Our language, Lekpokpam, was the only one I could speak or understand, except for the few words of Dagbani and Yoruba and Hausa I picked up in the market.
I was given in marriage soon after I was born. My husband was called Satila. Once a year he would bring bundles of guinea corn to my father to pay for my upkeep, one bundle the first year, two the second year, and so on. I hated him. He was old and ugly. I wanted to marry Itsho. Itsho was my lover. He was my own age. We used to go into the corn fields together, or to a secret pool near the river. Or if my father was away, my mother would leave us alone in her room.
It was my mother Tabitsha who broke the bad news to me. Satila had given notice to my father Tigen that he would soon bring the last sixteen bundles of guinea corn and take me away. I dreaded that day. Once I moved to Satila’s home, I would be properly married and meeting Itsho would be out of the question.
Then the distant sound of drums told us that my mother’s father, Sekwadzim, had died. I should have gone to the funeral, but my small brother Nowu was sick, and my mother Tabitsha said I should stay at home and look after him. I watched them until they were out of sight over the brow of the first hill. I felt lonely and scared. I had never been left all alone like that before.
Zacharias
She puts her hand on top of my head.
“You are taller than your father was,” she says.
She runs her hands over my face, feeling my forehead, my eyebrows, my nose, my lips; and then my jacket, my shirt, my trousers. I am fortunate; my master’s hand-me-downs fit me well. I sense her approval.
“Kwame,” she says, “to me you will always be Kwame and that is what I shall call you. Kwame, where is your wife? And where is my granddaughter, whom you named after me?”
That is a surprise. I gave our daughter a Christian name. I called her Carlota, after the Princess of Brazil.
Josef catches my eye. He waves his index finger at me. I understand his silent message. He invented the story that I named our baby girl after my mother. He is warning me. He doesn’t want me to tell her the truth.
“My Mother,” I tell her, “your granddaughter had a fever and we didn’t want to expose her to the journey across the bay. Iphigenia had to stay behind to look after her.”
“Who is Iphigenia?” she asks.
“Iphigenia is my wife,” I tell her.
Ama’s story
There was a puff of dust on the horizon. I saw it but paid no attention because I was carrying Nowu on my back and he was crying. I walked him up and down and comforted him with a lullaby. When he fell asleep, I put him down in my mother’s room.
Itsho had brought us an antelope the day before. My mother Tabitsha had prepared some of the meat and was cooking it in a light soup. She had left for Sekwadzim’s funeral in such a hurry that the pot was still simmering over its three stones. It smelled so good. I knew it was wrong, but what harm could come of one small sip, I asked myself. There was no one around to see me, to report me to my father for breaking the taboo. I tried the soup. It was delicious. Even today, as I recall the steamy bush-meat aroma of that antelope soup and the sharp taste of pepper on my tongue, I salivate. I filled a bowl and put it to my lips. As I did so, I felt the ground shake beneath my feet.
I dropped the bowl and the soup spilled onto the ground. I hardly had to look. I knew. That puff of dust had been made by a band of mounted Bedagbam raiders. All through my childhood I had heard stories about them. They had stolen our land; they were our enemies.
There was no time to escape. Had I tried, they would have seen me and caught me. And there was Nowu; I couldn’t just leave him. I did the first thing that came into my mind. I entered my mother’s room, lay down on the mat next to him, and pulled some skins over us. It was already getting to midday and it was hot. At once I began to sweat. I heard the snorting of the horses and strange voices. I lay quite still, listening to my heartbeat.
I heard them come into the room. Nowu sighed in his sleep. Afraid that he would wake up and cry out, I put my hand over his mouth, inadvertently waking him. He struggled to free himself. The Bedagbam must have seen the skins move. They ripped them off us.
I am not going to tell you what happened next. Just to think of it brings back the humiliation and pain as if it were yesterday. But this you should know: I did not give up without a fight. I bit the man’s finger right down to the bone. I tasted his Bedagbam blood. He punished me for that. When he had finished with me, he took my cloth and tore a strip off it to use as a bandage. I still have that cloth. I have kept it all these years. It is the only memento I have of home.
I must have fainted. The next thing I remember is finding myself strapped across the back of a mule, my hands bound. I was crying and my nose was running. The animal’s hooves threw up the red dust and it stuck to my face. I was desperately worried about Nowu. Put yourself in his position, just four years old, feverish, and left all alone. What’s more, I was certain that my father, Tigen, would blame me for abandoning him.
A man I later learned was named Damba rode ahead with my animal and the other pack mules tied to his horse with leather straps. When we had traveled some distance, I raised my head. There was a man approaching us on foot from one side. As we came closer, I saw that it was Itsho. He must have been at the funeral and, seeing that I had been left at home, decided to come and visit me. I screamed to warn him.
He shouted, “Nandzi, is that you?”
I called back in our language. Damba couldn’t understand what I was saying. He beat me with his fist and told me to shut my mouth. I could sense how nervous he was. The Bedagbam fear our men.
Damba was armed, but so was Itsho. Both had bows and spears. Itsho wanted to attack. I begged him to go and take care of Nowu and to wait until after dark before trying to rescue me. I knew that he would raise a force from amongst the young men at Sekwadzim’s funeral.
CHAPTER TWO
Zacharias
She says she is tired. I am tired, too. There have been heavy rains, and the road from the bay up to the engenho is like a river of mud. It sticks to your feet. Massapé, Josef says they call it. Good for the sugar cane, he says, but not so good for walking.
She throws a threadbare cloth across her shoulders. She is fingering one torn corner. I want to ask her whether that is the cloth she brought from Africa, but the words remain locked behind my lips.
Her cloth reminds me of the dresses which Senhora Miranda sent with me as gifts for her. Josef and I take an elbow each and help her to her feet. We hold one of the dresses up against her. She looks ridiculous: a barefoot old slave woman wearing the cast-off satin dress of a rich society lady. We look at one another. We don’t know what to say to her.
When she is alone with him, they speak their African language. If there are others present, they speak Portuguese. But when I am alone with her, she prefers to speak English.
We help her into her hut. There is a low bed, a table and a chair, a couple of bowls and buckets, and some clothing hanging from iron spikes driven into the mud walls. Josef rolls out a sleeping mat on the smooth mud floor.
“Your father, Tomba, made that bed for me,” she tells me. “But since he ... since he left us, I have never slept on it. Now I need to take a nap. That storytelling has tired me out. Josef, come for me later, I beg you.”
Josef takes me up to the casa grande where Senhor Fonseca, the manager, stays. A room has been prepared for me in the quarters at the back. It has a good bed and a table and a chair. There is a basin and a jug, and a bucket of warm water. I wash the mud off my feet. The first thing I’ll do when Senhora Miranda gives me my freedom is to buy myself a pair of boots. That will mark me as a free man. And then, once I have saved a hundred milreis, I’ll buy a young slave to keep them polished.
Josef takes me across to the kitchen and introduces me to his wife, Wono, and another woman called Ayo. They make a big fuss ove
r me and pretend to be upset that I don’t remember them. They claim they have known me since the day I was born. Stupid old women, talking such nonsense. What is that to me?
But they make me sit at the kitchen table and they give me a good meal. Senhora Fonseca comes in while I am eating. I make to stand up but she stops me and asks after the health of Senhora Miranda and Senhorita Elizabeth.
When I have eaten, Josef takes me to see the sugar mill. On the way, we meet some of the field slaves returning from their work. They file into the yard in the dark, dragging heavy legs, tripping over the ruts in the track, too weary even to talk. Josef introduces me to an old graybeard called Olukoya who is in charge of them. He is Ayo’s husband. It seems I should remember him, too, but I don’t. My childhood before Salvador is a blank. What is there about this place that’s worth remembering, anyway?
One visit to the mill is enough for me. At the back of the kettle house, a roaring furnace sends great orange flames flickering upwards, silhouetting the glistening naked bodies of the stokers. This is surely the hell that old Father Isaac depicts in his homilies. I would not survive here for a day, let alone an eternity. I bless Senhora Miranda that she took me away from all this to the heavenly cleanliness and comfort of her home in Salvador.
When we enter the store where the sugar cones are seasoning, we meet Olukoya again. His gang of field hands is back at work. At this time of the year, during the safra, the sugar harvest, they labor eighteen hours a day.
Josef
Zacharias worships Senhora Miranda.
When the Senhora was just a country girl, growing up here, at the Engenho de Cima, Sister Ama worked in the casa grande. Senhorita Miranda had no sisters and there were no white girls of her age in the vicinity. The nearest engenho was a dead estate, a fogo morto, called the Engenho do Meio, where my friend Fifi was the caretaker, living a hand-to-mouth existence.
Miranda’s younger brother, Alexandré, teased her without mercy. Her mother, the old Senhora, was a cold, unhappy woman. Sister Ama became Senhorita Miranda’s elder sister. Hers was a shoulder to cry on.
When Senhor Gavin married Senhorita Miranda and took her away to Salvador, she was little more than a child. In the city, she had to grow up quickly. I saw all this because I was the messenger. Once a week I would sail the old Senhor’s boat across All Saints Bay to the city and back. Depending on the wind, the trip each way might take a full day.
Senhora Miranda came back to the Engenho for the birth of her daughter, Senhorita Elizabeth; and Zacharias was born in the very same bed just a week later. That renewed the bond between the two mothers, though one was a slave and the other the daughter of the slave master.
No doubt Senhora Miranda thought she was doing Sister Ama a great service by taking Zacharias away to Salvador after the troubles. But I wonder. Senhora Miranda has become the boy’s foster mother. And yet, how could that be, with him a black slave and she a rich white slave owner, indeed, now, his owner?
Zacharias
I brought thirty sheets of paper. I took them from Senhor Gavin’s cabinet, just two or three sheets at a time. If I had taken more, Senhor Gavin might have noticed. I can hear him telling me that paper and ink don’t grow on trees. I couldn’t risk him accusing me of theft. Senhor Gavin trusts me.
This looks as if it’s going to be a long story. I may run out of paper before the end. Josef says the only paper here is in the store and that is kept under lock and key. We discuss the problem with my mother and she says she will try to be brief.
Ama’s story
That night, the Bedagbam raiders assembled at an abandoned homestead. They had captured about twenty men and one young boy called Suba. I was the only girl. Like me, Suba had been dragged from his mother’s home. I did my best to comfort him and he responded by treating me as if I were his elder sister.
The attack came just before dawn. All the Bedagbam, including the guards, were asleep. Itsho and his party crept into the camp, naked and oiled. Silently they slashed four of the sleepers with sharp blades. Then quickly and just as silently, they slipped away. Their victims’ screams woke their fellows to a scene of bloody terror and confusion. It was as if they had been attacked by ghosts. Their leader, Abdulai, the one who had raped me, was the first to come to his senses. He yelled to them to run for their horses, which were tethered nearby. As they emerged from the ruined buildings, carrying their saddles and their weapons, Itsho and his men fired their poisoned arrows. They targeted the horses, too, but Abdulai and some of his men managed to mount, and once they were on horseback, Itsho’s men were little match for them. I couldn’t see much of this but, from the noise, I could guess what was going on. At first, I was excited, confident of the outcome. Then, when it became clear that the attack had failed, I cried in despair.
After the Bedagbam had counted their dead, men and horses, Abdulai sent Suba and me to collect water from a stream, with Damba as our guard. On the way down, there was a dead body in our path. Damba turned it over with his boot. I kept telling myself, “Itsho escaped, Itsho escaped,” over and over. We collected the water. On the way back the vultures were picking at the corpse. There was nothing we could do. Damba wouldn’t let us stop to dig a grave.
Then we came across another body, naked except for a loincloth.
A horse’s hoof had crushed Itsho’s skull. I knew every muscle on that beautiful body of his.
Strangely enough, I was quite calm. I suppose I must have prepared myself for the shock. I set the calabash of water down and knelt beside him. I laid my cheek on his chest. His body was still warm. Damba was good. Using Suba as an interpreter, he asked me who it was. I told him it was my husband. Abdulai’s orders were to bury only the Bedagbam dead, but we were out of sight of the camp. Suba helped me cover Itsho’s body with branches to keep the vultures off. Then we went back to the camp to deliver the calabashes of water. Damba let me collect a hoe, my mother’s hoe, one he had stolen from us. I dug a shallow grave while Damba and Suba went down to the stream. I washed Itsho’s body. For the first time in my life, I spoke to the ancestors, asking them to forgive me, a mere woman, for addressing them directly. I begged them to accept Itsho’s spirit. Then Suba and Damba helped me lift his body into the grave. We covered it with stones to protect it from the hyenas.
Zacharias
My tears fall on the paper, making the ink run. I have to ask her to stop.
“My Mother,” I ask, “was Itsho my father?”
As soon as I say that, I know how stupid it is. Last night she mentioned another name, Tomba, I think. She said that my father was called Tomba and that he had made her bed for her.
“From his place with our ancestors,” she says, “Itsho has watched over me all my life. I am sure he has watched over you and my granddaughter, Nandzi Ama, too. But your father was Tomba, my second and only other love.”
She stretches out her hands. I give her mine and she squeezes them. Then she draws me to her and for the first time I embrace her. She is Ama. She is My Mother. We cry together. After a while, she wipes her dead eyes with her old cloth.
CHAPTER THREE
Ama
I do not understand Kwame.
First: his name. He prefers to use the Christian name Miranda chose for him, rather than the name his father and mother gave him.
Second: he says he doesn’t remember Tomba or me. I am his mother. Tomba and I brought him up. He was a good boy. His early years were carefree. The old Senhora put me in charge of the kitchen stores, so he seldom went hungry. For his first six years, he ran naked with the other children. He was usually asleep when Tomba arrived at night, so it was only on Sundays and Saints’ Days that he saw his father. The three of us would spend that day working in my allotment. Almost before the boy could walk, Tomba started to take him to the forest to hunt and trap and fish.
The Christmas after Kwame turned seven, the storeman issued him and his
age-mates with their first cotton shifts. I remember my boy’s pride when he wore clothes for the first time. The following year, he began to do odd jobs and run messages.
I began with the best of intentions: I would teach him to speak Asante and to read and write Portuguese as well as speaking it; but as time went by, my remaining eye began to lose its strength. I often felt tired. So I told him stories instead. Stories from Africa. Stories of my own happy childhood. But I never did tell him about Abdulai and what came after.
“Tell him,” Olukoya urged me.
“Later,” I insisted. “He is still too young to understand.”
By the time he was old enough to understand, it was too late.
Of all this, he says he remembers nothing. It is as if Miranda has succeeded in wiping Tomba and me from his memory. Why would she do that? She has kept my son from me all these years, so long that I had given up hope of ever seeing him again. Then, suddenly, she decides to send him to the Engenho on a visit. Why?
I need to consult Olukoya and Ayo, and Josef and Wono.
Then there is the matter of the paper. If Miranda has been so good to Kwame, why could he not have simply passed on my request to her? He says he had to steal the paper from Senhor Gavin. I didn’t bring him up to be a thief.
He tells me he has already filled four sheets, writing on both sides, and I have only just begun my tale. I may have to leave some parts out, but how can I decide in advance which to omit?
Ama’s story
Abdulai and his Bedagbam brigands marched us across the plain to their capital, Yendi. There they kept us behind walls and put us to work. Our numbers grew day by day as they brought in more and more captives. Suba already knew some of their language, Dagbani, and he quickly became quite fluent. They started to use him as an interpreter, and that gave him a chance to learn some of their secrets. It was Suba who told me what lay behind our capture.
A few years before, the Bedagbam had fought a war with the Asante. The Asante were on foot and the Bedagbam were mounted, but the Asante had guns and the Bedagbam horses were hearing gunfire for the first time, so the Asante won the day. Now, at that time, I had never seen or heard a gun. We don’t even have a word in our language for such a thing, so Suba had a job describing it to me, especially since his understanding was as small as mine.
Brave Music of a Distant Drum Page 2
