Naomi Jackson - The Star Side of Bird Hill

“It was a morning like this when your great-great-grandmother, her two big bubbies leaking down on everything, brought one of those big rocks, big like what you see by Bathsheba, down on her hand while she was doing the washing. People say that they could hear her scream all over the hill, from those that was working in the fields to the people working in the big house, all the way out to the sea. They say that the fishermen who heard her scream pulled up their nets, no matter that they hadn’t yet caught fish nor fowl. They say that every man, woman, and child who heard that scream knew that what had been broken couldn’t fix. And everyone, from the little boys in the plantation yard to the old man who couldn’t hold his penis to go to the bathroom by himself, everyone knew the pain behind that scream. And they went to look in on her, all who could walk, to see who had felt that kind of pain and lived.

“They say that her hand was never the same again, neither her mind. They say that from the time she start screaming until the next time she spoke was the three days the master let her take off from work. You would think that was generous, but the crop had already been taken in and he could spare her. On the fourth day, she got up before cockcrow. She said to her daughter, my grandmother, that the next blood shed would be bakkra’s. And she never said another word to her husband again.

“If you think this life you have is hard, you have to imagine those days. No television to watch. No electric iron to turn on. No curling iron to fix up your hair. No inside bathroom. Nothing like everything that you know to be true now, nothing like what you call your life now. Every day the children that you call your own, the husband that you call your own, the wife that you call your own, everything that you call your own, you knew it wasn’t yours in truth. You knew that any tie to what you thought was yours could be broken just so. And so this thing people call grief, this thing that people call sadness, this thing that people call darkness, that was what we were living in all the time. There was joy, yes, a dance here and there, a boy who catch your eye, the babies before they grow big enough to have value. But that part of your life that was light was small and this dark thing, this ugly thing call slavery, it was big. This big ugly thing had a hold on you strong enough to make you feel like nighttime was constantly grabbing at your neck.

“Before time, there was a whole heap of confusion about renaming this place Seven Man’s Hill. And that’s because people can only remember the men who went into battle for our freedom and not the women who made it possible for them to be there. Because even though Bertha herself didn’t even have two strong hands to fight, it was she who gave the young men the courage to make up their mind about what they had to do. It was she who said the prayers over them, she who put the pouches next to their hearts that protected them. And beside her every step of the way was her daughter, a girl with strong, long legs like you, about your age, your great-great-grandmother I’m talking about now, and she was a warrior too. And so even as the men were already puffing out their chests at what it was they managed to do, there was your great-great-grandmother among them, fierce and taking in everything she needed to know to make a life. That is the people you come from, child. Not a sad-sack kind of people that does sit down and let life blow all the air out they chest.

“The same way that your father’s people blood run through your veins, you have a strong line of women behind you, Bertha and her mother and her mother before her. If they could still stand up after what they did and what had been done to them, you have more than enough legs to stand up on now. Your heart is going to heal, you know. Your hand too.”

“What did they do to make their masters set them free?” Dionne asked.

“Oh, dear heart. They didn’t ask for their freedom. They took it.”

“But Bertha was an old woman then. What could she do?”

“Being old and being dead isn’t the same thing. She was a wise woman. She never turned her back on the things her mother brought over with her from Africa. So even though she wasn’t in battle herself, she cleared the way for the people who could fight.”

“You mean to tell me that it was some spells that took down the planters?” Dionne said. She turned to look at her grandmother. From this angle, she could see the wiry gray hairs that sprouted like wildfire at Hyacinth’s temples after Avril died.

“It was some spells that brought you back here after your father took you away.”

“Spells that drowned my father too?” Dionne said, straightening her back the way she’d seen Errol do.

“You already know the answer to that.”

Dionne searched Hyacinth’s face, although she wasn’t sure exactly what guilt would look like when she found it.

“I don’t practice the kind of magic that hurts people. And if you think that I killed your father, then you don’t know me half as well as you think you do,” Hyacinth said.

“Apparently you don’t practice the kind of magic that helps people either,” Dionne said.

“What do you mean by that?”

“Exactly what I said. All these years you’ve been helping all these women on Bird Hill. And not once did you say to yourself, well, let me go check on my child and see how she’s doing. Or I wonder how my granddaughters are.”

“You don’t think I thought about you?” Hyacinth asked.

“Thinking about someone and helping them is not the same thing. That’s the problem with all you old-time people here. You believe that if you just pray for something, ‘watching and waiting’ for it, then it will appear. But the world doesn’t work like that. Don’t you remember what Father Loving said about how when you pray you have to move your feet?”

Hyacinth went to hold Dionne, as the tears her story had dried were back. She said something that she’d never said to Avril, though she’d always wondered if saying it might have brought her home. “I’m sorry, Dionne. I’m so, so sorry. If I could bring Avril back or go back and change the way things were for you, I would,” she said.

“I know,” Dionne said. “I know.”

And they stayed there like that for a while, feeling the newness of embrace and apology until the pressure cooker’s whistle called them back to themselves.

“Well, child, this food is not going to cook itself. I’ll let you finish the cou-cou. Your cooking is getting so good I just want to lay back with my two long hands now,” Hyacinth said.

“Yes, Gran,” Dionne replied. She followed her grandmother into the kitchen where neat piles of okra and cornmeal lay on the counter. And then she went back to making the meal that was so close to Hyacinth’s heart it was like second skin.

OLD YEAR’S NIGHT IN BIRD HILL found the new moon with a copper ring licking its edges. Watch night service started at seven o’clock, and by eleven, low notes and a hum of hymns were laying the ground for Father Loving’s sermon, the words that would carry them over into a new year. At home, black-eyed peas that had been cooking all day stood cooling on the stove. The black cake that wasn’t eaten at Christmas was wrapped carefully in waxed paper. Oranges that would be passed around at midnight, to give the bittersweet taste that the year ahead would certainly bring, were in coolers by the baptismal font. All who could come had come, because the people on the hill thought that if the new year found them on their knees, the months that followed might bring what they prayed for.

In the pews, hill women tried to keep their minds on the Lord, but their thoughts strayed. Hyacinth wondered whether her jug-jug would keep. As they were saying prayers for the church they had adopted in a country in Africa whose name Hyacinth could never pronounce, all she could think of was how long she’d spent making the dish even though she was sure only the old-timers would eat it. The young people were corralled into the church hall, a couple teenagers left to keep watch, because the five-hour church service was too much to ask of a child.