THE BOOK OF NEGROES (11 page)

I turned my back and squatted over the waste bucket. The baby started to scream again and I whirled around to see Fanta unsteady on her feet, standing across the room. She flipped the hood off the birdcage, opened up the wide door and grabbed the bird by the beak. Its claws flew up and raked her, and she cursed, but she kept on.

“Stop,” I called out.

Fanta ignored me. She had the medicine man’s knife in her hand. She stabbed and stabbed until the claws stopped scraping at her and the body stopped quivering. She threw the mess back in the cage, closed the door, and covered it with the hood. After wiping the knife clean, she wrapped herself, and slipped the knife inside the cloth. Then she picked up her bawling baby and shoved its face against her nipple. Fanta and the baby eventually slept again, but I stayed awake, fearing what was going to happen when the medicine man returned and took the hood off the birdcage. But the little window showed light, and there was no sign of the medicine man.

I woke Fanta and the three of us went up on deck as the day was breaking. A pale moon hung low in the sky, at the very moment that the upper tip of a ball of fire crested the opposite horizon. Trouble was coming when the moon and sun shared the same sky.

The medicine man saw the baby and sang out words of pleasure. He
patted me on the shoulder. He took a step toward Fanta, but the look in her eyes stopped him. Fanta was now steady on her feet. I thought about how she had walked for three moons with a growing baby in her belly, and about how she had sliced open that parrot even as it kicked and clawed and cut her wrist. The sun cleared the horizon. Now it was a furious ball of red. The moon began to fade in the sky and I had the feeling that it was leaving me to fend for myself.

The orange-haired toubab was so pleased with the baby that you would think he had pushed it out himself. He sent off some toubabu sailors, who returned with the toubab chief and the assistant. The three of them spoke. After taking instructions, the assistant spoke to me, but I could not understand. The assistant repeated himself. I realized that the medicine man wanted me to call out to the men below. I was to tell them that Fanta had had her baby.

A toubab drew up the door to the men’s hold. I took a few steps down into the darkness. I could barely see.

“A son for Fanta,” I called out in Bamanankan.

“Louder,” the assistant told me.

I called out again, and then in Fulfulde.

I expected that the men would give a cheer, and that when they came up, we would all be made to dance over the whip raking the deck. But there was no movement. No sound. Not even the whispering of men. I heard the clinking of metal on metal. On the assistant’s command, I called out once more. There was still no response. I climbed back out onto the deck.

The medicine man conferred again with the toubab chief and the assistant. Two sailors and the assistant were sent down into the hold with clubs, firesticks and burning light. Down through the hatch they went. I heard the assistant shouting on his way down the hatch that Fanta had
had her baby and that the men could come up and dance with the women. A toubab sailor was sent off to fetch the women out of their hatch.

Somebody touched my elbow. I spun around. It was Sanu, holding her own baby in her arms. The baby was sleeping. Sanu stepped over to hug Fanta, but Fanta stared at her stonily. Sanu stepped back and stood again near me. The other women—some coming from their own hold, others from the toubabu leaders’ cabins—began to cluster around us.

At that moment, homelander men began charging out of the hold. They moved so swiftly that it took the two toubabu guarding the hatch a moment to grasp that the men were not shackled. The guards were thrown down into the hatch, into the hands of the rising men.

The toubabu began to blast away with their firesticks. Some of the homelanders took shots in the face or chest and fell right back against the surging tide of men, while others pushed through the hole and ran free on the deck. Some twenty or thirty men managed to escape the hatch before the blazing firesticks became so intense that every man who showed his chest was shot back into the hold.

Biton flew past me with an iron file in one hand and his ankle shackles in another. He jabbed one toubab in the eye with the file, and smashed another in the face with the shackles. One homelander used rusty nails to poke out the eye of a sailor. The toubabu leaders kept up an onslaught with their firesticks.

All around me, shots rang out and men and women cried. I backed myself against the ship’s railing. I saw a woman jump onto the back of a toubab sailor, clutching him like a monkey and using her fingers to claw at his eyes. Homelander men and women screamed, as did some toubabu. Other toubabu shouted orders. Their firesticks were deadly, but it seemed to take the toubabu time to use a firestick more than once. With knives and hammers and nails and enraged hands, the homelanders struck more quickly.

A few steps to my left, I saw Fanta crouching. At first, I thought she was injured or exhausted from the birth. She was doubled over, and the baby was wriggling on a cloth beside her. As I watched, Fanta reached inside her wrap. I heard the baby give a little cry. I saw his heels kicking. Fanta brought out the knife from the medicine man’s room, placed a hand over the baby’s face and jerked up his chin. She dug the tip of the knife into the baby’s neck and ripped his throat open. Then she pulled the blue cloth over him, stood and heaved him overboard. I retched and felt my body grow limp, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. Fanta ran behind the medicine man, who was pointing his firestick in another direction, and plunged the knife deep into the back of his neck. He started to turn, but sank to his knees. I saw his eyeballs bulging, and he fell forward, arms out, toward me. Blood streamed from his mouth. His eyes seemed fixed on me. I could not bear to look into the eyes of the dying man, and I hoped that he would die quickly.

I was tackled from behind. Now, for sure, I would die.
Allahu Akbar
, I mumbled, crashing to the deck. But no hand went around my neck, and no knife plunged into my ribs. It was Fomba who was lying over me. Blood spilled from his arm onto my face. He jumped up again. He had a hammer in the hand of his injured arm and used it to smash the skull of a toubab who was pointing a firestick at Biton.

I was too terrified to move. I watched Fanta run over to Sanu, who was crouching on the deck, clutching her baby and trying to avoid the mayhem. I could see Fanta gesture madly at Sanu and try to pull her baby away. Sanu held on to her child, but Fanta pulled it again, pushing and shoving and finally striking Sanu on the nose. Sanu fell back. Fanta grabbed the bawling baby by the leg. I tried to get up. I had to get over there. I had to make Fanta listen to me. But before I could move, Fanta had the baby by the ankle and was holding her upside down. I couldn’t understand what kind of madness had overtaken her. Fanta stepped toward the railing and
heaved the baby out over the waiting waters. Sanu jumped up. Her mouth opened, but I couldn’t hear her voice over the firing weapons and the cries of the homelanders and toubabu. Sanu climbed up onto the railing and followed her baby into the sea.

Now Fanta attempted to climb up on the railing, but a toubab tackled her, slammed her onto the deck and began to beat her. Beside me, one homelander had a sword rammed deep into his gut. He tumbled over me, covering me, bleeding on me, pinning me. I was stuck underneath him and couldn’t get up. Two men streaked past me and jumped overboard. I cringed at the double splash. A woman jumped overboard. And then another. I tried to push the man’s dead weight off me. Impossible. Biton fought with the toubab chief, whose firestick had stopped working. The toubab chief swung his firestick. Biton ducked, grabbed the toubab’s foot, pulled him down. Another homelander with a hammer smashed the toubab chief’s skull. Once, and the toubab chief kept moving. Twice, and he was still. The homelander was covered in blood. I couldn’t tell whose it was. Two toubabu closed and secured the hatch. A sailor fought Chekura, and sliced his arm with a knife. Chekura fell, clutching his shoulder, but Fomba stepped up from behind. He grabbed the sailor by the hair, snapped back his head, locked his other hand onto the man’s crotch and flung him overboard. Fomba was clubbed in the back of the head with the butt of a firestick, and he went down hard.

One homelander used a wooden feeding tub to bash out the brains of a toubab sailor, but his chest was then blown open. I couldn’t bear to watch the cascading blood. Two sailors passed armloads of new firesticks to the toubabu, who blasted at every homelander still fighting.

Two more homelanders were shot, and fell. I closed my eyes for a moment. I could hear no more battle cries of attacking homelanders. Now none of us was left standing. There was only moaning and wheezing and the sound of firesticks exploding. Then came the sound of angry metal clanking, as
the toubabu clamped us all in irons. Fomba was shackled. Chekura was bleeding but not so badly as to be thrown overboard, so he too went into irons. Biton had been beaten savagely, and had a rag stuffed in his mouth, and irons were already on his foot. I saw the bodies of three toubabu sailors, plus that of the medicine man and the toubab chief. I felt numb. With such a mess of bodies, bleeding, unconscious or dead, I couldn’t tell how many homelanders had been killed and how many had been lost to the sea.

The toubabu stumbled about with clothes ripped, hair loose and faces wild, bleeding. One toubab began shouting at all of the others, who moved where he pointed and did what he said. The toubabu locked up one homelander after another. I too was ironed. The metal bit into my ankle. But I was still alive. Now I just had to be still.

I looked up from the iron clasp around my foot. A huge sailor with pants down around his knees held Fanta flat on the deck. He pinned her two wrists with one thick hand, and as his manhood swung about like a long, hard tongue, he slapped her with his free hand and lowered himself onto her. Fanta spat up at him. She bit his wrist so hard that he pulled away. Another toubab used a wooden pail to smack the head of the man on top of Fanta. The attacker gave up and rolled off Fanta and kicked her. She was put in irons, and a cloth was stuffed in her mouth to keep her quiet.

I watched the toubabu throw the dead homelanders overboard. Over screeching protests, they also grabbed the badly wounded homelanders and heaved them over the railing. When the homelanders went overboard, they cried out again. Seven or eight toubabu lay crumpled in every imaginable position of death: face down, face up, on their sides, hanging over beams and railings. The toubab chief and the medicine man were left lying on their backs, as dead as I could have wanted them.
Allahu Akbar
, I mumbled to myself. But maybe Fanta had been right. Maybe God was impossible here.

THE TOUBABU DID NOT EXECUTE BITON. They hoisted some homelanders up by their thumbs and whipped them, and let them down only after they had died. But they only did that to the men who were weak and lame, and of little value to them. I thought they would kill Fanta or perhaps all the women, but they didn’t even do that.

After the revolt, they kept us shackled at all times. We were brought up in small groups to watch the whippings. We were made to eat and drink, and then were sent back below. No washings. No clothes. No treats. No women in the rooms of the toubabu leaders. Sailors were sent below with firesticks and clubs. They pulled out the dead bodies, and they collected all the clothing and unused weapons they could find.

Each rising sun saw more people die. We called their names as they were pulled from the hold.
Makeda, of Segu. Salima, of Kambolo
. Down below, at least, I couldn’t hear bodies hitting the water. Although the hold was dark and filthy, I no longer wanted to see the water, or to breathe the air above.

After what seemed to be several days, the toubabu started bringing us back up on deck in small groups. We were given food and a vile drink with bits of fruit in it. We were given tubs and water to wash ourselves. The toubabu burned tar in our sleeping quarters, which made us choke and gag. They tried to make us wash our sleeping planks, but we were too weak. Our ribs were showing, our anuses draining. The toubabu sailors looked just as ill. I saw many dead seamen thrown overboard without ceremony.

After two months at sea, the toubabu brought every one of us up on deck. Naked, we were made to wash. There were only two-thirds of us left. They grabbed those who could not walk and began to throw them overboard, one by one. I shut my eyes and plugged my ears, but could not block out all the shrieking.

Some time after the noise ended, I opened my eyes and looked out at the setting sun. It hovered just over the horizon, casting a long pink path across the still water. We sailed steadily toward the beckoning pink, which hovered forever at arm’s length, always close but never with us.
Come this way
, it seemed to be saying. Far ahead in the direction of the sun, I saw something grey and solid. It was barely visible, but it was there. We were moving toward land.

When they brought us back up on deck the next morning, I could see it again. It was much closer now. Land. Trees. A coastline. And even closer than the coast, there was a small island. I could see it clearly now. No trees, but sand and a huge, square barricade. That was where we were heading. They released our chains. Chekura appeared by my side, with barely more meat on him than a stripped bone.

“I am sorry, Aminata.”

“We have lost our homeland,” I said. “We have lost our people.”

“I am sorry for what I did to you.”

I looked at Chekura blankly. That he had once worked for the man-stealers was the last thing on my mind. “I am cold, and I can’t even pray. Allah doesn’t live here.”

“We still live, Aminata of Bayo,” Chekura said. “We have crossed the water. We have survived.”

And so it happened that the vessel that had so terrified us in the waters near our homeland saved at least some of us from being buried in the deep. We, the survivors of the crossing, clung to the beast that had stolen us away. Not a soul among us had wanted to board that ship, but once out on open waters, we held on for dear life. The ship became an extension of our own rotting bodies. Those who were cut from the heaving animal sank quickly to their deaths, and we who remained attached wilted more slowly as poison festered in our bellies and bowels. We stayed with the
beast until new lands met our feet, and we stumbled down the long planks just before the poison became fatal. Perhaps here in this new land, we would keep living.