Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [111]
The BOOM, the BAM, the DON DON DON, echoing through the forested groves, men chanting, to Shango, god of storm and wind, women raising their voices to Yemaya, the goddess alive and well in the sap in the trees, in the dew on the grass, in the light of the half-moon, in the wind itself, BOOM BAM DON DON DON DON, the drumming linking the drummers in their pounding and the families they stood for here on earth and the noise echoing up amid the storming clouds until it reached the ears of the waiting gods, the BOOM and the BAM and the BOOM and the BAM and the BOOM and the BAM and the BOOM and the BAM…echoing, echoing on into the dark above the forest, where only the sliver of the moon gave hope that the goddess still watched over them, perhaps, like them, still trying to become accustomed to life here on the ground of this new world and in the air above it. BOOM and the BAM and the BOOM and the BAM and the BOOM and the BAM…
Yemaya, to whom I gave my blood, Yemaya, who kept the ocean moving under me, who rained on me, who watered my throat and hair, moistened my eyes and helped me to see when awake and dream when asleep, Yemaya, who put this living thing in my belly—for she had another one growing.
Shango dancing, carrying his three-headed axe, singing, “Give it all, set it down, the man will do it…”
Yemaya singing, “Shut the mouth, put down the axe, let her carry what she carries, all the way home.”
“Home,” Shango shouted, “she has no home.”
Yemaya singing, “She had one, now she tries another, she will not yet find it but her child might.”
Yes, she was carrying again, and the turmoil created in her head by the drums and animal screams was nothing compared to the turmoil in her heart. She was sure this child would live and so she would carry forever the visible mark of her shame, that she could not defend herself against the approaches of the master’s oldest son. A dark, oh, a dark time! And so when she heard the drumming she rushed off into the woods to lose herself in the beat and in the shifting of hips and stamping of feet, solicitations with long arms raised skyward, to the goddess who must know what she had done to her, because she knew everything.
BOOM and the BAM and the BOOM and the BAM and the BOOM and the BAM.
Lightning kill me, kill the child
Drum kill me, kill the child
Lightning kill me, kill the child
Drum kill me, kill the child…
Chapter Forty-six
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The Flood
Here on this morning, in deep morning light, Isaac and I emerged from the woods into the broad clearing where the earth appeared to shimmer and glisten, as though a million million droplets of dew—or manna?—had fallen from the sky. The sight was beautiful enough to take my mind momentarily off the sordid matters of plantation life and put myself to studying the organics of it.
“We got to walk now,” Isaac said, and we dismounted, left the horses at the edge of the clearing, and walked into the rice field. We made our way along the berms that formed the border in lines that ran in rectangular fashion, from the woods where we had come from, to the south where another stand of trees stood guard, and to the north where the broad flat spaces filled with young stalks of plants came up against the waters of the wild swamp.
Along that berm Isaac pointed out to me the small squares of grating and wood that served as the flood-gates embedded in the walls of earth, some two dozen of them.
Along this low wall of earth, with all these windows ready to be opened to the water, the slave minions, mostly men, but a few women here and there (including a decidedly pregnant girl, at the far end of the first field) stood at the ready, waiting for Isaac’s command.
“The plants,” he explained to me, “are ready, as you can see.”
And he stopped us, and bent down to show me the