THE BOOK OF NEGROES (8 page)

THE MEDICINE MAN’S HAND rested on my shoulder. He was saying something I couldn’t understand. The helper explained that I was to go with them down into the ship. He led the way. The medicine man grabbed my arm and took me down steep steps into a dark, stinking hold. I choked at the stench of human waste. I imagined the biggest lion of my land—as big as the lion mountain on shore, but living and breathing and hungry. It seemed as if we were being taken straight into its anus. The lion had already rampaged through the villages and swallowed all the people live, and was now keeping them stacked and barely breathing in the faint light of its belly. Up ahead, the assistant held the portable fire that threw light into the shadows. The medicine man also carried fire in a container. Everywhere I turned, men were lying naked, chained to each other and to their sleeping boards, groaning and crying. Waste and blood streamed along the floorboards, covering my toes.

Our corridor was nothing but a narrow footpath separating the men to our left and right. Piled like fish in a bucket, the men were stacked on
three levels—one just above my feet, another by my waist and a third level by my neck. They could not lift their heads more than a foot off the wet, wooden slabs.

The men couldn’t stand unless they stooped—chained in pairs—in the narrow corridor where I walked. On their rough planks, they had no room to sit. Some were lying on their backs, others on their stomachs. They were manacled at the ankles, in pairs, the left ankle of one to the right ankle of the other. And through loops in these irons ran chains long enough for a man—with the consent of his partner—to move only a few feet, toward the occasional cone-shaped bucket meant for collecting waste.

Men grabbed at me, begging for help. I recoiled from their scratching fingernails. One inmate bit the helper on the hand. The helper clubbed the man on the head.

The men called out in a frenzy of languages. They called out Arabic prayers. They shouted in Fulfulde. They hollered in Bamanankan, and in many other tongues I had never heard. They were all shouting for the same things: water, food, air, light. One hollered over and over that he was chained to a dead man. In the flickering light, I could see him striking the motionless body attached to him, foot to foot. I shivered and wanted to scream.
No
, I told myself.
Be a djeli. See, and remember
.

“Sister, sister,” one man said.

He spoke with an authority that I could not ignore. He spoke like my father. I saw a face that was taut and tired but full of purpose. He was on the highest of the three levels, so his face came close to mine.

“Sister,” he whispered hoarsely, in Bamanankan. “Where are you from?”

“Bayo, near Segu,” I told him.

“We have heard of you. Are you the one who catches babies, but is still a child?”

“I am not a child. I have seen eleven rains.”

“What is your name, Eleven Rains?”

“Aminata Diallo.”

I told the helper that somebody ten rows back was attached to a dead man. He went with two toubabu men to fish him out. They rattled chains, grunted, rattled more chains, and finally pulled out a man by his feet and dragged him through the slop. My head spun and my knees weakened, but I couldn’t let myself fall in filth like this. The cries of the men rang in my ears.

“Pass by here every chance you get,” said the man issuing orders like a father. “Without the helper listening. Gather information and bring it to me. I am Biton, Chief of Sama. I too am Bamana. Speak to me. Tell me everything. Do not forget. Do you hear me, child?”

I gulped and nodded. “I was not supposed to be stolen,” I blurted out. “I am a freeborn Muslim.”

“We have all been stolen,” he said. “When the time is right, we shall rise up. But for now, child, you must get us water.”

“We leave soon,” I said, pleased that I could offer him something.

“How do you know?”

“I heard, outside. We leave very soon.”

“Good,” he said. “Some of us have been in here for moons, and we are dying of the heat. Do you speak the toubabu’s language?”

“No. But I speak Fulfulde too and know some prayers in Arabic.”

“Learn the toubabu’s language,” he said, “but do not teach them ours.” The medicine man was pushing me from behind. Biton spoke once more: “Eleven Rains. Aminata Diallo! Remember your Bamana chief.”

We struggled ahead. It was slow-going in the dark. After a brief spell, another hand reached out and took my wrist. I was about to slap it off, but when I turned, I saw Chekura.

“Aminata,” he whispered.

“Chekura,” I said.

“You do not hate me for bringing you here?” he asked.

“It is too hot in here for hate,” I said.

“You will not tell anyone what I did? Before they trapped me?”

“No. I want you to live.”

He repeated my name over and over, and then added, “I must hear you say it. Please. Say it. Say my name.”

“Chekura,” I said.

“Someone knows my name. Seeing you makes me want to live.”

I wondered if there was a way for me to bring him water. “Now we must all live,” I said. “Who wants to die in the anus of a lion?”

My expression,
anus of a lion
, raced through the stacks of men. Biton heard the phrase and gave off a deep, booming laugh that echoed inside the hold. He shouted out the phrase, and the man next to him repeated it. Those who spoke Bamanankan called out. One man asked the question, and all the others answered.

“Where are we?” the one said.

“Sister says the anus of a lion,” two men called back.

“I say where are we?” one called.

“The anus of a lion,” more men called back.

One man asked, “Who is the sister who visits us?”

“Aminata. I am from Bayo, near Segu on the Joliba.”

In the darkness, men repeated my name and called out their own as I passed. They wanted me to know them. Who they were. Their names. That they were alive, and would go on living.

“Idrissa.”

“Keita.”

And so it went. I looked for Fomba, and finally saw him. I called out his name. He stared at me blankly. Not a word escaped his lips. “It’s me, Aminata,” I whispered. Nothing. He would not speak. I touched his cheek but he did not even blink. I wanted to lay my head down beside this great, strong man who had turned silent and empty, but the medicine man grabbed my arm and pointed ahead.

The helper unlocked a wooden partition and slid it back, revealing a new room filled with about twenty women captives and a handful of infants. The women were not chained, but they had little room to move. In the middle of the hold, there was more headroom, so the women were standing there, although the taller ones had to stoop. I had to edge and twist myself about to get through the group. Women whispered their names to me and asked where I was from.

A hand gripped me firmly by the elbow. It was Fanta’s. “Stay away from those toubabu, for they will eat you,” she said.

I wriggled free and spun away from the crowd. I heard a baby begin to wail and I moved through the cluster of women until I found Sanu. She held my arm. “I need water or there will be no milk for the baby,” she said.

I touched my fingers to hers.

The medicine man pushed past me and headed up the stairs. The helper stopped, turned with his burning light, and said, “This is where you stay, unless we tell you to come up. Take this spot, near the stairs,” he said. “If you leave this spot, I will beat you. If you stay in this spot, I will save the beatings for the others.”

I stared at him defiantly. I saw the assistant raise his arm. I don’t recall him hitting me. I only remember falling.

I AWOKE IN THE DARKNESS with my mouth tasting foul. I felt rocking, as if I were on a donkey that had drunk palm wine. My stomach was sick again, and sore, and empty. I tried to stay motionless and go back to sleep. But the rocking persisted and a voice came to me. I opened my eyes. The medicine man.

I stirred on the rough wood and felt a sliver cut my hip. I raised my head as much as I could—just a foot or so—and slid out onto the floor, where I could stand. My hips ached. Dried waste caked my feet. My teeth
hadn’t been cleaned. I felt my womanly bleeding gush out of me and detested having to stand before this hairy toubab.

The medicine man grabbed my hand and pulled me up the steps. We came out of a hatch separate from the one serving the male captives. Out on the deck, daylight burned my eyes, and I had to shut them. When I opened them again, I saw that our ship was gliding over open water, with not an oarsman in sight. Waves brought the ship up and down, up and down. Above me, linens on upright poles beat like the wings of flying monsters. I could see no land. No canoes with homelanders. We were lost in a world of water. I thought that the toubabu must possess a fearsome magic to steer this ship across the endless desert of water.

The medicine man pointed to a water bucket. I crouched and rinsed myself. I had cuts everywhere: face, hips, thighs, ankles. The mark on my breast was too sore to touch, or to wash. The salty water stung and burned my skin. Still, it felt good to sluice off all that muck. As I cupped water and splashed myself, I watched other homelander women crouching around food buckets. Down on their haunches, they used their fingers to eat a gruel of mashed-up beans.

The medicine man gave me an empty cocoa-nut shell, and pointed to a bucket of fresh water. I scooped out some water and sipped cautiously. No salt. I drank it fast. Fanta came up to me.

“Give me that,” she said, pointing at the cocoa-nut shell. “I didn’t get enough.”

I handed it over. While Fanta drank, the medicine man gave me a long, sand-coloured cloth. I fumbled to cover myself, and was almost as relieved as I had been to drink.

Fanta dropped the cocoa-nut shell. “Women before children,” she said, snatching the cloth from me and wrapping it around herself.

The medicine man exhaled through crooked teeth, but said nothing. I wasn’t sure what sort of man he was, but he did not appear inclined
toward beatings. At that moment, however, I wished that he had smacked Fanta hard in the face and given me back the cloth. Instead, he let her keep it and motioned for me to follow him through the women’s area on deck and through a door.

The medicine man led me into a separate compartment for the male captives. Many were chained along the edge of the ship. Some called out to me by name, and I greeted each one who did so. I came up to Biton, the chief from below. He stood with his shoulders back and head up.

He smiled. “Aminata Diallo.” He said my name fiercely. He said it with pride. I liked to hear it said that way. It made me stand a little straighter. “Chief Biton,” I said.

“You have been away for more than a day. Why have you taken so long to come see me?”

I said I had been sleeping, but had no idea it had been that long.

Biton stared at the bruise on my face. “Stay up here if you can,” he said. “The more time you spend below, the faster you die.”

The medicine man asked me, in baby Maninka words, if there were dead men below. I looked at Biton, but he hadn’t understood. I repeated the question in Bamanankan. Biton said there was one dead man and that the fellow chained to him couldn’t get up to the deck to eat or drink.

“One dead man,” I told the medicine man. He didn’t understand. I held up one finger, and pointed below.

The medicine man needed two men to help him. I pointed to the irons binding Biton to a man named Poto. The medicine man reached into a fold in his pants, drew out a set of thin metal keys, selected one, inserted it into the leg irons and freed the men. While ten other homelanders watched, he returned the metal to his pocket, took along two other toubabu with firesticks and led the two homelanders down the hatch.

I joined Fomba, who was eating. “Good?”

He shook his head to indicate no.

“Feet hurt?” I asked him. He nodded. He wouldn’t look at me but he took my hand and wouldn’t let go. I sat with him, feeling the ship pitch. Biton and Poto emerged from the hatch, dragging up a dead man. They stood, staring at one another and then at me. The medicine man waved them over to the side of the deck and gestured furiously to them to throw the man over. Linens were flapping madly in the wind, and I could not even hear the body hit the water. I wondered how many of us would end up in the deep.

I grabbed the medicine man’s arm, pointed to Fomba, tried to tell him that the man was strong and would do his bidding, if only he could be released from those awful leg irons. The toubab had no idea what I was talking about.

“Don’t bring him into it,” Biton told me, pointing at Fomba.

“Why?”

“He can’t even speak. His mind is departed. We need the toubab to trust men who are of use to us.”

“He is from my village,” I said.

“We are all from a village, child. I will see to it that he is not harmed.” Biton stood still to make it easy for the medicine man to put him back in shackles. “Come see me soon, Aminata.”

The orange-haired toubab put his hand under my arm and pulled me along behind him, stopping to examine the chains of a few homelanders. From the next line, I heard my name whispered.

“Aminata.”

It was Chekura. His hair was matted, he had bruises on both cheeks, and his feet were caked with filth. At the moment, however, he didn’t seem to care. He whispered in Fulfulde so that Biton could not understand: “Watch out for that man. He wants to be our leader. But he could get you killed.”

Biton was a man, and Chekura still just a boy. Biton was far bigger and
more powerful, and homelanders already listened when he spoke. Chekura had aided my captors, but still I wanted to trust him. He had walked with me for three moons. Chekura came from a village near mine, and spoke my father’s language. I sensed that Chekura would protect me if he could. But I had seen what firesticks could do, and Chekura was likely to die if the homelanders revolted. And then who would help me? I did not know who to trust. I wondered what my father would say. Chekura or Biton? His answer brought me little comfort.
Keep your eyes wide and ears open
, he said,
and trust no one but yourself
.