Bloodchildren: Stories by the Octavia E. Butler Scholars

by Nisi Shawl

  “He a big man,” one woman said.

  “For true. Long time since a big man walked these parts,” the other said, and then they tittered, shushing themselves. Tchula’s tiny splintering cabin was near the main house, and the women didn’t want their laughter stirring up the Stewart household.

  Celestine eyed the women outside and wiped her brow with the handkerchief.

  “You seen him yet?” she asked.

  “No,” Tchula answered.

  “You think he knows English?” Celestine asked.

  “Dunno,” Tchula said. She stood up from the stool she squatted on and rubbed her hands on her dress.

  “That oughta hold you. Try and keep it clean if you can. I have wash to finish.”

  “You’re not curious?” Celestine asked.

  “A slave is a slave,” Tchula said.

  “Not this one. He saltwater. I’m gonna see him. So are you.”

  Celestine grabbed her sister’s hand and pulled her out of the cabin gingerly, mindful of Tchula’s bad hip and limp.

  The sisters went together towards the front of the spacious colonial-style house. Stewart was talking to the owner of Bola Ogun, a flinty-eyed man known as Mr. Harper. Stewart’s slightly receding hairline had turned a splotchy crimson from the heat, and he had a look on his face that let the sisters know he was annoyed with Harper.

  “I’m telling you, Mr. Stewart, this slave is worth every penny. He was seasoned in Barbados for the last three years. They broke him in real good down there. And he’s a damn fine blacksmith. A skilled slave with a trade, and—” Harper moved over to Bola and slapped his hand on the slave’s arm and chest, “—he’d make a good breeder if you want to stud him.”

  “Healthy?” Stewart asked.

  “Got his papers right here, sir. He’s a dream investment. I’d keep him myself if I could afford to. If you don’t want him, Mr. Trammel over in Noxubee County wants a gander at him.”

  “Trammel? That hump wouldn’t know what to do with a quality slave. Hand over his papers.”

  Harper reached into his dingy coat and pulled out a folded paper. Stewart frowned at the soiled condition of the health record, but read it anyway.

  Bola stood shackled next to two tired horses and a field hand named Luther. The new arrival was dusty, and streaks of sweat striped his face. His flared nose was pointed on the end, and his eyes were slanted and deep set. His lips were puffy, almost like a woman’s, and his head shaved bald.

  “He’s a looker, eh, Tchula? Tall and solid,” Celestine said, sucking in her teeth.

  “For true. Seem like he could fly off right now if he didn’t have those chains—”

  “What are you two doing here?” Stewart demanded.

  “Tchula was helping me with my hand, Master Stewart, sir. We’re just passing through, sir. Sorry,” Celestine said, linking her arm with Tchula’s and moving them past the carriage.

  Walking past Bola, Tchula smelled the sour stench of long travel on him. She kept her head down, but her eyes upon him. His gaze was like a gentle fondling on her cheek, and she shivered as if he had actually touched her. There was a mindfulness about him, something familiar in the way he regarded her. What impressed her most was that he didn’t have the bearing of a slave. His hands and legs were shackled, but his back was straight and his head held high. Unlike her, he was primordial, undiluted and unadulterated.

  And then he smiled at her.

  Not with teeth, but the curling up of those abundant lips. She found herself licking her own lips, and felt as if he’d made her do that. She tasted invisible blood in her mouth. It was a vulgar display of power on his part, and she felt compelled to smile back at him. Yes, there it is, she thought. She knew his kind well. He was a two-headed man, and she could sense his Vodun strength spilling off in waves. He had recognized her as a two-headed woman, although she veiled this knowledge publicly.

  When she and Celestine headed back around towards the kitchen, Tchula knew she would have to talk to the saltwater conjure man and ferret out his mojo. She felt like she had met her match at last.

  π

  Bola stood hitting iron on a fairly new anvil in the smithy barn. It was his first official day, and Stewart had asked for new horse shoes for his entire stable. Luther, the slave who had briefed Bola on the lay of the plantation, worked by his side along with a stocky young teen named Teak who chopped wood and kept the forge fires blazing. Luther wiped his mouth and glanced out of the smithy.

  “Here come trouble,” he said.

  Bola finished pounding the iron shoe and slid it into a barrel of water. He saw one of the twins making her way to the smithy. This one didn’t limp. She wasn’t the one he wanted to see.

  “Ain’t nothing worse than them red niggers, hear me, Bola?” Luther said.

  “Why?”

  “That one there is Celestine. She’s a cook for the house, and she sleep with the master. Watch what you say ’round her, ’cause it might get back to him if she can make it benefit herself some kinda way. The crippled one, Tchula, now she’s nice and all, but she’s not to be toyed with. She obeah, a black magic woman—”

  “You flapping your gums, Luther?” Celestine said, fanning her face with her hand. Bola noticed she dressed nicer than the other slave women, and she wore real shoes. Her hair was wrapped like the women he remembered back home. But the tufts of hair sticking out were thinner and straighter. She didn’t look like most of the women on the plantation who had made excuses to walk past the smithy, trying to catch Bola’s eye.

  “Thought you’d be making Master Stewart his biscuits by now, gal,” Luther said.

  “He gone for the day. Now stop pestering me man, I came to talk to Bola.”

  “Watch yourself,” Luther whispered to Bola. He left them alone.

  “Teak, you can rest,” Bola said. Teak nodded and headed out.

  “You do know some English. I was worried we couldn’t talk.” His Ibo accent was heavy but understandable. Celestine closed the gap between them.

  “I know enough,” he said. Celestine inched closer.

  “Good. You know something? My daddy was African too. My mama was Choctaw. You know what that is? You know what Indians are?”

  “Red peoples.”

  Celestine laughed, a full-throated belly laugh.

  “Yeah, Bola. Red people. My name is Celestine.” She held out her hand.

  “I hear your name is Neshoba,” he said.

  “It’s Celestine,” she said with a snap, her smile faltering.

  “Careful,” he said. “Iron still hot.” He pushed her back from the anvil.

  “I go by Celestine now. It’s prettier.”

  “What you want, Celestine?”

  “Get to know you. It’s boring around here. We don’t get much news about the outside world, so I thought you could talk to me about it. Not now, since you’re working, but later.”

  “I need my rest.”

  “I know.”

  He liked looking at her. She was attractive and her voice was soothing, but there was a sharpness beneath her that he didn’t care for. He’d have to be on his toes with her.

  “Something wrong?” she asked, stepping close again.

  It had been a long time since he had been with a woman. He was allowed to sleep in the smithy, so he would have plenty of privacy. He glanced down at her flushed cheeks and the swelling of her breasts. She was eager. It would be easy. But this was a kept woman. He wouldn’t risk his life for sex. He stepped away from her, and his right arm struck the anvil, burning his flesh.

  “Oh, God,” Celestine said. Bola ran to the clean water bucket, and thrust his arm inside.

  “I’ll go get Tchula!” Celestine yelled, running out of the smithy.

  π

  After wrapping his wound with cloth, Tchula made Bola drink willow bark tea in her cabin. Celestine wanted to assist, but she had a late supper to help the head cook with, so she left them alone.

  Bola was surprised at how clea
n Tchula could keep her cabin when so many slave quarters were infested with vermin. She had a lopsided wooden table and three chairs, a lumpy pallet with faded quilts in a corner, a fireplace with a stool in front of it, and a chamber pot near the front door. There was shelving on one wall that housed various jars of dried herbs and a few plates and bowls. A black kettle sat in the fire boiling water. She stuck a ladle in the kettle to draw out some hot water to make him more tea.

  “You have a man?” he asked.

  “Had one. He’s dead,” she said. Her voice was firm, but still had a melancholy lilt to it. He could tell that it had happened awhile ago.

  “How he die?”

  “We tried to run from here and find my mother’s people. Got caught. They hung him on that Tupelo tree out there by the well.”

  “And you?” he asked. Her eyes never wavered from his.

  “Master tied me to that tree while my man still swinging, and had another slave beat me in front of everyone. I was pregnant. The baby didn’t live. Now I have a limp and a half tooth.”

  Tchula poured the hot water into his tin cup and sat down in a chair beside him.

  “I’m sad for your baby,” he said.

  “I’m not. Glad it’s dead. I didn’t want to raise Master Stewart’s seed.”

  They sat for a moment in silence. He drank the tea. She watched him. He regarded the room again.

  “What’s that?” he said, pointing to another corner. A small checkered cloth covered something on the dirt floor near the fireplace.

  “That’s how I do my real healing,” she said.

  She stood and walked over to the cloth, squatted down and lifted it up. From where he sat, Bola saw bundles of dried tobacco sitting next to a pipe, a turtle shell, and several polished stones. There was also a small plate filled with dried corn near a wooden bowl filled with clear liquid. Familiar tools to him. He reached deep into his pants pocket and pulled out a small leather pouch. Tchula covered her altar and sat down next to him. He opened the leather and revealed a lock of dark curly hair tied with thread, bits of iron and other metals, along with a small tobacco leaf stained with dried blood.

  “Strong medicine?” she asked.

  “The strongest I know,” he said, fingering the lock of hair. He tied the pouch back up and placed it on her table. She picked it up.

  “I think our gods should meet,” she said. She took his pouch and placed it on her altar next to the tobacco. She returned to her seat.

  “You hungry?” she asked.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “I can go to the kitchen, and get you a plate of leftovers. You can wait here for me….”

  “Not that kinda hungry, Tchula.”

  He traced the shape of her oval face with his right index finger until it rested on her lips.

  “I’ll be your man now, if you want,” he said.

  “I want,” she said, taking his hand and leading him to her pallet.

  π

  The next morning when she awoke, Tchula found a tiny metal bird sitting on the pillow where Bola had slept. A tiny metal bird made of copper and pewter with mechanical wings that moved when the bird’s head was touched. It was half the size of her thumb.

  She could smell the burning of iron and hear Teak chopping wood to keep up with Bola’s work. She stretched out on the pallet that now smelled of his musk and her own sweat. She allowed herself a small sliver of happiness, just a little bit, no bigger than a thimble. To increase its size would risk more Tupelo trees and bitter tears. She touched the bird’s head again, and watched the metal wings flutter.

  π

  Tchula worked with the washerwomen, boiling clothes and sheets in big iron pots at four-thirty in the morning, then beat them against brick blocks with cleaning sticks that looked like boat paddles. Their rhythmic pounding filled the air with a cacophony of sound. Some of the women clucked their tongues at her because she didn’t tie her hair up. Instead she allowed her black silken strands to blow freely, making her look younger than her twenty-four years.

  At noon she took a break to eat with some friends out near the cotton fields before heading back to boil more sheets and fold up dried clothing. She saw Bola pounding iron with a hammer, creating sparks that twinkled like fireflies. Teak hovered near him, watching and learning. Moving closer to the smithy barn, Tchula noticed her sister sashaying over to Bola and Teak. Celestine carried a basket, probably with the pretense of doing an errand, Tchula thought.

  Bola’s body looked relaxed. He was listening to Celestine, and then he was back to pounding metal. Tchula saw Celestine’s neck roll, and she walked away so fast that Tchula understood she was upset with Bola. Tchula knew her twin wouldn’t give up until she had a taste of him. She wasn’t mad at her sister. She felt sorry for her twin now that Celestine had replaced her in Stewart’s bed. Because of Tchula’s bad hip and broken tooth, she was damaged goods in Stewart’s eyes. The last time he raped her, she was told that her raggedy teeth hurt him “down there” when he used her mouth. No man wanted either sister because of Stewart. It was the reason why Celestine was housed as a permanent cook inside the main house, away from the slave quarters and the fields.

  Tchula wanted to talk to Bola. And when she arrived at the smithy he was grinning at her, rubbing his chest. Teak chopped more wood, ignoring them.

  “You like my gift?” he asked.

  “How you make it so life like?”

  He showed her his pouch hung around his neck.

  “You have to be careful with that. If Master Stewart sees that he’ll get real nervous. Sell you off or worse.”

  He nodded and squeezed the pouch again.

  “The first day you was here, you was showing off to me. You put blood in my mouth. I tasted it.”

  He shrugged, but her face was strained. He tucked the pouch back into his shirt.

  “I don’t want to see you on no tree, Bola. He won’t let me live next time.”

  Now she made him taste blood in his mouth where there was none. She pulled out the bird from her apron.

  “Can you make me something else? A turtle?” she asked.

  “Whatever you want.”

  “Good,” she said.

  She wanted to kiss him, but Teak was nearby. Bola put down his tools, pulled her to the side and away from prying eyes.

  Tchula knew that Celestine was none too pleased to see them like this when she returned to have another go at Bola. It was the gentleness of Bola’s hand stroking Tchula’s arm that knotted Celestine’s stomach into a twisted mass. Paulo, Tchula’s former lover, had done that often, and it frightened Celestine. It meant that Tchula cared about something other than herself. It meant that her sister would try to run again. Escape the plantation without her. Unlike Paulo, Bola was strong and healthy, not likely to slow Tchula down and get them caught. And where would that leave Celestine? Alone and further alienated from the other slaves. Tchula was her one true, faithful companion, her only blood relative. Unlike Tchula, Celestine was not a runner. She was too afraid of Master Stewart and the pain of a whip.

  Tchula watched Celestine slip away. She would have to force Celestine to run with her this time. Force the wolf back into her sister’s blood.

  π

  There was the turtle, and then the pair of frolicking rabbits. Next was the group of pewter washerwomen beating sheets with miniature wooden paddles. Each week, when he had time, Bola shaped figurines for Tchula. Each gift strengthening their bond. They were discreet around their owner’s family and the boisterous overseer during the day, but entwined their arms and legs in her cabin at night. Other slaves knew of their couplings, but said nothing. They respected Tchula but feared her, too. They needed her to tend to their cuts and heal all wounds since the nearest doctor was miles away.

  The older slaves remembered her mother, Itta, the Choctaw woman who emancipated herself away from the forced Indian migration back in 1831. The Choctaw were the first ones removed, and Itta, a woman who carried strong medicine in her
bones, walked away from her tribe and their own parcel of West African slaves, hauling two twin girls in her belly. There were no tears when she made her way further south, passing herself off as a tawny-skinned white woman when needed. If it came down to it, she preferred to be a slave on the land of her ancestors than be free somewhere foreign, without them.

  When Itta reached the Stewart property in 1832, she had babies strapped to her front and back, and when they asked for her name, she told them “Itta, the walker.” Her girls were Tchula and Neshoba Walker. The fox and the wolf. And that was that.

  Despite their fears of obeah and darker forces, the slaves let Tchula be. Other women who may have gnashed their teeth for Bola gave her a wide berth.

  The true fear was of their owner, who was slowly selling off small groups of slaves to cover gambling debts, poor financial planning, and the lack of a good cotton season two years in a row. Lyle Stewart liked to pass himself off as a big man, owner of the most slaves in Yazoo County, but he was hemorrhaging money at an alarming rate. He had to bring home his eldest son from a prestigious boarding school to learn the trade of overseeing the slaves in his absence, and the current overseer, Rankin, was more interested in sleeping with slave women and drinking corn liquor than teaching Junior slaving skills. The opportunity to acquire Bola had been a lucky break.

  π

  Word came down in late August that Stewart had made a deal to exchange Bola’s labor to an owner in a New Orleans parish that was known to work slaves to death. The owner needed a skilled iron man for his shipbuilding enterprise, and in exchange for Bola’s labor, Stewart would get twenty male slaves for the duration of Bola’s stay. Twenty slaves that would be clothed, fed, and housed with compensation from the shipper, and not out of Stewart’s pocket. Any children born on the Stewart plantation during Bola’s service in New Orleans would be split between the two men and vice versa. Stewart ceded first choice to the shipper. Plans were in the works for Stewart to travel to New Orleans with Bola so both owners could sign binding legal contracts in person. They both wanted to look over their merchandise, finger the goods to make sure they were suitable for the new jobs they would undertake.