

  “Good. The rest of you, you will make the responses as I have taught you, and nothing else.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “You will sing the hymn with grace and dignity, like good Christians. You will not clap your hands or drum, and by God, you will not dance.”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Lord have mercy on us all.” Shaking his head, he returned behind his altar and resumed the nonsense words of the service.

  Tipingee sighed. She had wanted to water her pumpkin patch before the sun got too harsh. Sunlight on wet leaves would burn them. Her pumpkins would have to wait until this evening. She locked eyes with Mer, and was pleased to see her friend still laughing her quiet laugh. The simple amusement in Mer’s eyes filled Tipingee’s heart up, made her smile too. “Amen,” she said at the end of the prayer. Mer looked at her, smiled back, then turned to look at the statue of the Virgin on Father’s makeshift altar.

  We had waited and waited to see if Makandal would return, but he didn’t. My voice came back little bit. It’s hoarse and low. Hurts to use it too much, so I choose my words careful. Georgine is still teaching me my letters. My hands, so impatient with sewing, have finally found a use for it, other than closing up wounds. Georgine brings me scraps of cloth, bits of thread that our mistress gives her. There are wonderful colours sometimes, and soft silks. I piece them together into squares. I whisper to Georgine the words I want to embroider on them, and she writes them in the dust for me. With my needle and Mistress’s threads, I copy the shapes onto the squares of cloth.

  I give a light-skinned slave the courage to offer a gift of beauty and knowledge to a sad, powerful black woman. The bond between Georgine and Mer grows over the years, and the younger teaches the older to write words which she embroiders in flowing thread on banners which fly over Ginen celebrations, singing a song of freedom as they snap in the breeze.

  With the thread, I paint pictures on the cloths: Lasirèn, Ezili, Ogu, Kouzin Aka. All the lwas. And the Lady too; Mother Mary. I paint her with thread onto bright flags. Because from all those Sunday mornings in Father’s nigger church, I’ve come to understand something: I know who that Lady is. She’s beautiful, the Lady. That much the blans understand. Father burns incense for her, for he knows she likes the sweet perfume of it. I must listen with more attention after this to what Father tells us of his gods. Maybe it’s not all nonsense after all. One day in his church, when I looked at the Lady’s pale face, I understood something, a small something. They had it wrong, the blans. Seems they get everything wrong. The Lady’s gown should be pink and white, not blue and white. And her baby is a girl, not a boy.

  She’s pale, the Lady; a sang-melé. Pale and white, since she comes from the other world beneath the waters. That makes sense. Father calls her “Mary,” but I know her real name. Ah, my Ezili Frèda, to see you in this place!

  When the Ginen go in the nights to pray, to plan, Tipi and I take the cloths with us. We hang them in the trees. The breeze makes them flutter. They are our prayers, the prayers of the Ginen.

  “I want to go back, Tipingee,” whispered Patrice in the dark. We were sitting outside Tipi’s and Patrice’s cabin, talking by the light of one smelly lamp, slapping the mosquitoes as they landed on our skin. The night was burning hot, so we sat outside to get some little cool breeze. Plenty of time to scurry inside if we heard the book-keeper coming to make sure we kept curfew.

  “You want to go back where, Patrice?” Tipingee asked.

  Patrice put his chin on his knees. “To the bush,” he said.

  Tipingee turned to look at him. “What, back on marronage?”

  “Yes.”

  “Back away from me?” she said, her voice quiet.

  He tap-tap-tapped his palm against the ground, gently, like someone who wanted to hit harder but was preventing himself. “No, Tipi. Not away from you.” I heard the pain in his voice. “Away from this place. Makandal’s gone. More Ginen getting killed every day. We can’t win against the backra. Why should I stay? You would come with me, Tipingee? Eh? I know the way. I could get us there safe.”

  Me, I held still and listened to my heart leap in my chest. Tipi, maybe gone from me. I waited to hear if they remembered me beside them. A lizard scurried by my toes. Hard to see in the dark. I think it had all its four feet, though.

  “What is the bush like?” Tipingee asked Patrice. “How do you go there?”

  He blew out air, looked up to the sky. “It’s hard. When you’re trying to reach it, you move fast, through the day, through the night. You climb up hills, down them. You have to cut through bush. The leaves have thorns sometimes, and sometimes the branches spring back at you and slice your skin. Flies follow your sweat by day, and mosquitoes follow your blood by night. They torment you. You can hear them whining in your ears, but you don’t see them, only feel them when they bite. Pretty soon, you’re covered all over in bumps and you’re scratching them all the time. And you’re hungry. Your food runs out quickly, and your water. If you don’t find a stream, if you didn’t bring anything to catch rain water in, you might die of thirst.

  “Sometimes you come upon a cliff, and at the bottom of it, you see the sea, and the Cap over there. If that happens, it means you were going in circles, and you have to start over again. You try not to stop to sleep. When you can’t go any more without sleep, you try to find a tree you can climb, so if the blans come after you with dogs, the dogs can’t smell you out. You sleep in the tree, and every minute you wake up, frightened you’re going to fall. I fell out of a tree once, still sleeping. Thought I had died when my body hit the ground. Thought a backra had shot me. During the day, you run, run. Sometimes you have to sneak into plantations to steal food. Dig up yams, cassava. Steal from other Ginen. Better to steal from them, ’cause sometimes if they catch you, they won’t talk. They’ll just watch you go. But you never know if they’re going to keep quiet, or if they’ll tell the blans and next thing you know, the dogs are after you. You eat the food raw, for the smoke from a fire might draw the blans to you. Your belly aches. You get the runs.

  “Then you get there. You get to the deep bush. And it’s bush. Dark like the devil inside there. Hot. You hear the crickets singing, and all the trees look same-same. No paths. You don’t know where you’re going, you just walk, and climb the endless hills. Don’t know how to find food. More mosquitoes bite you. If night comes on you before the maroons find you, you don’t know where to sleep. Wherever you lie down, you can feel things crawling over you in the dark. Hear things
flying past your face. Bats, spirits, you don’t know. And still you’re hungry, and thirsty. When the maroons find you, you’re so glad you just drop down on your knees. Then they put their guns to your head and ask you what you’re doing there, if you’ve come to betray them to the blans.”

  “That’s how it is?” said Tipi.

  “There’s more. You go with them, and your feet are sore from walking, and you don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s more bush and bush and bush, and then you hear a parrot call. One of the maroon men calls back and you jump, for he sounds just like a parrot too. They make you turn a corner with them and push through some vines, and you’re there. In a compound. An accompong. Like the Ashanti just come off the ships talk about. Black people walking everywhere, going about the business they want to be about. Smiling. There are children, Tipi! Not like here.

  “The first few mornings, you wake up before the sun. You wake up at the time when the book-keeper would ring the bell. Your heart’s pounding, ’cause you think you’re late to go to the fields. And maybe you go to the fields, yes, but it’s fields made by black people. It’s food growing for black people to eat. No whips. When you get tired, you stop and go to the river for water.

  “Few more days, and you realise you’re walking different. Your back is straighter. You feel tall, tall. You’re tired when you settle down to sleep at night, just like here on the plantation, but you fall asleep thinking of all the things your labour will bring for you. Not for your master. For you. That’s what it’s like.”

  “Oh . . .” Tipingee said. I nodded. I understood why Patrice wanted to go back.

  “I told you I have another woman there, Tipi.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s young. She’s strong. She would share the wives’ work, and she would mind what you said. You would have no master, no mistress. Would be you giving the orders this time. I think I have a child there, too. You will come with me, Tipi?”