Mam's personal history traced back to a small tribal village in the west of Africa. And she stretched her memory of experiences over a lifetime–more years than she could put a number to–to find a young girl that was herself. Yet, as she said, 'twas not herself. This was a young, innocent, happy girl, yet too young for the ceremony that served her people as a passage to womanhood. And this was a free girl, who knew nothing of tyranny and suffered only the gentle authority of her parents and the tribal elders. She spake of fearful happenings that day the black raiders struck her village.
And she was old enough to know what it meant from the stories and warnings of the elders. She'd witnessed raids and pitched battles afore, betwixt her tribe and their natural enemies, over hunting grounds and water rights. But this was different; the bloodletting was horrific–and entirely one-sided. These men had firearms. And 'though these raiders were black, they were not the colour of her tribesmen or their natural enemies. More significantly, on one of the men she saw something she'd never seen afore: a white man's pantaloons.
In an instant, the tranquility of her early life ended, and the brutality that marked most of her life began. This instant was punctuated by a raider's club that struck her brow and near sent her to her ancestors. She awoke on a different day, in unfamiliar surroundings, naked and tied to other captives with coarse and thickly braided rope. Some of the captives she saw were from her tribe, but most were not. Of her tribes-people, only a few were men. These few had been struck unconscious, bound and dragged away—as had she. Most of the men of her tribe–including her father and uncles–fought to the death.
"Admirable warriors," the captain pronounced them.
She went on to tell us of the forced march, for countless days and nights, to reach the "boundless river" (our very Atlantic). The men, women and children were pulled, pushed and prodded along. Laggards were beaten, and those too weak to continue were killed–in various ways, as amused their captors.
Each eve, shortly afore dusk, a spot was selected where the captives could be huddled together in a circle and protected from predators, man and beast alike. This was the only protection provided. And each eve the captors would take their turns selecting from the young women, dragging them a few score yards from the encampment, and raping them. Many times these young women were returned to camp beaten and bloodied–even those who offered no struggle. 'Twas the second night of her captivity, Mam' remembered, that the man in pantaloons came for her. He stood and leered at her small, naked body for several moments. She said 'twas the first she could remember of feeling shame from being naked. He unbound her, wrapped a huge hand 'round her neck, pulled her to the edge of camp, made her kneel behind a tree, dropped his pantaloons and buggered her—repeatedly. He continued to use her so, twice daily, 'til they reached the coast.
There was little food and water provided on this march, and no amenities. The captives learned quickly to tolerate wearing their own excrement, and that of others. To complain about anything–to speak at all–brought immediate retribution.
When they arrived at the coast, Mam' saw such a throng of people she believed all the tribes of Africa had been captured and brought to this one place. And she saw many other new things that day. The first she noticed was the "boundless river:" and on it, two massive "canoes" with giant "tree poles." The next that caught her eye was white men–the first she'd ever seen. But originally, what caught her attention was their pantaloons–like those worn by the man who molested her so brutally, and so often. She stood frozen and felt her heart stop when she imagined they would all surround her and "share" her, in that way. Then the hard tug of the rope, as she and the other captives were dragged away from there (where the white men stood) snapped her back to reality and belayed the panic in her breast.
At this final encampment, Mam' spent one night. It was the first night in many she went unmolested. Doubtless 'cause the men who'd captured them had gone. They were replaced by new guards. All of these were black men in pantaloons. But by this time, homesickness, heartsickness and sheer exhaustion had brought Mam' to the point where she no longer cared what they did with her body. She fell asleep thinking–for the first time in her life–death would be a blessing, and she would bless the man who took her life. Yet she needn't have feared. That night, those guards kept their distance, merely watching over the captives.
Just after dawn, the captives were rousted and led down to the water's edge by their guards. Already assembled, when they arrived, were several other groups of captives and a smaller group of long-haired men garbed in blouses and pantaloons. Mam's group was led to the front, their rope bonds were cut and their guards stood 'round them in a loose circle, pointing muskets towards them. But Mam' noticed only the group of white men just beyond. They were white men! They were not as she'd assumed them to be, the night before. They were not men with white makeup, as she'd witnessed in spiritual ceremonies many times. They were WHITE MEN! And more odd looking to her than the monkeys and apes that lived among the trees. With their long, shaggy, fur-like hair that hung off their heads and ran down their backs–mostly matted and gnarled like a killed animal left too long unattended.
"An' dose faces! Ta Gawd!" I can still hear Mam' exclaiming to the captain. Chiselled-sharp features like the "evil spirit" masks used in ceremonies, 'twas how she described them. And many had more long, matted hair hanging from those ugly faces. Their skin was the colour of sickness and death and their bodies reeked with a most unpleasant odour. She convinced herself that these were the evil spirits whose coming her tribesmen had always feared; and they had failed to placate these spirits in their sacred ceremonies. So now, she felt, she and all the people of all the tribes were lost to these demons, forever.
"When I looks back on it," Mam' told the captain, "I re'lizes dat all I'd been tru, up ta den, had on'y jes' brung me up ta da gates o' hell."
At that point, the captain begged Mam' pause, that he might take some more tea and ponder what she'd told him. Once recomposed and feeling a might stronger, the captain spake. "Have you more to share on this, Mam'?"
Mam replied, "Yer aksin' me ta walk ag'in tru dem gates o' hell."
The captain said, apologetically, "I need to know, Mam'."
"I knows ya does," said Mam'; and she set forth to revisit her demons.
The ugly white "demons" dispersed, each going to a different group of captives on, or near, the beach. Mam' remembered the one that came to her group for his large, hooked nose and a scar that ran from his ears to his mouth.
"An' dem ears!" Mam' exclaimed. "Dey seemed ta stick out an' point fohwa'd, like da jackal a-lis'nin' foh da lion."
Her "demon" barked something she could not understand to the guards, and they began forming the captives into a ragged circle. He then went through the group, squeezing the women's breasts and the men's muscles, peering into mouths and ears and eyes. Occasionally, he would push a captive out of the circle and some guards would drag the cull off.
When he came to her, he pushed his hand 'twixt her legs and ran his forefinger against her genitals. He withdrew his hand and, patting her cheek, gave her a sneering grin.
"He was a toothless, ugly demon," Mam' said, "an' when he touched me, ma skin turned cold."
On a command from the white man, the guards arranged the remaining captives in the group into a single file, and for the first of many times, clasped them into shackles of iron. Presently, they were tugged along in their leg irons to the water's edge and boarded on several long, wide "canoes." Mam' remembered that for no apparent reason they were continually flogged with whips as they were pressed along. She remembered the sting of the whip and the look of it. Again, something new–something evil. Their captors had beat them, but they used what was handy: clubs, sticks, brush. These new implements appeared to her to be purposefully made by demons, to do the work of demons.
The "canoe" she was boarded was crowded with captives, and white men armed with whips and musk
ets sat fore and aft. She was forced to kneel in a penitent's position, with others pressed so close she struggled to breathe. The white men did not speak and the Africans dared not speak. This she found the most distressing. In her mind, the most fearful, horrific thoughts held sway. She was convinced that the demons were taking the people to their world, where they would be brutalized, tortured and eaten alive. She was near panic from the fear screaming in her brain. But around her was complete silence, save the sound of the waves lapping against the boat. If only she could talk of her fears to the other captives–if only she could talk at all!
All too soon she was surrounded by sounds, noises and yelling voices in tongues she could not understand–demon tongues. From the instant they arrived at that giant "canoe" with the massive "tree poles" amidst it, the white men started yelling at the captives, in their senseless, barbaric language. Mam' was shocked out of her inner horror and returned to the frightening present by a white man shoving his face right against hers and screaming some mindless babble in an angry, insane voice. The captives were being yanked, pulled and hoisted up onto the top deck of a large slave ship. And–whether they shared Mam's fearful fantasies of demonic purposes, or were just reacting to the shouting fury of the white men–the blacks were screaming, too. But according to Mam', they were not screaming words, more crying out like wounded animals–even when no one was touching them.
Mam's group was the first to be placed on decks. And, for a brief moment, this new thing–this giant "canoe"–was less fearful and more impressive. Imagine, a "canoe" so large her entire village could travel in it! But as more groups of captives were hauled on board, and all were pressed together, reality soon closed in about her. She was surrounded by human flesh, and all this flesh showed goose pimples: the sure sign of fear and stress. From within this din, Mam' was surprised to hear a familiar voice. 'Though the speaker was no more than a few feet away, Mam' could not see him for the taller, larger bodies pressed between them. But she knew from the voice and the language he spake, it was her tribesman.
With his fateful words, "The slavers have us for good, now!" Mam' ceased to think of herself as that innocent, independent African girl, or as a captive; she began to think of herself as a slave.
Mam' tried to call out to her tribesman, but the moaning and shuffling of the others drowned her out. Everything was motion, now. She was being pressed this way, and pushed that way, from all directions. She could not tell if more slaves were still being added, or the "cattle" were just being herded about. No matter, she could not safely do what her heart desired: reunite with her tribesman by falling to hands and knees and crawling to him through the legs of the throng. She knew if she went down she'd never come up. She doubted they'd even notice they were trampling her.
But as they swirled about on deck, that familiar voice called out her name! She hesitated before turning her head, afraid to believe he was there. When he repeated her name, she snapped her head about to see a familiar but sad, haggard face. Instinctively, she reached her arms around him and pulled herself to him, pressing her cheek firm against his chest. For a brief instant, she actually felt herself safe–a reminiscence flashed of being home. He stroked her head and spake her name again, softly.
In a voice still more child than woman, she said, "Please, please save me. Please take me home."
Then she gazed up at the haggard face softened with tenderness and streaked with flowing tears. Softly he said, "Only death can save you now, child. Only the ancestors can take you home."
Then, with his arms clasped tightly around her, he bowed his head over hers and continued sobbing. She felt peculiarly safe, as if held in the embrace of her entire tribe. They stood like that for several moments. Then the tumult stopped. And once again the real world crashed in on her. The screaming white demons were back, moving through the fray. This time, they were separating the males from the females. Mam' was ripped back into reality when a white man shouted something in her ear, grabbed her around the waist, pulled her from her tribesman and flung her into a group of women slaves.
"Da las' I knews of any ma kinsmen was den," Mam' said, choking over the words. "I could heah his callin' ma name, ovah an' ovah, as dey drug 'im aways."
"What was your African name, Mam'?" the captain inquired.
"I doesn't speak dat name, no mo'; no' will I answer ta dat name in dis lifetime–in dis whiteman's world," Mam' said, firmly. "When I passes ovah an' I heah dat name, I gwan know it be da Lawd callin' me, 'cause da devil an' his demons ain't never gonna know dat name!"
"Well, I'll not be asking you to share a confidence you hold with the Lord," the captain remarked. "But share with me, if you would, the experience of your transport to the Americas."
"Even as a sea dog, an' da cap'n of sea dogs, d'aint no ways ya kin know of it," Mam' told the captain. "Mebbe if ya was keelhauled 'cross da ocean ya'd know da mos' of it, but...."
Mam' stopped at that, and sat staring at the table for several moments. Her eyes were fixed, but there was no sign her spirit still was there. The captain wondered if Mam' stopped breathing.
Then, just as suddenly as she stopped talking, she started again–'most as if she was unaware she'd ever stopped. "An when dey drug us down dat hol', it was like da bowels of hell!"
Mam' described how the women were dragged and shoved into the hold of that ship, each one screaming and wailing–probably less from physical pain than from the private fear that tormented each individual mind. As Mam' put it, they were all going to hell, but each one's voyage must be different and personal, in the mind. Below decks, her visions of hell were confirmed.
The women were being stacked and chained bare-skinned against rough-hewn planks and beams. Every possible space in that great ship's hold was packed tightly with human cargo. Yet again being mishandled like some errant dog, Mam' was being hauled along by the scruff of her neck. The white man carrying her stopped in front of a woman who was chained lying on her back, with her shoulders lifted and the nape of her neck pressed against the bulkhead. The white man barked a command to another white man, who bent down and spread the woman's legs. The white man holding Mam' pushed her down in the space created, flat on her stomach with her face pressed in the woman's crotch.
"By God, Mam'!" the captain exclaimed. "You don't mean to say...."
"I does!" Mam' returned. "When dat po' woman could hol' back no mo', I wore it, an' I tasted it!"
The captain tried to understand when Mam' said how little that bothered her. In her mind, she had already accepted agony and death as her lot. Of course, all the slaves were living in their own excrement and vomit, and that of others. The white men offered no remedy for the situation. In fact, as the journey went on, they came below decks less and less often. Mam' believed the conditions of the slaves were making the white men sick, too. And since they could walk away from it, they did so.
Still having a bit of humour about her, Mam' cackled as she remembered the "drought" that brought her some relief. Food, for the slaves, was rarely provided and seldom missed—being mostly a vile and putrid, vermin-infested slop not fit for hogs. Eventually, most of them began to "dry up," since there was no "hemp" to make "rope" (so's to speak). Her reprieve concluded when the woman became sick from what sounds like the dropsy. Mam' said 'twas like the woman was dissolving into liquid and sludge and pouring it out upon her.
At the worst of this, a white man came and unclasped her irons. He latched onto her arm and drug her up on deck. She felt immensely grateful to this man for his act of kindness. She was out of the putrid hold, gazing at blue skies in bright sunlight that bothered her eyes–but didn't. The air was fresh and unscented. Someone was pouring water over her and scrubbing the crud off her hair and body. It was the man who'd delivered her from hell's very bowels. She smiled up at him, but he looked back at her with no expression. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. And for a long time, she held that breath: fearing
the next would not feel near so good. She felt clean, cool water run down her legs and off her toes. She opened her eyes and noticed several slave women about the deck. Some were themselves being scrubbed by white sailors. Others were being held by sailors, who fondled them and laughed with each other. She could see one sailor already "humping" a slave girl, whose mouth was open–as if in a scream–but no sound came out. Only the stream of tears from her eyes gave evidence of her real pain.
'Twas then Mam's "saviour" grabbed hold of her from behind, bending her forward at the waist. With the flat of his hand, he held pressure to the back of her head, as to instruct her to stay in that position. When she felt his callused hand run up the crack of her ass, she knew 'twould be the situation in the jungle, again. So she braced herself. But what she "knew" was wrong. She felt the girth of his shaft run down the crack, then under the ass and come up betwixt her legs. And hard up it came, and fast! She felt the full penetration in one mighty assault. At first thrust, he'd rammed his shaft inside her, up to its hilt! He'd as well run a dagger complete in her stomach, for the agonizing pain he'd delivered. Worse even than the buggery she'd endured, Mam' felt her body being ripped open. And, for the first time in a long time, she cried; and unlike t'other slave girl, she cried out loud.
Mam' said she'd never before in her life, nor since, screamed so loud and so long. Incredibly, this had no effect on her tormentor. He continued to thrust up inside her, pull out, thrust in, until he stopped sudden, full in her, with his shaft swollen to the ends of her endurance. At that instant, he grabbed her shoulders, pushed down on them, screeched loud enough to drown out her screams, and opened the flood gates: gushing his foul slime within her. Her cavity being more than amply filled already, the pressure of this additional substance created such pain as to drop her to her knees, delivering his shaft from her scabbard. She could feel his slime continue to spill out onto her head and back.
Her assailant kicked her ass, knocking her flat on her face. He then turned and walked away, laughing. For a moment, she lay motionless with her face to the deck. She wished she could seep into the wood and the wood all around would protect her. But a cold chill ran up her spine as she realized her vulnerability, lying there. Other sailors may come and assault her. She quickly turned herself over and sat up. If they would do to her, she could not stop them, but she would try–she would make them suffer. But as she looked about, she saw the sailors were otherways occupied. Some glared over at her and laughed, but no one else seemed interested in so young and small a girl. At least not at the moment. Now, she looked down at the bruises and blood on her legs and crotch, and the yellowish slime that pooled there. She felt a sickness in her stomach she'd not felt even in the putrid bowels of the hold.
It suddenly occurred to her there was only one release from her torment–only one deliverer from her tormenters–death (as her tribesman had told her). She drew herself to her feet and calmly, deliberately, walked 'cross the deck toward the sun, and the waiting sea, below. She looked not about her, caring of nothing or no one, save her own determination to release herself into the arms of her ancestors.
She was deterred in her action by the sight which came afore her eyes, within feet of her object. Two white men stepped in front of her, carrying the body of a woman. It was she–Mam's "companion" from the hold. Her body looked as sickly white as the demons who bore her. And her limbs seemed swollen and contorted. The white men were obviously uncomfortable, fidgeting as they maneuvered the carcass to throw it overboard. The stench from the woman wafted clear across the deck, and the sight of her made even the demons queasy. But Mam' looked at her, anyway. She had to–she could not divert her eyes. This was one of her people. A woman she'd never really known, but a woman in the same circumstances as she–a woman on the same voyage as she–a black woman–a slave–a member of her new tribe.
Chapter VI
Her New Tribe