by Gayl Jones
If it were not for the festival and that he was a stranger and a foreigner then I would never . . .
But why did I take the name of that slave woman? Her name’s Lauradia.
“Lauradia.”
“Yes, master.”
He wanted her to light the whale oil lamp. He forgot her name as soon as he said it.
“Who are you?”
“I’m Lauradia, master.”
She’d fix him onions and black beans or okra and fish stew. “Who are you?”
“Lauradia, master.”
He forgot her name as soon as he said it. That was my grandfather as an old man.
When they’re done, I’ll send for her to rub my head and get the lice out. What I can’t stand about this climate.
Why am I always thinking about those dark women? They shouldn’t occupy my thoughts. That Negro woman carrying that parasol and wearing her nails long. That Portuguese merchant who married her and dressed her up that way. They always dress them up so fancy. Like peacocks. But I laugh whenever I see them dressed like that. Still there are Indians in the interior who wear no clothes at all, and when they put them on can’t endure them. A special kind of blood they have. And when we penetrate the interior of this continent no telling what we’ll find and what degrees of humanity. When I was a girl, an Indian woman told me about that white man, Zume, some myths they have about a white man that came to found their religion, so that it was not a surprise to them when the white man came again, because he was expected. Some secret herb she had that kept her from getting hungry and thirsty for a long time. I told my father what she said about the secret herb, and he kept trying to get the secret from her, but she wouldn’t tell him. He tried to coax her, but she wouldn’t tell him. “It cleanses the spirit, and it keeps one from becoming hungry and thirsty for a long time.” He became obsessed. He wanted to make it into a drug and sell it everywhere, but she wouldn’t divulge the secret. Her name was Zuma. Why was it so similar to Zume, the myth she had told me?
She would not divulge the name of the secret herb, but she became sullen. She’d go about her household duties, but became sullen and sullen with me for telling my father. I was even afraid for her to wash my hair, because I feared that she’d plunge my whole head in the basin. But she would wash it as always, first rubbing my head and scratching for lice then lowering my head into the basin, soaping the hairline and the rest of my scalp. I would squeeze my eyes tightly waiting for the plunge and feeling I deserved it for telling her secret, but ready to scream. But always she’d pull my head up, dry it in sullen silence. When it dried, she’d pomade my hair and put it up. I would avoid her eyes.
Then she disappeared and I did not see her anymore. She was replaced by a tall, slender Negro woman.
At first I did not want the Negro and I kept asking where Zuma was, and I treated the black woman as Zuma had been treating me, in sullen silence.
“Where’s Zuma?” I asked her finally, when no one else would tell me.
“Zuma?” she asked and seemed surprised at me speaking.
“My Indian,” I said.
“Ah, that little girl, that poor little girl,” she said.
It seemed strange to hear someone calling her a little girl, when I always thought of her as a woman.
“That poor little girl,” she repeated. “I guess she couldn’t bear it anymore, this slavery, it was too much for her spirit.”
“She had a secret herb for her spirit, and her hunger and thirst too,” I said, and then I put my hand to my mouth. Then I stood straight like I’d seen my mother do when talking to slaves and demanded that she tell me what had happened to Zuma.
“It was too much for her spirit,” she said, looking at me with curiosity and what seemed like a sneer. “She started eating earth, the poor little girl, and it killed her.”
After that I stopped seeing Indians and they were gradually replaced by Negroes. I thought my father had forgotten about the secret herb, but every time he saw an Indian he’d badger them about the secret plant. But they all met his questions with sullenness and silence.
“Ah, the poor little girl,” mumbled the Negro woman. “Ah, the poor little Zuma.”
“Why are you alone here?”
“Because my husband is on an expedition going after Negroes, some fugitive Negroes.”
“A punitive expedition?”
“Yes.”
Coconut tapioca I’d like spread on a banana leaf and sprinkled with cinnamon.
Those penitents cutting themselves with glass. I dreamed of them all in a parade, one of the saint’s days. They were all in a line, cutting themselves with pieces of glass. In reality, I only watched them, but in the dream I asked them what their sins were.
“A spiritual transgression,” one of them replied. “The flesh was willing but the spirit wasn’t.”
They told me all kinds of offenses and then one of them said, “Join us.”
In the dream, I joined the procession. In the hand of God? I used to hear them say that. So-and-so was in the hand of God. Means they’re crazy. A cousin or an aunt they’d say that of. I used to think they meant some fine position, until they explained what it really meant.
“I’m in the hand of God,” one of them said.
After they cut themselves with glass, they sprinkle salt on themselves afterwards.
What is my ancestry, they all want to know. Portuguese mostly, and some Spanish and Dutch. “I wish someone would rub my head. There’s lice.”
That English woman couldn’t believe that respectable people could have lice in their hair. But it’s the country I told her. The tropics. Then she stayed here long enough and got lice in her own aristocratic hair. I laughed at that.
“Well, it’s almost worth it, to get such a good head rubbing.” That hat she brought. It would make it worse, I said.
“In this country only prostitutes wear hats.”
“In my country it’s prostitutes that don’t.”
When my husband talked to her, though, she put on a mantilla like the rest of us, for the Mass anyway.
Wine and cashew nuts we sat around with. Olinda wanted to hear all about Africa. The Sudan where she said she was from. Olinda’s eyes wide with every tale, and who’s to know what’s true and what’s not. These travelers who send back stories about magical serpents and wonder drugs, and sea monsters and rivers of gold. I could tell such tales myself, and create foreign princes for women to dream about in a room without windows, and maps pointing to places where they make their fantastic discoveries.
“Escape with me to the backlands.”
“No,” I told him in the dream.
“Why won’t you go to the interior with me?”
He kept asking that. Then in the dream I found myself going with him into the backlands. The dark, unexplored, mysterious interior. Those priests, they’ll go. The Jesuits probably braver than the rest. Whatever strange places they go, they send the Jesuits.
He kept the back of his head to me, but his feet were turned backwards, and there was only the shadow to be seen.
“Are you afraid of the interior?”
I walked on, in the dream cutting myself with pieces of glass, as the others were doing. I only saw the streams of red, but felt nothing.
“We could leave the others and head for the interior now.”
“No,” I said.
And she was talking about the savages again. “And their language has only the numbers from one to four. They have no other numbers.
“They don’t know that the world has other numbers. Anything beyond four is ‘many.’ They have no need for anything beyond the number four.”
The English woman told us about some place in Africa she had traveled to, some village, where she said she was tortured by the women of a certain African tribe. She didn’t describe what kind of torture but she said she kept telling them, “I’m not your enemy, I’m your friend.” For some unexplained reason they stopped torturing her. Or rather, she could
n’t explain it until she found out they had discovered some things she had written, and though they could not read it and themselves had no written language, they felt that this proved her to be a magician. However, they burned the papers and sent her on her way. “To prevent,” said one of the tribesmen who spoke a pidgin English, “to prevent the things she put down on it from come.” So they felt she had the power not simply to predict, but to create events. But if it had not been for the papers she said, the women would have continued to torture.
“You have such hard and dangerous work,” Olinda said after she heard the story.
“Yes,” the English woman replied.
“What were you writing about that they thought were charms?”
“Just a short history and description of the country and its people, and some notes on my impressions and feelings.”
“Oh, you’re so brave,” said Olinda. “There’ve been things like that to happen with the wild Indians. People who return from the interior tell such stories. But I stick to civilized countries. Isn’t she brave, Alcantara?”
I nodded but said nothing.
“You’re so brave,” Olinda repeated. “You must have true faith. Do they wear clothes?”
“No, they’re entirely naked. They don’t do anything at all to cover themselves.”
“Just like the Indians,” Olinda said. “Or rather, like they say they used to be before the Jesuits came and tamed them. But there are still naked Indians in the interior, they say. The men and women alike.”
“I’d like to travel into the interior of your country, but I’m not as brave as you make me out to be.”
Sometimes when I dream, I dream about that plant and its power.
“What’s its name? Do you have a name for it?”
“I have no name for it. It has its own name.”
Or maybe she told me a strange name I can’t remember.
“But one has to have the knowledge of how to use it,” she said. “It is not of the same use for everyone. The same plant that creates, might also destroy. But this one, this dear one I have the deepest love for, as it is this one that helped me to reclaim my spiritual powers.”
“Does it talk to you?”
“No, it doesn’t talk, not with words. But it understands my language and I understand its language.” She laughed suddenly. “Do you think it’s my master? Do you think it could be? Do you think this little plant could have power over the body and over the soul too?”
And she gave me something to rub my stomach with and something to make a strong tea with and drink.
“She is very discreet,” said Olinda of her. “She is the most discreet.”
I’m silent, but I throw away that herb and the other remedies. No telling what she had given me. Something to make me keep going again and again to her like Olinda does. Such savage potions.
“The most discreet,” Olinda kept repeating.
A red blouse and black earring she was wearing, or were they gold?
Who could tell in that shadow?
“How was it?” Olinda asked when I came out and we rode back.
“There wasn’t any pain,” I said.
“What did I tell you?”
“Should I tell you my dreams too, Father?” I asked.
“Your dreams?”
“Should we confess our dreams?”
“I want to protect your spiritual welfare, sweet angel, and our dreams are part of your experiences in the world. My first duty is to protect spiritual welfare.”
“But you, Father, have also been in my dreams.”
Then I dreamed I was living in a dream. A dream inside a dream.
Some secret revolt it was, but after the dream I couldn’t remember it. Perhaps I had overheard the Negroes talking in my sleep. A dream of revolts. But I couldn’t remember anything. Then a woman was talking. I remember that. “Do you want me to show you how to rise out of your body?” Was it her? That one?
The thoughts, the dreams, the feelings, the imaginings. How much of those does one take to confession. But only the dreams I asked about. If it was all of those, a priest could spend his whole time with just one person.
Or each one has his own priest. “Is that all of it?”
“Yes, Father Tovor.”
“You’re a little angel.”
Still if it hadn’t been for the religious holiday and that man who passed by with St. Anthony’s fire. Why they call it that I don’t know. Yes, she said she treated all kinds of things. St. Anthony’s fire too, I’ll bet. I wonder if they have diseases named after other saints. St. Vitus’ dance I’ve heard that. I wonder what would be named after St. Benedicto. The black saint. St. Benedicto’s what?
Discreet, she called her.
A peacock he brought after I told him to go to the devil. Bringing it to me because of all the pretty colors. I gave it to her to take care of.
“My husband said he captured you after the Palmares expedition,” I said.
“Yes.”
“How did you get there?”
I felt silly but I wanted to ask her something about it. I didn’t want to ask him.
“I was captured and taken there.”
“Captured? Didn’t you want to go?”
“Yes. I was rescued it would be better to say.”
Then she said something about her liberators, but using the French word for it, because she had been a slave for a French family and would often use the French word for things. Liberateur? I wanted her to tell me as much as I could get from her so that I could see what he saw, but after that she was silent.
And I remember that time I went in there and found her sitting on the floor making rosaries from palm nuts. That’s what she was doing, and all the children would gather palm nuts for her and she would string them to make rosaries.
I asked him, “Do you know what your black girl is doing?”
“What?”
“Making rosaries out of palm nuts.”
He looked at me like he thought I was the strange one, not her. “She’ll sell them and buy her freedom,” I said.
Why I said that I don’t know. Because he made her stop it.
But she was sitting there stringing palm nuts. She looked like a cat then the way her eyes went up, and the way she had her legs, her knees pointed up. I couldn’t sit that way. I tried to do it. I bet he asks her to sit that way for him. What power do you have, Madriaga?
“‘A woman is nothing without passion,’“ she said.
“Who said that?”
“St. Benedicto,” she replied, inside the dream.
“Do you mean a woman’s own passion or the passion a man has for her?”
I close my eyes and see the same dream woman, but she won’t answer. She is stringing rosaries from palm nuts.
“I swallowed a bit from the bottle, but threw the rest away,” I told her.
“Who is that woman?” someone asked.
“She’s a Negress slave, my husband brought her back from an expedition against some fugitive Negroes hiding in the forests. A place called Palmares. She’s not real. She’s an object some curandeira put in my head.”
“What is she doing now?”
“Searching for lice.”
Now I dream I’m riding on a crocodile’s back, not straddling him, like when you ride a horse, but lying on my back on his back and looking up at the sky.
“Tell me more about the Palmares, tell me more about the Palmaristas,” I ask her.
But she doesn’t answer. She goes on stringing palm nuts for rosaries.
THE BOOK OF JAGUARA AND THE APPRENTICE
Martina Puerreydon and the Journey
MARTINA PUERREYDON was a very tall woman who came in the nighttime with four young children. A hammock was strung for her, and we all, but Old Vera, shared a hammock with one of the small children. The girl who shared the hammock with me was a pretty one with almond-shaped eyes and pretty brown curls. There were two girls and two boys. They were all different colors, ran
ging from chocolate to golden brown and yellow, to almost white. The youngest was four, the oldest looked eight or nine.
Martina and the children had been tired, so no one had spoken until the morning, which was when she hugged and greeted everyone and said hello to them with grace and some formality and said, on seeing me, “I do not know that woman.” Barcala said I was “the madwoman” but Old Vera told her my name, Almeyda, but explained that I had grown silent and wary in these months and that she had not heard two words from me. She called me a complicated soul, but Barcala, who stood before me as if in judgment called it “cunning.” The woman looked at me with curiosity and a smile. She was dressed in white, loose-fitting trousers and a shirt and sandals, and her children who seemed to always be crowding near her, were similarly dressed.
“Do you believe in reincarnation?” she asked me suddenly. I looked at her, but said nothing.
All the children watched me with wide eyes and then when their mother turned away, they did too.
“Old Vera feels she has mystical connections,” Barcala said. He laughed.
“Tell Barcala anything and watch him laugh,” Old Vera said. Barcala looked at her but said nothing.
“Let’s be peaceable,” Martina Puerreydon said. “Today begins the new journey.”
“Or the old one repeated,” Old Vera said.
“Yes,” said Martina.
Martina was standing with her children gathered around her. Barcala was standing looking at me fiercely. The others were settled around the table. Joanna still watched me with a sad and kind expression. Old Vera sat on her mat with her legs in front of her. I sat in my chair in the corner.
“This one stays here with her spirits,” Barcala said. “With her invisible objects and events. But how does she know they’re not devils?”
“And what do you do, Barcala?” Martina asked. “They say you are not going with us.”
“No,” he said.