I must have looked wild and famished because the young woman immediately handed the package over and watched with bemused fascination as my eyes watered and my hands tore into a dish of chicken in coconut sauce on a pile of tepid semolina.
When I finished I licked my fingers dry, one by one.
Ezinwene was young and came from a family of means; that much was obvious from the two gold crowns on her front teeth. (A rich Ambossan made damned sure everyone knew it.) Her lips were huge and soft and stained ruby from tobacco flowers. Her cinnamon skin glowed with the combination of a healthy diet and expensive moisturizers like cocoa butter and shea oil. Her teeth were fashionably sharpened to a point. Her intricately plaited hairdo rose up in swirling interlocking arcs, revealing she was unmarried. Wooden pendants were sewn into them to ward off evil spirits. Her perfect, naked, cone-shaped breasts were draped with dangling ostrich shell necklaces and her brown nipples were raised flirtatiously to the sky. Gold armlets ran up her arms like coiling snakes. The round platform of her well-fed hips, wrapped in shimmering green silk stenciled with orange flamingos, would secure her a good marriage.
Ezinwene exuded the kind of exuberant confidence peculiar to those whom the gods favored.
To be honest I hated to come face to face with such wholesome Aphrikan youth, beauty and wealth.
She made me feel like the back end of a geriatric warthog.
Worse, she reminded me of Little Miracle.
She chattered nonstop, but I didn’t mind. After so many hours alone, I was hungry for conversation. The Ambossans didn’t believe in solitude, and neither did I anymore. Did I really spend time back home happily playing alone with my rag doll? They said that the Europane need for solitude was further proof of our inferior culture, our inability to share. Privacy was a foreign concept to all Aphrikans. Life was communal and for us slaves, by necessity, intimate.
“I am so happy to have found my calling,” she prattled on. “I am here to help those less fortunate than myself. I am of the belief that although we are all created equal, some have lives that are made easy and some will have to endure the greatest tribulations. Oh, look at me and my long words! That means bad luck, you understand. Life can seem so deeply unfair, can’t it? Take me, for example, I only need click my fingers and the hired help comes running to obey my every command. But even for myself, life is a struggle. No one understands how horribly tedious, how boring, how excruciatingly dull, how mind-numbingly terrible it is to not be expected to lift a finger, quite literally. What on earth is one to do with one’s time?”
She leaned in toward me.
“This slavery business really is quite appalling. Oh yes. I absolutely do not approve of it. It has even given me nightmares. I’ve heard what happens on those awful ships and in the colonies. You poor, dear, sweet, tormented, unfortunate thing. How you must have suffered.”
She smoothed back stray curly hairs on her glistening forehead and tugged at the sides of her expensive wrappa, straightening it out with long fingertips embellished with pumpkin-orange nail varnish onto which were stuck diamante stars. She then cocked her head to one side and half-smiled at me with-well, there’s a fine line between sympathy and pity and someone had just stepped over it.
When I was her age I carried a wooden tray full of sweet-potato chips on my shoulder and the knowledge that I was a fully paid up member of the most loathed race in the history of the world, the whytes, or, to use the correct jargon here, a term which the Ambossans invented-the Caucasoi.
“Listen very carefully,” she continued, overenunciating. “We are at the docks at Kanada Wadi. We need to get to West Japan Quays, a little farther down, where a ship awaits you. Now, pay attention, don’t mess this up or we’re both stuffed. You will pretend to be my slave from this moment on, and we have to leave right away. We cannot wait until nighttime because by then news will have spread. Do you understand?”
I nodded my head, resisting the urge to deck her.
She hugged herself with self-congratulatory pleasure as if her mission were already accomplished and she could go home and boast about her dangerous escapade as a freedom fighter.
Was it really that simple?
I wanted to ask her if she’d done this before but I already knew the answer.
She would be careless.
I would be cautious.
The docks at Kanada Wadi were heaving with Ambossan dockers in leather loincloths. Their faces were caked with dirt, their bodies streaked with a grunge of sawdust and sweat. Their hooves were hard and cracked and they possessed the raw masculinity of men who endure strenuous physical labor for a living.
They stank too, of the repellent odor of seamen whose open pores seeped not sweat but the beer and rum they drank all day long because fresh water was in short supply at sea.
Like a gang of big cats on a hunt they began to prowl too close for comfort, sniffing out the pheromones of the nubile Ezinwene, disrobing her bottom half in whatever soft- or hardporn scene each was capable of conjuring up for his own private viewing; inhaling her saccharine perfume as if it were an aphrodisiac as she pranced in front of them, throwing alluring smiles over her shoulder with the confidence of a woman who has no doubt she will receive admiring looks back when she does.
What on earth was she up to?
The sun struck us with typically nasty tropical ferocity, with no regard for those of us born without enough protective melanin.
The hammering, shouting and clanging of the docks was overbearing. I felt like a limp rag, my hair wringing wet, a pool of sweat dripping from my top lip.
The air was muggy. The waterways steamy. The muddy walkways glutinous and slippery beneath my feet. Everywhere there were pulleys, wheels, wooden crates the size of huts; ropes slumped like great sleeping snakes on the ground.
Cranes soared into the sky like exotic prehistoric birds. There were baskets of every shape and size, barrels that could fit ten of me inside, giant clay pots, iron scales so large they could weigh two Aphrikan buffalo apiece.
Slavers crowded the docks like hulking primordial mam—moths with three masts apiece rising toward the sky like towering horns.
Yemonja, the Ambossan goddess of the sea, with her voluptuous breasts and furrowed brow, was most ships’ figurehead of choice.
Jib booms protruded like giant swordfish snouts out of bows ready to slice through the seas of the world.
Each ship was studded with round gun holes. Cannons would be rolled into them and protrude like erect phalluses when approaching the Europane coast.
The slavers rocked and creaked in the water, impatient to set sail again and feed their carnivorous bellies with the succulent delights of human livestock.
Seamen clambered up and down the rigging and swarmed over the decks as they loaded up for the three-month journey of the Middle Passage.
I clutched my stomach.
Slavers sailed to the coast of Europa, where they bartered for my people with beads, knives, hats, gourds, bowls, spears, muskets, bolts of cotton, brandy, rum, kettles, even.
It’s nice to know what you’re worth.
Slavers had just arrived or were getting ready to set sail for the various coasts of Europa: the Coal Coast, the Cabbage Coast, the Tin Coast, the Corn Coast, the Olive Coast, the Tulip Coast, the Wheat Coast, the Grape Coast, the Influenza Coast and the Cape of Bad Luck.
When these ships sailed on to the New World, they exchanged slaves for rum, tobacco, cotton, and then sailed back home to the UK-rich, obese, slothful, satisfied.
Oh, it made great business sense for the Europanes. They received luxury items such as battered old hats and knives and in return sold off healthy specimens of the human race.
We passed warehouses on the Doklanda quayside where three million barrels of rum were stored at any one time. The thick, soupy, intoxicating smell of the wood-soaked rum was enough to make me feel heady.
Then we came upon several little shops selling seafarers’ staples such as live chickens and
sheep, dried goods, cooking pots and utensils, and then to a shop I knew by name only. I stared at the window of Fashion Victim, which sold “Designer Jewelry for the Master with Taste.” A blue plaque bearing the UK Royal Seal of Approval was nailed to the door.
It was high-end; it was classy; it was only for those who could afford to adorn their slaves with expensive “jewelry” to parade at weddings, rituals, festivals and the like.
Set on a bed of purple crushed velvet was a gold choker inlaid with sapphire, with a hook at the back on which to attach a chain (name engraving an optional extra); there were chunky gold bangles inlaid with amethysts with an interlocking chain (also available in platinum), silver-plated anklets (with matching keys).
A naked seven-foot security guard stood inside the door. His chest was crisscrossed with lots of multicolored beads, a red-dyed lion’s mane headdress raised him another two feet to nearly nine, and he had a sword and shield at the ready. He was whyte, of course. Security guards always were. This one looked very Nordic, with his long flaxen plaits and stature.
Ezinwene had stopped some way ahead and turned around, finally noticing me lagging behind. She shot me a stern reproachful look from eyes that glittered even at a distance. It was the typical slave-madam look. Designed to instill fear and subservience.
I dragged myself away from the Crown Purveyors of Fetters and Manacles and hurried to catch up. By the time I did, she was on her way again, walking closer to the ships that loomed ominously above. I read their names: The Ambossan Hero, Europane Queen, Black Beauty, The 3-Point Turn, The Whyteamoor, O Dear Mama.
Then I began to notice that the people on the docks were surreptitiously smirking at me: the fine ladies with their topless fashions and supercilious eyes, the fine gentlemen with their invincible struts and luxurious material flung over one shoulder, the robust children led by whyte nannies who were more mother to them than their own.
Ezinwene stopped in front of a small ship moored at the end of the quay and waited for me to catch up, whereupon she tried to usher me up the gangway with what I believed was an impatient, lip-curling grimace. Sunlight bounced off her gold teeth but cast the rest of her in shadow. In the energy-sapping heat and noise and frazzle of the docks, it dawned on me that her mission was in fact to lead me onto a slave ship where I would be sold on illegally, or where a sheriff was waiting to take me back to Bwana in chains.
Had the Resistance been infiltrated? Of course.
Everything was clicking into place.
The heat was frying my brains.
I couldn’t think straight.
My feet could not, would not climb aboard the ship.
Not another floating torture chamber.
Not another floating coffin.
Not after all this time.
I dug my heels into the sludge of the docks and felt myself sinking.
Back through the years to when I was a captured child.
THE MIDDLE PASSAGE
Trussed up in the bottom of the slaver’s yawl, I felt like a trapped fish flapping about in its final death throes as I struggled onto my back, spitting out rotten fish scales.
My head banged against splintered wood as I inhaled the strange new smell of the seaweed, which slurped against the side of the yawl, now lurching away from the coast.
I was being pulled in two: my body forced away from the shore, while my heart dragged me back to the landmass to which my whole life was attached.
Two men rowed out to sea, muscles pumping hard, four oars chopping up the waves, ignoring the squirms of us poor captives wedged in between their legs. They were the strange blak men who had taken control of our shipment on the beach, I noticed. Not of my own kind. My own kind? If I had to pinpoint a moment when the human race divided into the severe distinctions of blak and whyte, that was it: people belonged to one of two colors, and in the society I was about to join, my color, not my personality or ability, would determine my fate.
The rowing stopped and I was carried up a rope ladder that swayed precariously down the side of the ship.
As I looked backward one last time toward the coast, the dark forest seemed to charge toward the sea—a legion of black stallions racing to my rescue.
Then I caught sight of birds swooping down into the sea, making little splashes as they dived underneath the water in a carefree display of aquatic ballet.
It was darling.
Water glistened on my eyelashes.
I blinked to release it.
The ocean streamed soundlessly down.
THE SHIP WAS a slaver manned by the blak men. It weighed some two hundred tons with six cannons mounted on her gun deck. I craned my neck at the proliferation of nets and ropes that stretched high into the sky to secure the billowing sails being hoisted toward the trade winds. They were like the wings of the white albatross of legend, ready to carry us to a strange new place.
I was carried on board over the shoulder of one of the men, my hands bound, my body bruised and sopping wet. As the ship rolled from side to side in a gathering wind, I shuffled from foot to foot trying to remain upright. Goats, sheep and chickens in coops were winched bleating and squawking on board. Water caskets were hauled up over the sides alongside sacks of wheat and clumps of cowhides and more captives arrived dripping water over the poop rail, while others were being shoved down the hatch into the hold.
Garanwyn managed to sidle next to me. He was at least a foot taller than I, and his bulbous knees bolted his much thinner legs into place, while his knobbly shoulders tried to shrug off a childhood that had not yet arrived at the manhood that would bulk out his frame and settle his proportions.
Yet, like the man he wanted to become, he took my limp, damp hand in his confident clammy one and gripped it. I squeezed back. Warmth charged into me.
Captain Wabwire, the man in charge, leaned against a rail, watching the activity on board his ship, one leg casually crossed over the other.
In the shadow of a sail, his eyes appeared as bottomless hollows.
He swiveled a polished wooden cane between the slender fingers of his hands.
Unlike the sailors, who wore their hair shaven, cropped or stuck up in uncombed bushes, his was plaited into neat cornrows. A pristine white wrappa wound around his slim hips, the ends flung over his shoulders with the usual voluminous flourish.
I was mesmerized.
He was a long-necked, snootv-nosed peacock, standing aloof from the chaos of loading his cargo.
He caught sight of me peeping at him through a gap between the waists of two male captives. We were both transfixed. I wanted to drag my eyes away but a fresh deluge of tears poured down my cheeks.
He ruffled his wings, turned and strutted toward the cabins on the quarterdeck, the cane now spinning furiously.
Sightings of this exquisite bird were rare after that.
The seamen’s bodies and words had a strange physical presence. Their muscles were crisply defined and densely packed and they spoke a language unlike any I’d ever heard. Clicks and clacks were interspersed between words-sounds made by sucking the tongue against the roof of the mouth. They chucked wide, open vowels into the air while hard consonants rode on the spine of their own reverberation and shuddered down my vertebrae, making me shiver.
I gaped at the nicks of their facial engravings and at biceps imprinted with black-inked tattoos of naked women whose exaggerated buttocks enlarged when they flexed their muscles. One of them pissed over the side of the ship. The others snortled when the wind slapped it back so that it showered a group of us captives.
I winced, not realizing such uncouth behavior was nothing compared to what these lions of the sea would get up to once out at sea.
The men who worked the slavers were the lowlifes of the seafaring community because even their chance of surviving the Middle Passage was low. Those who had been press-ganged into it had no choice but to sink to the slaver’s moral code, which was-Anything Goes.
As I stood there amid the chaos, a sailor
cuffed his barnacled hand around my neck with such force it propelled my legs toward the hatch.
I tumbled down the narrow wooden steps into the lamp-lit darkness while my mind scuttled straight back up again, leaped over the poop rail into a yawl, rowed to the shore at great speed and ran through the forest for home.
BELOWDECKS THE STORAGE SYSTEM was both unisex and utilitarian: planks of wood formed shelves that ran in six parallel rows the entire length of the hold.
The shelves were space effective and cost effective, I later found out. There were two available options: the Tight Fit, which allowed for an extra thirty percent of cargo, but with a downside of increased fatalities. Or the Loose Fit, which offered more space per person but resulted in reduced profit.
I WAS ASSIGNED MY SPACE on a shelf and secured with leg irons bolted to the wood. I wasn’t handcuffed; the women weren’ t. No fancy bracelets for us; only the men wore chains that connected the irons on their ankles with those on their wrists.
A minor discomfort were the maggots that dined on the festering gashes caused by the constant chafing of iron on skin. Unfortunately, it was impossible for the men to reach down to pick the moist little squidges out of their ankles.
My ankles were almost thin enough to slip through the irons.
Our shelf was reserved for the female of the species only, and we were to spend nearly all of the trip lying prone upon it. We lay on our sides as Captain Wabwire had opted for the Tight Fit—more cargo, less space.
If one of us turned we all had to.
Headroom of less than eighteen inches made sitting up impossible for all but the tiniest.
WHEN I LAY ON MY RIGHT, my face was squashed into Hildegaard’ s back. Her spongy, creamy skin lifted easily off the bone. She became my mattress and my pillow.
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