The Year's Best SF 13 # 1995

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  I lived in the compound. My mother birthed me there, and was allowed to stay three months to nurse me; then I was weaned to cow’s milk, and my mother returned to the House. Her name was Shomekes’ Rayowa Yowa. She was light-skinned like most of the assets, but very beautiful, with slender wrists and ankles and delicate features. My grandmother too was light, but I was dark, darker than anybody else in the compound.

  My mother came to visit, the cutfrees letting her in by their ladder-door. She found me rubbing grey dust on my body. When she scolded me, I told her that I wanted to look like the others.

  “Listen, Rakam,” she said to me, “they are dust people. They’ll never get out of the dust. You’re something better. And you will be beautiful. Why do you think you’re so black?” I had no idea what she meant. “Some day I’ll tell you who your father is,” she said, as if she were promising me a gift. I had watched when the Shomekes’ stallion, a prized and valuable animal, serviced mares from other estates. I did not know a father could be human.

  That evening I boasted to my grandmother: “I’m beautiful because the black stallion is my father!” Dosse struck me across the head so that I fell down and wept. She said, “Never speak of your father.”

  I knew there was anger between my mother and my grandmother, but it was a long time before I understood why. Even now I am not sure I understand all that lay between them.

  We little pups ran around in the compound. We knew nothing outside the walls. All our world was the bondswomen’s huts and the bondsmen’s longhouses, the kitchens and kitchen gardens, the bare plaza beaten hard by bare feet. To me, the stockade wall seemed a long way off.

  When the field and mill hands went out the gate in the early morning I didn’t know where they went. They were just gone. All day long the whole compound belonged to us pups, naked in the summer, mostly naked in the winter too, running around playing with sticks and stones and mud, keeping away from grandmothers, until we begged them for something to eat or they put us to work weeding the gardens for a while.

  In the evening or the early night the workers would come back, trooping in the gate guarded by the Bosses. Some were worn out and grim, others would be cheerful and talking and calling back and forth. The great gate was slammed behind the last of them. Smoke went up from all the cooking stoves. The burning cowdung smelled sweet. People gathered on the porches of the huts and longhouses. Bondsmen and bondswomen lingered at the ditch that divided the gateside from the inside, talking across the ditch. After the meal the freedmen led prayers to Tual’s statue, and we lifted our own prayers to Kamye, and then people went to their beds, except for those who lingered to “jump the ditch.” Some nights, in the summer, there would be singing, or a dance was allowed. In the winter one of the grandfathers—poor old broken men, not strong people like the grandmothers—would “sing the word.” That is what we called reciting the Arkamye. Every night, always, some of the people were teaching and others were learning the sacred verses. On winter nights one of these old worthless bondsmen kept alive by the grandmothers’ charity would begin to sing the word. Then even the pups would be still to listen to that story.

  The friend of my heart was Walsu. She was bigger than I, and was my defender when there were fights and quarrels among the young or when older pups called me “Blackie” and “Bossie.” I was small but had a fierce temper. Together, Walsu and I did not get bothered much. Then Walsu was sent out the gate. Her mother had been bred and was now stuffed big, so that she needed help in the fields to make her quota. Gede must be hand harvested. Every day as a new section of the bearing stalk comes ripe it has to be picked, and so gede pickers go through the same field over and over for twenty or thirty days, and then move on to a later planting. Walsu went with her mother to help her pick her rows. When her mother fell ill, Walsu took her place, and with help from other hands she kept up her mother’s quota. She was then six years old by owner’s count, which gave all assets the same birthday, new year’s day at the beginning of spring. She might have truly been seven. Her mother remained ill both before birthing and after, and Walsu took her place in the gede field all that time. She never afterward came back to play, only in the evenings to eat and sleep. I saw her then and we could talk. She was proud of her work. I envied her and longed to go through the gate. I followed her to it and looked through it at the world. Now the walls of the compound seemed very close.

  I told my grandmother Dosse that I wanted to go to work in the fields.

  “You’re too young.”

  “I’ll be seven at the new year.”

  “Your mother made me promise not to let you go out.”

  Next time my mother visited the compound, I said, “Grandmother won’t let me go out. I want to go work with Walsu.”

  “Never,” my mother said. “You were born for better than that.”

  “What for?”

  “You’ll see.”

  She smiled at me. I knew she meant the House, where she worked. She had told me often of the wonderful things in the House, things that shone and were colored brightly, things that were thin and delicate, clean things. It was quiet in the House, she said. My mother herself wore a beautiful red scarf, her voice was soft, and her clothing and body were always clean and fresh.

  “When will I see?”

  I teased her until she said, “All right! I’ll ask my lady.”

  “Ask her what?”

  All I knew of my-lady was that she too was delicate and clean, and that my mother belonged to her in some particular way, of which she was proud. I knew my-lady had given my mother the red scarf.

  “I’ll ask her if you can come begin training at the House.”

  My mother said “the House” in a way that made me see it as a great sacred place like the place in our prayer: May I enter in the clear house, in the rooms of peace.

  I was so excited I began to dance and sing, “I’m going to the House, to the House!” My mother slapped me to make me stop and scolded me for being wild. She said, “You are too young! You can’t behave! If you get sent away from the House you can never come back.”

  I promised to be old enough.

  “You must do everything right,” Yowa told me. “You must do everything I say when I say it. Never question. Never delay. If my lady sees that you’re wild, she’ll send you back here. And that will be the end of you forever.”

  I promised to be tame. I promised to obey at once in everything, and not to speak. The more frightening she made it, the more I desired to see the wonderful, shining House.

  When my mother left I did not believe she would speak to my-lady. I was not used to promises being kept. But after some days she returned, and I heard her speaking to my grandmother. Dosse was angry at first, speaking loudly. I crept under the window of the hut to listen. I heard my grandmother weep. I was frightened and amazed. My grandmother was patient with me, always looked after me, and fed me well. It had never entered my mind that there was anything more to it than that, until I heard her crying. Her crying made me cry, as if I were part of her.

  “You could let me keep her one more year,” she said. “She’s just a baby. I would never let her out the gate.” She was pleading, as if she were powerless, not a grandmother. “She is my joy, Yowa!”

  “Don’t you want her to do well, then?”

  “Just a year more. She’s too wild for the House.”

  “She’s run wild too long. She’ll get sent out to the fields if she stays. A year of that and they won’t have her at the House. She’ll be dust. Anyhow, there’s no use crying about it. I asked my lady, and she’s expected. I can’t go back without her.”

  “Yowa, don’t let her come to harm,” Dosse said very low, as if ashamed to say this to her daughter, and yet with strength in her voice.

  “I’m taking her to keep her out of harm,” my mother said. Then she called me, and I wiped my tears and came.

  It is queer, but I do not remember my first walk through the world outside the compound or my firs
t sight of the House. I suppose I was frightened and kept my eyes down, and everything was so strange to me that I did not understand what I saw. I know it was a number of days before my mother took me to show me to Lady Tazeu. She had to scrub me and train me and make sure I would not disgrace her. I was terrified when at last she took my hand, scolding me in a whisper all the time, and brought me out of the bondswomen’s quarters, through halls and doorways of painted wood, into a bright, sunny room with no roof, full of flowers growing in pots.

  I had hardly ever seen a flower, only the weeds in the kitchen gardens, and I stared and stared at them. My mother had to jerk my hand to make me look at the woman lying in a chair among the flowers, in clothes soft and brightly colored like the flowers. I could hardly tell them apart. The woman’s hair was long and shining, and her skin was shining and black. My mother pushed me, and I did what she had made me practice over and over: I went and knelt down beside the chair and waited, and when the woman put out her long, narrow, soft hand, black above and azure on the palm, I touched my forehead to it. I was supposed to say “I am your slave Rakam, Ma’am,” but my voice would not come out.

  “What a pretty little thing,” she said. “So dark.” Her voice changed a little on the last words.

  “The Bosses came in … that night,” Yowa said in a timid, smiling way, looking down as if embarrassed.

  “No doubt about that,” the woman said. I was able to glance up at her again. She was beautiful. I did not know a person could be so beautiful. I think she saw my wonder. She put out her long, soft hand again and caressed my cheek and neck. “Very, very pretty, Yowa,” she said. “You did quite right to bring her here. Has she been bathed?”

  She would not have asked that if she had seen me when I first came, filthy and smelling of the cowdung we made our fires with. She knew nothing of the compound at all. She knew nothing beyond the beza, the women’s side of the House. She was kept there just as I had been kept in the compound, ignorant of anything outside. She had never smelled cowdung, as I had never seen flowers.

  My mother assured her I was clean, and she said, “Then she can come to bed with me tonight. I’d like that. Will you like to come sleep with me, pretty little—” She glanced at my mother, who murmured, “Rakam.” Ma’am pursed her lips at the name. “I don’t like that,” she murmured. “So ugly. Toti. Yes. You can be my new Toti. Bring her this evening, Yowa.”

  She had had a foxdog called Toti, my mother told me. Her pet had died. I did not know animals ever had names, and so it did not seem odd to me to be given an animal’s name, but it did seem strange at first not to be Rakam. I could not think of myself as Toti.

  That night my mother bathed me again and oiled my skin with sweet oil and dressed me in a soft gown, softer even than her red scarf. Again she scolded and warned me, but she was excited, too, and pleased with me, as we went to the beza again, through other halls, meeting some other bondswomen on the way, and to the lady’s bedroom. It was a wonderful room, hung with mirrors and draperies and paintings. I did not understand what the mirrors were, or the paintings, and was frightened when I saw people in them. Lady Tazeu saw that I was frightened. “Come, little one,” she said, making a place for me in her great, wide, soft bed strewn with pillows, “come and cuddle up.” I crawled in beside her, and she stroked my hair and skin and held me in her warm, soft arms until I was comfortable and at ease. “There, there, little Toti,” she said, and so we slept.

  I became the pet of Lady Tazeu Wehoma Shomeke. I slept with her almost every night. Her husband was seldom home and when he was there did not come to her, preferring bondswomen for his pleasure. Sometimes she had my mother or other, younger bondswomen come into her bed, and she sent me away at those times, until I was older, ten or eleven, when she began to keep me and have me join in with them, teaching me how to be pleasured. She was gentle, but she was the mistress in love, and I was her instrument which she played.

  I was also trained in household arts and duties. She taught me to sing with her, as I had a true voice. All those years I was never punished and never made to do hard work. I who had been wild in the compound was perfectly obedient in the Great House. I had been rebellious to my grandmother and impatient of her commands, but whatever my lady ordered me to do I gladly did. She held me fast to her by the only kind of love she had to give me. I thought that she was the Merciful Tual come down upon the earth. That is not a way of speaking, that is the truth. I thought she was a higher being, superior to myself.

  Perhaps you will say that I could not or should not have had pleasure in being used without my consent by my mistress, and if I did I should not speak of it, showing even so little good in so great an evil. But I knew nothing of consent or refusal. Those are freedom words.

  She had one child, a son, three years older than I. She lived quite alone among us bondswomen. The Wehomas were nobles of the Islands, old-fashioned people whose women did not travel, so she was cut off from her family. The only company she had was when Owner Shomeke brought friends with him from the capital, but those were all men, and she could be with them only at table.

  I seldom saw the Owner and only at a distance. I thought he too was a superior being, but a dangerous one.

  As for Erod, the Young Owner, we saw him when he came to visit his mother daily or when he went out riding with his tutors. We girls would peep at him and giggle to each other when we were eleven or twelve, because he was a handsome boy, nightblack and slender like his mother. I knew that he was afraid of his father, because I had heard him weep when he was with his mother. She would comfort him with candy and caresses, saying, “He’ll be gone again soon, my darling.” I too felt sorry for Erod, who was like a shadow, soft and harmless. He was sent off to school for a year at fifteen, but his father brought him back before the year was up. Bondsmen told us the Owner had beaten him cruelly and had forbidden him even to ride off the estate.

  Bondswomen whom the Owner used told us how brutal he was, showing us where he had bruised and hurt them. They hated him, but my mother would not speak against him. “Who do you think you are?” she said to a girl who was complaining of his use of her. “A lady to be treated like glass?” And when the girl found herself pregnant, stuffed was the word we used, my mother had her sent back to the compound. I did not understand why. I thought Yowa was hard and jealous. Now I think she was also protecting the girl from our lady’s jealousy.

  I do not know when I understood that I was the Owner’s daughter. Because she had kept that secret from our lady, my mother believed it was a secret from all. But the bondswomen all knew it. I do not know what I heard or overheard, but when I saw Erod, I would study him and think that I looked much more like our father than he did, for by then I knew what a father was. And I wondered that Lady Tazeu did not see it. But she chose to live in ignorance.

  During these years I seldom went to the compound. After I had been a halfyear or so at the House, I was eager to go back and see Walsu and my grandmother and show them my fine clothes and clean skin and shining hair; but when I went, the pups I used to play with threw dirt and stones at me and tore my clothes. Walsu was in the fields. I had to hide in my grandmother’s hut all day. I never wanted to go back. When my grandmother sent for me, I would go only with my mother and always stayed close by her. The people in the compound, even my grandmother, came to look coarse and foul to me. They were dirty and smelled strongly. They had sores, scars from punishment, lopped fingers, ears, or noses. Their hands and feet were coarse, with deformed nails. I was no longer used to people who looked so. We domestics of the Great House were entirely different from them, I thought. Serving the higher beings, we became like them.

  When I was thirteen and fourteen Lady Tazeu still kept me in her bed, making love to me often. But also she had a new pet, the daughter of one of the cooks, a pretty little girl though white as clay. One night she made love to me for a long time in ways that she knew gave me great ecstasy of the body. When I lay exhausted in her arms she whispered �
��goodbye, goodbye,” kissing me all over my face and breasts. I was too spent to wonder at this.

  The next morning my lady called in my mother and myself to tell us that she intended to give me to her son for his seventeenth birthday. “I shall miss you terribly, Toti darling,” she said, with tears in her eyes. “You have been my joy. But there isn’t another girl on the place that I could let Erod have. You are the cleanest, dearest, sweetest of them all. I know you are a virgin,” she meant a virgin to men, “and I know my boy will enjoy you. And he’ll be kind to her, Yowa,” she said earnestly to my mother. My mother bowed and said nothing. There was nothing she could say. And she said nothing to me. It was too late to speak of the secret she had been so proud of.

  Lady Tazeu gave me medicine to prevent conception, but my mother, not trusting the medicine, went to my grandmother and brought me contraceptive herbs. I took both faithfully that week.

  If a man in the House visited his wife he came to the beza, but if he wanted a bondswoman she was “sent across.” So on the night of the Young Owner’s birthday I was dressed all in red and led over, for the first time in my life, to the men’s side of the House.

  My reverence for my lady extended to her son, and I had been taught that owners were superior by nature to us. But he was a boy whom I had known since childhood, and I knew that his blood and mine were half the same. It gave me a strange feeling toward him.