by Sarah Lark
At the end of the day, Doug and Nora endured a terrible dinner with the Stevens — the reverend had coerced his wife into getting up and joining them for dinner. Nora thought it unwise, but the priest insisted that life must go on.
“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!” he said unctuously. “And surely, in all of his unfathomable wisdom, he has his reasons for taking this son from us. We have to bear it with the same dignity as Abraham, when he had to sacrifice Isaac …”
Completely overtired, Nora thought of the sacrifices at the Obeah ceremony and nearly giggled. She desperately needed rest, or else she would collapse. Luckily, at least little Mary was doing well in the morning, as Adwea reported. Nora wondered if Sally was still taking care of her, as she had not seen the housemaid all day. Ruth and the reverend apparently had not asked after their daughter, which was a relief, as Nora would not have been able to take care of a child whose mother was hysterical whenever black hands touched her.
Elias didn’t actually return home that night and Nora — too exhausted to sleep, a condition she had never before thought possible — wrestled with her decision not to go to Doug. Eventually, she forced herself to conjure up the embrace that they had shared during the storm. That feeling of security … so far, Nora had always comforted herself by imagining Simon in her arms. But tonight it was a different man whose arms were wrapped around her in her dreams …
The following day, the Stevens finally departed, Mary sitting between them on the box of the wagon and little Sam wrapped in towels in the cargo area. Ruth initially didn’t want to be apart from him, but the reverend had exercised his power again. Nora felt sympathy for the young woman. Ruth Stevens was faithful to her husband and obediently followed him halfway around the world. But now he left her alone with her unending grief. Nora wondered how a man of the cloth could be so uncaring.
The water had receded further, but they couldn’t begin with the new construction of the slave quarters because there was still no decision regarding the location. So, the overseers went on with business as usual and sent the slaves out to the fields.
Elias returned home in the afternoon and was in a clearly better mood. Hollister had agreed to give him three of his own slaves and two oxen, in addition to being financially accountable for the damages.
“Of course three is not nearly enough,” Elias ranted at dinner, “but he said he couldn’t spare more. So, we will need some from the next ship and we will have to train them. It’s such a burden!”
Elias ended dinner early that evening. He had undoubtedly been hitting the bottle hard with Hollister the night before and now needed sleep. Doug and Nora met briefly on the stairs, but they only quickly squeezed each other’s hands. There was still too many people milling about the house — Adwea was cleaning up, Elias’s personal slave brought him water to wash up, Nora was expecting Máanu. They couldn’t safely hold each other.
“He has agreed to the construction site for the new slave quarters!” Doug whispered to Nora. “Tomorrow they will begin clearing and moving the sugar cane field. You handled the matter fantastically — with me, he would have quarreled endlessly.”
“Your approach is wrong,” Nora began to explain, but then Elias’s servant appeared in the hall and the two had to part ways.
“Goodnight, Nora!” Doug whispered. It sounded like a term of endearment.
“Goodnight, Doug,” she said softly, surprised at how soft and tender her voice had suddenly become.
Had she spoken to Simon like that? At the time, she thought there was always a melody that their hearts sang. Had she found her way back to that?
It wasn’t going to be a good night. Nora had only slept one or two hours — and this time it was finally deep and dreamless — when someone knocked on her door. Doug? Nora got up and groped her way through the darkness of her room. Adwea was outside her door.
“Missis … I sent Máanu, but she not want … I get you. But Missis … you maybe still help. You maybe even do medical exam. Girl is so small. Is so young—”
Nora rubbed the sleep from her eyes. “A … miscarriage?” she asked, incredulously.
Amid the chaos of the storm, surely none of the slave women would have visited the baarm madda!
Adwea nodded. “I got baarm madda. But cannot help. I no, she no. But maybe Missis … so no baby.”
The arduous escape from the hurricane probably triggered a miscarriage. Nora wondered which woman it was. In any case, she hadn’t previously noticed any pregnancies.
“Where is she? And who is it?”
“Sally,” Adwea sighed. “And is here, in sheds near kitchen.”
“Sally?” Nora asked, horrified. “But she … she is still a child! And why in the shed, Adwea? It’s dark and damp in there. Why didn’t you take her into the kitchen with you?”
“She no want, ashamed. Found her yesterday in shed, very sick, very bloody … have called baarm madda. But is not better.”
Nora grabbed the few bandages and medicaments that she had in the house. Most of her stores had been washed away with the slave kitchen. But after dealing with an unwanted child, medicaments were less necessary than rinses and massages. If it even really was a miscarriage! The black women were experienced with such things, but they had to be mistaken about this. Sally did not have a lover. She was certainly not more than thirteen years old. Nora feverishly tried to think of other possible reasons for her bleeding as she followed the cook downstairs.
Two other women, one of them a kitchen assistant and the other the baarm madda from the Hollister plantation, had lit the shed with candles and oil lamps when Nora arrived. The baarm madda was uttering strange chants. They sounded eerie, but also somehow comforting. However, Sally was not listening to her any longer. She was resting on a blanket in front of them that was partially soaked through with blood. Her face was pale and haggard. Nora still remembered how death looked all too well. She had seen so much suffering in London — all of the consumptive children, coughing up blood until they died. Sally’s body was smoldering. Nora kneeled down beside her after briefly greeting the baarm madda. The woman was taking a huge risk by trying to help. By day, the herb-wives were sometimes forgiven for helping out at other plantations. At night, it was considered an escape attempt.
“Just what is wrong with her? What happened?” Nora asked. The black healer — who was a bit older than Adwea — solemnly lifted the cloths that she had spread over Sally’s lower abdomen.
“Has lost child,” she said quietly. “But was not me. Was none of us …”
Apparently, she thought she had to justify herself and her trade.
“But how can she … She’s just a child …”
Nora desperately tried to stop the bleeding, but she had little hope. After all, the black healer had tried for hours and also had no success.
The baarm badda shrugged. “She twelve. She bleed every month. Then man can put baby in her. She just could not keep it. Still much too small.”
“But what man would do such a thing?” Nora asked in shock and looked at Sally’s slender, childlike, underdeveloped body. “Who is aroused by such a young girl? He must have forced her. She was still … to me, she still looks completely innocent.”
She cut short when she remembered Sally’s crying during the storm: Sally bad … Sally do bad things … The girl must have been alluding to what some monster had done to her in the night.
“But we’ll get him!” Nora said resolutely. “I am going to get to the bottom of this!” She began preparing a rinse with curd soap and a herbal solution as she spoke. It was unlikely that she could still help somehow, but she would at least try. She needed red wine to help with the blood loss. “Brew a herbal tea, and get red wine from the house, and feed it to the little one!” Nora directed Adwea, as she washed the child herself.
She heard a bitter laugh behind her. “Missis will get to the bottom of it? Certainly! Missis is so concerned about poor nigger …” Máanu mocked.
Nora w
anted to reproach her, but she held back. Did the girl know something? She would speak to her later. “When did this happen?” she asked Adwea.
“I don’t know … yesterday, the day before yesterday …”
“The night before last!” Máanu said. “And it didn’t happen on its own.” Then she disappeared.
Nora didn’t stop her, but made note of what the girl said. The girl hadn’t lost the child on her own. So, from the hurricane? Or had the man abused her on the night in question? She shot a questioning glance at Adwea. Whatever Máanu knew, the cook must have also known. She was just afraid to talk. So, one of the overseers? Nora worked hard to stop the bleeding and at some point in the night, it stopped.
“It’s getting better … it—”
Nora almost felt a bit of hope, but then the look on Sally’s face gave her pause.
The baarm madda shook her head. “Will never bleed again,” she said softly and Adwea and the other kitchen slave began to sob. Even Nora felt the tears in her eyes. “But don’t cry, Missis,” the healer said. “Don’t cry, Addy … is now free, girl. Is now happy, is now free …”
CHAPTER 5
“I beg you, Nora, this is really not a topic for the breakfast table!” Irritated, Elias put down the fork with which he had just pierced the cod and fried okra. “Especially not for a lady.”
Nora had arrived to breakfast late and had not worried about spoiling the mens’ appetites with her story. She was not able to eat anything. She found it repulsive just to put sugar in her tea. Without the whites’ greed for sugar, Sally might still be alive — somewhere in an African village.
“Well, among the men it would hardly be discussed,” Doug remarked. “You and I wouldn’t have witnessed or overheard a single thing about it. So, you think Máanu knows something, Nora? We have to question her about it. Very seriously. I am not one to threaten with the whip, but here we may have to go that far, so that she is more afraid of us than the man who did this to the child.”
“It had to be an overseer,” Nora said. “Adwea is not afraid of anyone in the slave quarters. But she is scared to death of even giving the tiniest bit of information here.”
“Well, I wouldn’t dare to threaten Adwea with a whip,” Doug strained to make a joke. “She might poison us if we hit her too hard …”
Nora couldn’t laugh about it. But then Elias made an astonishing remark.
“No one is threatening anyone with a whip!” the planter exclaimed. “Whatever these women think they know. No one is being called upon for insubordination here. Or do you think it would be better if every nigger just denounced his overseer? They clear up such things among themselves. I will talk to the overseers and when I find out who it was, I will take Sally’s worth out of his wages.”
“Sally’s worth?” Nora asked in horror. “She was a twelve-year-old girl! And some bastard raped and impregnated her! You cannot sincerely believe that it will all be even when the attacker reimburses you for her value!”
“She was a slave!” Elias said firmly. “And if we are, in fact, speaking of her value, you can get such a little thing for fifty pounds. So, don’t make such fuss.”
Nora fumed. She would have liked to dig her nails into his cheeks and scratch up his face. This time, in contrast, it was Doug who remained calm.
“Father, that will not do! There are laws on how to deal with slaves and they clearly do not permit one to purchase children and torture them to death.”
Elias twisted his mouth into a nasty smile. “Now don’t get carried away! The girl was not tortured to death, she was just pregnant. Well, broken in a bit early … but who would punish that? Who knows what happens in all the brothels in Kingston? And they also buy slaves.”
“Broken in?”
Nora wanted to say something, but she was at a loss for words.
“That’s a good suggestion, anyway,” Doug said, clearly exerting himself to stay calm. “The next time I ride to Kingston, I will ask around.
Maybe one of our overseers has an infamous preference for young whores. Sorry, Nora …”
Nora made a dismissive gesture. “Just don’t be fooled into thinking that the ladies from Kingston have never heard of a brothel before. In any case, you have to fire him, Elias, if we find him!”
It was hard for her to even address her husband.
“And not only that,” Doug added. “You have to report him to the authorities. The child is dead, Father. The man should be hanged on principle!”
Elias finally reluctantly agreed to fire the man if Doug and Nora came to him with a name.
“But only if he confesses,” he conceded. “Otherwise, the floodgates for denunciations will be open. Give the niggers an inch and they take a mile—”
Doug grimaced. “Don’t worry about that, father. When I’m finished with the man, he’ll admit to everything!”
“Why won’t you say it, Máanu? You clearly know something. And Doug and I are on your side, we—”
Nora had been trying to persuade her maid for a half an hour, but Máanu only responded with that familiar, bitter, nasty laugh.
“Missis don’t want to know at all,” she explained in Pidgin English, knowing it would make her mistress furious. “Is better if Missis forget. And Backra Doug also.”
She resigned herself to getting nothing from Máanu. The attempt to get Adwea to make a statement, on the other hand, ended in crying and screaming,
“I no say … cannot force me … not even if beaten … please don’t beat, Missis. Was wrong, Missis, I should not have call—”
Nora desperately tried to calm the cook and explain to her that she did not intend to hit or otherwise hurt her.
“But you have understand, Adwea, that this man might do it again. Heavens, Adwea, you have a little daughter.”
The mention of the crime happening again completely broke open the dams. Adwea sobbed in horror and fear in such a desperate manner, that Nora could only sit speechless beside her and stroke her shoulder. The cook did not seem to notice her touch. She wailed and wept until they heard Elias’s voice asking about the next meal. Nora hadn’t moved an iota closer to her objective.
“Adwea knows, and Máanu, too. And they are nearly scared to death, even if Máanu doesn’t show it. But they would rather be whipped than say anything,” she explained to Doug, when the two finally went out for a ride together again. Nonetheless, secrecy was out of the question, as the beach was still flooded and the plantation was teeming with slaves and overseers. In addition to their normal work, they were trying to build their new quarters, as the whites brutally forced them to build the houses for the overseers first.
Doug furrowed his brow. “Well, they also don’t know anything in the brothels in Kingston,” he reported back from his own research. “Naturally, there are always fellows who run around being rough with the women, but no one from our plantation is known for that specifically.”
“Well whoever he is, he’s making up for it here,” Nora said. “You still don’t know the worst of it. Sally is not the only one. I spoke with the baarm madda, and she says that several girls have died at Cascarilla Gardens — three in the last ten years or so. One from a miscarriage like Sally, one drowned in the bathing pond — even though she could certainly swim quite well. And one hanged herself.”
“Ten years?” Doug asked. “Well, then at least I don’t come into question as the perpetrator.”
Nora looked at him, completely confused. “Surely no one would have suspected you!” she then said.
Doug rubbed his forehead. “Why not?” he asked. “Considering how Máanu behaves? She seems to see the embodiment of evil in me.”
Nora laughed. “You are only the second worst,” she teased him. “The absolute epitome of all evil is your father …”
It wasn’t until later that she thought about what she had said. Elias had married her and Doug’s mother before that. He was a cruel man, but he had always treated her respectfully. She had never even had a bruise afte
r he visited her in the night, and he had even deflowered her. It couldn’t be Elias — never.
After neither Doug nor Nora’s investigation had led to any results, quiet came over Cascarilla Gardens for the next few weeks. The slave quarters were rebuilt at a higher elevation, and the servants moved out of the buildings and stables and into their own huts. Nora took up nursing again and set up a small infirmary in the settlement. She went to the village every day and took a particular look at the very few very young girls that lived on the plantation. One of them was Mansah, Adwea’s younger daughter, but Nora wasn’t all that worried about her. After all, the little girl was practically always at her mother’s side. It had probably been planned for her to be trained as Adwea’s successor, and she helped the whole day in the kitchen.
A few weeks after Sally’s death, Nora bumped into the little girl as she polished furniture in the parlor.
“You’re doing that wonderfully!” she warmly praised her — and, in fact, the side table that Mansah was just working on rarely ever had such a shine. “So, do you want to also help us in the house now?”
Mansah nodded seriously. “Mama Adwe says have to. Because otherwise no house maids …” She looked sad. With what happened to Sally and Annie drowning, Nora realized that her friends and playmates were dead.
“That’s true,” Nora said. “But maybe I can talk to the backra and Mama Adwe. Surely some of the field slaves would like to work in the house. You’re too young to be doing that!”
That was undoubtedly the case. On the sugar cane fields, there were fewer female workers than on tobacco or sugar cane plantations, since the work was too difficult. Even the men died young and women rarely withstood more than a few years. However, there was always a shortage of black labor in Jamaica, as the slave traders preferred to supply to larger, more central islands like Barbados.
As such, strong, young women were also sent out to the fields and naturally jumped on any offer to ascend to a position as a house slave. Here, however, the long-established house servants often resisted the idea. Any Africans that just happened to come along, as they put it, might not accept the status-conscious cooks or personal servants. Nora could only hope that Adwea did not think the same.