“But this is not like anything we’ve ever known, is it?” Amari asked her. She braced herself for Afi’s answer.
“No, child. Horrors unimagined, I feel, will assault us.”
Amari thought back to the night she was captured and the journey to this place. Her mind could not imagine worse. She shivered in the night air, the brand on her shoulder throbbing. She thought of Kwasi, the little bird who would never fly again, but, in a way, she was glad he would not have to endure any of these horrors. Finally, leaning against the pole she was tied to, she managed to fall asleep.
6. FROM SAND TO SHIP
AMARI AWOKE STIFF, SORE, AND VERY COLD the next morning. Small, beach-living insects had feasted on her skin overnight, and she scratched at the red bites that covered her legs and arms. She looked around in alarm, because the dark wall of Cape Coast Castle, which had surrounded her every night since coming to this place, had disappeared. Then she remembered the small door, the bright sand, the blue water, and the fiery burn on her shoulder.
Afi, already awake, looked at her without smiling. “Today is the day, Amari.” Amari did not need to ask her for what.
They were all fed generously once again, and more salve was applied to their wounds. The men were then kicked and yelled at, shackled back together, and marched out of the pen. Besa was the last in line. He turned and glanced back at Amari with a look that said, I would have been a good husband, Amari. I would have loved you more with every sunrise and sunset. Then he was gone. Amari pulled her shackled hands up to her face. The chains rattled in rhythm to her sobs.
“You knew him?” Afi asked her.
“Yes, he is from my village. We were captured on the same day.”
“He is special to you, am I right?”
“Oh, yes!” Amari told her, a small smile breaking through her tears. “We were to be married.” Her smiled faded then.
“You must forget him,” Afi told her harshly.
“But—,” Amari protested.
“He is dead to you now. Just as your parents and your brother and my family are dead—gone to be with the ancestors.”
“But why, Afi? Why must I let go of the only link to who I truly am?”
“What you are is a slave,” Afi told her, her voice cold and firm. “You have been bought by men who will sell your body and will do with it what they want. You can be beaten and raped and killed, and your young man can do nothing about it.”
“You are cruel!” Amari cried, shaking with anger.
“I am honest,” she replied sadly.
“So why should I endure this? Why did you not let me just die in there?” Amari cried out.
“Because I see a power in you.” Afi lifted her shackled wrist and reached over to touch Amari. “You know, certain people are chosen to survive. I don’t know why, but you are one of those who must remember the past and tell those yet unborn. You must live.”
“But why?”
“Because your mother would want you to. Because the sun continues to shine. I don’t know, but you must.” She said nothing else, just sat down and began tracing pictures in the sand with her finger.
Amari had little time to mourn Besa’s removal or her own past or future, however. The soldiers came for the women next. They were herded together, then lined up and shackled, two by two. Afi was chained to Amari, to her great relief.
She tried to stay calm, but it was impossible. It was terrifying, not to be able to understand what was happening and not to know what was to come. She saw she wasn’t the only one—some of the other women screamed and tried to grab handfuls of sand as they were forced out of the holding pen.
Led across the sand, Amari found it surprisingly hard to walk. Her feet sank with every step. As they got closer to the edge of the beach, Amari noticed that the water never stopped moving, sending huge waves of itself against the sand—first blue, then white, then blue again. Bubbling, churning, even leaping onto the land, it seemed to Amari that the ocean was reaching out to grab and devour her. Many of the women backed away from the surf and were promptly lashed. Amari was frightened, but she knew the water would not kill her. Not today.
She watched as the last of the men were loaded into small rowboats, which rocked wildly on the waves. Some of the men cried out in terror. The boats became smaller as they got closer to the death house in the distance. Then Amari could see them no more.
A set of empty rowboats, much larger than Amari had first thought, awaited the next group of captives. The women were pushed from the soft warmth of the sand to the water-soaked beach, and Amari very quickly found herself standing in water up to her knees. She screamed in spite of herself at the sudden coldness of the water and its constant movement against her legs. It crashed against her as if it were angry and seemed to be trying to pull Amari away from the land. Her feet could not find a safe place—the sand beneath the water kept shifting. The water splashed onto her face, and she discovered with surprise that it was salty—like tears.
Afi, sloshing in the shallows just ahead of Amari, was knocked sideways by a wave and fell, taking Amari with her. They both struggled to raise their heads above the water, but the weight of their leg and neck irons pulled them down. Water seeped into Amari’s mouth and nose. She could not even scream.
Their captors cursed and hauled Afi and Amari up, then shoved them into the small rowboat. Afi breathed hard and tried not to show how frightened she was. Amari felt no need to hide her fear. She gripped the side of the boat fiercely and shrieked with every swell of the water, with every spray of water in her face. As the captives were loaded into the boat, it rocked and tilted as if it were about to toss them into the water once more.
And then the boat left the shore. Forty terrified women and girls howled as the boat began to float upon the sea. The soldiers on shore laughed at their fright, and the sailors on board beat them with their whips. Amari’s arms and face were lashed and sliced as she huddled with Afi in the bottom of the boat, trying to get away from the sailors’ ferocity. Why do they beat us? Amari thought wildly. To silence us? To stop our fear? Nothing made sense.
The screaming gradually subsided into deep, burning groans, which no salve could soften. Amari lifted her head and looked around. The land was quickly disappearing, the soldiers looking like miniatures of themselves as they dragged another coffle of slaves into another small boat. She could hear the cries of the seabirds above and the rhythmic splash of the oars as the rowers carried them away from her land and closer to the huge ship waiting for them. She looked back with longing at the land of her birth.
Amari knew that she would never see this place again.
7. SHIP OF DEATH
THE WATER, WHICH NEVER STOPPED ROCKING the small boat, carried them swiftly to the side of the huge ship. As they got closer, she knew she had been right: It was a place of death. Amari could not see the top of it. It rested upon the great water like a beast, ready to swallow them all up, she felt. Two of the captives who had been yoked together grew hysterical as they approached the looming structure and leaped without warning into the sea. The slave women gasped as one. Amari did not know the language of her captors, but she could tell they cursed as nets were cast overboard for the escaped slaves.
Amari and the other prisoners in her boat watched, however, in horrid fascination as the two women—a mother and daughter—tried in vain to swim back to shore. The mother struggled to keep her daughter afloat, but the chains were heavy and they were weak from hunger and captivity. Suddenly, the mother disappeared from sight for a moment, only to reemerge screaming in agony. The ocean bled bright red. Two huge gray fish with fins of silver surfaced for just a moment, their backs gleaming in the sunlight. One of them clenched a brown arm in its teeth. Then both mother and daughter disappeared. Amari stared at the spot, waiting for them to reappear. They didn’t. She had held her breath through the whole thing. She was so stunned, she could not even pray.
The sailors were now even angrier than before. The whips slas
hed across the backs of the remaining slaves once more, as if those still alive had to pay for the loss of the two who had died. No one else tried to jump.
A rough plank had been rigged for them to climb from the small boat to the ship. It was narrow and shaky, but the sailors made sure the women had no opportunity to escape into the sea, should they dare. When she got to the deck, Amari stood amazed—it was like a small city made of wood. Poles taller than any tree reached to the sky. Loud, flapping pieces of cloth, larger than a hut, were attached to the poles by ropes, some of which were thicker than her whole body. Barrels and boxes littered the area, and dozens of men ran around shouting at one another and clapping one another on the back. They were laughing and cheerful, but Amari noticed that everyone seemed to carry a weapon—a gun, a sword, a knife. Confused and frightened, she didn’t know what to think.
Amari had very little time to think, anyway. A whip lashed across her shoulder as she gazed around the ship, and she was quickly jolted back to reality. She jumped and yelped at the sudden pain. She and the other women were herded to one side of the deck, where a hole in the floor awaited. They were pushed into that hole and slid down into what Amari knew just had to be the underworld.
She wished that she had breathed more of the fresh air on the deck and in the boat, for the air in this place seemed to have been sucked out and replaced with the smells of sweat and vomit and urine. The male slaves had all been loaded before them, and she looked in disbelief at the sight before her. On narrow shelves made of wood, hundreds of naked men and boys lay chained together, wrists, necks, and legs held tightly by iron shackles. Only a few inches separated one man from another.
Each man had about six inches of headroom, not even enough to sit up. Under the upper level of boards a second level had been constructed, and under that, a third. Each row of shelves held men—human beings—chained like animals and stacked like logs for the fire, row after row, shelf after shelf.
The first row seemed to have more headroom and breathing area, but the second and third rows beneath them were already slimy with waste. The men on the bottom were splattered with the blood of the men who had been beaten, as well as the vomit and urine and feces that the men chained above them had no choice but to eliminate where they lay.
A large rat ran across Amari’s feet as they were marched past the men. She felt faint—surely this could not be real. Some of the women cried out as they found a man they knew. Amari did not want to see Besa tied like an animal. She turned her head and moved on.
The area for the women was in a separate location. Their feet were locked in leg irons and they had only the rough boards to lie upon, but Amari noticed that they had more room and that the air was a bit fresher. Nor were they stacked the way the men were. Amari was surprised to notice a number of children in their area. The men who had captured her group had killed all of the children—she had supposed because they were too much trouble to take care of. But the captives on this ship, as she found out later on the journey, came from all over Africa and by many different ways. Amari saw a small boy who huddled near his mother; he was about the same age as Kwasi had been. She wished for a moment that he had lived so that she could hold him and comfort him. Then she shook that thought free; she would never want him to know these horrors.
The ship of death was surprisingly very much alive. It inhaled and exhaled the foul air of where they lay chained, and it rolled with the rhythm of the water. Loud noises echoed down to them—pounding, clanging, and screeching. And it seemed the white men were always shouting. She also heard laughter above. No one in the hidden, dark area beneath the ship laughed. All were silent with fear.
Eventually, the activity above seemed to slow down. Amari felt a sense of anticipation, as if something was about to happen. Perhaps it was night. She could not tell. Afi, still chained next to her, quietly began to hum an old Ewe song. It was the lament sung at a funeral—a death song. She sang to the ancestors and to the other slaves. Gradually, even those not of that tribe joined in. Close to a hundred women softly sang with her. It was the saddest sound Amari had ever heard.
8. TOWARD THE EDGE OF THE WORLD
HOURS PASSED—IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO TELL IF it was day or night. Amari was unbelievably hungry and had to relieve herself. She was still chained and had no idea what she should do. She nudged Afi, who, as usual, was watchful and awake.
“Feel the motion of this ship of death,” Afi whispered.
Amari could feel a gentle rocking, rhythmic and constant. “It feels different somehow,” she told her.
“We float on the face of the sea,” Afi murmured. “And we travel toward the edge of the world.”
Amari started to ask her how she knew, but then she decided to trust Afi’s instincts. “There is no escape?” Amari asked, even though she was certain of the answer.
“Not only is there no escape, there is no land to escape to. They have stolen that as well.”
Amari did not understand. She had no time to ask her, for at that moment several sailors, with cloths tied around their faces, came down, unchained the feet of the women, and led them up out of the hold. After climbing the ladder up to the deck, Amari gasped with astonishment. Afi was right.
The land had indeed disappeared. Bright blue water surrounded them. The beach, the fort, the small boats—everything had vanished. One woman lurched at the sight, grabbed Amari’s arm, and squeezed it so tightly that she left marks. She mumbled words in a language Amari did not understand. Another woman fainted. Some covered their eyes from the sudden brightness; others cried out fearfully. Afi said nothing. She had known.
The sailors began throwing salt water on the women from buckets on the deck. The water stung Amari’s wounds and coated her with brine. Other women twitched and howled as the water hit them, and the sailors laughed at their discomfort. A barrel had been set on one side of the deck for the women to relieve themselves, and they were given food—some kind of beans mixed with an oily substance that Amari could not identify. It was horrible, and she gagged as she swallowed it, but she ate it all.
A sailor spoke sharply to the women, and they all stared at him blankly. He repeated himself again and again. “Now you dance! Dance! Dance, you monkeys, dance!” None of them had any idea what he meant. Finally, a young white man who looked to be about Amari’s age brought out a small drum and began pounding a beat. It was just a simple, basic rhythm—DRUM-dum, RUM-dum, DRUM-bop-bop; DRUM-dum, RUM-dum, DRUM-bop-bop—over and over again. The women looked around in confusion. The dull beat made by that foreign drum carried no message and certainly offered no cause for celebration. It has none of the life and voice our drummers were able to coax from a drum, Amari thought.
A whiplash stung Amari’s face and she jumped. The sailor holding the whip nodded, pointed to her, and jabbered some words as he hopped up and down. Amari then realized what the men wanted them to do. They expect us to dance, or at least jump, to this horrible rhythm! Amari thought incredulously. Slowly, reluctantly, the women began to jump.
Amari supposed it was for exercise. But it was also for another purpose, she noticed with a sickening realization. Most of the female captives had on very little clothing. Their clothes had been ripped and torn and stripped from them since they had been taken from their homes. The sailors, all carrying knives or guns, walked among the women as they danced. They watched the women closely, sometimes touching their bodies. The women knew what the men were looking for.
One of them, a huge man with bright orange hair, kept watching Amari. She had never seen a person with hair that color before, and he frightened as well as fascinated her. He never touched her, but while the women danced, she noticed he kept his eyes on her face rather than on the rest of her body.
At the end of the dance, instead of being taken back down to the hold where they had been chained all night, the women were tied to the sides of the deck. The children were untied and allowed to run free.
“Keep your child close to you,” Afi told o
ne mother. “Who knows what these strange men like to eat!” The mother nodded and grabbed the boy.
It wasn’t exactly pleasant on the deck of the ship—it was dreadfully hot, and the constant salty wind on her face only increased her thirst. They had been given no fresh water to drink since that first meal of the morning—but Amari was glad to be away from the stench of the bottom of the ship.
“They will come for us tonight,” Afi whispered to Amari, jarring her thoughts back to a harsh reality. “They treat us like animals, but tonight we will be forced to be their women.”
“But, but . . . I do not know what to do!” Amari wailed, thinking with embarrassment of her dreams of lying in Besa’s arms after they were married.
“Submit in silence. If you fight back, it will go worse for you,” Afi said sadly.
“Perhaps it is better to die,” Amari told her sharply.
Afi sighed. “If you die, they win. We cannot let that happen.”
“They have already taken everyone I loved,” Amari replied, ashamed to look at Afi in the face. “And tonight they take the only thing I have left that is truly mine. Death would be a relief.”
“You will live because you must,” Afi said sternly. “I should welcome death, but I cannot—not yet. And neither can you.” She turned away from Amari and looked out at the sea.
Amari did not know how to reply. She trembled violently at the thought of one of these strange, smelly, milk-faced men taking her against her will. Shall I throw myself overboard? she thought. It would be so much easier to give up and die. Yet she could not do that. And she didn’t know why.
The male captives were brought to the deck next, a few at a time. They also screamed as the salt water was thrown on them, and then they were forced to perform the same horrible dance. Amari listened to the thunder that their feet made and thought ruefully, The feet of my people bring forth rhythm even when the noise of the white men can produce none.