Oh Lord Take Me Home
So while my boss Bwana and his family are out clink ing r umand-coke glasses and shak ing their wobbly back sides at fancy par ties down the road, I’ve been assigned duties in his office to sor t through his ledgers. I used to hope that the celebr ation of Voodoomass would be the one day off in the year for us slaves – but oh no, it ’s business as usual.
Outside the window the palm trees which line the avenues are decor ated with gold and silver streamers. They are tall, sleek, snooty with the depor tment of those who g row up balancing the precious milk of coconuts on their heads; and dangling from their glossy g reen fronds are flickering oil lamps sitting in red-painted cassava gourds.
The cobblestone pavement has been swept smooth of yesterday’s sandstor m and the hawkers selling takeaways have been sent pack ing.
Frogs and crickets provide a dr unken night-time chor us while camel-dr awn carriages deliver stoosh par ty guests to our neighbouring compounds. The men wear flamboyant kaftans and their glamorously fat women tr y to outdo each other with peacock-print headscar ves tied up into the most extravagant girlie bows.
All the houses are freshly whitewashed, with stained-glass windows depicting the gods: Oshan, Shang ir a, Yemonja. Stone sphinxes guard porches and stationed by doorways are torch lamps on tall marble plinths – their flames are slipper y blue fingers gr asping out at the sticky night-time air.
From the upper rooms of the houses blast the hectic
electronic beats of the young, and from downstairs comes the mellow music of the marimba, amid the laughter and bantering of people who have every reason to celebr ate this season of goodwill, because they are free men and free women in the hear t of the most expensive piece of real estate in the known world: Mayfah.
Chief Kaga Konata K atamba I is the Bwana in question. He made his for tune in the impor t-expor t game, the notorious tr ansatlantic slave r un, before settling down to life in polite society as an absentee sugar baron, par t-time husband, freelance father, retired decent human being and, it goes without saying, sacked soul.
My boss is also a f ull-time anti-abolitionist, publishing his pro-slaver y rants in his mouthpiece The Flame – a pamphlet distributed far and wide – as a freebie.
In spite of myself, I’d just begun to flick through the latest godawf ul issue, feeling my stomach constrict and my throat tighten, when a hand shoved a folded note through the open office window and vanished before I could see who it was attached to.
I opened the note, read the mag ic words and felt my head suddenly drowning.
Waves cr ashed and thundered inside my skull.
I let out the most almighty, silent howl.
Then I passed out.
How long for, I’ve no idea, maybe a few minutes, but when I came to I was slumped in my seat, my head dropped forwards, the note still in my hand.
I read it again through a film of water.
It was real and it was tr ue – I was being g iven the chance to escape.
Oh Lord.
After so many years on the waiting list the thing I most desired was in the palm of my hand. Yet it was all too quick. I sat there frozen. A thousand what ifs ran through my mind. In retur ning my life to its rightf ul owner – me – I would also be putting my life at stake. If I wasn’t caref ul or lucky I’d end up at the local whipping post or chopping block.
Then my sur vival instincts k icked in.
My head cleared.
I was back again.
I ripped the note to shreds.
I stood up and looked at the wooden mask of Bwana’s face on the wall.
And I gave it the right, royal one finger salute.
The note told me that the Underground Railroad was operating ag ain after ser vice had been suspended owing to der ailment. It was often the case when energy couldn’t be filched from the city’s power station or the tr ain broke down due to the overload of escaping slaves wanting to cadge a safe ride out of the city, to begin the long jour ney back to the Motherland.
I hoped I could tr ust the message because the Resistance was often infiltr ated by sleepers who eventually went oper ational to betr ay whole rebel cells.
Deep down I knew that the slave tr aders were never going to g ive up their cash cow. It was, after all, one of the most lucr ative inter national businesses ever, involving the large-scale tr anspor t of whytes, shipped in our millions from the continent of Europa to the West Japanese Islands, so called because wh e n the ‘g re a t’ ex p lorer an d adve n turer, Chinua Chikwuemek a, was tr ying to find a new route to Asia, he mistook those islands for the legendar y isles of Japan, and the name stuck.
So here I am in the United Kingdom of Great Ambossa (UK or GA for shor t), which is par t of the continent of Aphrik a. The mainland lies just over the Ambossan Channel. It ’s also known as the Sunny Continent, of course, on account of it being so flaming hot here.
Great Ambossa is actually a ver y small island with a growing population to feed and so it stretches its g reedy little finger s all over the g lobe, stealing countries and stealing people.
Me included. I’m one of the Stolen Ones.
That’s why I’m here.
The note gave me only one hour to get to the disused Paddinto Station and directions on how to find the manhole hidden behind some bushes through which I could slip down into the subway. There I would be met by a member of the Resistance who would lead me through its dank subter ranean tunnels. That was the promise, anyway, and if it wasn’t the pr actice I’d be done for.
Slaver y had taught me that promises never came with a money-back guar antee and if you complained to customer ser vices they’d repor t you to management and then you’d really get it in the neck.
But I am a firm believer in hope. I am still alive, after all.
The city of Londolo’s Tube tr ains had officially stopped bur rowing many years ago when the tunnels star ted collapsing under the weight of the buildings above them. The city retur ned to the slower but more reliable modes of tr anspor t: car riages, horses, car ts, camels, elephants, stagecoaches and, for the really nutty fitness fanatics, velocipedes. The only vehicle we slaves owned was called Shank s’s Pony.
But here’s the thing: at some point, a bright spark in the Resistance had a br ainwave and the disused subway was put
to use, enabling many to make their way out of the heavily guarded city of Londolo as far as the dock s, where they began the long, hazardous trip back to Europa.
For the first time since I had been taken away, I could seriously consider that I might be retur ning home. Was it possible? I still had such vivid memories of my parents, my three sisters, our little flint cottage on the estate, and my beloved cocker spaniel, Ror y. My family were probably all dead now, if they had sur vived the r aids by the Border Lander men who had been my first captors.
The Ambossans called us tribes but we were many nations, each with our own language and f unny old customs, like the Border Lander s, whose men wore tartan sk ir ts with no knickers under neath.
The Ambossans also called Europa the Grey Continent, on account of the sk ies always being overcast.
But oh, how I longed for those cloudy g rey sk ies.
How I longed for the incessant drizzle and harsh wind slapping my ears.
How I longed for my snug winter woollies and sturdy wooden clogs.
How I longed for Mam’s war m dripping sandwiches and thick pumpk in broth.
How I longed for the fire cr ack ling in the hear th and our family sing-song around it.
How I longed for the far nor ther n district from whence I was taken.
How I longed for England.
How I longed for home.
I am proud to declare that I come from a long line of cabbage far mers.
My people were honest peasants who worked the land and never tur ned to theft even when it snowed in summer or rained all winter so that the crops miscarried in their pods and tur ned to mulch.
We weren’t landowners, oh no, we were serfs, the bottom link in the ag ricultur al food chain, although no actual chains clinked on the g round when we walked around. Nor were we proper ty, exactly, but our roots went deep into the soil because when the land changed hands through death, mar riage or even war, so did we, and so tied we remained, for gener ation upon gener ation.
The deal was that we were leased some fields by our master, Lord Perceval Montague (Perc y, behind his back), the umpteenth eldest son in the family to whom my family had an umbilical bond. In retur n all male serfs were conscripted to be foot soldiers in his battles, and believe you me it was a lawless society back then. It was pretty wild in the far nor th in those days. If someone wanted to r aid your land or steal your flock, they did it through br ute force, unless you were able to meet fire with gunpowder, or r ally a private ar my to defend yourself, even if it was just a motley crew of shambolic far mhands.
So we worked our patch of land, as well as Percy’s.
Whatever we har vested, we had to g ive half to him.
He was supposed to offer poor relief, but r arely did.
We were charged for extr as such as tak ing his car t to go to market or using his g rain mill or bread oven, which, if we had poor har vests, meant a debt car ried over on our annual accounts for sever al years.
Montague Manor was an imposing pile of gr anite, tomblike slabs fr amed against sk ies which shuddered beneath the chain mail of the nor th’s daily bout of rain.
It proved an ir resistible attr action to us k ids yet I was the
only one of my sister s with enough der ring-do to risk succumbing to the lure of the big house.
Once, when ever yone was at the annual summer fayre on the estate, my sisters peeping through some bushes as cowardly witnesses, I sneaked in through the manor’s heavy wooden door into the caver nous Gr and Hall. I tried to tiptoe, but my clogs echoed around the high ceiling.
The walls were hung with tapestries of fair maidens strok ing the hor ns of unicor ns, reindeer antlers spread out like the br anches of trees, and a massive bear’s head with salivating gnashers was stuck up directly opposite the front door. Its wet, limpid eyes followed my ever y move.
When I heard moans coming from deep under neath the ground, I panicked, about-tur ned and charged out, bumping into a stuffed wolf by the front door, which looked ready to lurch and take a bite. The moans must have come from Percy’s legendar y dungeons where he imprisoned poacher s and captives from the Border sk ir mishes. Eventually they’d be packed off for the long trek through the forests to the next ship docked on the coast bound for the New World – or so we’d heard.
To us peasants the New World was a distant land far across the seas about which we knew nothing, except that no one wanted to go there, because those that did never came back.
Home was Apple Tree Cottage on the edge of the estate. A hotchpotch of timber beams and ear th-packed walls. It was infested with r ustling insects. Indeed the whole house was alive with ver min – from the wasps nesting in the str awthatched roof to the body-hopping fleas for whom our blood was the elixir of life. A front door opened onto a tiny parlour with an ear then floor and a peat fire. Two sleeping spaces were separ ated by heavy g reen woollen dr apes either side of
the cor ridor which ser ved as the k itchen. We couldn’t afford window glass because of the tax, and so with the shutters closed it was always winter inside.
Me, Madge, Sharon and Alice shared a str aw mattress. We slept under a multicoloured quilt made out of cast-offs stitched by two great-aunts who’d died before we were bor n. I bagsyed the middle, kept war m by my sisters during those freezing nor th-easterly nights.
Then there was Ror y the dog who was always bounding around knock ing things over even though he wasn’t ‘a puppy no more’, as Mam’d shout. Her foot would send him on an impromptu long jump from which he’d land with a squeal, legs comically splayed flat.
Our Pa and our Mam were Mr Jack and Eliza Scagglethor pe.
Pa’s muscles clung to him in hard sinews because there was little fat to shelter his bones. He had a bushy scr ag-end of a beard which he ‘couldn’t be arsed’ to trim and his cheek s were blistered from where the bitter winds had rubbed them r aw. He had the stoop of a thin tree blown forwards by a gale, because he’d been planting and digg ing up cabbages since he was a tiny kid.
Pa’s hair was the dark g inger of the folk from the Border Lands. It fell to his shoulders in spir als beneath the widebrimmed far mer’s hat he always wore when outdoors.
Before I was old enough to know better he’d roll up his smock, instr uct me to put a finger to the throbbing pulse of the veins on his ar ms and tell me centipedes lived inside them. I’d run away shriek ing with him chasing me, both of us knock ing over stools, pails and my sister s in the process.
Pa was passionate about his cabbages, said they had to be treated loving ly, like children. What didn’t I know about flaming cabbages! Januar y King was ‘crispy and f ull of flavour’,
the Autumn Queen was dark g reen and the Savoy King was ‘a tough little bugger’. What didn’t I know about the Cabbage Wars of old, when the Scagglethor pes had fought victoriously for the Montagues against the Palderg raves?
I hated eating cabbage in those BS (Before Slaver y) days. What I’d g ive for one now.
Pa never once complained about not having a son but we all knew what was on his mind, because sometimes when he looked at us, his disappointment was undisguised.
Who was going to car ry on the Scagglethor pe cabbage far ming tr adition?
He’d always shake it off, though.
‘Go on,’ he’d urge us g irls. ‘Tell me I have one wish.’
‘What wish?’
‘Don’t be so stupid. Tell me I have a wish. That you can gr ant me.’
‘But we don’t have special power s, we ’ re not f air y godmothers.’
‘It ’ s a game, you silly lot, g ive me one wish or I’ ll throw a cabbage at your thick skulls.’
‘All right then, Pa, you have one wish.’
‘Well, now, let ’s see. What would I want? Oh, I know what I’d wish for,’ he’d say, scr atching his chin like the thought was just coming to him.
‘To see my g irls in those crinolines with expensive whalebones that those ladies up there wear, pretty paste on your cheek s, pearls around your swan-like neck s; to see you swirling around at dances with k indly gentlemen on your ar ms, winning smiles on your lips and glass slippers on your feet.’
‘Oooh, don’t be so soppy,’ I’d say, before going to fetch the look ing glass to see if my neck really was ‘swan-like’.
That night I dreamed of a lacy, yellow crinoline with puffed-
up sleeves. My gown was so exquisite, my glass slippers so dainty, that when I r an across the meadows, hair flowing in the wind, ever yone gasped at how elegant I’d tur ned out.
Then I r uined it by getting bunions because the slippers were too tight and one of them cr acked and the glass cut into my foot, wak ing me up with the pain of it.
Pa rose before daylight had k icked night-time into touch. He’d retur n after dark when he’d be mardy until he’d eaten.
He liked a tankard of ale (only ever admitted the one) of a Friday night after dinner when he’d go to Johnny Johnson’s bar n over at None-Go-By Far m for a ‘wee session’ with ‘the lads’ – all old men pushing forty. He’d come home reek ing of the barley and herbs in his ale, sing ing a bawdy song which we could hear from fields off, then catching his breath as he leaned against the opened door frame blasting cold air into our parlour, ranting on about how ‘the work ing man will have his day’, before staggering inside in his manure-caked boots and collapsing into his chair, legs sprawled open, head thrown back so that his bristly Adam’s apple stuck out and quivered.
‘How are the lads?’ Mam would say out loud once he was snoring, not look ing up from her knitting needles which clacked like war ring swords.
I’ ll never forget the first time it was my tur n to take Pa hot bread and dripping for lunch.
The clouds had sunk so low from the heavens I couldn’t find him for ages, until there he was, looming out of the fog, one hand rested on his pitchfork, look ing for all the world like a scarecrow, and I suddenly saw how all the back-break ing work had dr ained him.
He was sing ing, but not one of his usual smutty songs which made us g irls g iggle and our Mam scowl. Instead he sounded like one of the choir boys at church whose voices
hadn’t become coarse and mud-filled and ang ry from years of break ing up icy g round with shovels, slopping out donkey shit or chopping wood for hours in freezing winter dressed in rough sackcloth, with their bare feet shod only in clogs.
It was the voice of the boy inside the man. The child inside my father.
His hear t was f ull of year ning, for something he’d lost or wanted to have.
My hear t cr umbled like stale bread.
Are you going to Scarborough Fayre?
Parsley, sage, rosemar y and thyme, Remember me to one who lives there, She once was a tr ue love of mine.
On my tenth bir thday it was my tur n to go out onto the fields blindfold to pull up the first cabbage of the season. Aged ten you’d already sur vived the pox, the sweat and just about every other disease that spirited children away early, so it was likely you might g row to adulthood. If the cabbage came up with a lot of earth attached it meant you’d be rich, if not then you’d be poor.
That spring dawn we all trekked across the damp g rass and past trees beginning to unf url the tiny lavender-coloured petals of blossom.
I’d already decided on my career path. I was going to become one of those r are silk-tr ading women, like that young Margaret Roper from the village at Duddingley who went off on the back of a car t and came back in her own car riage. Like her I’d be apprenticed for seven years, then I’d r un my own business. First I had to persuade Pa to persuade Percy to let me go. I knew Pa would scoff at the idea of one of his silly daughters becoming a proper businesswoman.
It didn’t put me off.
The debt would take many years to pay off but eventually I’d be rich enough to settle it myself.
I had it all sor ted.
As you do, when you’re ten.
The cabbage came up with a huge clump of sod attached.
I did a car twheel, sing ing out, ‘Wey, hey, hey, the cat and fiddle and the cow jumped over the moon.’
Oh, so it really sodding worked then, didn’t it?
Memories would not get me to the station on time.
I flew out of Bwana’s office like a leopard on cola nuts and rushed across the compound, the largest in the city. Across the freshly sprink led, squeaky-g reen lawn, past the rocker y studded with cacti, past the wide-hipped, big-mama palms of the pineapple g rove, past the orange and pink slides and roundabouts of the adventure playground, past the saccharine scent of the mangosteen, pawpaw and vanilla trees, past the openair swimming pool with mosquitoes buzzing over its stagnant surface, past the camel paddock s, and behind all that, finally, to the secreted slave quar ters, which had been consider ately built next to the sewage dump and pigs’ pen.
There I entered the tiny hut I shared with my room-mates: Yomisi and Sitembile.
Yomisi was in her thir ties, like me. Only she’d been bor n Ger tr aude Shultz on a wheat far m in Bavaria. Aged eighteen she was k idnapped by slave-catchers as she made her way back from church one chilly Sunday mor ning, foolishly tak ing the shor t cut across the g raveyard. She eventually ended up in Londolo, sleeping side by side with yours tr uly. It was an unlikely bonding: I was the optimist, she the pessimist. I clutched my retur n ticket to my chest, always dreaming of
escape; she’d ripped hers to shreds the ver y first time she was gang-r aped by her three k idnappers shor tly after capture.
She’d been hell-bent on revenge ever since.
Yomisi was Bwana’s cook. Steel-thin, g reen-eyed, heavylidded, she was forced to wear an iron muzzle in the k itchen to prevent her eating on the job. It encaged her face in metal bands which clamped a perfor ated plate over her mouth. A lock secured this contr aption at the back.
Her lips cr acked. Her mouth dehydr ated. Her tongue swelled. Her gums bled.
Even when the muzzle was removed at night she spoke through g ritted teeth.
Sometimes Bwana vomited the night away or one of his children ran a fever. The runs were commonplace. Bwana’s regular hallucinations bordered on insanity, and the entire family frequently broke out in r ashes so unbear able they could be seen clawing off layers of sk in in a communal frenzy.
All fingers pointed to the juju of Bwana’s business enemies, none at the passive, stick-like cook.
Cr ushed glass.
Rotten meat disguised by strong herbs and spices.
Fung i.
Plants she would not name.
It was the only thing that gave her pleasure.
My second room-mate was the cheer y young Sitembile, who was in her early twenties. She liked to remind we lesser mor tals that she was bor n Princess Olivia de Champfleur-SaxeCoburg-Grimaldi-Bourbon-Orleans-Ha psburg in a palace in the ancient land of Monaco. Taken hostage in a war with the French, she was sold into captivity when her father the King wouldn’t pay for the release of a g irl child when he already had five sons in line to inherit the crown.
Sitembile held the honoured position of household toilet
cleaner, emptying a pproximately fi fty toilet pots each mor ning, before spending the rest of the day scooping out the bog holes and hosing them down with lime disinfectant to deter bugs and flies.
When time allowed, and it r arely did, she sat on our stoop, chattering away, embark ing on a conversation in her head, letting the listener in halfway through and then being sur prised when we complained we didn’t have a clue what she was going on about.
She’d sit there twisting her hair into pigtails mixed with clay, r ubbing ochre into her sk in to darken its pigment in the hope that she might be spotted by one of Bwana’s nicer, younger, more handsome business associates and be whisked away to a new life as a favoured mistress. With substantial cur ves either side of a natur ally tiny waist, it was just possible.
Yomisi tried to dampen Sitembile’s enthusiasm with her oft-declared dictum that dreams and disa ppointment were insepar able bedfellows.
I helped r ub ochre into Sitembile’s smooth, undamaged back, countering that dreams kept our spirits buoyant.
We three women had slipped into each other’s lives and found a way to be together.
Now I was slipping out.
Without saying a word.
Our shack was constr ucted out of corrugated iron which was boiling on summer nights. Not for us the fancy, cool, whitewashed wattle-and-daub residences spread out at the top end of the compound with palm-thatched roofs and mang rove posts and windows and wr aparound ver andas. No, we either roasted or we froze in our g rubby tin boxes, and our neighbour next door was a twelve-foot-high ter mite mound, which
we daren’t disturb as it would most likely rebuild itself inside our dwelling.
As I entered our hut I knew that the others would be occupied elsewhere in the compound because we never stopped working. Even when it seemed that ever y job was completed, Madama Blessing, Bwana’s imperious Number One wife, kept everyone busy. The stor y goes that she was once the sweetest young virgin in town, but that after years of mar riage to Bwana, and his accumulation of more and more wives for her to control, the power had gone to her head and she had tur ned into the gargoyle we all knew and hated.
That day she had been wearing a chunky gold chain which hung from the folds of her neck, with a r uby and diamondstudded Akua’ba fer tility doll as pendant. It was quite ridiculous when she was obviously post-menopausal. A gold ring in the shape of a snarling lion’s head leapt from her manicured hands so that even when she was tr ying to be nice you were reminded that she wasn’t. A beautif ul glazed-ivor y bone shot through her nose and a lip plug pierced through her bottom lip showed she was a woman with a husband (like anyone needed reminding).
On this most festive of days she had woken up in one of her char ming early-mor ning moods and ordered every available slave to get down on their hands and knees and scr ub the immeasur able lengths of her cherished beige flagstone floor s – with soap and a nailbr ush. To get deep into the grooves, she explained, sweeping her eyes at the assembled bare feet of her staff before propelling her bulk from the hips and shoulders down the hallway with all the g race of a threelegged, half-blind, three-thousand-pound hippo.
As the eyes are the window of the soul, if she had bothered to look into ours, she would have seen an axe murderer in each and ever y one of them.
Madama Blessing her self had large star tled eyes which dominated her face and when they swooped and swer ved you pr ayed they would not rest on you, because if they did it would be with shocked outr age at a crime for which you had to be punished, even though you had not committed it yet. At the same time she had bucket-loads of self-pity, which was often the case with our masters – they were the injured ones, not us. She wore her favourite outfit made out of Adinkr a cloth. It was stamped with the design known as Atamfo Atwameho, which means ‘Enemies Sur round Me’.
I gathered up a bundle of my clothing and threw it into a basket, g rabbed a wr appa and whipped it over my shoulders. It would hide the nice personalised tattoos which r an across my shoulders. As was the fashion with slave society, the name of my first mistress, Panyin Ige Ghik a – P.I.G. – was inscribed.
I was once the companion of P.I.G.’s daughter – Little Mir acle.
Oh Little Mir acle – more about her later. When Bwana bought me he had me tattooed with his initials too – K.K.K.
Can you imag ine having a red-hot poker searing into your sk in? Twice? The delayed shock reaction as it sizzles and smokes, then the war m bloody tears streaming down your ar ms and spine?
I didn’t have much to take with me. We didn’t we a r much because of th e heat, which I neve r di d get used to, nor to the Ambossan dress code – the wr ap a round wr ap pa s – or having to go barefoot, wh i ch felt so uncomfor table, especially when I had such fond memories of we aring clogs. How I longed for their cool moulded insoles; to feel a mild shudder when the wood impacted on hard g round. And
going topless is no joke when you’ve had three children and yo u r breasts swing like sogg y butter nut squash. And don’t get me star ted on the hair style Madama Blessing insisted I adopt as the household’s most high-status slave . My lo ng str aight bl o nde hair was threaded through with wire and put into plaited hoops all ove r my he ad. I wanted to protest that we why t es just didn’t have the bone str ucture to car ry it o ff . But she expected me to look respectable when I opened the door to her distinguished guests and not like some uncouth wretch from Europa. The guests were usually Member s of the House of Gove r nor s, the UK’s r uling body, many of them fellow plantation owner s wh o ha d purchased a seat in the House.
All these thoughts were whirring around in my br ain as I raked through the sandy g round beneath my sleeping pallet and brought up an old goatsk in pouch filled with for ty-six cowrie-pounds. I had managed to pilfer a shell here and there over the long years while out shopping for Bwana and his family. I always hoped I would need them one day.
I quietly shut the door, check ing the coast was clear. I put my basket on my head and crept through a gap in the bushes. It led to a back alley which was the means by which we slaves sneaked in and out of the compound to engage in romantic trysts with our lovers, myself included, although I had been single a long time. I was a very monogamous person, holding onto the oneman, one-woman practice of my own culture, no matter how much the polygamous Ambossans ridiculed it as uneconomical, selfish, typically hypocritical and just plain backwards.
The love of my life had been Frank. His slave name was Ndumbo, but I never called him that in private. A maker and mender of things, he was a renowned car penter. He said he never felt more alive than when facing the silent cong regation
of the severed limbs of the forest at their mor tuar y – the logg ing camp at Golda’s Green. There they underwent seasoning by the elements until ready to be reincar nated into functional or decor ative ar tefacts by their High Priest – my Fr ank.
Fr ank was over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, dark haired – a gentleman.
He never once spoke shar ply to me, or bossed me around, and whenever he smiled at me, it was with an appreciation which took a while for me to accept. I was so used to being taken for g ranted.
We spent what free time we could together and our pleasures were, by necessity, simple:
Sharing a slice of coconut rum cake Yomisi had pilfered from the k itchen.
Lying in the g rass and counting the star s in the night sky. The wooden bangles and ank lets he made for me, eng raved on the inside with my name and his.
I secretly taught him to write his name on a slate: Frank Adam Mer ryweather, son of Fr ank William Mer ryweather, of Hull, England.
Th e lo ok on his f ace when it was fi rs t ac complished without any spelling mistakes. How he beamed like an elated child.
At night Frank’s dexterous car penter’s hands roamed so exper tly over the contours of my back and limbs that my deadened body was resensitised and reshaped into a work of ar t.
The next day I’d go about my duties with softened bones and looser joints and weightless muscles and a wandering mind that could settle on nothing and no one but him.
Fr ank was such a har mless man, but his mistress, that fivefoot-nothing Madama Subria, accused him of sexually
assaulting her and repor ted him to her husband. He sold Frank on to one of the islands of West Japan but not before he’d endured fifty lashes of the cat-o’-nine-tails at the whipping post at Cumburlasgar Gateway up the road. Ever y slave in the neighbourhood was forced to attend.
Imag ine how I felt watching that? Poor Frank’s shredded back. His stubbor n silence, then pitif ul mewls, until he let rip such ter rible screams they tore open the f abric of the sk ies.
The irony was that Madama Subria was always tr ying to seduce him with her petulant pouts and hip-hugg ing lappas, flouncing about, rolling her ample Ambossan bottom (so that each cheek moved independently of the other – quite a feat) whenever he walked behind her in the cor ridor. He ignored her advances until one day she got him to repair the hinges on the gold and ivor y chest in the master bedroom. She suddenly stripped off her clothes and stood there completely starkers.
What you have to understand is that Madama Subria was as spoilt as ever y other mistress of means. When you have an ar my of slaves at your beck and call you expect to get what you want when you want it.
Lesson Number One – slaves do not reject their masters’ advances.
My man lear ned that the hard way. She was livid. She took her revenge.
We slaves don’t end relationships. Other people do it for us. Often we don’t star t them either, other people do it for us. We’re encour aged to breed merely to increase the workforce.
My three were sold on.
Each time they promised I could keep the child. A boldfaced lie, because some expectant mothers would r ather k ill
themselves if they knew their child was going to be taken away at bir th.
As I went into labour, crouched on a tattered r affia mat, the midwife, Ma Ramla (Sigfrieda, from Ger many), mopped my brow with a damp cloth, bur ned sandalwood joss stick s, held me from behind and encour aged me to push.
Each child was placed into the guardianship of a wet nurse, until they were sold. Another str ateg y, I discovered, because it had been known for mothers to become uncontrollably violent when told to hand over the infant they had breastfed for months.
Two girls and a boy.
I never saw my children again.
Sometimes, when I place my hand over my stomach, I can still feel their little k ick s.
I remember how car rying the extr a weight of a child filled me up.
How I’d sing nurser y rhymes to them in the womb:
Little Bow Peep has lost her sheep And doesn’t know where to find them. Leave them alone and they will come home Bring ing their tails behind them.
I remember Frank was there at the bir th of the first child, squeezing my hand.
His silence for months afterwards.
How we never spoke of our loss.
How he never attended the second or third bir ths.
Just as well.
I still dream that my children will come searching for me. Somehow – they will find their mother.
Oh Lord.
I miss Frank ever y day.
When he was my lover, I never felt alone.
The back alley was deser ted. Thank God it was dark. I had to exit onto our avenue before crossing down a side street and heading towards Edgwa District and then into Paddinto District. I put my head around the entr ance. Gleaming g ilt and chrome car riages were still ar riving for the Voodoomass par ties but it was otherwise deser ted.
I would have to walk with the slow confidence of one allowed out at night. If a neighbour saw me the alar m would be r aised. Freedom was within my g rasp but my knee caps were being tapped by a sledgehammer. I str uggled to stay upright. It would be so easy to slip back inside the compound.
Madama Blessing would be outr aged at my escape, and having witnessed her response to imag inar y crimes I dreaded to think how she’d behave if her anger could stand up in cour t, accuse me of the crimes of Ungr atef ulness and Dishonesty, and prove my guilt beyond Reasonable Doubt by presenting the Evidence (Caught Escaping) to a jur y of her peers, all of whom were, like her, Ambossan slave owners.
As for Bwana, unlike his wife, he didn’t waste his emotions, such as they were, on his slaves. He took disciplinary action when required with all the passion of a hard-headed businessman for whom slaves fell into either the profit or loss column. Take my children, for example. Bwana had no need for any more four-legged gurglers crawling around his compound
who didn’t carry his DNA in their genes, so it made sound business sense to enter them under the profit column.
As far as I could tell the only flame that set him alight was when he howled out at night from some woman’s bed with such unbridled ferocity, we in the slaves’ quar ters felt our spines r un cold.
Yet Bwana and his family were the known and here was I venturing into the dangerous unknown. I had become so much more than your non-achieving, low-flying slave. I had been elevated to the position of Bwana’s personal secretar y because I was ar ticulate and bright (but not too clever, or so they thought).
The terms of my engagement stipulated that it was a job for life, that my hours should r un from Monday to Sunday, a.m. to . p.m. daily, although I needed to be available to do over time when required. I would receive an annual wage of nothing with an added bonus of nothing for good behaviour but to expect forfeits in the for m of beatings for any insolence, tardiness or absences.
Luck ily, I was only knocked about a bit in the early days as par t of my in-ser vice tr aining when my work repor t read: Attendance %. Punctuality %. Motivation %. Could work harder and prone to distraction, i.e. daydreaming. After that I met all my perfor mance targets. I was also expected to look presentable at all times and I lear ned how to affect a pleasant smile devoid of any personal satisfaction. Our ‘contentment ’ must never exceed theirs.
It was pretty standard for a domestic slave, and I have to say Bwana had no cause for complaint with me.
I was the perfect house wigger.
I peered down the avenue, hidden behind an enor mous breadfr uit tree full of bulbous g reen fr uit which was about to fall
right down on my soft human head and splatter my br ains about.
My hear t r attled like dried peas in a gourd.
Another car riage clattered past with a laughing couple inside, its wheels and hooves kick ing sand up into my face. I caught sight of the woman; it was that coquette Madama Subria.
I had watched her with tears pouring over my hear t as she had obser ved Fr ank being tied up to a tree and whipped. She had been blink ing, rapidly. At first I thought she was sor ry for him, then it dawned on me that she was brimming with tears for herself. I read these people so well. It ’s ver y easy when you’re invisible.
I could see how the Ambossans had hardened their hear ts to our humanity. They convinced themselves that we do not feel as they do, so that they do not have to feel anything for us. It ’ s ver y convenient and lucr ative for them.
Madama Subria, I realised, had lost the hope of someone special to keep her enter tained when she was bored. Mr Subria must have forced her to attend the whipping. These Ambossan women were usually much too ‘faint-hear ted’ for that. He had a prestig ious position as a senior executive with Baringso Bank plc.
Tall, f unereal, he stood next to his attr active little wife with an unchar acteristic smile playing on his lips.
The carriage passed and I dar ted out of the alley.
Once I reached Edgwa District I felt safer. I walked under neath its famous entrance: two elephant-shaped tusks, which met in the middle as a g rand arch, sixty magnificent feet high.
Edgwa, after the genteel refinement of Mayfah, was an assault on my senses, buzzing with crowds and booming with the bone-r attling thud of Aphro-beats from the music booths. It was famous for its bazaar which r an all day, all night, and