CHAPTER ONE
SOME OF THE
PEOPLE COULD FLY:
THE WINGED
DAUGHTER, BORN 1740
Some of the people could fly.
I could fly. But my mother could
not. The gift was known to skip a generation.
So I stayed in the slaver's stone
tower with my mother and helped her kill her other babies.
She said it would be wrong to let
them live and be sold across the waters into chaos. When I killed them, she
said they would fly free.
I dreamed of freedom. What was
it?
To be a girl who left my mother's
snug hut to fetch fresh water in a gourd on my head? A girl who swept the earth
smooth between the huts on my father's compound dreaming that, when I married,
I might be first wife someday. A girl who stood in the sun to pound fufu for my mother's dinner, her middle
baby tied sleeping on my back. I saw such girls when I was allowed out of the
stone tower where my mother walked in her chains. I heard of such girls when my
mother held me and her tears ran into the parts between my tight braids and
cooled my itching scalp.
My mother had once been such a
girl. I would never be.
I was a girl whose head no one patted
in the marketplace when our captor left me coins and let me out of the tower
for market days. I walked between the mats of spread fish and the brown piles
of cassava and yam, and people turned from me as I passed. When I stopped to
buy, they took the bright money my father had given me and held it up to see it
shine in the sun that danced in off the sea.
I walked alone.
I slept on damp stones with the
smell of my mother's bitter sweat to warm me, instead of a cooking fire.
We never had fire. We ate our
food raw or dried, just as I brought it up the stone steps from the market. For
my mother had no fire pit in which to cook, and she had no stones worn smooth
and charred black by many meals, and she had no coals left banked and waiting.
But when our captor came in the
night, he brought fire. He held it high and stuck it on our wall, so I had to
shut my eyes not to see my mother.
What good did it do me?
For I must run for seawater in
the morning and watch her wash the cuts his beard had made on her cheeks and
the places where she said he'd left her unclean. Then
I dumped the bloodied water with my mother's scanty refuse in the sea.
Down the stone steps to bang on
the splintered door and yell for a red-eyed guard to let me out.
Across the sinking sand to the
lapping, stinging water.
And back into the dank dark where
one window let in light, but not enough air.
Each morning, my mother wept as
she cupped her hands in the half-gourd of cluttered brine I'd
brought her and splashed it quickly on her burning places. She hissed with
pain.
Her tears ran. She said she
thought she would have finished crying by the time I was so big that I could
tend her, instead of a guard. But she had little left besides her tears.
And me.
And the beauty scars of the tribe
that had rejected her and would never shelter me. For my very color was shame, like the brand burned onto people led to
the big ships. My mother and I were never to act out of fear and flee.
My mother was sold to protect her
village from invasion. Had the daughters and brides of the village's elders
been seized instead-for slavers honored no
traditions-then shame would have fallen on the ancient name of her people,
forever. To my mother's way of thinking, in our banishment lay our dignity and
our belonging to those who had sold my mother away.
"We must wait and bear our
anguish until our captor's own sense of honor makes
him send us home. For it is he, not we, who act without dignity." She
stared out the window, head high, beauty scars shot with light from the sun.
"Mother, how can it be right
to chain a woman who does not mean to flee? He gives you no chance to show him
your honor."
My mother and I knew nothing,
really, of our captor and his people. She thought all women lived as did the
women in her village. And my mother felt she lived with dignity in her sorrow,
for her shame preserved the honor of her people for
as long as the world would live.
I was the one who felt no such
thing.
"Why am I of less value than
other girls?" I had not asked to be born the bleached color
of the sand that led to the slavers' ships and their distant shores. Where were
the people who asked this sacrifice of us, to weep with us and thank us for
their freedom?
My mother's honorable
shame was bitter to me.
I walked alone. I had one dream.
I had one hope.
I knew I lived only because my
mother had no older child to do what I did, to sneak from the beach to the
bushes back from the shore, pick the thorns and scavenge splinters from the
fishermen's boats to drive into her newborns' soft
little heads.
As long
as I could remember, I had gathered the thorns and
splinters in the months when my mother's belly grew round and the skin across
it rolled with a live baby's kicks like thunder and cracked with pale brown
scars like lightning, waiting to burst with life and death.
I gathered thorns in the months
when the weight of the captor's body left my mother pressed into the stones in
the morning, her head pillowed on the bones of my hip as she wept and begged
her old gods in her old tongue for mercies they would never grant.
Or maybe they did grant them in
their strange way.
For sometimes the little sand-colored babies were born dead, limp and wet with blood and
slime into my hands, too little to keep them from sliding between my mother's
spread legs across the wet stone floor.
She rolled her dark eyes open and
smiled as the thin warm limbs and faces of her babies turned a color like bad fruit.
She never smiled when she made me
jab the live ones in their heads. She would nurse them and watch the greedy
mouths suck. "You must do it for me, daughter. My hands. My soul. I
cannot."
It was true. Her hands trembled
as she held the live ones. "Only to empty the breast," she assured
me. "To fill his stomach for his journey. Then you must send him on his
way."
The women in the marketplace bore
their newborns on their backs with pride and stopped
haggling and gossiping just so everyone might wait and watch them nurse. Those
women with circles of gold, bronze, and copper round their ankles to make music
of their footsteps.
The music of my mother's footstep
was the drag of her chain. A black band clutched each ankle and ate into her
swollen feet. The chain between them made her shuffle as her babies fell from
her body and she paced, raising her ritual cry to ancestors who would not hear
her, did not care.
She prayed while I laid her
babies in my half-gourd and started down the steps. I heard her as I waited at
the barred door for the guard, the rush of ocean keeping time to her stumbling
chants.
I buried her babies, tiny soft skulls
first, in the cool sands. I thought of her useless prayers. I thought of flight
and freedom and buried their wings last. "Go to the gods."
Someday I would soar in the sky
like birds. Someday, when my mother or her captor died. And when I soared, I would
think of these babies and fly for them, too.
"Weak," our captor
said. It was a word I knew well. My mother, still bleeding from her births,
hung her head out of the circle of his torchlight. "Too weak to sell, old
dear. No use as a breeder. I don't know how you ever
survived in the bush. Chin up now, you needn't cry. I don't need the money from your pickaninnies. Have no
fear." His hands glowed pale and red in firelight as he reached for her.
Sometimes my mother lay on the
stones where our captor left her and said her urgent morning prayers. I could
not truly understand, for I never learned my mother's
ancient tongue.
But I have often trembled and
wept from her fury. Her rage has sent me running for the barred door and the
sand and the stinging sea. When no one was near to see me, I have lifted my
arms and cried to know what curse the gods unleashed on the world when they set
these slavers loose in ships with sails.
"When will it end? Where
will it leave my mother and me, when it ends at
last?" And the question I cannot say. What chaos spewed them out?
When I asked this of my mother,
she scolded. "Never think such a thing! To think is to bring to you! Think
of-think of-" her eyes went dull "-birds in an empty sky that does
not smell of salt." Her faraway village.
Is that how things come to pass?
One thinks them into being? Then might I not think my mother and myself free?
Free.
I would rip off the rags of the
slaver's shirt that hid my bent wings. I would stretch them and leap into the
air and fly.
But what would bring our captor
to the sense of honor that would make him set us
free? I had no faith that he had a sense of honor.
But maybe if he had a second
wife. Then she. . . .
My dream of freedom took the
shape of a woman like the captor who would come and see his first wife living
as his prisoner. Might she not demand right behavior?
Might she not demand that he set us free?
One morning, I rose from a new
grave already lost in the sand to pray to the spreading sea. "A woman for
the captor like himself. Let her come and see his dishonor
and our shame. Let her demand change." And I went into the tower with my
new faith and demanded of my mother that she pray in the tongue that the gods
heard.
She was afraid. "Daughter,
we do not know these people. We cannot know what such a woman would do."
"What do all women do? They
spit on the ground in the marketplace at the mention of you and how we live. No
fire. No home. Like animals!" I wiped my angry tears. "A second wife
would refuse to be part of such a family. She would demand that he take off
your chains." I pointed to make her cringe.
Such fear. Her brows twisted
above her pleading, wet eyes.
She feared me as much as she
feared our captor, in that moment when she knew I had called to her old gods in
his unclean tongue. Without honor. Without shame.
Born of such a man, I acted as he
did. Defied what was right and dared what was wrong. Refused our honorable banishment and wrapped a foreign tongue around
sacred words.
Maybe it was my prayer.
Or maybe it was simply that the
sea and the land, the villages and the gods that rule them hate lost people.
They hate us, and they hold us in contempt.
For the sea licked the bleached
bones of the babies sacrificed to my mother's village and its honor, and the sea heard my prayer. And the sea brought the
captor a second wife, a woman from his own land.
With her, it brought my mother's
death. And then the sea took me away.
I looked out of the tower with my
mother when the pale woman came. My mother's black body gleamed with more than
its usual sweat. The patterned scars on her cheeks lifted and moved as she
talked. "She is coming. He said I am to keep you from her. Daughter, you
knew him. You knew all along! He fears she will demand that he set me
free."
She rested her hands on the stone
ledge of the window and panted from the work of walking. She stared out.
This time, it was I who said,
"Mother, I am afraid."
"You must not fear. You must
watch with me. When you see her, go to her. Kneel before him and call him
father. She must hear you call him father."
My mother had taken my wild
thoughts and built upon them a hope of justice. Her hopes were just. What had
she done to deserve chains? My mother's treatment was not as men were known to
have treated women since time began.
And yet. . . .
My mother saw little from her
tower window. She had not seen what I had seen upon the beaches. Long lines of
women, men, even children, dragging down the sand to more towers and to waiting
ships. Why would gods who watched such sights reach down from the sky or up
from the sea to succor my mother and me?
What could I know of prayers, the
ignorant child of a slaver? I watched with my mother at the window and waited
for the woman who would speak for her. I dreaded what might come.
The sun rose and burned us
through the bars. We shielded our eyes and watched through the stinging sweat
of our hands.
The sun was high.
And at last, a woman wrapped
tightly in layers of strange cloth that clutched her bosom and swept the sand
behind her came walking. The captor walked beside her with his long gun. They
came beneath my mother's window.
We stared at her and at each
other. We hesitated to speak.
How could one be sure that this
being was not a man? Her heavy tread bounced her into the air. The sand itself
could not soften the blows of her step.
I faced my mother, hard and hot
like the bars, like her chains. "He has lied to you. He has brought no one
here but his brother." I waited to see her give in and give up my own mad
dream of freedom.
Instead, she wiped her eyes and
leaned her head against the bars to get a closer look at the strange creature.
Just at that moment, the person
beside the captor raised its face and peered at the burning sun. Sunlight fell
on and through its thin skin on a face that had never grown hair.
My mother's sweating hand pulled
me toward her. Her eyes were lit with hope. "It is a woman! Go to
her!"
I stared and made no move.
"Go to her." My own
mother fell to her knees and begged.
What could I do? My mother held
herself in honor and understood no one's scorn. But
if I did not serve her, how could she serve herself? Who was she, and who would
I be, if I did not act honorably toward her?
I walked down the stone steps.
The guard smiled at me.
"Come to see the lady? Well, why not?" He pulled open the door and
waved me on.
People lined the sands to stare
at the strange woman and bow, as if to greet a great king. I followed the wave
of bending backs and found my mother's enemies.
I caught up with them just before
they entered the open gates of the fort. I rushed to grab the captor's hand. I
fell on my knees in the scraping sand before him.
He looked down at me as if from
the burning sky. His dry lips parted and said not a word.
"Please, father." My
words burned in my throat. "Mother sends me with empty hands but with her
blessings to serve your second wife." My voice shook. I looked at the
woman.
Up close, she was a skeleton
covered with a thin layer of boiled skin. This was clearly why she kept her
dying body wrapped so tightly in those cloths. Wisps of something thin grew
from her head and flew in the air about her as she turned to see where I now
pointed.
Back up at my mother.
In her tower window, my mother
raised a hand and waved.
The slaver watched her.
His new wife raised a piece of
cloth to where she had lost her lips and much of her nose. She made a sound
like birds crying out over the sea. It seemed she could not breathe.
She turned and her eyes flamed
red as she looked at the man. She gave up her struggle for words and looked
again at my mother.
And at last she looked at me. Now
her eyes were wide, white rimmed, and washed of that sudden color.
She shook.
Fear drove me from my knees. I
ran to pull my mother from the tower window. I only knew she was not safe. I
did not know just how unsafe she was.
There was an explosion behind me.
My mother's waving arm fell. I watched her, too, fall back from the window.
There were shouts.
"Mad!" The captor. I understood nothing else.
Now there were explosions all
around. Grunts as men ran and the clank of their long guns. My heart beat in my
ears.
The guard stared open-mouthed
before his open prison door. Blinded by the sun, I slipped past him and
stumbled all the way up to the tower. I crawled on my knees to feel for my
mother.
She sat, dazed, on the stone floor.
Propped against the wall, her head rolled. Her eyes stared wide and sightless.
She struggled to rise. One of her arms poured blood from shoulder to wrist.
I pushed her to the floor.
"Lie down," I whispered. "Close your eyes. Be dead for them when
they come for you."
I heard the
sound of many men in heavy shoes scuff the stone steps. Harsh words I
did not know. The captor's men ran in to fill the little cell, stepping on my
hands and on my mother. They pulled her to her feet. She cried out from the pain
in her shot arm.
The red-faced men carried my
mother between them down the stone steps. She screamed and cried out for mercy
all the way.
I followed.
When she reached the sand, someone
knelt at my mother's feet to unlock the black bands on her ankles. The cuffs
and chains were yanked away, their rattling muffled in the sand.
We all heard my mother's screams
as the metal that had eaten into her ankles came free.
She wobbled, forced to stand. The
men let her go. I rushed to ease her fall against my body. We sank together on
our hands and knees.
"Run!" someone shouted.
The people who had lined the
beach to watch the captor and his second wife all shouted, "Run!" My
mother struggled to her feet, pushing against the sand that drank her flowing
blood. Before she was up, she was already running headlong down the beach.
Was this to be our freedom? I
started after her and ran beside her, shoving her up straight as she stumbled.
She ran into the sun as the
people shouted. She pumped her one good arm, as though she thought she had
grown a wing.
Had she forgotten that she could
not fly? I thought of her babies with their useless wings, buried in the sand
beneath our running feet. Would their spirits rise to meet my mother? Would we
turn from the sea and start toward the inland villages?
And when we got there, would we
at last be accepted with honor, to live in peace?
I smiled as the people from the
marketplace and the fishing boats along the shore added their voices to the
cry. "Run!" My foreign-tongued prayer had been answered. The gods had
heard us, their lost people.
A crack, like a large stone
breaking.
My mother pitched forward into
the sand. Her arms flopped beside her. She lay flat and still.
I fell onto her back to cover the
spreading bright circle of blood. It seeped through the belly of the shirt I
wore to hide my wings.
Hands pulled me from my mother.
Men surrounded me with long guns.
My mother was still in the sand
when I last saw her.
Our captor spoke to his new woman
as I was dragged before him. I hung between the hands of the men until they
dropped me at his feet.
I watched my father reload his long
gun.
"I already told you, my
dear," he said to the skeleton woman. "Not that it is your business
to concern yourself with such matters. But as I said, this woman was clearly
mad. Some of them are. That means they are of no use and cannot be sold. The surest
test is simply to set them free. If they run in the direction of their old
villages, why then one can rest assured that they are as sane as the savage
mind can be, and they are well worth keeping. But where was this one headed?
You saw her. Running nowhere, toward wasteland, as mad as a hatter. Mad ones
are a waste of food and water, both here and on board ship. No captain will buy
them. There is nothing for it but to rid oneself of them, as I have done. It's business. That's all. No need
being sentimental about such things."
He finished reloading his gun and
braced it against one hip. The woman stared at me.
People murmured and shielded
their eyes to look into the sun where my mother lay. I
watched the captor.
He looked down at me. "I
taught her little bastard English myself, you know. I
would never have expected her to get up to such devilish tricks. There's simply no trusting them. They are a superstitious
and underhanded lot."
The woman made a sound into the
cloth at her mouth. A sob? Or had my mother just sobbed a last breath, out
there alone on the sand? I tried but could not bring myself to turn toward my
fallen mother. My eyes were fixed, mindless, on my captor.
He turned from me. "Well,
there you have it, old thing. I regret that this is your introduction to the
Gold Coast. But you can't say I haven't warned your
father. Most excellent man, and all that, your father, but he won't hear reason, will he? This godforsaken shore is no
place for a lady. Now, come along, old girl, or these blasted mosquitoes shall
be the death of us."
He touched her bent elbow. His
hand wavered toward her cheek but dropped away as she turned from me at last to
start through the fortress gates.
He let her go ahead. Then he
doubled back to strike me in the face with the butt of his reloaded gun.
And that is why I never saw my
mother, nor the sand on which she died above her babies' bones, again.
For when I came to, I was on
board a ship that had already set sail. The shore, my siblings' graves, and my
fallen mother had all been left long and far behind.