Song of Slaves in the Desert

by Alan Cheuse

  “But what about Gentiles? You were talking about them.”

  “They go into the business without a thought for the morality of it.”

  “And we Jews?”

  “We struggle with the problem, we exhibit great soul-searching and painful thought.” He pounded a fist on the table. “We moan, we groan, we worry…”

  “And then?”

  “And then we go into the business.”

  While he laughed at his own witticism, I took the liberty of pouring myself another glass of port. Before very long, I felt my head drooping.

  “To bed!” my uncle announced. “Tomorrow for part of the day we will continue your education.”

  “To bed,” Jonathan stood to announce—and make a toast—“where all life begins, and every day ends…”

  I wove from side to side as I followed Black Jack who showed me to my room, a fine little closet on the second floor at the rear of the grand house with a window, covered with netting, wide open to the night.

  I took some time removing my things from my bag, and from my person, such as the small pistol, which, figuring that I had arrived in the peaceful kingdom, I would not need, and so I placed it in the top drawer of the bureau, beneath a pile of handkerchiefs. I continued unpacking, eventually unwrapping the portrait of my mother and placing it on the bureau (and with a twinge of nostalgia poking at my chest like an insistent finger taking care to fold the newssheet from the New York newspaper that had wrapped my mother’s portrait that I might read some of it later). I lay there a while on my soft down bed with the lamp burning, musing on the faint memories of that dear departed woman, and then I put out the light and lay a while longer thinking in the shadows of the room. What was it? The humming in the near-distance, like a chorus of some tuning of strings in an orchestra, but also the sissing of a million tongues, as though the stars, so bright beyond the trees, were each a lamp hissing after some cosmic god had blown cosmic breath across the sputtering wicks. It was the music of the low country under cover of darkness, the news of the land, the swamps, the creeks, the woods, and the skies filled with those stars, but lower toward the earth, the insects and the swooping birds who flew with beaks wide open so that they might just scoop up all that they needed for nourishment. Thus settled over me the last night of comfort and freedom from care that I would ever spend.

  Chapter Sixteen

  ________________________

  Taken

  Overhead, chattering away, monkeys awoke her. What they were trying to tell each other, Lyaa could not say, noticing only that they were excited. But then, as anyone knew, that might mean one of them had found a dead bird or a rat or a mate or had a dream and awoke as startled as people were when they awoke from dreams dark or dreams cheerful, dreams of flying or dreams of dying, which she, as she had once told the local witch, sometimes suffered to great degrees.

  Those monkeys, what might they see? Growing to girlhood in this green world just to the south of the river Lyaa had learned some things about the life around her. These chatterers with sandy whiskers and shining eyes migrated to the south in the dry season and in the wet season returned to make a noise in the heaven above the forest floor that began before first light and went on until after sunset, their calls increasing in pitch or subsiding now and then to celebrate encounters and meals and discoveries and disappointments and fears, much like her own life amid these people whom she could not call her own, because they owned her.

  They owned her!

  That was every morning’s true awakening. In the pit of this green world, where insects crawled and swarmed and small rats ran right and left, even the smallest of animals was freer than she! Those monkeys looking down from the treetops upon this world of green, even they were freer than she! In this green world, no safe place offered itself. Nowhere could you hide. Her mother could not hide. She lived as her desert born mother lived, exercising ways not of the green world. After a while the greenness crept into her lungs and long before her time she lay weighed down in her breath by a terrible heaviness of green.

  “I am your mother,” Wata said to Lyaa, who sat cross-legged by her side. “I want to give you hope and a clear view of life. But I am confused. (Her breath came hard as she spoke these words). Our mother left the desert god behind in the northern sands. The entire world, whether sand and rock to the north or this jungle, or whatever lay south beyond it, remains a place of imprisonment. The desert god enslaved the men who enslaved us.” Her whisper deepened, her breath turned into a rasp and a wheeze. “Pray now to the goddess of the forest. The goddess who rules the forest world and all the world’s waters, whom the desert god challenged, may be our only hope!”

  Yemaya, Yemaya, hear my prayer. Carry me away from this green house, carry me out of this place of worry and woe. She remembered even as a very young girl hearing such words in the language her mother called the tongue of the goddess. “My grandfather believed in submitting to his god,” she explained to young Lyaa, even before the girl could truly understand. “I say no, I say never give in or submit, we slaves of slaves, born into chains and misery in our hearts. You are my only hope. You must never give in to the desert god but instead devote yourself to Yemaya and her sisters, who travel with us all over land or water.”

  Yemaya, Yemaya!

  Yemaya made her heart full, and when she lost the path Yemaya helped her to find it again.

  Yemaya! She of the fierce eyes and rough hands, a voice like a roaring stream, the queen of queens, mother of all the green jungle and blessed of all streams, rivers, and oceans, within and without. When Lyaa’s father/uncle stared at her ferociously with his one good eye, she did not look away. He hardly ever looked at either of them and so it seemed important to acknowledge his attention. Yemaya, she whispered to herself under her breath. Later his under-chief came to her and told her that she was not eating enough. She called on Yemaya then also for assistance. One night the big man himself, with his rolls of belly fat and that one good eye, strolled over and took her arm, inspecting it as if it belonged to a monkey or a bird.

  She had heard stories, beginning with her mother’s stories. If he touches me elsewhere, she said to herself, Yemaya, please give me the strength to kill him or kill myself.

  As if he could feel the force of her prayer, the man released her. (But did it happen because Yemaya answered her prayers, or because he had seen enough? Lyaa had no answer. Perhaps there was no answer and could not be. Did the gods intervene in this world or did they not? Sometimes it seemed as though they did, sometimes as though they did not or would not or could not. Was it her name that called up the power of the First Woman?)

  But as it happened on that morning early it was much worse than that, so much worse than she ever, in her innocence, might have feared. The monkeys could see the men moving along the forest paths, which is what gave them such cause for alarm.

  Awake, Lyaa! they called. Awake and hide!

  Awake and run! Others called back.

  Awake, awake!

  Come!

  Hurry!

  Run!

  Go!

  Alas, she did not understand the language of the animals, knew only that something important had happened.

  Or something terrible was happening.

  She sat with her ailing mother, listening to the disruption in the trees. Not until—yes! no!—she heard the rush of men hurrying along the path, and heard the clank of the chains they carried, heard the sound even though the chains lay muffled in large sacks slung over the traders’ shoulders, did she try to urge her mother to her feet.

  “Go,” her mother said, so deep in her whispery voice that it seemed as though she spoke from another realm.

  “You must stand and come with me,” Lyaa said.

  “Go,” her mother urged her, and then closed her eyes, closed her lips.

  Men shouted, women screamed, and children screeched and howled.

  Go! The voice echoed in Lyaa’s mind.

  She glanced down one
last time at her supine mother, ran out into the light, and kept on running, running, beyond the village clearing, into the woods, along the creek. It was not until she reached the edge of the big forest that, hungry for breath, she paused, and then raced forward again, hearing now the pounding feet of pursuers breaking through the forest behind her.

  Yemaya! Yemaya!

  “Run!” A woman’s voice behind her urged her on.

  Run!

  Turning in the hope of catching a glimpse of how close the people hunters might be, she tripped on a root and fell forward, slamming her shoulder against a tree trunk that even though it bent with her weight was still large enough to bounce her back and send her catapulting off the path.

  A moment later two men rushed past, chains clanking in the sacks at their shoulders.

  She inched up above the grass and watched them disappear into the woods.

  Oh, Mother! Oh, Yemaya! Might she be safe now? Slowly she pulled herself to her feet, touching the raw place where her shoulder had hit the tree. She felt tears rising in her belly even as she bent over and spit up liquid and air. Safe? Where was her family? What should she do now?

  The monkeys overhead had quieted down and this gave her pause. Perhaps the raiders had moved past the village, though if so she feared they might have left for dead those who resisted. In spite of herself, she called up the image of her father/uncle, the man who had made her life a little prison in itself. If anyone had been hurt, she hoped, hoped so hard she began to double over again with belly pain, may it have been him!

  When she pulled herself upright once more she started back in the direction of the village, walking slowly, tentatively, alert to every sound in the woods around her, the chirping of the monkeys, the call of birds, the rustle of leaves as she brushed past plants and low trees. It sounded as though the terror that had driven her to run so fast and far had ended. Her heart settled down. She whispered prayerful thanks to Yemaya, and in a deeper part of her cursed the desert sky god who allowed those slave traders to live and track poor human beings such as herself and her family.

  “Lyaa!”

  Her father/uncle hailed her as she stepped into the clearing.

  Never, ever could she have imagined she would feel so happy to see this man whom she despised!

  She walked toward him as he gestured, which she took to mean that he was happy to see her, too.

  And all of a sudden the world went black, she fell forward, or was pushed, and couldn’t catch her breath.

  “And the cattle?”

  Her father/uncle’s voice boomed above her where she lay sprawled, a cloth tied tightly over her head, on the sandy ground of the compound.

  “You will have them tomorrow, you have my word.” This was a voice she didn’t recognize. One of the slavers! Or not?

  “You take these people now and you give me your word you will bring the goods in return tomorrow?”

  “You have my word.”

  “Do I?”

  “My word, for God.”

  “Your god or mine?”

  The slaver spat, and Lyaa could feel him stamp a step past her.

  “Is that a curse?”

  “Never,” her father/uncle said. “Never. I submit to your god.”

  The trader did not respond, instead kneeling alongside Lyaa and tying something around her neck. He then pulled at a chain and she felt the collar tighten at her throat. When he yanked her to her feet she nearly choked.

  “My men are fetching the others. And then we depart. You’ll have your cattle tomorrow before sundown.”

  “Thank you,” she heard her father/uncle say, his voice more subdued than usual.

  “I want to return to my mother,” she said in a raspy voice, her throat constricted by the chain.

  “Oh, yes, yes, she will be meeting you,” her father/uncle said.

  “She is ill. She needs help. She cannot take a deep breath. Did you see her back in the village? Did you?”

  Lyaa felt strength flow into her arms and she reached up and tore at the chain.

  Her father/uncle turned away.

  “Tell me!” she shouted, at terrible cost to her throat. “Did you see her?”

  “Take her,” her father/uncle said.

  And the trader led her away, pulling her along for some distance before they stopped and he removed the hood. She stood quietly, confused, numb at heart, while he and the rest of his band rounded up others from the village. Women sobbed, nervously clutching handfuls of belongings, children cried because their mothers cried, unknowing, innocent. The monkeys overhead joined in, chattering, screaming. Finally she herself began to weep, for her mother, for all of them. When the slave returned to where Lyaa stood he stared and stared with coal-black eyes so fierce that she turned her head aside.

  Pinching the flesh on her arm, the slaver said, “Worth every cow, worth every cow.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  ________________________

  In My Margins

  What Are the Origins of Woman?

  It is He who created you from a single person, and made his mate of like nature, in order that he might live with her in love. When they are united, she bears a light burden and carries it about unnoticed. When she grows heavy, they both pray to Allah their Lord, saying: “If you give us a goodly child, we vow we shall ever be grateful.” (Koran, 7:189)

  What then are the origins of woman? All the stories have her born of man’s clay or man’s rib. But she gives birth to men, rather than men giving birth to her. Can all the oldest stories be wrong?

  The new science says we first came out of water, and our ancestors, odd fish from the salt sea, flopped onto shore on stubby fins like legs and with rudimentary lungs breathed the sulfurous air before retreating to the ocean. And, oh, we liked the air! More and more often we stumbled ashore and stayed longer and longer, so that eventually some of our old folks stayed behind when the tide withdrew, making a life free of the vagaries of the tides and subject to the new light of the sun and the cool reflections of the moon.

  But clay? But ape? But man?

  All these stories whirling about on the fumes of a newly explosive land, where after the heat settled and the chemistry of place set in tiny green plants clung to the rocks and small insects whirred through air warmed by fire. First clay? First ape? Did we all come from clay and then did woman break free of man’s clay and become a creature of her own? Or did the salt sea creature with lungs one morning a million million years ago ascend a tree as fish and descend some millions of years later as ape?

  What are the origins of woman?

  The first upright female wondered, turning her liquid eye to the moon, and breathed a sound of surprise.

  What are the origins of man?

  The first upright male turned his blinking eye to the sun, and looked away, down at his shadow.

  Chapter Eighteen

  ________________________

  First Morning

  My first Carolina country morning awakening! And if I had been opening my eyes after a good sleep in Eden I could not have been more astonished and pleased—the air, just cool enough to make me feel as though I should arise, the light, milky with early morning fog, the odors, such a mix of flowers and trees and grasses my New York nose could scarcely begin to engage with them beyond the awareness of a wonderful new perfume.

  The odors!

  Now do not take this in the wrong way. New York had its own olfactory wonders, from the tarry beams on the river piers to the bittersweet smell of wood burning in fireplaces on the first cold autumn morning. And imagine crossing the Spuyten Duyvil into the Bronx farmlands without feeling yourself pushing aside a curtain of green wind. And the meaty stench of the horse apples in the gutters or the sweet stink of a dying dog in the roadway, its entrails laid open to the sun. Or if you would stand at the foot of our Battery and breathe in the perfect salt-sea sting of the incoming ocean tide, the breeze that carried it parting your hair toward the land behind you, you know the var
ied pleasures of our New York air.

  But this curtain of oxygen—oh, I also learned my chemistry with master Halevi—in which I lay entangled weighed everything and nothing and like the depths of the ocean which I have heard has made a comfortable resting place for sailors who give up fighting sleep beneath the waves it pressed me to the bed—while at the same time allowed a medium in which my mind could take flight. Wasn’t this how it might have been—and would be—if I had—when I would—set sail for Europe on my tour?

  In a sleep-drenched state, picturing large thunderheads sailing toward us from the south, their stately top-heavy presences looming like figures from a dream, watching over me, smiling faces painted on their upfurling undersides, eyes winking, mouths wide in laughter, and from a long way away over the heaving water the boom and belch of their voices, disconnected from their bodies but by the breadth and length of their thunderous rolls making clear their relation to the soaring clouds—and at my elbow, a girl, just my age, her hair flowing the wind off the waves, one hand pressed tightly on my arm, the other holding to the rail—not-Miriam—and the wind snatches away my hat and we laugh as we watch it flop and roll into the ocean and the girl, not-Miriam, turns to me, face uplifted, and says my name—

  A knock at my door.

  “Yes?”

  I sat up, still half-drowsy, and after a blinking moment, swung my feet to the floor.

  “Massa Pereira?”

  A woman’s voice, sultry and soft, inviting, yet with a certain tone of servitude.

  “Just a moment.”

  I stood up and pulled my nightshirt over my head. As I was doing so I heard the door open and I immediately covered myself with the shirt.

  There was the slave girl, standing in the doorway, looking at the floor.

  “Excuse me,” I began, “do you always walk in on a man in his room?”

  “I’m sorry, Massa Pereira, but your uncle said it was urgent. He would like to speak with you in the sunroom.”