by Suzanne Weyn
His words made me smile. Somehow I knew he was right; we would be friends. There was nothing psychic about it. The feeling came from the warmth of his smile, the fact that in some strange way — although we’d just now met — he seemed happy to see me. I felt oddly pleased to see him too, as though somehow we’d always known each other and we were reuniting rather than meeting for the first time.
“Then I should call you Aakif,” I said.
“Of course. And what should I call you?”
“Elsabeth.”
He shook his head thoughtfully. “Too long.”
“Bethy?” I suggested.
He considered this. “Betty-Fatu.”
“But that’s also long,” I pointed out. “And why that?”
“Fatu is African and it’s a name I like. It’s easier to say than Elsabeth.”
Again, I found myself smiling broadly. “I like it also. Betty-Fatu.”
And so I began my new life as Betty-Fatu.
HOLDING ON TO MY HAND, AAKIF WALKED UP THE BEACH toward the forest. “Come. I’ll take you to my village.”
We left the beach and traveled through the woods. The giant oaks with their hanging moss were just as shadowy and otherworldly as I’d feared, although being with Aakif made me less afraid. He knew every twist and turn of it.
In about fifteen minutes, we came to a clearing in the oaks. Twenty small, unpainted, wooden cabins stood side by side in a straight row. They were neat but simple. Their only adornment was a bright blue outline painted around the windows and doors of each cabin.
Aakif noticed me looking at the adornment. “Ever hear of indigo?” he asked.
I had learned of it in my history lessons. “It’s a dye from a plant, isn’t it?”
“Besides rice, we also grow and harvest the plant it comes from, indigofera. We make it into a blue dye. The bosses don’t mind if we scrape the bottom of the barrels for our own use as long as we don’t take too much.”
“It’s very pretty,” I commented.
“The purpose is not for beauty,” Aakif said. “It is to keep off the juju.”
“Evil spirits?” I guessed.
“Yes, witchcraft. It is everywhere. We guard against it always.” He tapped the blue bead he wore around his neck. “This also keeps off the juju.”
Not knowing what to say about such a superstition, I changed the subject. “Which of these cabins is yours?”
“That one,” Aakif said, pointing down the line. “When I came here, I thought I would have no family, but as fortune had it, I discovered a cousin of my mother’s was already here — enslaved many years ago. She is much respected as a conjuror among the bin yahs. Her name is Mother Kadiatu, but everyone calls her Aunty Honey because she keeps bees.”
“Will I meet her?”
“You will. Soon. You will love her and especially her cooking. She makes the best gumbo on the island.”
We walked along the cabins and I noticed that there was no one around. “Where is everyone?” I asked.
“Working,” Aakif told me. “The last of the harvest is still coming in. The women are already beating the first of it that came. When the slavers are here, everyone works hard, hard. But when they leave, we let the old people and the children stay home to work at easier tasks.”
“Why aren’t you working?” I asked.
Aakif grinned mischievously. “When I told the other foremen that I thought I saw a forest spirit on the beach, they let me go. Now I must let Aunty Honey know that I have returned and no harm has come upon me.”
“Aunty Honey is home now?”
“Yes, she is old, old, old. No one knows exactly how many years. Even Aunty Honey is not quite sure, I think.”
“You said Aunty Honey is a conjuror. I’ve never heard that word.”
Aakif stared at me with a puzzled expression. “Never heard of a conjuror?” he questioned incredulously.
“No,” I replied, shaking my head.
“Aunty Honey knows how to use plants — leaves and roots — to keep off the gafa.”
“Gafa?”
“The evil spirits. If someone has put the hudu on you — you know, a spell, a curse — Aunty Honey knows how to get it off. If a njoso enters you, Aunty Honey can drive it out with her medicines.”
At once, I pictured Bronwyn with her herbal medicines.
“Does anyone accuse her of being a witch?” I asked.
“A witch?! Aunty Honey?! No! No!” Aakif explained, waving his hands as if to shoo the question off. “There is witchcraft on this island, but not Aunty Honey.”
“Do you know who the witches are?”
“No, they keep themselves secret,” Aakif replied seriously. “Sometimes you can see them at night. They fly through the sky.”
Again, I thought of Bronwyn and wondered if she was still traveling.
“You can see the witches because they leave a trail of shooting lights,” Aakif went on.
“I saw a shooting star last night,” I recalled.
“That was a witch that you saw,” Aakif insisted.
There was no point in arguing with him. He was certain of the things he believed. And besides, who was I to say he was wrong?
“Magic is everywhere,” Aakif went on. “Every day we see magic; we live with it. The only magic that is bad is magic intended to do harm — evil magic.”
“And witches do the evil magic?” I inquired.
“Yes.”
I decided to keep my desire to study witchcraft a secret. It would not do me any good to have these people think I was a witch, but I wondered if I could learn anything from Aunty Honey’s conjuring.
Aakif stopped in front of the last cabin on the row. When I followed him to the other side, I realized we had been walking behind the cabins. The fronts of the cabins faced a sort of village square bordered by more slave cabins on the other side.
Clustered together under a spreading oak, four white-haired men wove more of the sweet grass baskets Aakif had given me. A little way off, two elderly men sat on a simply made bench carving blocks of wood — one shaped a wooden bowl, the other whittled a wooden chain. In the center of the green, about fifteen adorable children, aged from three to ten, ran around, laughing. They seemed to be playing a game of tag. Five grand-motherly women appeared to be patching garments with needle and thread while they watched over babies who either crawled or slept on blankets near them.
“It is like a different world here when the bosses are gone,” Aakif commented. “We are thankful for this heavy, heavy heat that drives them off for a time.”
A mosquito stung my shoulder and I slapped at it, leaving a splotch of blood where it had gotten me. Now that I no longer had the cooling ocean breeze and the protection of the shady oaks, I realized how truly scorching it was.
Staggering slightly, I clutched Aakif’s shoulder to keep from falling. Aakif steadied me. “Ah, Betty-Fatu, I see for certain that you are no forest spirit. You are a white and cannot stand the heat. Aunty Honey will feed you and cool you down.”
With my arm draped across his shoulder for support, Aakif led me toward his cabin. As we neared, I became aware of a continuous hum and looked toward the sound. Over to the side of the last cabin where Aakif lived with Aunty Honey were six sweet grass baskets, only they were large and cone-shaped. They sat upside down on small wooden tables. There was a small hole in each one; occasionally a bee would fly in or out. “Those are Aunty Honey’s bee skeps,” Aakif explained as he eased me toward the steps to his cabin. “There’s a real beehive in each one. Aunty Honey believes honey will cure almost anything that ails a person.”
The moment I turned my attention away from the bee skeps and back to the cabin, I was faced with a person I assumed was Aunty Honey herself.
Though very short in stature, she was also wide, especially at the hips. Her plain blue skirt appeared scrubbed yet stained and it had been mended in various places. She wore a shirt with wide black stripes, and wisps of cottony white hair peeked from
the black head wrap she wore. Her skin was as black as Aakif’s, and her small onyx eyes gleamed angrily at me.
Feet planted on the top step, and with her hands on her hips, Aunty Honey barked furiously at Aakif in a language I assumed was Gullah, but which I couldn’t begin to make sense of.
Aunty Honey turned her piercing stare back to me and the rapid-fire syllables of her unfamiliar language — words she was thinking but not voicing — flooded my mind. It was a torrent of images: a mother, a father, a husband, a girl baby born, friends, cooking, tending the baby … then men from a nearby tribe attacking her village. Shouting. Screams. Running, running, running through a wide savannah, howling baby clutched to her chest. A net hurtling through the air.
After that, the next images came quickly but not in the same jumbled torrent. These were horrible pictures that I didn’t want to see. They rushed in just the same, and there was no way I could shut them down, even though I was trying.
Black African slaves were chained together at the ankles and wrists, packed so tightly in the lowest chambers of a ship that there was hardly enough air for them all. Aunty Honey lay shackled to another slave. The sound of wailing and anguished cries filled the space.
I saw a white man pulling at the baby girl Aunty Honey clutched. Aunty Honey screamed for her child and was hit with a metal bar from behind. I saw her crumple onto a dock where other Africans were being sold.
My mind filled with the image of Aunty Honey grinding her back molars as she was whipped by a white slaver, searing agony shooting through her. Men were nearby, laughing.
I saw things I don’t ever want to see again or remember even now.
Tears flowed from me — gently at first, then harder and harder still. Rolling despair washed over me and I fell to my knees, my hands over my face, weeping from the depths of my being. Was this Aunty Honey’s deep sadness or my own? I couldn’t tell.
Another, different, but still overpowering emotion swept through me. Ferocious, red rage. Aunty Honey herself entered my mind, younger and stronger than she actually appeared. She glowered at me with pure hatred.
Never had this kind of malice been directed at me. It was terrifying. In my mind, I saw her grab my throat and squeeze. Each time I tried to push her off, she’d tighten her grip.
“Gafa!” Aunty Honey shrieked at me.
She tossed a white powder into my face.
The powder burned my eyes.
“Gafa! Gafa!”
From somewhere very far off, Aakif shouted urgently at Aunty Honey, speaking in the Gullah language. It was the last thing I heard before my eyes rolled up in their sockets and my knees buckled out from under me.
WHEN MY EYES OPENED, I WAS STARING UP AT THE LEAVES of an oak. Aakif was beside me and, as I struggled up to lean on my elbows, he offered me a kind of yellow cake.
“Corn bread with honey,” he explained. “Here, take it.”
It was warm and wildly delicious. Aakif then handed me a carved cup filled with cool water. “She says you’re a witch,” he stated calmly. “She won’t let you into the cabin.”
I coughed up the water I had just sipped. “Why does she think I’m a witch?” I asked. Had she seen into my deepest secret, my desire to know what witches knew? Did she know about my grandmother and great-grandmother?
“Aunty Honey told me that you went into her mind and witnessed her most hidden memories. To protect her thoughts, she had to enter your mind and put a stop to it.”
It was true!
“I think she was trying to kill me,” I said, remembering the old woman’s ferocious violence.
“No. If Aunty Honey wanted you dead, you would be dead.”
We sat there for several minutes without speaking.
“Do you think I am a witch?” I finally asked.
It was a relief to see a smile spread across his handsome face. “Would I give you my corn bread if I did? No. I don’t think there is any bad in you — but there is power, the same power as in Aunty Honey.”
“How do you know that?”
Aakif shrugged. “I can feel it. Sometimes I just know things. I have … I don’t know … I think the word for it is instinct. I have an instinct for people and what they are like. But Aunty Honey does not guess, she knows. She has great power but also knowledge. She has studied the roots and flowers, even minerals and animals.”
“Where does she get her supplies?” I asked.
“Some are brought in from Africa, often already ground. Like a blowfish for instance. Did you know that the venom from a blowfish can make a person appear dead, even though that person is really still alive?”
A shiver of fear ran through me. “How awful! Has Aunty Honey ever poisoned anyone?” I asked, fearful of the answer but needing to know. If so, I would have to be careful of everything Aakif offered me to eat.
Aakif sighed and contemplated the question for a moment. “Aunty Honey boasts of poisoning many folk. All her victims had bad juju, she claims, and deserved to die.”
“She thinks I have bad juju,” I reminded Aakif.
“I know. I did not expect that when I brought you to her.”
“What should I do?”
“Be careful of her,” he advised. “I will speak with her on your behalf.”
Leaning forward, I felt strong enough to get to my feet. “I think I should go back to the beach,” I decided. “It’s probably best if I stay out of Aunty Honey’s way.” I really didn’t need her turning the whole village against me.
“Maybe so,” Aakif agreed, no doubt with the same idea in mind. He went back to his cabin and quickly returned with a cloth bag. “Supplies,” he explained. Swatting another mosquito, I let him lead me back the way we’d come. “Do you want to stay on the beach or in the forest?” he asked.
“The beach,” I answered without thinking about it much. I simply liked the beach better. “It’s cooler and has fewer mosquitoes,” I added.
“The smoke from your fire will help keep them off,” Aakif said. “I’ve brought you more coal.”
Once more, we walked through the shadowy forest. I told him how I’d thought I’d seen an angel the other day, but it was a heron.
“Ah, I know of these angel spirits,” Aakif said. “How do you know them?”
“From the Bible. My father would read it to us every night.”
“Sometimes here on the plantation, white men in black robes come to read it to us. Mostly they read stories about Jesus. I like those stories. But I first heard of angels from the Muslims back in Sierra Leone. I met them while working for the palm oil company. Their stories are very much like the Bible stories, and they too have angels.”
“I’ve never met a Muslim, but I’ve read of them. I didn’t know they also have angels in their religion. It just shows you people are more alike than they realize.”
“Maybe.” Aakif sounded skeptical. “It’s not easy to find anything in common with the plantation owner or his family or his foremen.”
“What about me?” I asked quietly.
Aakif gazed into my eyes. “You’re different from them.”
It made me extremely happy to hear those words. “I hope so. I want to be,” I said. “Tell me how I’m different.”
Aakif smiled softly as he brushed some hair from my eyes. “You are njoso, Betty-Fatu, but you are not a spirit from the forest. You are an ocean sprite.”
The first thing Aakif and I did when we reached the remnants of my old fire was to build a new one. After that, we set up a tent, made from a quilt that looked like it was woven but was really strips of fabric sewn together.
After that was done, we walked the shore, talking for close to an hour. His dream was to buy his freedom. The plantation owners paid their foremen a small wage. “And during the off-season sometimes I can fish and row over to the mainland after dark to sell my catch. I know a man there who takes it from me and pays right at the dock. I can be back before anyone knows I’m gone.”
“Do you think you can ever earn
enough?”
“Men have done it on this plantation before,” Aakif replied, his voice filled with determination. “And if others have, I can.”
“You’ll do it,” I said, feeling sure he would.
“What about you? What do you want?” he asked.
“Right now I just want to find a way home.”
“When the masters return in two months, we’ll make sure they help you.”
Could I last two months? It seemed like such a long time to live out here on the beach by myself. But at least I had Aakif to help me.
“After you go home, I suppose you want to marry a rich man and have babies,” Aakif assumed.
“No,” I confessed, “that’s not what I want at all. I want the independence to live as I like, to be a free woman.”
This made Aakif smile. “So we have the same dream, then.”
“In some ways,” I agreed, returning his smile.
Returning to my beach campsite, we stoked the fire and heated Aunty Honey’s famous gumbo. Then Aakif handed me a glass bead strung on a reed, like the one he wore. “To keep off the bad juju,” he said.
I turned the bead over in my hand. It was a deep blue. The glass was full of air bubbles and was a little uneven, so it was obviously handblown, possibly very old. “Will I need this to protect myself from Aunty Honey?” I asked.
“I don’t think so,” Aakif answered, though he sounded uncertain. “She is not a bad woman, only a powerful one.”
Aakif tied the beaded reed around my neck. “A girl who floated to safety across the wide ocean in a barrel most likely doesn’t need a bead to help her. But just the same, I want you to have it.”
After our supper, we sat by the fire, watching the waves. Aakif took hold of my hand, which thrilled me at first, but soon came to feel very natural.
“Would you like to hear a song I know?” I asked him. “I sang it while I was floating in my barrel.”
“Absolutely, yes! Sing it for me.”
Fighting a moment of self-consciousness, I leaned back on my arms and sang out: “The water is wide, I can-not cross o’er. And neither have I the wings to fly …”