Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Tia

2015; Duke University Press; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/07990537-3139262

0799-0537

Damian Femi Rene,

A black face, heavily wrinkled, like a sheet of crumpled paper, stood—a totem—in the balcony of the four-roomed house. The face had remained for almost an hour, resignedly inhaling pungent tobacco smoke, sucking on a blackened pipe and trying its best to track the movements of three tiny bodies through the brush. The three children were playing hide-and-seek in the brush, a game they played regularly. One child would close his or her eyes, counting to ten or twenty, while the other two would run to find a hiding place. When the counting was done the seeker would begin his or her job of finding the hiders, wherever they might be. Like rats through the grass, they raced through the bush, the face watching them impassively. The sun was predictably sinking. Soon it would be dipping into the vastness of the Caribbean Sea. The face was moving now, a surprisingly firm voice reverberated from the crooked crack that was its mouth. It was calling the children to come in to bathe and to have their supper then to go to bed, maybe after a few stories, which they usually begged for.She had already put an enamel basin outside, as well as soap and a rag. The children had come running in. They quickly dispensed with their ragged clothes. The old lady using the old rag and some blue soap, washed and rinsed each child in the little enamel basin. After the baths, the children dried themselves and put on their ragged nightgowns.Outside the sun continued its steady descent, down into the Caribbean Sea. The sun was a wound in the sky from which light bled profusely. The sky was awash with color: orange, yellow, and vermilion spreading like an inkblot through the endless pages of cloud. The sunset was indeed glorious. All the trees and shrubs were bathed in a film of reddish-orange light. It covered the valley that lay like a yawn at the foot of the hill, bathed the tall breadfruit trees that beckoned with their hands outstretched, bathed the slender coconut trees that danced in the breeze blowing from the sea, and bathed too the ruins of an old house, abandoned long before, that sulked like a forlorn child on the crest of a gentle hill. The old face was looking at the house now. Like her, the house was old, a worn-out thing, except of course the house was even older than she. She had known it always to have been there. It didn't look quite as large to her now as it had then, did not intimidate her as it had then, but still it was a big house, much bigger than anything she could call her own.As the dying sun gilded the ruins on the crest of the gentle hill, the old face creased with remembrance. Time itself seemed to condense, to fold in on itself. And the memories came to her now like a thrashing school of fish.She could remember her days as a young girl growing up on the very land where she now lived, on the Koulibri plantation. She had heard so many stories about the plantation as she grew up, so many miserable stories. Stories about slavery and the many cruelties of the time. Her mother herself had been an actual slave, a fact that was for her mother a source of great shame. Something that she did not enjoy talking about, and which she avoided as much as possible. There were so many, so many tales, so many miserable tales of this thing called slavery. It was like a chafing sore that would not heal. She had heard such tales of cruelty as would make her shiver with fear and sometimes, too, with anger. They had come in ships, she had been told, into which they had been packed like yams in a basket, chained and weakened by a months-long journey, often sickened by hunger and disease. They came in coffles then, like giant caterpillars or worms retched from the guts of the pregnant ships. It was the unfortunate who survived the journey, who had not been killed by disease or on the edge of some slaver's sword or swallowed by the insatiable jaws of the sea's dark depths. She had heard of the rapes, the brutal hangings, the whippings, of slaves being tarred and feathered or quartered by horses. She had heard of slaves swallowing their own tongues, suffocating themselves. She could never fully comprehend the horror of it, a horror her mother never wanted her to know. So the memories flipped and flapped their way along the stream of her thoughts like so many fish searching for their source, traveling compulsively to that sea, that infinitely deep sea of memory. Time had, quite softly, imploded on itself as the tide of memory rose within her.She was about ten years old, playing with her cousins, chasing ground lizards, the ones they called zandoli, all through the bush. They chased the big marvelously colored lizards relentlessly. At times they would come across a couresse quickly needling its way through the bush or a constrictor coiled around the limb of a tree or sluggishly digesting a recently consumed meal. She was playing with three of her cousins now—Jn-Pierre, Celine, and Marc. The children of two of her aunts. Now they were hiding from her in the grass and making animal sounds, mooing like cows and chirping like birds, free birds, not like something caged and restricted but like the wood doves and pigeons that flew from tree to tree or the brightly colored Jacquot that flashed through the dampness of the canopy.She was going to market today. It was Saturday. She would have to help her mother sell. Her older brother, Henri, was helping her to pack the mules. They would ride, the two of them, on the head mule, and the other mule would carry the produce. Her mother was calling out to her now. To hear her name on her mother's lips was one of the sweetest things, except when she was being reprimanded; then, it was an awful thing to hear. “Tia!” her mother called her now, her euphonious voice echoing through the underbrush. “Hurry up, ti mamzelle. We have to go to market!” Tia raced through the bush, leaving her three cousins to the lizards. She rushed inside to put on her shirt. She rushed back out and climbed on behind her mother, onto the brownish grey beast. Her mother seldom sat astride the mule; she normally sat across it, with both her legs at the side. But to accommodate her daughter, she now sat astride the beast, and they made their way down the morne, along the narrow track that led to the next plantation. Tia was extremely excited. They were not going to the tiny market they had, once in a while, in Koulibri. They were going to a real market in the town of Portsmouth, many miles away, and they would not be returning the same day. They would be sleeping in Portsmouth, where they would be attending service at the big Catholic church, then they would return home with all the necessaries that her mother would buy—salt and sugar and bread and a thousand other things that Tia didn't really care about. Her mother always bought her snacks to eat on the way back. It was the only way, her mother discovered, of keeping her quiet, of staying, if only for a while, the constant tide of questions that rose from Tia like the waters of an incessant spring.It was early morning when they left, and the sun was not too high yet in the sky. Normally, her mother would have left much earlier, but because she had Tia with her, she had waited for the light. God alone knew what evil spirits lurked about these parts in the restless darkness of night. One could not be too careful about such things, especially when one had a child to think about. As they rode along the track, people called out to her mother, “Ma Gatneau, comment ou ye?” and her mother would greet them, stating the obvious: she was going to the market—to Portsmouth Market. As they passed by houses, they would catch a whiff of breakfast being prepared, of people brewing their morning coffee. Old men and women sat on their steps or on their balconies, sipping pensively a cup of coffee, contemplating, no doubt, the work that lay ahead for the day or, for the devout, the long ride to the nearest church, which was miles away. The air was redolent of mountain coffee and roasted plantain, bakes, and all the good things those sturdy people ate. Tia giggled at the mule's ears, so long and pointy, that twitched about continually. “Mama,” she was asking, “why mules have big ears like that?” “My child,” her mother replied “if I had know half the answers to your questions, I would not have to be riding to market on a milèt right now. God alone know why he give the mule dese big ears, but somehow they look like they was make for him, ehn.” Tia did not think so. From what she had seen of the mule, it looked like a mismatched animal, made from odd bits and ends from other animals. It had a stocky body, short slender legs, an elongated face, two large otherworldly ears, and a restless tail that ever seemed to be swiping at its behind.Around them the sibilant forests were stirring from their slumber as the ethereal mists dissipated gradually. They were miles away from home now, and just then they were passing a farm on a hillside, planted with cauliflower and yam. Her mother hailed the old man who was crouched there in the field. He waved to her, greeting her, “Bonjour, mademoiselle.” Tia marveled at some of these old people, how they always seemed to be working. Her mother was the same way. She always seemed to have work to do. When she was not cutting cane or picking limes on the plantation, she was busy tending her own garden or washing clothes or cooking and cleaning up. Her hands that were once so soft and tender had coarsened, had become rough with use.Tia and her mother were near the town now. They were on a hill looking down on Portsmouth. The sea lay there serenely; the large port lay there like an open mouth. A ship was berthed at the wharf. In the distance Tia could see Morne Cabrit, where her mother now pointed it out. It formed the headland of a peninsula that enclosed the broad-bottomed port. This was Portsmouth rising from its sweet somnolence. The sounds of industry could already be heard amid the chirping and twitter of risen birds. In the distance, giant frigate birds scanned the sea from way up in the air, their red breasts throbbing against the night of their black bodies. They were on a proper road now. They had finally reached the town. A wagon passed them, loaded with watermelons, drawn by a lone brown trotting horse. It was heading to market, no doubt Portsmouth Market, where one could buy a thousand things. Some dogs were trailing them now, barking at the mule. Her mother was shouting at the dogs, trying to chase them away. Tia pulled her legs up higher, away from their sharp canines. One of the dogs was yelping; it had been hit in the gut by a man who stood at the roadside. He had hit the dog in the side with a stone, and it, along with the rest of the pack, had cowered away. Tia brought her slender legs back down gratefully. Her mother thanked the young man, who smiled at her. She smiled back. They moved on now, along the dusty street. A man was sprinkling the road with water to keep the dust from flying about. They were seeing more and more people now; the market must be near. Tia's mother dismounted and they continued along the road.The noise of the town was growing to a steady hum. There were people selling at the roadside, old toothless ladies, young ladies, young and older men; people were selling everything imaginable. The sights and sounds and scents commingled, flowed into one another, and Tia was drowning in them; all of her senses were engaged, occupied. They had finally reached the market. Tia's head jerked from side to side, her eyes wide with wonder. All about her people were selling, calling out to potential customers, bartering, imploring. All sorts of goods were on sale. To her left, a grey-bearded man was chopping fish with a broad bladed machete. The sound of the falling blade reverberating fiercely in her ears. She could see bright red tomatoes, plump oranges, ackee, plums, breadfruit, bananas, sapodillas, pineapples, yams, dasheen, plantains, crabs, chickens, and goats. Every manner of food was on display.The mule had stopped. Her mother beckoned her to get down. A powerfully built man with bulging muscles was unloading the pack mule as Tia looked on. Her mother began to organize her goods to display them on some wooden crates. Tia started to help her. She opened a brown crocus bag and began pulling out the pale christophenes, placing them on one of the crates, then she took out the dark purple eggplants. The eggplants looked so out of place beside the immaculate christophenes, she felt. She put them on another crate, and in their place, put some bright orange carrots that had been neatly tied into bundles by her mother. They were better together, the carrots and the christophenes; they were more alike. The eggplants, she felt, could stay by themselves. Someone passed by with a cage of frogs. Those would be made into a tasty meal today, maybe a stew, Tia thought. It was only the legs they used, the thick fleshy thighs and lower legs. How could anything so ugly be so succulent, she wondered. Across from where she sat, in silent display, a dozen corpses, the carcasses of various animals, were displayed, hanging dismally from hooks. Tia squirmed with discomfort.When the day was over (they had sold everything), they made their way to the home they would be staying in for the night. It was a small, two-bedroom home belonging to her mother's close friend, Tia's godmother. The woman doted on Tia, hugging and kissing her profusely. “I bien pwofite‘ oui,” she kept repeating and remarking on Tia's growth and stature. Tia smiled proudly. She always enjoyed spending time with her godmother, who would always give her gifts when she came. She liked, too, playing with her godmother's little daughter, Yvette, whom Tia used as a living doll to dress and undress as she wanted. Her mother handed her godmother a crocus bag stuffed with food. Her godmother beamed with delight. Tia walked over to the window, leaving the two long-time friends to themselves. A carriage was passing by just then. A pitch-black man with rippling biceps was cracking a long whip above the horses, a twisted frown on his harassed face. Within, a white couple, handsomely dressed, sat erect. The man turned to watch her. From behind his aquiline nose, a pair of cold blue eyes stared. In a flash the carriage was gone, the thundering clatter of hooves and wheels receding into the evening's silence. The solemn chatter of the women came back now, something about the white people, her mother was saying, a grave expression on her face. They always seemed so tense, Tia thought, those adults—whenever they spoke of the whites.The white people. Tia wondered why God had made them all so rich and made her people, the black people, all so poor. Why did God give the white people all the nice things? He gave them nice hair and beautiful white skin and nice noses and colorful eyes. Even the Indians on the island, the Caribs, had nice hair and nice skin and nice thin noses. How come her people didn't have these things? Almost all the people she knew had black or brown eyes, dull uninteresting eyes. They had broad noses and black or brown skin. And hair that was coarse and hurt sometimes when it was combed, hair that curled in on itself in shame. The only thing she didn't like about the whites was their lips. They barely had lips at all, she thought, screwing up her face. She still, however, dreamed of a white prince riding through the mountains on a white horse, a real horse, nothing like the grayish-brown mule they had ridden to Portsmouth. He would come, his long sword at his side, to rescue her. Rescue her from what? Rescue her from those cane stalks that hemmed her in like the bars of a prison, from the sharp brambles of the lime trees, from the rags and the ugliness. She was ugly, she was sure, for no one ever fussed about her, no one ever longed to play with her hair or look into her eyes with longing or gaze in awe at her skin, her coal-black skin. She would be rescued someday by her prince, some dauphin on a white horse, with his very own castle somewhere in England or France, or even right here in Dominica, in Koulibri, even, or where her uncle lived in Concorde, at the top of a hill facing the sea, and she would bear her prince pretty white children with flawless white skin and straight, long flowing hair.It was soon time to have supper, which consisted of bread and egg and a cup of bois d'inde tea. Tia had a bath with chilly water from a barrel, then spent an hour playing with her little friend, her godmother's daughter, Yvette. They played dress-up and, as usual, Yvette was the main model, prancing about in her mother's rags, with a mouchoir tied around her head, her mother's bag in hand, and walking with the assured, deliberate steps of a grown woman. Soon they had fallen prey to sleep, as the ceaseless chatter of the two women continued through the night.They were up early in the morning. Tia's mother had woken her and Yvette. They gathered the rags and old clothes on which they had slept and stuffed them into a beige crocus bag, then they knelt, made the sign of the cross, and started to pray. “Don't forget to pray to the Virgin to guide us home safe, ehn,” her mother interrupted. The smell of breakfast soon displaced any heavenly thoughts they might have been having, bringing their prayers to a premature end. Soon they were seated before fried flying fish and breadfruit with thinly sliced cucumber and bakes, which they ate with large mugs of cocoa tea. After breakfast, it was time to get ready for church.The large stone building dominated the town. It was the largest building Tia had ever seen. It was bigger than the big house, the great house on the hill at Koulibri, the house where the owners of the plantation, the white people, lived. The service had begun. It was being conducted by a Frenchman, a white priest from Guadeloupe. The priests always came either from Guadeloupe or Martinique, or from France itself, but mostly from France. Tia watched as the priest held the wafer aloft above his pale long nose and as he dipped his nose into the chalice to drink wine. The priests were always white men with grey or blue eyes, and most of them were old, greying men. She wondered why all the priests were always white. It was true that God and all the angels and saints were white, so perhaps it was natural the priests should be as well.The service was over. People were making their way out of the pews and were walking down the aisle. The white people (who always sat at the front) led the way. As they went out, they shook hands with the priest and exchanged pleasantries. Tia, following her mother, genuflected, making the sign of the cross, then walked solemnly down the aisle.The journey back home seemed twice as long, although it must have been quicker without the load. On the way Tia chewed on some of the candy her godmother had given her. She was heading back home, back to her cousins Marc, Jn-Pierre, and Celine, back to her aunt, Tante Monique, back to the cramped hovel that she called home. There was, of course, excitement that she was going home, that she would be with her friends and cousins again, but, too, home meant more hard work in the petite bandes, picking up canes left in the fields and getting one's hands and legs cut and scratched by the leaves and stalks of those wiry canes. She looked up at the countless hills around her, hills behind which stood towering bluish mountains. The mule plodded on. She rode by herself now, on the second mule, which was tethered to the one on which her mother rode before her. As they rode on, the landscape became more and more familiar. Vertiginous boughs bowed high above the straggling track, and the whistle and chirp of birds filtered through the air.They were back home now. All the children ran out to meet them. Tia was beaming with delight. She felt like an adventurer returning from a long and dangerous journey. Her younger cousins who had never been to Portsmouth kept asking her questions about the town. With an air of authority, she shared her candies and the other snacks her godmother had given her. It was getting late. It would soon be time to go to bed, to begin another day in the canefields. Belair drums could be heard throbbing in the night, summoning the able to a dance and maybe to imbibe some powerful spirit in the descending night. Passing the kitchen on her way to bed, she could hear the adults whispering. They must be talking about the white folks. She thought to herself, Something is going on, something is definitely going on.The following day, after doing her work with her petite bandes in the canefields, Tia and her cousins were startled by a horse, a tall handsome creature with wide flaring nostrils and neurotic eyes. Planted firmly in the saddle on its sturdy back was a tall pale man with a wild unruly beard about a cruel face. Two broad saucer-shaped ears stuck out from a mass of graying hair and a twisted frown sat above the piercing coldness of his haunting blue eyes, a beak-like nose was poised above his mouth, a mere line scribbled arbitrarily on his face. It was through this line that he now spoke. “What do you want here, ye brutes? Thieving off my land again, are you?” The children were terrified. Tia struggled to speak. “W-we w-were just taking a shortcut to g-go h-home, the mister,” she managed. “Well, be gone then, and don't ye make it a habit either. This is my land, all of it, I'll have ye know,” he said, pointing with an unsteady hand. The smell of rum was heavy on his breath, but he was as ever imperially dressed—a colorful feather in his hat. He dug his heels into the horse's side, and just as suddenly as he had been planted in their path, he disappeared. Tia shuddered at her encounter with the white phantom that had so suddenly imposed itself upon her world, so imperiously supplanted her dream, for henceforth where her wonderful white prince rode into her dreams to valiantly rescue her and bring her to his castle, an all too fearsome lord on a dark horse now came peering at her from terrible blue eyes set in a pallid mask of death.The following week, on her way to the river to get some water, Tia noticed someone bathing. She could hardly believe it. There below her, frolicking in the river, stark naked, was the white man's daughter, the pink little girl who lived in the Great House. She and Tia used to play together. One might even have called them friends. They had played together whenever they got a chance. Tia had even been to the house a few times, though never inside. A lady who lived near her home worked in the big house, where she scrubbed and cooked and cleaned. In return, she was allowed to farm a piece of land on the property (they had little money). But the lady, Miss Bertherlina, had nothing good to say about them, the ones in the Great House. They called her names, she said, and treated her like a slave, although her mother had been a free woman and she herself had been freeborn. She stayed, however, because wanted to keep her farm. Tia and the white girl (Antoinette was her name) had played every chance they got. The girl's mother had not seemed to mind at all. She seemed happy that her daughter had some company.It was only a matter of time, though, before the master himself found out, and it was not with bemusement or indifference that he had come upon them but with the greatest anger and disappointment. He saw it as personal attack, the act of an ungrateful child. He could not, with his highly evolved mind, imagine why his beautiful white daughter, his princess, would be playing “with an ugly black monkey,” he had said, bitterness dripping from every word. Antoinette sat on a stump before him weeping, a crumpled flower in his dark world. Tia could remember still the secrets Antoinette had told her, of how the master would come to her at night, kissing her, touching her, hurting her “down there” in the heart of her shame, easing his pain into her, and how he would whisper his whisky breath into her hair and bruise with his bristly beard her fragile face as he kissed her lips. Tia had been jealous then, for Antoinette, her precious Antoinette, before whom tongues faltered, whose hair flowed like corn silk from her precious skull, whose soft pink lips parted to reveal a nacreous, perfect smile, who wore real clothes and sat at the front of the church, before whom even adults demurred.That Antoinette had filched her dreams, had stolen the prince for whom she secretly yearned and left in his stead a dark imperious lord who rode a demoniacal horse and breathed pure liquor. Now, Tia edged onward surreptitiously to where Antoinette's clothes lay in an unseemly bundle and, careful to leave the underwear, Tia's black hand closed around the dress, and she disappeared as stealthily as she had come.The following day, Miss Mary, a neighbor came early to the home. She was speaking to Tia's mother and her aunt. They were rather animated; their voices were raised. Tia was sure she had been found out, that the master would be coming at any time with his vicious whip to crack her back open. She felt sure that her mother's voice, like a sharp cane stalk, would cut through her soul any minute. But, no, her name was not called. She was not summoned to explain herself. It was something else. Besides, where she had hidden the dress, the devil himself couldn't find it. Something was wrong nonetheless. She went closer, listening intently. She could, from the scattered words and fragments of speech, discern that it was something to do with the white man. What horrible thing had he done? That night she hardly slept. The incessant throbbing of the drums in the distance pierced her mind and, as she finally yielded to sleep, became the throbbing of hoofs on the ground beneath a horse so horrible, so ghastly in its terror, its nostrils flaring with an insane rage, its mane a startled rider on its charging neck, its muscles straining against its skin, death in foamy rivulets streaming from its mouth, eyes wide with horror, and saddled on its thrusting back, the master himself, the dark lord, his left claw holding the reins and the right a spiked riding crop with which he whipped the throttling beast. His venous, pallid face lay on a fearsome lunging neck. His eyes, two pools of icy blue anguish piercing through the night—a loathsome corpse on a cadaverous steed. And there she was, stark naked, running through the canes, their blades cutting through her skin—on toward the river, the insistent horror gaining on her, the beast's insane neigh, like the retching cough of a dying man, and its hooves attending like a rolling thunder.It might have been her very shrieking that awoke her as she lay there in the bedclothes, salty rivulets of tears sliding down her face. It might have been, or maybe her dark lord really had come to her that night. As her mother came hurrying to her, she kept repeating through her sighs, “I steal it, I steal it!” Her mother, impervious to her confession, was rocking her and saying, “Doh worry, my chile. Mommy dere with you. It will ok, it will ok.”The following day, it became clear just what had happened. A young girl from the village claimed she had been raped by the master, that he had called her from the fields and forced her in the thicket. This was nothing new; young girls were always taken by their masters or overseers, even by some of the villagers. But this girl, this particular girl had been promised in marriage, and it was three days before the marriage was to take place that the master, the beke, gave vent to his lust. Lizette was her name, and the man to whom she was promised, Ti Frere, a brazen and vengeful Negro was determined that the white man would pay.That afternoon the drums echoed like musket shot through the surrounding mountains. A meeting was to take place; there was enough rum for everybody and, fired up by the rum, the indignant speeches soon had their blood boiling. Ti Frere stood, and with the vilest, most incensed language, delivered on his rum-soaked breath a most caustic philippic. The frenzied crowd made its way to the village. As they went through the village, people joined them and so did Tia. They made their way up the hill. They were tired of being used by these whites. They were tired of bowing and smiling and yes-sirring and begging and pleading; they were tired of metayage, of paying tribute to the white man. Why did the white people insist on staying in Koulibri? Had they not sucked enough out of the land and the people? Why did they not go to live in Roseau with the other blancs? They stayed because they needed people to bow and scrape before them, because they needed people to yes sir and yes ma'am them. They stayed to maintain in their minds that illusion of superiority. They needed to be better than someone else; they needed to be more beautiful, more wealthy, more worthy, and so they needed us, thought Tia, much more than we ever needed them. But justice comes around when it will, and on that night, justice, like a taut goatskin on a drum, was being beaten to a frenzy.The mob had reached the house on the summit of Morne Koulibri. It was getting dark. Only the embers of a dying day charred the darkening sky. Giddy bats whisked about the fiery faces of the villages. In their hands, the hands of peasants, were crude implements, improvised weapons—broken branches, stones, but some had machetes. By the light of their flambeaus, they confronted the house, its windows staring like vacant eyes.“Mr. Mason!” Ti Frere called out to the master. “I come for you!”There was no response. Over and over he challenged the master to come out, but Mr. Mason did not respond. Inside the house, a distraught Mrs. Mason was pleading with him not to go out, but he dismissed her words as outlandish. “You think I'll be scared by