Cinnamon was thrilled. “Soon? There’s no time to lose.”
Aidan nodded as they tucked her under the comforter and turned out the light.
“Old as the hills,” Kevin whispered. “A miracle they’re still walking.”
Cinnamon must have fallen asleep, because grizzly old hills stood up, shook cold snow into the Ohio River, then walked off toward West Virginia. The phone rang and woke Cinnamon up to shouting. Her door was cracked.
“She’ll call you back, Star,” Aidan said.
“I will not. Half this mess is her fault!” Opal yelled. Star heard that across town.
“Star think you need to go see Raven at the nursing home,” Redwood declared.
“I don’t see you going.” Opal never went to see Daddy. “Star is worse than you backward hoodoo fools —”
Cinnamon slammed her door. She’d call Star tomorrow, when Opal wasn’t around. The orca knapsack slid off the bed, spilling The Chronicles onto the floor. Opal would hate her reading such a nasty grown-up story. Too bad! Cinnamon jammed headphones from Sekou’s new Walkman on her ears and climbed under the comforter with the book. Tina Turner wailed, What’s love got to do with it? as Cinnamon read new pages.
Notes (#1) to the Current Edition of the Earth Chronicles, December 1984
In this twentieth century, I’ve been tracking lost memory, desperately trying to conjure scattered history. After seeing Kehinde’s Yoruba homeland in Nigeria, I traveled to Benin. I visited the coastal city of Ouidah and braved the three-mile slave walk to the sea. It was a good-natured day, breezy and sunny. The sand was golden, the sea black jewels. A parade of tourists and pilgrims was led by Daagbo Hounon, the highest priest of vodun, the ancient Fon religion gone worldwide on slave ships. We supposedly traced the footsteps of African ancestors, paying tribute to souls lost in bondage, celebrating spirits who survived slavery.
I offered sacrifice at a shrine to the water mother, Mère d’eau, called Mami Wata nowadays. Our guide claimed this vodun had protected captives (who jumped, fell, or got thrown overboard) from treacherous reefs and sharks roaming coastal waters.
“I tell true story,” the guide insisted. “Not Hollywood Voodoo.”
Near the end of the memorial path, we came to the Tree of Forgetfulness. Wretched captives who had been gagged, branded, and held in close quarters before Middle Passage were marched counterclockwise around the tree, seven times if female, nine times if male. With the past thus wiped from their minds, they were prodded through The Gate of No Return to slave ships and the horrors and triumphs of the New World. I stumbled eight times clockwise around the tree and fell to the ground with other tourists. We wept in black crystal waves.
During several hundred years of slave trade with insatiable Europeans, Dahomey grew wealthy (and avoided a slave destiny) by forcing millions of captives down many routes to the sea; this one slave walk is a grand fiction. Yet, tourists and pilgrims take this staging of a legendary past as the past itself, as stolen memory restored, as healing for the aching ancestors in our hearts. I found not a building or a rock or a tree that looked familiar, not an echo of Kehinde or our past anywhere. It was as if we had never happened.
Beware, dear Guardians.
Perhaps the stories I write are the convenient lies I tell on myself until they seem true. Or perhaps I’ve fashioned a performance around stolen memories to reclaim my spirit. Or maybe my life since that time with Kehinde in Dahomey has made me a simpleminded cynic who doubts truth.
CHRONICLES 4: Dahomey, West Africa, 1892 —
Books
I don’t know how long we sat in the river, Kehinde squeezing my throat. Starlight burned our scalps as the water stole our warmth. She had many jagged scars, deep purple signs of her fearlessness in battle. I struggled for a breath and touched a scar on her collarbone that I hadn’t noticed before.
“How can you trust me?” Kehinde relaxed her grip. “Why are you with me?”
“I was a heavy burden slowing you down.” My voice hurt, yet I shouted over the rushing river. “You didn’t abandon me when death chased at your heels.”
“I’m good at running. Flight can masquerade as freedom.”
“I’m a witness, a chronicler of life. Wanderers lose their minds to fill them with Earth stories, your stories.”
She frowned at me. “Wanderers forget who they were before?”
I nodded. “Who knows why we are born to a life? We make it up as we go.”
“I too wish for memories to die…” She shook herself. “But you talk nonsense.”
“Teach me.” I bowed my head. “I wish to be brave, swift, and wise, as you are.”
“I’m a coward, not brave. The Fon bent me to their will.”
“You are no coward.”
“I ran when they first tried to make me a warrior ahosi.” She touched the collarbone scar. “They dragged me back and beat me, but wouldn’t kill me.”
“Who?”
“The Fon of Dahomey aren’t my people. The English call my people Yoruba as if we’re just the language we spoke. I poured libation to ancestors in Abeokuta. Fon warriors led by a fierce young captain, Yao the incorruptible, raided our village. Yao was all muscle with deep-set eyes, scars over his heart, and a handsome lion face. He came for captives to ship to Cuba or to work royal plantations near Ouidah. Yao took my father’s head and raped my sisters.” She blinked slowly. “My brother and I hid in aje masquerades. Yao mistook me for a boy, strong enough for labor, too young for a threat. He sent my brother to a royal plantation and me to the ships. I leapt into the ocean near Ouidah. Bloody fangs and battered fins swam toward me — sharks. Men were devoured in three bites of their dagger teeth. Blood spurted in my eyes. Heavy chains and flailing bodies dragged me down. Holding my breath, I wondered if the ancestors would greet me. I’d neglected them. Satiated sharks swam by me. The chain digging into my neck was no longer attached to anyone. I struggled up for air.
“Near me, men flailed to reach the very slave boats they’d leapt from. Fon soldiers laughed as sharks ate their legs. The hope of escape died in the eyes of captives on deck. Yao had tricked us into escaping to scare others. Fon warriors whispered greetings to their ancestors before hungry sharks swallowed a captive. In death we should still be slaves of Dahomey. I refused messages to their ancient fathers and great uncles. I spit their words back at them and banged a curious fish in the nose.
“She fights off sharks! Yao pointed at me thrashing in bloody sea water. We must have her fight on our side. Yao fished me from cruel waters. I didn’t struggle against his rescue. I was a coward, choosing life, not honor.” She leaned back her head and shuddered.
I stroked her cheek with my cheek, my eyelashes brushing her forehead. I slipped my arms around her belly. She was startled into speaking again.
“Yao took me back to Ouidah. I was far from the altars to my ancestors. My brother had been sold, my family slaughtered. The life I could have was as a slave. I thought of killing myself in this very river. The water wouldn’t take me.” She grasped a ripple in the fast moving current. “Women scouts of King Glele, Béhanzin’s father, claimed me. Abla, the strong one, child of fire and captain of new recruits, made an offer. She would train me to be a warrior-wife. If I craved death, I could find it on the battlefield where there is honor in death. If I fought well, I should have power, slaves of my own, and live as a man with no one but Glele and his lords over me. A warrior makes her own destiny. Indeed, slave women have risen to kpojito, reign-mate of the king.”
Kehinde stood up, green froth clinging to her skin. “I accepted Abla’s challenge. I would learn the warrior way and speak Fon oaths, but remain true to myself. I would offer sacrifices at the Fon’s vodun shrines, but also pour libations to the orisha who watched over me —Oshun, mother of waters. I’d show Abla and Dahomey the mask of loyalty and wait for the day that revenge was possible.” She laughed like a hyena.
“But in time I forgot myself and enjoyed what this warrior life o
ffered. To bow to no one — how many women can boast of this? I can shoot and kill, and I don’t fear death. I’ve taken many heads.”
I gasped.
Her lip curled. “I can’t recall my first, second, or even tenth head. The first battle, I was full of rum, fear, and pain where Abla had beaten me. They woke new recruits to train at night. The smell of death, shrieks…like a nightmare. Abla claimed I ripped a man’s throat with my teeth when I ran out of bullets. Ten heads that night — Abla said I’d be rich and rise high. She lied.” Regret shivered through her. “The powerful have subtle ways to seduce and conquer. I’ve done terrible things.” She gripped my arm. Her fingernails broke the flesh. “Yet, I came home to myself.” Her face twisted into a predator’s grin. “Béhanzin’s scouts sought an oath-breaker, a traitor.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know.” She cupped my face in rough hands. “For ahosi there is no greater crime, no enemy so base as one who breaks a promise to other ahosi or to our husband and king. Only Eshu knows why I go on living.”
“To find Somso, of course, and to share your world with me.”
Kehinde looked at me, baffled. “You do not give up hope?”
I plunged her fingers into the water and onto a fish that would be our supper. She laughed in surprise at the quickness of my move and the slick skin of the fish. I guided her up the riverbank and made a fire. We feasted. The fish was succulent and sweet. I roasted yams to accompany it — her favorite meal. I sang birdcalls she loved, shook a rattle for her to dance, and mimicked graceful moves so poorly she laughed again. Knowing what she would like, planning small joys for her was delight. Despite my efforts, Kehinde crumpled in the mud as the moon rose. I folded her into the sphere of my arms for the first time. Uninitiated in romance, I nuzzled her neck and belly and filled the air with pungent scents. Her sleep was beautiful, and I managed to cloak consciousness a few moments myself.
The next morning, Kehinde awoke renewed, hopeful. We headed south, determined to find Somso. Although war had transformed Dahomey into a dispirited, alien landscape, Kehinde resisted despair. As we slipped through broken countryside, teaching me gave her pleasure. Reanimating the ruins with stories allowed her to mold my thoughts and name the future. We kept a relentless pace, resting only a few hours now and then. Kehinde feared never finding Somso.
One afternoon, the home star was too hot. Our lungs were full of dust and our feet were bloody. “We should take refuge in this deserted spirit house,” I demanded.
She relented. We slept by an altar to a green-eyed deity with stringy hair. After several unconscious hours, Kehinde shook me awake. I was covered in sweat. My throat ached.
“You were choking.” She leaned against the one sturdy wall. “Breathe when you sleep, or you won’t return from dreams.”
I shook off lingering drowsiness. “Sleep is too much like death.” She winced at my words. “What are you doing?” She clasped a dusty leather treasure against her belly. It was filled with thin, crisp sheets of cloth. It absorbed her attention like quicksand.
“I couldn’t sleep anymore. I read my books for…inspiration.”
“Books?” I grunted at these inexplicable weighty things. “Why carry these —”
“You disapprove? Fula women always warned me, capturing a gawlo, a griot storyteller like this, locking him away in a book, is very bad for the memory and everything else. How can we trust distant words from nobody? How do we recognize truth without hearing a voice, seeing the eyes, or smelling sweat?”
I shrugged. We had met few Fula people — a griot playing his hoddu lute and a woman with tattoos singing under the stars. They were no wiser than anyone else.
“I say, who remembers every story? Who can call up ancestors so clearly they sing in your mind? A person can lie out loud to my face or on paper behind my back.” She handed me books purchased in Ouidah: a slim weather-beaten thing (Sufi Poetry?), Jules Verne’s Vingt Mille Lieues sous Les Mers (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea), and Charles Dickens’s A Tale of Two Cities. “I read and write Arabic, French, and English. I learned to be a proper British lady in a school where they hoped I would love Jesus.” She indicated a broken glass painting above her head. “Jesus was a powerful orisha who walked on water and called the dead back to life.”
I handed the books back to her, indifferent to their magic. My stomach grumbled. “Do we have food?”
“My parents wanted me to understand European cunning and Arab secrets.”
“You’re tired. Sleep, and I’ll watch over you.” I gobbled the last of our fruit.
“Eshu Elegba doubts everyone and everything. But —”
“The powerful have subtle ways to seduce and conquer.”
She jumped up, sneering. “You will school me?”
I didn’t answer. Why give inexplicable anger more fuel?
She shouted. “My father was a Babalawo, an Ifa diviner, a master of mysteries, a guide to our highest destiny; and my mother an Iyalawo, also a priestess of Ifa, a mother of secrets. She saw me writing in a vision. My father said words were my destiny and sent me to school when who would think of such a thing for a poor girl.”
I stood up too, close enough to drink her breath. “Your destiny has never been defined by what others think,” I said softly.
“The Fon stole me before I was truly initiated into the secrets of the Yoruba, French, or English wise people. I’ve been lost a long time —”
I kissed her sweet lips to end our foolish disagreement.
We tasted tongues, brief intimacy that she ended too quickly. She shoved the two cities’ saga in my face. “You will learn.”
CHRONICLES 5: Dahomey, West Africa, 1892 —
Blood Oath
As we wandered through sparse savannahs and approached Abomey, I came to know many languages, spoken, written, and danced. I learned the difference between the Yoruba of Abeokuta and the Fon who stole Kehinde to wage war for Dahomey, who made her steal other people from themselves. I memorized what she knew of Ifa — the history, wisdom, and spirit guide of the Yoruba rendered in stories and praise songs to the orisha. I read every night. Arabic poetry and European novels made little sense. Stories without bodies didn’t interest me. I grew bored learning nonsense.
Kehinde chastised my laziness in the ruins of a compound we had visited before. Blood still stained the ground. “We shall not always wander a conquered land hunting my brother’s wife and son.”
“Somso was his wife? Your brother had a child? Why not tell me sooner?”
Kehinde hadn’t meant to tell me. Her tongue slipped. She flicked fingers at my anger and continued. “There are cities across the waters where we might become someone else.”
“We are who —”
“— they make of us.” She sneered. “I’m a daughter of a distant land. Dahomey isn’t my home or yours. I’m a traitor to everywhere I’ve been. Eshu knows where we shall make a place for ourselves and be reborn. We do not.”
We found no sign of Somso. Still, Kehinde rejoiced at the sight of fields being plowed and soldiers keeping the peace. Finally, home territory.
“The French have spies everywhere. One may have heard of Somso,” she said. “We’ll make ourselves useful to French lords. Our skills are valuable.”
“Well…” I had only seen the French recruit male warriors. I clamped my tongue. We tell the stories we want to believe. Sometimes they come true.
“I am gbeto, a sharpshooter, and who needs good aim with such a weapon?” She pulled the Lebel rifle from my back. “Don’t worry. You will be as ahosi.”
“Yes, I have completed the training.”
“Completed?” She laughed. “Run through there.” She pointed at a bush with thorns longer than my hand and sharper than the cutlass at her waist.
“No.”
“Go on!” She threatened to whip me with strands of goat knotted with chips of bone and metal — a weapon I surmised and not a musical instrument or, maybe, both.
“Why
beat me for protecting delicate skin?” I was swift now. She couldn’t catch me.
“You should obey.”
“Even what does not make sense?”
“Do you know all the sense there is?
“Explain why I should do this? Or why I should let you beat me if I don’t?”
“How will you ever get tough if you can’t bear a little pain, a little blood?” She dropped her gear and raced through the bush that slashed her cruelly. She didn’t cry out or falter, but stood waiting for me on the other side, bleeding and breathing hard. “You never know where your enemies hide. Perhaps they live within you. Pain can’t be your master. We must be loyal to one another, through blood and pain, in the face of death, then we will always triumph.”
“You believe this still?”
“Not everything Abla taught me was a lie.”
“Which is lies and which is truth?”
She staggered as if I’d thrust a bayonet in her stomach. “Whoever knows that?”
“We must ask.”
“My brother was always pondering lies and truth. He said we are ignorant children drinking at a river that runs with poison, believing in those who scoop tainted water into our mouths.” She trembled. “Which is worse, dying of thirst or poison?”
“Your brother asked this?” I prodded, hoping she would speak more.
“My twin. He was with me when we first met.” Her cheeks were stone, her breath fire. “You look like him.”
“So do you,” I realized. “In the cave, your twin brother, not your lover — he died on your cutlass?”
She bared her teeth in that predator grin. “I spared him the slow death of Winchester bullets in his belly. Honored in life, Taiwo dances with our ancestors.”
Taiwo. I shared a name with her brother, a brother she had killed for mercy’s sake.
“I live on for us both.” She waved at me. “Come through danger and pain, and I will tell you about him.”
I ran into the mighty bush with no armor but my pathetic skin. Pain assaulted me. I feared thorns would come from nowhere and take my eyes in a surprise attack. Well-armed plants defending their fruit against tougher skin than mine demanded respect. The tangle of stinging hooks captured me. Thrashing made me more of a prisoner.
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