by Carter, Noni
I shrugged the thoughts away, my eyes on the ground ahead of me. “John, how can I say there’s harm in that when you’re here?” I asked him, softly, my eyes returning to his face.
“Well, anyway, it seems I could neva think that too long, anyhow,” he said, walking once more. “Jus’ couldn’t. Made up my mind I’d search round an’ round this country fo’ you, long as you still had to be found.”
“How’d you find me?” I asked him.
He looked at me strangely and laughed.
“Sorry, Miss Anna, but that’s one question I jus’ don’t have no good answer for ’cause I jus’ don’t rightly know.”
We reached the school. John stood in front of it, his hands on his hips, and inspected it from the edge of the clearing.
“So, this is what you bin up to. Havin’ schools built an’ all. All this, fo’ you?” he asked, amused.
I laughed. “I’m a teacher, John. It’s for the children.”
He nodded. “Teachin’. Well, you sho’ is my Sarah.”
We lay down, him on his stomach, and me with my head on his back. The sunset looked on, brightening the sky, expressing how happy it was to see my joy. John hopped up and lifted me again in his arms. We danced to our own music. We ran through the schoolhouse. We laughed until it hurt our bellies. We fell, exhausted, to the grass when the sun had completely set, and looked at the stars.
I drifted off to sleep lying in John’s arms, guarded by his watchful gaze. He touched his lips with mine. He wiped my tear away. He picked up my finger and ran it down his cheek, under his chin, and up the other side. I knew what God had brought back into my life: John was my angel whether he knew it or not.
If I had two wings, I would take those wings and cover you, completely, until not an inch was visible, so you’d be protected … from everything.
CHAPTER
52
IT WAS DANIEL, THAT NIGHT, WHO BROKE DOWN CRYING.
John had been around for two days, and it was the second night that the four of us decided to come together, eat, and share stories of escape.
There were living quarters on the second level of the schoolhouse. In the weeks after it had been finished, I had fixed it so that I could live there until I could build my own house. It had two small rooms. The bedroom had a round table that was pushed into the corner and a single broken-down night table next to the pallet I had set on the floor. The cooking area was actually in a room below.
But I wouldn’t be alone here now. I had John. He would be living with some of Daniel’s friends until it was appropriate for him to move into the schoolhouse.
“One day real soon, after I find me a job, I’m gonna make you one of them nice beds, Sarah,” John told me. I grinned with delight.
Each of the rooms upstairs had a single window, while the large schoolroom downstairs had three. In addition, there was plenty of room outside to start a garden if need be and for the schoolchildren to play.
It was in my room that I intended the four of us to sit that evening. When Daniel and Florence arrived, I was setting two biscuits and some bacon on the four plates. I greeted them, sat them in my room with John, who was busy fixing my night table, and went back to preparing the food. Daniel poked his head through the doorway.
“Anna,” he said softly, walking into the room.
“Hey, Daniel, what is it?” He had hardly sat down in the chair near me before the tears came to his eyes.
“I know … I know you may have it in your head that Mama jus’ didn’t run.”
I stopped what I was doing, staring hard at the food in front of me before turning toward him.
“Well, I figured since John came by himself, she …”
He hung his head. “He didn’t come by himself, Anna. Talked to John about it. Mama, she ran with him, Anna.”
My knees buckled and I sank to the floor.
“Where is she?”
“She went wit him, Sarah, but she didn’t make it.”
“They didn’t catch her, did they?” I asked Daniel in a horrified whisper.
“Naw,” he said, shaking his head. I felt relieved, but overwhelmed with sadness. A memory suddenly came to mind.
“I had a dream about Mary,” I began, afraid to look up, afraid I would see accusation of me not sharing this with him leap from Daniel’s eyes. “She was flying in the sky with my real mother, and they both had wings, like angels. I think Mary … I think she wanted to tell us that she … she’s content where she is. That she’s happy, and even freer than we are.”
Daniel’s tears flowed as he ran his nails across the floor boards.
“They was split up, like me an’ you. John found her. He found her lyin’ there. He said—he said there wa’an’t a line of struggle ’cross her face. Seem like God jus’ come an’ stop her heart so quick, she ain’t feel a thing.”
I pulled lightly at my earlobe and looked up at my brother. “You’re not feeling that you’re to blame, are you Daniel?” I asked him softly. He put his thumb to his lip in thought.
“Thought I would. Thought I—” Florence pushed the door open, cutting him off, and got ready to open her mouth as if to ask what was taking so long. But seeing Daniel seated like he was, and his wet cheeks, and me seated on the ground, she changed her mind. She walked over and stood behind Daniel, placing her soft hands on his shoulders.
“Thought I would feel that way, Anna,” Daniel continued, “but it’s almost like I hear her sayin’ that’s what was for her—that’s what was to be. Wa’an’t nothin’ I could do about it.” He then stood up. Florence leaped at the chance to embrace him in a hug, which he fell into weakly. I found my breath and told them to grab their plates of food. We headed on into my room and listened as John recounted his escape.
“We ran round Thanksgiving, the year afta you and Daniel left, Anna,” John explained.
“Jus’ a few weeks lata, Mary and I was separated. I had to keep runnin’ an’ when, I reached Kentucky, I met up wit a Quaker man, Lorenzo. He say somethin’ needed to be done to get them slave catchers away from me. It was easia than I thought. He tole a friend’ve his, Finch, ’bout how he wanted to call me dead in the papers. Didn’t see it fo’ myself, but I was tole that’s what happened. Afta that, I didn’t have to run no more. I traveled as Quaker Lorenzo’s servant till I got to freedom.” John described the intensity of his escape and how, even after he was proclaimed dead, he had to be very careful.
He addressed Daniel but watched me carefully, trying to figure out how much I knew. “I didn’t say, but I saw Mary fo’ she closed her eyes for good. She tole me, she say …”—he paused and looked over at my brother—“she say she’ll always be wit you in your hearts. She said death don’t take away a person’s spirit, it jus’ lets that spirit get closer to you. Then she jus’ … she jus’ closed her eyes an’ was gone.”
Daniel squeezed his eyes shut and pursed his lips.
“It was her time to go, Daniel. That was all. She’s in a better place,” Florence whispered.
He nodded. “I know.”
Time swallowed the space and slipped into the crevasses of intense sorrow and immense joy. That night, after Florence and Daniel had left, I walked out into the fields, alone, my eyes skimming the stars.
A breeze brushed by my face, and I closed my eyes, feeling the tears streaming as the spirits about me sang loud and flowed through my own soul with a love that was untouchable in the physical world. I dared not whisper the words “thank you” for fear of disrupting the unspoken gratitude.
I heard Mary laughing in my ear. She was telling me that things would indeed be all right.
Mama Mijiza stood by watching, saying nothing. She was content and knew that I knew this.
I stared at the schoolhouse, my thoughts carrying me back to etching crooked letters in the soil and on discarded newspapers back on the plantation. I closed my eyes and imagined each and every child in my school holding books, writing books, influencing the law, speaking in front of crowd
s of blacks, whites, and Indians, too. I had found my passion, and my heart was full.
And then there was John. It seemed like I had stepped back into something timeless that we shared, something that brought him out of the depths of the impossible, right to my side. Was this the usual life of a slave girl who ran to freedom? Was there any such thing? I had decided to carve out no explanation of how and why John had reappeared in my life. Instead, I melted into every desire, every longing, that shone on his face. I saw the satisfaction of freedom shining in his eyes, and it was like staring into a mirror.
I went back inside with my burdens carried away, for the moment, by the night. Sinking down into the warmth and security of John’s presence, I allowed him to embrace me while he let me deliver all the love and desire that I had forgotten existed.
We lay absorbed in the peace and satisfaction of the moment.
“You know, Anna, I don’t know where all your fortune comes from, but it’s a beautiful thing,” John said.
“Comes from my name,” I said simply.
“You mean, Bahati?” John asked.
“Yes. It means ‘our fortune is good.’”
John looked at me, amused. “How you rememba that?”
I shrugged. “I’ve always known it.”
John stared at the ceiling in silence for a little while, then turned back to me and said, “I think, Anna, that the last name Bahati, would do me jus’ fine.”
In that moment, my life flashed before my eyes: living with Mama in Africa, being transported to America, enduring the life of a slave, and taking ownership of my life in what I called freedom.
“Well,” I said, looking into the eyes of my soul in masculine form, the man lying calmly next to me, “I’ve certainly lived up to that name, for my fortune is, without a doubt, good.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
TO ALL OF MY READERS:
The insightfulness that the topic of slavery offers was introduced to me at a young age. From the age of ten, I felt the inspiration arise in me to create this story, not even dreaming that it would manifest as it has done. I can gladly see the dispersion of this knowledge as Good Fortune passes from hand to hand. For this and the many other blessings that have come with this book, I thank all who have placed a helping hand in this process: my sisters for their love and criticism, my parents for their support and guidance, every ancestor of mine that walked upon the gloomy road of slavery, and ultimately, Mother/Father God.
I had several motivations for writing this novel, the first of these being the genuine love for and greater desire to learn about my history, a passion instilled within me at a very young age by my parents. At some point during the writing process, I felt driven to teach what I had learned through my writings. What is more, my memory races back to a true story, retold to me by my aunt of Rose Caldwell, my great-great-great-grandmother. This story was my final and most influential motivation for completing the book.
Imagine:
A small body, a child, thin arms dangling next to hips that have seen merely twelve years. She absentmindedly swings her left leg slowly back and forth, her bare feet playing with a small rock on the bank of the Mississippi River.
“Rose …”
The memory of that whisper encourages the young girl to bring a stubby finger to her eye, quickly brushing away a tear that had escaped from her saddened soul onto her dark cheek. She can’t help fooling with the sides of the rags draped over her small body, the only clothes she has ever known. Rose purses her lips as she replays the last moments she had with her mother through her mind….
“Rose, chile.” Her mother kneeled down in front of the girl, a frown creasing her weary face.
“Yes, Mama?” Rose responded as she turned to face her mother.
“You listen close. See dis ’kerchief here?” Rose nodded slowly, trying her best to memorize every line and shape that formed her mother’s face.
“When you can’t see this here red ’kerchief wavin’ in the wind anymore as that ship there take me away, then you know, you ain’t eva gonna see your mama again….”
Rose feels tears spilling methodically from her eyes as she recalls her mother grasping her shoulders as they embraced for the last time in a hug. She whimpers quietly as she remembers her mother turning away, just another sold slave, gone forever as the last of that red cloth disappeared over the horizon.
The image of that little twelve-year-old girl staring out over the Mississippi River at her mother’s red handkerchief until it slipped from her sight, has stayed with me as I have mused over it, trying to intertwine her spirit into this story, Good Fortune. Anna’s story is not that of Rose Caldwell, but rather a representation of the journey that our ancestors endured from Africa as they were bound in slavery. In order to create this ambitious and fictitious character of mine, I listened to stories, read accounts, researched, and placed my heart into an existence that seems as real to me as any true narrative from the past would be. I have done my best to weave together a tale that will bring to light what many young adults do not know. Events such as the Middle Passage and the selling of human beings, all defined in this system of slavery, echo upon the steps of history itself. They were as real as you and I. I hope the story has the power to remind today’s youth and those young at heart of a past that should not be forgotten while simultaneously releasing invisible chains: by-products of the past that undoubtedly still exist today.
Oftentimes, as I stare at Anna’s soul, I find myself hankering for changes that could possibly alter the past for the better. This is impossible: We can merely take what was and walk forward, understanding the lessons, forgiving, and doing our best to change situations that mirror what our ancestors had to go through. It is true that even today, in countless areas of the world, slavery still does exist. Perhaps our eyes should remain open for the sake of these people, and for the justification of our ancestors. They are begging for peace, screaming in our faces. Are we taking the time out to listen, leading lives that we can be proud of?
I ask you, my readers, to listen and to become that light the world needs in whatever manner suits you best. It is my wish and my prayer that whoever may crease the pages of this book, encasing him- or herself within Anna’s life, will walk away with a new sense of understanding and a greater appreciation for the difficulties endured as well as the unshakable strength our ancestors held on to so that we as a people, every single one of us, could exist as we do today. It is your responsibility, as the reader, to take with you the image of these people as well as those of other cultures who also experienced such atrocities. We all should help keep their stories, their lives, and their struggles alive within our hearts so that all people in this world can move on, sailing beyond the bondage that seems to prevail today: that of materialism, hate, manipulation, anger, and unnecessary warfare.
I leave you with that challenge, and hope that you embrace an appreciation for humanity and its countless dimensions. I challenge you to become one of the many benefactors of the beautiful idea of change, and to be the very best that you can be.
So, as the reader, open your minds to this painful excursion into the past, and prepare your hearts for the joys and pains Good Fortune has to offer, for you will be taken on a journey rich in history, culture, and excitement. I give you the story from my soul: the story of Sarah, of Anna, and of Ayanna Bahati.
Love to all,
Noni Denise
FACTS AND FICTION
FICTION
The story of Ayanna Bahati does not depict the life of any factual person in history. None of the characters represent specific people that existed.
FACT
Anna’s story delineates the spirits of the African-American peoples in the early 1800s. The system that held her in bondage, chattel slavery—where African people and those of African descent were made the property of others and forced into physical labor—was very much in effect during the early 1800s, and existed in America for over 250 years.
FICTIO
N
The nightmares that Anna have throughout Good Fortune reveal a “story behind a story,” in which she is captured from her homeland on the African continent, taken across the ocean, and finally separated from her brother on the auction block. These, in keeping with the fictitious character, are fictional interventions.
FACT
However, the transatlantic slave trade that Anna’s “story behind the story” refers to was real. For nearly three centuries, African people were bought, sold, traded, carried across the Atlantic, and tossed into the system of slavery. With a close look at the dates during which Good Fortune takes place, Anna would have been taken from her homeland around 1811—three years after Congress passed the law that prohibited the importation of slaves into the United States after January 1, 1808. Illegal importation existed quite a few years after this law had been passed: Over a million African people were illegally imported into the Americas after 1808. Congress then passed the Act of 1820 to prevent such illegal trade, or “piracy” as they termed it, from occurring.
The Middle Passage is also subtly alluded to in Anna’s nightmares. This passage from Africa to the lands in the West took weeks, and often months. The “cargo,” as the African prisoners were regarded, was situated in the bellies of the ships in such inhumane ways of confinement that many did not live through the voyage. Packed between bodies; surrounded by loathsome smells of defecation, decay, and disease; lying still without any means of mobility, these individuals underwent a wretched and horrendous journey that carried many into the hands of bondage, while leaving millions of African bodies lying, chains still intact, at the bottom of the Atlantic.
