Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [32]
Wata!
A net fell out of heaven, through the roof of the house, and covered her in a spidery essence of slim silver-coated ropes as the music of small fingered instruments tinkled in her ears. Voices began to sing. A hot soupy liquid replaced her blood and all she could do was open her eyes and see through the dark. Dark eyes stared back at her, unblinking.
Later that year she bore her half-brother’s child.
Who was a good girl—another girl! whom Wata named Lyaa, after the First Woman of this green place, this girl who was as dark as a black river on a night without a moon. Some shades bleach out. Lyaa turned even darker, and, as it happened, Yemaya the goddess known by many other names, who, in addition to reigning above the great waters and rivers, presided over these green parts of the continent, approved. Lurking above the forest as she always did, sometimes in the form of sunlight, sometimes in the form of tiny droplets of moisture, she surveyed her domain, watching, listening always, for creatures who turned to her for assistance. In this way she showed herself forth in quite different fashion from the god who ruled the desert lands to the north, a deity who rather than reveal himself appeared to encourage everything among his followers that would keep him hidden. None of that for Yemaya! She was not shy or, for whatever reason, withholding.
One dark night, as dark a night as the night of Lyaa’s conception, she appeared to Wata, and told her how glad she was that Wata had given the world this child. Far down the trail, she told Wata—of course, to Wata this encounter with the goddess seemed like a meeting in a dream—I will look after her. This girl will ache and she will dance and she will deliver a child whose children’s children’s child, or thereabouts, I am not counting, but merely trying to look ahead through the wavery dark and smoky curtain that keeps the future from our eyes, will free us all from the prison of our days. That is, if my plan runs true, and sometimes even the plans of the gods can go awry.
Wata awoke from that dream coated in sweat, and to the daughter to whom she eventually revealed this prophecy she appeared never to have quite recovered. As time in the forest went by, Wata grew so frail as to give the appearance of being already dead, her body an ashen gray beneath the usual sandy lightness of her skin.
In dreams along the route of the years Yemaya appeared to her again, stretching out her long dark arms to her and inviting her in.
Come to me, darling girl, she said. Come to me. Dance in my arms. Whirl about my feet when I am flying. When he was not much older than you, his own long arms covered with bramble cuts and the pocking of wood shards, my own son came to me in the night and had his way with me. I knew your mother’s sorrow, I knew her shame, I knew the bitter blood that flowed in her veins. From where I live up here in the treetops I descend as dew and sometimes as river water. And tears. And spit. And urine. And the monthly blood. Poor men, they never suffer the flow. I ask them to cut their arms and bleed on my behalf, showing their loyalty. Walk with me and I will walk with you. You will have glory, rather than shame, and your daughter, named after the First Woman, will show forth as well.
Chapter Fourteen
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First Woman
Days and nights in the forest. Green sun, green dark, green moon, green air. Months and years. Wata and the helpful Yemaya, always present at night in her dreams to give her good cheer, raised this child, Lyaa, well. The father never did more than now and then glance at the girl. Wata had hoped that the beauty of the child and the power of its name would keep him by her side. The master’s other wives pitched in, even as his own mother did her part to help with the girl’s upbringing. To everyone—except, apparently, the father—this was a special child and a woman to whom a link, more than just her name, stretched back in time all the way to the mother of them all.
Yemaya showed Wata that woman, after whom Lyaa