The Ten Incarnations of Adam Avatar (39 page)

The hangings was the better fate. To get whip is defeat, discouragement. But to get hang, though first a more harsh warning, reverse when I revisit alive. Though the planters like to punish, they hesitate to kill. Especially women. They want to rouse the slave fear, but fear to raise the slave rage. That is why I get hang but rarely. That, and because hanging is a unpleasant fate. The eyes does bulge like if dey want pop out you head, the bowels does let go, the skull does feel like it want to burst, and the neck could stretch like tar. No wonder the whitepeople like this kind a execution! Death I doan mind, but dying always awful. But the gods protecting me. They does visit me in mi lean-to or walk with me as I walk the rutted roads. Damballa always travelling with me, with im shaven head and feet that doan touch the ground. When I walk in rain and wind, Shango does come and dance with me and I does roar back in delight when im speaks in im thunder voice. Ogun does come and we does fight. He does wear a tunic ah rusty iron and polish copper bands, and im limbs make ah gleaming black iron. He did teach me how to be a warrior. He ent giving no quarter, and though I have knife or sword or even gun, and im only have im bare hands, im always beat me. Afterwards, Atabale comes with his crown ah aloes and soothes mi wounds. Atabele is Ogun next face, for Ogun merciful: he never pull the silver spike from im belt. Nobody, not even me, can heal after getting wound by Ogun spike. But im doan want to kill me, im want me to be African queen, like Cleopatra.

The whitepeople ghosts inside me frighten too bad a mi African gods. Every time a god visit I does hear them bawlin inside mi head. If they coulda, they woulda run away like agouti. Just like whitepeople, to be frighten ah real gods. I does ask Oludumare to get rid ah them, because now I know all they know. But is like they part ah me. I suppose I go have to live with it. Oludumare know best. But is hard, is hard, but black woman always have it hard. I wish I could get rid ah that planter daughter, though, abort she from mi insides like a monster child. Is she who nearly make mi betray mi cause. I go tell you how.

When I did now start preaching bout freedom, it had a boy name James used to come by. Pretty like pretty self – coffee complexion, curly curly hair, and sea-grey eyes that look straight in my green ones. I wouldn lie – I fall in love with im one time. But I was young, eh, and I didn really know miself and what I stand for yet. So I give im mi heart and mi body. Im was the first man I sex with. But I didn give im mi soul – that belong to Oludumare. But I feel was the whitegirl soul that really cause me to feel like I was in love with im, because I know miself now, and Legba Falunbi could never love any man who wasn a true true African man. James was a house nigger, a butler, and im did earn money making wood carvings of animals and people and what im say was African gods. Im master, who was also im father I feel, used to sell these carvings for im and give im some ah the money. Im did make lil statue for me, and I suppose it was good for somebody who doan have no true true African spirit.

James did love me back, so far as somebody like that could love anybody. But im didn believe in fighting for freedom, though im say im believe in freedom. That is how I shoulda know im was just a hollow log. Im say we couldn fight the planters, because them have guns. Im say the best way to fight was to buy freedom, and for free Negroes to show how they could be hard-working and polite and not a threat. Pah! ‘Not a threat.' The whiteman woulda never give we freedom unless we show im we was damn well a most dangerous threat! But James didn agree. That would just make the planters more determined to keep us enslaved, he say. He used to talk pretty like he look. He said it was up to free Negroes to be better Christians than the whiteman, to get an education to show he could be as civilized as the whiteman, to write letters and articles to demonstrate his intelligence and, more importantly, to show that freedom was right both morally and economically.

I tell James that im was a dreamer, imagining words go be better than guns. And I shoulda know im was a traitor from then self. But I was young and I did think I was in love.

We went we different ways when James save enough money to buy im freedom. Im come to me that say and show me im paper and say im wanted to marry me. That was when I get vex. Just two weeks before, a African chief who used to come regular to mi
adaes
try to take over the whole island. Im name was Tacky and im and some Ashanti slaves take over a fort and get guns. Hundreds a slaves join up, and they mighta succeed if a traitor slave didn alert the militia. (I find out who im was and went into im shack three nights later and knife im in im bed.) Most of the slaves retreat, but Tacky and the Ashantis continue fighting till the Maroons track them down and kill them.

So they fail. But, for the first time, I truly feel I could make a difference. And then James come offering me a peaceful life, telling me to get marry in front im whiteman god. I cuss im black, white and blue, telling im how all he good for was to lick the whiteman shoe till it shine, suck he wife cunt till she pee, lick the shit off the whiteman asshole and so on and im went away with a face like thunder. Maybe I was really vex at that traitorous slave and at the Maroons. Ashantis in other parts of the island rebel too. I join them. I remember running with mi brother warriors, making screams that would stop the whiteman blood in im veins. Some of we had muskets, most had hoe and cutlass. I carry a knife. I leap like a lioness on the whitemen, opening their throats like oysters, seeing their cruel eyes roll up dead, their faces lose meaning. I shriek in triumph, as mi African warriors pour past me in a victory tide, flames ah the Great House roaring in chorus. Whitemen and whitewomen and whitechirren killed like how they kill we, kill by the tools they enslave we with, cutlass to cut arse, hoes for the whores, picks for the piccaninnies. But then come the bark ah the militia guns, the wounded grunts ah the warriors, the cannon booming, dirt jumping high and a human hand spinning over mi head like a weird bird. The soldiers advancing, red uniforms with gold buttons so organize; kneel and shoot, kneel and shoot. Our warriors, slaves again, fleeing in a mad rout. But some remember Africa, and attack the soldiers head on, with only cutlass. They are cut down. Black bodies lie on the ground like harvest cane. Bullets did tear through mi arm, mi thigh, mi throat. I did join mi brothers on the dead and bloody earth.

Was months before the unrest really stop. By that time, hundreds ah Africans was dead, but only sixty or so whitemen. I miself get shot and kill plenty times.

James never fight for freedom. I never see im again. I hear how im write a book and whitepeople bring im to England to talk. That is when I know for sure im was a traitor to im people, because whitepeople would never respect any nigger who wasn telling them anything they didn want to hear.

But is the whitegirl inside me who make me take so long to see all this. She with all she nice ideas about courting and pretty clothes and styling she hair, while all the time she a blasted half-nigger, a disgrace to mi race. I hate the whitepeople, but I hate the half-white people more. Them so does dilute we pure African blood, and some a them feel they white like white self. Some a them even getting inheritance and owning they own plantation. See why I hate them! They does make mi people feel they could get freedom without fighting. Plenty times I meet slaves who working outside the plantation, selling dey produce or catching fish, or doing masonry or carpentry or boiling, if they have them skills. And why? To save up money to buy dey freedom! But that is how nearly all them mulattos get born in the first place: with African women sleeping with whiteman and getting coin. You cant win your freedom like that. No African could be free if even one African in chains! But not all mi people understand that.

So I wiser now. I does temper mi words, so I doan raise wordless tempers. It have plenty fear in mi people, and fear does lead to anger. Those who doan have words could only lash out. But they cant lash out at the source ah dey fear, the whitepeople, so it easier to turn dey anger on me. So I choose mi words. I doan speak about revolt too soon. At first, I doan speak about it at all. I tell them I am Ifa, a oracle, and I hold dey hands and tell them what kind a person they are. Not a difficult task: no slave too different from any other, and what difference it have obvious. A person character does get stamp on dey face, reveal in dey walk, and the crook in a finger. Easy, too, to see the callus palm ah the field slave, the burn forearm of the boilerman, the thick fingers ah the ropemaker, the powerful chest ah the blacksmith, the lighter complexion ah the house nigger. Easier even with the women: who have a man, who doan have, who fucks with the whiteman, who has lost children in the womb or in the auction, who did kill she babies at birth.

I pray to Babaloawo the Diviner, doing the
itan
, throwing the bones to tell them if they lucky – easy: no slave lucky save in small things. I give them potions to heal dey ills or to lend vigour in sexing: easy – belief is the best healer, and the best aphrodisiac. I commune with the dead – also easy: the dead even more alike than the living. I commune with the
egungun
– easiest of all: mi people have forgotten dey ancestors.

They ask me most to tell them what they already know: about theyself. They ask me least to tell them what they need most to know: the wisdom a we ancestors. And many ask me for curses – not against the whiteman, but against one another: that one who sex with she man, the other who leave the tools in the rain and make im get put in the stocks, this one who steal the fish from im fishpots, that one who get more than she share a beans by cosying up to the overseer.

But I never give curses, and I always tell them who want them that we cant curse one another if we are to be free. Is only then that they look upon me with doubt.
What manner ah obeah women doan grant curses?
them ask. But that belief is not we belief, but the whiteman, who know about we magic. He is clever, the whiteman, for im know that to truly defeat a people you must cut them off from dey gods. So im says the obeah is evil. But for us spiritual evil doan exist. Evil is live. There is kin, and them who ignore dey kin – them evil. There is the tribe, and them people who reject the tribe's ways – them evil. There is hunting, and them who kill without respect for the animal spirit invite evil. There is the chief and the tribal elders, and them who disrespect the chief and the elders acting evil. And there are the ancestors, and them who disrespect dey ancestors guilty ah great great evil.

I trying to save mi people from evil. They come to me for power, which all people want. By telling them good things about theyselves, by prophesying lucky things for them, they feel they taking control. But they doan have no control: them is chattel. All I really offering is solace; but solace is no light thing for a slave.

Once I give solace, I begin mi real work. I tell them: ‘The whiteman says his god is good, but im does great wickedness in He name.' I tell them: ‘The whiteman god is a dog, but his devil is lived.' On some plantations, mi people think they's get treat good. I say: ‘The well-treated slave gets fed in a month what his master eats in a day, don't get whip too often, gets a day off for the birth of the whiteman god's son.' Mi words lash like whips, but the slave who think im get good treatment hard to talk to. I prefer the plantations where the master stingy with clothes, where the food sour, where the overseer's hand free with the cat o' nine tails, where they quick to put a rude slave in the stocks daubed with molasses to attract the stinging flies, where the whitemen hot to fuck the newly-ripened slavegirls. That slave does respond to mi words. I does only tell him what im already know, quickening the rage already in im heart. Often times, I doan even need to stay. The powdered glass gets into the master's biscuits, or the poison in im wine, or the slaves break into the tool shed one dark night and attack. But when I do stay, I lead such attacks myself, armed with machete or sword. I scorn guns, and mi followers does attack more savagely when they see mi own savagery. Most times, we can't get muskets anyway.

For that reason, the uprisings mostly fail. We have more numbers than the whitemen, we fighting for freedom while they fighting for possessions, we good and they wicked. But the whitemen have guns and we do not. The gods did not give us guns.

I is mi people only real weapon. I can put curses on the white man – the black hen with slitted throat at im front door. A dead man wrinkle hand under im bed. A frog with mouth nail shut in im kitchen. The whiteman God avails him not then – im as fearful ah we gods as we are ah his. So im rage at mi portents and whip he slaves. I could put these curses only when the slaves doan fear the master's rage, which is rare. When the slaves already brave enough to ask for obeah on the master, they brave enough to revolt. I did lead in some a these, and I did get strike down by the whitemen's guns. Always I recover. I show mi people how mi wounds close, I tell them how the whiteman weapons cant kill me. I did think that showing the gods' power would rally them behind me. But not so. I cant be everywhere. It have many plantations and many islands. And mi people say, ‘You cant get kill, but what about we?' I tell them that everyone have two souls, one that is them and one that belong to the gods and that neither soul could ever die. But some people just think that I refusing to share the secrets of mi power. They ask why did the gods not give them all strength like mines, if the gods really want them to be free? But the power is mi own, born to me. I doan know how to share it, and I doan know the minds of the gods. I have tried to pass spells so mi people could heal like me. I even give them potions made from mi blood and the milk ah goats. But they fall in battle nonetheless, and I have no power of
orisha
so they stay dead. Was a long time before the people trust me again, and I learn never to promise immortality, at least not in this world.

All I could truly share is mi inside knowledge ah the whiteman. I tell them the whiteman is no more than we. I tell them that im fraid we black strength, we black power, same way he fraid the black night. I tell them we can defeat him. I know all this because all the ghosts in me show me is so. And I sure none a them would want to have six souls, as I do. I cant even sleep good at night, always have to remember myself by day, with their voices whispering constantly in mi head. I tell mi people that to know your enemy is the best weapon, better even than invulnerability. They should be glad for dey two natural souls. But they cant believe me when I say this, for all they know is that the whitepeople have guns and we doan have guns.