Ocean Stirrings: A Work of Fiction in Tribute to Louise Langdon Norton Little, Working Mother and Activist, Mother of Malcolm X and Seven Siblings E-Book

Merle Collins

• Herausgeber: Peepal Tree Press
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 729

Beschreibung

A feminist retelling like no other: the story of Malcom X's Mother The mother of the African American revolutionary, Malcolm X, was a Grenadian woman born at the turn of the 20th century in a rural community in a colonial society where access to education had only just begun for the children of working people and the power of white plantation owners still had few limits. In Ocean Stirrings, Merle Collins has created a moving and deeply feminist novel that not only creates a memorable individual life but also has much to say about the passage from colonialism towards independence.

Leseprobe

MERLE COLLINS

OCEAN STIRRINGS

A WORK OF FICTION AND POETRY

IN TRIBUTE TO LOUISE LANGDON NORTON LITTLE

WORKING MOTHER AND ACTIVIST

MOTHER OF MALCOLM X AND HIS SEVEN SIBLINGS

“A novel is, after all, not a historical document, but a way to travel through the human heart.”

— Julia Alvarez, In the Time of the Butterflies.

“… Poetry is concerned with the massiveness, the multidimensional quality, of experience.”

— Cleanth Brooks, Understanding Poetry (Boston, MA: Holt, Rineheart & Winston, 1976), 6.

“The story of her life was an epic one. The epic began in Grenada, continued in Canada, and ended here in the States. In all three countries there are parts of her life waiting to be resurrected.”

— Wilfred Little, brother of Malcolm X, about his mother Louise Little in Jan Carew, Ghosts in Our Blood (Lawrence Hill Books, 1994), 112.

CONTENTS

Preview

1917: On the Way to Canada

Part 1: Grenada Beginnings

Chapter 1. 1896. A La Digue morning.

Chapter 2. 1895-1896. I té la pou tout moun wè.It was there for everybody to see.

Chapter 3. 1895-1900. The New Arrival.

Chapter 4. The times before. Earlier in the nineteenth century.

Chapter 5. Unraveling the story. The children asking questions.

Chapter 6. Maryam’s Musings. 1895/1896 – and after.

Chapter 7. 1900s. Maryam: still a lot on her mind.

Chapter 8. Oseyan. 1896 to early 1900s.

Chapter 9. 1903/1904. Carib Stones.

Chapter 10. 1903. Remember Baptism Day.

Chapter 11. 1903. The Royal Readers. The Storm.

Chapter 12. The Royal Readers: The Moments.

Chapter 13. 1903-1904. The Royal Readers.Facts for Little Folks.

Chapter 14. 1903-1904. The Royal Readers. Nursery Rhymes.

Chapter 15. 1903-1904. The Royal Readers. Skipping.

Chapter 16. 1904-1908. Extra Lessons.

Chapter 17. 1906-1907. Pick Sense from Nonsense.

Chapter 18. 1907-1908. Royal Reader Book V.An Indian’s Traps.

Chapter 19 1907-1908. Royal Reader Book V.

Sir. Mr. Ansel, Columbus and the Atlantic Ocean.

Chapter 20. 1907-1908. Royal Reader Book V.Speak the Truth and Speak it Ever.

Chapter 21. 1907-1908. Royal Reader Book V.

The Principal Rivers and the Mediterranean.

Chapter 22. 1907-1908. Royal Reader Book V.Synonyms and Antonyms.

Chapter 23. 1907-1908. Lessons from Ma in La Digue.Korèk sé dwèt: Correct is Right.

Chapter 24. 1907-1908. The Royal Readers.Fifth Reading Book. Miriam’s Song.

Chapter 25. 1907-1908. Royal Reader Book V. Fifth Book.

Chapter 26. 1908. The Assyrian Came Down.

Chapter 27. 1908. Henry, Lord Broughamat Holy Innocents School.

Chapter 28. 1908. Chatham on the American War.

Chapter 29. 1908. Fifth Book: Hear Chatham to the end.

Chapter 30. 1908/1909. Watch it with me, young lady.

Chapter 31. 1908. Baby Malcolm.

Chapter 32. 1909. Meetings.

Chapter 33. 1910. A Man named Marryshow.

Chapter 34. 1912. Something in the mortar besides the pestle.

Chapter 35. 1915. This Mr. Marryshow.

Chapter 36. 1915-1916. Garvey and Marryshow:A lot to think about.

Chapter 37. 1916. Changes.

Chapter 38. 1916. Afterward.

Chapter 39. 1916. The Golden Apple. Ponmsitè-a.

Chapter 40. 1916. Mourning Song. I must tell Mr. Dickens.

Chapter 41. 1917. Going Away.

Part 2. Letters to Ma. 1917-1919

Lèt ki di dédé. Goodbye letter.

Lèt ki mwen ékwi pandan tan mwen ka voyagé. Letter en route.

Lèt mémwa. Memory Letter.

Lèt ki konsène latè-a. Letter about the World.

Lèt ki te ékwi adantan nous té asou lanmè-a. Sea Letter.

Lèt asou dwa plantè-a. Letter about the Right of the Lord.

Lèt pandantan mwen kouté. Listening Letter.

Lèt fanmi. Family Letter.

Lèt ékwi kon an poenm. Poetry Letter.

Lèt épi antjèt. Anxiety Letter.

Lèt na Kanada. Letter in Canada.

Lèt ki ka palé nomn-la. Letter about the man.

Lèt. Letter.

Lèt ki pwan disizyon. Decision letter.

Lèt: Mwen mayé’y. Letter: I married him.

Part 3. The United States of America. 1919-1931

1. Getting There.

2. A Baby.

3. Emancipation Day.

4. Widower.

5. Butler, Georgia.

6. Leaving Philadelphia.

7. Thoughts about the Journey.

8. Girl Child in Nebraska.

9. It hasn’t happened.

10. So what do you plan to do?

11. Life Goes on.

12. 1925: Take it easy inside there, little one.

13. Working Woman.

14. Reaching Back.

15. Housewife.

16. Teach the children. American Midwest 1920s and 30s.Memory from La Digue, 1902.

17. Where is your boss?

18. More lessons in the American Midwest 1920s and 1930s.

19. The Midwest 1920s and 30s. Memories from La Digue.Plants make me smile.

20. Turn your hand to something.

21. Lessons in the American Midwest circa 1929Negroes in America.

22. X-rated.

23. The Fire.

Part 4: Premonitions and Endings 1931-1939

24. 1931. Blood in the Dream.

25. Their Mother’s Tears.

26. The Body.

27. Passing?

28. Eating the Bread that the Devil Knead

29. 1926-1927. After Twenty Years in North America.

30. Reasonings in the Dark.

31. A Different Story.

32. 1938/39. Sé jab pou vwé: Is real devil.

33. January 1939. They came for her in the morning.

Part 5: Leavings and Returnings. 1939-early 1960s. Poems

Why am I here? Sing a song to me.

No-one will answer me.

My name.

1939/1940. In a wood where beasts can talk.

1940s. Love wins love.

1939-1943. Tick tock.

1940s, Kalamazoo. The place where I am.

I lose road.

Tired, but not insane.

1940s: Who was he?

1940s: The Honourable Marcus Mosiah.

1940s: The great jump.

Royalty.

1940s. All the people have gone.

1940s. No birds.

Black is illegal.

Land.

1940s. The tea that they give.

Once.

1940s. At war.

1940s. I will not think about it.

1940s. Kalamazoo musings.

1940s. They write me “W”.

1940s. Broken by the war.

1950s. They shock me.

1950s. Be careful, wi.

1950s. Silence.

1950s. I feel so ill.

1902, 1903, and the 1950s. The moments fly.

Kalamazoo, 1950s. Talking to myself again.

Kalamazoo Musings: The see-saw.

1904 and 1950s. Lessons.

Biting.

1950s. She took a bottle to church.

1950s. Kalamazoo.

1950s. Kalamazoo: Group therapy.

1950s. The old man and the dog.

1950s. Visits.

Yes. All the people have gone.

1950s. The owl.

1950s. The wind.

1907-1908 and 1950s. That George Washington.

1907, 1908 and 1950s. Evening.

1958. The judge

1950s. It is decided.

Really – the judge.

1950s. Kalamazoo needs.

1908 and 1950s. Memories at Kalamazoo.

1950s. Gardening.

1950s. All in a row.

Whom can you trust?

1959. She is a seamstress.

1903-1904 and 1959. She didn’t know what to do.

1950s. Waste not, want not.

1908 and 1959. Write things down.

Rheumatism and grandchildren.

My children?

1960-1961. Where did you learn all these things?

1960s. They stole my life.

1960s. Stronger.

1960s. The pet bird.

1960s. Mental health.

1960s. Beauty parlor.

Convalescent.

1960s. Little wheel and big wheel.

Afterword

Acknowledgements

Endnotes

PREVIEW

1917: ON THE WAY TO CANADA

I turn to the ocean

That swallowed my ancestors

I stand on deck

Dare the waves to be calm

I’m here again, Atlantic

I want to visit the place that Hudson claimed

I want to walk where the Iroquois walked

I want to see more of the Lamèwik that made and divided Europe

I want to listen to what the ocean says

Whisper to me, ocean

I want to find a way to tell my story

Mwen vlé twouvé yon manyè pou wakonté listwa mwen

PART 1

Grenada Beginnings

CHAPTER ONE

1896. A La Digue Morning

From the hills of La Digue they can look down at the ocean, talking secret to the sands, shoo-shooing, playful, intimate, running up and easing back, down there near La Baye, the town that is theirs. People say it is the second town of their island, Grenada, but for those who live there, La Baye, which some also call Grenville, is the first. Sometimes town people act as if town, which is what they call St George’s, the capital, is the centre, but to people around La Baye, their town is really the main place for everything – for good king fish from the sea, for crayfish from the river mouth, for a nice new market these days, for cocoa, now that cocoa is in swing, for nutmeg, for everything. It is where they meet and greet each other by Mr Lamotte liquor store, by Mr Rennie on Victoria Street, by the Revenue Office, by the Colonial Bank agency, by the market. They pretend not to see Miss Doodoose, as underneath as ever, standing up at the corner by the pillarbox, watching everything and waiting to run she mouth. Or Mr Joseph, waiting by that same pillar box in his khaki shirt and khaki pants, waiting to see the government workers clear the mail out of the pillarbox at half past two, waiting as if somebody paying him to do that job. Fast he fast so, they thinking. But there is nothing of that in their shouts to one another.

Makoumè, kouman ou yé? How tings?

And

What you know good? Sa ou ka di la?

Épi

Ti fi, ou gadé bèl, wi! Girl, you lookin nice, yes!

And

You don’t have to tell me something in the mortar besides the pestle. Uh Uh Uh!

Ou pa ni pou di mwen i ni kéchoy nan pilon-an pasé manch-la

Épi

Woy-o-yoy! Denmou an plas la! Trouble in the place!

Sometimes they have to help up two languages – dé lanng – to tell the story going on around them; sometimes one is enough. And always they laugh out loud, sounding gleeful, as if they have secured the secret to survival. Not that life is easy. Life has never been easy. Sometimes on the hill in La Digue and the surrounding areas, when the rain don’t fall to water the hillside land, and when the estate acting as if labourer is river dog, things hard like boli, which is the name their ancestors left them for the calabash, but anyway God good – Papa Bondyé bon – and they making it.

And this thing self they call the estate! All round the place the situation different and some people getting rid of the land because they say it not doing too well, but whether is Vincent in La Digue or those that inherit from Garraway in Union or is Patterson in Marli Cottage or Patterson and Whiteman in Mirabeau and St Cyr, it don’t matter who it is, you have to listen out for when land become available and try to make sure you get a piece because land becoming available more and more and a little piece o land is the answer these days for poor people who don’t have it. Because even when it there for you to work on and put money in their pocket, that is another story. They say they getting rid of the big estate and helping out poor people, but what they doing is trying to help deyself first. Épi, si ou katjilé asou’i, ou sa konpwann. And if you think about it, it stands to reason. Tout moun ka gadé pou kòyé. Everybody looking out for theyself.

They tell you they going give you an acre of land so you could work it and they ask you to plant cocoa for them in between your crops on your acre while you plant yam and dasheen and other things for yourself. But don’t be fooled. Mé pa kité yé kouyonné’w. Oh no! As soon as you finish planting the cocoa for them, they taking away that piece and saying how willing they are to give you another piece. They laughing with you kya kya kya while all of this happening and you just have to watch them and do as if you stupid. You know that is their land, but that as soon as you manage to buy a piece for yourself where you could grow your own food, you done with this nonsense. Ou fini èvèk bétiz sala. And is not only here it happening. My cousin in Sauteurs tell me is the same thing up there.

Maryam is thinking all of this as she stands with arms akimbo, on the dirt road below the hill where their house sits, looking down through the trees at the sea in the distance. She gives a quick swish to the light blue cotton skirt, stamps her feet, puts her hand up to touch the plait circling her head, and stamps her feet again. A cricket or a mybone or something. Some insect trying to bother her. She moves a hand across her shoulders, brushing, looking around; she sees nothing, focuses again on the grey-blue sea, foaming down below.

She can’t hear it, but she can imagine that swhooshing sound of the sea as it moving in and out, looking so calm over there near La Baye. These days, is like she always hearing talk about how blue and peaceful are the seas around the island. Hmm. Is the children she hearing the talk from. Is high-up people that does talk that talk, and it come to her mainly through the children, who get it wherever they get it, but the sea looking good down there in truth, wi, even from far – the white foam on the blue, speckling it up like – well, it lookin good – well good.

Maryam thinks of her big son Eero. At seventeen, eh – seventeen dèggè dèggè years! – and with what his father calling a independent streak. At seventeen, what kind of independent streak is that he having? Ki kalité andépandans i ni a dissèt lané?

Anyway, mouth open, word jump out, yes. At seventeen, me self already had more than enough on my plate. Hay-a-yay! And in spite of herself, Maryam laughing out loud at this thought so that Dolly – walking down the track just at that moment, coming from her garden further up the hill along this road that they calling Waterfall, with a bundle of wood poised over a straw hat on her head, a brown skin mami sipot in one hand and a short-blade cutlass in the other – Dolly stop and talk.

“Ay ay, Maryam! Blag sala byen dou. That joke well sweet. I want piece of it. Mwen vlé yon mòso.”

Maryam turns to face Dolly, smiles, stands with her feet apart on the track, and moves the outside part of her right thumb across her chin. “Kouman ou yé, Dolly? How you do?”

You have to be careful, she thinking. The same ones laughing with you kya kya kya just waiting to pick up story and run with it.

Dolly looks at Maryam curiously. “Mwen la. I dey. But you self, Maryam, you more than dey! Mé ou menm, Maryam, ou plis ki la. You and who else enjoying thing so? Ou épi ki moun ki ka pasé bon tan kon sa? Bagay bon? Thing good?”

Maryam is still smiling, calm, watchful. “Me and me alone, girl. Sé mwen épi mwen tousèl. Is my mind giving me good joke like that. Sé lèspwi mwen ki ka ba mwen bon blag kon sa. Épi sé lanng épi dan ki ka édé mwen kon sa. And is tongue and teeth that helping me out so.” Maryam laughs out loud again, and Dolly smiles, still looking curious.

“Lanng épi dan, sé dé sala, yé danjéwé, eh. Those two, tongue and teeth, they dangerous, you know.” And Dolly moves her head slightly to one side to give emphasis to the point. Maryam smiles too, her face crinkling as she lifts a hand to rub it across eyes gone suddenly cloudy, as if rain does fall when you least expect it. She thinks, Yes, I know. Wi. Mwen konnèt. She turns to her right, jumps over the cocoa leaves, across the small drain, indicating that she is going to walk back up to her house on the hillside.

“Well, see you again, Ma,” says Dolly. “Let me put foot to road and go make sure pot on fire. Kité mwen mété pyé asou chimen èk alé mété chòdyè mwen asou difé-a. Take care of yourself, okay? And say howdy for me.”

“Wi, doudou. Mèsi. Yes, my dear. Thank you. Di bonjou pou mwen osi. Say howdy for me, too.”

Dolly, her dark face glistening with sweat, her long brown skirt down over black waterboots,the underarm of her blue and white short-sleeved t-shirt visibly wet as she lifts an arm again to steady the load on her head, turns to continue down the hillside. Maryam walks up the hill through the red bougainvillea she had planted on both sides of the stony path.

Her brain is at it again, not making her laugh out loud this time, just turning things over so she could read them inside her head and try to make out anything that might be wanting to hide in the margins. Lanng épi dan. Hmm. Tongue and teeth. Yes. She know they dangerous. Anyway, she must go back inside. She just had to run down the hill and get some air. She like to look down at La Baye from the bend in the road, especially when the head feeling kinda full. Something about that particular bend-in-the-road view always make her feel better.

They will christen the little girl tomorrow in the church. The priest give them a date, so February twelfth it is. Just do it quick and quiet. Don’t give tongue and teeth too much time to talk about what it don’t know about.

Maryam is restless this morning. True it getting brighter and brighter and the sun starting to look at her as if it wondering if she waiting for it to get high, high in the sky, but she still not ready to go back inside. So she let her body down on to the wooden steps that Oba and Eero build for this little board house on the hill. They work good together, those two. And Oba knees not doing too well these days, so is a good thing Eero there to work with his father. Well, the father seventy. Seventy, yes. Old man she take put on her account. He wasn’t old when they start out all those years ago. But… and Maryam sits there with her chin in her hand, leaning on the elbow pressed into her right thigh, thinking about this thing called her life. She must brush away these cocoa leaves, wi. Where they come from? No sound from inside, so the baby must be asleep still and Gerda probably sleeping too. She out of school – big lady, yes, twelve years already now – and she could help with the baby instead of looking for some kind of work in the big house and going and find trouble. Because is so these people stay. Those white man in these houses, their hand well fast. She know that from experience. You just have to be you and let them know what is what. And of course she will learn to sew. Girls must learn to sew.

Hard how things hard, she had to take this little baby from Ernestine, yes, because that girl can’t cope. She really can’t cope. She was always like that, worried about everything, but is like this thing with baby take the energy and the fight out of her. And look she close sheself up now and only staying on her own there, not even eating the little bit she could get, down there on the hillside in Richmond. I don’t know what to tell this child… well, not child any more at eighteen – but she have to learn how to handle sheself in the world with these men. They don’t care nothing about nobody, especially when dey not black like us, and dey skin clear, or dey white, and the world belong to them, but you have to know how to handle things when you is woman.

She say he force her, and I believe her, but Lord! Is like that child is a magnet for trouble! It hurt me heart, in truth. That same man, big official with white skin, the talk is that he get Miss Evangeline eleven-year-old little girl pregnant now. These white people, when they in position – well, not when they in position, non, because their skin itself is the position! So they always in position once they white. So is just to avoid them because sometimes they have you in a situation as if you, as woman, you can’t say no. Is just to avoid them. I tell the child that. Is not her fault, non, is not her fault. So I don’t want to sound – I don’t want to feel – as if is her fault. Is so the world is already, but I tired telling her. Don’t grin, grin with these men; make them think you want nothing from them. Because dem don’t care! I tell the child. Mwen di timamay-la. Mwen di’y.

Maryam sits on the steps with her head down. Is to avoid them. Don’t put yourself in a position where they could see you and corner you. Maryam rustles the skirt of her dress, trying to brush away the sandflies that waking up already to bother people this early morning. She sits back, elbows on the wooden steps, looking up at the trees – the bwa kano marking the boundary with Joseph down the hill, the mango tree over there, and a set of bush she not even sure what is what. This granddaughter of hers will have a good life if she Maryam have anything to do with it. This child will make it. She going make it. She going make it, for sure.

Maryam watched the world around her getting brighter. But look at me, eh, sitting down here like lady of leisure, as if I have nothing to do. Dolly must be reach home and forget. Let me get up, eh! Let me get up and go inside.

CHAPTER TWO

1895-1896. I té la pou tout moun wè. It was there for everybody to see.

By about June that year, 1895, i té la pou tout moun wè, it was there for everybody to see. The bad-mouth people in the area had enough to say. Maryam was right there to hear because she had decided to do a few days in the cocoa, carrying the heavy cocoa basket to bring in some extra so that she could help out Ernestine because she thought the child wasn’t eating as she should at this particular time, and she seemed to be struggling on her own. It was there, when she was settling the kata on her head so she could lift up the cocoa basket, that Isidora whisper to Maryam that she didn’t like to talk behind people back, so she would tell her what she hearing. And though Maryam knew that mouth was all over her business, she said nothing. She just listened as if she was hearing it for the first time, lifting up more worry same time with the cocoa basket.

She had always been worried about the way men – white, black and in-between – used to watch that child. And she always worried, too, about the way the girl responded, not really encouraging them but not pushing them away as Maryam thought she should. And when you hear people whispering like that under the cocoa is usually some talk about woman or about a high-up man. She didn’t like it that this time again it was her Ernestine.

So here it was now, reach under the cocoa in June, in the middle of mango season, tongue and teeth – lanng épi dan – looking for another kind of juice, gossiping about what they didn’t know about. June – just around the time when you could find the pwa dou that the two younger girls, Faith and Amèlie, liked so much that any time you miss them you could be sure they under the tree up on the hill cracking the long black pods and sucking on the white pulp inside. The talk reach under the cocoa in June but inside the house Maryam had sensed something before that. April. About middle of April. The child was staying over a few nights, wanting to keep close to them, although her little one-room house wasn’t far away, almost as if she was afraid. She was keeping her head down a lot, rushing outside early in the morning. Clinging around her a lot, but not saying much, her eyes looking dark and weepy and heavy. Maryam gave a deep, knowing sigh. Ah-h-h Lord! And then she could see the little girl vomiting her liver out, behind the cactus, on the other side of the walkway Oba had carved out in their spot there on top of the hill.

Non, Sènyè Jézi, non. Not again. It hit her already once and the Lord put a stop to it. Not again. No, Lord Jesus, no!

And as she walking under the cocoa basket, with her back straight and her hips moving like load is no stranger, is that she thinking about, not tongue and teeth and their komès, but what she remembering. Strange how the body and the mind could be shouting a thing and mouth just keep its own counsel, grim and closed and quiet, like nothing happening – or perhaps as if what happening so worrying that mouth think it better to keep its own counsel. Non, Sènyè Jézi. She not the youngest, Lord, but she have so much trouble in her life already with good-for-nothing people, and she young still, and although people might say well, at eighteen, nineteen she big enough, me, she mother, I know she not big enough, and she don’t have a penny to she name, Lord, and things hard. She just drink water and she struggling to be who she is. Don’t give her this tribulation now, Lord. Spare her, Lord. Bondyé, otjipé-i.

And because Maryam and the Lord had that kind of relationship, she could hear him and see him answering her with his head to one side, looking sideways at her. “Well is not me, non. She have to know to spare herself. I ni pou konnèt pou otjipé kò’i.”

Oba, meanwhile, didn’t say anything. She wondered if he had noticed. He moving in and out of the house, doing his work as usual, saying nothing, and even in the night when they in bed together, nothing. Turning his back on her as if she do him something.

And then one morning they heard a golden-apple fall – rustling down through the leaves and then boop on the ground. Right after that movement, another kind of rustling. Somebody get up, rush through the hall outside, fumble and pull at the door. That was how Maryam remembered it – the sound of the golden apple falling from the tree outside, and then her little girl – well, they always little, even when other people think dey big – rushing outside from the hall. She couldn’t help thinking about the tall woman over the hill on the other side of Grand Bras – Miss Mooma, everybody called her – Miss Mooma, tall and a very dark, striking black. Just the other day they were saying in the corner shop that Miss Mooma little girl was pregnant by one of those reprobates. Only ten or eleven years old the child was, and instead of picking up cutlass and going and look for the man and give him a good planass, people talking about how at least the child would have some good colour if that is the father in truth. And she think about it now because she hear that that same reprobate was sniffing around her little girl. In fact, his name call for the one the Lord take back. He not one of those big planters, but is their family, and the big jèwè in town had him managing and doing what he doing on the estate up the hill there. And she had warn the child as she always do.

Sènyè Jézi, tjébé lanmen mwen pou mwen pa sèvi yon koutla anlè yon moun. Lord Jesus, hold me hand so I won’t use a cutlass on somebody.

Maryam knew that Oba was awake in the bed next to her. She held her breath. I hope is the latrine she gone to, just to pee, and perhaps she gone to pick up the golden apple. She had to think that. But she knew. Near her, lying facing the board partition on the other side, Oba took a deep breath. And Maryam found herself listening for the breath to come out, but it was like he would never let that breath go. Then he said simply, tonelessly, without turning in the bed, Mwen asiwé mwen kay tjwé yon moun tan sala… I’m sure I will kill somebody this time.

Maryam got up, put her feet down on her side of the bed that her carpenter husband made – di Bondyé mèsi – and she sat there for a moment moving her toes on the bedside straw mat that she had bought at the store in La Baye. She made the sign of the cross sitting there. She prayed, sitting down there. This is April Fool’s day, yes, Lord. The month just start. My little girl eighteen, but she is a child without a penny to she name. Save her, Lord. She had warned the child: Be careful. Man always watching you on the estate there, but the watching could be dangerous and could spoil you life. Be careful. Well, what she want to save her from there, it happen already. But better not to think too much. Maryam stood up, dragged a breath from deep inside her and let it go out into the world. Papa God don’t give you more than you could handle, they say. So Papa God, why you thinking I could handle this? Poutji ou pansé mwen sa sipòté sa?

Maryam felt she would always remember every detail from that morning. She picked up the checkered dressing gown, the one she had made. She moved the chamber-pot over to one side – she will empty it later. She looked across at her baby girl, Amèlie, asleep in the cradle, the sleeping space that Oba had built with his own hands for his youngest. She would even remember afterward that she took a deep breath before telling her feet that they should move and keep her going.

And for years afterward, Maryam will move her feet when her thoughts reach this place, an involuntary movement, taking the step nobody could take for her. Life had been good to her, she would remember thinking, almost as a prayer, as if insisting that it continue to be good. And she counted off the good things on the fingers of her thoughts. One, since she knew herself as a child, she had food to eat – mango to suck, governor plum, sapodilla, yam on the land where the estate let her mammie make provision grounds, green fig from that same land, ripe fig – so really she always had food. Just in that one thought there were six, seven good things. And she could add a second thing that made her know she was lucky. Even after her mother died, she had another mammie to take care of her. And once you could add one plus one, you lucky. So with two things, she didn’t even have to find more, but she could remember all that laughter growing up and she had children to play games with. So she could stop now. Life had been good to her, and she hadn’t even started counting Oba and the children yet. She put on her dressing gown, tied the two ends of the band at the front, walked to the door over the creaking floor, creaking so damn much that she feared it would wake the children, and then she turned the knob of the door that Oba had put up to give them a bedroom space, and walked out into the hall.

She wasn’t really surprised to see Gerda sitting up in her nightie, crouched on the floor to the right of the bedroom door, looking as if something frighten her. Gerda would be eleven in just a couple of months. She had just started to see her monthly blood. Sènyè, pwotéjé-i. Lord, protect her. Where was Beatrice? Perhaps she had run outside to help her sister.

She must talk to this little one, too, yes, although what to tell her was a question she didn’t much like having to deal with. But they… well, think about it another time. She looked at her little girl and said, “Everything alright. Tout bagay byen. Go back to sleep. Viwé dòmi.”

The other little one, Faith, eight years, yes – and this morning Maryam is weepy as she thinks of the age of each one of her girls. It was as if suddenly she was realising that they were in a world that had no respect or love or consideration for their age, that did not really value them or think about them as people. Faith lay next to Gerda in the bright red nightie that was her favourite colour – this one is Sängo, Oba always says. The rumpled sheet on the other side of Gerda was evidence that Beatrice and Ernestine had been lying there before one or both of them rushed outside. One part of Maryam’s mind took in all of this but still the main part was focused on her daughters outside. On one of them, mainly. He will take care of her. God will take care of her.

Maryam tried to walk carefully and not to brush her hand too hard against the green curtain on her left, separating the hall into two rooms. Rex slept there. Both boys used to be there, but now Eero had left the space to his six-year-old brother. Perhaps he might be at his cousin’s house this early morning. But who know where he is? She can’t worry about him now like she used to when he was younger. She was only thinking about him because while every instinct told her to run outside, her feet and her whole body were putting things off.

Oba would soon replace this curtain with a proper wooden partition. He just had to organise himself so that he was taking on less work outside to make ends meet and could spend time on the many building ideas he had for this precious living space they had at least been able to say was almost theirs.

Maryam walked to the door, held on to the doorknob, turned, pulled the door open, walked through the doorway, and down the steps to outside. Ernestine, her back to the house, her body outlined in the long grey cotton nightie, was just under the coconut tree, knees bent, hands just above them on her thighs. Instinctively, Maryam’s eyes went to the branches of the tree. Don’t stand under coconut tree, child, she cautioned in her mind.

Later, the story came out – more from Beatrice than from Ernestine. The person who had forced her daughter was one of the high-up people – a big shot not because he was rich, because he wasn’t rich, really, but because he was white, and he knew of them there on the hill, while he was further up the hill on the estate. He didn’t think much about them, of course, and what they might want, Maryam felt sure. If you white, you all right. She wouldn’t tell the child anything, not now. It happen already. She heard that a woman up the road beat her little girl for being too forward. And was this the same man as before, she was wondering. She doesn’t really want to know. And tifi, people said, should learn to keep their tail quiet – Sipozé apwann tjenn latjé-yo twankil. They should learn, people said, not to form fashion so much that they make man drag them in corner – pou pòté kò-i a manyè pou nom pa halé-i a ti kwen.

But Maryam couldn’t blame her little girl. True, from time the child like to skip, to perform, to challenge big people, to form fashion. She is a child who like to see how far she could go. She is an inquisitive girlchild grown big in a world that does not respect girlchildren and definitely does not like inquisitive girlchildren.

The planter man, the sailor man, the insurance man, the highup man, all man, and especially the high-up ones who had the sayso, they watched little girls, and you could see the big eyes saying, This one ready already, as if the girl had been put in their garden to grow and feed their hunger, and they just keep watching the fruit to see if it was ripe enough for their taste. Sometimes you could see their eyes thinking they could even eat it green. It’s not as if man hiding.

What her girlchild is guilty of is being a girl in a world that does not think twice about shaming little girls. And Maryam knows that no one would forgive her girlchild for that – that even her own – the Africans and the Creoles – would be watching and blaming her, and whispering that you could see she like to take man. She had heard whispers like this too often not to know it would happen. Plain talk, bad manners. So the less said the better. Is okay. Bondyé bon. They would see after themselves.

Oba says quietly, “I am going to kill somebody.” For days after this, he siddown on the step sharpening his cutlass with a file, moving the instrument with precision and intent. He stop going to sit in the corner shop on his way home the day the talk in the shop turn to the story of a little girl whose belly was swelling because a white planter or his relative… he or his brother, one of them highup people – that’s how the story went in the shop – one of them just throw her down in the boucan and pull her this way and dat, and had sex with her. And tongue and teeth started to create.

In the boucan? I thought I hear was under the cocoa? Miss Marjorie, give me two pound a flour dey please, Ma’am. The madam say she will pay you weekend.

Well, however it happen, it happen.

I not sure if is the man in the big house himself or if is one of his relative – you know how they stay! They can’t keep their thing in their pants.

And is so people talking . And the laughter in the shop is long and loud. Somebody say steupes and shake head from side to side, but nobody take up cutlass to go up to the big house. They just mutter about how those white men like black meat. Somebody even say that the young white man is a relative and they hearing talk about perhaps he married one of those little black girls. And so the talk continue.

Perhaps he what?

Gason, ou fou? Boy, you mad? Sa épi yon bouwik vè.

That and a green donkey!

Woy! Tongue and teeth don’t laugh at good ting, in truth.

Lanng épi dan pa ka wi bon bagay, pou vwé.

And of this eleven-year old little girl, Adolphus said, “You think that is child, then? Some of these little woman an dem act like big people, you know.”

And Oba heard Jerome, who used to be his friend before that moment, announce, “Me self will take a piece if I get it. Those little woman fresh too much, you know.” And on Jerome’s face was the same look you could see on Boss face when he watched little girls on the estate.

Carlton said, “She get what she want. I sure they does see how the big man eyeing dem. Dose little girls not stupid, you know.”

And Oba, wise because he is hurting for his own child, said in a quiet voice, “But is a child, man.” And even as he says it he thinks he should say more, protest more. He remembered Maryam saying, “An eleven-year-old little girl is an eleven-year-old little girl, no matter how fresh you think she is. As the grown-up person, she can’t put question to you, and if you think she putting question to you, tell her to go home. You-self, you not a child. And even if the girl is eighteen or more, if she tell you no, is no she mean, and you can’t just decide that she pretending that. And if she just didn’t say nothing because she realise you are a boss man and you powerful and could be the one to give her a work, you still not suppose to take advantage.” Oba walks these days with Maryam’s voice in his head, so he isn’t afraid to say something.

But still, perhaps Maryam could say all of this better than he could. The words stuck in Oba’s throat even as Jerome said, “Me, I not going to miss out. Leave all for the Boss? No sir! I have more sense than that.”

Old Adolphus, silent until now, said, “That is just nastiness. All-you letting Bossman take all-you soul just because you hear how ting happen. And because that is what you have in your head already. That is just nastiness.”

But the laughter echoed around them. Oba told Maryam later that he sat and listened, unable to join in the general laughter. And Maryam said nothing because she thought that when man get together she know for sure they does say things they wouldn’t say in woman presence. Beg God pardon but she couldn’t help wondering if Oba’s reaction would have been different if he wasn’t thinking that this was his daughter. He told her that in the rumshop a woman’s voice from the doorway turned out to be that of Maisie, mother of Jerome’s woman, Dolly. And Maisie said, “What happen, Oba? How you looking downhearted so? You have a dog in the fight?” Oba didn’t take the bait. That, he said, was when he got up and walked out of the shop, limping a little because these days the right knee was always swollen and hurting.

It was as if Oba retired from the village around this time. The house benefited, Maryam thought. You have to look for the silver lining. Oba finished all the work he had long been planning to do in his house. Sometimes she had to remind him that he had to go out, do like her, and get a few days work because bad how ting is, they have to eat.

He put a partition in the large hall so that now they had two proper bedrooms, like big shots. He said he would build a third. After he did some work on the house and some carpentry in the estate yard, and could put his hand on some money, he painted the house green to fit in with the surrounding vegetation and put edgings the colour of the purple bougainvillea, and he paid Vincent off for the piece of land. From the bottom of the road, as they walked up the hillside road everybody called Waterfall, people paused, standing arms akimbo and head back to look up at the special board house standing back from the green and settling there behind the purple bougainvillea. Woy! Oba and Maryam is big shot these days, man! You doh see house! And that is not wall it have in the bottom down dey? Like they planning for the future? Well yes. Oba and Maryam well reach! They reach where they going, wi…

CHAPTER THREE

1895-1900. The new arrival

Bush-gram busy shoo-shooing. All-you don’t hear? A new baby in the Langdon house on the hill up there, yes.

Oba and Maryam didn’t stop on the roadside to talk to people and hear what tongue and teeth had to say. If you don’t wash your clothes in the open river, nobody could say they see the colour of the water that the river take away. Tongue and teeth eased aside the doors of their hideout up there in face-top, but nothing much they could wag and slobber-lick with each other about except what they imagine, or what fast people who know nothing at all present to ears sitting down on the corner.

And me, I could tell you because I am Spirit of the Place, hearing and seeing and knowing everything. You know how old people does say walls have ears? Well, I am the ears that walls have, and although they don’t usually say it, walls have eyes too. When you think you see something, so you turn right around to find the something, but nothing there, is me, Spirit. I don’t let nobody catch sight of me, but I witnesssing.

And yes, tongue and teeth shoo-shooing. Baby coming, they say. And those who know the names of the Langdon girls say is each one of them that mother this child.

E-heh? But the big one – what she name again? Beatrice! That little girl is only about 12 or 13, yes! And the one after her only about 10, 10 or 11, you know. And the other two girls – they little. Is four of them that there as girls. And then is the two boys – the big one – the one that does hold he head in the sky as if he is the governor, and the little one. So which one? And spit swish word around in mouth to see which one taste good enough to keep teasing tongue. And another one say, well, if it is that one is the mother, she lose the baby fat quick, but perhaps is not that one. Then which one, non? Well, perhaps is the other one that people say sitting down in Richmond round the corner down there watching through the bushes all day long trying to see the sea, as if she believe blue going out of style, and looking as if she have something heavy weighing down her spirit. But couldn’t be she! That is their child, non? I thought I hear was a relative? Non. Non. Non. I hear they had a child before, you know. Never! How I don’t know that? Or – well, it might well be the one that born just before the big fire in La Baye. I know them, you know. I know Maryam since she used to live with a relative in Grand Bras land for a little time, before she married and had children and everything. That little girl pass school age already, but not long, non, not much more than – twelve or thirteen. I hear she take off go in Trinidad – Beatrice or some other name they does call her. Or something else happen in the family, non? Perhaps. Nuff ting that get bury does happen in family when you see white people and man – whether black or white – involve.

They even say it might be the last little girl that is the mother – which goes to show how much some people know about the natural way of things – or perhaps is just that they don’t know the age of the last little one. Because that little one is a baby, yes, about three years old. Is to tell you how tongue and teeth could be dangerous.

And all tongue and teeth could do was whisper, because neither Oba nor Maryam invited conversation or ventured explanation. It’s not that they looked down at the ground as if they drop shame and had to find it to pick it up, non, but they just look a little bit above everybody head, as if they like the sight of the bwa kano growing in boundary line in the distance and waving to the sky up there. Or as if they wondering about that nutmeg tree over in the corner on the hill and how it looking as if it bearing already and thinking that it can’t be true, that is anywhere from five to eight years these nutmeg trees take to bear and produce the tight yellow pod that will suddenly open one day to show fancy red and brown skinfit outfit. And when, their heads still high, Oba and Maryam wrinkled their nose a little bit, people had to wonder if they think they seeing thrips on the cocoa tree and trying to figure out if that little sucking insect really there to destroy the tree. Because Maryam and Oba had nothing to say to nobody. They just there looking like if they don’t know that everybody shoo-shooing and trying to figure out what don’t concern them.

The children from that Langdon house, too, kept their own counsel. The big boy keep his head high in the usual way, making people say that – ay ay! – is like he feel he is the governor in truth. But how he could be governor with nothing much in his pocket? Those Langdon people meet things hard like gru-gru, like everybody else on this hill. So what it is with this head high business? But some asked, So what? You can’t hold you head high if things hard?

What people sure about, though, is that Oba and Maryam have a chabin grandchild. Anybody could see that later on when the family take the little bundle out to introduce crinkly face and tiny rolled-up light-skinned fists to the La Digue air, and they could see it even better a lot later, when the little girl with the long black plaits and the red skin start walking down through the bottom road there in Waterfall, holding on to her grandmother’s hand or to the hand of one of the girls who may or may not have been her mother.

Then later on, they watched the little girl walk down the La Digue road to go in the shop like everybody else, and they marvelled at her high colour. Some said, She pretty, eh? Whatever happen, the skin well pretty. Whatever you want to say, she raise their nose. She raise their chances in this world. Look how Maryam grand highcolour. But when Maryam heard that kind of talk, she ready to cut neck.

She say, “She pretty, yes. She pretty because all my generation pretty, and that reprobate colour have nothing to do with it. Trying to spoil things, but it ain’t succeeding. If it wasn’t my child, I would say that colour is a evil mark, but is mine, so is just a stain we couldn’t avoid, that is all it is.”

And people watched the little light-skinned Langdon, not one that get the Langdon name and some of the skin colour from a white Langdon, but one that tongue say could get another white man name that staying secret for now, a name from another wandering white seed; and they marvelled that this new little Langdon so active already, and she so small that she just barely able to keep the little legs steady. They watched her hold a big person hand, the little blue skirt and white shirt neat on the nearwhite body, the little knife pleat of the blue school skirt sharp even when she a little thing – little, little. And they talked, of course. Ay! Ma Maryam buying plenty starch boy, or is manioc she grating so? They watched the child walk up the dirt road to that place the church say is a school – they put a roof on it and it looking well good dey – is not for style, is for the children to have some place to sit down and learn their lesson – one day they go make it a proper school. Ma Maryam taking in front. She starting early. Before time, everybody who want lesson had to go down to La Baye but the Archdeacon well trying in La Digue here! Ma Maryam start to send her grandchild to learn early early, as if, they murmured, to prove a point. And it was as though Maryam was the mother, because she was the one taking the child on Sunday mornings to the Anglican church in Holy Innocents, where the English school and the English church together on one long piece of land above the place the French people call La Digue when they were here, taking the child to church to give God thanks for letting eyes open up on a day of sunshine – or rain, if is rain Papa Bondyé choose to give; is Ma Maryam introducing the little girl to the market in La Baye; is from Ma Maryam she learn early to watch the eyes of the fish in the market and not to buy no fish with the eye too cloudy because that probably mean it there since Jesus was a little boy; is Ma Maryam dropping the little Langdon girl off to school most times. And so, time come and pass; one and one become two and two, become four, become eight and more.

CHAPTER FOUR

The times before. Earlier in the nineteenth century.

Sometimes when life hit you, you have to go back and trace the steps – see where you come from and remind yourself how many steps you take, even though you don’t think you reach where you want to go yet.

Maryam couldn’t remember much about her own childhood. It was right in this land, as far as she knew, but the grown-ups talked about capture and boats and the ocean, and when you hear their voice gone low is because they whispering about some kind of thing that seemed too terrible not to make it a secret. They frightened her, for sure, although they never explained anything much, as if either they didn’t know too much, or as if it were something people shouldn’t really talk about, especially when little children – piti zanfan – around.

There was something shadowy, something that her ma and aunties and the men didn’t really want to talk about because, as they were always saying, sometimes through pipe smoke, sometimes straight so, with no smoke to cover it up, there are things you have to leave right where they are, and is not everything, everything you have to run your mouth about. So the – Steupes, child, leave me alone; or the – What the eye don’t see, don’t hurt the heart; or Child, you don’t know trouble; count your blessings – that is ask you have to ask! Or – alé asiz anba tab-la, go and sit down under the table, ka dammit – these were answers to questions she couldn’t even shape most times out of the shadows that framed her way of being.

She never saw the something shadowy but she could feel it, sometimes, even though she couldn’t name it, as she lay at night with her mammie in the board house with the thick plaited straw roof in the place that the estate called Nigger Yard. She only thought about things like that later on. When she was growing up in Nigger Yard, it was their home space, and it was just the way things were.

Sometimes, when her mother and her aunts talked the past, about capture and a boat and the sea, she thought she was part of the story, and if they didn’t look so sad, she would have thought it was exciting, and then they said it was her mother who would be able to remember a sea like a mountain it was impossible to climb, and who would even remember a night that had no beginning but had a part where they were in the bottom of a ship, like in the middle of the boat belly, her mother had said. The idea frightened her, and although she wanted to feel part of the story, she couldn’t really imagine it – the ocean and the bodies and the shouting and the jumping, and the taking, and people fraid because they can’t find their mother, can’t find their father, can’t find their child. And white sailor man just jumping on top of woman because they could and because African body belong to them they feel. That one does really tie up her inside. Boss people acting like African belong to them still, but in those times it was even worse. And who frightened jumping out in the ocean because they just can’t take it, and… woy-o-yoy! It just sound like an impossible kind of story. But that’s how they got here, yes, Maryam figuring out, her people and Oba people.

And to tell the truth, when Oba was telling her the story his father told him, he talk so fast that she could hardly understand, as if he anxious to leave one part of the telling and reach another part – like the part where his father and other Africans didn’t have to be called slaves and they could learn a trade. They had to work on the estate but it was a little different. If they get tuppence, was theirs. And his father say he hear there was something some people called a contract but he didn’t know too much about it. Oba told Maryam that he himself didn’t know a lot, but to her it sounded like he knew a lot more than she knew.

Maryam knew nothing. She didn’t even know who was the “family” that her mammie talked about when she said that all her family disappeared. But Oba now – Oba know his family – his father from Africa and then his mother’s people on this side, although his mother, like a lot of other mothers, died when he was a baby.

From what they told her, she had been born on the estate, and her mother was the one in the boat with the sea mountain shaking it outside. And her mother didn’t live long after she, her little girl, was born on the estate, but she left her ship sister to take care of her. And nobody ever talked about a father. But there was the woman she knew as Mammie.

Maryam’s earliest memory is a wood-plank house on the estate in a place called Baillie’s Bacolet that people say was the property of Mr Alexander Baillie, and then that same mister or his friend probably had a place in Boulogne, because she can’t remember how, but she was working in cocoa there in Boulogne later, walking with Mammie and sitting down under the cocoa tree to pull slippery cocoa seeds out of the pods. And then she knew that the last name Sam was hers. Perhaps he, Mr Sam, owned or had some kind of interest in both of those estates – Boulogne and Baillie’s Bacolet. She not sure how they divide up, who responsible for who, but she know that she get the last name Sam.

And the talk big people always talking, she couldn’t really say that she pay attention to all of it. She would hear them say that things happen just before the big rain, or the time God suddenly send a dark day and cover up his world or the year of the flood