Blonde Roots (5 page)

I prayed those whyte men wouldn’t follow me. As a single whyte female, I was often sought after by my own men, who found my bony size-4 figure attractive. A prominent clavicle, corrugated chest bones, concave stomach and thin blonde hair were considered the embodiment of beauty in Europa, even though the Ambossans considered me ugly as sin. And as it was their world I was living in, I had image issues, of course.

Every morning I’d repeat an uplifting mantra to myself while looking in the mirror. I’d try not to see the “pinched nostrils, pasty skin, greasy hair, pale shifty eyes and flat bottom” that the Ambossans labeled inferior. Instead I tried to say with confidence:

“I may be
fair
and
flaxen.
I may have
slim
nostrils and
slender
lips. I may have
oil-rich
hair and a
non-rotund
bottom. I may blush easily, go
rubicund
in the sun and have
covert yet mentally alert
blue eyes. Yes, I may be whyte. But I am whyte and I am beautiful!”

Our guys would call women who looked like me Barbee, named after the popular rag dolls of the Motherland, those floppy little female figures with one-inch waists, blue-button eyes and four-inch blonde tresses that every little girl loved over there.

Not here, though. Find a little slave girl on this continent and you’ll discover she’s hankering after one of the Aphrikan Queens, a rag doll with a big butt, big lips, lots of bangles and woolly hair.

It was so bad for our self-esteem.

In private the more voluptuous whyte women were sometimes highly desired by the Ambossan male. In any case, all whyte women were labeled sexually insatiable. A sick joke, of course, because how could we refuse their advances?

The Ambossan male liked his women large and juicy: a fat woman was a well-fed one, and when he strolled out with her it was as good as flashing his checkbook. Some women ate chicken hormones to pump up their breasts and behinds. Bwana had always left me alone, and if his latest bride-to-be was anything less than a perfect size 20, she was sent to the fattening farm out in Onga to be beefed up for him. She’d be there all day, forced to do nothing but sit around eating yam dumplings, doughnuts, eba, fried plantain, greasy chips, starchy rice, sorghum, hunks of beef and lamb, fried pork fat, cashew nuts, bread rolls, cheese, chocolate cake, avocados and whole chickens with their skins on.

I walked on through the market, relieved not to be followed, then turned off into Paddinto District. In a few minutes I would be at the station. The sun had gone down hours ago, but I could still feel its hot, rancid tongue scratching my neck.

I held my breath as I walked past the mud tower blocks that housed the city’s offices, in between the proliferation of trendy coffeehouses that were springing up to meet the twin demands for coffee and business.

The coffeehouses in Paddinto were legendary-some even had auction blocks. Stupidly I’d thought they’d be closed on this most sanctified of days, but to the traders, I guess, wealth was more important than worship. Several were doing business. Damn!

I slunk past the Cocoa Tree, Coasta Coffee, Hut Tropicana, Cafe Shaka, Demerara’s Den, Starbright and then the highly fashionable Shuga, part of a trendy chain store of cafés that stretched from the West Japan Quays all the way to Amersha, a distant northwestern outpost of the city.

Shuga specialized in the novelty of cappuccino with rum, known as rumpaccino, the gimmick of the daily news relayed via talking drum “On the Hour Every Hour” (even though this antiquated postal service went out of fashion moons ago), homemade star-apple pie with peanut ice cream and, advertised in chalk on a black signboard, “Fresh Slaves.”

The men inside Shuga could sniff out a slave a mile away. Hounds to a fox, one and all. Some were agents for Amarikan or West Japanese planters, there to buy new Europanes; others were middle-class householders seeking new staff.

I had always tried to console myself with the fact that while they were destroying us they were also destroying themselves. Such was the demand for sugar, the price of a sweet tooth was a toothless smile. Such was the demand for coffee, the price of caffeine was addiction, heart palpitations, osteoporosis and general irritability. The price of rum was chronic liver disease, alcoholism and permanent memory loss. The cost of tobacco was cancer, stained teeth and emphysema.

I had stopped directly outside Shuga while my mind took off on yet another sprint of its own. Years of suppressed rage were rising to the surface because freedom was so close. I had done the very thing I should not. I had looked inside its “rustic” spit-and-sawdust room with the mandatory portrait of President-for-Life Sanni Abasta in prime position above the counter.

I found myself staring at a male on the auction block.

The air was charged with tobacco smoke and pungent with steaming coffee beans.

Men were bidding for him.

He was about fifteen, I reckoned. A prize buck, then. He had his back to me but his pimpled, fisted face was turned toward the door, away from the men.

It was flushed with adolescent shame rather than the teeth- grinding rage of a fully fledged male.

He was completely naked, and his pallid back and buttocks were crawling with what looked like cockroaches but were lumps of congealed blood. Maybe he’d tried to run away or had spoken his native language or had committed some similar crime.

My eyes roamed over the crowd of men with their animated, perspiring faces, hand-printed robes draped over a shoulder or knotted at the waist, puffing on pipes, sitting with their legs akimbo so that they took up twice their body width. Their hoarse, booming Ambossan voices batted back and forth as they bid for the boy. I suddenly locked eyes with a very young man sitting apart and looking bored, head tilted, twizzling a pigeon feather in his ear. He was staring straight at me through the haze and the bartering with a surprise that was rapidly working itself up to a realization.

He knew me.

It was Bamwoze.

Bwana’ s second but most favored son.

Of all people.

Bamwoze.

I had wet-nursed the little bastard. I had wiped his scuzzy little arse and rocked him to sleep. I had breastfed him when my first newborn had been taken away and I was still heavy with milk.

All the while I was in mourning for my lost child.

I swaddled Bamwoze with all the love meant for my own.

I even kidded myself, at times, that he was indeed my own.

He took to me like a leech and wouldn’t let go.

Then he grew up and was sent off to the forest to be initiated into manhood. When he returned from being buried up to his head in dirt for days to prove his endurance and killing a crocodile with his bare hands to prove his strength, he began strutting around the compound like a mini-Bwana, and I, whose teats had produced full-fat milk that had formed his bone, brain, skin and muscle, ceased to exist for him.

Nanny no more.

Invisible, see.

SOME TIME AFTERWARD,
Bwana discovered Bamwoze had gotten a local slave girl pregnant, a rite of passage for the sons of masters, but he had tried to elope with her to Europa of all places, which was taking the piss. What were they planning? A Grand Tour?

Bwana disinherited Bamwoze and kicked him out of the house. I don’t know what happened to the girl—dead or in the New World, probably. We were all filled with a newfound respect for Bamwoze when we discovered he had forfeited his inheritance for a mulatto. Some time later we heard he’d become a trader in slaves himself, in order to continue living in the comfort to which he was born. The girl had been an aberration, we all realized—just a pretty mulatto trophy or simply part of his teenage rebellion against Bwana. What I knew for sure was that he couldn’t give a damn about the rest of us.

And here he was after all these years, locking eyes with me, knowing full well that I was where I shouldn’t be and that there could be only one reason for it. He’d been a big lad and was a big man now, typical of the Ambossans. But I recognized the familiar expression of self-pity sweep across the plump face of the child before he became the man; before bones started pushing through his cheeks and shaping his face into something fierce and arrogant.

Here was the spoiled boy who got everything he wanted—more giraffe burgers, more vanilla drops, yet another baby camel to take him riding around the compound. He had never been denied anything as a child, and so, as is the way with the blessed of this world, nothing was ever enough for him.

The wretch still felt sorry for himself.

I didn’t move and neither did he. I could see the indecision in his eyes, weighing up the options, which one would benefit
him
the most. If I moved, I would make up his mind for him and he would raise the alarm. Seconds passed. The sensory overload of the smoke and smell and shouts of the bidding faded away. I knew better than to plead with my eyes because he would feel manipulated and resist. If I looked afraid, he would despise me. So I just went blank—the slaves’ default position. Then I sensed a thought take shape in his mind. To let me go would be a way to get back at his father.

We both knew that I had read him.

He smiled to himself, then gestured at me with a magnanimous roll-of-the-eyes and an Oh,
go on then
nod to be on my way.

Seconds later I was running.

I didn’t care anymore. I had no time left.

If someone stopped me, so be it.

I found the dusty bushes with little effort, using all my strength to open the round iron manhole. I levered myself down and felt strong hands catch my slim hips with such warm, solid strength it was like being caught by my father after he’d thrown me into the air when I was a kid. Would they be a safe pair? Turning round, I saw an elderly Ambossan holding a pottery lamp reeking of kerosene. His head was as bald, hard and uneven as a gourd, and a band of antelope teeth was draped over it. His welcoming lopsided grin reassured me that he was not out to ensnare me.

“Greetings, Omorenomwara, from your friends at the Resistance. I am your Conductor. We are glad you made it.”

Omorenomwara was the slave name PIG gave me when I was first enslaved. It meant “This child will not suffer.”

I PAUSED.

I could finally give my real name to an Ambossan. It was like reclaiming my identity. I trembled, stuttering.

“Please, call me Doris. I am Doris. My name is Doris.”

He grinned and tried to repeat my real appellation, slowly, looking embarrassed, breaking it down into three elongated syllables, his tongue stumbling over the strange phonetics. He looked so pleased when he managed to pronounce it.

Honestly, it was truly endearing.

“Dooo-raaa-sha,” he said.

Bless.

I smiled encouragingly nonetheless. At least he’d tried.

“We must make haste,” he added. “I will lead you to the Bakalo Line, where your train awaits you.”

I
t was silent down there except for the scurrying of rodents and lizards and the muted echo of our footsteps. The floor gave way in places, and it took an age to descend the escalator as I eased my way down, gripping the rubber banister, my fingernails scraping up mushy dirt. Who knew when I’d be able to wash again? I was a fastidious person and liked a hearty wash-down at least once every two weeks.

When we reached the bottom, my anonymous guide turned right into a corridor reeking of must and so clotted with dust that I gagged. But my guide didn’t turn around. I was supposed to be a brave escapee, not a wimp. I was a mature woman, not a child. Yet something was stirring deep inside of me. When had I last been in such a dark, enclosed, claustrophobic space?

Cobwebs stretched before us like veins of forest foliage. He brushed them away with his swaying lantern, step by step. I could sense the surge of all those Ambossans who for years had filled those brightly lit tunnels during what they called the Rushing Hour. All those scurrying feet and harried minds. All those sugar-loving, coffee-drinking, baccy-smoking, rum-sipping commuters, most of whom hadn’t a thought about who provided their little pleasures, their little dependencies.

Like the caves deep in the hills of my homeland that the sun could never penetrate, these were catacombs running underneath a landmass that weighed down upon it, and it was chilled to its abandoned bone. In time the soil of the land and underground rivers would complete nature’s reclamation.

My guide shuffled ahead, his lantern creating spooky patterns of light and shadow, which looked like ghouls looming toward us.

He carefully stepped over little craters in the ground and piles of powdery plaster from the caved-in ceilings, glancing behind to check that I did the same. He needn’t have worried; I was at his mercy. The Tube was strange territory and I had no bearings. When I looked behind, the tunnel had closed in on us.

When something wet, hairy and slithery crawled onto my foot, I merely bit my lip and managed to kick it off. There were probably more small beasts in that subterranean jungle than I could bear to contemplate, families of tarantulas and scorpions for whom my ankles would be a once-in-a-lifetime delicacy. What had happened to the farm girl I used to be? The girl who could wring a chicken’s neck, gut a rabbit, deliver a calf, who had kept a dog as a pet.

The Ambossans regarded the keeping of animals as domestic pets as downright primitive. The very idea of sleeping with a flea-ridden, molting cat or dog in the same bed, or kissing a canine or feline mouth that licked its own anus, was disgusting.

I turned my attention to my guide. He wore a bleached-orange wrappa and nothing else. He was short for an Ambossan, and tubby, although his fat had the hard substance of a man who has known a lifetime’s manual labor rather than the slack softness of one who has not. I was used to reading people from behind, an emotional state emanating from someone’s posture, a state of mind indicated by the tilt of the head. There were those who carried a self combusting anger in their backs. Others had the defeated trundle of a loser, the imploded chest and listless arms that asked,
Why should I bother?