Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [85]
Lyaa shook her head.
“A child?”
She brushed her hand across her belly.
“I don’t feel a child.”
“The child feels you.”
“I have the goddess inside me, and I am inside the goddess.”
“What are you saying?”
But before she could try to explain the doctor returned and directed her, as the master had directed him to tell Old Dou, to take the girl to the bedding at the back of the barn.
“This is comfortable,” Old Dou said once they arrived at the barn. “Better than most get when they arrive here. But these Hebrews have a funny way. They own us but they want us to like them. It is different from the old country. At least they are, though not a lot of the others. The Christian folks. I hear things, I see things. Word travels, and not just in carts and carriages. All the years here, they do whipping. They hang people in the sun. Can you see that? No, you cannot see that, sick as you are. I do not mean to frighten you. Be glad you are here. Be glad the master wanted to get me a helper, and not some ugly girl up out of the fields, her ways already all twisted. He wanted somebody new, somebody we could teach. That’s what he told me. Maybe the master decided he will get us a bargain, somebody who is two for one. That is you, daughter, clearly that is you. But right now I see we need to help you or else we might have nothing for our money. Listen to me, nothing for their money is what I mean. You know I sure don’t have any money, not even anything hidden under the clay in my little cabin. But you had something hidden, didn’t you? Right there in your belly. In your own little clay hiding place. So we need to get you comfortable, sure, and get you some food, and fatten you up because you are going to get fat from the child soon and soon, because that child will come out of hiding.”
Old Dou touched the girl on her cheek.
“No worry, I will take care of you.”
Most of this passed Lyaa by. She felt cleared out, exhausted, hungry, tired beyond the need just for sleep. Only just now she felt steady, after that long voyage. Only just now did the sky and trees and earth stop shifting in her vision, side to side, up and down. She settled into her bed in the barn, soothed by the odors of animals that drifted in from the front of the building.
“We are all brothers and sisters,” Yemaya told her in a small voice that Old Dou could not hear. These horses, they carry us, but they do it as a favor. And we groom them, as a favor. The whole world works that way, daughter, and you are no exception. That sailor up on deck took something from you that you can never get back, but he left something in you, and that has grown to be the child within you, this little pip of a child grown into a swimming fish in your belly, growing now so fast and so big that I have to move over to make room for her.”
“Her?”
“Oh, yes, she is going to be a girl.”
“I am a girl.”
“No, a woman now.”
“And you are a girl.”
“Long ago, and now older, much older.”
“When you were a girl, tell me about it.” Oh, all that life in the forest, all that running, all that pain of captivity, the pain of the passage, and rape, the ignorance of her own condition or of where she was living, in what place and what country, poor demented girl finding happiness only in the goddess, until the day the birth spasms took her over.
Chapter Thirty-five
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Rice and Blood
Another early morning, another ride, as Isaac and I mounted up, and rode along the trail. A swift furry animal low to the ground started across our path, startled the horses, which startled me, reminding me again of the runaway slave my cousin Jonathan and I had encountered on our fishing day. My heart beat up a flurry, and then settled down. I touched my hand to my coat, where the pistol had made a shape under my fingers. And then let go. I had decided I would not ride out without it anymore.
“Here we are, master,” Isaac said, as we left the woods and found ourselves at the rice fields.
We dismounted, tied up our horses, and walked toward