The Salt Roads Read online

  As you kissed the black woman’s hand, you whispered in her ear, “Isn’t it delicious? Maman thinks you are a whore,” and this ginger soul case that held me quivered in shame. The ginger woman thinks Yes, I am a whore and the daughter of a whore and a whore’s whore’s daughter. “Whore” I do not understand yet, but I understand from her that her and her kin are your spices, your honey scent; she knows that you and your class have made them so. Wherefore then is she bitter? Do you find her so bitter then, Charles? What do you say, O man of words?

  You whisper in my captor’s ear, “She has given me some money, Jeanne. You will have your apartment!”

  And ginger woman Jeanne is glad, but I do not, do not understand all the things that make her so, that make her rejoice or weep. I find I do want to know. So I still my waves of battering to get free. Perhaps in silence I can learn more, find a way to return to my all-seeing world.

  Soul

  wip! Crack of the overseer’s whip tore into my back. I shouted out, jerked. The book-keeper yelled, “Mer, stop lollygagging there!” People cutting cane in front of me sped up little faster, so the next whip lash wouldn’t be on their backs.

  I chewed on my lips, to distract from the bite of the whip cut. Chopped down three more cane stalks, threw them to one side. Checked the ground. No, no poisoned piquette stake there. I advanced little more, cut some more cane, looked again. I was behind. Me, who was usually out in front.

  Check the ground. Advance little bit. Cut.

  Was hotter than a cooking fire today. The crackling sound all around could have been people stepping on cane leaves, could have been the fires of the blazing sun. Something was running down my back inside my dress. Was maybe sweat, maybe blood. Likely both. My back was burning, burning. I stayed bent over the cane, didn’t dare raise up. Seasoned twelve years ago to stay bent that way whole day if I must, crouched over cane.

  Shouts rose from over yonder, where one of the oxen was lazy to pull his wain cart to the factory. No wonder; they’d filled it almost to bursting with cane. Whip was landing on the ox’s back like on mine. He had scars too. Off he staggered, slowly.

  Check the ground. Advance little bit. Cut. Check. Advance. Cut.

  No piquette yet. He must have hidden the one that killed Hopping John somewhere in this field. He, Makandal. Been seeing him slinking around and I know he’s up to something.

  But all I looked, I couldn’t find another piquette with its sharp load of poison.

  Book-keeper popped me with the whip two more times before I finally caught up to the rest. Tipingee would have to rub my back good with aloe tonight.

  Oreste spared me a quick glance, chopping all the while. “You’re well, matant?” he asked, felling four cane stalks with one blow. He had only a breechclout to cover him from the cutting edges of the cane leaves. His skin was tough. His face was springing water, fat beads of it running down his chest and legs. I could smell the hot sun sweat on him, on me. And the sugar reek of cane.

  “Well as I might be.” Check. Advance. Chop. “Watch your feet today.”

  “Hmm?”

  “Ouanga.” Bad science. “Might be a piquette. Someone is up to tricks.” I knew it was Makandal, but I didn’t say. The other Ginen loved him too well, and the passion in him to see them free. I didn’t want to bring anyone’s wrath down upon me.

  I shoved aside a pile of cane trash with my machète, making centipedes and grasshoppers wriggle and jump out. I think they had all their legs. Hard to see, so fast they moved.

  Fear wrinkled Oreste’s brow. “Matant, you can’t make a gros arrête to guard us from the piquettes?”

  “We should tell Makandal!” hissed Belle from the row ahead of us. Hopping John’s woman once; no man’s woman now. I watched the muscles in her backside heave under the sackcloth dress as she cut cane and threw it to the side. A piece of cane trash was stuck to the sweat laving her solid arms. She spit onto the ground. “He would help us. Makandal is going to be the saviour of the Ginen, going kick out all the grands blans, give us our own land to work!” She said it soft, so the book-keeper wouldn’t hear. Last week Milo who brings the wood for the great house stoves was resting in the kitchen, spouting Makandal this, Makandal that, Makandal going to chase off all the plantation owners and make people like Milo rich as the whites. Our owner, Master Léonard Simenon, got a bad bellyache after lunch that day, and Marie-Claire and the other women of the kitchen were whipped for spoiling the food. Two days Master stayed sick, spewing from mouth above and gut below. And every day he wasn’t well, it was more beating for the kitchen slaves. Every night Tipingee wept as she spread aloe on the welts on Marie-Claire’s back and behind. It had to stop. One of the kitchen slaves must have carried Simenon word about Milo’s threats; Marie-Claire swore it wasn’t her. On the third day, Master was better, though Marie-Claire said he was grey and sweating and only calling for wine, more red wine. That afternoon, he made us all to gather round and watch. Milo he made to be tied to stakes in the ground to scream out his life while Master Simenon peeled the skin from his twitching body with a knife. Peeled away all the skin, leaving the white fat glistening, quivering. “You want to be white?” the master shouted over Milo’s howling as he cut his ears off. I had heard about this blanching of black people before. Mama, please you make me dead before I ever see it again. Three hours it took Milo’s spirit to flee his body, back to Guinée.

  Let Belle think Makandal will free us. It’s so Tipingee thinks too, filling her child’s head with stories of revolution. I pondered if to tell Belle it was Makandal killed her man. But no. We survive in this place by keeping our own counsel. I bent to pick up the cane I had just cut. Felt my cut back split open, start running blood again. Ignored it.

  Check the ground. Advance. Cut. Wipe the sweat from my face. Check the ground. Advance. Cut.

  And so it went the rest of the day. Was well into the night before the book-keeper allowed the second gang to go home. When I straightened up, first time in hours since the midday meal, the bones in my back creaked and complained. I remembered I wouldn’t see Tipingee tonight. She was on first gang, helping the younger ones and the new, unseasoned slaves with their trash gathering.

  I made to stretch my aching arms above my head, but my dress pulled where dried blood was sticking it to my back. Sweat was rank on me, dried salt prickling my skin. Blood unclean on me. I was dropping down with fatigue, my belly griping from hunger, but I wanted so badly to wash. Curfew soon, I was supposed to be in bed, but any of us with the brains the gods gave us knew how to catch a few hours for ourselves.

  I walked the half-hour to my hut, got my fishing line and my tinder box, the one Marie-Claire had stolen for me from the kitchen. Hiked down to the beach in the dark. Sea water would wash me clean, and gods willing, I would catch some fish for my supper.

  Path down to the beach was so rocky, my efforts to climb it opened up the slice on my back again. I didn’t pay it no mind, just listened to the rush and wash of the waves whispering; just smelled the sea air. Should have bathed after fishing, not before, so my smell in the water wouldn’t scare away my supper, but I couldn’t wait no more. Put my tinder box down in the sand and walked right into the warm sea, dress and all. Ai, it stung, the salt water. Burning cut on my back, tiny burning nicks on my arms from cane leaves. But the sweat and the dirt washed away.

  When my dress wasn’t sticking to me no more, I pulled it over my head and threw it up on a rock to dry. I would pass by the river on my way home and wash it clean of salt. I ducked my head briefly beneath the waters, scrubbed at my itching scalp. My hair was all thick and matty-matty. Weeks now Tipingee and I hadn’t had any time together to plait each other’s hair. Lasirèn? Bondye who the Muslims call Allah, the god over all? All you gods, why did you bring the Ginen to this?

  No. Couldn’t think on that, else I would just let my head sink below this water and never rise again. Then who would treat the people when they sicken? Plantation doctor white man didn’t know the herbs,
the prayers. If I denied to help my people, then my spirit wouldn’t fly home.

  I waded out of the water. Night air made my skin pimple and chill. Today when the sun was high, all I had wanted was to be cool. Now I shivered until I was dry and warm again. Fetched my line from the shore. Climbed up on the rock where my one dress was drying. Mama, see how my muscles tremble from bending all day over the cane. Baited my hook with sea roach barnacles I dug out of the rock. All the fish loved those. I stood on the slippery rock, my toes gripping to hold me, and threw the hook into the swelling sea. If Mami willed it, I’d make a good catch. A fin fin, or a sad woz.

  Glittering stars in a peaceful sky. The moon-face of Ezili floating above the waters. Mama, what a beautiful land this was.

  Something pulled on my line. I looked down, saw my own reflection dancing beneath the waters, in the glowing path of moonlight.

  And I realised it’s not my own face I was seeing, for this woman was young, smooth; she was fat and well-fed. The bush of her hair tumbled about her round, brown, beautiful face in plaits and dreadknots, tied with twists of seaweed. Her two breasts swung full and heavy like breadfruit swaying on the branch. The fish tail waving lazy behind her instead of legs was longer than I’m tall. Light danced and trembled on it as it swept the water, holding her steady. Lasirèn! Lasirèn!

  My two knees thudded down onto the rock. I never felt the pain of it. I let go my fishing line one time. “Wai, Lasirèn,” I prayed, “beg you take me away!” Oh, you Powers, to be gone from here!

  I stretched my arms to my water mother. Up out of the waves she reared, till I could see the rolls of her belly like mountains. She was laughing! Her breasts and belly bouncing. The hand she reached to me had my fishing line in it, with a big red snapper jerking on the hook. “Take your dinner, daughter.” Voice like rushing waves.

  Salt tears sprang from my eyes, I could feel them. “I don’t want it! I want to come with you, Mama!” I’m a big woman, but like any child, I cried for my mother to pull me into her arms, to rock me on the swell of her breast.

  Her face got serious. “Mer, for all you have my name, if you jump into the sea right now, I will throw you right back.”

  I couldn’t breathe for sobbing, for choking with my sobs. “Why?”

  And Lasirèn, this lwa, this Power of all the waters, she frowned. She made to speak, stopped. Then she said, quiet, “I don’t exactly know, daughter.”

  “What?”

  She pressed her lips together, then forced the words out: “Something is not right. You must fix it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She didn’t answer. Sucked her teeth, exasperated. Then she threw the fish up on the rock, sank back down into the sea. Her black shadow moved away from me, fast.

  “How am I to help you?” I shouted to her.

  Up her head came again, a few yards away. My heart rose with it, from the joy of just seeing her. “The sea roads,” she said. “They’re drying up.”

  “The sea is drying up?” I looked out over the massive, heaving water.

  “Not this sea! Stupid child!” Her tail slapped, sent up a fountain, exploding and drenching me. “The sea in the minds of my Ginen. The sea roads, the salt roads. And the sweet ones, too; the rivers. Can’t follow them to their sources any more. I land up in the same foul, stagnant swamp every time. You must fix it, Mer.”

  Fix it. Fix the problem a great Power of Africa has. If she can’t fix it, who is me to try? Despair wanted to swallow me up again.

  Little more time, yards and yards out into the deepness of the water, the lady breached. She’d grown. Fear leaped in my chest, to see the size and strength of her, big so like a house. She twisted in the air, dove down. Slapped her tail again at me, spraying me one more time in wet salt as she submerged. The last tip of the moon dropped below the waters. Then nothing. She was gone. Gone before I had the chance to ask her the thing that ate at me every day; why did the gods bring us to this? I was afraid to even think it to myself, but I was angry. I was angry at the gods! Me, one small woman! But the anger was not just for myself. All the Ginen. All the people sick and dead on the ships, and the ones sick and dead on this soil. What are gods for, then, if they let things like this to happen to their people?

  I wouldn’t think it any more. Mama said I must help. Maybe the gods had a plan?

  My catch was barely twitching by now. Plenty meat on its bones for my supper. I threw my dress over my shoulder, climbed down careful with my fish, for it was full dark now. Mama, thank you for sea breeze to keep the mosquitoes away. I waded to the beach, thinking. The sea in the minds of the Ginen, she had said. What sea? I gathered driftwood, found a place between some rocks, where the fire couldn’t be seen. I piled up the driftwood and set it alight. What sea? I went down back to the firm, wet sand where the shallow waves were breaking over my ankles. With my knife I scaled and gutted my fish right there, threw his entrails into the water. What sea? I rubbed him with salt water to season him, took him back, jooked a stick of driftwood through him, and roasted him on my fire. And all the time I was cooking, all the while the smell of food was making my mouth water and my belly rumble, all I could think is, what sea? And how was I one woman going to help a great African Power?

  A scuff of sand flew into my fire, making it pop blue stars. I looked up. A man shape was blocking out the moon from my view.

  “Salaam aleikum, matant.”

  So. Finally he had caught up with me. I kept tearing with my teeth into the hot, salty fish. Wasn’t going to make him know he had startled me. “Honour, Makandal,” I said between bites. He had to give me the greeting, or scorn his elder.

  He sucked air between his teeth in irritation, came around the fire to where I could see him. “Respect, matant.”

  “Nice night.”

  “Not too plenty mosquitoes.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Not like the night you three women buried Georgine’s stillborn.”

  Oh, such a sly brute! He was there when we did that, yes. I knew it. But all I would say was, “Hmm.” I picked at my fish, tried to enjoy it. Bad-minded man, always making mischief, spreading doubt and fear. He was quiet some little while, just watching me. Then:

  “Why do you hate me, matant?”

  I ate fish. “You cause trouble, you and your big ideas. Make people take risks for your dreams. If Marie-Claire gets caught, it’s she will feel Simenon’s knife, not you. Then Tipingee would mourn, and me. Why do you stir the Ginen up so?”

  “Are you so happy with your life, then, matant?”

  “I stick to my work. I do what I’m told. Each day I live is another day I can help my people.”

  “Help them do what they’re told. Ease their dying from overwork or starvation. Help them learn to be good slaves.”

  My dinner tasted like sand in my mouth. I didn’t answer him. He said: “You were talking to somebody out on the rock.”

  “I was fishing for my dinner, and look, see it here so.” I would relish my meal. I sucked tender flesh, spat fish bones at his feet.

  Makandal stepped back, but not far enough. He was still standing too near. He said, “Somebody was in the water, talking to you.”

  “A porpoise, swimming in close to the beach. Must be my torchlight that attracted it. It went away back.”

  “They talk to you!” He crouched down in front of me. Normally he looked stern, proud. But now his face surprised me. It held sorrow. Loss. He was not angry. “The lwas, matant; they talk to you?”

  Such a pleading in his voice. I’d never seen him so. Makandal has hurts too. Mama, help me not to forget that. I opened my mouth to tell him the beautiful thing that had happened to me. I felt the joy lighting my features. Opened my mouth to share with him the fearsome glory of Lasirèn, to share with him what she had told me, to ask him what he thought: “I . . .”

  . . . and I remembered Hopping John’s grey face as he was dying on that factory floor, remembered his cracked lips whispering to me, “I ’fraid centi
pedes, matant. ’Fraid them too bad.”

  I swallowed back the words I was going to say to the killer Makandal. “Was a porpoise,” I told him.

  He cried out, swiped more sand into the fire with his good hand. Blue stars crackled, spat. “Why they don’t speak to me! I pray, I fast, I feed them, feed them; so many goats I feed them.” He glared all around him, spread his arms, pleading: “Why this old woman and not me!”

  And right that minute, I knew why. “Makandal,” I said quiet-quiet, like to a fractious child.

  He looked to me, all that hurt-little-boy still showing on his face. Red, his eyes were, and wet. So. That night I learned that Makandal can cry. “Makandal, you eat salt, or you eat fresh?”

  He reared back, sullen now. “What stupidness is that, Mer?”

  But he knew. “Just answer,” I said to him.

  It’s so the stories go that the Ginen tell. If you find a beautiful fairmaid swimming in the river, her fish tail flashing; if you follow her down into her water home with her, she will make the water like air so you can breathe. But then she’ll ask you, playful, You eat salt, or you eat fresh? And if you say salt, she will let you go back home, but if you say fresh . . .

  “It’s my business,” he said. Pouted. Looked at the ground.

  If you only eat unsalted food, fresh food, we believe you make Lasirèn vexed, for salt is the creatures of the sea, and good for the Ginen to eat, but fresh—fresh is the flesh of Lasirèn, and if you eat that, it’s pride. You’re trying to make yourself as one of the lwas. Makandal never eats salt. He, a living man, giving himself powers like a lwa. That’s why he couldn’t hear the voice of the lwas.

  “I think you know good and well why they won’t talk to you,” I told him.

  “But it’s them I’m serving . . .”

  “Oh, yes?” I said it firmly, to cover my own doubts. Maybe there are many ways to serve the spirits?

  “Yes, matant!” He opened his one hand to me, pleading. It’s not me he needed to plead to. “I’m doing this work for the lwas; freeing the Ginen of this plague of whites so we can be like we were before! They must understand, don’t they, matant?”