by Zakes Mda
There is Margaret Tabler standing behind a long table under the picture of Martin Luther King Jr., directing the traffic that has lined up for the food. The table is bedecked with trays of cookies and cakes and pretzels and sandwiches and candy and hot dogs and chips and cans of pop. Irene insists that I must fill my paper plate many times over.
There are Nathan and Orpah sitting on a couch by the door. He waves at me and I wave back. They are laughing at something Nathan has said. Yes, Orpah is actually laughing. I am happy that she has been persuaded to come out and enjoy herself with other human beings. But also there is a slight pang of jealousy that she is with Nathan. I should have been brave enough to ask her out for this dinner. Who knows? She might have said yes. They look good together though: Orpah and Nathan. I am sure Ruth is happy too. She has been encouraging Orpah to go for Nathan because Nathan is a good man and Nathan is a hard-working man and Nathan is a responsible man who will look after her and Nathan will bring some sanity into her life.
“Nathan’s a wild man, Ruth,” that’s what Orpah said the last time I heard them talk about him.
“She’s looking for a tame man. They’re hard to come by. She’s gotta tame one for herself,” said Ruth, not addressing her daughter directly but looking at me for confirmation.
“I am not looking for no man, period,” that was Orpah’s response as she walked away.
And now here they are, Nathan and Orpah, laughing together under a red and white banner with a gold star of Bethlehem and the three wise men on camels.
There is Santa Claus sitting on a chair next to two big boxes with presents wrapped in colorful paper. The children are lining up for their gifts. A child sits on his lap and they exchange a few words, I don’t know about what, and then he selects a present from one or the other box depending on the sex of the child. Older children don’t sit on his lap but receive their presents while standing in front of him. Santa spots me and waves at me with a big grin. I can see Obed under that sloppy white beard and red and white hat. The scoundrel can be useful when he wants. It is amazing how he is able to bring out a giggle even from the shy kids.
There is Mahlon Quigley sitting with men who are obviously much older than him. Two men are trying to charm an equally senior citizen whose face and neck are mapped with deep furrows of wisdom. She is giggling like a teenage girl and her blue eyes glisten with tears. I think she has been laughing her dear little heart out. Mahlon for his part is just smiling as always.
Once again I wonder what goes on in that head. Especially after what I saw last night. I cannot understand why even the stormy Ruth holds this man in such awe and reverently refers to him as Mr. Quigley and never Mahlon. Mr. Quigley this, Mr. Quigley that, and Mr. Quigley needs to be well fed. He turns his head and looks at me. Maybe it is my imagination but I think the smile faded a bit. I get the feeling that if I were to compete for Orpah’s attention at all it would not be with Nathan but with Mahlon Quigley.
The thought sickens me and I slip out of the room. I walk among the many cars and SUVs parked in the yard to the gate and stand there alone. Why on earth would I think of competing for any woman in Kilvert? I think I am getting too comfortable in Tabler Town. I have forgotten my mission. I came here in search of mourning. Not to fight duels with fathers over their daughters. And how presumptuous of me to imagine that a woman like Orpah would be remotely interested in someone like me!
The sciolist nagged me until he got tired: Toloki, you are a professional mourner. You have a vocation to fulfill. Do not be seduced by the life in Kilvert. We must see that you are here for a reason. We must see why you are a professional mourner and not just a man from South Africa who finds himself in a southeast Ohio hamlet. That voice has since gone silent.
Santa Claus walks out of the building and is about to take off his costume behind one of the SUVs when he sees me. I join him.
“Why would you strip naked in this cold?” I ask.
If he strips in the hall he will spoil the illusion for the kids.
“You think those kids are dumb? They know who you are.”
It is too cold, so he decides that he will take the costume off at home. The party is not over but his part is done. He would stay only if there was beer.
“I’ll walk with you,” I tell him.
We walk slowly past the little church. I am suddenly overwhelmed by an urge to mourn. My whole body cries for mourning. I tell Obed that I’ll find him at home. I need to go to the cemetery. He insists that he is coming with me. He has seen me mourn a few times and claims he finds the experience inspiring. But we don’t go into the cemetery. We walk toward the woods instead. We are drawn by the ghost tree gleaming among the maples and elms and walnuts. We tread lightly into the woods. Everything is still. Only our boots disturb the silence. I think Obed is warm enough in his Santa suit since it is stuffed with old clothes to give him a round figure. I am cold in my Windbreaker, which I am wearing over a light shirt that was never meant for such a chilly winter night.
It is dark in the woods but we are able to find our way with the aid of my penlight. We have no idea where we are going or why. The urge to mourn has dissipated, perhaps with the realization that I cannot mourn in civvies. I can only mourn effectively in my sacred costume. Something gleaming on the ground attracts my attention. It is a piece of porcelain. There is a mound covered by leaves and lots of debris. More broken pottery. We clear the leaves and discover a lamp chimney and a pot. We rummage some more in the leaves with our fingers. There is a white ceramic hen. There are seashells surrounding part of the mound. Clearly this is a grave.
“We must find the gravestone,” I tell Obed.
But it is too dark. We mark the spot with a cairn of stones so as to make it distinguishable in daylight. We walk back home, my heart pumping from the discovery. This is not just any grave. It is an African grave.
The next morning Obed and I return to the woods armed with a small digging spade, hoping that we did not just dream the grave. Today I am wearing my mourning costume, for I am going to mourn the African sleeping under that mound. Children titter along the way and ask Obed why I am wearing a Halloween costume when it is long past Halloween.
“It ain’t no Halloween costume, you little asshole,” says Obed. “My man here is an African shaman.”
“You don’t talk like that to children,” I admonish.
But the kids don’t seem to mind. They laugh and one of them asks: “What the fuck is an African shaman?”
He is not offended at all but promises to explain to them next time.
Well, the grave is still there. And this time we are able to find the headstone with ease. After scraping the mud from it the crude inscription becomes clear: Here lies Niall Quigley—Slave Owner, Slave Trader, Slave, Slave Stealer, Professional Witness. Died: 1875.
“Who was Niall Quigley?” I ask.
“The first Quigley,” says Obed.
“I wonder why they buried him like an African.”
“What they wrote here is bull, man,” says Obed. “My great-grampa was no slave owner. He was no slave trader either. They got it all wrong, man. There were no slaves in Ohio.”
“We’ll know when we mourn the man,” I assure him.
We kneel at the mound and I teach him new mourning wails. They are like the sound of a coyote, he observes. I combine them with groans and moans and sacred chants of my own invention. Obed follows faithfully and together we are able to muster a two-part harmony at one time, and a call-and-response at another. Our mourning transports us to another place; another realm; another time.
6
White Slave
The story is told by the mound and the white chicken and the headstone: Niall Quigley lost everything he owned in the gambling dens of County Tipperary, Ireland. After serving time at the Bridewell for some fraudulent transaction aimed at recouping his losses, he traveled steerage aboard a vessel to the new world where he hoped to start a new life. He endured the rough seas in crammed and filt
hy conditions. Some of his fellow passengers fell sick and perished, and were thrown overboard. He was determined to survive the voyage, and when his provisions ran out—passengers in steerage provided their own food—he stole from others. Even after a beating that left him all bloodied and tattered for most of the journey, the thought of the great fortunes awaiting him in America sustained him.
When we meet him for the first time in the gaming dens of New York he had not made the fortune, but like any decent white man he had a slave of his own. Ownership of this particular property was a source of great mirth at his haunts, not only because New York was no longer a slaveholding state, and hadn’t been one for fourteen or so years, but also for the fact that Quigley was a lowly Irishman. In the eyes of his fellow citizens he was not of a much higher breed than his property.
He won the property in a card game—a toothless scrawny African who would not fetch any price at the slave market in any of the slaveholding states. Even those who had offered to buy the slave before he became Quigley’s property had only done so for the good-Samaritan purpose of putting the poor creature out of its misery by shooting it dead at a target practice.
Quigley walked around the dirty streets of Five Points with his slave on a leash around his neck, and used him to beg as a “performing Negro.” But the fellow did not have any talent at all and people laughed at his attempts to sing and dance. His venture into some variation of tap dance was pathetic. Five Points citizens had seen better. After all, Five Points invented tap dance, although they didn’t call it that in those days. They called it “buck and wing” or the Juba Dance after the great “Master Juba” Lane whose nimble footwork of African rhythms combined so expertly with Irish clogging to create magic.
“What kinda Negro is this who can’t sing and dance?” people asked as they walked away, with their fingers trying in vain to stop the atrocious sounds from polluting their ears. The kinder souls put a coin or two in Quigley’s hat and fled to the bordellos in the tenements as fast as they could.
The partnership’s only bane was the band of ragamuffins who played cruel tricks on the performer and disrupted Quigley’s business. One day they set fire to the tattered seat of the slave’s pants for better entertainment than his performance was able to provide. He ran up and down the street screaming. At first Quigley enjoyed the sight and laughed. But when he realized that the pants had really caught fire and there were some flames he dived onto the fellow and rolled him on the ground. The ragamuffins ran off laughing.
That night in the church basement they shared with rats—courtesy of a kindly Methodist minister—Quigley took the leash off his slave and broke out laughing as he cleaned his scorched buttocks with cold water and lye soap that was never meant for human skin but for laundry.
“You son of a bitch!” said the slave. “You let them do this to me.”
“You saw I didn’t let ’em, you ninny!” said Quigley still laughing. “But you must admit it was damn funny.”
“I’m gonna do it to you one of them days and you tell me if it’s funny.”
The fellow was not able to sit for a few days. But the show had to go on. Every day they went out on the streets to perform, and then to the taverns to partake of the good life. Once in a while they went to the bordellos and Quigley treated his slave to more good life with either the Negro or Irish prostitutes; those who were so destitute that they accepted any customer.
It was at the bordellos that Quigley was struck by a brilliant idea. There were many stray white children in the street. Abandoned by women of the town. Some not quite abandoned but neglected by mothers who had to spend days and nights servicing customers. These children had to fend for themselves in the streets or even follow their mothers’ profession before the age of ten. At night Quigley discussed the welfare of these children with his slave. There could be good business here.
“All we need is to transport ’em down to Virginia,” he said.
“And then set up a house for orphans for them down in Virginia,” said the slave with a sarcastic chuckle.
“Sell ’em as slaves, you ninny.”
“I ain’t gonna kidnap nobody’s child,” said the slave.
“We lure ’em, man, we don’t kidnap ’em. We promise ’em a better life and jobs and the like.”
“Who’s gonna buy white slaves, you ninny?” asked the slave.
“Oh, they buy ’em all the time! You call ’em mulattos they buy ’em. No questions asked. They know pretty damn well they ain’t no mulattos. I hear Irish girls make excellent slaves as if they had nigger blood running in their dear li’l souls.”
It was easy to capture stray Irish and German girls in the streets of Five Points and other New York slums. When Quigley could not sell them at the House of Reception on West 13th Street because of the competition of more professional slave traders, he loaded them on a wagon and drove for days to Richmond, Virginia. He invested a lot of resources in treating the children very well, feeding them the kind of meals they would never even have dreamed of in the streets or at their bordello homes, and made sure that their clothes were clean even though most were tattered. The reason for this generosity was that healthy-looking slaves fetched a better price. But also it helped to keep the girls from ever thinking of escaping. If the journey to the South was this comfortable, what of the life that awaited them? Only a foolish girl would even think of escaping from such a prospect.
Quigley and his slave never used the children for any nefarious purposes. They were not unscrupulous at all. When it was necessary to satisfy their manly needs they went to the auction rooms. No, not to auction their children. Those were going to be sold directly to specific customers at the plantations that had placed previous orders. Each child was earmarked for a specific owner even as she was being captured or lured by the two. Quigley and his slave went to the auction rooms to rent women for the night. Slave dealers who were entrusted with girls to sell at the auction earned some extra money by hiring the girls out for the night. Whenever Quigley heard a new batch of female slaves had arrived he whispered in his slave’s ear, “Let’s go get some fresh pussy from the auction rooms.” And they tittered like two naughty schoolboys.
So, the children in their care were never in any danger of being used for the gratification of the two kindly gentlemen who were taking them for wonderful jobs with kind-hearted employers. Through most of the journey they sang happy songs and dreamed beautiful dreams. They were happy to have Quigley’s slave at their beck and call, for they did not know that soon they would themselves be slaves and would be used for the pleasure of their new masters.
Sometimes there were women among the children. Irish and German women who had had enough of destitution and were quite willing to walk into servitude and even slavery with their eyes open. Most of these were sold to rich Negroes who kept white slaves. In Virginia and Maryland there were a number of free blacks who were quite wealthy and were slave owners. Some of these were happy to keep white women both as slaves and concubines. It was a better life for the women than the cold and hunger at Five Points, and Quigley was always ready to rescue them from that life and transport them to the South. Some of the women—denounced as depraved by white society—ended up marrying their black masters.
Things were looking up for Quigley and he wondered why he had wasted so many precious months begging with his performing Negro instead of engaging in such a lucrative business. At ten dollars cash per slave, and the cost of transporting it, he was making a killing. Even his slave seemed to be gaining more flesh on his bones. But alas, Quigley couldn’t stay away from the gaming dens. The wealthier he became the more he stayed for nights on end losing money, and then staying for more hours hoping to recoup his losses. His slave was always by his side, still on his leash, or sometimes in chains in order to emphasize to the onlookers that the fellow was a slave and he was indeed the master. This enhanced his status. Or so he thought.
Sometimes he won a few dollars but most times he lost everyt
hing he had in his purse that night at the roll of a die. The gambling binges became frequent and he began to neglect the business. This worried the slave and he tried to talk to his master about it. But Quigley was too stubborn to listen to a mere slave. He made the money through his brilliant ideas; he had the right to enjoy it. The fountain would never run dry as long as indigent women continued to manufacture babies.
They had moved from the church basement to one of the tenements, and sometimes Quigley forgot to pay the rent. The landlord would come knocking and threatening to evict them without notice. The slave, who had taken to hiding some of the money under his own mattress, would pay the rent. Quigley would then ransack the house for more hidden money, which he would promptly take to the gaming dens.
That was how Niall Quigley and his slave fell on hard times. Creditors took everything he owned, including his precious wagon and horses that he used to transport slaves to the South. With only his clothes wrapped in a bundle Quigley and his slave trekked down South with the hope of finding new ventures in Virginia, perhaps with the assistance of the rich men he used to provide with fresh supplies of slaves. But none of them wanted to know him. Even the wealthy black landowners who had bought one or two white women from him and were now living with them in holy matrimony or blissful concubinage did not want to have anything to do with him. In cities like Richmond and Norfolk he tried to revive the old act of a “performing Negro” but it just didn’t get off the ground. There were no takers, and more often than not property owners drove them away from the sidewalks with whips.
The slave was now sickly and a burden to keep. Quigley tried to sell him. He took him to the auction rooms but the auctioneers would have none of him. Putting a scrawny fellow like that under the hammer would destroy their reputation as auctioneers of quality slaves. In any event no one in his right mind would bid for him. “A scurvied Negro like this ain’t good for nothing,” they said.
