Butler, Octavia - Wild Seed

The woman smiled, pleased. “It’s a kind of cake I haven’t made before—special for Isaac and Doro’s homecoming.”

“You said…” Anyanwu thought for a moment. “You said your husband’s people were knifemakers. Cutler is his name?”

“Yes. Here, a woman takes the name of her husband after marriage. I was Sarah Wheatley before I married.”

“Then Sarah is the name you keep for yourself.”

“Yes.”

“Shall I call you Sarah—your own name?”

The woman glanced at her sidelong. “Shall I call you … Mbgafo?” She mispronounced it horribly.

“If you like. But there are very many Mbgafos. That name only tells the day of my birth.”

“Like … Monday or Tuesday?”

“Yes. You have seven. We have only four: Eke, Oye, Afo, Nkwo. People are often named for the day they were born.”

“Your country must be overflowing with people of the same name.”

Anyanwu nodded. “But many have other names as well.”

“I suppose Anyanwu really is better.”

“Yes.” Anyanwu smiled. “Sarah is good too. A woman should have something of her own.”

Doro came in then, and Anyanwu noted how the woman brightened. She had not been sad or grim before, but now, years seemed to drop from her. She only smiled at him and said dinner was ready, but there was a warmth in her voice that had not been there before in spite of all her friendliness. At some time, this woman had been wife or lover to Doro. Probably lover. There was still much fondness between them, though the woman was no longer young. Where was her husband, Anyanwu wondered. How was it that a woman here could cook for a man neither her kinsman nor in-law while her husband probably sat with others in front of one of the houses and blew smoke out of his mouth?

Then the husband came in, bringing two grown sons and a daughter, along with the very young, shy wife of one of the sons. The girl was slender and olive-skinned, black-haired and dark-eyed, and even to Anyanwu’s eyes, very beautiful. When Doro spoke to her courteously, her answer was a mere moving of the lips. She would not look at him at all except once when his back was turned. But the look she gave him then spoke as loudly as had Sarah Cutler’s sudden brightening. Anyanwu blinked and began to wonder what kind of man she had. The women aboard the ship had not found Doro so desirable. They had been terrified of him. But these women of his people … Was he like a cock among them, going from one hen to another? They were not, after all, his kinsmen or his friends. They were people who had pledged loyalty to him or people he had bought as slaves. In a sense, they were more his property than his people. The men laughed and talked with him, but none presumed as much as Isaac had. All were respectful. And if their wives or sisters or daughters looked at Doro, they did not notice. Anyanwu strongly suspected that if Doro looked back, if he did more than look, they would make an effort not to notice that either. Or perhaps they would be honored. Who knew what strange ways they practiced?

But now, Doro gave his attention to Anyanwu. She was shy in this company—men and women together eating strange food and talking in a language she felt she spoke poorly and understood imperfectly. Doro kept making her talk, speaking to her of trivial things.

“Do you miss the yams? There are none quite like yours here.”

“It does not matter.” Her voice was like the young girl’s—no more than a moving of the lips. She felt ashamed to speak before all these strangers—yet she had always spoken before strangers, and spoken well. One had to speak well and firmly when people came for medicine and healing. What faith could they have in someone who whispered or bowed her head?

Determinedly, she raised her head and ceased concentrating so intently on her soup. She did miss the yams. Even the strange soup made her long for an accompanying mound of pounded yam. But that did not matter. She looked around, meeting the eyes first of Sarah Cutler, then of one of Sarah’s sons and finding only friendliness and curiosity in both. The young man, thin and brown-haired, seemed to be about Isaac’s age. Thought of Isaac made Anyanwu look around.

“Where is Isaac?” she asked Doro. “You said this was his home.”

“He’s with a friend,” Doro told her. “He’ll be in later.”

“He’d better!” Sarah said. “His first night back and he can’t come home to supper.”

“He had reason,” Doro told her. And she said nothing more.

But Anyanwu found other things to say. And she no longer whispered. She paid some attention to spooning up the soup as the others did and to eating the other meats and breads and sweets correctly with her fingers. People here ate more carefully than had the men aboard the ship; thus, she ate more carefully. She spoke to the shy young girl and discovered that the girl was an Indian—a Mohawk. Doro had matched her with Blake Cutler because both had just a little of the sensitivity Doro valued. Both seemed pleased with the match. Anyanwu thought she would have been happier with her own match with Doro had her people been nearby. It would be good for the children of their marriage to know her world as well as Doro’s—be aware of a place where blackness was not a mark of slavery. She resolved to make her homeland live for them whether Doro permitted her to show it to them or not. She resolved not to let them forget who they were.

Then she found herself wondering whether the Mohawk girl would have preferred to forget who she was as the conversation turned to talk of war with Indians. The white people at the table were eager to tell Doro how, earlier in the year, “Praying Indians” and a group of whites called French had stolen through the gates of a town west of Wheatley—a town with the unpronounceable name of Schenectady—and butchered some of the people there and carried off others. There was much discussion of this, much fear expressed until Doro promised to leave Isaac in the village, and leave one of his daughters, Anneke, who would soon be very powerful. This seemed to calm everyone somewhat. Anyanwu felt that she had only half understood the dispute between so many foreign people, but she did ask whether Wheatley had ever been attacked.

Doro smiled unpleasantly. “Twice by Indians,” he said. “I happened to be here both times. We’ve had peace since that second attack thirty years ago.”

“That’s time enough for them to forget anything,” Sarah said. “Anyway, this is a new war. French and Praying Indians!” She shook her head in disgust.

“Papists!” her husband muttered. “Bastards!”

“My people could tell them what powerful spirits live here,” whispered the Mohawk girl, smiling.

Doro looked at her as though not certain whether she were serious, but she ducked her head.

Anyanwu touched Doro’s hand. “You see?” she said. “I told you you were a spirit!”

Everyone laughed, and Anyanwu felt more comfortable among them. She would find out another time exactly what Papists and Praying Indians were and what their quarrel was with the English. She had had enough new things for one day. She relaxed and enjoyed her meal.

She enjoyed it too much. After much eating and drinking, after everyone had gathered around the tall, blue-tiled parlor hearth for talking and smoking and knitting, she began to feel pain in her stomach. By the time the gathering broke up, she was controlling herself very closely lest she vomit up all the food she had eaten and humiliate herself before all these people. When Doro showed her her room with its fireplace and its deep soft down mattresses covering a great bed, she undressed and lay down at once. There she discovered that her body had reacted badly to one specific food—a rich sweet that she knew no name for, but that she had loved. This on top of the huge amount of meat she had eaten had finally been too much for her stomach. Now, though, she controlled her digestion, soothed the sickness from her body. The food did not have to be brought up. Only gotten used to. She analyzed slowly, so intent on her inner awareness that she appeared to be asleep. If someone had spoken to her, she would not have heard. Her eyes were closed. This was why she had waited, had not healed herself downstairs in the presence of others. Here, though, it did not matter what she did. Only Doro was present—across the large room sitting at a great wooden desk much finer than the one he had had on the ship. He was writing, and she knew from experience that he would be making marks unlike those in any of his books. “It’s a very old language,” he had told her once. “So old that no one living can read it.”