Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [80]
He turned her again, and this made her dizzy. He turned her again, and she felt the sun weighing on her even more.
He gently poked her in the belly with the stick, saying something that drew a laugh from the crowd, and she turned away, holding the pouch with the stone to her nether parts and wishing she could drink water or, again, fly high, or go to sleep and have a beautiful dream that would carry her away from all this turmoil.
The man held the stick over her head and called out, and men in the crowd called back to him.
He leered at her and touched her belly with his stick, raising a cheer from the crowd.
She flailed her arms at him and spun away. A shout! The man slapped her on the shoulder. Lyaa felt her gorge rise, and turned in the sun spewing vomit over his shoes and falling onto the platform before all the light disappeared.
Was she dreaming? What land was this? So far across the waters from home, so far from the heaven in which she had flown within the goddess’s body, and yet the light from that heaven poured down on her, and on the wagon in which she lay, and the noise of the creaking vehicle and the sound of the animal’s hooves on the road, the clicks and grunts of the driver—she leaned up on her elbows and caught a glimpse of his black neck and the back of his black head—even the sound seemed magnified by the light all around it. She took several deep breaths and closed her eyes, pressing her knuckles against them, and opening her eyes again. All that she had seen? Still here! Was this real or a dream? She asked Yemaya, but the goddess didn’t answer.
And then, she noticed that she lay covered in a simple cloth garment, rough but roughly enough to dress herself in. After all that time down in the hold and up on deck living nearly naked she had nearly forgotten it was not the natural state of things. The man who drove the cart wore a white shirt that glowed in wavering lines in the heat of the burning sun. And then she noticed that a man rode on horseback alongside the wagon, a man wearing a rough-cloth dark shirt and dark trousers, his face as white as the cart-driver’s shirt.
She shivered, and heard herself sigh. The day grew hotter, even as the wagon bounced along beneath a canopy of trees. Another forest! But not the forest of home, no. Oh, Yemaya, please, goddess, You cannot have gone away and left me here! You would not, would You?
Chapter Thirty-two
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Two Selections
That night I returned to my room and, in a rather melancholy mood, stood at the window a while as though I might see into the dark across the fields and into the woods where that runaway black man had been hiding—though I was quite sure he had been captured, giving the excitement of the dogs who went after him—and then picked my way through a book case near the bed. The only thing there that caught my interest was a small volume of illustrated poems by a man named William Blake. But these I put aside for further study. Next I went to the bureau and took up the prayer pamphlet I had folded and pressed during my stay in the synagogue.
Creed of the Reformed Society of Israelites
Q. What are the fundamental Elements which form the basis of the Jewish faith?
A. The thirteen following:
1. The existence of God.—We believe that God exists, who created and sustains the universe.
2. His unity.—We believe that God is ONE, and only one, without a second that can in any manner be compared to, or associated with him.
Slowly, I read down the list of the other elements of the faith—His incorporeity, his eternity (“We believe that he is eternal, without beginning and without end…”), his direct superintendence (that he reigns alone over the universe without the intermediation of any other power…), his providence, the truth of prophecy, the prophecy of Moses (“the prince of prophets”), the delivery of the Law, the permanence of the Law, oh, and yes, the rewards and punishments for those who fulfill the law and those who transgress it, and the Coming of