Sycorax's Daughters

by Kinitra Brooks, PhD

  almost devoured by the deep darkness within the woods. A gasp escaped me and he turned around. A smile came to his lips along with relief. Without thinking, I ran into his arms. He held me tight to him beneath the meagre moonlight streaming through the dense trees.

  When I released him he took my face in hands that were as large as my head and kissed me. I grew weak in his arms and drank in the feel of his lips, the heat of his body against mine, my toes curling and parts of me awakening that I never even knew existed. He pulled away and searched my face.

  “I’ve been here every night since I brought you back here a few weeks ago, hoping to see you again,” he said.

  “Every night? Oh Moon, I didn’t know.”

  I stroked his face, his hair and then kissed him again.

  As he had done every night that week, he helped me onto his horse and then climbed on behind me. We rode out of the woods and away from the plantation until we were near his camp. He helped me off his horse and we lay in long, soft grass beneath a moon as serene and as whole as I felt in his arms as we made love. Afterward I lay staring at him as he slept, his skin a bronze shimmer beneath the light of the moon, his hair spread about him. One of the things I hated about the white man was the long, unnatural hair that grew flat and cowed instead of strong and upward. But I loved Moon’s hair. I loved everything about him.

  I reached a hand to caress his face and he caught it, his eyes still closed, and brought it to his lips. He sat up then and kissed me. Then he reached a hand for my stomach and stared intently at it, stroking it in sadness and awe.

  “I wish I could be with you to see her face when she is born,” he said.

  A pang of sadness swept over me and I stayed his hand. “There’s nothing growing there, Moon. The herbs you gave me made sure nothing can grow there.”

  “The herbs I gave you were to make you quicken. You are already with child.”

  Silence hung around us deep and dreadful. In the middle of that horror was a creeping joy I did not want to feel. I removed his hand from my stomach and stood. He stood also.

  “What do you mean? How could you give me something to make me quicken? You know what life for a slave is like!”

  “Our daughter is not one that can easily be refused. She wanted to come into this world through the two of us. Are you telling me you have not felt her presence at some point over the years? I have felt her my entire life. I could not refuse her.”

  Sadness in his eyes, he moved to place his hand over my stomach, but I backed away from him. I retrieved my clothes and dressed as tears fell down my cheeks.

  “You may have deceived me, Moon, but I have my own magic and I will kill this child you forced on me!”

  “You will do no such thing.”

  “It will be out of my body before this day is done!”

  I turned to walk away but before I could move, he quickly closed the space between us and grasped my arms, his eyes wide with anxiety in the dark.

  “Akosua, don’t leave here angry with me. I knew my time with you would be short, but I still cannot bear for you to leave me.

  Please don’t take away these last few hours I have with you.”

  I wrenched my arms out of his and walked away, my hand automatically coming to my stomach, overwhelmed by his treachery but even more so at the gift he had given me, the gift of life. Yet I knew it was too precious a gift for me to be able to keep.

  His voice reached me again, full of emotion and desperation. “She chose the two of us for a reason, Akosua. Promise me this, when he finds her, promise you will help him. Promise me, Akosua!”

  His voice was lost on the breeze and the sound of my sobs. I did not ask myself what his words meant, I could only think of the baby I would have to kill.

  I left with my new mistress that morning, riding on the back of a horse drawn cart, my mind on the child I could not keep. Was he right that it was a girl? I swallowed back bitter tears. Suddenly my heart tightened painfully and I looked up. On a hill in the distance stood an Indian dressed in clothing Moon told me they wore for funerals. Even from this distance, I knew it was him. He had come to say goodbye. I wished he were close enough so I could see his face, but I kept my gaze on him for as long as he remained in sight, tears streaming down my face. That was when I knew I would not kill this baby, the only thing of his I possessed. Soon he was gone, and I looked onward in the direction of my new home, my hand on my stomach and the life that was growing there.

  MY CHILD

  Pain rippled through my abdomen, a wave of pain that could not be contained or denied. I screamed in defiance of the pain, a scream that tore through my tiny cabin, drowning out the voice of the old slave woman who was kneeling between my legs. I cried out again as another contraction ripped through me. I knew more about delivering babies from the many times I had helped my grandmother deliver children in my village, but I let the old woman deliver the child, her manner clumsy and inept all while she exuded a haughty, knowing air.

  I felt my body give at the same time the pain lessened. Then I heard a whimper, barely discernible, over the old woman’s chatter.

  She lay in the old woman’s arms, calm and silent unlike other newborns I had helped deliver who screamed in anger at the world they had just entered. I stared at her small, perfect brown face. For a moment, I felt disappointment that she did not look like her father, but then I became captivated by her dark eyes which were searching the cabin. It seemed an age before they came to rest on me and that is where they remained. I reached for her. At first, the old woman continued to talk, tending to the baby in her clumsy way, which made me wince as I watched her hacked off the slick springy cord that had bound me to the baby, all while an ache gathered and grew within me. At last she was in my arms and the ache disappeared. I stared at that perfect face and for the first time since I was captured and brought to this land, I felt that which I thought had been forever stolen from me. Love. Love and a sense of self.

  I also recognised in this tiny perfect baby the spirit that had come to me on the bow of that slave ship in the form of those feeble hands which had prevented me from throwing myself overboard. My child. As if it was something I had done before, I brought her to my breast, the old woman and her chatter forgotten. The baby latched onto my breast, the pain flaring only to be forgotten. She fed and was soon asleep. The old woman tried to take the child out of my arms, muttering something about rest, but a look forced her back.

  I stared at the miracle in my arms. I would do everything in my power to protect this child. Yet even as I made the vow I felt a chill flood me for I could not protect myself let alone this precious gift Moon had given me. I vowed that no matter what it took, I would protect this child, and not even the white man’s God would take her away from me.

  #

  I wanted to name my child Moon, for her father, but in this world even the simple privilege of choosing one’s name was denied us. As I watched my mistress walk around my cabin, careful not to touch anything around her, bored as she threw names into the air carelessly, I pushed back my anger and decided to steer her toward the name I had chosen.

  “All those names are good names,” I said. “But I can only think of the night of her birth, how bright the moon was and how it seemed to shine on the birth of my child. My grandmother used to tell us tales of a god that had made the moon its home. I thought of that through the pain and I thought of you, mistress, that you are like that god, watching over me and my baby.”

  She was completely silent for a few moments, her brown hair harsh against her pale, thin face, her eyes round as she stared at me. I thought I saw something else in them as well. Maybe it was guilt or shame, I do not know. Then a hollow laugh escaped her.

  “Well, then, we must call her Luna, the Spanish word for moon.”

  “Luna,” I repeated, trying to hide the disgruntlement I could feel seeping into my voice. Then I looked down at the child. I smiled at her, a smile she returned with a gurgle of pleasure.

&
nbsp; “Luna. Yes, mistress. You have chosen the perfect name for her.”

  #

  I was happy during those first few years of my child’s life, but in this world happiness was not something that was meant to be mine, and a threat was looming, one I had not foreseen.

  My master, who had never seemed aware of my existence was suddenly frequently by my cabin, little gifts for Luna, who was almost three, in his bony hands marked with brown liver spots. Her skin was the same mahogany as my own, her ebony eyes always alight with joy, her plump face quick to spread into a smile and flash rows of perfect, little white teeth, her hair always lovingly oiled and plaited. I remembered the obeyifo that always manifested to me in the form of a little girl and the laughter that had accompanied its assurance my new master would never lay a hand on me. It had lied for I sensed a dark lust in my master’s smile, and when I went to my mistress with the herbs I prepared for her every week, I found words no one would dare speak to their mistress tumbling out of my mouth, and into the neat stuffy bedroom.

  “Why don’t you at least try and stop him?”

  She stared back at me, anger tightening her thin lips as the colour drained from her face making her almost blend into the weak sunlight that bled into the room. I was sure only the herbs I had just placed on the table prevented her from ordering the punishment I would otherwise have received.

  “What do you mean?” Her voice was like a whip snaking across the silence in the room.

  “You know what I mean. He is always at my cabin. I won’t stand to be used like that again. You will stop him!”

  She laughed, a sound that was brittle and filled with such pain it made a chill run down my spine.

  “You think it is you he wants?” she said.

  “Then why—?” The words trailed off for I was seeing the candies in his bony hand and the way he held them out to Luna, his eyes glued to her face, that dark lust in his eyes.

  I stared at the herbs on the table. I had never asked myself why she wanted them. Fear and dread flooded my chest as nausea settled in my stomach. The obeyifo’s laughter from so long ago rang through my mind.

  “Luna,” I said.

  She nodded.

  “You may go,” she said after a few moments.

  It was a while before the dismissal filtered through to my mind and, in a daze, I left the room.

  Luna. He wanted Luna. I would slit his throat before he ever laid a hand on my child.

  BETRAYAL

  It was months before I returned to the world around me and the new plantation I had been sold to which was a long way away from Mississippi. It was a voice that drew me back, a male voice that was husky with the quality of thick smoke. And then his face was before me. We were sitting in the shade of a cluster of trees, other slaves scattered around us. It was lunchtime. He sat beside me, looking out at the vast cotton field basking in the sunlight some distance from us, but not seeing it, only seeing the childhood memory he was recounting to me.

  I studied his face, his glistening maple-coloured skin and pleasant open face that was quick to smile and hide the pain behind his quick lively eyes. He faced me suddenly and finding my eyes on him, he appeared startled, the words trailing away. He stared at me for a moment or two, and then resumed his story, never taking his eyes away from me. I glanced down at the plate of food I held.

  Instead of one portion of the salted pork that was given to each slave, I had two. I glanced at his plate which was empty. Since he had given me most of his food, it had not taken him long to finish. For a moment darkness pressed in on me and the pain cut deep, almost cutting me in two when I thought of my loss.

  Back in Mississippi they told me I was needed at the main house and I arrived to find a slave trader waiting there. I had known immediately he was waiting for me. I uttered one word. Luna. He was taking me away from my child.

  The pain threatened to make me withdraw again but his voice drew me away from the darkness. He had sat with me every day for the past few weeks talking and I found that his voice had reached me in the darkness for I remembered all he had said and that each day he had given me most of his lunch.

  I placed his salted pork back on his plate. Again his words trailed away, eyes that normally told so much giving me nothing for a change.

  “You need more than you have had to eat over these weeks,” I said.

  He nodded and a smile lit up his face at the gift of words, the first words I had spoken to him after many weeks of silence.

  “Abraham.” He turned at the sound of his name in exasperation.

  “What?”

  “Come here,” an older man called from the other end of the cluster of trees.

  He faced me again, anxiety in his eyes, his expression fretful as if he was watching a fish he had spent the entire afternoon catching wriggle out of his grasp.

  “I will still be here when you return,” I said.

  Perhaps it was the way I stared at him in rapt concentration, but he nodded and stood, darting over to the older slave. The darkness threatened to pull me away and back into the shell I had retreated to ever since I had been stolen from Luna. My thoughts drifted back to what had pushed me into the darkness. A dream I’d had of Luna, her plumb face lengthened and thinned by a few years, screaming in pain whilst death, silent and unseen, reached out to grasp her. Pain almost completely wiped the sight of the cotton field away. However, I clung to the sight before me for I had the promise of hearing that voice, like thick smoke, and of looking into those eyes that were quick to brighten when he smiled, eyes which concealed dark rooms and intense loneliness.

  #

  We became friends over the months that followed, and although I never spoke to him of my pain, his many kindnesses

  soothed the constant rub of the gaping wound of my loss. Although he kept me in the world, the dream was still there. So,

  when one night Abraham and I were sitting around a fire cooking our nightly meal, he told me of a plan he and a few other slaves had made to escape on a day when the master would be distracted by visiting friends. I had stared long at hard at his face half caught between shadow and the orange light of the dancing fire. He had waited in silence, anxiety a dark light in his eyes. I saw what this escape plan would bring for the two of us. Safety and joy in a place where we would be able to be man and wife and live in dignity. I saw children and the pain hidden behind his eyes ease and then disappear over years of relative contentment.

  “Yes, Abraham. Of course I will go with you,” I said, there being only one reply I could make to his offer. “Tell me what the plan is.”

  The smile that spread across his face usually brought joy to my heart, but this time there was only the dream of my child screaming whilst death reached for her.

  #

  A few days later I trailed behind my new master avoiding the darts of hostility and accusation I saw in the eyes of the slaves we passed. I had expected it. What I had not expected was my new master to take me past the cotton field and the gruesome offering that had been placed there. A line of men and women were hanging by their arms from wooden posts, wounds and red, oozing stripes across their backs festering in the relentless heat of the southern sun. My new master lingered by the cotton field as the hot, angry gazes of the slaves working in the field burned in my direction, but there was only one whose gaze could sear my mind and heart. At first I thought he was unconscious, but one eye fluttered open, the other squeezed shut by dark, swollen flesh. That eye shone bright with pain, pain that deepened when he saw me standing behind my new master. Perhaps he had not allowed himself to believe I had betrayed them, but he could no longer deceive himself.

  The morning after he told me of the escape plan I had approached one of my master’s friends, a slaveholder from Mississippi, and asked him to buy me revealing the escape plan to him. He had accepted easily for I had also displayed my talents at healing. He lived a long way away from my child, but I would be that little bit closer to her.

  A sob escaped
me before I could catch it and although my eyes glistened with unshed tears, I suppressed the anguish that was like hot coals in my chest. I could not deny Abraham and tear my gaze away from his and so I watched the bewilderment play out on his face.

  Eventually my new master moved on. I kept my gaze on Abraham until I could no longer do so. I wished then that I had told him of my loss. Now I would have to wait until I met him again in the afterlife for he would be dead in a few days. It was the only thing that gave me some comfort during that long journey back to Mississippi, that all the pain he had endured would be gone once his soul was released from his body and this life of pain and misery. Throughout that journey there was no Abraham to keep me in the world, but I forced myself to remain in it. My child. I had a few years to make my way back to her. The dream of her face narrowed and sculptured by the years, screaming out in pain, was never far away.

  #

  I was sold a further two times before I got within walking distance of my child. A long walk that would take hours. During my first week at that plantation I saw portents of death everywhere. Everything I saw whispered of death from the bitter cold that had descended on the plantation to the deathly brown trees starved of leaves. A family of hungry runaways I came across in the woods, one holding a one year old baby to her painfully swollen bosom, whispered of an end. A weeping cut on the foot of the male screamed of death to me, even when I gave them food and herbs to heal the cut, telling him they must remain in the cave they were hiding in for a day or two to let it heal. The gratitude and relief in their eyes did not smother the whispers of death and when malignant black clouds gathered above that evening, I knew I could not wait. I had to make the long journey to see my child.

  I set out after the other slaves had gone to bed, relying on instinct to show me the way through a ferocious storm that smote the Earth with its petulant rage.

  When I got to the plantation I saw a light in one of the cabins and headed straight for it, fear clutching painfully at my stomach. I pushed the door open and entered to find the dream taking place right before my eyes. I saw Luna lying on a pallet, a woman hovering nervously over her as she screamed in pain. What sent horror tearing through me was her stomach which was engorged and hideously distended with child even though she was just one herself.