Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo

by Ntozake Shange

  Idrina was on the other side of 8th Avenue, enjoying a Sabrett’s hot dog with sauerkraut. She did have a few vices. Sabrett’s & root beer in the street. That was living in New York, somedays. It was so much more delicious to watch Cypress building moats, sand castles, direct lines to her soul on the corner of 49th Street.

  Walking fast, but not without pleasure, Idrina came behind Cypress as she always had, without announcement. Just that sweet tickle round the back of her neck. The smile that offered what could be, whenever Cypress wanted.

  “Hi, Cypress. Don’t tell anybody I was eating from a street vendor, please. It’ll ruin my reputation.” Idrina hugged Cypress, who let her barbed wires disintegrate, right there in midtown.

  “Oh, Idrina, I’m really glad to see you. I didn’t think I would be, but I just saw Ariel. I can’t believe what he’s done to himself.” Cypress held Idrina tight. Idrina caressed her head, soothing this child so willful, they’d never had all they should have.

  “Come on, Cypress. I’m gonna take you home. You don’t need to be out here in all this.” Cypress didn’t resist. She knew Idrina wouldn’t hurt her, not again. This time they went to Idrina’s for comfort, for relief from the loving too much, too many who’d abandoned caring. Some old things lay in wait for the night, deep in citadels where demons play God and memory consecrates our sense of reality. As she slept, Cypress encountered her other worlds, where her scars, fungi, and terrors grew wild.

  CYPRESS’ DREAM

  This was obviously England after a nuclear holocaust. Cypress figured that it must be 2014, at least. Nothing within her view was familiar; the grey was implacable, flat, disrupted only by scurrying women in bright tunics. Some had papers in their hands like secretaries at the stock exchange, others with angular contraptions Cypress felt must be weapons. She was alone in this place, alone in the sense that she didn’t “belong,” like the rest, to whatever manner of civilization she’d come upon. An impulse to tuck her skirt under her legs—or to throw it off, and far away—came over her body whenever the women with weapons came near. There was something wrong with her appearance, her attitude, though she wasn’t sure how or what. She hid in the tubes of shadow along the sides of tunnel after tunnel, curving and never-ending, watching the white, brown, and golden women in this world.

  Someone found her. Another woman in a red tunic took her to an official place inside the grey world, where she was introduced as a survivor. The leader, the queen, the reigning glory of this community was a tall woman with red hair who welcomed Cypress and kept saying she would be safe. Cypress asked safe from what, thinking that the world might still be at war, but that was only partially the case. After the bombs laid waste to the planet, somehow the men and women of the earth had been separated. “Of course,” Cypress thought, “of course.” In a war the women are left behind, and the men go away to fight and kill, so when the devastation began and ended, women were left to contend with the fruitlessness of the soils, the weight of the skies. Now each breath meant poison. At any rate, all the women left on the planet had ended up in this cove off Britain; that was many years ago, they said. The men lived somewhere in the Western Hemisphere, plotting and determined to take back their rights to pillage and wreak havoc, but so far the female colony had defended itself against the attackers; violence they claimed was only for self-defense.

  Cypress was initiated into the new world—not quite as herself. All vestiges of male-dominated culture were to be “rehabilitated” out of her psyche; the true matriarch, who is the woman-powerful, was to be nurtured. The population wanted for nothing: food, clothing, shelter, or art. These were a woman’s work, even in the old world. But here there were no patriarchs, ordering and demanding. Here there were only Mothers and Daughters. “Mothers” were supreme; there was no higher honor than to be deemed “Mother,” yet this had nothing to do with biological offspring. Women who had no children were of a higher caste than the “bearers,” as they were called. The “bearers” were never seen in public assemblies, nor were they allowed to wear bright colors, because they might bear sons.

  The “Daughters” worked in the nurseries, the factories, the offices, the arts, and military of this place where no men were mentioned or seen. Some young girls who pulled Cypress aside to ask her about the other world where men had been present were severely reprimanded; Cypress was instructed by the female guards to watch that she didn’t contaminate the young minds with the filth of the past. Immediately after the girls had been scolded, some other brown figure in yellow took her through a passage that became smaller and smaller, until finally Cypress and this woman, Gisa, had to crawl on their stomachs. Eventually, Cypress heard groans, heavy breathings, and screams she recognized as coming from women in labor. Gisa said, “Yes, these are the bearers, our real mothers.”

  Cypress wanted to stop her, to say, “No. My mother is in Carolina,” but she knew her companion wouldn’t understand. The “bearers” were in a great black hole that went on for the distance of a football stadium. Cypress thought, “There’s no need to put them in a womb; we are the womb,” but such a thought was impossible, here. Gisa explained.

  “In order to become a bearer, a woman must do something bad: not follow rules; steal; behave strangely.”

  Cypress couldn’t believe it. “You mean giving birth is like a punishment?”

  “Yes . . . why else would anyone do it?”

  Cypress thought of the fertility pills, the test-tube babies implanted in women’s wombs, the invention of surrogate mothers, all the things people of her time did in order to have a baby. Yet, why else would you do it was beyond Gisa’s comprehension.

  “You know what else they do?” Gisa asked Cypress, who shook her head no. “They murder most of the boy babies. They haven’t figured out how to stop that from happening; plus, they don’t capture enough men from the outside to keep our population stable, so the boy babies they don’t murder, they keep down here and feed them so they can make sperms. Isn’t that what you call it, sperms?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But once they make the sperms, the Mothers have it frozen, so no one has to worry about touching them,” Gisa reassured Cypress, who was longing to touch Leroy, to feel his skin and sinew so this place wouldn’t be true.

  “But where are they?”

  “Why in the gaol, naturally.” Gisa smiled, so safe. “Want to go see them? We have to be very careful, ’cause it’s against the law . . . if they find us we’ll be made bearers.”

  Cypress wasn’t sure she wanted to jeopardize her position in the colony by going to see the men. She’d seen men before; there was not the mystery, like there was for Gisa. Then a curtain opened, and Cypress saw her mother in labor; her very own real mama from Charleston was in the black hole giving birth; and all around her were the female guards carrying small Sassafrasses and Indigoes, toddler-sized Mahlons and Lallahs.

  “Oh my god.” Cypress caught herself from speaking too loudly. “Oh, Jesus.” Most of the “bearers” were black and Latin. “Oh god, not again.” Cypress held onto the walls. She was swooning; all of slavery gushing from her stomach.

  “That’s my mother. I’ve got to get my mother out.”

  She kept repeating this while Gisa gently reminded her that they could come back all the time; that no one knew. And Cypress couldn’t explain that her people had done this before, filled wombs over and over until they collapsed, or the body let go. Brought children to the soil never to be seen again, bred spirits to be smashed, sold, played with until their connection to the idea of humanity was obliterated. Gisa tried to calm her, leading her further into a black tunnel that opened onto a moat. A huge glass building surrounded by armed guards in purple helmets was in the middle. Cypress could see crocodiles and alligators meandering through the waters. Her skin shuddered. Then she saw them. Boys on the lower levels; young men in the middle levels; old men on the top floors. There was a loud buzz. The men came toward the glass walls that enclosed them, to inject their sperm
into individual tubes running the length of the prison.

  Cypress thought of all the porno shows she had ever seen or heard of; women masturbating on the stage in front of three hundred men; women hung from trapezes so anyone could eat their pussies for the admission price; women passed around from man to man to be sodomized, cut, beaten. This spectacle belonged with those. Even though no one touched the men, or watched them “perform,” the threat of violence, the humiliation, was inherent. Cypress wondered if the boy on the third floor, second cage, was Ariel; he looked like Ariel, and she wanted him out of there. Then she heard one of the guards shout.

  “Hurry up, old man. We don’t have all day!”

  Cypress looked to the highest windowed cage, and there was her father, with his hands behind his back, refusing. Cypress was stunned.

  “All right, let him have it,” the guard said, and his entire cage crackled with electricity; he was being shocked to submit.

  Cypress screamed, “Daddy, Daddy,” and a guard came chasing her. It was Idrina, laughing, her father still trapped in the roaring red glow. Cypress whimpered “Daddy . . . Daddy” through the black winding tunnels and caves lined with laughing Idrinas, Ariels jacking off, while the whole colony, alerted to a defector, prepared to capture and punish a felon.

  Cypress woke up running; at least, it looked as if she’d been running. Her body hurt like long forced strides, her linen was tossed about like undergrowth round deserted towns. She was panting, she was sweating. She was crying, hugging herself. Rocking back and forth, shaking her head. No, that wasn’t real, there was no such place; that was a dream, everything’s all right, now. But everywhere she looked she saw her mother in the cave, giving birth over and over; her father in the electric popping cage, his arms behind his back . . . pain everywhere she turned . . . their faces made ugly for the first time, by something she had dreamed.

  Usually she comforted Leroy, who had grabbed her arms from the depths of his sleep that night, trying not to see what he was seeing, yelling “He killed her. He killed her. Towbin’s wrong; doesn’t understand.” Cypress got him to keep talking. “He killed Mama ’cause of that bitch. He killed her.”

  It had been so hard for Cypress to listen to the ugliness Leroy found in his parents, to reconstruct malignant romantic triangles; lies and longings he’d been trapped in as a boy.

  Yeah, he was raised with the best of everything. If it hadn’t been for the rigors of any child’s life in East St. Louis, he would have been Little Lord Fauntleroy. It wasn’t talk about his father and that woman. That was no talk. That was the truth. The nights he spent keeping company with his mama, fixing one last cocktail, until they heard the hum of the Eldorado by the side of the house, confirmed for Leroy that his father had chosen some Guinea bitch young enough to be his daughter, over Eleanora and her geraniums by the picket fence.

  Such indiscretions are resolved by little boys when they become men. But Leroy was a man whose dreams told him, “White folks killed your parents, murdered your folks. On account of a piece of ass some white folks murdered your mama. And your pop thought so much of you he let your mama die for his white bitch . . . so much for the niggers, huh . . . huh?” That’s when Leroy’s hands grabbed for Cypress in the night. That’s when Cypress rocked him back and forth, slipping her fingers through his braids, pushing out the nightmares, his tears on her thighs. Cypress fought to say, “Let go of that, Leroy. That’s over. Remember the nice things . . . ,” but she wanted to say, “Let’s get ’em. Let’s make somebody pay. Somebody has to pay for this.”

  Now, in contortions she hadn’t learned in class, legs and arms twisted like a dying centipede’s, Cypress vowed on the voices of her dreams; the image of her mother strapped down and bleeding, her father helpless in a glass cell. She vowed to avenge her kin. She swore on the burned limbs of her father and her mother’s smiles stolen from the Charleston swelter that white folks would not make her ugly, helpless, and lost. She swore she’d never ask Leroy to remember the nice things, but to remember all of it. She pulled her head from beneath the pillows, searching the walls for the images that terrified her. The faces were still there, but she was no longer afraid. Idrina wasn’t laughing; she lay still in Cypress’ arms.

  Cypress laid waste to the tunnels, caverns, and shadows of the other world. She drew upon memories of her own blood: her presence would be a mortal threat to those who wounded, maimed, her ancestors, her lovers, Leroy. Like those women before her who loaded bundles on their heads and marched off to fields that were not their own, like the “bearers” of her dreams swamped with births of infants they would never rear, Cypress clung to her body, the body of a dancer; the chart of her recklessness, her last weapon, her perimeters: blood, muscle, and the will to simply change the world.

  My lovely C.,

  Did you get the box of costumes I whipped together? I hope your new company can use them, but pay me next time, when you’re on your feet!

  I’m so excited about your association with a national touring company . . . please, send me clippings, especially if you play major cities where we have relatives.

  You’re still in the corps de ballet . . . that’s a start. Nevermind, I’m jumping around so, imagining you in all those frilly tutus, and your toe shoes . . . you don’t know how happy I am. Plus, the Lord will look kindly on the benefits you’re going to do for Negro Christians; bless your souls, for taking time from a full season for the race. I’m mighty proud.

  Love, your Mama

  P.S. What’s the name of the group—I’ve been calling you the American Negro Ballet. I don’t like that other group, Afro-American Ballet . . . who ever heard of such a thing!

  This is the overseas operator. Your call is ready, miss.”

  “Yes, thank you . . . Leroy, Leroy are you there?”

  “Huh?”

  “Leroy, it’s me, Cypress. I got it. I really got it.”

  “What, baby . . . jeeze, what time is it there?”

  “I don’t know, I’ve been celebrating!”

  “What, darling . . . I’m sorta out of it . . . now tell me again.”

  “Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, go on . . . I love you.”

  “Guess what? I’m in a dance company; I’m going on the road.”

  “But honey, I’ll be back in two weeks.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, but you can meet me . . . let me see . . . oh, I’m so happy! Why, in two weeks we’ll be in Orangeburg, South Carolina.”

  “What?”

  “I’m dancing with this group called Soil & Soul . . . they go all over to raise money and morale . . . bail, legal fees, stuff like that for the Civil Rights Movement.”

  “But Cypress, the crackers are raising hell out there. You gotta wait for me, ’fore you get yourself killed.”

  “No Leroy, it’s not like that. We travel with the same kinda protection that Rap Brown gets, and the Panther Party, even Ralph Featherstone is on the same circuit . . . don’t you understand?”

  “Cypress, will you listen to me? What you’re talking about is politics; that’s not what you’re trained to do, is it? Do you know anything about guns, Cypress? Do you know about white folks and bombs? Do you?”

  “I know we haveta do something. We promised the shit had to stop here, didn’t we? Didn’t we say that somebody had to pay?”

  “Yes, darling . . .”

  “Don’t ‘yes, darling’ me. You’re sitting somewhere in France. L’Ouverture’s bones should be rattling in your ears, but all you can hear is Europeans being amazed you can read music.”

  “Cypress, you’re being unreasonable.”

  “Living here is unreasonable, or don’t you remember?”

  “When do you leave?”

  “Day after tomorrow.”

  “Okay, I’ll be there.”

  “No, you don’t haveta come home. I just wanted to tell you what . . . well. I was so proud of myself. Now you made me scream at you . . .”

  “Cypress, I’m coming home so I
can marry you.”

  “Oh, Leroy, that’s perfect.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to say ‘yes’? What do you mean ‘Oh, that’s perfect’?”

  “The first gig is in a church. A church in Valdosta, Georgia.”

  “That may be where the first gig is, but we’re getting married in your mama’s house.”

  “Leroy, are you serious? You want to marry me?”

  “I will, if you say yes & stop talking ’bout going to get yourself killed.”

  “Dancing never killt nobody.”

  “Dancing in a church in Valdosta might get you blown to bits. Wasn’t that the church was bombed a few months ago?”

  “Yes, but that’s why we have ta keep going back.”

  Leroy wanted to shake her to her senses, to come cross the waters and kiss her with tides, salt, and the music he heard as she spoke. Pigeons criss-crossed the Tuileries, le Pont Royal, the Louvre; flicks of sunlight waltzed past his windows. Paris was a formidable temptation, but this woman on the other end of the phone was his treasure.

  “Listen, Cypress, can Soil & Soul get along without you for a few days?”

  “Well, that wouldn’t be very professional of me . . .”

  “But can they?”

  “I guess so . . .”

  “Can I get along without you?”

  “You been over there for god knows how long . . .”

  “Do you want me to get along without you?”

  “No.”