The Book of Night Women

by Marlon James

  Homer didn’t die by gunfire at the mistress window. Homer die the day she get word ’bout her pickneys. Pickneys that nasty nigger rape out of her, but pickneys she love nonetheless. Homer was the mistress’ personal slave and many of the evil things that happen to her was because the mistress was so miserable that she make it her mission to make everybody round her miserable as well. Especially a negrowoman with nothing in this world but the mercy of her mistress. There be something in the negro smile that confound the mistress because she know they didn’t got no reason to smile. Her husband, the mistress grow to hate, but Homer she hate from the day they assign her. Then she grow to need Homer and hate her even more. There was a quilt of scar on Homer back too and some of that the mistress leave herself. But Homer bide her time. Homer watch, Homer wait and Homer plot. And Homer find the right group of woman with just enough cause to join her. Woman who have a right to be free ’cause of birth but get robbed of it. Woman who carry Jack Wilkins’ malice in they very being. Woman who could see the moon and know when be the time to shed blood. Homer kill Homer and reborn herself as the struggle. They never find Homer body. Homer song get sing in a whisper like a night spirit leaping from a tree. Her song be in the dark of the eye where secrets be.

  Turncoat nigger Iphigenia cover all over in coal burn. But that wasn’t the worsest. Every burn leave a scar that grow big and bumpy so that the woman cover from neck down to toe. No man was ever goin’ want her so Iphigenia start to think ’bout what she want for herself. She forget black, she forget nigger, she forget everybody who couldn’t help her when they was raining burnin’ coal all over her skin. That leave only she to take care of she. Iphigenia thinking that if she tell massa ’bout the plot she would get British pound and freedom for sure. Turncoat nigger Iphigenia ain’t got no song.

  The blind niggerwoman in the bush, she tell me everything.

  What can a niggerwoman do but endure? What can me do but tell the story? Who is there when we recall great womens? My name write in blood and me don’t answer to it much.

  Me was but nine year in age when me mother start to teach me how to read. The book she teach me to read was Joseph Andrews, which she find under a pile of osnaburg cloth that used to cover Homer bed. As soon as me read that, me move on to other book, for nobody care who or what go into the library no more. Me read John Donne and Lives of the Poets and Edward Long’s History of Jamaica and Sense and Sensibility , a new book leave behind by the attorney. And she teach me how to write. That was the most forbidden of thing and it still be so, but there be no man, black or white, that can stop her now. But she didn’t teach me for me but for her, for when the time come to write her song she have somebody true to be her witness. Somebody who know that one cannot judge the action of a niggerwoman who only wanted to be everything and nothing. Mayhaps she ’fraid of how the time was goin’ judge her. Mayhaps she don’t care, for she tell me everything as if me was a stranger and not blood.

  Atlas the slave get him name from somebody me read about in Thomas Bulfinch book. He be the man or man-god who get punish to carry the burden of the earth on him back. Me not no Heracles but me know why she telling me everything. Me know what Atlas trying to do to me, to shift onto my back. For somebody must give account of the night women of Montpelier. Of slavery, the black woman misery and black man too. And me goin’ sing the song and me mother goin’ sing it and even the blind niggerwoman who live in the bush, who thin like stick, who hair white like cloud and who smell of mint and lemongrass, going sing it too. We goin’ sing once, then no more.

  The womens. That woman. Me look at that woman. Me mother call me Lovey Quinn from birth. Me used to hate that name. Me did hate that name when me start writing but me come to peace with it now. Any niggerwoman can become a black woman in secret. This is why we dark, cause in the night we disappear and become spirit. Skin gone and we become whatever we wish. We become who we be. In the dark with no skin I can write. And what write in darkness is free as free can be, even if it never come to light and go free for real. The first time me write, me wanted to tell a different story, a story ’bout me, not a story ’bout her, but such is she that every nigger story soon become a tale ’bout they mother, even the parts that she didn’t tell herself. The first time me ever write ’bout me mother was December 27, in the year of our Lord 1819. This was the first thing me write.

  You can call her what they call her. I goin’ call her Lilith.

  Thank You

  To the great, kind and gifted Bob Mooney, who first read this book and knew where it was going long before I did. To the wonderful, generous and sharp Ellen Levine and the brilliant, inspiring and maddening Sean McDonald.

  Thanks also to everyone at Hallin Bank, where I have now written two novels; Bill Landauer; Kaylie Jones; Bonnie Culver; Mike Lennon; Rashidah Ismaili AbuBakr, who in one conversation changed the very core of this story; my favourite living Irish writer, Colum McCann; Robert McLean, who I should have thanked in my first book; Johnny Temple and Akashic Books; my James and Dillon families; and Ingrid Riley.

  Thanks to the history I learned and the history I had to unlearn.

  And yes, my mother is now permitted to read this book.