by Gayl Jones
I said nothing, because that was the answer I’d given myself, that this time he’d given a remedy for the soul.
Suddenly my legs began to tremble and I fell to the ground in front of him. I felt as though I couldn’t move, felt as if I’d been drugged. I saw him placing flowers and beads on the ground in front of me.
“Accept these offerings and take them to your jeweled home in the sea.”
He kept watching me, although I couldn’t straighten or stand. I stared into his copper-brown eyes. The sky behind him looked as if it were lit by candles. Then he held large banana leaves and began to rub them all over my face and body.
“Are you an African woman?” he asked.
“I am the granddaughter of an African,” I replied.
“You are the same as any woman except when the spirit of one of the gods enters. But tell me, are you an informer? Are you a spy who has been sent here to ferret out the hiding place of these renegades?”
I answered him as if I knew exactly what he was saying and why and said, “No.”
“You are not?”
“No.”
“Well, they hung him and put his head on a pole as a warning to the other rebels. That he is no immortal man.”
“Oh, yes, he is immortal, as his soul has come into all of us.”
“Are you a woman alone?”
“Yes, in the beginning. They attacked a small town and then the plantation and declared us free.”
“Were you afraid?”
“Yes, but I trust fear. No one has the right to determine the liberty of others. To make them free or to keep them from freedom.”
“Are you any other woman?”
“I’m Almeyda.”
Then the Indian woman was standing there, rising above me, candles in the sky behind her.
“The whole right side of her face looks swollen. May I lift her up?”
“No.”
“Do you think it’s erysipelas?”
“No.”
“May I lift her up?”
“Where?”
“Into my bosom. She sought protection in an Indian village, but the Indians themselves captured her.”
“Was it this one?”
“Perhaps this one.”
“No, they were protecting us,” I said. “I was riding on his shoulders. His helmet was made of anteater’s skin.”
Xavier kept rubbing the banana leaves all over my face and body, and then he lifted cassava branches, scraping them all over me.
“Is it an ailment of the spirit or of the soul?” asked the Indian woman. “He gave her biscuits and a pair of shoes and so she informed on the hiding place of the rebels.”
“No!” I shouted. “No!”
Xavier kept scraping the cassava branches up and down my back and thighs, my whole body twisted, my face turned up to him.
“Did you see her in the Holy Week procession?”
“Yes, and they don’t allow colored women.”
“It’s difficult for a colored woman to live in such a town,” I said.
“Do you trust fear?”
“Yes.”
“Did you make a mask?”
“I put feathers along the edges of them.”
“Did you see the man who came to visit me? He’s the godfather of my child.”
“Father?”
“Godfather.”
“Barbacoeba’s his name. He came first and stayed with the wife of Martim Aprigio and then he saw me and knelt down and said he’d never seen such a beautiful woman. He didn’t know where such beautiful women came from in such a country. Aren’t you the enchanted Mooress, your lips tinted with berries, the blue of the sky on your eyelids?”
I couldn’t tell if I was the one speaking or the Indian woman. “Lips tinted with blood?” asked Xavier.
“It’s not only my people who’ve made such sacrifices or have come into strange lands to live off the flesh and blood of others. Oh, it’s the gods who rest on the old stone and know everything. I’m a silent woman in the worst country. Why does she look at me with such eyes?”
“Why does she look at us with such eyes?” Xavier repeated. “Has she come to solve the mystery of this place?”
“Only the gods rest on the stones and know everything. You have said it.”
“Look how her shoes are wide open.”
“I’m not wearing any.”
“Why does she look at us so?”
“Yemanja? Is this the goddess Yemanja?”
“I’m Almeyda. Didn’t I say so?”
“Have you shown her how to rise up out of her body? Have you presented her with a supernatural gift?”
“It’s only the gods who sit on the stones and know everything.”
He kept rubbing cassava branches on me, till the leaves had broken off, then he lay the naked branches on the ground beside me. My body sore, and blood raised in places.
“Any man can raise blood,” said the Indian woman. “But have you shown her the other?”
Xavier placed an amulet around my neck, an amulet made of seeds and trumpet shells. He rubbed an oil over my arms and thighs and the wounds healed. What was left, he lifted my head and made me drink. I rose into the sky, floating above the candles. Then when I was back beside them lying on the banana and cassava leaves, they lifted me and carried me into the long hut where the women were and lay me on my hammock. They carried me easily, for I was very light.
“The next time I come I’ll come in a form that will please you,” he said, and he bent and kissed my mouth.
Xavier and the Indian woman walked away. I lay there. Then the old woman Vera was standing silent above me. I tried to raise up, but couldn’t. Though the scratches on my body were healed, I could still feel the sting of them.
“They say that we’re rivals but we’re not,” she confided. “We work together.”
I said nothing.
“He won’t keep you very long now,” she said.
“Who?”
She laughed hard.
“Azevedo,” she said. “Does anyone else make such a decision here?”
I still couldn’t move and stared up at her. Then I asked, “Why won’t he keep me?”
“Because he’s afraid of what you know, afraid of what you saw, afraid you’ll tell me. He’s afraid of me knowing it. It’s less you than me he fears.”
Her eyes got larger, rounder. She had a habit of widening her eyes at certain times when she spoke to someone. And when she did it, it was like a light, a spark, or a spirit jumped out from them. Now the light jumped out. I shut my eyes to avoid her penetrating stare.
“But didn’t you already see?” I asked.
“Yes, I see.” I could still feel her above me. “He thinks I don’t see what he’s come to, that I don’t know. He thinks only he sees this old woman, peeking out of his slit. He thinks I can’t see the man that’s in that covered hammock. Every way he hides himself from me, but do you think I can’t see?”
I wanted to see the eyes of the woman now, but dared not open my eyes to look at her. She began to laugh again, but then grew very silent.
“He thinks you’ll repeat what he said of me. Does he fear that? As if I couldn’t repeat him word for word and sentence by sentence, nor tell you every rise and fall of his voice. Every rise and fall of his voice. He thinks I didn’t see that? He thinks I can’t see him now, eh? He’s never hidden from this woman. No. I see what you saw with your own eyes that day, and more than you saw. Do you hear me? I see what you saw with your own eyes and more. Strange symbols he’d put on paper and say that was his science. Strange symbols I’d write on the ground, and say that was mine. Should I tell you my story? Should I make my case?”
I opened my eyes and looked at her.
“He says I’m one of the witches they brought from Africa, but I won’t claim anything. Should I say I wasn’t even there when the fire started?
“Well, I was healing someone, burning coca leaves to rid a young girl of demons, rubbin
g ash on her eyelids. He claimed he saw me running away from the house. Others claimed they saw me too. But wasn’t I there, forcing the young girl to stare into the fire?”
I nodded.
“Telling her she was a new woman, telling her over and over again she was not the same, burning coca leaves, forcing the girl to be a new woman. Wasn’t I curing someone?”
I nodded again.
“But he says he saw me and that I leaped into the air and ran as fast as a serpent. And how could I be two places at one time? How could I be curing that girl and destroying him in his house at the same time? Didn’t the girl see me? Didn’t I force the smoke into her nostrils and paint her eyelids? So I’m one of the witches that came from Africa, eh, but didn’t I cure that girl?”
I nodded yet again.
“Didn’t I share some of the knowledge of the heavens with her? How, then, can I be two places at one time?”
Did I sleep? I opened my eyes and she was not there but there was the smell of burning coca leaves.
The Shoemaker and the Sadism of the Senhora
DID YOU RENT ME OR BUY ME?” I dared to ask the silent Sobrieski.
He said nothing as we walked across a banana grove toward a long squat building. Near it under palm trees were three slave huts, smaller and not as well constructed as the ones on Azevedo’s plantation—though this could not rightly be called a plantation.
“I have only two other slaves,” he said, though it did not seem as if he were speaking to me, but I walked slightly behind him and so could not see his eyes.
“I work hard like a slave myself,” he said.
He certainly dressed like one, I was thinking. I waited for him to go on talking but he said nothing.
As we drew near the buildings, I thought he would point to one of the huts for me to enter, but instead he kept walking and I followed him into the back doorway of the long squat building—that I later learned was both his house and workshop. As soon as we got inside I saw two slaves sitting at a long wooden table covered with straps of leather. Lined along the walls were sandals and high top European shoes. One of the men, who was sewing leather into a cylindrical shape looked up at me. The other, who was pounding leather and had sandals piled up to the side of him, did not. In one corner were piled saddlebags, but I saw only one saddle, a very expensive-looking one among the rows of shoes.
Sobrieski went inside, but I stayed in the doorway. “Sit down,” he said.
“Capao, show her how to string the sandals,” he said to the man who was pounding leather.
Capao looked at me grimly and stopped what he was doing. I sat down in one of the chairs near him, but not very close. “Sit here,” Capao said.
I sat closer. Sobrieski left the workshop and disappeared into the next room.
Capao took a flat piece of leather and a long strap. Holes were already in the leather, so I did not have to worry about that.
“Here and here and here,” he said simply, showing me what to do, then tying the end of the strap, and pulling it tightly in his teeth.
“Do you see how to do it?” he asked.
I nodded. He handed the other one to me, then watched as I made his movements, though not so quickly as he did, and finished by pulling the string between my teeth, except that it felt that my teeth also were being pulled, as I was not used to using them in labors.
He laughed.
“What?” I asked.
“You squinch up your face so. You put all your face into it.”
“There,” I said, putting it down.
“Good,” he said, pushing a pile of flat bottoms of different shapes and sizes over to me, and a bundle of straps. “That is your job now.”
He went back to his pounding and stretching leather.
I did another one. At the end of several, my teeth felt as if they were out of my mouth. I told him so.
He handed me a metal clamp. “Here, put it in here.” Then he pulled on it.
“Better?” he asked. I nodded.
He went back to his work.
“Am I being rented or did he buy me?” I asked Capao.
“How should I know? I am a slave the same as you. Do you think the master shares his business transactions with me?”
“Well, do you know how long I will be here?”
“Forever? And what business would it be of yours or mine?”
I started to say something, but he rapped the table in front of me.
“He likes silence from his workers. Do you want to get in trouble your first day?”
I said nothing. I pulled one of the flat soles toward me and strung it.
After I had completed those, he tossed them into a corner, and showed me the proper stitching for more intricate looking shoes.
“You learn very quickly,” he said.
I pricked my finger and there was a bloodstain on the leather. I wiped it away on the back of my hand. There were footsteps and then silence.
Sobrieski looked over my shoulder.
“Not so far apart,” he said. He grabbed what I was doing, stitched and returned it.
I stitched again. He said nothing, watched me a while longer, then went into a corner of the workshop, sat at a desk, on which were saddlebags. He dipped into a bowl and began to rub some kind of oil on them. Every now and then he would get up and stare over my shoulder, but would say nothing. In his corner, he began to cut shapes into huge pieces of leather. The man sitting next to Capao, and who had said nothing the whole time I was there, began to sew buttons into the thick leather.
I felt her before I saw her—a woman holding a baby and standing in the door. I looked back at her and I was the one she was looking at hard. I looked back at the work I was doing, but I still felt her eyes on my back. I pricked my finger again, staining the leather. Capao glanced over at me, but said nothing. He had begun his stitching now, more complicated and intricate than my own. He slid a very black cloth over to me, for me to wipe the leather. The woman still stood in the doorway and then I heard a strange sound. I glanced back and saw that she had undone her blouse and taken one of her breasts out and the baby was sucking on it. She had a strange look on her face as she watched me—for it was me she continued to watch and no one else, as if I were the only one in the room and even her husband was not there. Her hair was a very pale and flimsy brown and I could not tell what her strange expression must mean. None of the men turned to look at her, not even her husband, who continued to cut pieces of leather. After some moments, though probably fewer than it seemed, I turned back to what I was doing. She was very much younger than Sobrieski. She seemed to be in her mid-twenties while he appeared to be in his early forties. I do not know the meaning of the woman’s look or the very slight smile that was on her lips—but it was not the kind of smile one takes for kindness or interest, but a very slight though self-conscious smile that made me afraid of her.
Then my fingers were slapped and Sobrieski grabbed the leather from me. He took a pen knife from his pocket and slit the stitches I had made, made several stitches, then tossed the leather sandal back on the table.
I turned and saw the woman, still eyeing me—a deeper smirk. “Agostinha,” Sobrieski said.
She disappeared from the doorway. We worked again in silence until the woman placed bowls of rice and cassava in front of us and banana leaves to roll the mixture in. Then we stopped and Sobrieski disappeared into the exterior of the house.
“She fears you,” Capao said.
“What?”
“Don’t you see the woman is afraid of you,” he said. “She wonders of what her husband might come to see in you, and so she is afraid.”
I said nothing. Then I said, “I am afraid of her.”
“For what reason?” he asked.
“The way she was looking at me. I was afraid of her.”
“Then we have two women who are afraid of each other,” Capao said as if he were making a joke.
I stared down into my bowl of rice and cassava. “I am afraid o
f that woman,” I said.
Capao sat stroking his forehead and saying nothing. He touched my shoulder. I pulled away from him.
“Aren’t you more afraid of the man than you are of the woman?” he asked.
I said nothing, then I said I was not afraid of any man, and he began to laugh.
“How are you doing, Pedro the Third?” he asked the man next to him. Pedro nodded, but said nothing.
“Pedro the Third won’t speak to anyone. He stays silent. He thinks that silence will free him.” Capao chuckled.
Pedro the Third took a handful of rice and ate it in glum silence. “Who knows why he is called Pedro the Third?” Capao said. “Neither his father nor his father before him has had such a name. Why is he not Pedro the First?”
I looked at Pedro the Third who scraped his fingers with his teeth.
“Do you know why he is in such a state?” Capao asked.
I shook my head no.
“Because he fought against his own kind, that’s why. He was in the military, in another territory, and they sent him on expeditions against escaped Negroes. And he captured many, many, and informed on many.”
He waited for me to speak, but I was silent.
“They decorated him for all the niggers he has captured. Ha. Ha, but now he is a slave himself. The niggers captured him and cut out his tongue and put an ‘f’ on his forehead, for fugitive. And that is why you see him in the condition that he’s in today.”
Pedro the Third did not look at either one of us. And there was silence for a very long time. I thought of the evil that the man had done and the evil that had been done to him.
“How do you know all this if he has not spoken?” I asked.
“It was I who put the ‘f’ on my own forehead,” Pedro the Third said. “I painted ‘f’ on my own forehead.”
Capao began to laugh. I did not like the joke that had been played. “Are you still afraid of the woman?” Capao said.
“I am afraid of no one,” I said glumly.
When Sobrieski returned, I sewed in silence. When it was time to go outside I followed Capao and Pedro the Third. Sobrieski did not go with us. I had expected that all three of us would have a hut, but Capao and Pedro the Third walked into the same one. I stayed standing outside. When I did not follow them in, Capao came outside.