“You fear him yourself. I have seen it in your eyes.”
Anyanwu gave him a sad smile. “Not as much as I should, perhaps.”
“He is a spirit!”
“You know I am your mother’s kinsman, Okoye.”
He stared at her for a time without answering. Finally he asked, “Have her people also been enslaved?”
“Not when I last saw them.”
“Then how were you taken?”
“Do you remember your mother’s mother?”
“She is the oracle. The god speaks through her.”
“She is Anyanwu, your mother’s mother,” Anyanwu said. “She fed you pounded yam and healed the sickness that threatened to take your life. She told you stories of the tortoise, the monkey, the birds. …And sometimes when you looked at her in the shadows of the fire and the lamp, it seemed to you that she became these creatures. You were frightened at first. Then you were pleased. You asked for the stories and the changes. You wanted to change too.”
“I was a child,” Okoye said. “I was dreaming.”
“You were awake.”
“You cannot know!”
“I know.”
“I never told anyone!”
“I never thought you would,” Anyanwu said. “Even as a child, you seemed to know when to talk and when to keep quiet.” She smiled, remembering the small, stoic boy who had refused to cry with the pain of his sickness, who had refused to smile when she told him the old fables her mother had told her. Only when she startled him with her changes did he begin to pay attention.
She spoke softly. “Do you remember, Okoye, your mother’s mother had a mark here?” She drew with her finger the jagged old scar that she had once carried beneath her left eye. As she drew it, she aged and furrowed the flesh so that the scar appeared.
Okoye bolted toward the door.
Anyanwu caught him, held him easily in spite of his greater size and his desperate strength. “What am I that I was not before?” she asked when the violence had gone out of his struggles.
“You are a man!” he gasped. “Or a spirit.”
“I am no spirit,” she said. “And should it be so difficult for a woman who can become a tortoise or a monkey to become a man?”
He began to struggle again. He was a young man now, not a child. The easy childhood acceptance of the impossible was gone, and she dared not let him go. In his present state, he might jump into the water and drown.
“If you will be still, Okoye, I will become the old woman you remember.
Still he struggled.
“Nwadiani—daughter’s child—do you remember that even the pain of sickness could not make you weep when your mother brought you to me, but you wept because you could not change as I could?”
He stopped his struggles, stood gasping in her grip.
“You are my daughter’s son,” she said. “I would not harm you.” He was still now, so she released him. The bond between a man and his mother’s kin was strong and gentle. But for the boy’s own safety, she kept her body between his and the door.
“Shall I become as I was?” she asked.
“Yes,” the boy whispered.
She became an old woman for him. The shape was familiar and easy to slip into. She had been an old woman for so long.
“It is you,” Okoye said wonderingly.
She smiled. “You see? Why should you fear an old woman?”
To her surprise, he laughed. “You always had too many teeth to be an old woman, and strange eyes. People said the god looked out of your eyes.”
“What do you think?”
He stared at her with great curiosity, walked around her to look at her. “I cannot think at all. Why are you here? How did you become this Doro’s slave?”
“I am not his slave.”
“I cannot see how any man would hold you in slavery. What are you?”
“His wife.”
The boy stared speechless at her long breasts.
“I am not this wrinkled woman, Okoye. I allowed myself to become her when my last husband, the father of your mother, died. I thought I had had enough husbands and enough children; I am older than you can imagine. I wanted to rest. When I had rested for many years as the people’s oracle, Doro found me. In his way, he is as different as I am. He wanted me to be his wife.”
“But he is not merely different. He is something other than a man!”
“And I am something other than a woman.”
“You are not like him!”
“No, but I have accepted him as my husband. It was what I wanted—to have a man who was as different from other men as I am from other women.” If this was not entirely true, Okoye did not need to know
“Show me …” Okoye paused as though not certain of what he wanted to say. “Show me what you are.”
Obligingly, she let her true shape flow back to her, became the young woman whose body had ceased to age when she was about twenty years old: At twenty, she had a violent, terrible sickness during which she had heard voices, felt pain in one part of her body after another, screamed and babbled in foreign dialects. Her young husband had feared she would die. She was Anasi, his first wife, and though she was in disfavor with his family because after five years of marriage, she had produced no children, he fought hard against losing her. He sought help for her, frantically paying borrowed money to the old man who was then the oracle, making sacrifices of valuable animals. No man ever cared more for her than he did. And it seemed that the medicine worked. Her body ceased its thrashing and struggling, and her senses returned, but she found herself vastly changed. She had a control over her body that was clearly beyond anything other people could manage. She could look inside herself and control or alter what she saw there. She could finally be worthy of her husband and of her own womanhood; she could become pregnant. She bore her husband ten strong children. In the centuries that followed, she never did more for any man.
When she realized the years had ceased to mark her body, she experimented and learned to age herself as her husband aged. She learned quickly that it was not good to be too different. Great differences caused envy, suspicion, fear, charges of witchcraft. But while her first husband lived, she never entirely gave up her beauty. And sometimes when he came to her at night, she allowed her body to return to the youthful shape that came so easily, so naturally—the true shape. In that way, her husband had a young senior wife for as long as he lived. And now Okoye had a mother’s mother who appeared to be younger than he was.
“Nneochie?” the boy said doubtfully. “Mother’s mother?”
“Still,” Anyanwu said. “This is the way I look when I do nothing. And this is the way I look when I marry a new husband.”
“But … you are old.”
“The years do not touch me.”
“Nor him … ? Your new husband?”
“Nor him.”
Okoye shook his head. “I should not be here. I am only a man. What will you do with me?”
“You belong to Doro. He will say what is to be done with you—but you need not worry. He wants me as his wife. He will not harm you.”
The water harmed him.
Soon after Anyanwu had revealed herself, he began to grow ill. He became dizzy. His head hurt him. He said he thought he would vomit if he did not leave the confinement of the small room.
Anyanwu took him out on deck where the air was fresh and cooler. But even there, the gentle rocking of the ship seemed to bother him—and began to bother her. She began to feel ill. She seized on the feeling at once, examining it. There was drowsiness, dizziness, and a sudden cold sweat. She closed her eyes, and while Okoye vomited into the water, she went over her body carefully. She discovered that there was a wrongness, a kind of imbalance deep within her ears. It was a tiny disturbance, but she knew her body well enough to notice the smallest change. For a moment, she observed this change with interest. Clearly, if she did nothing to correct it, her sickness would grow worse; she would join Okoye, vomit
ing over the rail. But no. She focused on her inner ears and remembered perfection there, remembered organs and fluids and pressures in balance, their wrongness righted. Remembering and correcting were one gesture; balance was restored. It had taken her much practice—and much pain—to learn such ease of control. Every change she made in her body had to be understood and visualized. If she was sick or injured, she could not simply wish to be well. She could be killed as easily as anyone else if her body was damaged in some way she could not understand quickly enough to repair. Thus, she had spent much of her long life learning the diseases, disorders, and injuries that she could suffer—learning them often by inflicting mild versions of them on herself, then slowly, painfully, by trial and error, coming to understand exactly what was wrong and how to impress healing. Thus, when her enemies came to kill her, she knew more about surviving than they did about killing.
And now she knew how to set right this new disturbance that could have caused her considerable misery. But her knowledge was of no help to Okoye—yet. She searched through her memory for some substance that would help him. Within her long memory was a catalogue of cures and poisons—often the same substances given in different quantities, with different preparation, or in different combinations. Many of them she could manufacture within her body as she had manufactured a healing balm for Doro’s hand.
This time, though, before she thought of anything that might be useful, a white man came to her, bringing a small metal container full of some liquid. The man looked at Okoye, then nodded and put the container into Anyanwu’s hands. He made signs to indicate that she should get Okoye to drink.
Anyanwu looked at the container, then sipped from it herself. She would not give anyone medicine she did not understand.
The liquid was startlingly strong stuff that first choked her, then slowly, pleasantly warmed her, pleased her. It was like palm wine, but much stronger. A little of it might make Okoye forget his misery. A little more might make him sleep. It was no cure, but it would not hurt him and it might help.
Anyanwu thanked the white man in her own language and saw that he was looking at her breasts. He was a beardless, yellow-haired young man—a physical type completely strange to Anyanwu. Another time, her curiosity would have driven her to learn more about him, try to communicate with him. She found herself wondering obscurely whether the hair between his legs was as yellow as that on his head. She laughed aloud at herself, and the young man, unknowing, watched her breasts jiggle.
Enough of that!
She took Okoye back into the cabin, and when the yellow-haired man followed, she stepped in front of him and gestured unmistakably for him to leave. He hesitated, and she decided that if he touched her uninvited, she would throw him into the sea. Sea, yes. That was the English word for water. If she said it, would he understand?
But the man left without coercion.
Anyanwu coaxed Okoye to swallow some of the liquid. It made him cough and choke at first, but he got it down. By the time Doro came to the cabin, Okoye was asleep.
Doro opened the door without warning and came in. He looked at her with obvious pleasure and said, “You are well, Anyanwu. I thought you would be.”
“I am always well.”
He laughed. “You will bring me luck on this voyage. Come and see whether my men have bought any more of your relatives.”
She followed him deeper into the vessel through large rooms containing only a few people segregated by sex. The people lounged on mats or gathered in pairs or small groups to talk—those who had found others who spoke their language.
No one was chained as the slaves on shore had been. No one seemed to be hurt or frightened. Two women sat nursing their babies. Anyanwu heard many languages, including, finally, her own. She stopped at the mat of a young woman who had been singing softly to her.
“Who are you?” she asked the woman in surprise.
The woman jumped to her feet, took Anyanwu’s hands. “You can speak,” she said joyfully. “I thought I would never again hear words I could understand. I am Udenkwo.”
The woman’s own speech was somewhat strange to Anyanwu. She pronounced some of her words differently or used different words so that Anyanwu had to replay everything in her mind to be certain what had been said. “How did you get here, Udenkwo?” she asked. “Did these whites steal you from your home?” From the corner of her eye, she saw Doro turn to look at her indignantly. But he allowed Udenkwo to answer for herself.
“Not these,” she said. “Strangers who spoke much as you do. They sold me to others. I was sold four times—finally to these.” She looked around as though dazed, surprised. “No one has beaten me here or tied me.”
“How were you taken?”
“I went to the river with friends to get water. We were all taken and our children with us. My son …”
“Where is he?”
“They took him from me. When I was sold for the second time, he was not sold with me.” The woman’s strange accent did nothing to mask her pain. She looked from Anyanwu to Doro. “What will be done with me now?”
This time Doro answered. “You will go to my country. You belong to me now.”
“I am a freeborn woman! My father and my husband are great men!”
“That is past.”
“Let me go back to my people!”
“My people will be your people. You will obey me as they obey.”
Udenkwo sat still, but somehow seemed to shrink from him. “Will I be tied again? Will I be beaten?”
“Not if you obey.”
“Will I be sold?”
“No.”
She hesitated, examining him as though deciding whether or not to believe him. Finally, tentatively, she asked: “Will you buy my son?”
“I would,” Doro said, “but who knows where he may have been taken—one boy. How old was he?”
“About five years old.”
Doro shrugged. “I would not know how to find him.”
Anyanwu had been looking at Udenkwo uncertainly. Now, as the woman seemed to sink into depression at the news that her son was forever lost to her, Anyanwu asked: “Udenkwo, who is your father and his father?”
The woman did not answer.
“Your father,” Anyanwu repeated, “his people.”
Listlessly, Udenkwo gave the name of her clan, then went on to name several of her male ancestors. Anyanwu listened until the names and their order began to sound familiar—until one of them was the name of her eighth son, then her third husband.
Anyanwu stopped the recitation with a gesture. “I have known some of your people,” she said. “You are safe here. You will be well treated.” She began to move away. “I will see you again.” She drew Doro with her and when they were beyond the woman’s hearing, she asked: “Could you not look for her son?”
“No,” Doro said. “I told her the truth. I would not know where to begin—or even whether the boy is still alive.”
“She is one of my descendants.”
“As you said, she will be well treated. I can offer no more than that.” Doro glanced at her. “The land must be full of your descendants.”
Anyanwu looked somber. “You are right. They are so numerous, so well scattered, and so far from me in their generations that they do not know me or each other. Sometimes they marry one another and I hear of it. It is abomination, but I cannot speak of it without focusing the wrong kind of attention on the young ones. They cannot defend themselves as I can.”
“You are right to keep silent,” Doro said. “Sometimes ways must be different for people as different as ourselves.”
“We,” she said thoughtfully. “Did you have children of … of a body born to your mother?”
He shook his head. “I died too young,” he said. “I was thirteen years old.”
“That is a sad thing, even for you.”
“Yes.” They were on deck now, and he stared out at the sea. “I have lived for more than thirty-seven hundred years and fathered t
housands of children. I have become a woman and borne children. And still, I long to know that my body could have produced. Another being like myself? A companion?”
“Perhaps not,” said Anyanwu. “You might have been like me, having one ordinary child after another.”
Doro shrugged and changed the subject. “You must take your daughter’s son to meet that girl when he is feeling better. The girl’s age is wrong, but she is still a little younger than Okoye. Perhaps they will comfort each other.”
“They are kinsmen!”
“They will not know that unless you tell them, and you should be silent once more. They have only each other, Anyanwu. If they wish, they can marry after the customs of their new land.”
“And how is that?”
“There is a ceremony. They pledge themselves to each other before a”—he said an English word, then translated—“a priest.”
“They have no family but me, and the girl does not know me.”
“It does not matter.”
“It will be a poor marriage.”
“No. I will give them land and seed. Others will teach them to live in their new country. It is a good place. People need not stay poor there if they will work.”
“Children of mine will work.”
“Then all will be well.”
He left her and she wandered around the deck looking at the ship and the sea and the dark line of trees on shore. The shore seemed very far away. She watched it with the beginnings of fear, of longing. Everything she knew was back there deep within those trees through strange forests. She was leaving all her people in a way that seemed far more permanent than simply walking away.
She turned away from the shore, frightened of the sudden emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. She looked at the men, some black, some white, as they moved about the deck doing work she did not understand. The yellow-haired white man came to smile at her and stare at her breasts until she wondered whether he had ever seen a woman before. He spoke to her slowly, very distinctly.
“Isaac,” he said pointing to his chest. “Isaac.” Then he jabbed a finger toward her, but did not touch her. He raised his bushy pale eyebrows questioningly.
“Isaac?” she said stumbling over the word.