THE BOOK OF NEGROES by Lawrence Hill Page B

stay, unless we tell you to come up. Take this spot, near the stairs,” he said. “If you leave this spot, I will beat you. If you stay in this spot, I will save the beatings for the others.”
    I stared at him defiantly. I saw the assistant raise his arm. I don’t recall him hitting me. I only remember falling.
    I AWOKE IN THE DARKNESS with my mouth tasting foul. I felt rocking, as if I were on a donkey that had drunk palm wine. My stomach was sick again, and sore, and empty. I tried to stay motionless and go back to sleep. But the rocking persisted and a voice came to me. I opened my eyes. The medicine man.
    I stirred on the rough wood and felt a sliver cut my hip. I raised my head as much as I could—just a foot or so—and slid out onto the floor, where I could stand. My hips ached. Dried waste caked my feet. My teethhadn’t been cleaned. I felt my womanly bleeding gush out of me and detested having to stand before this hairy toubab.
    The medicine man grabbed my hand and pulled me up the steps. We came out of a hatch separate from the one serving the male captives. Out on the deck, daylight burned my eyes, and I had to shut them. When I opened them again, I saw that our ship was gliding over open water, with not an oarsman in sight. Waves brought the ship up and down, up and down. Above me, linens on upright poles beat like the wings of flying monsters. I could see no land. No canoes with homelanders. We were lost in a world of water. I thought that the toubabu must possess a fearsome magic to steer this ship across the endless desert of water.
    The medicine man pointed to a water bucket. I crouched and rinsed myself. I had cuts everywhere: face, hips, thighs, ankles. The mark on my breast was too sore to touch, or to wash. The salty water stung and burned my skin. Still, it felt good to sluice off all that muck. As I cupped water and splashed myself, I watched other homelander women crouching around food buckets. Down on their haunches, they used their fingers to eat a gruel of mashed-up beans.
    The medicine man gave me an empty cocoa-nut shell, and pointed to a bucket of fresh water. I scooped out some water and sipped cautiously. No salt. I drank it fast. Fanta came up to me.
    “Give me that,” she said, pointing at the cocoa-nut shell. “I didn’t get enough.”
    I handed it over. While Fanta drank, the medicine man gave me a long, sand-coloured cloth. I fumbled to cover myself, and was almost as relieved as I had been to drink.
    Fanta dropped the cocoa-nut shell. “Women before children,” she said, snatching the cloth from me and wrapping it around herself.
    The medicine man exhaled through crooked teeth, but said nothing. I wasn’t sure what sort of man he was, but he did not appear inclinedtoward beatings. At that moment, however, I wished that he had smacked Fanta hard in the face and given me back the cloth. Instead, he let her keep it and motioned for me to follow him through the women’s area on deck and through a door.
    The medicine man led me into a separate compartment for the male captives. Many were chained along the edge of the ship. Some called out to me by name, and I greeted each one who did so. I came up to Biton, the chief from below. He stood with his shoulders back and head up.
    He smiled. “Aminata Diallo.” He said my name fiercely. He said it with pride. I liked to hear it said that way. It made me stand a little straighter. “Chief Biton,” I said.
    “You have been away for more than a day. Why have you taken so long to come see me?”
    I said I had been sleeping, but had no idea it had been that long.
    Biton stared at the bruise on my face. “Stay up here if you can,” he said. “The more time you spend below, the faster you die.”
    The medicine man asked me, in baby Maninka words, if there were dead men below. I looked at Biton, but he hadn’t understood. I repeated the question in Bamanankan. Biton said there was one dead man and that the fellow chained to him