Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [56]
Shit. Vomit. Many became sick from the guttering rhythm of the ship. At some point some sailors descended into their mess, holding candles and one of them with a large pot.
“Hohlee farkin jeesus!”
The man shouted, the men shouted, the captives shouted.
“Farkin steeenk!”
Lyaa heard their words only as noise. Years would pass before she understood and spoke English well. But she already hated the language of the captor, just as she had despised the language of the Arab slavers and despised their Allah who had put her in chains. All gods seemed feeble, except Yemaya, who still apparently listened to her prayers, because some hours later came more candles in the dark, and crewmen rousted them upright, and others doused them with pail after pail of cold, stinging water that left her lips bitter with salt. Bless you, Yemaya, for cleaning us, bless you and all your children.
Though within minutes people began soiling themselves again, and, desperate for release, Lyaa strained at the manacles and chains until her ankles bled. Now the air around her reeked of the iron stink of blood. The wretched metallic odor leached through the space of confinement. It reminded her—Yemaya help her, she could not say why—of her mother when she was nursing the younger children. Was her mother enclosed in here somewhere? Would she ever see her again? Lyaa’s mind worked back through the events she had suffered, the advent of the traders, the chase through the forest, the confrontation with her uncle/father. Her mother had told her of the family’s travels as captives from Timbuktu to the forest, a tale Lyaa never tired of hearing, and amid all of the news of the family’s sufferings and displacements and disruptions Lyaa never imagined that she would one day—all too soon, all so soon—turn these details over and over in her thoughts, longing for her mother, and relishing those memories that included her.
The warm rush of her urine gushed again over the bench where she lay half-dreaming. She had not even thought of it, let alone worried about it. What might have been a half day or a day confined in this infernal cabin and she had given over to the rhythms of her bladder and bowels while everything else around her sank into chaos and disgust. If there was another way of living with this, she didn’t know, and if some of her fellow captives knew where they were going they didn’t shout it out—or even whisper it—and she tried to catch the rhythm of the ship and give herself over to sleep.
But just as she was dozing sailors descended into the midst of the captives carrying buckets of something that scarcely passed for food. With trembling hands Lyaa scooped up the lumpy mess and splashed the foul mixture into her mouth, swallowing but hating herself even as she did. Her stomach rebelled at the feel of it, and before she knew it she began to convulse and vomit up the slop.
“Better to eat,” came a voice from the shadows behind her.
A man lay stretched out on the bench nearly full-length. Lyaa wondered how he had been given so much space when she saw that the former occupant of the bench along with this man had fallen onto the floor beneath it, still in manacles but unmoving.
“What happened to him?”
“He is dead,” the man said. “I hope only they come and fetch him before he begins to rot.”
“Do not talk about a human being that way,