Freedom's Pen Read online

  You feared not the predator.

  You walked in trust.

  You never knew, you never saw, you never felt.

  I hold the memory of you forever.

  She repeated it to herself, but she didn’t dare tell her mother. No one but the griot made praise songs. She didn’t have a tama or a kora, but when she was alone, while her mother cooked the meal that night, she upended her calabash bowl and, with a stick, beat out the rhythm of her song.

  How she wished she could sing the song for her village. She wondered what it would be like if her song were to be remembered forever, just as she promised to remember the gazelle.

  “How is it a good thing that Lamin died?” she asked her mother.

  Her mother looked up from grinding the couscous. “What do you mean, a good thing?”

  “You said it was a good thing Lamin died because the griot is still here.”

  Her mother made a high-pitched keening sound—almost a wail. “No, no. I only meant that his memory would last from generation to generation because the griot will make a song for him. It is not good that he died.” Her mother ground the millet harder with her pestle. “But it is the will of Allah,” she said, as if only remembering belatedly, “so maybe it is a good thing.”

  The will of Allah. Janxa had heard those words for as long as she could remember. What did they mean? Most times the words were followed by a shrug of the shoulders. It was almost like when the Harmattan raged—that great wind that blows off the Sahara. When Janxa had only seen two or three rains, she once told her mother, “Make it stop, Maamanding.” She hated the way the sand got in her eyes and nose. She felt like she was eating dirt the whole time the Harmattan blew.

  “It blows, little one,” her mother said. “It blows where it pleases and stops when it pleases.”

  Soon after the burial of Lamin, the griot took his leave and things settled back to normal in the village. The grandmother cared for the little ones. The mothers tended the rice fields. Dunxa still bragged about her son. The goats were herded to fresh grazing and the fathers hunted. They were moving toward harvest time and much work had to be done. Janxa spent her days helping her mother or minding her little brothers.

  The only darkness that intruded was the increasing talk of tubaab. Janxa had learned to recognize the word, so when she heard the drums telling another story of tubaab evil, her heart thudded along with the drums. The griot had said they even took children.

  One day, toward the end of harvest, Janxa followed her mother to her father’s hut to help carry food. When they got there, she noticed that her father had his robe tied across his shoulder, ready for travel. He reached out a hand to touch Maamanding. Janxa didn’t often witness their tenderness, so she turned her head.

  “I will go to the Fula,” her father said. “I will buy a calf for us.”

  Her mother smiled. Nearly everyone had goats, but cattle were rare. “The harvest was good?”

  “Yes, very good. Allah be praised.” He turned toward Janxa. “If I allow you to accompany me, can you walk a long distance?”

  “I can. I can.” Janxa could hardly believe what her father was suggesting. She looked at her mother. Would her mother let her go?

  “Can you carry her if she tires?”

  Her father laughed. “She’s just a wisp of chaff. Do you think she ‘s too heavy for me?”

  Janxa was so excited she could not even take offense. She could see her mother relenting.

  “Let me go and pack food for the journey.”

  They had been walking for much of the day when her father stopped by a stream to rest. He took maize cakes out of his pack and filled their gourds with water from the stream.

  Janxa felt too tired to talk.

  They had only rested for a short time when her father stood up and walked around their resting place, his eyes on the ground and a worried look on his face. “Come, daughter, be silent,” he whispered. “We must leave.” He had barely hoisted her onto his hip and slung his bundle across his head when he silently took off, skirting toward the brush.

  He continued to move, watching from side to side. Janxa wondered if he’d seen lion tracks or the spoor of some other predator. She knew not to ask. Her father hardly made a breathing sound. As night fell, she listened to the sounds of the nighttime jungle—a faraway roar of a lion, the crashing underbrush caused by some nocturnal hunter. Each noise seemed familiar. Her father’s wariness eased.

  “Climb down, little daughter. We can rest.”

  “What did you fear, Father?” Janxa asked.

  “I can’t be sure. I saw footprints that had no toes. They were made by no animal I recognize. Perhaps they were made by a tool of some kind.” His forehead creased. “But they were shaped like a foot.”

  He gathered her into his lap and wrapped his cloak around both of them. “Sleep, Janxa. I will keep watch.”

  She didn’t know how long she’d slept, but she woke to her father gently shaking her, with a finger placed over her lips. As she shook off the mist of sleep, she heard clumsy movements nearby. Dawn had only begun to streak the sky, so all she could see were dark silhouettes against the lightening sky.

  A flock of birds startled and flew up into the trees right beside Janxa, but she managed to stay still and silent. What had startled them?

  She soon caught an unfamiliar scent—something cooking? Something burning?

  She heard a string of sounds. It was a human voice—she knew that. The words didn’t sound like any words she’d ever heard. It wasn’t Fula or Mandinka. She felt her father stiffen. She understood what his body told her. Don’t move. Don’t swallow. Don’t breathe.

  A deeper voice spoke. It sounded slow and clipped. At the end of one group of sounds, the voice went up, as if the man asked a question. What kind of tribe spoke like that?

  Back and forth. There were two men, she could tell by the tone of their voices, but they spoke gibberish. It sounded like a bitten-off tooth language instead of a rich, round language using the throat, the tongue against the roof of the mouth, and lip sounds.

  As they moved off, she caught sight of them. They wore strange clothing and their feet looked like hooves of some kind. She caught her breath. Tubaab! Their skin … they had hair coming out of white faces.

  They continued to move off. They hadn’t heard the thumping of her heart against her chest. She knew her father had felt it though. His arm had tightened around her.

  “We must go back to our village and warn our people,” her father said when they were sure the tubaab had gone.

  Janxa didn’t even ask about the calf they planned to buy. It didn’t matter anymore. She looked down and saw footprints like the ones her father had seen last night. Now she understood what her father described. The strange hooves of these tubaab made the prints.

  As they retraced their steps, her father kept them close to the brush. Janxa kept looking up at the trees. The skin on the back of her neck prickled, and she flinched as if a leopard stalked them. Would they reach their village by nightfall? How she longed to snuggle next to Maamanding on the sleeping mat and listen to Caaman making suckling sounds and Baaku snoring. She hurried her steps.

  High up in the trees a group of quarrelsome monkeys made a ruckus. If the monkeys felt safe playing in the trees, she knew there could be no leopards sleeping there. As long as the monkeys chattered, they were safe. Besides, the sun was high enough that the cats would no longer be hunting.

  Father stopped and listened hard. He put his fingers over his mouth to warn her to be quiet. The monkeys fell silent as well.

  Snap! She heard the sound of a stick breaking as someone moved through the brush. Her father scooped her up in his arms just as two men stepped out from behind a tree. She couldn’t tell the thumping of her heart from the wild beating of her father’s, but as the men stepped forward, she could see that they were not tubaab. Both of them had color—rich deep color. Relief washed over her. These were her people.

  “Brother,�
�� the tall man said, “where is your family?” His words sounded strange, as if he came from a different tribe.

  “Here and there.” Her father tried to shrug his shoulders, but Janxa’s arms were wrapped around him and she could feel the tenseness of his back. Something was wrong. Why did Father not tell them everyone was back at the village?

  “Call to the other hunters so we can meet them,” the other one said, smiling.

  “He does not hunt,” said the tall one, nodding and squinting his eyes against the sun. “He has no weapons, and he’s traveling with a child.”

  Father tightened his grip on her and shifted the bundle tied across his forehead. “Do you have need of something?”

  The men moved closer. As Father stepped back they moved to either side of him. Father gracefully let his bundle slide down his back. He set Janxa down and moved away from her. “Stay back,” he whispered.

  Janxa nodded. She didn’t know what was happening, but she knew her father was wise and strong. She would stay out of the way. Pushing the bundle toward the brush under a tree, she stood next to it.

  As the tall man kept talking, the other one rushed her father from the side, swinging a thick stick. Janxa flinched as she heard it hit her father with a thud, but before she could even cry out, her father grabbed the stick, twisting it out of the man’s hands, and landed a ferocious blow against the man’s head that sent him reeling. The other man dived at Father’s knees, throwing him off balance. The man and her father both landed with a thud.

  Janxa squeezed her eyes shut. She wanted to cry out to Allah for help, but it seemed so useless. This was probably Allah’s will just like everything else she ever asked about. She still found herself crying silently for help.

  When she opened her eyes, both men were on top of Father. The tall one was fastening metal bracelets of some kind on his hands.

  “No!” she cried out. “What are you doing?” She ran toward her father, but the shorter one kicked her away.

  “Do not touch her!” Father screamed, thrashing even more violently. He swung his manacled hands and struck one of the attackers.

  “What do we do with the girl?” the shorter man asked as he shifted out of reach of her father. “She’s hardly worth the trouble. Look at her—skinny and sickly looking. She won’t last a week.”

  “Just leave her for the hyenas.”

  Her father pushed the remaining man off and rolled to a kneeling position even though metal bands and chains tied his hands together.

  “Watch out. He’s a wild man.” The taller man rubbed his face where he had been struck by the metal. “This one’s dangerous even with shackles. He’ll fetch a fine price, but how will we ever get him to the island?”

  The island? What do they mean?

  Her father kicked out with one leg toward the tall man again. The shorter man reached over and grabbed Janxa, squeezing her. He put his hand across her face. His hand was gritty and smelled like dirt and blood and sweat. Her stomach lurched and she started to gag.

  “Do not harm her.” Father stood up, hands shackled in front of him. “Let her go back to the village, and I will go with you.” His voice took on a pleading tone she’d never heard.

  She gagged again.

  “Take your hand off her mouth unless you want the contents of her stomach all over you,” said the taller man.

  The shorter man took his hands off her, and she gasped for breath.

  “We’re going to let her go back to her village?”

  She used the hem of her mbubba to wipe her face. How would she find her way back home all by herself? Could she leave her father? What about the tubaab?

  “No. We will take her with us,” said the tall one, nodding to himself. “If she is safe, he has nothing to lose. He will fight to the death. No,” he said, smiling, “if we have her, we can control this wild one.”

  Janxa felt relieved. Whatever happened she did not want to leave her father. When she looked at her father though, she did not recognize him. His bruises had begun to swell, but it was more. His shoulders sagged, and he breathed ragged breaths like an old man.

  It was as if he already knew what was going to happen.

  Middle Passage

  Atlantic Ocean aboard the schooner Phillis, 1761

  Janxa tucked herself into her place on the deck of the ship, between two large wooden crates. When she had first discovered this place she found a tattered piece of carpet wedged partway under one of the crates. She managed to wiggle it out and used it to sit on. When the tubaab herded the women and children below, she took it with her. So far, no one had taken it away from her.

  She stayed well out of the way between the crates, but she could see most of what happened on deck. She watched. If she lived, she promised herself, she would never speak of the things she saw, the things she heard, and the things she felt.

  Never.

  When she and her father had been captured she’d had no idea what lay in store for them. But somehow her father knew.

  She would never forget that day.

  The men had who captured them had taken them to a clearing a day’s walk from where they had been caught. It was there she saw tubaab again. The tubaab used other Wolof, Fula, and Mandinka guards like her father’s captors. Janxa kept studying these men who looked just like the men in her village. What kind of man would sell his own people for tubaab money?

  But it wasn’t these bad men who drew her attention. It was the other captured people. All gathered together, they looked like a whole village of sad, frightened people who all spoke different languages.

  As Janxa and her father were brought to one of the tubaab, he pushed right up to Father and forced his mouth open to look at his teeth just as Father would have done to the calf they had planned to buy. As the tubaab poked and prodded, looking him over, Janxa closed her eyes. She would not insult her father’s dignity by looking.

  “This man could be worth something,” the tubaab said in her own language. How strange it sounded for a colorless person to be speaking Wolof. “But why did you bring this one?” He pointed to her. “She’s not worth the rice we’ll have to provide.”

  Her father stiffened. Janxa could sense him ready to do battle.

  “We took her because, through her, we could control him.” The tall captor bowed to the tubaab, pressing his hands together. “Begging pardon, sir, but this one’s the strongest and fittest slave we’ve yet taken. Our bruises tell the tale.” He stepped back a step. “We ask a generous portion for him. You’ll make a good increase on him.”

  The tubaab stretched his lips over his teeth. It did not pass for a smile. “We’ll pay you the customary amount for him because you’ve thrust his sickly girl on us as well.” He turned his back and walked away.

  The men who captured them yanked her father over to the other captives and put metal shackles on his feet. They then strung a rusted chain through the wrist shackles, chaining Father to a long line of men.

  No one paid attention to her.

  “Let’s move the cargo out so we can reach James Island by nightfall,” said the man she’d come to hate—the tall one. When some of the chained men refused to move, the guards lashed at them with whips. Janxa stepped back, but the end of one caught her across the face. She felt the welt rising on her face as she watched her father catch the end of the whip over and over.

  As the long line began to move, Janxa moved with them. One foot in front of the other. Don’t think. Don’t look. She wondered why no tears came to her eyes. Maybe everything inside her had dried up. If these tubaab were planning to eat her, by the time she got to this island she would be one hard, dry piece of meat.

  She glanced up at her father and she saw his head nod slowly and his eyes crinkle in that way that meant he was proud of her. She inched closer to him so she could touch his leg for a brief moment.

  As she continued to follow, her mind darted here and there. Maamanding. She wondered when her mother would know that they were not coming home. How
long had they been gone? If they had bought the calf instead of being captured, they might be on their way home by now, but it would be too early to be missed. Perhaps they would already be on the island the tubaab talked about before her village knew they were gone?

  One foot in front of the other.

  She looked at the many people captured. Surely there were too many to be eaten. She’d seen money change hands —it was too much money for food. You could buy several cattle for that price.

  There were a few other children. Most were boys about Lamin’s age. Several women were chained separately. Most of them wept as they walked. Some had babies in their arms.

  She remembered how her village had mourned at the death of Lamin. Would they mourn for Father and her?

  The griot. Would the griot write a praise song for her? She stopped to remove a sharp thorn from between her toes. The whip slashed across her arm.

  “Keep up.”

  Her father screamed at the man wielding the whip, but his protests called down blows onto his own back and all those chained near him. It made Janxa determined to do nothing to bring attention to herself, because it would only bring trouble to her father in the end. No matter what, she would keep pace and remain as invisible as she could.

  Praise songs. That’s what she had been thinking about. If the griot were to write a song to her memory, what would he say? All she could think about was the praise song she had composed for the tiny gazelle killed by the leopard. She mouthed the words:

  From your mother’s side you walked.

  You feared not the predator.

  You walked in trust.

  You never knew, you never saw, you never felt.

  I hold the memory of you forever.

  She had repeated those words over and over as she walked the next two days. Though she had written it for the gazelle, the words became her story as well.

  She sensed a slowing down on the afternoon of that second day. As they came to a bend in the river, she saw hundreds of people, all chained like her father. They stood waiting to board small boats to take them to the island in the Gambia River called James Island.