A Fistful of Honey

by Malena Crawford

  “Get me out of here please! I want this to stop!”

  Alena desperately scanned the room for a means to be transported back to Brooklyn.

  “Effie, you been swillin’ moonshine? You ain’t got a bit more sense than a June bug. Cain’t you see we over here birthing a baby? Looka here”, she snapped, pointing a knotty finger at Alena. “I ain’t gon’ tell you again. You stop this here fool nonsense!” Granny Pearl shook her head in disappointment. “And you call yourself apprenticing under me.”

  Her ruddy brown skin shone like wet red clay in the lantern’s light, giving away her Congolese and Chickasaw bloodline. A life toiling over rice fields had bowed her back like a cat’s. She walked with a limp and her weak foot trailed the dirt floor as she shuffled about the cabin. One long gray plait peeked from under her head scarf. She had placed an ax under Sarah’s birthing bed in her efforts to cut the pain but from the sound of the woman’s screams, the remedy had failed her.

  Alena, still plastered against the cabin wall, breathed deeply and tried to calm down. Surely, she would be out of this dimension soon, she hoped.

  “It take a special kind of evil to put a pregnant woman under the lash and whip her nearly dead like this. Especially when the child is by the buckra himself.” Granny Pearl muttered angrily as she pressed a numbing poultice against the wounds on Sarah’s back.

  Sarah heaved one final push with Ma Pearl in position to receive the baby with swaddling cloth. The pale child slid forward but lay still between Sarah’s blood soaked thighs. Ma Pearl rushed to cut the child’s cord and held her by the feet, slapping her backside. Still, there was no movement. She moved the baby’s tawny limbs and sent her breath into the lungs trying to resurrect life in her body. But when she held her ear to the infant’s nose and mouth, no breath stirred. The child remained lifeless and silent, her tiny palms and soles tinged blue.

  Granny Pearl ordered Sarah to push again, releasing the afterbirth.

  “What’s the matter? Why aint’t it crying? What’s wrong with my baby, Pearl? Give me my baby! Please. Let me see my child!”

  Granny Pearl frowned and lowered her head, “Lawd Sarah, I’m sorry. Your baby gone. The child passed in the womb.”

  Sarah wailed loudly. Her cries filled the cabin, clung to the rafters and up to the heavens they rose. Granny Pearl placed the baby in her arms. Sarah’s tears splashed over the girl’s eyelids. She held her daughter’s hands and kissed them. She ran her fingers over her thatch of jet black hair and then kissed her rosebud pink mouth. She pressed the child against her swollen sweat drenched bosom, as if to breathe in the last of the warmth left in her little body. With patient sorrow, she held her girl for as long as she could before the child’s body was taken away. There would be little time for bereavement.

  ***

  Alena woke to women’s voices whispering in the dark of the early morning. She hadn’t remembered even falling asleep. “Oh God, how am I still here? What if I’ve gotten stuck here?” Alena was panicked.

  “Mornin’, Miss Pearl. I come for some more herbs for Noah, that foot of his ain’t looking good.” It was a young woman wearing a blue smock and the same dull brown shift dress Alena wore.

  “Mornin’ Tilly. You keep an eye on your boy’s foot today, don’t want to lose it.”

  Granny Pearl was the slave’s doctor and midwife, or Bush Woman as some of them called her. Sickness was common on the plantation. Most came to her for some ailment they had caught in the squalid rice waters.

  “Thank you, Miss Pearl.” The woman gave Granny Pearl a grave look.

  “I heard about Sarah last night. Poor gal. This the fifth child she done lost. And the word is that dirty buckra fixing to sell off Hayden and Aaron to some of his kin up St. Helena Island. Them her last boys. How can massa sell off the last of her boys knowing they all she got left? Can there be any darker evil than that there, Miss Pearl?”

  “Yes sir, they can sell every last one of her babies off just as easy as pie ‘cause that’s what they is; they pure evil. I’s an old woman and Lawd knows I seen a lot on this plantation. I come to know they cain’t help to be no other way but evil. They don’t stop ‘til they strip everything from us. They ain’t got no problem spoilin’ the wife right in front of her husband like they done with sweet Sarah and her husband Roy Lee, then snatch the children up right from under our arms and sell ‘em right off. Or they leave the children be and carry the Ma this way, and the Pa the other way. Make us dizzy in the mind ‘til we forget all that we is and all we ever was ‘fore we come here. Damn devils work us to the very death to boot.”

  “Ain’t that the truth? After this you suppose they take her out the field? She was a house woman before the missus got wind of Massa John’s rascal ways. A good house woman, too.”

  “Now, Tilly you know better’n I do if Missus Ashby got anything to do with it poor Sarah’ll be back puttin’ down rice in one week’s time. Hell, she probably won’t even give the gal time to stop bleeding. If the child’s pappy get any heart he may give her ten days to heal up. But massa’ll be tryin’ to calm that wife of his down now that Sarah come up with another one of his babies so that probably ain’t got no hope of happenin’. That missus got the evil eye on Sarah and she ain’t gon’ let it up ‘til the gal either get sold off herself or she six feet under.”

  Tilly clutched at her heart and shook her head sadly.

  “Well, at least this one was took by the good Lord himself and won’t be sold away by no buckra.”

  Granny Pearl nodded in agreement.

  “I’s sure Roy Lee gone preach up a nice sermon tonight. He’ll give a good one when they bury the child, too. A little shoutin’ll sure help Sarah get her spirit strength back up. That is if she even strong enough to get out to the praise house. Heart and spirit strength is what she needing now. Anyhow, I got to wake this ‘ole crazy gal and get this day started. You bring your boy by after supper tonight if the foot get any worse and I’ll see what more I can do for it. Good day, Tilly.”

  The dawn’s light pierced through the cabin window. Alena’s rustling caught Granny Pearl’s ear.

  “Get on up now, Effie. It almost day-clean. I hope you slept off whatever it was making you act up like a plum fool last night. It’s time for you to get to them fields and don’t you be late, hear?”

  “Miss Pearl? G-Granny Pearl is it?” Alena stammered.

  “What is it Effie?” She said sharply, giving Alena an irritated scowl.

  “I’m not Effie. Please, you have to listen to me. I am not Effie. My name is Alena. Alena Ford. I’m a free woman and I live in the 2000s. The painting….it brought me here but there must have been some kind of a mistake, a huge mistake. Please, help me get out of here.”

  Finding no empathy in Granny Pearl’s eyes she shouted into the ethers.

  “Mary! Mary Magdalene?” She begged desperately, turning in all directions. “Please, Mary, help me! I’m not ready for this.”

  Granny Pearl grabbed Alena’s chin, tilted it up, and examined her face carefully.

  “Mmm-Hmm,” she grunted, then shook her head solemnly. “Just like I thought. Mania. Confusion of the mind,” she pronounced after a long pause. “This here ain’t the work of no poison, and I know you ain’t fool enough to get into no liquor,” she explained. “This here ain’t nothin’ but the devil’s work. Somebody done put a root on you, child. They set a root on my very own grandbaby. Lawdy!” she exclaimed, slapping her palms down on her apron and shaking her head sadly.

  “This is some bad juju that’s got a hold of you right here. Lawd, I should of known it from the way you was jabbering on last night. But don’t fret, Effie. We gon’ bring you to Old Mother tonight.”

  Granny Pearl went to a row of mason jars lining the cabin wall. They were brimming with dried herbs. She scooped a handful out and sifted them through her slender fingers.

  “I got herbs for everything from swamp rot to snakes bites but she the one who know all about them roots, charms and th
em conjures. She know how to get ‘em off of you and she can turn ‘em right back on the folk that sent them to you, too. She’ll know what need to be done. Yes sir, Old Mother is a for real African, she know ‘bout these kind of arts like the back of her hand. In the meanwhile, you stick close to me li’l gal, you hear me? Now it’s too late for us to tell massa’s peoples that you too sick to work, it wouldn’t work no way. So you got to go on and work through whatever this is on you today. That rain gone and turned them fields to mush so the soil’ll be nice and loose for sowing. Listen to me good, Effie. Try and remember yourself as best as you can while you out there unless you want to get yourself whipped.”

  “Granny Pearl, you have to believe me! I’m not cursed. There is no root—”

  “Hush now! Heed to what I’m sayin’! Now, you do just what they tell you and stick to your work. You don’t breathe a word of this crazy talk to no one, hear?”

  Granny Pearl’s hooded eyes glared at her, a warning that filled Alena with more fear.

  “Keep quiet as you can, then come on straight back home so we can carry you to Old Mother and get you fixed up.”

  With little choice left, Alena walked half a mile down the sodden dirt road with the other slaves to work the field. As she stooped low to sow rice saplings into long neat rows, her bare feet sank into the muddy earth and thick black water rose to her shins. Alena hadn’t farmed a day in her life and could barely keep a cactus alive. She stole glances at the other slave women crouched in the fields, studying their techniques with the hoe. Young and old, their brown faces were woeful yet determined, shining with sweat in the blaring sun. A hum of grunts rose from all of them as deft calloused fingers worked the rice. As the day wore on, Alena felt faint and weak, her back ached terribly and her fingers were chafed and had started to bleed. She stood up to relieve her back and rub the sunburned skin on the nape of her neck. Suddenly an excruciating pain thundered across her shoulder blades and down her back.

  “Lazy nigger wench!” An overseer had thrashed her with his bullwhip. His eyes raged with a wicked glare, white face twisted with hatred.

  Stunned by the cold, searing burn of the lash, Alena screamed and collapsed in the black water. The blow had confirmed an immediate truth. Here, she was defenseless subhuman chattel in grave danger. It hit her with crushing darkness.

  “You stand up, nigger, before I give you another!” The words clanked in his mouth with vile loathing and disgust. “I won’t hesitate to turn your flesh through the hog press if I catch you lazing off again girl.”

  Terror raked through her body and her legs trembled violently, but with all of the strength she had left, she stood. She knew if she fell again the beastly man would surely make good on his promise.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” she managed hoarsely, averting her tear filled eyes from her captor’s impatient gaze, holding both of her palms up to her face.

  “What you say, nigger?” He lurched forward as if to strike her again, but at that moment, his attention was captured by a scream. A field hand had been bitten by a snake.

  Pain coursed through her body. Alena toiled away in horror, until at last the reddening dusk sky ended the working day. Supper was lima beans, pig tails, and a palm-sized piece of hominy bread which she ate quietly but quickly, hunched over her meal gobbling the food down in four forkfuls. Back at Granny Pearl’s cabin, Alena nearly collapsed from profound exhaustion and pain that set her back ablaze. She stunk of urine (it had been shocked out of her) and her feet were caked with dried mud. The humiliation and rage she felt would be forever emblazoned in her memory. She lay on a small makeshift cot on the floor wincing in pain and weeping, as Granny Pearl dabbed a goldenseal salve over the long, thick welt on her back.

  “Oh li’l Effie, why couldn’t you just listen!” Granny Pearl wailed. “I done told you, do what they tell you! There ain’t no break ‘til they tell you there is. Thank the Lawd all he gave you was one lash, you mighty lucky for that. Ain’t too much skin broken back here neither.”

  She wrapped a strip of damp cotton cloth gently over Alena’s wound.

  “Sleep on your belly tonight. This’ll heal you up good by morning.”

  Strangely, Alena felt the breadth of her love as if she were truly connected to Granny Pearl. It was tinged with the same helplessness that plagued all slave mothers. She would never be able to truly protect her grandchild.

  “I got something for you.” She handed Alena a chunk of hominy bread wrapped in a blue handkerchief.

  Almost as soon as Granny Pearl handed her the morsel she devoured it gratefully. Alena had never been so hungry in all her life.

  “Thank you,” she muttered as she chewed.

  “Wash up in that pail and put your church dress on Effie. It’s time to see Old Mother and then we’ll be on our way to the praise house.”

  With a lantern in tow, Alena and Granny Pearl walked to Old Mother’s cabin at the edge of the woods.

  “Old Mother, something sinister has touched Effie. I suspect it’s a root. Somebody is sending black magic to this here youngin’. Outta the clear blue last night she ain’t know who she was or where she was. She was just acting like she gone pure mad. She says she a free woman, and her name ain’t Effie. She say she from the way distant future and she trying to get back out there,” Ma Pearl whispered.

  Old Mother was even more aged than Granny Pearl. She moved her wrinkled ebony face close to Alena’s and studied her with her soft brown eyes, just as Granny Pearl had done in her cabin. She drew in from a clay pipe and blew its fragrant smoke over Alena, letting the wisps curl over her, as if to cleanse her with it. Old Mother muttered a prayer under her breath and after a few moments her ancient eyes were riveted on Alena, filled with awe. A smile curled over her brown lips.

  “There ain’t no vengeful spirits on this gal. I can see just who she is. The gal ain’t lyin’, Pearl. These eyes of hers is from the other side indeed. They from the side of where there’s freedom. They got magic in them, they do. She right, this sure ain’t Effie but Effie’ll be back. Don’t you worry none, Pearl. This gal got a spirit that come with hope. She come here with the promise from the Lord I known would be delivered on. Known it with all my heart. I known God ain’t brought us all this way to leave us be.”

  Alena pleaded, “Old Mother, do you know how to get me out of here? How can I get back home, to the other side?”

  “When you get whatever you come here for, you’ll go back. Every little thing, place, and person got a reason. When you find yours, you’ll get back to wherever it is you come from. And you take us back with you.” She tapped a finger at her chest. “Here. In your heart. Our memories, our suffering flow in your blood. But so do our royalty. You take our royalty back with you. You must not forget.”

  Old Mother worked her gnarled fingers over her blouse buttons and opened it to reveal a ropey S-shaped scar branded above her left breast.

  “Look here. You see this letter “S” them white people done burned in my chest? It been there since I was a wee gal stolen and brought here to work the rice. I believes it stand for Sierra Leone, my home. Mother Africa, our home. They burn it right in me like I’m nothin’ but a cow. But I tell you, I’m grateful. They say ‘Nigger, you ain’t got no home but the one we give you. I look here and I know they is full of lies! They say nigger, you ain’t got no name but the one we give you.’ I say no, my people already done named me, my Ma and my Pa. I sang my name in my mind every day and every night since I was stole away. I am Fatimata. I won’t ever forget. And you, Gal, you must never forget.”

  TWELVE

  The packed little praise house was jammed full with thirty other plantation slaves. Sounds of the rapid clapping of hands, stomping of feet, and shaking of makeshift tambourines poured from the windows and rang from the trees. When Granny Pearl, Old Mother, and Alena filed inside, they found Sarah hobbling slowly. Sarah was tall and willowy. She was also very beautiful despite the grief in her face and vacant almond eyes, eyes that felt stran
gely familiar to Alena. Her glossy raven black hair was plaited into thick braids that hung down either side of her head to her shoulders. It was Sarah’s beauty and natural charm that inspired Master Ashby’s short lived favor. Many years prior he allowed her a few lessons and books. To her great misfortune, her radiance and resulting “pretty talk” had also inspired his lust.

  After listening to Granny Pearl and the other women talking, Alena learned that Sarah had been carrying the plantation owner, Master John Ashby’s child. The master’s wife, Mistress Jane Ashby, was maddeningly jealous of his affairs with his slave women and made it her duty to torment the woman, even though it had not been voluntary on her end. To punish Sarah, the vengeful mistress ordered her whipped severely for the mild offense of breaking a dish in the kitchen. She had called in her brother Peter to do the deed that her husband would not. She lied to him and told him that she caught Sarah stealing a jar of jam from the cannery in the pantry. Ma Pearl herself was a native slave owner’s child sold to Master Ashby’s father when she was young and had a special affinity for Sarah.

  “Evenin’ Miss Sarah,” Granny Pearl greeted Sarah.

  “Now you know you should be restin’ and healin’ up. You gettin’ some rest when you can, ain’t you?” Granny Pearl asked her.

  Sarah stared blankly into nothingness. “I’m done with resting. I’ve got something to say to God and it can’t wait.”

  “Well how you feelin’, honey child?”

  “They only have my body. They will never have my mind. Tonight, I’m going to fly away home.” The moon glimmered in her eyes.

  “Oh yes, Sarah. Tonight, we gon’ be praisin’ and dancin’ and the Holy Ghost gon’ fill us all!” Granny Pearl assured her.

  For hours they sang and danced as Roy Lee preached until eventually the congregation filed back outside into the forest behind it, gathering in a ring around their dear Sarah. Joy and hope was alight in their faces as they sang. They drew close to one another to lift up their sister and friend.