Chains of Time

by R B Woodstone

  Sighing, he stands slowly and throws his head back in the wind, letting it dry his tears. “Yes,” he nods, “I was a slave, just as you are going to be a slave, my little African devil witch. My slave. Mine.” He stares hard into my eyes and repeats the word: “Mine.”

  Against the night sky, his eyes are a spectral white, and he looks far more the devil than I ever could. He doesn’t scare me, though. What scares me is the vision I keep seeing of him: it is years from now, more than a century away. He sits in a window, looking the same age as he does right now. He stares out, focusing on nothing, concentrating, almost lost in a trance. Then a smile crosses his face. “Yes,” he says softly. “Yes, Dara. I see you now. Weakened with child, are you? I’ll be there with you soon.”

  Dara? I have seen her in other visions. I’ve seen her children as well—Terry and Regina and the older ones, Warren and Jerome.

  For a moment, I wonder if any of this is real—if I’m still in Africa, deep in a nightmare but waking soon to my wedding and a blessed life with Kwame. The visions answer me, though, showing me the ceremony once more, my father falling, always falling. This is a nightmare, but it’s also real. It’s all real.

  I try to keep focus on something solid to root me in the moment—I focus on Roland, his eyes locked forever in a pained gape—but the images won’t recede. They flood into my mind with startling succession.

  “Mother,” I hear myself calling only days in the future. “Mother, are you here?” Chains rattle by me. I hear whips slapping the flesh of my people, but I see none of it. The curtain covers my cage like a shroud. “Mother,” I shout, “it’s me. It’s Amara.”

  “Amara?” a voice answers. A man’s voice. Kwame’s voice. He‘s alive!

  Eight

  Terry often spoke about his after-school job as if he hated it. He didn’t, though. Being a delivery boy at Harlem’s largest supermarket wasn’t fun, but it did offer two perks: money in his pocket and time away from the house—specifically, time away when his father arrived home from work.

  When he was younger, Terry had assumed that his father’s workday must be awful. Perhaps Carl Kelly loathed his job, and that was why he was so angry all the time. On the day Terry had gotten the job at Greenway Market, he took a bus along the river to Stilson Stables, anxious to tell his father the news of his first job—finally an accomplishment that Carl Kelly might appreciate.

  Their father had never allowed Terry or Regina to accompany him to the stables. Horses are big and smelly and dirty, he’d always told them. There’s nothing there for you to see. You don’t want any of that. Besides, they can be dangerous. That was his father’s standard excuse for barring Terry and Regina from all sorts of activities: it was dangerous. Be careful, he would say, whether his children were heading to school or even to the bodega for a half-gallon of milk. Terry couldn’t remember, though—had their father been any different before their mother’s death, or had Carl Kelly always expected peril at every turn?

  At age fourteen, Terry was determined to brave his father’s wrath and surprise him at the stable with the news of his first job. He rang the bell on the stable’s big double door. It made no sound, but Terry still waited for a time before he circled to the rear of the building and climbed on a dumpster to peer through the window. He stood there for some time, unable to peel himself from the sight. The Carl Kelly that he saw—the one talking to the horses, laughing, smiling, and thoroughly enjoying himself—was a man that Terry didn’t know. This man was joyous. This was not the dour presence that came ranting through the front door every night, complaining about every article of clothing that Terry hadn’t hung up, about every piece of silverware that was a fraction of an inch out of place in its drawer, about every cupboard door left slightly ajar, about everything that Terry hadn’t done or had done wrong. Just thinking about his father’s temper caused Terry to flinch. But, this man, the one frolicking with the horses, was content.

  Terry didn’t interrupt his father’s pleasure that day. He walked home. And, as he trudged across the bridge, he tried to make sense of his father’s behavior. How could Carl Kelly be so jovial at work and then come home so irritated every night? Had Terry ever seen his father as happy as he was at the stables? Terry tried to remember anytime over the last several years when he’d actually seen Carl smile. He could envision isolated moments when Carl seemed happy—watching Jerome play football; tossing Regina in the air…but that was before Regina stopped speaking. Now Carl Kelly rarely had grins even for her. Mostly, he gave her sad looks, pitying glances, gentle sighs. And he never had kindness for Terry. No words of encouragement. No compliments. No appreciation. No acknowledgment. As far as Terry could tell, his father saw him as did the bullies at school: weak, worthless, effeminate. Terry wasn’t powerful and confident like Jerome. He wasn’t brilliant and adorable like Regina. He was skinny and plain and frail. Everything Carl Kelly didn’t want in a son. Worse, he had his mother’s green eyes. Perhaps, he wondered that night, Carl Kelly didn’t hate his job or his life. Maybe it was only Terry that he hated. Just Terry.

  It had been more than a year since that trip to the stable, but Terry still thought of it nearly every day as he walked home from work. He thought of it now as he toted two heavy grocery bags along Riverside Drive.

  “Where you going with those bags?” Stephon Akins called out, prying Terry from his reminiscence. Akins and Leticia were riding in the back of a hansom cab carriage. The horse was an aged palomino with wobbly legs. The driver was a young Black man who looked familiar to Terry—perhaps a former classmate. The carriage stopped, and the two passengers descended to the street. The hansom cab wheeled away, the horse limping.

  “What do you want now?” asked Terry, even as he looked around for a place to run, for a stranger to notice.

  “You heard me,” said Akins. His hands hung at his sides as if he were an old west gunslinger waiting for a signal to draw. Leticia stood beside him, her arms folded across her chest. “Where you going with those bags?” asked Akins. “You steal that shit?”

  It was Terry’s last delivery of the afternoon and the only one he made without a bicycle—the same delivery he made at the end of every Monday afternoon since he started working at Greenway. It was the one delivery that Terry always looked forward to—Marco Fenelli’s apartment. Marco, an eighty-year old retired criminal who hadn’t left his apartment in decades, was Terry’s confidant. Terry had often told Marco about the intimidation he endured at school—particularly from Akins. Stand up to him, Marco had told him. Whatever you do, don’t run away. If you keep running, he’ll just keep coming back. Stand up to him once. Even if you lose, he’ll respect you for it, and he’ll stop coming after you. Marco’s advice wasn’t panning out.

  “I’m working,” answered Terry as he tightened his grip on the bags and kept walking. He heard the footsteps behind him. He knew that the couple was following him, but he hoped they’d grow bored after a few blocks. If Regina had been correct about the lunchroom encounter—that Akins had backed off not because Terry had stood up to him but because Jerome had interceded—then Jerome’s threat should be enough to keep Akins at bay.

  “You got a job?” mocked Akins. “What kind of fool would hire a faggot like you? You’re so skinny that you can’t even carry more than two bags.”

  Leticia smirked as she joined in. “Your little mute bitch sister could probably carry more than you.” She grabbed at one of Terry’s bags, missing, but her fingers caught onto the delivery tag. The sticker tore in half. She glanced at it before stuffing it in her pocket.

  Terry looked down at the bag. Marco’s name was on it, but the address was gone. He bit his lip to keep from responding. Marco’s apartment was only three bocks away. Perhaps Terry could make it that far without another altercation. “Just leave me alone,” he said, but his tone sounded pleading, and he knew it.

  “Leave me alone,” Akins mimicked. “You’re always alone. Nobody likes you. Even your brother didn’t get up to help you
until I had you on the ground like a little girl.”

  Terry thought of the lunchroom fight, wondering what he could have done differently.

  “And I ain’t scared of Jerome Kelly,” Akins went on. “Yeah, he’s big, but he’s a pussy. He just plays at hurting people—in a game. And he can only hurt you if you let him get close, and I ain’t gonna let that happen again. I can do any shit I want to you, and I don’t have to worry about Jerome Kelly. He comes near me, I’ll pull my piece and shoot the fucker right in his face.”

  “Ooh,” gasped Leticia. She tried to cover it with a laugh, but even she was surprised at what her boyfriend had said.

  Terry kept on walking. It had begun to rain. The water glanced off the plastic bags that Terry was clutching against his chest and poured down his cheeks like tears. Still, he refused to stop and adjust the bags; if he did, he would give his pursuers an opportunity to surround him or grab the bags. He thought of running into traffic. There were still a few cars passing by. Perhaps Akins would be less likely to start a fight in the glare of headlights and onlookers. But stepping into the street or running into a store or calling for help—they were all escapes. Akins would only come back the next day or the next, wouldn’t he? Perhaps, Terry thought, his only option was to follow Marco’s advice: don’t run. So he kept moving at an even pace.

  “Jerome Kelly,” Akins continued. “I seen him play. He ain’t got no instinct for blood. He takes people down—he tackles them—but that’s it. He don’t make anyone hurt. If I hit you now, all Jerome will do is come threaten me again. Then I’ll just wait until after practice. I’ll wait by his car. And just when he gets in the driver seat of that red pickup truck, I’ll come right up to the window, and I’ll stick my gun in his face and…”

  “Stop!” Terry bellowed as he spun toward them. The wet grocery bags fell from his arms and flopped onto the sidewalk. Akins watched silently as a pink grapefruit slipped from one bag and rolled toward a grate. “You aren’t going near Jerome,” Terry went on. “You go near him and I’ll be the one at your car window.”

  Akins stood frozen in place. Leticia stared at her boyfriend, who seemed to be gasping to get words from his throat, but nothing came. Terry noticed the boy’s silence and felt suddenly empowered.

  “I’m not playing around with you anymore!” said Terry. “I’ve been putting up with your shit for too long. Now both of you just get the hell away from me.”

  Akins and Leticia started backing away slowly, almost mechanically.

  “Get away from me,” Terry roared. The boy and girl responded by turning away and moving faster. “Get away!” And they ran.

  Terry’s throat felt raw. He had the urge to tilt his head back and let the rainwater fall on his tongue. Instead, he remained still, catching his breath as he watched Akins race down the street. Leticia couldn’t keep up, but she lingered only a few paces behind. Their footsteps were resounding slaps on the damp pavement, echoing across the Harlem night. The pair ran through red lights, dodging cars and broken bottles and passersby. They just kept running.

  Nine

  The ship crawls toward America, swaying in the tides of four continents. The days drag on into weeks. Weeks of hot and hotter days of rocking, of watching the adjustment of sails, of listening alone at night to the creak of the boards, of wondering how much worse it is for my people below.

  I hear talk of Gibraltar and Cuba. Sometimes when Van Owen is below deck, the men grumble while hauling in fish or mopping water from the boards. They complain about bringing a cargo of slaves directly into a northeastern harbor. They speak of the dangers of the African Squadron, a naval patrol that scours the waters for illegal slave traders, and yet the men never bring their arguments to Van Owen. They’re too afraid. Perhaps they keep in their minds the image of Roland’s corpse, which Van Owen ordered them to leave on the deck by my cage, rotting, for two days. Only when the albatrosses started picking at Roland’s flesh did one older sailor find the courage to plead: Please, Captain, it’ll bring sickness to all of us. The lesson’s learned, Captain. At that, Van Owen nodded. Two men dragged Roland by his ankles—his head scuffling against the deck, his eyes still staring back at me, upside-down—to the edge of the boat and sent him tumbling into the waves.

  They fly the United States flag from the highest mast and display crates of palm oil across the ship’s bridge just in case they are stopped, though Van Owen doesn’t appear concerned at all. He seems composed, fully in command of everything and everyone around him. I wonder whom he has bribed for safe passage.

  Sometimes I am curious just where we are, what islands we’re passing, what waters we sail through. I rarely know. Most of the men will not speak near me. After Roland’s death, they eye me with caution and stay far from my cage.

  Twice, I’ve had to endure what the sailors call Dancing the Slave. Van Owen leans against the mast, waiting as his men bring five or six of my people from below. Here the sailors say, drink this. And they force the Mkembro and Merlante fisherman and hunters and farmers to drink the foulest of rums. When my people begin to sway from the drink, the sailors bring out the drums they stole from my ceremony. They pound on the instruments, poorly mimicking our rhythms, howling at the air like beasts, crouching as they clap along. And then they crack their whips against the boards and command my people to dance.

  I don’t want to watch. Hunched in my cage, I hide out of shame—shame for me, shame for my people, shame for the ignorance and cruelty of man. But then I hear the Mkembro voices rising above the sailors’ roars. Even as my people dance, drunk and frightened, even then they sing in our native tongue, railing to our gods, calling curses down upon the evil men. The bloodless white devil, they cry as they pass in front of Van Owen, shall crumble and melt to nothingness. They stare at Van Owen, who remains oblivious to their curse, and they call out, The gods will dissolve him.

  Even as they dance for him, they defy him. I promise myself that I will do no less.

  Late each night, long after the moon has risen and most of his men have gone to sleep, Van Owen clears the deck so that he can be alone with me. Sometimes he wanders along the bridge, watching me from different vantage points. Other nights, he sits beside my cage and speaks to me, telling me of his childhood in Kentucky and the Carolinas, of his mother and father and their fierce love for their only child. Sometimes he reads to me from the Bible, telling me of good and evil, explaining sin to me, lecturing me that the Bible holds answers to all questions. Yet even as he reads, I find myself doubting that he believes the things he says. One night, as he tells me the story of Moses, he shuts the book in anger and walks off to stare at the water or up at the stars. “Man shalt not take a wife from the daughters of Canaan,” he shouts at the sky, wagging his finger toward me. Most of the time, though, he simply stares at me as if I am a puzzle, as if he can learn my secrets by observing me. So I give him nothing to watch. No movement. No reaction. No emotion. Even as visions stream past my eyes—visions of him and me and my progeny and all the horrors to come—I sit silently, watching him as he watches me, trying to learn what I can use against him one day.

  It storms for the next several days—fierce storms—but I welcome them; the whipping wind against my wet body reminds me that I am alive. And the storms keep Van Owen away, for the deck cannot be unmanned in a squall, and he won’t visit me when the others are watching. So I am given even less food and water than usual. As it rains, some of the men circle my cage and laugh, as, like an insect, I crawl on my chest, licking the water from the sullied cage floor. With what’s left of the rainwater, I wash my hands, for I have used them at night—when no one is watching, and I can empty my bladder in peace—to brush the urine from my cage.

  Once a day, they bring the sick or dying prisoners on deck, those who will not fetch a good price even if they survive the trip. So the sailors remove the afflicted from the pens down below before the healthy ones can be infected too. I jump to my feet, wondering if I will see my mother’s face. I try t
o recognize a necklace or a bracelet. Is she still alive? Is she on the ship or still back in Africa? But it’s never my mother who emerges from down below, weak and filthy and encrusted with dirt and blood.

  The sick have already lost their will to live, so they don’t even struggle as the slavers lead them forward. Their chains already removed, they are simply walked to the end of the deck and told to step into the water. Sometimes they turn to see me in my cage before they go overboard. They all know who I am. The chieftain’s daughter. The princess. Perhaps, seeing what has become of me makes it easier for them to accept their end. For if even a princess is a caged zoo animal, then what chance had they to fare better? They stagger toward the plank, all hope gone, and when they enter the water, they do not resist its pull. They fall into the surf and vanish forever.

  The rebellious ones, though, are dangerous, for they cannot be broken—and so they are feared. They could incite others to rebel. For them, the end is different. As they are tugged toward the edge of the ship, the white men beat them with sticks and slash them with sabers. Still, the strong ones struggle against their shackles and curse their captors. Finally, just before they’re thrown overboard, the defiant ones are killed. Van Owen likes to watch them die. He has them stabbed or struck over the head, for bullets are too expensive to waste on them. Then the chains are removed so that they can be reused. Only then are the men tossed into the water.

  It’s just before dawn when the noise begins from deep below. At first I wonder if there’s a commotion of some sort—perhaps an uprising—but these are not African voices that I hear. It is the crew. Someone has looked through a telescope and seen the land we’re approaching. As the men stream onto the deck, embracing and slapping backs in cheer, I look toward a dark, shriveled mass in the distance. For a moment, I envision it as it will appear a century from now, the smokestacks and office buildings rising so high that I can see them even from here. In this time, though, I see only gray skies and a pier and a plethora of ships that dot the waters of Boston Harbor.