The Book of Negroes

by Lawrence Hill

  In the medicine man's room, I covered the bed with extra cloths and brought close a pail of water. I hoped this birth was going to be fast.

  "I could be here all night, if this takes a long time," Fanta said. "And I will not spend the night in bed with any toubab. I will die first. Or he will."

  I put my hand on her shoulder and told her to think about the baby. She grunted.

  "I stopped caring about that a long time ago. No toubab will do to this baby what they have done to us." A shiver ran through my body.

  I had to get away from Fanta for a moment. I had to collect myself, so I did what the medicine man had shown me before. I took a wide metal wash bucket from the room, stepped out for a moment and motioned to the junior toubab working at the cooking fire to throw two red-hot iron bricks into the bucket. I returned with them to the cabin. Inside, Fanta was pointing at the bird with her mouth wide open. The bird was squawking at her. I tossed it a few peanuts and hung a sack over the cage to make it shut up.

  "Don't give food to that thing," Fanta said. "Take the food for yourself. Give it to the others. Or give it to me."

  "I have to feed this bird or it will die. And if it dies, the medicine man—"

  "I know, I know," she said.

  I dumped several pails of water into the metal bucket and got Fanta to step in. She crouched, careful to avoid the red metal.

  "I haven't had warm water like this since we were back in Bayo," she said.

  "Hmm," I said.

  "Do you do this?"

  "Sometimes."

  "Does he watch you?"

  "Yes."

  "Touch you?"

  "He has tried, but I won't let him."

  "You can do that?"

  "He stops when I look in his eyes and speak fiercely."

  "He's a weak toubab. And the weak die first."

  I did not dare ask which weak people Fanta had in mind. Homelanders or toubabu?

  Fanta relaxed a little. I watched her ride out a few convulsions. She finished with the bath, dried herself off with a cloth I handed her, shivered and climbed onto the bed.

  "Do you call him anything?" Fanta asked.

  "Who?"

  "The medicine man. Do you call him by a name?"

  "He has a name. Sounds like 'Tom.'"

  "Do you call him that?"

  "No. I never call him anything. I just speak to him. No name."

  "Good."

  The convulsions shook Fanta for some time, but eventually they diminished and she fell asleep. During that time, the medicine man came into the room. His arms flew up. He looked shocked.

  "Baby," I said. "Catch baby." He had taught me these terms.

  "No."

  I stood up. Looked him in the eyes. This was the only way. It had worked when I pushed his hands away from me, and I hoped it would work now. "Catch baby," I said again, and in Bamanankan, said firmly, "Go. Mother sleep."

  "When?" he asked.

  "Catch baby soon," I said.

  He removed an orange from his pocket and unsheathed from his belt a long knife with a handle made from elephant tooth. Then he sliced open the fruit, set the knife and fruit down on a small table and indicated to me that Fanta and I could eat the food. He turned, picked out another cloth from his trunk and left it near Fanta's feet. My eyes fell on the knife. The medicine man had forgotten it on the table. He drank quickly from a bottle, stuffed it back under the cloth in his trunk, gathered a few more things and left the room.

  I sat on the bed and waited for Fanta to wake. She snored. I thought about teasing her later, and telling her that she sounded like a wild boar. When she finally awoke, she sat up quickly, looked around and remembered where she was. She moaned and lay back. Her breathing was speeding up. I rubbed her back.

  "You need to know something," she said.

  "No one will be eaten, so stop thinking about that now," I said.

  "In just a rainy season or two, you were about to become my husband's next wife," Fanta said.

  My mouth dropped, and I yanked my hand away from her. "That's a lie."

  "That's why I never liked you," Fanta said. "You were so young, not halfway a woman yet, and I knew that one day you would be my husband's favourite." Beads of sweat had broken out on her forehead, but I did not move to wipe them. "I would have made your mother leave you at the door," Fanta continued, "and as soon as we were alone, I would have given you a royal beating. I would have made you pay."

  "I don't believe you," I said. "My father and mother never would have agreed."

  "No? What do you think a jeweller would tell the village chief? Wouldn't it be better to accept and to negotiate good terms?"

  "I don't believe you."

  "Don't you want to know what you went for?"

  "No."

  "One day you will hate people just like me. You won't have that childish look on your face that makes everybody want to love you and clap their hands with pride that a little runt like you can already catch babies. You know what, Aminata? Anyone can have a baby, and any idiot can catch one."

  I was so angry that I didn't know what to say. I wanted to stab her with the knife. I wanted to rip her hair out. I wanted to scream and shout that she was a liar and that my parents would never have let me go to that old man. Even if he was the chief. But I knew I couldn't hurt her, and I couldn't scream. My mother had taught me well. When you catch a baby, you are calm. The mother may behave like a tyrant or a wild child, but you cannot. When you catch a baby, you are not yourself. You forget yourself and you help the other. I gulped. I swallowed. I wondered if what Fanta had said was true. Sadness had been welling inside me during three moons overland and more than one moon in this stinking toubabu's vessel, and now it burst. Tears shot from my eyes and my breath grew short. I heaved and sobbed and stood there useless, while Fanta lay back and watched and waited. I shook terribly for a few moments, both feet planted beneath me, eyes shut, fists clenched. I swayed, and rocked, and finally settled down. I had nothing to do but to appeal, as I hadn't in a long, long time, to God. Allahu Akbar, I mumbled. God is great.

  "Don't waste your time on that any longer," Fanta said. "Can't you see that Allah doesn't exist? The toubabu are in charge, and there is only madness here."

  Perhaps it was true. Maybe Allah lived only in my land, with the homelanders. Maybe he didn't live on the toubabu's ship, or in the toubabu's land. I said nothing. I tried to shove all the things Fanta had said into a little room in my mind, and I tried to close the door. I imagined my mother's voice, calm and capable. We have a baby to catch.

  Fanta's body started shuddering again. I offered to check with my hand to see if she was ready, but she refused. The contractions began rolling hard and long and often, and I left it to Fanta to decide when to push. I would not guide her. I would offer her water, and hold her hand, and wait for the chief 's wife to make up her own mind about what to do next.

  She pushed for a long time, and then she lay back and rested. Something seemed to grab her body again, and she pushed once more. She rested again, then pushed so mightily that I could smell her bowels moving. "Now," Fanta said. She pushed three more times. I saw hairs on a head starting to part her, but the baby wouldn't come yet. She pushed once more, and the head came all the way out, blue and purplish and light coloured and specked with bits of whiteness and blood. Fanta pushed again, and out came the shoulders. The rest slid out quickly: a belly, a penis, legs, feet. I used the toubab's knife to slice the cord, then I wrapped the baby and gave him to Fanta. The baby cried, and Fanta let it howl good and long before allowing it to root for her nipple. She was not a proud mother, but an angry one. I tried to settle Fanta comfortably on the bed, but she pushed me away.

  I turned my back and squatted over the waste bucket. The baby started to scream again and I whirled around to see Fanta unsteady on her feet, standing across the room. She flipped the hood off the birdcage, opened up the wide door and grabbed the bird by the beak. Its claws flew up and raked her, and she cursed, bu
t she kept on.

  "Stop," I called out.

  Fanta ignored me. She had the medicine man's knife in her hand. She stabbed and stabbed until the claws stopped scraping at her and the body stopped quivering. She threw the mess back in the cage, closed the door, and covered it with the hood. After wiping the knife clean, she wrapped herself, and slipped the knife inside the cloth. Then she picked up her bawling baby and shoved its face against her nipple. Fanta and the baby eventually slept again, but I stayed awake, fearing what was going to happen when the medicine man returned and took the hood off the birdcage. But the little window showed light, and there was no sign of the medicine man.

  I woke Fanta and the three of us went up on deck as the day was breaking. A pale moon hung low in the sky, at the very moment that the upper tip of a ball of fire crested the opposite horizon. Trouble was coming when the moon and sun shared the same sky.

  The medicine man saw the baby and sang out words of pleasure. He patted me on the shoulder. He took a step toward Fanta, but the look in her eyes stopped him. Fanta was now steady on her feet. I thought about how she had walked for three moons with a growing baby in her belly, and about how she had sliced open that parrot even as it kicked and clawed and cut her wrist. The sun cleared the horizon. Now it was a furious ball of red. The moon began to fade in the sky and I had the feeling that it was leaving me to fend for myself.

  The orange-haired toubab was so pleased with the baby that you would think he had pushed it out himself. He sent off some toubabu sailors, who returned with the toubab chief and the assistant. The three of them spoke. After taking instructions, the assistant spoke to me, but I could not understand. The assistant repeated himself. I realized that the medicine man wanted me to call out to the men below. I was to tell them that Fanta had had her baby.

  A toubab drew up the door to the men's hold. I took a few steps down into the darkness. I could barely see.

  "A son for Fanta," I called out in Bamanankan.

  "Louder," the assistant told me.

  I called out again, and then in Fulfulde.

  I expected that the men would give a cheer, and that when they came up, we would all be made to dance over the whip raking the deck. But there was no movement. No sound. Not even the whispering of men. I heard the clinking of metal on metal. On the assistant's command, I called out once more. There was still no response. I climbed back out onto the deck.

  The medicine man conferred again with the toubab chief and the assistant. Two sailors and the assistant were sent down into the hold with clubs, firesticks and burning light. Down through the hatch they went. I heard the assistant shouting on his way down the hatch that Fanta had had her baby and that the men could come up and dance with the women. A toubab sailor was sent off to fetch the women out of their hatch.

  Somebody touched my elbow. I spun around. It was Sanu, holding her own baby in her arms. The baby was sleeping. Sanu stepped over to hug Fanta, but Fanta stared at her stonily. Sanu stepped back and stood again near me. The other women—some coming from their own hold, others from the toubabu leaders' cabins—began to cluster around us.

  At that moment, homelander men began charging out of the hold. They moved so swiftly that it took the two toubabu guarding the hatch a moment to grasp that the men were not shackled. The guards were thrown down into the hatch, into the hands of the rising men.

  The toubabu began to blast away with their firesticks. Some of the homelanders took shots in the face or chest and fell right back against the surging tide of men, while others pushed through the hole and ran free on the deck. Some twenty or thirty men managed to escape the hatch before the blazing firesticks became so intense that every man who showed his chest was shot back into the hold.

  Biton flew past me with an iron file in one hand and his ankle shackles in another. He jabbed one toubab in the eye with the file, and smashed another in the face with the shackles. One homelander used rusty nails to poke out the eye of a sailor. The toubabu leaders kept up an onslaught with their firesticks.

  All around me, shots rang out and men and women cried. I backed myself against the ship's railing. I saw a woman jump onto the back of a toubab sailor, clutching him like a monkey and using her fingers to claw at his eyes. Homelander men and women screamed, as did some toubabu. Other toubabu shouted orders. Their firesticks were deadly, but it seemed to take the toubabu time to use a firestick more than once. With knives and hammers and nails and enraged hands, the homelanders struck more quickly.

  A few steps to my left, I saw Fanta crouching. At first, I thought she was injured or exhausted from the birth. She was doubled over, and the baby was wriggling on a cloth beside her. As I watched, Fanta reached inside her wrap. I heard the baby give a little cry. I saw his heels kicking. Fanta brought out the knife from the medicine man's room, placed a hand over the baby's face and jerked up his chin. She dug the tip of the knife into the baby's neck and ripped his throat open. Then she pulled the blue cloth over him, stood and heaved him overboard. I retched and felt my body grow limp, but I couldn't take my eyes off her. Fanta ran behind the medicine man, who was pointing his firestick in another direction, and plunged the knife deep into the back of his neck. He started to turn, but sank to his knees. I saw his eyeballs bulging, and he fell forward, arms out, toward me. Blood streamed from his mouth. His eyes seemed fixed on me. I could not bear to look into the eyes of the dying man, and I hoped that he would die quickly.

  I was tackled from behind. Now, for sure, I would die. Allahu Akbar, I mumbled, crashing to the deck. But no hand went around my neck, and no knife plunged into my ribs. It was Fomba who was lying over me. Blood spilled from his arm onto my face. He jumped up again. He had a hammer in the hand of his injured arm and used it to smash the skull of a toubab who was pointing a firestick at Biton.

  I was too terrified to move. I watched Fanta run over to Sanu, who was crouching on the deck, clutching her baby and trying to avoid the mayhem. I could see Fanta gesture madly at Sanu and try to pull her baby away. Sanu held on to her child, but Fanta pulled it again, pushing and shoving and finally striking Sanu on the nose. Sanu fell back. Fanta grabbed the bawling baby by the leg. I tried to get up. I had to get over there. I had to make Fanta listen to me. But before I could move, Fanta had the baby by the ankle and was holding her upside down. I couldn't understand what kind of madness had overtaken her. Fanta stepped toward the railing and heaved the baby out over the waiting waters. Sanu jumped up. Her mouth opened, but I couldn't hear her voice over the firing weapons and the cries of the homelanders and toubabu. Sanu climbed up onto the railing and followed her baby into the sea.

  Now Fanta attempted to climb up on the railing, but a toubab tackled her, slammed her onto the deck and began to beat her. Beside me, one homelander had a sword rammed deep into his gut. He tumbled over me, covering me, bleeding on me, pinning me. I was stuck underneath him and couldn't get up. Two men streaked past me and jumped overboard. I cringed at the double splash. A woman jumped overboard. And then another. I tried to push the man's dead weight off me. Impossible. Biton fought with the toubab chief, whose firestick had stopped working. The toubab chief swung his firestick. Biton ducked, grabbed the toubab's foot, pulled him down. Another homelander with a hammer smashed the toubab chief 's skull. Once, and the toubab chief kept moving. Twice, and he was still. The homelander was covered in blood. I couldn't tell whose it was. Two toubabu closed and secured the hatch. A sailor fought Chekura, and sliced his arm with a knife. Chekura fell, clutching his shoulder, but Fomba stepped up from behind. He grabbed the sailor by the hair, snapped back his head, locked his other hand onto the man's crotch and flung him overboard. Fomba was clubbed in the back of the head with the butt of a firestick, and he went down hard.

  One homelander used a wooden feeding tub to bash out the brains of a toubab sailor, but his chest was then blown open. I couldn't bear to watch the cascading blood. Two sailors passed armloads of new firesticks to the toubabu, who blasted at every homelander still fight
ing.

  Two more homelanders were shot, and fell. I closed my eyes for a moment. I could hear no more battle cries of attacking homelanders. Now none of us was left standing. There was only moaning and wheezing and the sound of firesticks exploding. Then came the sound of angry metal clanking, as the toubabu clamped us all in irons. Fomba was shackled. Chekura was bleeding but not so badly as to be thrown overboard, so he too went into irons. Biton had been beaten savagely, and had a rag stuffed in his mouth, and irons were already on his foot. I saw the bodies of three toubabu sailors, plus that of the medicine man and the toubab chief. I felt numb. With such a mess of bodies, bleeding, unconscious or dead, I couldn't tell how many homelanders had been killed and how many had been lost to the sea.

  The toubabu stumbled about with clothes ripped, hair loose and faces wild, bleeding. One toubab began shouting at all of the others, who moved where he pointed and did what he said. The toubabu locked up one homelander after another. I too was ironed. The metal bit into my ankle. But I was still alive. Now I just had to be still.

  I looked up from the iron clasp around my foot. A huge sailor with pants down around his knees held Fanta flat on the deck. He pinned her two wrists with one thick hand, and as his manhood swung about like a long, hard tongue, he slapped her with his free hand and lowered himself onto her. Fanta spat up at him. She bit his wrist so hard that he pulled away. Another toubab used a wooden pail to smack the head of the man on top of Fanta. The attacker gave up and rolled off Fanta and kicked her. She was put in irons, and a cloth was stuffed in her mouth to keep her quiet.

  I watched the toubabu throw the dead homelanders overboard. Over screeching protests, they also grabbed the badly wounded homelanders and heaved them over the railing. When the homelanders went overboard, they cried out again. Seven or eight toubabu lay crumpled in every imaginable position of death: face down, face up, on their sides, hanging over beams and railings. The toubab chief and the medicine man were left lying on their backs, as dead as I could have wanted them. Allahu Akbar, I mumbled to myself. But maybe Fanta had been right. Maybe God was impossible here.