Friday stretches up over rum puncheon, him belly’s slithering back towards cart tailboard.
‘E too scared to come down, Pa,’ I say.
Pa shouts despairingly, ‘Jump! Jump!’ He keeps on goading Friday. ‘Jump out-a deway!’ Leaping to one side Pa’s jumping shows Friday how.
‘Yu stay! No, move on up!’ Dick shouts, pushing cart from below and behind now. Dick’s pressing, straining, leaning full against cart tailboard. Cart halts, rum puncheons rock. Dick springs clear of tailboard. Stumbling onto bony knees grey horse screams. Puncheons tumble over cart back, Friday topples from him perch. Wild pig squeal – Friday shrieks and shrieks in awful agony. Puncheons battering him body, head, spilling over pimento-stuffed sacks, bounce-rolling down plantation path; split. Smashed. Rum gushes downhill. Rum flows red. Slumped between shafts horse rears up front hooves, mane splaying out in yellow-white flames.
Pa have a zombie face. He just stands there. Lips shaking.
Friday’s bloody rum-soaked body wedges awkwardly beneath puncheons, torn sacks spewing pimento atop cart’s wreckage.
‘Yu aright?’ Dick asks Friday. Clambering up pimento-stuffed sacks to guinea thatching-grass bundles, crawling over splintered puncheons, Dick shouts, routing for Friday. No answer comes. Then I see Friday’s bleeding head; sameway like broken chicken’s neck twisted unnaturally it defy any kind of faith in life, limply falling back dead. In my mind him still squealing like pig with machete to him throat. I sharply feel yoke of guilt slant across my shouders.
‘Friday never aright afta dat,’ Pa says, him voice broken. He joins Dick to pore over messy stack. Pa’s trembling hand reaches out, grasps rope loop like it’s a line leading to hope. Searching for ways to free Friday, he tilts up a puncheon, ripping out grey-green shirt shred.
Turning, I see myself through great-house windows, rushing along landing – how I got here I don’t know – down hall, across front verandah. Cinnamon Hill great hall’s empty. ‘Mary Ann! Mary Ann!’ I’m yelling. Flying up stairs, I yell, ‘Yu not gawn to Sibyl’s yet?’ Blocking Mister Sam’s chamber doorway a shape black as a shadow moves. Panting hopelessly, ‘Friday. Is Friday,’ I’m saying. ‘Me tink Mary Ann aright, but me cyaan find she.’
‘It’s Monday, Kaydia, what’s wrong?’ Minister shoves him hands in deep black gown pockets. He must have come in by back door, I think.
Frantically my thoughts spin back. ‘Is Mary Ann. Rum. Friday. Gone.’ My burning eyes scour plantation path sweeping round, eye-watching drive for Charles.
‘How much rum was lost? How many puncheons?’ minister asks, moving to window to see. ‘It’s a mercy the consequences weren’t more serious.’ Minister hisses under him breath, ‘This horrible, cruel weather.’ He asks again, ‘How much rum was lost, damnation? You must answer clearly. I can’t understand if you keep blubbering.’ But minister shudders. Like he smells something else wrong. Smells more than spilt rum. ‘You will send for Junius to find someone to clear up, clean up any mess. And get Friday to water my horse, she’s hitched to the cinnamon tree by the cut wind.’
‘Yu pass Mary Ann on plantation path?’ I ask. Turning into Mister Sam’s bedchamber minister, muttering prayers, closes door on me, turns chamber key. I shout after minister, ‘Yu ride wid Charles dis mornin?’ Fury flares hot within my breast. Over and over my hand’s banging hardwood door. Breaking through my pangs of loss I feel thin ray of hope – at least Mary Ann’s alive.
I can tell it’s Pa thudding into great-house hall. I break off from door thumping.
Sticking to stone wall, quaking, Pa’s all pain and rage. ‘Wot’s dis yu dangle fe Mister Sam?’ Leaning back, hard breathing, Pa’s head batters stone wall two, three, four times. ‘W’appen, Kaydia?’
‘Someting wrong.’
‘Speak out. W’appen?’
‘It a-accident.’
‘Dere’re no accidents!’ Now Pa’s bawling, him body shaking violently. ‘Puncheons brik. Friday . . . killed. Always someone’s fault. Always someone’s blamed.’ Pa’s head’s battering stone like skull’s about to crack.
‘Don’t, Pa. It me telled Friday go on.’ Pa comes to a standstill. Air reeks of anger. ‘Where Mary Ann?’
‘Don’t blame yuself. Isn’t yu fault,’ Pa speaks kindly now.
‘Me cyaan care wot you say. Wen it appen me was dere.’ She choose to go with Charles? Me cyaan hold onto she?
‘Don’t blame yuself,’ Pa says.
Walking into great-house hall Sibyl strokes she swollen belly, caresses broad thighs that seem to grow out, unavoidably, fill up too much anxious space.
My eye can’t make four with Sibyl’s. Asking like she knows, Sibyl says, ‘W’appen, Kaydia? Where’s Friday?’
‘Yu see Mary Ann dis mornin? Yu see where she gawn?’ I say.
‘Me not know. W’appen to cart back dere?’
‘Friday’s lickle bwoy,’ Pa says accusingly. ‘E shouldna work in distillery.’
Shivering, Sibyl mumbles, ‘Friday. Lickle Friday.’ She shudders – disbelief – too swamped by loss to speak she whines hoarsely.
My eyes go under hall stairs to Mary Ann’s empty sleeping place. ‘Mary Ann,’ I shout, running outside to coarse lawn grass. ‘Mary Ann!’ Can’t take my eye off looking for she. Can’t shift what’s done.
Old Simeon’s bench stands empty. Dull clop of unshod hooves gallop full pelt from stable-block; air’s filled with quivering sounds of my footfall on beaten ground. Knowing I’m seeing Charles astride Mister Sam’s bay horse, Mary Ann in front, I run run run headlong down driveway past upturned cart. Before me she goes. Turning back, Mary Ann’s look catches me, scorches my heart, though fire in she eye’s long died out.
‘Charles,’ I’m bawling. ‘She me dawta, yu cyaan tek she way fram me.’ Me cyaan bear witness to dis. I’m shouting, ‘No. No. No,’ my voice a jagged gash. Mary Ann’s face screws up, hair blowing free. I sing out Wayah! Mary Ann’s little screwed-up face locks in me mind. Along drive I follow, flying like wicked duppy’s chasing.
I need someone alongside me so I don’t lose sight of why I’m pelting down plantation path, headed seawards. But even dawn breeze desert me.
‘Mary Ann! Mary Ann!’
I’m screaming, speeding down hill under shrieking sun. Running through gushing rum, blood, making plantation path a swamp, my feet slither, giving way beneath my belly. Dashing on slushy sand, screeching sky scorches blue. Galloping horse turns into sunlight. I holler. Toppling over, rolling. Smashed. Running upright again but frantic rush of dread holds me back. My belly groans. Jerking forward, back, I wobble. Can’t bear losing another pickney. Can’t take that risk. So I run away from Charles, from Mary Ann.
Feeling warmth of smooth-stoned coast road I branch off other way, swerve from Montego Bay. Run away. Coast road to Falmouth’s empty. Open. Rising. Rum flowed red. Screaming gone. Dead.
The Runaway Slave at Pilgrim’s Point
ELIZABETH BARRETT BROWNING
I.
I stand on the mark, beside the shore,
Of the first white pilgrim’s bended knee;
Where exile changed to ancestor,
And God was thanked for liberty.
I have run through the night – my skin is as dark –
I bend my knee down on this mark –
I look on the sky and the sea.
II.
O, pilgrim-souls, I speak to you:
I see you come out proud and slow
From the land of the spirits, pale as dew,
And round me and round me ye go.
O, pilgrims, I have gasped and run
All night long from the whips of one
Who, in your names, works sin and woe!
III.
And thus I thought that I would come
And kneel here where ye knelt before,
And feel your souls around me hum
In undertone to the ocean’s roar;
And lift my black face, my black hand,
Here, in your names, to curse this land
Ye blessed in Freedom’s, evermore.
IV.
I am black, I am black,
And yet God made me, they say:
But if He did so – smiling, back
He must have cast his work away
Under the feet of His white creatures,
With a look of scorn, that the dusky features
Might be trodden again to clay.
V.
And yet He has made dark things
To be glad and merry as light;
There’s a little dark bird sits and sings,
There’s a dark stream ripples out of sight;
And the dark frogs chant in the safe morass,
And the sweetest stars are made to pass
O’er the face of the darkest night.
VI.
But we who are dark, we are dark!
O God, we have no stars!
About our souls, in care and cark,
Our blackness shuts like prison-bars!
And crouch our souls so far behind,
That never a comfort can they find,
By reaching through their prison-bars.
VII.
Howbeit God’s sunshine and His frost
They make us hot, they make us cold,
As if we were not black and lost;
And the beasts and birds in wood and wold,
Do fear us and take us for very men; –
Could the whippoorwill or the cat of the glen
Look into my eyes and be bold?
VIII.
I am black, I am black,
And once I laughed in girlish glee;
For one of my colour stood in the track
Where the drivers drove, and looked at me:
And tender and full was the look he gave!
A Slave looked so at another Slave, –
I look at the sky and the sea.
IX.
And from that hour our spirits grew
As free as if unsold, unbought;
We were strong enough, since we were two,
To conquer the world, we thought.
The drivers drove us day by day:
We did not mind; we went one way,
And no better a liberty sought.
X.
In the open ground, between the canes,
He said ‘I love you’ as he passed:
When the shingle-roof rang sharp with the rains,
I heard how he vowed it fast.
While others trembled, he sate in the hut
And carved me a bowl of the cocoa-nut,
Through the roar of the hurricanes.
XI.
I sang his name instead of a song;
Over and over I sang his name:
Backward and forward I sang it along,
With my sweetest notes, it was still the same!
I sang it low, that the slave-girls near
Might never guess, from what they could hear,
That all the song was a name.
XII.
I look on the sky and the sea!
We were two to love, and two to pray,
Yes, two, O God, who cried on Thee,
Though nothing didst thou say.
Coldly Thou sat’st behind the sun,
And now I cry, who am but one, –
Thou wilt not speak today!
XIII.
We were black, we were black,
We had no claim to love and bliss –
What marvel, ours was cast to wrack?
They wrung my cold hands out of his –
They dragged him – where I crawled to touch
His blood’s mark in the dust – not much,
Ye pilgrim-souls, – though plain as THIS!
XIV.
Wrong, followed by a greater wrong!
Grief seemed too good for such as I;
So the white man brought the shame ere long
To stifle the sob in my throat thereby.
They would not leave me for my dull
Wet eyes! – it was too merciful
To let me weep pure tears, and die.
XV.
I am black, I am black!
I wore a child upon my breast, –
An amulet that hung too slack,
And, in my unrest, could not rest!
Thus we went moaning, child and mother,
One to another, one to another,
Until all ended for the best.
XVI.
For hark! I will tell you low – low –
I am black, you see;
And the babe, that lay on my bosom so,
Was far too white – too white for me.
As white as the ladies who scorned to pray
Beside me at church but yesterday,
Though my tears had washed a place for my knee.
XVII.
And my own child – I could not bear
To look in his face, it was so white:
So I covered him up with a kerchief rare,
I covered his face in, close and tight!
And he moaned and struggled, as well might be,
For the white child wanted his liberty, –
Ha, ha! he wanted his master’s right.
XVIII.
He moaned and beat with his head and feet –
His little feet that never grew!
He struck them out as it was meet
Against my heart to break it through.
I might have sung like a mother mild,
But I dared not sing to the white-faced child
The only song I knew.
XIX.
And yet I pulled the kerchief close:
He could not see the sun, I swear,
More then, alive, than now he does
From between the roots of the mango – where?
I know where! – close! – a child and mother
Do wrong to look at one another,
When one is black and one is fair.
XX.
Even in that single glance I had
Of my child’s face, – I tell you all, –
I saw a look that made me mad,
The master’s look, that used to fall
On my soul like his lash, – or worse,
Therefore, to save it from my curse,
I twisted it round in my shawl.
XXI.
And he moaned and trembled from foot to head, –
He shivered from head to foot, –
Till, after a time, he lay, instead,
Too suddenly still and mute;
And I felt, beside, a creeping cold, –
I dared to lift up just a fold,
As in lifting a leaf of the mango fruit.
XXII.
But MY fruit! ha, ha! – there had been
(I laugh to think on’t at this hour!)
Your fine white angels, – who have seen
God’s secret nearest to His power, –
And gathered my fruit to make them wine,
And sucked the soul of that child of mine,
As the humming-bird sucks the soul of the flower.
XXIII.
Ha, ha! for the trick of the angels white!
They freed the white child’s spirit so;
I said not a word, but day and night
I carried the body to and fro;
And it lay on my heart like a stone – as chill;
The sun may shine out as much as he will, –
I am cold, though it happened a month ago.
XXIV.
From the white man’s house and the black man’s hut
I carried the little body on;
The forest’s arms did around us shut,
And silence through the trees did run!
They asked no questions as I went,
They stood too high for astonishment, –
They could see God rise on His throne.
XXV.
My little b
ody, kerchiefed fast,
I bore it on through the forest – on –
And when I felt it was tired at last,
I scooped a hole beneath the moon.
Through the forest-tops the angels far,
With a white fine finger in every star
Did point and mock at what was done.
XXVI.
Yet when it all was done aright,
Earth ’twixt me and my baby strewed,
All changed to black earth, – nothing white, –
A dark child in the dark, – ensued
Some comfort, and my heart grew young;
I sate down smiling there, and sung
The song I told you of, for good.
XXVII.
And thus we two were reconciled,
The white child and black mother, thus;
For, as I sang it, – soft and wild,
The same song, more melodious,
Rose from the grave whereon I sate!
It was the dead child singing that,
To join the souls of both of us.
XXVIII.
I look on the sea and the sky!
Where the Pilgrims’ ships first anchored lay,
The great sun rideth gloriously!
But the Pilgrims’ ghosts have slid away
Through the first faint streaks of morn!
My face is black, but it glares with a scorn
Which they dare not meet by day.
XXIX.
Ah, in their stead their hunter-sons!
Ah, ah! they are on me! they form in a ring!
Keep off, – I brave you all at once, –
I throw off your eyes like a noisome thing!
You have killed the black eagle at nest, I think;
Did you never stand still in your triumph, and shrink
From the stroke of her wounded wing?
XXX.
(Man, drop that stone you dared to lift! –)
I wish you, who stand there, seven abreast,
Each for his own wife’s grace and gift,
A little corpse as safely at rest,
Hid in the mangoes! yes, but she
May keep live babies on her knee,
Strange Music Page 24