Palmares

by Gayl Jones

  Old Vera pushed my shoulder and told me to go on. We stumbled through thick underbrush.

  The Free Woman and the Slave

  IF I AM THE WOMAN HE HAS CHOSEN,” I asked Nobrega, who had brought me fruit and cow’s milk and who was oiling my hair. (I said that she could oil and brush it only if I oiled and brushed hers in return.) “If I am the woman he has chosen, why has he not spoken to me? I saw him sitting with other men, and he did not see me. He saw me, but would not say so.”

  “I can’t say why,” she said.

  “And this king, whom they call Zumbi. I have not seen him. Does he stay hidden?”

  “Perhaps you have seen him and not known.”

  I said nothing, thinking perhaps the man who carried himself with importance whom they had told me was Martim Anninho, was in fact King Zumbi.

  “Is he the king?” I asked finally.

  “Who?”

  “The man you called Anninho.”

  She laughed. “No, he is not King Zumbi.” She laughed again.

  “He carries himself with such importance. I have never seen a black man carry himself so.”

  She said nothing. When she finished braiding my hair she remained standing with her hands to her sides.

  “Now, you sit down,” I said, getting up.

  “No, I cannot,” she said.

  I took the brush from her and asked her again to sit down. This time she did and I began to oil and brush her hair.

  “Do not tell anyone,” she said. “Everyone must keep to his own place.”

  “Did you commit a crime?” I asked her.

  “No, I am not a criminal. Perhaps I simply gave fatal herbs to a man like Old Vera did.”

  I dropped the bowl of oil. She jumped up to clean it up, and then not letting me finish her hair, she wrapped it in a cloth.

  “What will they do to her?”

  “I was told she got away with only a reprimand, a warning, because she is new and did not know the laws here. But me, I knew them well.”

  She started to say something else, but did not. “Was he a man you knew?” I asked.

  “What?” she asked, tying the scarf very tightly, letting the ends hang across her shoulders.

  “The man you freed from such torture?”

  “Yes, I knew him,” she said. “I knew him.” She looked at me fully for the first time. “I saw them when they brought him back. He had not wanted to stay here. He did not leave to go back to some old master.”

  “Was he a slave here?”

  “No, he was a free man. But for him it was a difficult freedom. He wanted to be free. Not in a perpetual fight for it. He didn’t mind taking responsibility for his own freedom. But he wanted out of the whole place, the whole country. But the ones here captured him and brought him back before anyone out there did. I saw his eyes when they brought him back. I saw him and stared at his doom. Oh, I could not pass that man easily,” she said.

  She had gotten up as much of the oil as she could, then she said she would come back with something, and got up and left.

  “For God’s sake, have some pity,” I heard the man say.

  Zumbi’s Women; Small Talk on Mulatto Women and the Virtues of Reserve and Silence

  I SAW ALL THREE OF ZUMBI‘S WOMEN before I saw him. I had gone down with Nobrega to the stream and saw three women there. One was very white, the other a bushy-haired mulatta, and the third a dark round-faced woman with short hair and sad eyes and rings in her ears. Three women stood on the bank watching them. I started to get in but Nobrega told me to wait.

  “Those are Zumbi’s women,” she whispered.

  I stood watching them, mostly staring at the white woman. I thought at first that she was also a mulatta, but then I realized she was really a white woman.

  “The white one?” I asked without completing it.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Let’s go back some,” she said.

  We sat on a rock at the edge of the wood, until the women got out of the stream and dressed, helped by the three women on the bank.

  I stared at the mulatta who had short curls all over her head, not the long hair of most mulatta women I had seen, not long down her back. It was only the white one who wore her hair long down her back. Then when the women were dressed, and shawls were placed around their shoulders, they paraded past us with serious eyes and did not look at us.

  “When he first brought the white one here, some whispered against him. Others said no she was part Indian, that she looked like an Indian and so it was not wrong. But everyone knew she was a white woman. Me? I don’t like her to look at me. I don’t like her eyes. Once she tried to make her skin brown like ours, and he beat her, at least people say it was him that did it, but who knows in this world? The black one is the most reserved. I thought she was mean, but she is just reserved and quiet. The white one I don’t like to look at. Did she have a serious expression when she passed or did she laugh like she had some secret?”

  “They all looked serious,” I said.

  “I’m afraid of her. I don’t know why. I won’t look at her. Some of the women have gotten used to her and say she acts the way she does because she feels we don’t like her. What way does she act? I don’t know. I don’t know how white women act. She made her skin dark and tried to learn our dances, falling to the ground. But she wouldn’t cut her hair. No. No.”

  I said nothing.

  “The mulatta is the friendliest,” she said. “And isn’t her hair nice, just like a cushion. Her waist is thin and her hips are large and she’s shaped just like me, except her breasts are so small, aren’t they? And her skin’s got a lot of milk in it. She’s the friendliest and she likes to paint her eyes. Once when I was down at the spring to get water, she came down there. It was not for water to carry, but for her own thirst. She looked at me and smiled and cupped her hands to drink. But she did not speak. But still she seemed so friendly. I don’t like her the best though. I like the black one. Did you see the shadows under her eyes? She has a hard time. Did you see the mark of the tribe where she came from? It’s under her chin. It’s very distinctive. I like her the best, though at first I thought she was mean. It was just reserve and silence. In the place where she came from it is a virtue for women to behave so, especially royal women. It will give them youth and a long life.” She was quiet, then she said, “I wonder which he finds the best to make love with. I have heard white men say that mulatta women are the women to make love with. That is what they believe.”

  “Color is not contagious,” I said.

  “What?”

  “That’s what they sing where I came from, the masters’ sons to little mulatta girls.

  “‘I want your love, mulatta, Color is not contagious, So I want your love.’“

  She said nothing, and we rose and went to the stream to bathe.

  The Name “Almeida”

  WHY DO YOU HAVE THE NAME ALMEIDA?” she asked, as we were returning. “Who would name you after such a false governor?”

  “My name is not the same as Don Pedro de Almeida,” I said. “When I first heard of him I said too, ‘Why am I named after such a man?’ But my name has a ‘y’ in it, not an ‘i’ as his. Still I don’t know where my name came from. Or what it means. I looked it up in a priest’s dictionary. I couldn’t find it. I found ‘alma,’ that’s ‘soul.’ But also it’s like ‘almejar,’ ‘to covet.’ I don’t like that. ‘To agonize.’ I don’t like that either. But ‘to long for, to yearn for.’ It also means that.”

  She listened but said nothing.

  “Tell me about him, this de Almeida. How was he false?” I asked.

  “I was not here,” she began, “but it was when Ganga Zumba was king and he sought peace with the governor de Almeida. He sent representatives to prostrate themselves before his feet. That was in 1678, fifteen years ago, before I came here. It was all very strange, but it is all the same to me. I am always in the same state, in an ‘independent’ state or outside of it. Inside or outside I
am the same woman. The servitude is constant. But the representatives told the governor that we never desired war, no more than any other man, that we were the same as other men and fought only to save our lives. He said that those born free in Palmares should remain free, others would be returned to their owners, if a treaty were given. He wanted some site provided for the free men; it did not matter if the independent state of Palmares was no more, as long as there was some place provided, they would serve the flag the same as other men. It was the new governor, Aires de Souza though, who finally extended peace, freed the Palmaristas. But it was all false, he did not demobilize the detachment of soldiers, and then what did he do? He began to give land to those men who had fought against us.

  “Began to give our land away. That was when Zumbi revolted, and together with some men killed his uncle, Ganga Zumba. Is that the name of the old king? Zumbi said the Portuguese have not the only claim here, that we either continue to fight or face extension, extinction, that is the way it will be and always will be . . . But I am not a free woman. It is not my matter. I have no free ground to hold.

  “Every ground I walk on is the same. Why should it matter to me if Palmares is no more? I walk on the same ground wherever I go. I am the same woman wherever I go.”

  I said nothing as we entered the road leading to my house.

  Black Beans, Brazilian Style; Iararaca, the Mystical Serpent Visits and Almeyda Is Made Whole Again

  DID YOU MIND AN OLD WOMAN‘S TALES of brutality?” she asked.

  “No.”

  “Every journey is preparation for another one.”

  I said nothing. We sat on the rug in my small house, eating black beans and rice that she had prepared and brought to me.

  “Do you still have the dreams?” she asked.

  “I haven’t dreamt in some time,” I said.

  “It is because you are here now and think you are a free woman,” she said. “Free to resist slavery. Free only to resist it.”

  I said nothing.

  “Did you see the white woman?” she asked.

  I looked away from her. “Yes, I saw her,” I said.

  “Has the man touched your face, has he touched your hair and shoulders?”

  I said nothing and did not look at her. She was repeating my dream to me.

  “Where is the man you have chosen? Where is the man whose woman you have become?”

  “I have chosen no one. I am no one’s woman.”

  “Do you want to be his woman?”

  I said nothing.

  “Tell me yes or no now,” she said.

  I looked at her. I said yes. I felt as if there were a serpent crawling down my back, between my legs. I tried to pull at it.

  “You are uncomfortable.”

  I kept moving and twisting and trying to be rid of it. It was stuck there, and then it crawled up my belly and between my breasts, and then I did not feel it.

  “Iararaca has positive meaning. There is always some positive meaning whenever Iararaca is near,” she said.

  I felt it along the back of my neck and she grabbed it and shook it loose and then rubbed it across my forehead and under my chin.

  Then across my thighs back and forth, then she touched my head again, the center of my forehead.

  “Do you feel you are a whole woman?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you feel you are a whole woman or a mutilated one?”

  “I was mutilated for my own protection.”

  “Do you feel you are whole now or mutilated?” she asked with anger and impatience.

  “Whole,” I said timidly.

  Then we were looking at each other, and she took Iararaca from me and wrapped him around her head, then she rose.

  “Tell me, Almeyda, how does a woman find her spiritual place in this world?”

  I said nothing and she left me sitting there.

  Martim Anninho; The First Meeting

  NOBREGA CAME TO THE DOORWAY. I was sitting on the rug drinking cocoa.

  “Anninho is coming,” she said.

  “He is coming?” I asked. It had been weeks since I had even seen him.

  “Yes, he is on his way here.”

  Then she said softly, “He has complained of your friendliness with me. He does not like it.”

  “I am my own woman,” I said.

  Anninho stood in the doorway, tall and straight shouldered. He looked at Nobrega and she left quickly. He looked at me.

  “Let’s go for a walk,” he said.

  “Where?” I asked.

  He looked angry. “Just a walk.”

  I put my cup down and went to the door.

  We walked through the palm grove until we reached the place where the wooden pikes tipped with iron stuck out of the ground. We went no further. I stared at the side of his face, then up at the clouds in the blue sky.

  “The free women here feel you shun them for a slave,” he said.

  I said nothing.

  “Those who escape here on their own are free. Those when we bring against their will are not. Those who go against the laws here are slaves again. Those who desert are executed. Murder, adultery, theft, desertion are punishable by death. That is the way it is.”

  I said nothing. I had looked forward to our first visit, and now I was not pleased.

  “I want you to be my woman,” he said.

  He looked at me. I stood close to him but said nothing. I wanted to ask him why he had not spoken to me before this time, and that once when I saw him with a group of men he had shunned me.

  “What do you say?” he asked.

  I said nothing.

  “Why do you look so sad?”

  “People tell me I always look this way.”

  He touched my short hair and my forehead. He touched my shoulder. He asked if he might kiss me. I shook my head no. He said nothing. He looked out into the heavy forest. I studied the scars on his cheeks and forehead. One was shaped like a star and the other a half circle. His eyes looked very solemn. I touched one of the scars on his jaw. He turned and smiled at me. We kissed.

  He put his arm around my shoulder and we walked back to the small house.

  I sat down on the carpet and he asked why didn’t I sit in one of the chairs. They were Dutch chairs, gotten during the time when they were at war not with the Portuguese, but with the Dutch. I said they were nice chairs but I was not used to sitting in chairs. Then he sat down on the carpet and folded his legs. He wore a white shirt and string-tied pants but he was not barefoot. He was wearing tall boots that came to his knee, but made of a flexible and thin leather.

  We sat in silence. I rose nervously and got a bowl of coconut and pears and set it between us.

  “How did you first come here?” I asked.

  He said nothing, then he said, “I rode in the same as you saw that morning, on horseback. They were suspicious of me for a very long time and thought I was a spy for the government and would inform on them. They sent me through difficult tests.”

  “What tests?”

  “You would not want to hear.”

  “Not hear?” I asked. “Perhaps I will see worse.”

  “I was sent in search of a certain enemy, to come back and place his head on a pole. You see, I was very much distrusted in the beginning.”

  “I have not been sent for anything.”

  “You are a woman.”

  “I have heard here that the women fight along with the men.”

  “Fight, yes.”

  “But none are distrusted? You expect none as informers?”

  He laughed. “Are you an informer? Should I distrust you? Anyway, if a man is captured by either side he is killed. The women are never killed. There are always other uses.”

  I said nothing.

  He said, with seriousness, “There is a certain woman who is a spy for us in the town. You will meet her soon. But I have known few women to be executed by either army. I have known women to be executed by other women.”

  I still s
aid nothing.

  “Speak to me.”

  “I’m not a ready talker.”

  “What do you think?”

  I did not answer.

  “We have a strong system of vigilance here. Spies in the towns, on the roads, at points wherever travelers and strangers gather. We have our own informers. We are a very organized group. We have garrisons in other mountains, and sometimes certain Indians join forces with us. Though certain others have been in the attacking armies. Did you come with any weapons?”

  “No.”

  “Have you held a sword, bow and arrow? Do you know how to shoulder a musket?”

  “No.”

  He frowned. “Well, you’ll learn those things. In that house over there,” he said, pointing. I rose to look over his shoulder. “There is a woman called Indaya, Indaya Matroa; one of our best fighters. An old woman now, but an instructor to younger women. I will send you to her. The only way we maintain our freedom here is through resistance.”

  I said nothing.

  “That will begin tomorrow, and you will also be given some field to cultivate.”

  “I have never worked in a field. I have always worked . . . inside places.”

  He shrugged. “There are women who will show you. Nobrega will show you how to do that. Perhaps sweet potatoes.”

  I did not speak.

  “What did you do when you were found? What type of work?”

  “I worked in a shoemaker’s shop.”

  “We have a tannery here and a shoemaker’s shop, but there are no women. Here the women do the cultivating.”

  I said nothing. I started to say I was the only woman in that shoemaker’s shop, but I did not. Again I saw the shoemaker’s wife standing in the doorway.

  “Did you make those sandals you are wearing?”

  “Yes. I only made sandals, and did sewing and embroidery, and when things needed to be ornamented by painted designs. But no boots and nothing with heels,” I said.