One

                I was just a girl when my family was put on a boat heading to the Americas.  Not long before that day, my brother came running over the hill into town.  He had been playing a game of stick ball with his friends.  And far behind him, sucking air through their mouths until the spaces between the ribs showed, puffed his friends.  Akin whistled a tune through his front teeth.  He bounced the ball on his knee, hit it with his head, passed it behind his back, and kicked it to hit me in the leg. 

 “Always working.  You’re so serious and never play,” Akin called to me.  He laughed at me as I tended the goats.  I raked the muck from under them and shooed the goats away from around my legs. 

“Your goats will be taken in the night,” said Akin.

            “Without my goats, we would have no milk to drink.  And who would take my goats?”  I called back to Akin, loud enough to be heard over the goats bleating.  “All the families have goats.”

             “The lions are roaming near the village again,” Akin said, close enough now that his boy sour wrinkled my nose.  “Uncle saw them again last night.”  He dropped his voice lower and jabbed me in the arm.  “You better lock your goats inside the fence tonight.  Or you will have nothing but bones in the morning.”  Akin’s mouth twisted and his eyebrows raised up.  His face reminded me of the time Uncle told a joke about an elephant trying to mount a rhinoceros.

We climbed a tree to see out to the grasslands of East Africa.  The waist-high grasses waved in the wind.  A herd of elephants roamed in the distance.  An elephant trumpeted, and I looked further past the herd to see a lion taking down the smallest elephant. 

After school, we all circled around two boys.  Akin spun them with their eyes closed until they were too dizzy to run straight.  One played the lion, the other was the goat.  We chanted the lion’s name, Mbube, Mbube, calling faster and faster as he got closer to catching the goat.  Akin spun them again, and we chanted slower now as the lion, too dizzy to catch the goat this time, fell at my feet.  We sang the song as we walked back across the hills to our houses.  As the sun went down behind the trees, I still sang Mbube softly to myself.  I led the goats into their pen and latched it shut.

In the morning, I awakened to listen for the bleating of my goats.  I looked out over the hilly grasslands at the sunrise and heard the bell on the littlest goat.  I opened the gate to let them out of the pen so they could forage over the hill together.  The lush grasses whooshed and clattered in the wind.  In the yard outside the house, I fed the chickens and swept the litter from the yard.

My mother stood at the doorsteps.  I kissed her goodbye and ran to catch my brother.  At school, Akin’s friend whispered that a lion had snatched an infant child.   The baby’s father had chased the lion away to the edge of the village, but it ran off with the child in his jaws.

The next day, we heard in the village that two lions had come in the dark of night and stolen a family with four children.  The young girl’s toy had been left, but the family could not be found.  Rumors of kidnappings continued to swirl around town.  We heard that the lions were aided by sleek long-necked giraffes who plucked boys right from the trees they climbed to escape.

Then Uncle told us a pack of lions came into the next town just over the hill and kidnapped a whole village of people in the dark of the night.  As children, we had always heard these stories from our parents to convince us to come inside from playing before night turned the town blacker than Uncle’s skin.  When he told his story now, Uncle’s eyes were bloodshot, and his face wrinkled and contorted in the way it did when he talked about the man who cheated him out of money.

School was cancelled in the morning because the teacher was missing.  We walked across the hilltops to the next town.  Nothing was there but a left-behind shoe, dusty and worn, ripped by an animal with sharp teeth. 

A few days later, the lions arrived in our village.  Akin picked me up and ran, but he was not as fast as the lions.  They outran him, beat him senseless, and threw him on a horse.  Akin’s arm jutted the wrong way, and air whistled past the rib bone poking through his chest wall.  My father, my mother, Uncle, the horse carrying Akin’s listless body, and I marched for two days with all the people from our village to the coast where a boat awaited us. 

*Photo courtesy of Fir0002/Flagstaffotos

Two

           We marched in a snaking line chained together by our arms and one leg.  The boy chained behind me was one of Akin’s friends from school, Farhani.  He was small and followed after Akin, chasing behind him to keep up.  Akin would tease him and say, “Here comes Last One.”  And there would be Farhani, far behind.  But Farhani didn’t seem to mind.  No one was faster than Akin.  There were other children he could have followed, other children who wouldn’t run past him on the way to school.  But Akin always let Farhani have the longest stick, and he paid attention to him.  Farhani always hung with Akin and with me.  Sometimes he was still there when we ate dinner after my father returned home from hunting when he brought back grasses or bone to make medicine for our people.  

“Do you think Akin’s gonna be alright?” Farhani asked.  “Oh, see there, he’s looking up.”  We were chained together and were being pulled by the faster walkers in front of us.  Farhani hopped along behind me.  He was also leading Akin’s horse.  The captor who had charge of the horse when we started had finally given up and Farhani had volunteered.  He didn’t complain.

“I see Akin’s hand moving,” Farhani said a bit later.

It looked to me like Akin’s hand moved when the horse bumped him up, but I said nothing.  The men had tried to leave Akin behind in our village, but I had lain on the ground beside him wailing until two men lifted him up and threw him over the horse.  My mother cried in my father’s arms.  My father’s face betrayed nothing.

Farhani and I walked for a long time in the line chained together with all the people in our village.  The women sang rhythmically, in pace with our steps.  After several hours of walking, our captors beat them with reeds and forced them to stop singing.   We didn’t stop for food or drink the first day until evening fell.  That night, we finally stopped so the men could give us a small cup of water and a bit of bread.  They took away the horse and left Akin with us.  I gave him a bit of my bread.  We sat, with our line curved back around itself.  Soon a rumble moved through the group that the men who captured us laid out their bedrolls and were lying down to sleep.  It looked like we were going to stay there and weren’t going to march anymore that night.  From where I sat, I could see my father and mother, now huddled together.  My father’s brow wrinkled and tears fell from my mother’s eyes.  My father eyed me and my brother wearily.  Akin had fallen asleep, and his chest whistled in and out.  Finally I leaned against Farhani to try to get some sleep.

In the morning, they awoke us with the sunrise to get moving again.  I nudged Akin awake. 

“Come on, get up,” I said to him. 

Akin grunted but didn’t speak.  He barely opened his eyes.  The coiled line of people in front of us was beginning to move, but I could see that Akin wasn’t strong enough to stand on his own. 

“My brother!” I shouted to one of the guards.  “He can’t walk!” 

The guard didn’t seem to take notice.  My father saw what was happening.

“Little one, you have to let him go now,” said my father.  The fold of line in front of him began to move away from me.

“But I can’t leave him here,” I said.  I began to wail.

Farhani shouted to another one of the guards as he walked by checking the chains on our arms and legs. 

“This boy can’t walk,” he said.  I continued to wail.  The guard called over another man and the two men conferred.

“If we try to leave him here, we’ll never get this line moving,” said the second man. 

The first guard got a horse and threw Akin over it.  Farhani took the horse’s lead.

The men marched us all the way to the sea where water lapped at the sides of a large boat I saw floating out in the water.   My skin felt gritty and wet, but there was no water on it.  I licked my arm, and it tasted salty.  I counted the waves as they foamed on the sand.  The water reflected pink and blue from the sky.  I had never seen anything like this place before. 

Three

We waited for several more days on the shore as people arrived from other villages, but suddenly they were in a hurry to get us all on the boat.  One line at a time was unchained, but too many men surrounded us for anyone to try to escape.  We were shoved onto the boat, and my mother and father and Farhani got pushed ahead of me.  I fell behind to stay with Akin.  We were thrown roughly against the wall, and I sat on the floor next to him and held his hand tightly.  I listened to the air whistle through his chest wall.   After several hours, the ship began to rock, and I fell asleep.  When I awakened, it was dark on the ship.  I felt around on the floor next to me.

“Akin,” I whispered. 

All around me, I heard the grunts and snorts of people nearby.  I listened closely for Akin next to me, but his whistling had stopped.  I found his cold arm in the dark and followed it up to his chest where it was still wet and sticky.  His chest was still and there was no warm breath at his mouth.  I held on to him tightly, but Akin was gone. 

Several days of sunrise and sunset passed, and I didn’t get up from the floor where I lay with Akin’s body.  After a few days at sea, the crewmen unchained us.  They came around on the boat to clear up the dead bodies and throw them overboard.  Before they came for Akin’s body, I took the bracelet made of animal bone my father had brought him.  I put it in the pocket of my dress.  I didn’t want to wear it myself since it had brought him bad luck. 

  The man who took my brother leered at me and watched as I kissed him one last time. 

“You can kiss me like that tonight after the sun goes down,” he said.  He glistened with sweat.  His eyes were blood shot.  The air around him smelled of rotting fish.  I didn’t know what to say.  He took Akin’s body away and threw it overboard.

When the sun rose again, I sat up to eat a bit of the bread they left for us.  I slept.  When I had to, I relieved myself right where I lay.  I slept again.  Each time I awoke in the half light, I forgot where I was.  The dank sea air was unfamiliar at first.  I waited for the rustle and whoosh of the grasses in the wind.  I listened for the bell on my littlest goat, but the sounds of living and dying were all I heard around me.  I looked around expecting Akin to jab me in the arm, but he didn’t.  I don’t know how many days passed.

One night in the ship’s inky blackness, a woman began to sing a song in a tongue I couldn’t understand.  The haunting melody reminded me of a song my mother sang during her mother’s burial ceremony.   I prayed to the gods for blessings for Akin in the afterlife.

A few nights later, Farhani shook me awake from a deep sleep.  My heart startled.  I thought at first it was Akin come back to me.  He took my wrists and helped me off the floor.  I saw women nestled with their children sleeping around us and wondered where my mother and father were.  Farhani brought me more bread and a bit of water.  I ate and drank hungrily.  He helped me to my feet.  I looked around for my mother and father, but they were gone.  Farhani and I sat together during the day, and he laid with me at night.  He was all I had in the world.

We all had long days where we had to amuse each other.  People from different villages spoke with different tongues, so communicating wasn’t always easy.  Farhani pointed at a fat crewman with a flat nose.  He was the one who usually barked orders to the other crewmen.  Farhani made a honking sound and rolled like a warthog in the mud.  It was a game, pointing at objects, miming scenes, and acting silly with each other.

I imitated a big lumbering animal.  Then I motioned to indicate its long trunk and brayed like the animal I had heard in pain.  I tried to show them that my tall Uncle had ridden one, but I don’t know if anyone understood that.  Farhani tried to show a story about a lion, and we could tell that he had been very frightened.  I think he was showing the lions in our village.

We got a few words together and talked about our families in broken conversation.  I showed them my dress and tried to describe Uncle’s wedding. We had been celebrating Uncle's wedding when the captors came to our village.  A few people around us understood the words I was saying.  Several women around us excitedly got up from the floor.  Some of them surrounded Farhani to act as his family.  One woman introduced his family to mine.  She spoke as if she was reading the letter to ask for my hand in marriage.  Then Farhani’s family laid down flat at my feet to beg for me to be his wife. 

As we danced the traditional wedding dances, all the people around us joined to dance together.  For a few minutes, I forgot all the stink and fish rot and the fear of what was ahead of us.  It was like a spirit possessed me and everyone around us.  Women and children joined together to kick and drum and chant and wave our arms.  The sound was louder than it had been since we had gotten on that ship.  The usual dull clangs of the chains at our ankles, the repetitive sound of the water hitting the sides of the ship, the high pitched whistle of the steam that we usually heard around us were there now.  A woman crooned, a boy drummed with pieces of wood right there on the floor of the ship, and the many feet tapped together in time to the rhythm of the beat of the music and the drumming.

Soon the crewmen were there to see what all the commotion was.  I thought they would stop us.  Others had certainly gotten beatings and worse, even thrown overboard for insubordination or talking back or less, but this time, they must have welcomed the entertaining diversion too.  Soon, all the crewmen were on our deck mesmerized by the dancing, cheering us on.  Farhani noticed that only the youngest crewmen were there.  The fat crewman with the flat nose who usually barked orders wasn’t there to watch.

The next morning, there was no gruel, no bread, no rotted fish to eat, only shallow dishes of water, barely enough for each woman and child to have some.  The crewmen’s eyes were bloodshot and they smelled even stronger of liquor than usual.  One of the younger crewmen came near me walking carefully, wincing, and holding his back.  I saw red welts across the backs of his arms. Farhani brought me a little of the water.

For several days afterwards, we had only water to drink, just enough to keep our mouths from parching completely.  Everyone around us was getting weaker.  Fights broke out all around us.  The kind people we sang with earlier now stole our little bit of water and gruel.  There were more dead bodies for the crew to throw overboard.  The next morning, there were more fresh fish swimming around the boat, attracted by the dead bodies.  The crew caught them with their nets.   

Farhani and I huddled closer together than usual.

“Where is your father, and mine?” I asked him.

“They were pushed another way when we got on the ship,” he said.  He had seen the men pushed to a lower deck in the boat.

 “Do you think they are asking about us?”  We decided our fathers must be sitting together talking. 

“What will happen to us?” I asked.

He looked at me with his deep brown eyes.

“I will hold your hand,” he said.  “We will stay together.”

Four

We were pushed off the ship roughly just as we had entered it, and it was chaos.  As we got off the ship, we were hustled into a marketplace with great crowds of people with skin lighter than mine shouting and calling at us.  I was shoved with the women and girls up on a platform.

I couldn’t stand still as I watched the crowd of men looking at me.  The men called out and shouted, pointing at the others around me.  I didn’t understand what they were saying or what was happening. 

Finally, the crowd of women around me began to thin out, and most of the others around me had been older and were chosen already.  The ones looking at us had white skin, but all the ones around me reminded me of my mother and my father.  I hadn’t seen either one of them since we got on the boat. 

My bare legs were dusty, and my shoes were tattered.  I smiled to myself as I thought about my mother sewing the long brightly colored dress I was still wearing.  She had made it for me to wear to Uncle’s wedding.  I fidgeted and pulled at the hem where it was dark-stained and torn.  I hoped I could find some water soon to wash the dress.  I looked up to see the men leer at me.   I had seen that look on Uncle’s face when he whistled at the girls on the street.  I wasn’t quite sure what that look meant.  I couldn’t be as beautiful as my mother with her dark brown skin that shimmered in the sun.  My mother’s fingers were long and slim, and I remembered them gripping mine.

My gapped teeth chattered together as the sun went behind a cloud.  My brother used to call me rabbit because of my teeth, but then he had laughed and said no that wasn’t right, I was the tortoise, always reliable, slow and steady.  My brown legs were thin, and I didn’t have nearly as much muscle as he did.  He won the town races every year, but he didn’t outrun the strangers. 

I still didn’t know why the men were looking at me like that.  My knees were so dry and sticky.  I stood there for a long time, until finally one of the last white men standing in front pointed to me.

“I’d like that one,” he said, jabbing a fat finger at me.

He was short and round, and had a fat head with small eyes.  He smiled broadly with dry, cracked lips.  His teeth were like the beads on the necklace my father had given to my mother when he returned from one of his trips across the grasslands.  My mother had worn the necklace at Uncle’s wedding party.  Each bead was a different size and shape and some of the beads were pale yellow like the haze-covered sun over the grassy plains, but others shined brighter white.  His nose was bulbous and red and his cheeks were wide and flat.  The clothes he wore were cleaner than my dress, but he was shabbier and was not as well-dressed as the other men who called out before him.

He came closer and squinted dimly at me.  His sweet smell reminded me of the medicine man who visited my father bringing him wormword.  His breath was warm and sour as he grabbed my face and chin to push and pull on my teeth.  I rubbed my jaw with the back of my hand as he roughly took me by the elbow, pulled up my arm, and felt my breast. 

“She looks like one who will have a lot of children,” he said then, squeezing my belly flesh.  “I’ll take her.” 

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. 

Six

One day in the field, I saw my brother standing right next to me, his face cut and bruised purple, and the sharp edges of his rib boned through his chest.  I leaned over in the field and vomited brown bile.  My stomach turned over and over.  My head spun.  The sun beat hotly on the back of my neck.  I picked cotton until the ends of my fingers were numb.

My mother was near me in the field too.  She sang Mbube, Mbube, the song from the game we had played in the school yard just a short time before.  I heard her singing the song with her sweet, strong voice.  She chased after me, like the lion after the goats, right there in the field.  I worried the master would catch us being silly.  She hugged me goodbye in front of our house in Africa, and sent me off to school. 

“Be good,” she called after me.  “Listen, and do what they tell you.” 

Then I was running, far behind Akin and his friends, trying to catch up with the boys who were already halfway to the schoolyard.  Akin looked back and stuck his tongue out at me.  I was far behind him, and I couldn’t catch him.  It was the rainy season, and I was running in thick, wet mud, and my legs were so slow.  Then we were all dancing at Uncle’s wedding.  Loud music and drums played, and I danced in circles with my mother and father, Akin, and all my aunts and cousins.  I looked down at my dress, and it was covered in shit and muck. 

Something cool was on my forehead, and I was lying in the field back in Alabama.  My lips tasted salty.  The other field hands gathered around me, peering down at me lying on the ground.  I looked up and saw my father walking across the field towards us.  In his broad, strong arms he carried a bundle of grasses, leaves, and flowers he had brought back from his travel.  He had bones from a slaughtered animal in the pack on his back.  He had been gone only a few days on a short trip across the countryside.  He went into the house where would greet my mother and ask her to boil water so they could cut and pound the plants he brought and cook them down to make into herbal medicine.  

“Baba,” I called weakly after him and waved my arms to get his attention, but he didn’t answer back or turn around to look.  I squinted into the sun.  A shadow passed in front of my eyes and someone slapped my face.  I saw Momma had come down from the big house.  She had come to see me.

“She’s seeing things,” she told the others. 

She held my face, and opened my mouth to peer inside.  She held a cup of water for me to drink as she looked me up and down.  I tried to sit up, but my head spun.

Three strong men carried me up to the big house.  Inside it was cool and dark out of the bright sun.  Momma fixed me a bowl of grits and a cornmeal biscuit to eat.  I drank a big cup of water and still felt the dry scratch of my tongue inside my mouth and on my dry, caked lips. 

“She looks like she is with child,” said the old woman rocking in the corner, darning socks.

I looked down at my belly.  My dress had grown tighter around my middle since I had arrived in Alabama.  I had wondered what that fluttering feeling inside was.  It had grown stronger with each passing day.

Seven

Momma roughly shook me awake. 

“I need help with these children,” she said.  “They’re more than we can handle, and you’re too weak for the fields.”  She bustled back to the kitchen.

The smell of roasting meat wafted to me, and my stomach rumbled loudly.  I sneaked in the kitchen to see what she was doing.

                “The meat is for the master and mistress’s noon meal,” said Momma, slapping my hand away.      She gave me more mush and another biscuit.  “You need to eat though.”

I saw the granny rocking in the corner was holding a swaddled infant.  She was surrounded by at least a dozen other children, all different ages.  A girl younger than me held another infant in her arms, but the baby was throwing its head back, kicking and screaming.  Two boys wrestled on the floor, and a third lay on the floor watching them.  Two children sat up against the wall drawing with a stick on the dirt floor.  I looked around and saw four young girls whispering in the corner, each one with a stick doll wrapped in cloth.

I sat down on the floor with the 3 year olds and smiled at their dolls, but they turned their backs to me.  I only wanted a doll of my own, but the granny from the chair in the corner pressed the screaming infant into my arms.  The swaddled one she had held first was asleep on the floor.  Momma brought some more mush and a spoon.  She slapped my face when I started to take a bite. 

“Feed the baby,” she said.  “You’re going to have to learn to keep these children quiet.” 

After I fed the baby, I took a sock from the mending pile, filled it with dirt from the yard, and sewed the end together.  We all laughed as we watched the children hit the odd-shaped ball back and forth with sticks like Akin and his friends.