Palmares

by Gayl Jones

Why does she insist it’s not so?

  “The hallucinations of a melancholy woman,” my grandmother explained and winked at me. How could she have known?

  “Your mother doesn’t believe anything,” she said to me. “Doesn’t she know there are things in this world which she hasn’t seen and doesn’t have any knowledge of? Doesn’t she know there are wonders in the world, strange and frightful wonders?”

  “I know the difference between possible and impossible things,” said Mother.

  “Would you say it was impossible that the horse trader could have found you again, without my magic?”

  My mother bit her lip in silence. I look from one to the other. Was that why she insists it’s not so, because Grandmother mentioned the horse trader? She lifted up the hammock she was making. She pulled on it to test how strong the threads were.

  “Alsace,” I said, to remind my grandmother of the tale she promised.

  “Alsace was a Moorish woman who turned up in Bahia de Todos os Santos many years ago, a traveling woman, an itinerant singer and very beautiful. I was a young woman myself then. As soon’s she showed up many strange things began to happen. But only natural things, heavy rains, storms, fishing troubles. But because the woman was there and from one of the dark corners of the world, they blamed the occurrences on her.

  “Then one night someone claimed they saw her rubbing devil’s grease on her hair and body, and they captured her and imprisoned her. When she was in prison, a guard swore that he saw a big, black bearded man in the cell with her, kissing her on the lips. When she was confronted by the fact that the devil was in there, she told them, ‘Indeed, there was no man there, but if one was, wouldn’t it’ve been natural for him to’ve been a black man with a beard?’ They took that to mean a confession that the devil had indeed been with her. I myself was standing on the street when they were taking her to be executed. I myself. She saw me and touched my hand. I was standing on the street, because I’d been sent by my master with some ambergris for . . .”

  “I don’t believe the woman passed on any powers to you, Mother.”

  “Don’t tell the ‘nina that.”

  “The horse trader’s here, isn’t he? Didn’t he know the exact place and time?”

  My mother was silent.

  “How was unsettled times settled?” I asked.

  I’d stopped weaving the basket to listen. Now I sat up in my hammock that had become too small for me.

  “Ah, after her execution, there were more heavy rains and storms and fishing problems, but there was no Moorish woman to blame for it, so they blamed it on the laws of nature.”

  “But your grandmother claims that she caused things this second time, with powers that Alsace had passed to her.”

  “She was only the medium of the gift, not the source of it.”

  Mother hummed then she said, “I don’t believe she was here. I don’t believe in Alsace, because they don’t let Moors in the country.”

  “Don’t you think she’d have her ways?”

  “Did the black bearded man come to you?” I asked. “Is that the one we saw?”

  “What black man?” My mother looked at her. My grandmother jumped in the air with excitement.

  “Your mother doesn’t believe in the invisible world,” she explained, “or the powers of anyone except the Portuguese and the Dutchmen. Maybe an Englishman or two.” She twisted her hands in her hair and went out.

  I swear it’s so, but Mother swears it’s not. She does say I asked her about the witch and the black man.

  “We saw a black man riding on a horse,” I told her. “Who is he?”

  “It’s not for you to know,” she scolded. “Some way she’s gotten you to share her visions.”

  “Then she is a witch!” I exclaimed, clapping my hands.

  “Hush. Come here and hold this.”

  I went and held the new hammock while she twisted the cotton threads.

  The Gathering of Turtle Eggs

  BUT THE GIRL WITH THE TURTLE EGGS, she said was real. It was before my grandmother had been sent off to the Negro asylum. We found this young girl. Years later, when I saw my grandmother again, she told me that the young girl was Alsace, come round again, but then I only knew that she was brought to my mother’s and grandmother’s hut. She was found wandering alone on a beach and she was very sick. She was very thin with dark skin and glossy hair and huge black eyes, and indeed did look like the enchanted Mooresses in the storybooks. My grandmother—did she recognize her then?—placed her in her hammock, but with all her magic she couldn’t determine what was wrong with the girl—or refused to tell us.

  Anyway, my mother went to the man who’d found her and asked him where she was and what was around her when she was found. He said, “On the beach, just the beach. Piles of sand and bits of rock and little dead fish and a basket of broken turtle eggs.”

  Grandmother came back and said that maybe the girl had been with a crew who’d been gathering turtle eggs.

  “To eat?” I wrinkled my nose up. I liked nothing with turtle, not even turtle soup with garlic.

  “No,” she said. “They make oil out of it. Turtle butter. Very expensive and very good. She must’ve been traveling with them, the poor dear, and got sick and they left her behind.”

  She treated the girl not like some stranger, but someone she knew. I didn’t know the tale of Alsace at the time though and Father Tollinare didn’t believe in reincarnation, claiming it to be a devil’s trick. Anyway, the girl stayed with us till she got well. My grandmother never discovered what it was she had, or never told us. She just gave her soups, even turtle soup, and herbs till she got better. But the girl never spoke and she’d back away whenever anyone but Grandmother came near her. Even when my grandmother would hand her a plate of rice and bacon she would go into the corner and away from everyone and eat it. Her eyes were as shiny as pearls. I saw her touching my grandmother’s hand, but I didn’t give it any significance then. I thought it was merely to thank her for the help she’d given. Did my grandmother need more powers? New ones? Was that why Alsace had come again?

  Master Entralgo—some people swore behind his back that he was not a branco but only considered himself to be one—sent someone to inquire of the health of the girl. When she was well, he said, I was to bring her to the master. And so when she was well, she walked with me in silence, and kept her arms folded.

  “What’s your name?” Entralgo asked.

  When she didn’t answer, I spoke up for her. “I don’t know her name, Sir,” I said. “She’s spoken to no one.”

  “I’m asking her what’s her name.”

  She refused to answer.

  “And how’m I going to tell if you’re dangerous or not,” he said with a snorting chuckle, “if you don’t speak?”

  The girl still refused to answer, her hands hugging her arms. “Whose slave’re you then?”

  No answer.

  He watched her with annoyance. I thought he would swoop down and strike her. “Well, if you belong to no one else I’ll take you.”

  “I belong to me,” she said in a little voice.

  He laughed. I waited for him to swoop down on her. “And did you belong to you before we found you?”

  The girl wasn’t much older than I myself, perhaps ten. But I liked her.

  No one had ever spoken to Entralgo like that. Not anyone I knew. “Where’re your free papers, wench?”

  She said nothing. Wasn’t she too young to be a wench?

  Still she didn’t answer, and still I expected him to swoop down on her with his anger, but he merely laughed. Why? What power did she have? I had no idea that this was Alsace.

  “You’re an uppity little wench,” he said.

  “I’m not from the same world as you,” she said.

  “And what world do you come from, wench?”

  I kept staring at the girl, who was looking at him directly, not out of the corner of her eyes, as I only looked at brancos.

  “If it
’s the devil, then he owns you,” said the man.

  “No, I’m from a place there.” The girl pointed eastward.

  Entralgo said, “Take her back to your grandmother till I decide what’s to be done with her. A Negro asylum for this one, I’ll guess.”

  The girl turned a moment before I did. I’d been expecting him to swoop down on her, but he hadn’t. Whatever he planned to do to her, I wasn’t sure, but I knew he planned something. The girl and I walked back. I wanted to ask her why she behaved in such a manner, but I didn’t dare. When we got back to the senzala, to our hut, I told my mother what had taken place. She shook her head and clucked at the girl, saying that it was a wonder Entralgo hadn’t stripped her bare and beat her there and then.

  When I told my grandmother what had happened, she merely looked at the girl and smiled.

  Now I was sure that since she’d spoken, she’d continue to speak to us, but she didn’t. She seemed more withdrawn than before, taking her food into a corner away from us. She spent whole days alone and in silence. I kept waiting for Entralgo to decide what to do with her. When he did not, my mother began to give her bits of laundry to take down to the stream and wash, which she did expressionless.

  And when I took her to school with me, Father Tollinare had started to pass her the catechism, then realizing that she was not a regular student, was about to take the book from her, when she took the book and began to read, quickly and intelligently, as if she’d been born to it. She read in a manner that Father Tollinare much regarded, leaving all the endings on all her words.

  “Where’d you learn to read like that?” asked Father Tollinare, in amazement.

  The girl hunched her shoulders but didn’t answer. Mexia, who’d been in the room, had stopped and looked at the child.

  “That was wonderful,” said Father Tollinare. I’d never heard him fawn over anyone so, not even the brancos.

  Although I was said to be a quick and agile reader, still Father Tollinare complained that I exaggerated some of my words while leaving whole syllables off of others.

  “That is perfect, child,” he said. “What’s your name?”

  “She doesn’t have a name,” I answered quickly. I don’t know why I said it. It just popped out, as if someone had impelled me to.

  Father Tollinare looked at me with impatience, then back at the child.

  “I am called Selvagem,” said the girl.

  “Savage! Who’d call you that? You’re very intelligent.”

  “She’s from Sudan,” I said quickly, before she could say anything. “From East Africa.”

  Father Tollinare looked at me. You could say that I was looking at myself too, for in truth I didn’t know a thing about her.

  “I want you to come here again and again,” he said to the child. “Do you write?” he asked eagerly. “Do you know how to copy the scriptures?”

  The girl nodded. Father Tollinare clapped his hands. “But come tomorrow and show me what you can do. I can see you’re a very intelligent little girl.”

  She came the next day and copied the scriptures, but Father Tollinare scolded her for putting things in there that weren’t there. She kept putting things in there that were . . . well, forbidden. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t copy what she saw. What it was she put into the scriptures, he wouldn’t tell us, but he began to look frightened by it, and quickly took the writing papers away from her and tore the papers up.

  “I can see you’re very intelligent,” he proclaimed. “But such things are forbidden. Such things are dangerous.”

  “That part and that part are my own creation,” she said.

  He extolled her intelligence, but he said again that such things were forbidden, were dangerous, were unholy. He told her what was in the scriptures, and if she saw anything else there, why she imagined it, or it was the work of the devil. The girl replied with nothing, but she didn’t return the next day nor the next; she refused to speak to anyone and drew further into herself.

  Once I asked her what turtle oil was used for and she said for light. I asked her if the ship she’d sailed on was a pirate ship. I’d heard tales of pirates.

  “Your master, was he a pirate?” I asked.

  She’d come with me to the palm grove where we gathered palm leaves. She didn’t answer, but looked at me as if I were a fool to ask such a question. But I liked her anyway.

  And Grandmother treated her with a special kind of tenderness. Once she commented that if the girl were from anywhere it was from her own country because there it was considered a virtue for a woman to be quiet, but she admitted that now in this New World she didn’t consider silence very virtuous among women. “Ah, but then wasn’t I the truly silent woman?” she said. Was it Rugendas she spoke to?

  The girl’s eyes seemed to get larger whenever my grandmother spoke to her. I knew now it was because Grandmother shared the secret of her identity. That is, if she’s to be believed. I know my grandmother would stare at her often. “What should we do?” she’d ask. I thought then that she was asking what we should do with the girl, because she couldn’t be fathomed. But now I suspect that she was addressing the girl. Once when she asked that, the girl came and kissed my grandmother as if she recognized her suddenly, then she went out into the yard.

  When the girl didn’t return for a time, my mother went out to find her. She found her, she said, but she didn’t bring her back; she took her instead to Father Tollinare. My grandmother said that she’d committed suicide, that she’d eaten earth, so much of it, and in that way had committed suicide. Some others believe that it was Entralgo that stuffed her with earth and killed her.

  “But why?” my mother asked, believing I suppose the first thing.

  But my grandmother was again the truly silent one. She refused to explain, nor did she tell us who the girl really was, but when we were alone she told me that that was the way that lessons were learned in the world. I had no idea what she meant.

  Antonia Artiga

  I SUPPOSE THE FIRST THING WAS true, because when Master Entralgo discovered he couldn’t have his way with the girl, he took things out on Antonia Artiga. Everyone said she was a drunkard and a thief, although what she stole or continued to steal I don’t know. My grandmother swore that it was one thing she stole and only one thing, but that Entralgo (she never called him “Master,” not even when speaking face to face with him), but as soon as he learned about the girl, Entralgo beat this Antonia Artiga. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t beat her before. He’d always beat her for this one thing she’d stolen as if she’d stolen it again and again. And if anything else drove him to annoyance, he’d beat her for that too.

  We were sitting in the palm grove where Grandmother had first spoken to the invisible Rugendas. This time, however, she spoke to no one. We sat in silence until we could hear the woman scream. It was loud and long. That’s the way she’d do it. One loud long scream and then she’d be silent for the rest of the time. He’d beat her publicly, once a week, and like I said, any other time that he was irked. The rest of the time she’d go about her work in the cane field, like any other woman. In the evening she’d sit in front of her hut, sitting very straight and proud, chewing on a cane stalk and drinking rum she’d made herself. Then she’d commit some crime again or someone else would do a thing that riled him and he’d go and grab Antonia.

  After her beating, my grandmother would visit her or some other woman who knew about medicine and rub salve on her wounds, then the next day, early in the morning, she’d be out in the fields cutting cane with the other women, as if she’d never been beaten.

  “What did she steal? What does she keep stealing?” I asked.

  “She doesn’t keep stealing. What she stole she only stole one time. Such a woman only needs to commit one crime. He goes on beating her for the same one. But that’s not why he’s beating her now. A man like that can take one reason or another.”

  I looked at her, but she wouldn’t explain in words that I could understand. After
a moment, she got up and began picking certain leaves, and then I followed her out of the palm grove and among the cinchona trees. She scratched off some of its bark and drew sap from it.

  “Come on,” she said. “I’ll go see about her. She’s more stubborn than a goat, but a man like that can take one reason or another.”

  I walked beside her up the road. We stood in the senzala watching while they untied the woman from a post. My grandmother left me standing there and walked with the woman into her hut. I went into my mother’s hut.

  “Why does he beat her in public?” I asked.

  I knew he beat other women, but none of them in public. Besides Antonia, only the men were beaten in public. When my mother didn’t explain, I climbed into my hammock.

  After a long moment, she said, “It’s considered indecent to beat a woman out of doors.”

  I waited for her to explain further, but she wouldn’t, as if she wanted me to make the connections she refused to make. “Make the understanding for yourself,” was a phrase I often heard my grandmother say. But I sat there with my mouth open waiting for her to make the understanding for me.

  Grandmother came in smelling like cinchona salve and told me to shut my mouth before I swallowed a goat.

  Entralgo Comes to the Medicine Woman

  HE KEEPS PROMISING HER he’ll ship her to Corricao’s,” said Grandmother as she climbed into her hammock and took up a basket to weave.

  I shuddered, because I knew that Corricao’s was the place where they breed slaves. A few of the slaves on our plantation had been born at Corricao’s and disgusting things were whispered, even into the ears of children. I started to ask Grandmother why some slaves had to work harder than others, and why some were even forced to do disgusting things. Perhaps Corricao wouldn’t buy Antonia, I was thinking. Perhaps he wouldn’t buy a drunkard and a thief, as she was called.

  As I was about to speak, a tall house servant loomed in the doorway.

  I eyed him because they had just started talking to me about going to Pao Joaquim and I knew that Pao Joaquim could be any of the men, behind his mask. But this tall house servant didn’t look fierce at all. Still, it was the mask that could make anyone fierce.