Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [90]
“Sweety-weety, weety-sweety,” Jonathan went on. On and on and on, until Old Dou wrapped the child in a cloth and carried her out the door.
Jonathan followed.
“Sweety-weety,” he said in that same high-pitched voice, “weety-sweety…”
The doctor had never seen this man, or any man, behave with such silliness, or was it madness or devotion over a child not his own. At first it cheered the doctor and then made him sick to his stomach as he wondered what good—or evil—would come of this.
***
A little girl, and they called her Lyaza. Her mother left her the imprint of her beautiful face, dark eyes just the right distance apart, perfect lips, the nose a masterpiece in shape and form, all of this the color of sand on that ocean beach from which she first departed her native continent.
The doctor, who would become a strong presence in Lyaza’s life, and in her own child’s life as the years passed, checked her over, beyond the perfect face—looking to the functions of her various parts as best he could surmise, breathing, the flow of her blood, digestion and evacuation, liveliness and laughter.
“Well, Old Dou,” he said, “Lyaza’s a strong and pretty baby, and though it’s going to take time for the family to recover its investment, this one is going to give back much more than her mother could. The mother, being…” His voice trailed off, and he tapped a finger to his forehead.
Old Dou nodded, but she did not smile. It was one thing to belong to someone, and to have to show obedience to any of all of these white people. It was another to give in to any emotion that might suggest you were happy about any of it. Smiling, jokes, singing, dancing, all that belonged to the private lives of the slave cohort on this plantation, and you might figure on all plantations. Here, at least [the only place I know about in an intimate way, having heard these stories from my mother year after year after year], the Africans tried to live lives like any other people, when they took to themselves. And of course the sound of that happiness—the singing, shouting, joking, dancing—sometimes broke out into the air for anyone in the big house or anyone passing by to hear. Faces that might be downcast in the big house often bloomed like flowers in the privacy of the quarters. Charged with energy, limbs that dragged in the fields stepped lively and hopped and kicked to celebrate the vitality of the life-blood flowing through them. Song came later, after the girl, taken in by Old Dou, joined in the music, in her simple way, so that the old house slave cooed and hummed and sang for her as she often did, especially in the early days of her growing years.
The doctor enjoyed that side of the African woman. If he found himself a little too stiff to allow his soul to sing along with the music the slaves made, still he knew it was a good thing they did. The other side of Old Dou gave him pause. The woman who gathered herbs to treat people in the cabins, who threw chicken bones on a mat and read news in them about the future, a time which, invariably, she surmised would be worse than things were now, the woman who looked up at clouds and saw wispy signs in the air, in other words, the woman whose mind and soul belonged to Old Africa rather than to the rational ways he hoped would make up the future of the country they both lived in, this woman made for doubts in his mind. A physician, trained in Massachusetts, who returned to his native grounds after the cold winters of the north began to seep into his bones, the doctor took her to be a competent if overly mystical house slave worthy enough to be trusted with the family’s treasured belongings, and discreet enough to keep her countenance cool if not indifferent when the usual flows and ebbs of family life in the big house sometimes rose to the level of distress and disarray. It wasn’t the Hebrew aspect of the family’s nature that intrigued him. Up north he had met and sometimes