Part 16 (1/2)
Who had cast the cowries? Was it the tall, strong one named Atiba?
Could it be he was also a Yoruba _babalawo_?
She had heard the verses for the cowries once before, years ago in Brazil. There were thousands, which her mother had recited for her all in one week, the entire canon. Even now she still remembered some of them, just a few. Her mother had never admitted to anybody else she knew the verses, since women weren't supposed to cast the cowries. The men of the Yoruba always claimed the powers of the cowries were too great for any save a true _babalawo_, and no woman would ever be permitted to be that. Women were only allowed to consult the G.o.ds by casting the four quarters of the kola nut, which only foretold daily matters. Important affairs of state were reserved for the cowries, and for men. But her mother had secretly learned the verses; she'd never said how. She'd even promised to explain them one day, but that day never came.
When she was sure the drums had finished, she rose slowly from the sweltering pallet that served as her bed and searched the floor in the half-dark till she felt the smooth cotton of her s.h.i.+ft. She slipped it on, then began brus.h.i.+ng her long gleaming hair, proud even now that it had always been straight, like a Portuguese _donna's_.
She slept alone in a small room next to the second-floor landing of the back stairway, the one by the kitchen that was used by servants. When she had finished with her hair and swirled it into a high bun, Portuguese style, she slowly pushed open the slatted jalousies to study the clutter of the compound. As always, she found herself comparing this haphazard English house to the mansion she had known in Brazil, on the large plantation outside Pernambuco.
Now it seemed a memory from another world, that dazzling white room she had shared with her mother in the servants' compound. The day the senhor de engenho, the master of the plantation, announced that she would go to the black-robed Jesuits' school, instead of being put to work in the fields like most of the other slave children, her mother had begun to cry. For years she had thought they were tears of joy.
Then the next day her mother had started work on their room. She had whitewashed the walls, smeared a fresh layer of hard clay on the floor, then planted a small frangipani tree by the window. During the night its tiny red blossoms would flood their room with a sweet, almost cloying fragrance, so they woke every morning to a day bathed in perfume. Years later her mother had confessed the beautiful room and the perfume of the tree were intended to always make her want to return there from the foul rooms of the _branco _and their priests.
She remembered those early years best. Her mother would rise before dawn, then wake the old, gnarled Ashanti slave who was the cook for the household, ordering the breakfast the senhor had specified the night before. Then she would walk quietly down to the slave quarters to waken the gang driver, who would rouse the rest of the plantation with his bell. Next she would return to their room and brush her beautiful _mulata _daughter's hair, to keep it always straight and s.h.i.+ning, in preparation for the trip to the mission school the priests had built two miles down the road.
Serina still recalled the barefoot walk down that long, tree-lined roadway, and her mother's command, repeated every morning, to never let the sun touch her light skin. Later she would wander slowly back through the searing midday heat, puzzling over the new language called Spanish she was learning, and the strange teachings of the Christians.
The priests had taught her to read from the catechism, and to write out the stories they told of the Catholic saints--stories her mother demanded she repeat to her each night. She would then declare them lies, and threaten her with a dose of the purgative physic-nut to expel their poisons.
Her mother would sometimes stroke her soft skin and explain that the Christians' false G.o.d must have been copied from Olorun, the Yoruba high G.o.d and deity of the cosmos. It was well known he was the universal spirit who had created the world, the only G.o.d who had never lived on earth. Perhaps the Christians had somehow heard of him and hoped to steal him for their own. He was so powerful that the other G.o.ds were all his children--Shango, Ogun, all the Yoruba deities of the earth and rivers and sky. The Yoruba priests had never been known to mention a white G.o.d called Jesu.
But she had learned many things from Jesu's priests. The most important was that she was a slave. Owned by the senhor de engenho. She was his property, as much as his oxen and his fields of cane. That was the true lesson of the priests. A lesson she had never forgotten.
These new salt.w.a.ter Yoruba were fools. Their life and soul belonged to the _branco _now. And only the _branco _could give it back. You could never take it back yourself. There was nothing you could do to make your life your own again.
She recalled a proverb of the Ashanti people. ”A slave does not choose his master.”
A slave chose nothing.
She found herself thinking again of her mother. She was called Dara, the Yoruba name meaning ”beautiful.” And she was beautiful, beyond words, with soft eyes and delicate skin and high cheekbones. Her mother Dara had told her how she had been taken to the bed of her Portuguese owner after only a week in Brazil. He was the _senhor de engenho_, who had sired mulata b.a.s.t.a.r.ds from the curing house to the kitchen. They were all still slaves, but her mother had thought her child would be different. She thought the light-skinned girl she bore the _branco _would be made free. And she had chosen a Yoruba name for her.
The _senhor de engenho _had decided to name her Serina, one night while drunk.
A slave chose nothing.
Dara's mulata daughter also was not given her freedom. Instead that daughter was taken into the master's house: taught to play the lute and dance the galliards of Joao de Sousa
Carvalho when she was ten, given an orange petticoat and a blue silk mantle when she was twelve, and taken to his bed the day she was fourteen. Her own father. He had used her as his property for eight years, then sold her to a stinking Englishman. She later learned it was for the princely sum of a hundred pounds.
A slave chose nothing.
Still, something in the _Defiance_ of Atiba stirred her. He was bold.
And handsome, even though a _preto_. She had watched his strong body with growing desire those two days they were together in the boiling house. She had begun to find herself wanting to touch him, to tame his wildness inside her. For a moment he had made her regret she had vowed long ago never to give herself to a _preto_. She was half white, and if ever she had a child, that child would be whiter still. To be white was to be powerful and free. She also would make certain her child was Christian. The Christian G.o.d was probably false, but in this world the Christians held everything. They owned the Yoruba. The Yoruba G.o.ds of her mother counted for nothing. Not here, not in the New World.
She smiled resignedly and thought once more of Atiba. He would have to learn that too, for all his strength and his pride, just as she had. He could call on Ogun to tell him the future, but that G.o.d would be somewhere out of hearing if he tried to war against the _branco_. She had seen it all before in Brazil. There was no escape.
A slave chose nothing.
Could he be made to understand that? Or would that powerful body one day be hanged and quartered for leading a rebellion that could only fail?
Unsure why she should bother, yet unable to stop herself, she turned from the window and quietly headed down the creaking, makes.h.i.+ft rear stair. Then she slipped past the kitchen door and onto the stone steps leading out into the back of the compound. It was still quiet, with only the occasional cackle of Irish laughter from the kitchen, whose chimney now threaded a line of wood smoke into the morning air.