Two older Blank ones come down, stare around and pointed, unlocked three our young womens. Took the girls with early breasts poking out at sassy angles couldn’t nobody living in this down-pull earth keep high-riding for long. Bleachnesses didn’t even choose the royal sisters us considered our most beautiful. (No-colors have they own odd unperfect idea of what bout us look good.) Off went handpicked girls, each just shrieking for our King to save them, please. He done nothing. Him said not one word as they got pulled, fighting kicking, towards day. Both doors slammed shut. Sunk down here in home night, we had to set, eyes open in the dark, and listen at our three maidens screaming so. One sailor had a wood post to support he un-leg. We heared him thump around, chasing. We heared other white-bodies laugh. We heared that tree leg strike and knock, tackling and holding down one princess onto deck. His wood foot beating, beating as she screech so bad. Sound like he drubbing her to gruel.
Two days later, when Bleach chanting start again, we got quiet in our chains, guessing that by now our three tribe girls be floating dozens of blue-green miles underneath the Tears of Something Even Bigger. Then we heard own maidens giggling, our home girls trying and hum along with the putty-faces what wanted nothing but to harm us all.
King announce in his boominest boss bass, “Ladies only doing that to throw them water-bodies off guard, soon girls gone slip down here and save us.” Reba—chained at the very end, keeping even more to one side, slouched in on herself, chains tensed up off her neighbors, still holding that stick upright in stale air like she bout to go land strolling—she just cackle at the King’s explaining. “Reba say, first: Let them save theyselves.” Others (mostly ladies) moan, agreeing.
Then we keened for our lost maids-in-waiting to the Queen. Us call they full names upwards, encouraging. Our three missing was probably being touched by the white blotter hands of twenty-some bleachnesses, our dark girls might be losing color now—one handprint, one wet mouth bite at a time—our girls maybe having they very lives leach/sapped by all that white male bleach spread, spilled, shot, and burning on the deck.
WHEN we still lived aloose, each time Reba turn up in our village, all peeve, snub, and mumble, folks would gather at they own risk. They drawn close, but only in groupish knots to see Aunt’s truest skill. After being axted a question, Reba’d reach down and blind-touch some feeble part of her tough hide. The snakebites’ shiny scars lumped in either palm, a long spear wound in she side that someway, pure miracle, healed over after enemies raided when Reba won’t but nine years old—back when the world itself were all unmemorized names, fresh paint. Aged to slowness now, face both open and decided, she’d prod her own flesh wounds. Then—eyes closed—our spinster would tell-tale her old hurts’ freshest answers. Like the star charts you keep forever reading out you Fashion Quartlies, ma’am—no wound ever says the same fact two days running. And, look here, Missy, folks generally believe whatever Auntie tell them do. Be it for their stomach dropsy, a bad son, or a hut what’s smoke hole ain’t been drawing right on windy days.—She alone. She know. She, alone, know.
—So, yeah, Miss Reba had what everbody claim they want. But—still nodding from her pointy answer—folks might then study this old walking-away toadstool, all folded in and cranky, folks see her over-with breasts that’d never invited one drop of milk into theyselves for giving on to others. And, spying this never-kissed stump—three-toothed—living freedom out, you sure had to wonder, Mistress Mine, What’s the point of being free if you gots to go off and do it all alone?
SAY WHAT? But I don’t wants to quit my dusting. You done owned me seventeen years and you never thought to tell Cassie “quit” before! Only with Yanks headed here to spring me, only now does you grow milk-of-human-kindness mushy. This shade of white is new to me. Listen, if you think Castalia’s going to slack off for her last someteen minutes of your ownership, you out you silly gourd.
Oh, I know you ain’t all bad. (When the chips is down, all the wicked say that.) I know you been giving me the party dresses you gets tired of but, answer me this, where is I going to wear them? Green watermarked silk with lace side panels—should I slip it on for a corn husking? Bad form. I done caught that disease from you: Knowing what’s “put on,” “climbish” and “too free and easy.” But except “climbish,” except heartsick for “freeish,” Lady, you ain’t left me much to be.
OUR KING, using he deep rich voice, flexing chained arms overhead, he say he’d about had it. He finally shout, It time for our own best warrior guards to spring out of hiding, get they tailbones down here fast, set us free, “Now!” Everybody rustled to bossy regal life again—loving hearing our most royalest person roar so.
“Free us!” King bellowed good, and others start to chanting it, us children too. “Free!” sound so fine, no matter that the bleachnesses didn’t know our word for it. King act like a king what always gets his way (though we knowed he chained as tight as us). We tilts forwards, each eye open in this rocking, whining stink-dark. All waiting for our guards’ brave shouts, for a scuffling as they kilt off unkind Bleaches. Came no sound. Except. The slapping. Of more water hills. Then more.—Our guards sure is staying quiet though us give them time aplenty. Finally you hears the King fall back against his metal links, a great ramshackle crashing like his proud feelings been powerful hurt by such rudeness from tribe serving folks. (See, ma’am, good help’s always been real hard to find!) And—Lady Whalebone Stays, was right then that all our tribe’s rich magic seemed clean over. Our saving ceremonies had gone silent as The Sound You Couldn’t Name. Our Our-selfness felt spent the way sweet water, dropped into the salted stuff, be right off ruint.
To fill the time, my Daddy King, he axted us to describe our missing village, act like some lost-and-found. King figured if—even in this wet dark—we spoke our local truth true enough, maybe it might save us. Each elder soon added on a fact till it seem you really could be walking back to the safe-beaten center of our home. Somebody would recollect how one crazy yellow dog always slept in this certain doorway and how, after a week’s snooze, when the cur finally built up decent spunk, he’d stand and chase hisself in total circles. Always. Some boy say, “That dog ain’t ever been right in the head.” Then—out of this being-lugged-away scrap of African shade—tame mild laughs rose up from loved ones. Folks talked in order of their chaining. Odd, but I recalls that order of folks’ answering. The one real thing had shrunk down to my kin’s voices, laughs. Voices stayed our shields and totems—we was chained but they won’t. Even now when I thinks back to the home time before Red bamboozled us, I someway recollects our group along the same two rows where we sat chained. Soon every child add on one knee-high fact about our missing village—everybody say a picture. Our tale-told darkness, it were full of pain but full of Equalness.
All us spoke but Reba. She just snort like belittling this whole boat and us ones too.
Mrs. Got to Have She Marmalade from England, they can do a lot of badness to you. They can hurt you and hide you and cart you off from where you always knowed the rules, but maybe the worst deed be how easy they can switch you inside out—I mean: set you gainst youself, gainst each other. Happen on day ten/twelve. Packed in this foul spot, one lonely husband, chained to the row just opposite his wife’s and missing her terrible, call out that all he want to do is touch her breast, just one she breast be plenty. Bolted in this bunch, he feel so alone. Breast’d help. Shy, she whisper then—with him so far off—call louder—yeah, she wouldn’t mind. Soon others try and get at others for to feel and rut. Chains clanking. Childrens soon shrieking. Soon folks do like animals—try anything for comfort.
I were still three years old, stationed at my Queenly mother’s perfect breast. Of a sudden, I won’t too alone there in my worship. From out the dark’s every which a way, I/her/it was being stroked/milked/squeezed by the hands of whose?
Now, Lady Place Cards, you get you forty-some folks carrying on like this, it bad. Our home tribe’s religion didn’t credit no Hell. We just expect on
e hammock limbo, plus a long long waiting list. But now we learning bout the Blanks’ idea of Hell. Because they made one. Put us in it.
Some my kin crying bout having been fumbled with. Others crying bout not. But worse sounds were the childrens’. Don’t know what happening here, they squeaking to their lovey-dovey parents for advice, parents’ hands on anybody round them, including children of other parents. None too pretty, for a royal group.
“No more!” King shout. “They gone hear us, gone think we copying they savage ways.” Then our regal clan sniffed a new smell, half old, part new, total scary. Were the scent of people worked up love-wise (forgive my French, Miss Prissy—but if you lived out in you own quarter with all that matrimony in one room, you’d of smelled it, too). But this time, honeymoon perfume took on a tangy edge. The more us smelled of us, the more we caught uprising whiffs off the heated metal binding us. Just now, the tribe’s wild flurry of feeling free caused a new mix: our scent and our bonds’. After just twelve days in chains, us reconized the iron smell nearbout like we knowed our own. Us tried and name this deep stink of unfree. Something’d edged into every head with steel bent round the neck of that head.
A shaming quiet snared us in our chains. What if we someway deserved this? What if being royal caused us to be punished? Our language didn’t even hold no word for Sin. Closest one—maybe: “Fun” or “Necessary Hurt” or even “Too Much of a Good Thing.” But Sin? And yet, this sin idea? already it be working in us like undertow. A contagion so soon picked up off the bleachnesses above.
And where Reba been during such sad mess? She still embunched off yonder, wrapped in chains that she keep shifting over shoulders like some shawl that she done knit. Folks, slow, turn more Auntie’s way. We done tried all else already.
Ship’s upper deck had a few chink holes knockt betwixt planks. Sometimes one stray arrow of yellow day would fall and settle on our rocking under here. Sun—bobbed side to side by waterland’s false hills—Sun would find a brown hand flexing in its blue-iron hoop. Light might pick out a child’s cheek pressed gainst one dry breast and—for dear life—sucking Nothing. Just now the beam settled across one of Reba’s filmy eyes—brown/green/gray/amber/black—her pupil un-laxed wide, staring straight ahead like looking at something.
We can nearbout hear her map-plotting something. Such purr won’t like Reba’s usual jagged cut-yourself disposition. Back home, she been so quick to accuse you … and for next to nothing. Now, she keep so still, seem peaceful as somebody beautiful and kind stuck down on the far end. But how? How, here?
Finally a sassy princess speak. Girl’s sharp clear voice coaxened Auntie, Why didn’t she care for our Put Home Together game? Reba finally grumble, We all been taking it from the wrong side, should be figuring where-all we headed, not feeling of each other, not trying to remember what we knowed already. Waste of time—recollecting a place probably not one of us would ever going to see no more. Hearing this, two girls commenced whimpering.
“Shut up,” Reba tells them but not not-kind. You could hear Aunt using all her spirit to mull on something way far off. Aunt’d already got past the appetite for petty messes that kept her so stirred up/mad back home.
“Us needs to recollect the new place. Us needs to remember the future.—That what a true King’d keep you busy with.”
The King heself, in a voice used to being listened at, axted right loud, How does you call back a spot you ain’t never seen once, hunh?
Reba giggle-coughed over this silliness, then give a marshy answering sigh, “Look, sir, we’d best get ready.”
Our tribe had right good drummers/storytellers, had even better drum and story hearers. So we noticed at this very second how Reba’s corner share of darkness now seem singed with something strange for Aunt back home, but truly odd for anybody clonked down here.
Happiness!
That right unusual since we talking a rake-bottom boat what stunk so bad of you not having no jungle to go use (a different willing spot each day) for personal toilet needs, we talking hands and feets and necks past feeling anything—irons what fit you like your total-turned tourniquets. We talking a slow leak someplace what let in salt water, not enough to sink the boat but plenty to wash over you, to baste you in leavings, to trick under them irons and sting you hurts way worse. We talking a place where roach bugs lived, bugs that our three semi-princess forced to race down the center plank. Bugs growed so big they sounded, when stomped on by a chained foot, like a walnut busting. We talking the fear of being in another storm and only hearing sounds of the storm.
“Know what done happen to us, folks?” Reba volunteer now. “Guess. Go on.” Ain’t like her, bothering to even axt what you thinks, but now? She say we got time. “Got nothing but,” Aunt say.
Her quextion make a target over chained heads. It hung up there in dark like a memory of moon. Drifting at Reba out of the pitch, ragtag answers come. “Our lives ain’t ours no more? Bleach-brains someway stole our souls?” Another party venture, “We all having one big dream, see? it from something bad we et. We bout to wake up, dog-sick but happy in home hammocks, right? Right.”
“Wrong.—We been picked.”
Reba’s voice grind extra deep, layered. Her voice made all our warriors and ladies chained down here—ones that’d felt of one another earlier—tip closer, now hearing what they’d sought love-wise. Reba’s smoothened youngened voice now offered sufficient room so it’d hammock all desire. Nothing’d be too wild or strange for resting in there. What she’d got so ready for us, we couldn’t know. It hum. It drawed us.
Our language didn’t even have no word for “future.” Closest we got fell somewheres twixt “more of the same” or “Heaven Early” plus that handy jungle standby, “Too Much of a Good Thing.”
“They a pattern here.—You figure it by accident them sad beasts got windblown so far up river, up our river? Do it be a mistake that only just the King’s kinfolks be stuffed down here on this great tipping shell? Well, Reba, after considering a good bit, after trying and overlook you-all’s silly gabbling, Reba believe, No. Ain’t a bit of this by chance. Childrens, it have all been planned. I bout to tell you what gone happen next.”
US WAS listening in metal, hearing big frisky fishes slam against the boards bowed under us, like fish saying, “We free, you ain’t.” We was floating in our own messes (nobody can tell you how much mess you makes per day till you gets forced to stay right with and in it, Lady Fair!). We won’t ready to accept nothing yet, but we felt willing—like always—to let Reba do first backbreaking thinking for us.
“All my life,” voice roll forth with right much energy, “my pet pleasure (nigh onto my only one) been scheming and figuring the Hows and Whys of world mess. Your Reba’s fought to stay not nobody’s wife, nobody’s momma. That way she ain’t got to be running back home to check bout what’s true, what ain’t. The more heads you got adding onto this and hacking off of that, the less so a thing be. I kept myself aside and apart (and maybe even a wee bit above) the rest you folks. Still, I ain’t saying it done been without a cost.
“Not that I now looking no extra pity or nothing—because, mostly, it were worth it and a pleasure. But expecially on rainy bad nights with me hid off so far from out the village in my hut, me hating the damp like I do, well … let’s say it ain’t all been pure gift. I earnt what little seeing I done managed on my own. I got by on a few Whats at a time. That made me nearbout happy enough. Not quite (who ever is?), but close. Then the big Why done slipped up on me, done toted me off—raw reward—me, laughing all the way. Reba ain’t never had no fun that touches what she’s knowed since they done trapped us. This the ride home I been waiting for.”
Well, that drawed some right loud groans/grouching, you can bet.
“This time,” rolls the King, “you gone too far, dog-woman. If this be your idea of a fine time, you ain’t no fit blood of mine. And listen up, Miss Old, if you so smart, then why come you tied down here among the bugs with the rest of us, hunh??
??
Reba just give a snort. Us heared her cross them bony scarred old arms (chains following). Aunt lets out a long huff that back cuts towards coughing. (It the damp.) First we figured she about to go off and hide inside sheself to tend the meaning of it there. Sassy princess (Reba’s favorite niece) begs, regretting a un-answer when we most needs telling. But soon Auntie’s chains start clinking. One by one, wound by wound, she begins testing her own signs. You hear her shifting. Medical fingers soon be finding every place she ever got scalded, bit, or stabbed. Long years will leave a history of marks on a person living wide open to this world of bruise. Soon we hear Auntie turning scars to she advantage, ouches pressed to being telling mouths.
“I believes Bleaches been sent to fetch back home a royal family whole. You all seen how pitiful them pale ones is. Why, they bodies missing so much. True, they do got a few dark spots on the shoulders, cross they spiky noses. But I calls that beginner’s luck. One them young ones have great egg-size blisters rising on he back and just from living in plain view of our holy sun. Don’t you reckon it bound to hurt? Why, just looking out through pinchy blue eyes must make the whole world throb like a palm-wine hangover. Fancy having a medcine tint locked in you eyeballs full-time, like stale water sealed rattling/crazy-making in you ear! Ain’t natural. But listen, ignorant though they is, they did have sense aplenty to come collect all us. Right? Wants us to go cross, be they guides, they medicine peoples, examples. To help teach them and other bleach-bodies how to do and be.
“Bleaches gots to hide us down under here. And why? My busted hip say (a ache-glinch drumming out the pulse) it to keep other white ones from spying such prizes as been stole from out our land’s downriver. There’d be wars if other jealous Bleaches was to learn about us here.