Five

We were sent to the fields to pull cotton day after day in the hot-beating sun.  Each day was the same.  We picked cotton from sun up until sundown with only a short break at noon.  We ate supper after night fell at a long table up by the house.  I fell asleep with the other children in the bunkhouse listening to the men and women outside finishing home chores until late.  

The long days and hard work kept my body tired and sore but did nothing to still my mind.  Some days the women sang or told stories.  As the days went on, I learned the important English words we needed to know like soil and rain and cotton and water.  We learned each other’s words and songs and stories too. 

When it was quiet, I thought about my goats foraging on their own and wondered who would feed my chickens.  By now the fire in my mother’s kitchen had died down with no one in the village to stoke it.  She kept the fire burning to warm the house during the cold nights.  Where were my mother and father?  How had I allowed us to be separated on the boat?  The elephant herd had probably moved up over the hill behind my house by now and trampled everything in our village.  The herd had stood by eating grass while the lion took the smallest one.  I listened for the wind whistling across the tall grasses, but the air here was silent.  I picked cotton.  Sweat beaded down my forehead, and I wiped it with the back of my arm.

We were all at Uncle’s wedding when the men came to capture the people in our village.  Uncle wasn’t really my father’s brother.  He was a close friend, but they had been friends so long he had no trouble calling my father for favors.  My father was powerful in our town and most everyone owed him favors.  Uncle’s wedding party was grand, and everyone in the town was invited.  We wore our finest clothes.  I wore the dress my mother made for me with yellow and red beading all the way around.

The goat had been slaughtered, and we were just about to begin the feast of cow, goat, and yams.  The kidnappers must have heard the music and festivities beginning that morning as they entered our village.  First, I thought they were friends of Uncle’s come to join the celebration.  They seized my Uncle and his new wife and killed them right in front of us all.  My father, the village’s powerful medicine man had been powerless to try to stop them.  They seized my father and mother and my aunts and cousins.  That’s when Akin threw me on his back and started running.