Song of Slaves in the Desert Read online

  The warm rush of her urine gushed again over the bench where she lay half-dreaming. She had not even thought of it, let alone worried about it. What might have been a half day or a day confined in this infernal cabin and she had given over to the rhythms of her bladder and bowels while everything else around her sank into chaos and disgust. If there was another way of living with this, she didn’t know, and if some of her fellow captives knew where they were going they didn’t shout it out—or even whisper it—and she tried to catch the rhythm of the ship and give herself over to sleep.

  But just as she was dozing sailors descended into the midst of the captives carrying buckets of something that scarcely passed for food. With trembling hands Lyaa scooped up the lumpy mess and splashed the foul mixture into her mouth, swallowing but hating herself even as she did. Her stomach rebelled at the feel of it, and before she knew it she began to convulse and vomit up the slop.

  “Better to eat,” came a voice from the shadows behind her.

  A man lay stretched out on the bench nearly full-length. Lyaa wondered how he had been given so much space when she saw that the former occupant of the bench along with this man had fallen onto the floor beneath it, still in manacles but unmoving.

  “What happened to him?”

  “He is dead,” the man said. “I hope only they come and fetch him before he begins to rot.”

  “Do not talk about a human being that way,” Lyaa said. “He was just like you, before he died.”

  “Oh, yes,” the man said, “he was hungry and angry and filthy and sick, and I believe his heart stopped beating in the night. If we go on like this much longer, my heart will stop, too.”

  “How much longer do we go?” Lyaa asked him.

  The man shook his head.

  “I have heard stories…”

  “Stories?”

  “About events like this.”

  “Events?”

  “These ghost traders—”

  “Ghosts? Pale-faced men?”

  “Yes, like these men.”

  “And where do they come from?”

  “That doesn’t matter,” the man said. “What matters is where they take us.”

  “And they are taking us where?”

  Lyaa listened to the rasping of her voice even as she felt the soreness while she spoke.

  “Across the waters,” the man said.

  Lyaa felt her heart sink into her bowels, her heart bathed in her own piss and shit.

  “Is it a long journey?”

  “Long enough,” the man said.

  “What is on the other side of the waters? Is there another world?”

  “It could be Paradise, or it could be filled with demons.”

  “I am glad my mother is not with me,” Lyaa said.

  “You should be,” the man said. And he inclined his head toward her.

  “Yes?” she said.

  “This man, who has fallen?”

  “Yes?”

  The man suddenly howled like a dog.

  “He is my father!”

  How she wept! Wept and wept! Out went her sullied heart, and her hopes bathed in her filthy fears, and she wept and wept again, and finally, finally, finally, at least for that night—or was it day? she didn’t know—she closed her eyes and even as she clutched in her right hand the small pouch with the stone her mother had given to her many mornings ago she drifted away from the bench where she lay enchained. Not even the stone could anchor her. Oh, my poor grandmother, neither living nor dying, but simply floating in her own odor and imagining she had been transported to a peaceful place even as the ship carried her to her hellish Paradise or splendid Hell full of demons. Whichever the other shore turned out to be, Lyaa longed with all her heart and strength to reach it alive.

  No dreams, as far as we know, not in this round sleep. She awoke sharply in the dark to the jamming of water against wood, and beneath that larger motion and the noise of groaning sick and aching and sleeping captives all around her a tickling sensation at her ankle.

  She sat up, glanced down, and saw the gray shadow gnawing at her.

  No!

  She kicked, and the animal fell away into the shadows. Her chest tightened, she could scarcely breathe. Her heart roared like the ocean on the other side of the timbered cabin wall. Quickly she used her hands to assess her state, ankles bleeding, toes, one two three four five, one two three four five, intact, knees, and her precious part, stomach, chest, present and aching.

  The pouch with the stone she had worn around her neck?

  Gone!

  In a confusion of misery and great care—the stinking bench had grown slippery with her own residue and fluids—she leaned down and trying to keep herself balanced peered at the body of the man who had died and found rats gnawing at his flesh. Her gorge rose and she splashed vomit onto the floor, though the rats paid little attention, so intent were they upon their feast.

  Better dead flesh than live! Fresh meant nothing, decay meant everything! Oh, they would love this voyage from the land of the living to the land of the dead! The rats would love it. And the captives and the crew would hate it worse than death.

  She reached down and felt around on the filthy floor, unable because of the chains to stretch much further than the end of the bench. Here, she felt the cloth of the pouch. A rat nipped at her fingers and she flipped it aside. Before she could reach for the pouch again the rat returned. Once more she flicked her wrist and sent the animal sailing into the dark. With a deep intake of breath and a stretch beyond anything she thought she could summon up she found the pouch and clutched it in her hand as she pulled herself back onto the bench.

  The pouch was empty!

  Ay-ieee! It was as if her own heart had slipped from her chest!

  It took a while for her to regain control of her breathing. Once more she leaned over the edge of the bench and walked her fingers through the filth, shoving aside aggressive rodents with her balled fist.

  “Hah!”

  A light appeared at the end of the row as one of the sailors completed his descent into the cabin. Catching sight of what she took to be the stone she reached again and picked it up. And with a cry of disgust tossed aside the piece of rat turd.

  The light grew brighter as the sailor drew near, allowing her to see more clearly. Spying the stone she reached again—the last of her strength went the way of the smoke from the torch—and plucked it from the floor.

  “All ow!”

  The sailor shouted in words she did not understand, except that he spoke forcefully, and in a moment other crew members descended the stairs, with more torches and louder voices.

  “All ow!”

  They went from bench to bench, unlocking the manacles, raising the captives, some of them rearing up with strength and power, some of them sitting up as if brought back from the dead. Lyaa welcomed the climb up the steps to the deck, feeling power returning to her legs. In front and above her some people stumbled, a woman fell back, nearly pulling Lyaa and several others down with her. Drinking in the cool salt breeze that rushed down from the open port she regained her balance and surged up to the top.

  On deck, the faint light of dawn, the sliver of a new moon already fading in the sky above the shivering sails. The wind conspired to cool the captives and buffet them about. More and more of them arose from below decks. Lyaa felt a flush of amazement at how many captives the ship held, and how many, like herself, seemed unable to do anything but blink into the rising light all around, the light of a dawn that seemed, as they did, to be coming up from below the surface of the ocean.

  Some of the men began to chant at the sight of that rising light, an old song that Lyaa knew gave praise to the gods who made the days. How could it be after all she had been through that she found herself humming along?

  “‘Nuff!”

  Sailors shouted, brandished pails and flung sea-water water at the captives, an act that seemed hostile until they all realized that here was a chance to clean themselves. So
me of the men removed their ragged clothing. Even a few of the older women availed themselves of the chance for a cleansing.

  “—!”

  A balding red-faced sailor, eyes nearly bulging out of his head, shouted at Lyaa, taking her by the shoulders and spinning her around, pulling at her clothes. Within seconds she stood naked on the deck while another sailor doused her with chilling water from a pail. And again! She pushed at the sailor and he pushed back. Her legs ached, her bare breasts stung, she hunched her shoulders against the cold, while she covered herself with her hands, a distinctly human figure distorted by pain and humiliation, waiting for the chance to retrieve her clothing. From all across the deck screams and cries arose, mostly the voices of women.

  Worse, she learned immediately why they screamed as the same red-faced sailor charged at her, grabbed her even more roughly than before and dragged her to a place behind the mainmast. What happened next we can never truly know, unless we find ourselves forced into the immediate degradation sometimes suffered by the victim, usually female, when man turns beast and instinct—raw, foul, animal, devilish, destructive instinct—overpowers her. Lyaa struggled, and the sailor cuffed her on the mouth with the back of his hand. Blood spurted from her mouth as she shouted, wept, struggled, near to death but still struggling, although hopelessly, as it turned out.

  “‘Yemaya!” she called. “Mama!”

  Sea-birds glided above the deck. The sails flapped one way and then another. It wasn’t long before they herded everyone back below decks, and Lyaa found herself aching and chained once again, dressed in shreds of cloth, her (to others) mysterious pouch clutched close to her chest, wondering why she was not dead.

  “I am sorry.”

  A man’s voice woke her from a stupor.

  Darkness enfolded the cabin as waves broke against the prow, hammer, hammering, stuttering back at the ocean. Her stomach ached, her ears roared from the mix of moans and silence among the people where she lay. She turned to the man whose father had died in the first hours of the first day of their journey. It had taken a long while—so long in darkness, she couldn’t count in days—for the sailors to drag the corpse from the cabin and carry it above decks. The odor of its rotting flesh still lingered in the air.

  “What?”

  His bowels creaked and whistled as he gave up a reeking bolus of wretched disgust right there on his bench.

  “I am dying,” he said.

  “No, no, no,” Lyaa said, “you have a life to live beyond your father’s life.”

  “I cannot live as a slave anymore,” the man said.

  “Death is slavery,” Lyaa said, not knowing where her words came from. “Life is freedom, because it can be free.”

  “I do not understand,” the man said, “and yet I do want to know.”

  She shook her head in amazement at her own speech, and though she tried she could not return to sleep, imagining all the spirits he had called down for her. One by one they settled in her body, presided over by Yemaya, and she knew this was good. Oh, goddess, she prayed, take us easily over the waters and break our chains on land, whatever land it is.

  In the middle of the night the man reached over to touch Lyaa on the head.

  “Bless you,” he said. “All the spirits on your head.”

  As if in a miracle, up on deck some time later, chained together in rows of ten, someone pointed out an island off in the distance to the north.

  Word pulsated through the captive ranks.

  “Land! Land!”

  The row of captives, urged on by the man whose father had died, shuffled toward the starboard railing and amid shouts from the sailors and the whirring and slap of whips as nearly one person they all went over the side.

  Lyaa stared in horror at the empty space where a moment before all those people stood while the sailors shouted and whipped the air to hold back the rest. The captain in his dark uniform soon appeared on deck to call out orders to the rest of the crew. Sailors reshaped the sails and the ship began to turn. But circling back to the spot where the ten or so slaves had dived into the ocean no sign showed of any of the escaping captives.

  The captain himself climbed down into the slave cabin along with a group of torch-bearing sailors. He shouted, cajoled, pleaded, ordered the slaves in his own language, none of which Lyaa could not understand. Many, many days went by before they were brought up on deck again.

  Fewer of them gathered now. It was as if the god of death walked along the odiferous rows, pointing out those whom he would take with him on another sort of voyage.

  But not Lyaa. She became sick, but she got well. She licked her palms after she ate the food the sailors delivered, licked rain water from the boards when on a beautiful sunlight morning after a vast rainstorm finally they did climb back up on deck again, if not gaining strength then at least not losing it as quickly as she might have. She prayed for more rain, and what better thing could happen than a dark cloud, lingering at the tail end of the boiling storm, poured down upon them, and Lyaa, along with the other survivors, turned her face to the sky and opened her mouth.

  Returning to the benches some of the captives sang old god-songs and one or two of them—she swore she heard it, but she might have imagined it—laughed, a sound no one had heard in a long, long time. She held the laugh in her mind when she tried to sleep, but as had become usual a chorus of groans and weeping, coughing, whispering, farting, praying bubbled up constantly in the ranks around her. When at last sleep settled over her, her dreams became just as overcrowded as the cabin. Gods descended around her and spoke, in voices she could almost but not quite recognize, urging her to carry on through all of the filth and pain and discomfort and discouragement.

  “For your mother,” Yemaya said.

  “For all of her mothers, those who gave birth and became and came and went and bore still more children.” Yemaya’s brother spoke in stronger terms still. “You must eat and drink whatever and whenever you can. You have a mission. Your mission is to become free.”

  Oh, yes, and darker spirits appeared to her as well. Shadows with horns and fangs and noses shaped like spears who chanted to her about welcoming death, and eating herself alive until she died.

  Jump, dive, sink!

  Follow your kinsmen down to the bottom of the sea. A lovely haven awaits you, the flowers of the ocean, jewels made of spindrift and the water sweeter to breathe than air.

  “Don’t listen,” Yemaya cautioned her.

  “Listen but don’t obey,” said the goddess’s son.

  He gave her explicit instructions, and she drank the slops sloshed into her hands and licked the decks and when someone near her died she went through the woman’s pouch and found damp bits of nuts and she ate those, and when a man in the next row over caught and killed a rat she flinched before she took what he passed to her but took it she did, and drank the nasty animal’s blood and ate its flesh. The next time she did not flinch.

  Some of them had a plan. Days and nights had passed—very few of the captives could tell them apart—since their last time on deck. At least they could speak freely, none of the sailors being able to understand their languages, and only a few among them capable of understanding all of the languages they spoke. But in the dark, amid the stench and foul litter, a few of the men were talking about what to do the next time the sailors allowed them up into the air. Finally, it coalesced into a scheme, so that when they came up through the hatch one group moved to starboard and the other to port.

  They had discovered a glorious day at sea, with great heaving fields of waves making up an ocean that seemed to have no limit except where it touched the pale blue of the descending wall of the sky. The wind blew easy, with hints of salt and tar carried on its currents. However, the slaves paid little attention to their surroundings, casting their eyes upward to the heavens or staring down at their chains. None seemed to meet the eye of any other. For a few moments, all seemed calm, and the sailors hauled their buckets up from over the side, prepared to
douse the filth-encrusted captives with stinging cold sea-water to splash away the fetid stains and disgusting daubings, evidence of their miserable life below decks.

  Just then the first line, men and women bound together, began to chant and sing, and a few sailors dropped their buckets, picked up whips and clubs, and rushed toward them. As the first sailor struck the first captive a line of men—all men—on the other side of the deck turned to face the rail and threw themselves headlong overboard.

  The captain standing tall on the bridge turned red-faced with rage, shouting orders and waving his fists.

  This time as the ship turned it became clear by the boiling patch of water where the sharks swarmed exactly where the captives had perished.

  The captain shouted at the remaining captives—and there were still a great many, no doubt of that—and sent them, under a rain of whips and clubs delivered by his crew, down below. As Lyaa hobbled along, aching in her chains, arms raised to protect herself from the blows, she saw staring down at her from the captain’s bridge, a blazing halo of sunlight coloring the sails behind him, the balding sailor—an officer, as it turned out—who had taken her behind the mainmast and wounded her soul. He stared at her as though she were some animal familiar to him from his travels in a foreign forest.

  ***

  From that moment on, and she was not sure what it was that sent her in this direction, she dived down into her mind and tried to follow her path as far back in memory as she could, into her life and the life of her family. Oh, Yemaya, she silently called out, send me back, back to where I first emerged from my mother’s womb, back to where my mother first saw the light, back to a desert dawn where her mother first saw the first light, back to where her mother’s mother’s mother’s mother, and many before her, first opened her eyes on a place without trees, with mountains only, and a great mountain had just blown open and splashed a fiery cloud above it made of smoke and ash. Lyaa’s belly ached and her head felt as though it were on fire as she lay dreaming in the dark, picturing those sparks, that sea, that sky, one far bright star above it breaking through the nearby fire so strong it was and so close to home. That star would ignite itself each sunset and serve as a signpost which each and all of her mothers would use as a marker of the trail toward safety and the future, even as she knelt in the dust and retrieved that stone that had shot up out of the burst of flame from the bowels of the earth, the stone gift from the belly and bowels of the mother.