Palmares

by Gayl Jones

  She began to laugh. Her teeth were very white and her smile made her somewhat pretty, but the solemn expression she returned to me made her a plain-looking dark yellow skinned woman.

  I looked at her, my expression a curious frown. I could see no one in the back room, although she’d left the door wide open. There was cloth, straw, feathers scattered about on low gray benches, but I could see no one.

  “Where did your brother go?”

  She laughed again and then was as quickly solemn. I stared at her, thinking surely this too was a crazy woman.

  “He’s not my brother. But he appears and disappears when I wish him to. He makes life easier for me sometimes, other times more difficult. But he went for you more easily than I could have, carrying a note from our mistress.”

  I caught the funny way she’d said the last thing and kept my curious expression. I arched an eyebrow and stared at the hair about her shoulders, the thick fuzziness of a black woman, the flatness and looseness of a white’s combined. I thought of a story I’d heard about a magic man in a lamp.

  “How can a real man appear and disappear?” I asked.

  “Did I say he was a real man?”

  Yes, she was certainly crazy, I thought, for I’d surely seen him with my own eyes, although it was true he’d not spoken one word to me. I wondered whether mulattoes were sent to the Negro asylum or whether they had their own asylum, like the whites. She laughed and pushed her long hair up and put the hat back on. She was the man. I began to laugh.

  “So it’s your mistress has only one servant and she uses you for a woman and a man,” I said, feeling that I’d caught the joke and I clapped my hands, though softly, afraid the mistress might hear.

  She was not delighted at all. She frowned and looked more solemn.

  She removed the hat and shook her hair out.

  “I’m your mistress,” she said. “I’m your mistress and the man.”

  I shook my head. “No,” I said. “I don’t like such jokes. You’re a colored woman. There aren’t any colored women mistresses.” Then I was doubtful, as I thought of the strange colored woman I’d seen once before, the captain’s wife. Then I added, “I’ve never had a colored woman for a mistress.”

  “Well, I’m to be,” she said. “At least until the festival is over.”

  I looked down at the hard wooden floor and my bare feet. I still wouldn’t wear the sandals, though I’d not thrown them away, keeping them on the floor when I slept and in my hammock during the day, and listening daily to Mascarenhas talk of the gift of sandals he’d not given as well as the flesh and blood gift that had not been his.

  “Well, they’re having themselves a parade to celebrate their Indian ancestry. Suddenly all the people in this town have got Indian grandmothers and great-grandmothers and so forth and they’re celebrating them. Changing their names to Indian names, but it’s just their Christian names and their mother’s names they’re changing, the rascals, for it’s their father’s name that holds the prestige for them. Do you think they’d change their prestige names?” She asked this question strangely, paused, but didn’t look as if she expected me to answer, then went on, “The only Indian names any of them know are the names for trees and rivers.” She laughed. “So they’re all naming themselves after trees and rivers. And the mayor’s declaring it a special holiday, and there’ll be parades and dances, and as for me, I’ve been commissioned to make special hats and headgear for the devils to look just like those Indians wear . . . And so that’s why I needed extra help.”

  My mouth fell open. I’d never heard brancos referred to as devils and rascals before.

  “Why didn’t you get an Indian woman?” I asked.

  “I’ve got sketches of what I want. I wanted someone who made things, wove baskets and of some ability, and you were the one they sent. Anyway, they kept telling me that their Indian women didn’t make good servants.” She tossed her hat into one of the chairs. “Does it surprise you I’m your mistress and a free colored woman?”

  I nodded. “Does the town know you? Do you fool them too?”

  “The town knows me, and I’ve no problems here. None to speak of. My father was a carpenter and built the church and many of its ornaments. He was a respected man here. Commissioned to build a lot of the better houses.”

  “A free colored man?”

  “No,” she replied, as if angered that I’d think so. “A white man, a Portuguese carpenter, and my mother was his slave.” She sounded impatient. “She was his slave and he freed her and me. There’s a lot we have to do. Come on.”

  She started into the small room and when I didn’t follow her she turned and looked at me meanly.

  “Come on, I said. Do you think that because I’m a colored woman I don’t have the right to give orders or that I won’t punish you if you don’t obey them?” She stood with her arms folded, her large eyes narrow.

  As she turned again to enter the small room, I followed her.

  My first task was to dye all the white hen feathers yellow. The peacock feathers and all the other splendid ones from parrots and macaws I was to leave as they were. I worked at a low bench with bowls of yellow, red, and green dye, while she sat at a high table with parchment spread in front of her on which were certain symbols and designs. I don’t know if they had any meaning; most were abstract, although one looked like a running deer. They were designs she had seen, she explained, from Indian art, sculpture, and headdresses.

  At first she’d said she’d seen them, and then she clarified that she’d copied them from a Jesuit’s library. She explained that she herself had not gone into the library, as that was forbidden, but one of the townsmen had copied it, so I wasn’t certain how authentic any of the designs were, whether or not I knew their meanings. Nor it turned out was she.

  “I hope the rascal copied this one right,” I heard her mumble.

  Mostly I enjoyed my task of dyeing the feathers and of studying the splendid designs in those that nature had painted. When I finished that task she gave me a little brush and wanted me to put certain designs onto bark cloth. She said that it was very simple and I’d be able to do it quite easily. I put a painting on them that looked like circles inside circles and other geometric patterns. Only one pattern looked familiar. It resembled my own eyes that Old Xavier had drawn in the sand.

  One of the things she made was a sad mask with many-colored feathers sticking out all around it, the eyes oval and slanting down, the mouth slanting down at the corners and huge round balls for ears. Then there was a hat with feathers sticking out around the bottom edges as if there was hair hanging down. There were square patterns in the hat, some painted red, some white, and all made out of straw. She showed me how to weave the pattern into an egg-shaped basket, turned upside down. I was to make many of these hats and attach feathers to them while she made the more difficult mask, with the round ears and cylindrical nose.

  On the paper there were animal heads that we’d begin to do tomorrow, she said. My task then would be simply to paint in the little round eyes.

  “It’s very easy,” she said.

  I nodded and continued to weave the upside down baskets. “Will there be any real Indians in the parade?” I asked.

  “No, of course not. They’re all rascals, didn’t I tell you? Just those who claim to have an Indian grandmother or great-grandmother here and there. It’s not the old days anymore. They all think they’ve got to celebrate their Indian ancestry instead of condemn it. Even the priest feels it’s a good thing.”

  A picture of Father Tollinare bending to kiss Mexia’s hand flashed into my mind, then he turned into the skinny man on the skinny horse and carrying an umbrella.

  “Do you have any Indian blood?” I asked, weaving my hat, while watching her attach feathers to one of the bark-cloth masks she’d made.

  “No. Haven’t I enough defect of blood?”

  I looked at her, but she’d spoken casually and automatically, and her face didn’t shift from its solemn
expression, as she carefully attached feathers, and wiped the moisture from her forehead and around her nose. She didn’t even look up at me, or show a familiar smirk to show that we share some feeling. I kept watching her face. Hadn’t she called the brancos rascals? Whose defect of blood?

  “Look what you’re doing.”

  She pulled the work from my hands. Only a bit of it was twisted in the wrong direction, what I’d done in the past few minutes, because I was very used to watching people while I wove. She took the work apart and then threw it back at me.

  “Keep your eyes on what you’re doing,” she said, a deep frown in her forehead, a line that ran in the middle very deep.

  I couldn’t read foreheads and tell fortunes in them like my grandmother and Old Vera could, but I felt it had some meaning, and that she must be a woman of some special destiny. The wife of Martim Aprigio had spoken of freedom, but the woman I stared across at was really a free colored woman, and I couldn’t help trying to take all of her in, her movements, her turns of phrase.

  “Your mother was a slave,” I said suddenly, “before he made her a free woman?”

  She nodded but did not look up at me. “Did he marry her to make her free?”

  I watched the deep line. Finally, she answered, “No. He declared her a free woman. He declared her and his daughter free. You’re a nosey one, eh. He declared us free. I’m his daughter.” She looked at me as if to say that if I didn’t know that, then I couldn’t remember things from one moment to the next.

  I was silent, but there were many questions I wanted to ask her about her father and about her mother and about the town that had accepted her as a free woman, colored and all. We worked a whole day before she got up to bring me victuals—a bowl of cabbage and thick and pasty rice with manioc biscuits. Yes, she brought it to me her own self. She didn’t say get me this and that. And she herself ate the same, except she didn’t give herself manioc biscuits, she ate wheat bread. And I ate in the small room, while she sat in the middle room. She sat facing me, and though I looked into the room at her a great many times, she didn’t look at me once.

  When we finished eating, I told her how strange it was that she hadn’t asked me to prepare the food for herself and me, since it was I who was her servant and she’d rented me.

  She said proudly that she’d only gotten me for one task, to help her with the costumes and that she’d continue to do the rest of her work, for she was a woman of honor.

  “It’s very difficult for a free woman of color in a town such as this one,” she said, as she settled down to continue her work.

  I started to say that this contradicted what she’d said earlier, but I didn’t. I waited for her to continue, but she did not. After some moments I heard a bell ring and she went into the front of the shop. I heard low talking, but couldn’t make out any of the words.

  When she returned she sat down and said bitterly, “One cannot even dance in the streets with a person of color. My costumes will be in the public procession, but I won’t be. Nor did I want to be. I’m mostly a hidden woman, anyway. I’m not a public person. I wouldn’t be a public woman, whether I were white or black. A spirit doesn’t undergo a change of personality with a change of skin. But to know that I couldn’t be even if I chose to. Do you know what I’m saying? There’s a free man of color here who’s written a play for the public procession. They’re making use of his play, but not the man.”

  She wore an expression that made her look ugly, twisting her mouth almost to the corner of her face. Seeing her like that made me want to turn away, but I continued to watch her. She looked as if she were wearing a mask.

  “It’s more difficult for him, because his spirit’s not so private as my own. Should I wear gloves and one of these sad masks and join the procession anyway, Almeyda?”

  I didn’t know she knew my name.

  “Should I make a mask for him, and we both go that way?” She waited as if I’d have an answer, but what could I say?

  “Even the tooth puller’s daughter will dance in the streets next week.” She bowed her head and examined one of the masks. She still wore her own mask. “But I’m not a dancing woman, nor a public one, and I’d be a hidden woman whether white or black.”

  Her expression grew easier, and she took up more bark cloth, and began to create another mask for the people who’d take part in the procession, and who’d changed their names to Indian names for trees and rivers.

  I wondered about the man she’d mentioned and what their relationship was, and if they loved each other. When she’d mentioned what they’d do, I saw a masked man and woman dancing along the streets.

  We worked for several more hours in silence, then she leaned back in her chair and breathed heavily. She lined up several of the sad-faced masks in front of her on the table, then pushing them away, she put her forehead down on the table.

  “Are you married?” I asked.

  She raised her head and straightened her shoulders.

  “No,” she replied, but the tone of her voice sounded proud, even of that. Then she rose slowly and reaching into a corner, she got a folded hammock. “Here, hold this end.”

  I got up and held it. She tied one end to a hooked post sticking out of the wall, then she took the end I was holding and tied it to the hook sticking out from the other wall. Coming back around the table, she almost stumbled, but reaching out, caught the table. I rushed to catch her, but she’d already braced herself against the table. I stood awkwardly, watching her.

  “You sleep in here,” she said, coming around me and standing in the arched doorway between the two rooms.

  She seemed suddenly very nervous and almost afraid of me. “You’ve done very good work,” she said. “I probably won’t need you for more than a couple of days.”

  “Are they paying you for your work?” I asked, not knowing why I asked it.

  She frowned. “No, everyone’s contributing. Everyone who has a business is contributing something.”

  “How much did I cost?”

  “What?”

  “To rent me. How much was I?”

  “That’s none of your concern.”

  I pushed myself up into the hammock, still staring at her. “Don’t look at me with such eyes,” she said.

  I looked away from her. When I looked again the doorway was empty.

  I heard her climb into her own hammock.

  I stayed with her for several more days, attaching feathers to the masks she made and painting eyes on animal heads.

  “What was he like?” I asked her once.

  “Which he?”

  “Your father. The carpenter. And your mother too. What kind of woman?” I finally got my questions out.

  “And am I to tell you? Am I to tell you that?” She looked at me with narrowed eyes. “You’re such a talkative creature, and nosey too. I don’t like talkative creatures with their noses everywhere. If you want to grow to be a good woman, learn to be silent and mind your own business.”

  “I usually don’t talk very much, but I’m always curious.”

  She smiled at me, then she straightened her shoulders. “But with me, eh? You think because you’re looking at your same color, there’s no distance between us, and that I’m the same as you and have no right to demand your respectful silence.”

  She tied the string of her trousers, then she tied her breasts very tightly, and put on a loose white shirt. She put a cream on her lips that took a slightly berry-color away from them, then she pushed her hair up and put the large white hat on, down across her forehead.

  “How do I look?”

  “Like a man,” I said glumly.

  “But I can’t change my voice, there’s nothing I can do to change my voice. So I pretend he’s mute.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t be angry with me. I accept my station the same as I accept my defect of blood.”

  I said nothing. But again she’d spoken without changing her expression or looking at me as if we shared some spe
cial knowledge.

  “I’m no tooth puller’s daughter,” she said, looking perfectly like a man, with the hat making a long shadow on her face. “No, and my father was more than a carpenter. The sculptured figures for the church he made, and many churches in the territory. If he’d stayed in the Old World and hadn’t come to the New, he’d have sculptured different art. You’d have seen his work in galleries. I’m no tooth puller’s daughter. Don’t look at me like that . . . You think because we share the same blood . . .” She looked at me haughtily from under her straw hat. “No, don’t assume that, and even if I were a white woman I’d be the same one you see here, hidden in these rooms. I’d be the same woman you see standing here now. Don’t think we share anything of the spirit because we share the same blood. And don’t ask me again of that man and woman either. Don’t ask me anything about them, because it’s not your place to.”

  I followed her outside and climbed into the back of the wagon. When we returned to Azevedo’s plantation, Old Xavier was sitting on the ground outside his hut with his bottles arranged in front of him. The woman drove the wagon right up to him.

  “Tell Mascarenhas I returned her,” she said in her own woman’s voice.

  Xavier nodded but said nothing. I climbed out of the wagon, but still stood near them.

  “Climb down, Maria,” he said, as if she were someone he’d known a very long time.

  She did as she was told and sat on the ground near him. “Nyanga,” he called her.

  He ran his hand along her forehead and the side of her neck and pushed his hand in the air as if he were shaking something away from her. Then he lifted one of the bottles that lay beside him and handed it to her.

  “That will relieve the ailment,” he said.

  She thanked him and stood up. She looked at me with what seemed to be embarrassment, then she climbed onto the driver’s seat and drove away.

  I kept staring down at Old Xavier, wondering what it was he’d given her.

  “Do you believe it is only bodily ailments that Old Xavier treats?” he inquired. “Don’t you think his territory is also the spirit? Don’t you think he treats ailments of the soul?”