The Book of Negroes Read online

  "What are you doing?" I whispered.

  "Sweetening the tea," he said.

  I brought my nose near. Fresh mint leaves had been stuffed into the pot, and the fragrance seemed to speak of life in distant places.

  "Hmm," I said, breathing it in.

  "If you close your eyes," Papa said, "you can smell all the way to Timbuktu."

  With a hand on my shoulder, my mother also inhaled and sighed.

  I asked Papa where, exactly, was Timbuktu? Far away, he said. Had he been there? Yes, he said, he had. It was located on the mighty Joliba River, and he had once travelled there to pray, to learn and to cultivate his mind, which every believer should do. This made me want to cultivate my mind too. About half of the people of Bayo were Muslims, but Papa was the only one who had a copy of the Qur'an, and who knew how to read and write. I asked how far it was across the Joliba. Was it like crossing the streams near Bayo? No, he said, it was ten times the distance a man could throw a stone. I couldn't imagine such a river.

  When the tea was strong and sweet with the gift of the bees, Papa lifted the steaming pot to the full height of his raised arm, tipped the spout, and poured the boiling liquid into a small calabash for me, another for Mama and a third for himself. He didn't spill a drop. He set the teapot back on the embers, and warned me to let the drink cool.

  I cupped my palms around the warm calabash and said, "Tell me again, Papa, about how you and Mama met."

  I loved to hear the story about how they had never been meant to set eyes on each other, Mama being a Bamana and Papa a Fula. I loved how their story defied the impossible. They were never supposed to meet, let alone come together and start a family.

  "A lucky thing for strange times," Papa said, "or you would not have been born."

  JUST ONE RAIN SEASON BEFORE MY BIRTH, Papa had set out with other Fulbe men from Bayo. They had walked for five suns to trade their shea butter for salt in a distant market. On the way home, they gave a little pouch of salt to the chief of a friendly Bamana village. The chief invited them into the village to eat and rest and spend the night. While eating, Papa noticed Mama passing by. She was balancing on her head a tray of three yams and a calabash of goat's milk. Papa drank in her smooth walking gait, level head, lifted chin, the arch of her back, her long, strong legs and the heels of her feet, dyed red.

  "She seemed serious and dependable, but not to be trifled with," Papa said. "I knew in an instant that she would become my wife."

  Mama sipped her tea and laughed. "I was busy," she said, "and your father was in my way. I was going to help a woman who was ready to have her baby."

  Mama had no children yet, but had already brought many babies into the world. Papa found Mama's father, and made inquiries. He learned that Mama's first husband had disappeared many moons earlier, shortly after they had married. People assumed that he was either dead or kidnapped. Papa's wife—to whom he had been betrothed before he or she were even born—had recently died of fever.

  Mama was brought to meet Papa. This interrupted the catching of the baby, and she told him so. Papa smiled, and noted the muscles at the back of her legs as she turned to go back to her work. Negotiations continued about how to compensate Mama's father for the loss of a daughter. They settled on six goats, seven bars of iron, ten copper manillas and four hundred strung cowrie shells.

  These were troubled times, and without all the turmoil, the marriage between a Fula and a Bamana would not have been permitted. People were disappearing, and villagers were so concerned about falling into the hands of kidnappers that new alliances were forming among neighbouring villages. Hunters and fishermen travelled in groups. Men spent days at a time building walls around towns and villages.

  Papa brought Mama to his village of Bayo. He made jewellery with fine threads of gold and silver and travelled to bring his goods to markets and to pray in mosques. He sometimes returned with the Qur'an or with other writings, in Arabic. He claimed that it was not the place of a girl to learn to read or write, but relented when he saw me attempting to draw words in Arabic with a stick in the sand. So, in the privacy of our home, with nobody but my mother as a witness, I was shown how to use a reed, dyed water and parchment. I learned to write phrases in Arabic, such as Allaahu Akbar (God is great) and Laa ilaaha illa-Lah (There is none worthy of worship except God).

  Mama spoke her native Bamanankan, a language she always used when the two of us were alone together, but she also had picked up much Fulfulde and learned some prayers from Papa. Sometimes, while I watched, a gaggle of Fulbe women would bump elbows and tease one another as Mama bent over with a sharpened stick and scratched Al-hamdulillah (Praise be to God) in the earth, to prove to the village women that she had learned some Arabic prayers. Nearby, the women pounded millet, using heavy wooden pestles that were long like human legs and smooth like baby skin and hard like stone. When they flung their pestles against the mortars full of millet, it sounded like drummers beating out a song. Once in a while, they paused to sip water and examine their calloused palms, while Mama repeated the words she had learned from Papa.

  By the time I came along, Mama was respected in the village. Like the other women, she planted maize and millet, and collected shea nuts. She dried the nuts in a wood-fired kiln and pounded them with her pestle to extract the oil. Mama kept most of the oil, but set aside some of it for bringing babies into the world. Mama was always wanted when a woman was ready to bring a child to light. Once she even helped a donkey stalled in labour. She had a peaceful smile when she was happy and felt safe, a smile that I have thought of every day since I was ripped away from her.

  When my time came, I refused to enter the world. Papa said that I was punishing my mother for conceiving me. Finally, Mama summoned Papa.

  "Speak to your child," she told him, "for I am growing weary."

  Papa placed his hand flat on Mama's belly. He brought his mouth close to her navel, which bulged like an unbloomed tulip.

  "Son," Papa said.

  "You don't know that we have a son in here," Mama said.

  "If you keep taking so long, we just may end up with a goat," Papa said. "But you have asked me to speak, and I am thinking of a son. So, dear Son, come out of there now. You have been living the good life, sleeping and clinging to your mother. Come now, or I shall beat you."

  Papa claimed that I answered him from the womb.

  "I am not a boy," he told me I said, "and before I come out, we must talk."

  "Then talk."

  "To come out right now, I require hot corn cakes, a calabash of fresh milk, and that fine drink the unbelievers tap from the tree—"

  "No palm wine," my father cut in. "Not for one who fears Allah. But I can bring cakes when you have teeth, and Mama will supply the milk. And if you are good, one day I shall give you the bitter kola nut. Allah doesn't mind the kola."

  Out I came, sliding from my mother like an otter from a riverbank.

  AS AN INFANT, I TRAVELLED on my mother's back. She slid me around to her breast when I cried for food, and passed me among villagers, but usually I was swathed in red and orange cloth and rode low down on her back when she walked to market, pounded millet into flour, fetched water from the spring and tended to births. I remember wondering, within a year or two of taking my first steps, why only men sat to drink tea and converse, and why women were always busy. I reasoned that men were weak and needed rest.

  As soon as I could walk, I made myself useful. I collected shea nuts, and scrambled up trees to fetch mangoes and avocadoes, oranges and other fruits. I was made to hold other women's babies, and to keep them content. There was nothing wrong with a girl as young as three or four rain seasons holding and caring for a baby while the mother did other work. Once, however, Fanta, the youngest wife of the village chief, slapped me when she found me attempting to make a baby suckle me.

  By my eighth rain season, I had heard stories of men in other villages being stolen by invading warriors or even sold by their own people, but never did it see
m that this could happen to me. After all, I was a freeborn Muslim. I knew some of the Arabic prayers, and even had the proud crescent moon carved high into each of my cheeks. The crescent moons were to make me beautiful, but they also identified me as a believer among my Fulbe villagers. There were three captives—all unbelievers—in our village, but even children knew that no Muslim was allowed to hold another Muslim in captivity. I believed that I would be safe.

  My father said it was so, when I came to him with all the stories that the village children chanted: somebody, some night, was sure to snatch me from my bed. Some said it would be our people, the Fulbe. Others warned about my mother's people, the Bamana. Still others talked of the mysterious toubabu, the white men, whom none of us had ever seen. Put those silly children out of your mind, Papa said. Stay close to your Mama and me, don't go out wandering alone, and you will be fine. Mama wasn't quite as confident. She tried to warn him about travelling such long distances, to sell his jewellery and to pray in mosques. Once or twice, at night when I was supposed to be sleeping, I heard them arguing. Don't go travelling so far, Mama said, It's not safe. And Papa said, We travel in groups, with arrows and clubs, and what man would test his strength against me? Mama: I have heard that before.

  Mama took me along when women were at their biggest, ballooning from within. I watched her quick hands loosen umbilical cords from babies' necks. I saw her reach inside a woman, with the other hand firm and pushing outside the womb, to turn the baby around. I saw her rub oil into her hands and massage a woman's private parts to relax her skin and prevent it from tearing. Mama said that some women had their womanly parts cut up and put back together very badly. I asked what she meant. She smashed an old ceramic pot of no value, pushed apart the pieces, discarded one or two, and then had me try to reassemble it. I managed to stick some pieces together, but they were jagged, and stuck out and didn't quite fit any longer.

  "Like that," Mama said.

  "What happens to a woman like that?"

  "She might survive. Or she might bleed too much and die. Or she might die when she tries to push out her first baby."

  Over time, I watched how Mama helped women have their babies. She had a series of goatskin pouches, and I learned the names of all her crushed leaves, dried bark and herbs. As a game, to test myself, I tried to anticipate when Mama would encourage a woman to ride out all the shaking in her belly. From the way the woman moved, breathed and smelled, and from the way she let out a guttural, animal-like sound when she was at the height of her convulsing, I tried to guess when she would start to push. Mama usually brought along an antelope bladder full of a drink made from the bitter tamarind fruit and honey. When the woman cried out in thirst, I would pour a little into a calabash and pass it along, proud of my service, proud to be dependable.

  After Mama caught a baby in another village, the mother's family would give her soap and oils and meats, and Mama would eat with the family and praise me for being her little helper. I cut through my first rope of life at the age of seven rains, holding the knife fast and sawing on and on until I made it all the way through the resistant cord. One rain season later, I was catching babies as they slid out. Later still, my mother taught me how to reach inside a woman—after coating my hand with warm oil—and to touch in the right spot to tell if the door was suitably wide. I became adept at that, and Mama said it was good to have me along because my hands were so small.

  Mama began to speak to me about how my body would change. I would soon start bleeding, she said, and around that time some women would work with her to perform a little ritual on me. I wanted to know more about that ritual. All girls have it done when they are ready to become women, she said. When I pressed for details, Mama said that part of my womanhood was to be cut off so that I would be considered clean and pure and ready for marriage. I was none too impressed by this, and informed her that I was in no hurry to marry and would be declining the treatment. Mama said that no person could be taken seriously without being married, and that in due time, she and Papa would tell me about their plans for me. I told her that I remembered what she had said earlier, about some people having their womanly parts torn apart and put back together improperly. She carried on with an implacable confidence that left me worried.

  "Did they do this to you?" I asked her.

  "Of course," she said, "or your father would never have married me."

  "Did it hurt?"

  "More than childbirth, but it didn't last long. It is just a little correction."

  "But I have done nothing wrong, so I am in no need of correction," I said. Mama simply laughed, so I tried another approach. "Some of the girls told me that Salima in the next village died last year, when they were doing that thing to her."

  "Who told you that?"

  "Never mind," I said, employing one of her expressions. "But is it true?"

  "The woman who worked on Salima was a fool. She was untrained, and she tried to do too much. I'll take care of you when the time comes."

  We let the matter drop, and never had the chance to discuss it again.

  IN OUR VILLAGE, THERE WAS A STRONG, gentle man named Fomba. He was a woloso, which in my mother's language meant captive of the second generation. Since his birth, he had belonged to our village chief. Fomba wasn't a freeborn Muslim, and never learned the proper prayers in Arabic, but sometimes he kneeled down with Papa and the believers, facing in the direction of the rising sun.

  Fomba had muscled arms and thick legs. He was the best shot in the village. Once, I saw him take sixty paces back from a lizard on a tree, draw back his bow and release the arrow. It shot right through the lizard's abdomen, pinning it to the bark.

  The village chief let Fomba go hunting every day, but released him from the tasks of planting and harvesting millet because he never seemed able to grasp all the rules or techniques, or to know how to work with a team of men. The children loved to follow Fomba about the village, watching him. He had a strange way of holding his head, tilting it way off to the side. Sometimes we gave him a platter of empty calabashes and asked him to balance it on his head, just for the pleasure of watching the whole thing slide off and crash to the ground. Fomba let us do that to him time and again.

  We teased Fomba mercilessly, but he never seemed to mind us children. He would smile, and put up with rude taunts that would have gotten us beaten by any other adult in Bayo. On some days, we would hide behind a wall and spy on Fomba while he played with the ashes of a fire. This was one of his favourite activities. Long after the women had done their cooking and we had eaten millet balls and sauce and finished using soap from the ashes of banana leaves to clean the pots, Fomba would bring a stick to the fire and poke around in the ashes. One day he trapped five chickens in a fishing net. He brought them out one by one, wrang their necks, plucked and cleaned and gutted them. Then he drove a sharp iron rod through their bodies and set them over a fire to roast.

  Fanta, the youngest wife of the village chief, came running from the millet-pounding circle and smacked him about the head.

  It seemed strange to me that he didn't try to protect himself. "The children need meat," was all he said.

  Fanta scoffed. "They don't need meat until they can work," she said. "Stupid woloso. You have just wasted five chickens."

  Under Fanta's gaze, Fomba kept roasting the chickens, and then pulled them out of the fire, cut them up and handed the pieces to us. I took a leg, burning hot, and grabbed a leaf to protect my fingers. Warm juice ran down my chin as I sucked the brown flesh and crunched the bone to suck out the marrow. I heard that night that Fanta told her husband to beat the man, but he refused.

  One day, Fomba was sent to kill a goat that had suddenly started biting children and acting like its mind had departed. Fomba caught the goat, made it sit, put his arm around it, patted its head to calm it down. Then, he drew a knife from his loincloth and sliced the neck where the artery was thick. The goat lay still in Fomba's arms, staring like a baby at him as it bled ferociously, weaken
ed, and died. Fomba, however, hadn't positioned himself cleverly, and blood ran all over him. He stood in the middle of the village compound, ringed by mud homes, and called out for hot water. The women were pounding millet, and Fanta told the others to ignore him. But Mama had a soft spot for Fomba. I had heard her once, at night, telling Papa that Fanta mistreated the woloso. I wasn't surprised when Mama took leave of the millet pounding, grabbed a prized metal bucket, poured in several calabashes of hot water and carried it over to Fomba, who lugged it into the bathing enclosure.

  I thought the bucket was magical. One day, I snuck into Fanta's round, thatched home. I found the bucket and brought it into the better light by the door. It was made of smooth, rounded metal, and reflected sunlight. The metal was thin, but I was unable to bend it. I turned it upside down and beat it with the heels of my palms. It swallowed sound. The metal had no character, no personality, and was useless for making music. It was not at all like goatskin pulled taut across the head of a drum. The bucket was said to have come from the toubabu. I wondered what sort of person would invent such a thing.

  I tried lifting and swinging it by the looping metal handle. At that moment, Fanta came upon me, ripped the bucket from my hand, hung it from a peg in the wall, and popped me on the side of my head.

  "You came into my house with no permission?"

  Slap.

  "No, I was just . . ."

  "It's not for you to touch."

  Slap.

  "You can't beat me like this. I'll tell my father."

  Slap.

  "I'll beat you all I want. And he'll beat you again when he hears that you were in my home."

  Fanta, who had been planting millet in the boiling sun, had beads of sweat on her lip. I saw that she had better things to do than to stand there hitting me all day. I ducked and ran out of her home, knowing she would not follow.

  PAPA WAS ONE OF THE BIGGEST MEN IN BAYO. It was said that he could outwrestle any man in our village. One day, he crouched low to the ground and called for me. Up I climbed onto his back, all the way to his shoulders. There I sat, higher than the tallest villager, my legs curled around his neck and my hands in his. He took me outside the walled village, me riding high up like that.