Praise Song for the Butterflies

by Bernice L. McFadden

  “Did you hear it?”

  A speechless, shaken Abeo could do little more than nod her head.

  * * *

  That Sunday the entire family attended church—well, all but Grandmother, who refused to because she claimed a white god was no god of hers—where Abeo made her First Communion. She looked like an angel in her white dress and matching patent-leather shoes. For the occasion, Ismae had taken Abeo to the hairdresser, where Abeo grinned all through the wash, dry, press, and curl.

  At the church, Ismae welled with pride as she watched Abeo prepare to take, for the first time in her life, the body of Christ. Ismae squeezed Wasik’s hand, but when he didn’t squeeze back in response, she looked over at him to find that he was staring down into his lap, his face void of emotion.

  Abeo stood tall and proud before the priest with the palms of her small hands pressed tightly together. The priest used the thin wafer to make the sign of the cross over her head and then held the wafer inches from her lips, announcing with great reverence, “The body of Christ.”

  Abeo responded, “Amen,” closed her eyes, opened her mouth, and presented her tongue.

  Ismae had wanted to give Abeo a party to celebrate the special occasion, but to her surprise and Wasik’s relief, their daughter declined. “I’d rather go to the beach,” she said.

  And so she and the family spent the entire day at Laleb Beach, running through the surf until their fingers were wrinkled. Afterward, they filled their bellies with sausage and fish kebabs. The adults drank beer after beer while Abeo glugged down three bottles of orange soda.

  They stayed until the sun changed from daffodil to ruby and drained into the sea. Bonfires were lit, amateur acrobats cartwheeled and tumbled their way up and down the sandy shoreline, people sang, and the stars floated a little bit closer to the earth.

  8

  The following week, Serafine talked Wasik into driving them to the Cape Coast of Ghana for an overnight stay. “It’s important that Didi visits the slave castle,” Serafine pushed when Wasik began to make excuses.

  They invited Grandmother, but she clucked her tongue. “What I want to go there for?”

  The normally three-hour drive took four and a half hours. A truck carrying diesel fuel had overturned, blocking traffic for miles. On top of that, it seemed to Wasik that all of the black Americans visiting Ghana had chosen that day to make the trip to the place that had made their descendants orphans in their own land.

  When he expressed this, followed by a smug laugh, Didi made a sound in her throat, admonishing him through clenched teeth that she didn’t think slavery was a joking matter.

  Wasik mumbled an apology and turned the volume up on the radio to conceal his humiliation.

  Abeo stared out the back window watching the chaos of Port Masi fade. The traffic eventually thinned and Wasik was able to accelerate, racing past burgundy hills, rows and rows of cotton and pineapple fields, savannas dotted with orange and cacao trees.

  Serafine closed her eyes and fell asleep. Abeo and Didi remained awake, chattering like excited sparrows.

  Halfway through their journey, Abeo lowered her window and waved at a line of children marching single file, singing and swinging their long dark arms. The kids smiled and waved back.

  The traffic came to a halt at the foot of a drawbridge that had been raised over a trickle of a river.

  Hawkers swarmed the still vehicles, peddling everything from food to jumper cables, baseball caps, and plastic shopping bags from high-end Western department stores. Wasik lowered the driver’s-side window and the Ghanaian heat rushed in, smothering the air-conditioned chill of the car. He summoned a girl barely older than Abeo, who was carrying a tray of one-man thousand—fingernail-sized fish—fried to a golden crisp.

  He purchased five bags and five bottles of water, which he distributed among his wife and the family.

  The drawbridge was lowered and the traffic ebbed forward.

  In no time, the scenery changed yet again. The roadside shanty shops, gargantuan anthills, and clusters of desiccated bush soon gave way to a sandy beach and a procession of coconut trees that were so tall, their palms seemed to brush the bottom of the sky. Beyond the trees were the cresting waves of the sapphire Atlantic Ocean.

  Wasik cut off the air conditioner and pressed the lever that magically lowered all four windows, instantly flooding the car with an aromatic mixture of banana and coconut.

  They’d reserved a modest four-bedroom, two-bath, split-level guesthouse a block from the beach. The structure had once been a gem, but was now slowly slipping into disrepair. The faucets leaked, the hardwood floors squeaked, and the mattresses were thin and stiff, but the location was beautiful—everywhere they turned offered a panoramic view of the sea.

  They had dinner at a small restaurant where the owner seated them at a table that looked out over the water. They enjoyed a sumptuous meal beneath an evening sky swimming with purple clouds.

  Serafine and Didi reminisced over bottles of wine, recounting their sordid adventures in New York.

  “Remember him? He was the one with the long . . .” Serafine raised her finger to her lips and nodded in Abeo’s direction.

  Didi winked. “A loooooong nose. He had a very, very long nose!” Serafine, Didi, and Ismae dissolved in girlish giggles.

  Wasik cleared his throat disapprovingly and lifted the sleeping Agwe from the high chair. “It’s getting late,” he grumbled, “I think we should head back to the house and put the children to bed.”

  Didi placed her hand over the check. “Let me take care of this.”

  “Oh no, we couldn’t,” Ismae wailed. “You are our guest and you’ve spent so much money on Abeo, taking her out and buying her gifts—”

  Didi raised her hand. “Please, you have been such gracious hosts. Opening your home to me, treating me like family. I am so very grateful. Please, let me do this one small thing.”

  Wasik’s shoulders slumped with relief. When Didi and Serafine first raised the idea of an overnight excursion to the coast, he had no clue Ismae would want to tag along. When she made her intentions known, Wasik didn’t feel he could ask her not to. Worse yet, he’d said: “Why don’t we make it a family affair? A minivacation of sorts. I could use a break from Port Masi.”

  Even as the words hung in the air, Wasik was regretting them. They were broke. Piss-poor, truth be told. Their savings account was empty and they were living off the kindness of his brother who was a successful gynecologist in London. But family or not, Wasik knew that this charity would soon come to an end.

  Ismae had no idea they were living on borrowed money, and Wasik would do everything he could to keep her in the dark.

  Ismae threw her arm over Didi’s shoulders. “How else are we supposed to treat you? Hospitality is the African way,” she laughed.

  “Thank you,” Wasik said, hoisting Agwe onto his shoulder. He gave Ismae an expectant look, but she diverted her eyes, so he turned his attention to Abeo. “Come on, young lady, I think it’s getting very close to your bedtime.”

  Abeo frowned, opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again when Wasik’s warm eyes turned to ice.

  “Well, we’re going to stay awhile. Maybe even have another bottle of wine,” Serafine chuckled as she turned over the empty bottle and watched a single scarlet droplet fall onto the green tablecloth.

  “I’m going to stay too,” Ismae announced in a small voice.

  Wasik rose from the table. “Okay, I’ll see you back at the house.”

  * * *

  The next day they got an early start. Wasik planned to drop the women at the castle and return for them later.

  “I’ll stay with the children, take them to the beach,” he said over breakfast.

  Abeo’s head bounced up. “I’m not going to the slave castle?”

  “No,” Wasik answered without looking up from his plate.

  Ismae wrinkled her nose. “But why, Wasik?”

  When he raised his head, all eye
s were on him. He set his fork down. “I-I just think she’s too young for all of that . . . that . . .” He couldn’t seem to lasso the right word, so he repeated, “I just think she’s too young.”

  Abeo’s lower lip trembled with disappointment. Didi had told her so much about the Africans who were taken to America and turned into slaves, how important it was that she—that all of them—visit the place where it all began and ended for millions of men, women, and children.

  “Oh, Abeo,” Didi had sadly moaned, “you have no idea how many of your own ancestors, people who share your bloodline, were sold away from their lives.”

  Abeo hadn’t understood some of it—the bloodline and the idea that one person could own another—but even at her young age, Didi’s sentimentality was not lost on her.

  Didi had continued: “Imagine if you were taken away from your mother and father, never to see them again. How would that make you feel?”

  “Sad.”

  “Right, well, it’s the same for black Americans. Imagine Africa as the mother and father of black Americans; a mother and father who they knew they had but never met. Imagine that one day they have the opportunity to meet them, to be reunited. How do you think that would make them feel?”

  Abeo had thought about it for a moment. Her eyes lit up when she piped, “Happy!”

  “Exactly.”

  She had to go to the slave castle. “Papa, pleeeeeaaaasssse,” Abeo wailed.

  “Oh, Wasik,” Ismae offered gently, “let her come. I think she’s mature enough to handle it.”

  Wasik released an agitated sigh. He couldn’t win for losing with Ismae. He would be happy when Agwe was old enough to help balance the sheet. “Okay,” he acquiesced.

  “And you should come as well,” Didi interjected. “It’s your history too.”

  Wasik smirked at her. He’d never visited the castle. And if he’d ever harbored a desire to do so, it had been crushed long ago by the warnings and terrifying ghost stories of his elders. But now he was grown: a husband, father, and provider for his family. He received Didi’s words not as an invitation, but a challenge.

  “But of course,” Wasik responded, as if he’d planned to come all along.

  Ismae’s eyebrows rose. “Well, who will watch Agwe?”

  Wasik glanced at their toddler. “Uhm . . .” he started, absently scratching his chin. “I guess we can leave him with Mama Tati?”

  It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Mama Tati was the domestic charged with cleaning and cooking for the visitors at the guesthouse.

  On the low side of sixty, rotund, and pleasant, Mama Tati had been in the employ of several homeowners for two decades. She was loved and trusted by her employers and guests and often took on responsibilities that fell outside of her standard duties. Babysitting was just one of those chores.

  Ismae nodded. “I guess that would be okay.”

  * * *

  As they approached by car, Elmina Castle emerged from the horizon like a dream. Its whitewashed walls pressed against the indigo sky, casting shadows over the bucking Atlantic Ocean.

  They fell quiet as Wasik eased the car into a parking space and cut the engine. Abeo was confused by the silence—not just the absence of conversation, but the weight of it.

  Didi was the first out of the car. She stood on unsteady legs, gazing apprehensively at the imposing structure.

  “Didi?” Serafine called out, pointing at the kidney bean–shaped bulge on the underside of Didi’s left jaw.

  Didi touched her index finger to the swollen flesh. “Oh, this?” She shrugged. “Nerves.”

  “What’s there to be nervous about?” Abeo ventured, perplexed.

  Didi thought for a moment. “You see, baby,” she cooed, smoothing her palm across Abeo’s plaits, “my great-great-grandparents were slaves. I don’t know if they were born in America or stolen from Africa. They could have come from Ukemby or Ghana. They might have even been held in this very prison . . .”

  It was the first time Abeo had heard the castle referred to as a prison.

  Didi shivered with emotion. “Families ripped apart,” she mumbled, turning her attention back to the castle, “never to see one another again.” She swiped a fat wet tear from her cheek.

  Abeo wasn’t so sure she wanted to go into the castle prison anymore.

  Wasik, who had been standing off to the side, suddenly stepped to Abeo, took her by the hand, and gently pulled her to his hip. All of this talk about slavery and broken families was making him uneasy. “Are we going in or what?” he barked. He’d not meant to sound harsh, but it was out and he couldn’t take it back. He met the women’s stupefied gazes with his own apologetic one.

  “Wasik, when did you become so insensitive?” Serafine admonished.

  Once inside, Wasik trailed behind, stepping cautiously as if the ground were covered with broken glass.

  They stopped to take photos beside the ancient rusting cannons that extended out over the ocean like reaching arms. Nearby, a group of black women holding hands belted out a tearful song in a language Abeo did not understand. To her left, an elderly white couple made the sign of the cross over their hearts before tossing a dozen yellow roses over the wall, into the water. A few feet away, a young Asian woman collapsed to the ground and wept openly.

  Eventually, Abeo and her family joined a dozen other people for a tour of the castle. Their guide was a tall, dark man named Morris who had lived his entire life on the Cape Coast and had never ventured into the country’s interior. The group followed him down the narrow stairway into the first dungeon, where Morris abruptly switched off his flashlight, throwing them into darkness. Abeo yelped in surprise and wrapped her arms around Serafine’s waist.

  “More than two hundred Africans were imprisoned in this very chamber for months at a time,” Morris explained in a low, ominous voice. “We are a small fraction of that number and you cannot shift one inch without touching your neighbor.”

  Abeo tested his claim and the truth terrified her.

  “The separation of families began right here, long before they reached the shores of America, Europe, Brazil, and the Caribbean islands. The jailers mixed Ga-Adangbe people with Abron and Adele with Bimoba, and Ukemban with Chumburung—so that there would be no possibility of communication, hence no threat of revolt.”

  The crowd shifted uncomfortably. Wasik wiped at the perspiration forming on his neck and forehead. The darkness was clawing. He willed Morris to switch on the flashlight, and after a few more excruciating moments, the yellow beam sliced through the darkness and landed on a rectangular opening in the wall high above their heads.

  “Food was thrown down to the captives from that hole.” Morris swung the beam to another opening, this one square, the size of box, a tiny box, one small enough to hold a single teacup or bottle of expensive perfume. Once again, Morris switched off the flashlight.

  The opening was so small that not one of them could make out the blue sky or the lingering yellow sun. So minute that not even the daylight could trickle in; it just rested on the lip of the cavity, glowing like a flawed diamond.

  “That is all of the natural light they were allowed,” Morris continued.

  Abeo glanced over her shoulder but couldn’t make out the look on her father’s face in the darkness. Wasik stood completely still, staring, gnawing his lower lip.

  Morris switched on the flashlight and aimed the beam at the uneven floor beneath their feet. “Do you know what this is?” he questioned. “Do you know what you are standing on?”

  Abeo studied the ground. It looked like mud, like shiny hardened mud.

  A lone voice cried out, “Stones? Old stones?”

  “Yes, old stones, as well as centuries of calcified blood, bone, flesh, and excrement.”

  The crowd groaned. Abeo did not understand the words excrement or calcified, but she did understand blood and bones and closed her eyes, because she did not want to see those things in the cobbled floor.

  Wasik’s st
omach lurched. He suspected he was treading perilously close to bringing up his breakfast.

  The group moved on to the various dungeons that once held the weaker men, women, and children.

  “Children too?” Abeo asked Ismae, who responded with a slow, sad nod.

  The final room they entered was dungeon number five, where those Africans who were ready for export had been kept. Back then, Morris told them, the dungeon emptied into a tunnel, which led to the exit now famously known as the Door of No Return. The mouth of the tunnel had long since been sealed, and an Ashanti shrine had been erected in its place—which was guarded night and day by an Ashanti priest. Visitors to dungeon number five paid homage to those Africans who had passed through the tunnel centuries ago by leaving offerings of fruit, flowers, and money.

  After the group had placed their own offerings before the priest, they formed a circle. Hands linked, they stood somberly listening to their thudding hearts.

  Didi’s voice was the first to splinter the silence: “I think we should pray.”

  Moaning their agreement, the circle of people bowed their heads.

  Didi began: “Dear Lord, we send up prayers to our brothers and sisters who passed through this place so many years ago. We are grateful for their sacrifices and we pray that we can adequately take the knowledge and the spirit that we’ve gained here back to those people who may never be able to make this pilgrimage. We ask that You forgive those hands that were bloodied with this inhumane and horrendous act and also that we all learn from this lesson and go forward declaring, Never, ever again. Amen.”

  By the end of the prayer, a number of people were weeping.

  Ismae squeezed Abeo’s hand. “You okay, baby?”

  Abeo was not okay. She felt a great sorrow in her chest and it hurt like hell.

  “It’s okay to cry.” Ismae pulled Abeo into her. Wasik came and rested his hands on Abeo’s shoulders. Ismae looked into his wet eyes and felt the love she held for him roll through her like a wave.