Midwives (fragment)
To the historians, for leaving us out.
Here we are again . . .
bodies present, color in full force,
defying invisibility,
refusing to be erased.
I remember, half-awake, half-asleep, the bonfires during my escape with the Yoruba. We light pyres with pieces of wood and palm trees because it’s cold and too dark at night. We manage to find some caves and hide there until we are sure we have lost our pursuers. Then we light torches, rest, and outline a plan for our return to the continent.
After hours of discussion, we give up. It will never happen. We would need resources—barges, weapons, supplies for the trip, and other necessities we do not have. We decide that dying would be better than bowing to the oppressor. We talk of some of our brothers who were experts in suicide; they had done it, and left instructions as their legacy. I mentioned Undraá, who was forced to cohabit with the white men on the ship that took us from the continent to the island, a woman who knew the sea and its species for she lived among the yellow fisherwomen for many years. She waited until the ship reached open sea, near the sharks’ nests. Then she jumped into the water. The Yoruba mention other brothers. Bguiano, an expert tusk hunter, member of an army of men who continually sharpened their teeth and killed jungle beasts with their bare hands. He taught his skill to a group of newcomers at the plantation where he served. They all made an oath before S.àngó, and could rip out the most visible throbbing vein in someone’s neck with a single bite. We remembered Zeza, spell-caster and brewer of potions, who knew the right combination of every poisonous herb in the region to close one’s eyes and never open them again. And so we went on coming up with ideas, while some dozed off.
I yawn and make an oath to the gods of the wind: if I am ever caught again, the children shall pay.
Petro, the monk, gently taps my face to wake me. His pink, familiar look quenches my thirst. He puts water and medicine, made from painkilling herbs, down my throat to ease the pain in my body. “You were talking in your sleep,” he says, and when the jailer passes nearby, Petro makes as if he is praying in Latin with his rosary beads. He then combines compound syllables to explain to me that I am not an animal. Mbwa / ‘m.bwa / dog; tembo / elefant / thembo / elefante; ne.nda / not / no; you / toi. The rebellious empathy in his voice that makes me believe him, even feel sorry for him. I mumble in French, and he freezes, surprised at my language proficiency. I repeat the phrase in Castilian Spanish and Igbo. Petro silences my mouth with this hand, so I’ll not be found out. The guards are coming. They feed the other two women in my cell leftovers from the neighboring plantations; nothing for me. According to the public bulletin boards, I’ve been declared a Seditious and Subversive Black Woman, identified by a P-shaped mark made near my eye with a branding iron, a reward offered for my capture. When they leave, Petro takes out some casaba he had concealed, and puts it in my mouth, inviting me to chew it slowly, lest I choke. The other women share their water with me. Everything tastes like the candy made in the valley near our native river during the ceremony of masks.
With a clicking similar to tribal musical laments, fricative and guttural sounds, aspirated possessives, stuttering, short consonants, long vowels, Petro ensures me that he will keep my secret. All he wants is “to document the violence spreading all over humankind,” he explains, “all this bestiality. There are friars in other islands chronicling these events; I want to tell your story. We act like friends to the crown, but it is not so. I swear I won’t bring you any trouble.”
“Do you swear it to your god?” I demand, and when he says that he does, I rebuke him: “Your god has no power; he is lazy, weak, useless. How can he let this happen?”
Petro nods and lowers his head in shame. He asks me who my gods are, if I believe in Babalú-ayé, Oiá, Obàtálá . . .
“I believe in none of them,” and tears spring from my eyes. “They all abandoned us.”
I swear I would rather die, Fray Petro, than be used as an animal. I swear that I wanted to kill them all, Father. Nous allons reproduire une armeé, kite a kwanza yon lame. That is what I set out to do, what we women set out to do, and we spread the word through the beating of our drums. Hebu kuzaliana jeshi. We repeated it at music gatherings to the Wolof, Tuareg, Bakongo, Malimbo, and Egba. The news continued to spread in chant to the Balimbe, Ovimbundu, and the rest. Those of us from Congo, from Ibibio, from Seke or Cabinda, all of us women responded. Hagámonos un ejército. Let us breed an army.
The problem for those who oppress, Fray Petro, is that they underestimate the oppressed. I always take note of vitality or exhaustion on the faces of those who enter a woman without her consent. In my village, if something like that were to happen, the transgressors would be punished and fined. If a man raped a woman, he must pay with his possessions. And if he had none, he must pay by the chopping off, in cold blood, of an appendage—an arm, a hand, a foot, an ear, even the nose. We women were encouraged to defend ourselves, to hit back, bite, and tear out. Things have changed since Blacks started kidnapping other Blacks and selling us to the Portuguese or other whites, to ship us away. Now we are discouraged from defending ourselves because we belong to a master. Oppressors have such liberties, yet they underestimate us.
I always take note of vitality or exhaustion on the faces of those who enter a woman without her consent, Fray Petro. One afternoon, I am confronted with the face of an unknown night watchman, overcome with ecstasy just after forcing himself onto me. He didn’t even care that Oshun’s blood was running down my thighs on one of my lunar days. He closed his eyes for a second, exhausted. He tilted his head back, engulfed by the pleasure of his ejaculation, distracted. It only took a second to realize that he was alone . . . I bit him. I closed my teeth on his glans like a rabid dog. At first he tried to hit me. He fell, disoriented and in great pain. While he grabbed himself, moaning on the floor, I seized the keys from his pants, unbolted the cage, locked it behind me. I stopped at each cell, one by one, freeing ladinos, runaways, and native slaves. And the midwives, my sisters in battle.
Witch doctor, herbalist, bone healer, midwife. I have done every task of a domestic slave to gain access to white newborns. Following the instructions of a great Black witch stationed at a hacienda belonging to the Dominican cathedral Porta Coeli, I have blessed them with the sign of the cross and treated them for bellyaches. I smear my hands with concoctions and place anesthetic herbs on their gums when they are teething. I’ve had them suck on my breast until milk comes out, thus becoming their nursemaid. I read them stories; I untangle their hair with silver combs; I fluff skirts for rich girls and pants for the little masters. I cook for them and prepare their teas.
Gradually I gain their trust. We all do the same; we gain their trust gradually. Then I start helping newcomer Black slaves to bring their children into the world. Black women are the hardest to tame, say the whites. In essence, I am one of them, but I behave like a ladina, a native speaker. I speak Spanish and wear petticoats even when I work in the fields; I kneel at the right moment during mass, and at processions for imaginary Catholic virgins. No one knows I speak Hausa and Fulani, or that I stand behind walls and listen to the pronunciation of my master and his visitors from the militia, and later practise it when I’m alone.
On the twentieth day of my fifth imprisonment, I am taken from my cell for the physical punishment to be carried out in accordance with my sentence. The plantation’s book lists my crimes: disobedience, defiance, insolence, vagrancy, inciting rebellion, and, finally, escaping—the worst crime of all. A mestizo woman ties my hands behind my back. She pushes me. She spits on me. The executioner says I belong to an animal race, soulless and heartless. A priest recites the prayers they have taught us so selflessly at our masters’ homes. He orders me in Spanish to repeat after him. At first, I don’t comply, until the lashing begins.
I remember the village shaman chanting to summon protection from pain, and I imagine that reciting “The Lord’s Prayer�
�� may do the same. In a final attempt at resistance, I manage to untie my legs and crawl, hands bound. The guards stop me and hit me harder, then ask permission to repeat the flagellation. But a high official will not let them, and they stop.
On the way back to the dungeon, I recognize Petro walking beside me. He extends his hand towards me, and I give him mine. I hear I’ve been sentenced to death by hanging. Then I faint.
On the day my sentence is to be carried out, someone comes to shave my head. Petro asks permission from his monastery to perform the last rites. They at least let him join the procession escorting me to the gallows where the noose awaits.
Petro touches my face and repeats the confession ritual: “Hail Mary, full of grace . . .”
“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned,” I say.
“Tell me your sins, child.”
I close my eyes, but there are no tears. “I have none!” I reply.
Petro hugs me, improvises some sort of sign of the cross, and tries to keep me on my feet. Everyone is watching—lieutenants, sea captains, plantation owners and their wives, pubescent children. A dozen Black midwives accused for the first or second time have been escorted by their jailers who are hoping to teach them a lesson through my plight. Owners who lost merchandise because of me applaud.
“Ndizi, what did you do to them?” Petro asks.
“It’s my secret under seal of confession, Father,” I tell him. “Forgive me.”
And he insists, “What must I forgive?”
Silence.
Then a revelation. In a low voice, in our dialect—Fray Petro’s and mine—I tell him:
“I drown their babies in the placenta bucket, Father. I press my hands into their little black throats and asphyxiate them. Or I suffocate them with their own umbilical cords, sometimes even before they come out of the womb. The mothers either don’t notice or wish it so . . . have requested it, begged for it in a tongue unknown to the whites. The act can be quite subtle and seems normal to the keeper who is meant to ensure the survival of newborn future slaves. We all outwit him. If I can’t do it at birth, I later feed them fruit tainted by the blood of women infected with tetanus from their chains. Or I collect diarrhea from dysentery outbreaks and mix it with puréed meals. Sometimes I smear my breast with the concoction and then breastfeed them. Or I put dry casaba close to their tonsils to block their breathing. I am not the only one. Many follow me. We have bred an army.”
More silence.
I make a mental account of forgotten words. I repeat their sound. I articulate by touching the back of my tongue with the back of my soft palate. Suddenly there is narrowness in my air passages. Air does not pass. I feel a strong radiance at my uvula. I am a vibratory contraction. I am a choking pharynx—moon, energy, courage, eternity.
The last thing I recognize is Fray Petro’s pink eyes.
Mildred K. Barya
Born in Uganda, she has authored three poetry books: Give Me Room to Move My Feet (2009), The Price of Memory After the Tsunami (2006) and Men Love Chocolates but They Don’t Say (2002). She has also published prose, poems or hybrids in Tin House, Poets.org, Asymptote, Prairie Schooner, Per Contra, Northeast Review and Poetry Quarterly. She holds a PhD in English from the University of Denver, Colorado, an MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, New York, and a BA in Literature from Makerere University, Uganda. She is a board member of the African Writers Trust (AWT). She teaches creative writing and literature at the University of North Carolina-Asheville.
Black Stone
Nyana Promise leans against the camp wall a few feet away from the maimed old women. Two lines of tears trek down her young face and she licks them when they arrive above her lips. She makes no sound. But there she is with wet eyes and a fisted hand concealing a black stone.
Other children do not call Nyana by name. They know her as the lone one, like the single mushroom growing behind an amputated tree. Women are afraid to use the mushroom for soup because mushrooms are supposed to grow in clusters.
Nyana goes to the children, thinking she should say goodbye. She wants to die. As usual, little Margo’s nose is running. Her navy-blue dress is clean but probably will not survive three more washings. Nyana lifts the hem and cleans up Margo’s nose. Margo thanks her and Nyana wants to tell her she can do it herself, it takes no effort, but she says nothing. Besides it’s not even true; everything requires effort.
The kid called James Bond makes Nyana smile. He’s always angry; his lips permanently in a pout, his eyes two red chilies. Nyana offers him a high-five and the kid frowns. On her way out she sees Kizito slumped in the folding chair, brooding. She searches for what to say. What eventually comes out of her mouth is a command: “Don’t tell,” then she walks away.
She knows she’s breaking an unspoken rule; she’s not supposed to walk alone but she couldn’t care less. She imagines it would be a relief if the rebels killed her. She knows that when you die you die. Living is the tough part and her fear of getting kidnapped is worse than the fear of death. Because then she’d have to go on living. In the doorway is Hillary, her hands up against the frame. She is said to be the oldest but she doesn’t look twelve years old. Obviously stunted, her stomach is big like a pregnant woman’s, and Nyana thinks it’s full of worms.
“Move,” Nyana says.
Hillary drags her feet.
The women see Nyana leaving but they don’t restrain her. There she goes again, is all they say to let the one who can’t see know. Nyana walks down a short bend that connects to a broader, straight path. She arrives at a silent stream tucked away in the bush. She halts, then crouches abruptly and falls flat on her stomach. A group of armed men in military fatigues treads past her. Minutes later she rises to her feet but is uncertain whether to proceed to Gulu town or walk back to the camp. Two steps forward she hears: Don’t.
Back at the camp, James Bond is missing, and one of the old women, Tasha, is on the ground writhing, her right hand holding back her intestines, trying to stop them from spilling and mixing with dirt. Her blood flows and merges with the dark soils of Acholi.
At night, Nyana dreams that Kony, the rebel leader himself, is trying to wrench the stone from her fist.
“Bastard,” she screams. She kicks fiercely and lands on the floor.
“Nyana?” Modesta, the eyeless one, whispers and holds her. Nyana’s back is hot with sweat. Nyana stares. She wants to know how the eyeless one has found her. How she can tell Nyana from the other children. Nyana peers into the empty sockets. She relaxes her tightened fingers and uncurls them.
“This is all I have of my people,” she says of the small black stone, and guides the old woman’s fingers to feel it.
“It’s all right,” the old woman says. She tilts her hand and closes Nyana’s palm over the stone. “Nobody is going to take away your people. They’re here and here,” she says, touching Nyana’s chest and forehead.
Nyana smiles.
“Try and sleep some more,” Modesta says, helps Nyana back to bed and gently tucks her in.
Nyana sleeps coiled like a fetus in the womb.
At 4 a.m, there’re more screams from the little ones. Modesta tiptoes to the makeshift kitchen to boil some tea. “Once it starts it starts,” she says to Estelli, her colleague who lost her legs.
“Hmn, hmn,” Estelli says, and hobbles along.
The screams have become a routine, a signal to start the fire and make tea. The two women fill small plastic cups and put them on a basket tray. Modesta carries the tray with Estelli in tow. Together they pass out cup after cup of lemongrass tea mixed with honey and chamomile flowers.
Modesta lost her home and eyes the same afternoon that Nyana’s home was torched. Nyana returned from school and found their small house burnt to ashes. She tried to think she was in the wrong place, but an old man from the village called her name and told her the family line now rested with her.
“May the ancestors be kind to you. You’re the only one left.”
Nyana started to rake through the ashes, looking for remains of her family.
“You’re wasting time, child. Come with me and I’ll take you to a place where there are others like you.”
Nyana continued rummaging, using both her hands and feet. She stopped when her left foot came into contact with a hard substance. It looked like a bead her mother wore, the one that her father had given her when she delivered the baby boy. The bead, which Olga loved so much that her mother had made her a promise that when she grew older and passed her primary leaving exams, the bead would go to her. Nyana picked it up. It had been green, now it was a black stone.
“It’s getting dark and we have a long way to walk,” the old man said.
Nyana did not move. The old man moved.
“Come,” he pulled her gently and she followed.
When morning breaks, the women and children silently dig a grave and bury Tasha, whose intestines refused to go back inside, and whose blood chose the land.
Days later, Modesta and Estelli are seated on the large stones in the compound having a conversation. Their heads are covered with bright headscarves; gifts from the outside world. Keeping their voices low, they can’t help wondering how Nyana stays out of harm’s way when she’s clearly courting danger.
“That girl will bring us trouble,” Estelli says.
“We are like family,” Modesta says. “She wouldn’t betray us.”
“I don’t trust what I see.”
Nyana walks towards them and stretches out her hand to touch Modesta’s scarf. The woman ducks her head, making Estelli laugh.
Nyana murmurs, “How does she know what I’m about to do?”
“Senses,” Estelli says. “Sometimes I walk but I have no legs, you see.”
Nyana is about to sit when she smells danger close by. First there’s a cry, then she sees red and yellow flames, a man on fire, running.
“Everyone take cover!” she shouts.
Modesta lies on her stomach begging Mother Earth for protection. Nyana leans against the mud wall, visible. She listens to the gunfire that’s getting closer and more strident. This is it, she says to herself, looks around and notices the grass is not even tall enough to cover her people, and the small cactuses would not shield a rat. But the women and children keep their bodies to the ground, hugging Earth and praying to the all-knowing Protector to have mercy and preserve their lives.
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