The Salt Roads Read online

  “You will, beautiful one. Shall we do this thing now?”

  “Yes. No, don’t leave go of my hands! Remember to hold on.” Her fingers held mine tight. “Look into the liquid in the pot, and let your mind wander, but keep one idea always before you; that you wish to see with me a vision of my true love.”

  “And he’ll appear in the pot? He’ll get his feet wet.”

  “Silly Jeanne. A vision of him will appear, as though we were looking in through a window.”

  “Very well.” This scrying business had a flavour about it of my grandmaman’s juju, her African magic. Cleanse the floors with the morning’s first urine, always keep a silver coin in a bag around your neck, with some sweet herbs in it. Harmless. I relaxed and did as Lise asked. I took a pull on the hookah, let the hashish fill my brain, open it wide.

  Hot; it was so hot in that room. I breathed out smoke. It flowed from my nostrils, seemed to swirl in the piss pot, floating on its bloody waters. I stared into the pot and waited.

  When there was money, Grandmaman would sometimes buy live chickens in the market for us to eat. She would cut their clucking throats on our back stoop, let the blood fall there. For the spirits to drink, she said. Fresh blood was life, she said. But she said the blood from a woman’s time was stale, not fresh. What had we just put in that pot, Lise and I?

  The smoke in the pot writhed and wound about the blood and piss.

  Something began to form. Should I have been frightened? Not when sweet hashish filled me even to the tips of my fingers. I could feel a pulse ticking in Lise’s warm thumbs. The smoke in the pot began to drift away, and something, an image, was moving in the orange liquid. Lise gasped, her hands clutching tightly to mine. Me, I felt only a lazy, sly curiosity. Yes, show us this perfect man, I thought at the spirits swirling in the foetid pot, this man who will love my sweet Lise as though she were the frailest doll, the purest virgin.

  Eh. There in the still liquid, as in a mirror. A black man. Dark as coal, as mud. “What is it?” asked Lise, then “oh,” said Lise; a little, sad cry.

  Is this what she will come to? Making black babies? I whispered, “Hush, sweet. Don’t jerk, or you may disturb the image. Maybe there’s more to see.”

  I knew faces like his. My grandmaman’s skin was like that, and she had that flat, wide nose. He stood in a simple, empty room. Not a chair in it, not a lamp. He was poor, then. He wore plain clothing, a working man’s baggy trousers and heavy shirt with a stained apron knotted around his spare middle. I felt a wash of shame for my Lise. Her hope, her true love, was an ugly black butcher. And poor.

  The liquid in the chamber pot splashed, making the image shimmer. Lise and I kept ourselves even more still until it was becalmed.

  The man was holding a hat of some kind. I thought it was a hat. Hard to tell, for he had twisted it into a mere screw of fabric between his loutish hands. He looked nervous, as well he might. Was that his house? Whose, then? Had he a right to be there? Perhaps he was a thief?

  He turned at some sound we couldn’t hear. He gazed off to my left. What he saw there made his face brighten as though angels had come to bid him enter heaven. Joy transformed him. They knew him in that house, then. Even thought it well to see him.

  His lips moved; a greeting, perhaps. He reached out to someone. A hand reached back towards him; a woman’s hand, in . . . was that a pink sleeve? Difficult to tell in the yellow-orange piss water. The hand placed itself firmly in the centre of his chest and pushed. He stumbled back some little bit. Oh. The woman wanted him to leave. A lovers’ quarrel? Had he vexed my Lise?

  His face got sorrowful, dignified. His shoulders dropped. He nodded, smoothed his poor hat out, jammed it onto his head, and turned away.

  The woman—Lise, I wager—was moving into the circle of the chamber pot. I could see more of her arm, the jut of a firm breast. I leaned forward. Soon I would see her face. Was my Lisette old? Was she still beautiful?

  “Oh!” the real Lise exclaimed again. She picked up the pot, and before I could stop her, before I could see, she threw it across the room. It hit the wall with a tinny clang, spraying its mess everywhere. The bloody plug fetched up against the wall. “It’s not true!” She wailed. “It’s not!” She clutched my hand in one of hers, and ground the heel of her other hand into her eyes. She sobbed.

  I gathered her into my arms. “Hush, Lise,” I said, gently. “Hush. Let me hold you.” I rocked and rocked her as she wept storms.

  “He was so foul, Lemer!” She wept. “Black as the devil!”

  I said nothing, only thought of the soft creases of my grandmother’s face. Once Grandmaman had given me molasses in a plate, and when I ran my fingers through it, it had left lines like those around her eyes and mouth. Sweet lines.

  “And that apron!” lamented Lise.

  I felt near to swooning from the hashish, and I was the more dizzy from the way I was rocking her, but I tried to think how to comfort her. “Maybe it was a mistake,” I said.

  “No,” she cried, sobbing harder. “I am to be wedded to a black, and toil all my days killing pigs, and have nigger babies.”

  Something, something was working in me, making me think thoughts I don’t think. “Well then, my beauty,” I told her, “they will look like me.”

  At once she grew still in my arms. She was silent some little while. Then: “Yes,” she said. “Yes, so they will.” She turned her tear-tracked face to me and smiled, too wide. “My beautiful Lemer.” She pulled out of my arms, scrubbed her face dry with a corner of the sheet. “And really, this is not a day to be gloomy,” she said. “We are meeting our gentlemen at the café, after all!”

  Gently, I pulled a lock of her long, fair hair through two of my fingers. Like silk. “You won’t sulk any more?”

  She giggled, too loud. “How foolish of me! No, no more. It’s just that I’m tired. Let me nap a while?”

  Even as I was nodding, she was lying back against the bed, pulling the covers over herself. She was asleep very quickly. I covered her bare shoulder. She didn’t like drafts. I put my head out the door and shouted for someone to bring us some water. I went and sat on the bed, just regarding Lise’s face as she slept.

  If I had looked for my own love in that pot, I knew I would only have seen Lise, but she and I weren’t rich women, to make of our tribadism a secret marriage.

  A few minutes later, there was a quiet tap at the door. I opened it to see Maryvonne who danced in the chorus, holding a jug of water. To look at her always reminded me of home, of all the brown and black and teak-coloured faces of we who lived near the docks in Nantes. She smiled at me and held out the jug in her lovely plump arms. “You and Lise are liking your furlough?” she asked in the French of the Nantais coloureds.

  I know my smile back was rueful. “Perhaps too much,” I said. “We are become dull and womanish.” I took the jug and closed the door again. I found a discarded chemise and used it to clean the stained wall.

  This week I shall send some things for Maman. The emeralds, perhaps, that Charles gave me. He’s so distractable, he won’t notice if I’m no longer wearing them. Maman could get good money for them. Buy herself some new shoes, and some of the good brandy for Grandmaman. Grandmaman thinks it eases her coughing. It makes her sleep, at least.

  Charles has been talking of setting me up in an apartment here in Paris. I scarce dared to hope that he would. Oh, how I would love him if he took me off the stage and away from Monsieur Bourgoyne!

  The wall was clean again. I put my used bung back in the chamber pot, to be washed later. I put the pot back under the bed.

  It was full dark. I turned the lamp up. We would have to leave soon.

  The brightening of the lamp woke Lise. She yawned and stretched. I sat beside her. She just looked up at me, her waking eyes blank. Not enough of her in her eyes. Almost like she didn’t know me. I said, “You mustn’t let the vision frighten you, love.”

  She frowned. “Vision?”

  Little prickly points
rose on my arms. “Yes, the vision in the chamber pot. The man.”

  She giggled and patted my thigh. “Oh, my Lemer. Such sharp eyes, to see a man. Was he a gentleman?”

  “You saw him, too,” I whispered.

  She only shrugged. She sat up and kissed my cheek. “I saw hashish smoke, dancing in front of my eyes. Shall we dress for dinner now?”

  She had really forgotten. She heaved herself out of the bed and went and sat at the mirror. When I was little, Grandmaman used to tell me that people only see what they see. Used to vex me, for it made no sense. Children like for their adults to speak plain, to help us make the world come clear. But I understood Grandmaman now.

  I had seen a vision of my Lise in that piss pot, and in her blank gaze at me now. She would leave me soon, to find her own gentleman. And me, I would cleave to Charles.

  After the mountains, still more mountains. You aren’t there yet, Georgine.” I mopped her face with the damp cloth. “Soon you’ll have to push again for Auntie Mer.” I handed the cloth and water bowl to Tipingee to replace with fresh.

  Georgine looked at me, wiry hair wild where it had slipped from her scarf, sweat in beads down her face and throat, eyes rolling like the goat’s when it sees the knife coming down. So young she was.

  “I’m tired, matant,” complained Georgine.

  “You think that little bit of tiredness is anything?” Tipingee smirked. “You will feel more fatigue in the weeks to come. Feeding the baby, changing the baby, and doing all your same washerwoman’s work for the great house.”

  It was all true. Tipingee knew. Six babies she had pushed out; two dead, three sold away from her as soon as they had weaned. Fifteen-year-old Marie-Claire was the only one left, and she worked as cook’s helper in the great house. Used to steal us the crisp salty fat off the roasts from time to time. Me and Tipingee would lick it off each other’s fingers. Marie-Claire wasn’t bringing us plenty now though, because she was sneaking slow poison into the backra’s food. Makandal’s poison. Salt hid the taste of Makandal’s herbs. All I argued with Tipingee, she was teaching the child to do this thing.

  A big contraction took Georgine. “Push, Georgine!” I laid hands on her belly, guiding the baby to turn. It was coming early. Jean Rigaud was supposed to have been here with us, for only white men could practise medicine by law. But he was back in the slave hospital, treating a man with yaws. Good. He would only be in the way.

  Georgine held my arm, squeezed so till it hurt. Her cheeks blew out big, her face turned red, but almost no sound came from her. She spread her knees apart and bore down. The baby shifted a little, not enough.

  Good, strong girl, Georgine. I didn’t think she would be. And silent too, like a grown woman should be. Like me back home, on the day they cut away my vulva to make me an adult. She’s just a whore, though. Opening her legs for the white man. Coloured man’s not good enough for her.

  Georgine was looking at me like I had spit in her food. Tonnerre. I was mumbling the words out loud. Talking to myself. No matter. She knew how all of us felt about her. But I pushed my lips shut against each other.

  Georgine’s contraction faded. She lay back. “He’s a good man, Pierre,” she said to me in a begging voice.

  Tipingee rolled her eyes, sucked air between her teeth. “And where he is now when you need help?” She jerked her head towards the closed door. “Hiding. Playing door-peep.”

  A shadow outside, man-sized, shifted against the shutters. I warned Tipingee with a look. She well knew the carpenter was there, knew he wouldn’t come in and interfere with women’s business. Tipingee’s mouth always ran away with her. The whipping scars on her back went deep from it.

  Tipingee scowled, went on talking: “Best you pray to Aziri, have some water near you; man can’t make your labour flow smooth like the river.” Tipi was Akan, but on the ship, as we learned each other’s speech, I would tell her stories of the power of Aziri, how she wouldn’t let us drown. Tipi had adopted Aziri to herself.

  Georgine pursed her mouth like she’d sucked green limes. “I’m a Christian woman. I could tell Master you still pray to demons. He’d do for you.”

  Time to stop this talk. I said, “Tipingee has a silly head sometimes, listens to too much old time stories.”

  Tipingee glared at me. Worry about that later. I told Georgine, “She just wants to use everything she knows to make your baby come easy.”

  Outrage flared behind Tipingee’s eyes. Georgine closed her own. She was tired. She gave a weak whisper: “Best she pray with me to Holy Mother Mary, then. Pray for my baby. Pray for all our souls.”

  Tipingee glared at me, but she closed her eyes to make the Christian god’s prayer. She and Georgine began to Hail Mary, full of grace, Tipingee’s voice sullen, only aping the words, really.

  Georgine’s womb thrashed again around the baby. I could feel the ripple. This time she did make a little noise.

  “Push, Georgine!” I guided the baby with my hands, muttering in Ewe for Lasirèn, for Aziri, to help me turn its head into Georgine’s birth canal. Georgine grunted and strained, knees wide, no use for modesty now.

  “Philomise is not the good man you think he is,” she panted, “free-coloured Philomise, he.”

  “Hold my hands,” Tipingee told her. Biscuit fingers grasped chocolate ones, squeezed hard. “Do your labour. Now’s not the time to run your mouth.”

  “Is she well?” the carpenter sang out from the yard, his voice anxious.

  “She’s well, yes, Master Pierre,” I told him. “You could fetch a clean sheet for her. And some pillows. And if you have any old blanket, soft cotton, tear it into strips to swaddle the baby.”

  His footsteps left running. I knew he had nothing like that in this hut of his. That should keep him away for a while, let us work.

  “Philomise, he would taunt me,” Georgine hissed, her womb heaving. “Ah, Mother Mary, please let this be over!”

  “Sh, sh,” said Tipingee.

  Another contraction. A muffled shriek from Georgine. “He would visit our master. He would come into the kitchen when no one was there, touch my . . . tell me he would have me, buy me away and make me always his. Matant, please, please, sweet Jesus it hurts, please pull it out of me.”

  I pressed on her belly again. Slow like molasses, the child began to move. A few more pushes and the baby was crowning. Georgine grunted, bore down hard on trembling thighs, squeezed the baby out of her like a turd. It flopped into Tipingee’s arms, the glistening rope of birth cord still joining it to its mother. A flood of bloody mucus spilled out of Georgine’s womb after it.

  A woman had died chained to me on the slave ship. Blood and liquid shit had been gushing from her anus for days before. In that narrow space we had lain together for weeks, but I never knew her name, couldn’t understand her language. Was too sick myself to know she’d died. Was Tipingee, a little girl then, who had shouted and shouted till the sailors came and cut the dead woman away from me. The mess between Georgine’s legs put me in mind of that death. It always did now, when I helped women birth. Back home, birth had been a thing of joy.

  Tipingee held up the baby for Georgine to see. No, more like a fat maggot than a turd. Her marabou baby. Georgine’s chest was heaving from her labour. She raised her head and looked at her child. She screamed.

  Mister Pierre came running, slammed the door open. “Sly bloody niggers, what are you doing to her!” His eyes opened big and his nose too as he took in the scene: Tipingee clutching the worm child tied to its mother; me, my arms around Georgine, supporting her back; his Georgine, fouled skirts laid back, legs wide apart, velvet thighs covered in blood and her own shit, pushed out of her body by the baby’s passing. The smell of woman’s insides and blood and excrement was all through the room. “Gods . . .” Mister Pierre muttered.

  The baby hadn’t moved yet. I needed to get to it. It’s Georgine who spoke first. “Pierre, these women are only tending to me.”

  I looked Mister Pierre calmly in the
face. Yes, I could see he realised that we weren’t doing anything to his Georgine, that birthing was the only thing happening here. I rushed and took the baby from Tipingee. Held it upside down and stroked its back to start its lungs. Tipingee found my knife and cut its navel string.

  “Pierre,” said Georgine, “I need soft cloths and more water. You could find things like that for me, please?” Her speech slipped always between poor coloured girl and the lady she wanted to be. Her eyes sidled over to the baby.

  “They’re outside. But Georgine . . .” Mister Pierre said. The child lay still in my arms. A boy.

  “Please get them, Pierre?”

  He still didn’t move, his eyes gaping at the swamp of her crotch. His face was glazed, he was swaying on his feet. I put my ear to the child’s chest. Silence. Its head flopped back. Its navel string hung from its belly, dripped a thin blood.

  “Pierre, please . . . ?”

  His eyes lifted to her face, searched it out like it was his life he saw in her features. “I’ll get them,” he whispered. He went outside.

  “Mer,” Tipingee said, “the baby’s not breathing?”

  I put the child on the bed. Rubbed and pressed on the little chest. I’d delivered plenty light-skin babies before. Backra men were always pushing their business into Ginen women. But I never had delivered one that so favoured a backra. Skin the blue-white of breast milk, with fine colourless hair. Its head was long like a mango, squeezed as it went through Georgine’s body. “Pale like gruel,” Georgine said, low. I glanced at her face and saw the surprise there. What colour did she think it would be? Isn’t that what she had wanted, a cream-coloured child?

  The baby was still blue, no breath going in. I wiped mucus off the face, put my mouth over the tiny mouth and nose and breathed in gently. Chest expanded, contracted. I blew nine more times. Its heart never beat once. I had to admit it; Georgine’s baby wasn’t living. I raised my eyes to Georgine’s. “The birth was too much for it,” I said. Georgine put shocked hands to her mouth.