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When the slaves' emancipation reaches Texas, a black woman named Lifee and her family rely on their extraordinary resilience and ingenuity to face the reverberations of slavery and stake out a farm and a home of their own. 40,000 first printing.
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L'autore:
J. California Cooper is the author of the novels Family and In Search of Satisfaction and five collections of short stories, including Homemade Love, winner of the 1989 American Book Award, and Some Love, Some Pain, Sometime. She lives in northern California.
Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.:
Now and Then
Once upon a certain year, 1764 or so, over 200 years ago, someone in the world requested a number of African longhorn steer and the African men who knew these cattle and could breed and raise them on a foreign soil; the southern states of America.
Later, along a river in Africa where slavecatchers did not usually seek their prey, and where tribes did not sell their people to slavecatchers (a lie made bigger from a kernel of the truth), these cattle and men were sought for. There were two quiet and content villages at least forty miles apart in this area. These two villages did not socialize much, they were working people and only seldom married others from the different tribes. Even so, some of them were related. Some of the cattle herders knew only in passing the herders from the other village. But Suwaibu and Kola knew each other and when they passed each other in the nights, would stop and talk awhile, exchanging knowledge and small gossip. They liked each other; were friends. Kola wanted Suwaibu to meet and love his younger sister; to marry and become part of his family, to exchange knowledge with him. Suwaibu had sneaked one night to peek at the sister; she was beautiful, he liked her and planned to speak to his father and mother.
These villages did not know their young and able people were in danger at that time and so there were no precautions taken along the river against the heartless thieves of life and men.
Suwaibu, sixteen years old, from the upper river, was herding his father's cattle because he loved the beauty of the land and loved being out on it living under the stars and the sun. His father was a merchant and traveled many places even as far East as Egypt and as far North as Timbuktu, to the University of Sankore. Suwaibu, the eldest son, traveled with him sometimes and loved most the Northern lands where the University of Sankore was. His father was a supplier of paper, salt and books to the university and knew some of the learned people there. Suwaibu could read, write and certainly count, as his father could. Because Suwaibu had begged him, his father was making arrangements for Suwaibu to attend the University at some future time when he could spare his son for a while.
Kola, twenty years old and from the middle river, was married with two children. His father was a keeper of livestock, content with his lot in life; he had an excellent wife and a family of many children, plenty to eat and the whole world, it seemed, to roam in at will.
Soon thereafter, these young men, and other cattlemen from both villages, happened to be out at the same time, late one night, to prepare for a cattle drive along the river, were taken by the thieves, along with their livestock. When these stolen men were thrown into the hold of the ship, mixed amongst each other, no one could explain what had happened and even living so close to each other the dialects were not the same and most of them did not always understand each other.
Suwaibu and Kola were shackled together. They were crowded in the hold face to back over the thousands of miles. Smelling the breath and the body odors of the other, lying in their combined urine and waste. Blood and pus from their wounds mixed as it oozed from their bodies. Some of them who could not understand the language of their brother spoke to each other with their eyes and the tone of their moans when conscious. But what was there to say except of terror and pain, fear and loss, which all those in the hold understood from all the others in the hold. You know of these cruel, unwanted voyages, what more to add?
Finally arriving in a town in the Southern United States, they were taken from the ship to holding cells in a rough-hewn building. There were not too many other buildings in this town, but there was this one new, solid, sturdy and strong building where human beings were stocked. Human beings for sale. To become slaves.
Hosed down and scrubbed (Suwaibu losing much of his skin), they were fed at troughs like animals and prodded into cells with dirty, vermin-filled straw on the floors. Some captives had died on the ships, some died at the trough, some died in the cells. Oh! they had died all along the way! Suwaibu and Kola, among others, did not die; they survived to be taken, at last, to the auction block. Suwaibu and Kola were bought, with the remaining cattle that had survived, by different plantation masters. After breathing each other's breath and mixing blood daily for months, they were separated. They were never to see each other again. Suwaibu was taken to Texas; Kola was taken to Mississippi.
They both grieved for their old homes of family and warmth, love and a future. They looked, often, toward what they thought was the direction of their old homes and Gods over long and miserable months as days grew into a blur of time. Their work was long, hard and heavy. In time and finally, in lonely desperation, Kola was forced to take a woman (a wife?) and begin his life, for true, in America. He fathered children that reminded him of his children back in Africa. In his lifetime in America he had three wives (?) and all his children sold away from him. His grief, daily, became too huge and heavy to bear and so he died after fifteen years. He was about thirty-five years old. An old, old young man. His children all sold or dead, he was leaving no one behind him to grieve for him (which men of all nations try to have), only a master who cursed him for dying and said not a good word about Kola or the beautiful cattle roaming his fields that Kola had raised for him. Not even the master's money could buy more slaves that knew how to raise the cattle as Kola had.
The master raged, "These black devils cost too much to just die and leave you! I blive they only do it for meanness, the good-for-nothin black bastards!"
Another female slave had died the day after Kola died. She died giving birth in the sugarcane fields where she should not have been sent to work. She might have survived it anyway and given birth, but the overseer did not believe the child was coming yet and she was whipped, unmercifully in the heat of the afternoon sun for "trying to get out of work," he said. She and the child gave up the ghost, gladly. Kola was thrown in a pit with her and the baby, back to face, and covered with dirt. So Kola was buried in this new country the same way he was brought to it. Back to face, though now, with someone he did not know; a crying, desolate stranger whose dying blood and child still clung to her and now, with him. All uncared for, unwashed, just thrown away.
These kinds of whipping deaths happened so often, the whippers would have been called serial killers or psychopaths, by an honest people, had the words been in use.
Yes, Kola died . . . but he had had children and his blood was still living in this new world of pain. His blood still rushing, striving, pulsing on toward some future.
Suwaibu was living his pitiful life as a slave and he chose to live it alone. For many years he did not want a wife or woman or children, to lose to the vast unknown space beyond his vision. Sold . . . or killed. Many years he dreamed of and longed for his home and family in Africa. Thought of the future he had had before him, the university, his father's commerce. His reading, writing and speaking in four different languages he had learned working with his father did him no good here; they did not recognize there was no "th" sound in his language. They called him ignorant and savage in this country where his Master could not even speak his one language well. He grew to hate his cruel and ignorant masters.
He was not allowed to remain alone, however. Though he was very religious and wanted to maintain his honor to his God, Suwaibu had to be forced on pain of death to father several children. He worked all the days of his life, dying a truly beaten, bent old man, full of hate and rage. He had been beaten many times when they sold his children and even the wife he had grown to care for. He had raged and grieved. They said that was only the savage part of him. "Animals!" they said. From the day he was taken from his home, Africa, he was not happy One day, One hour, for all the days of his life. Not One. Not even when his children were born was he happy, because he knew they were born to be slaves.
When Suwaibu was about fifty years old, grayhaired and almost sightless, for his tears had washed away his sight and the tears of his body, called sweat, had drained his soul. He died, sitting in front of a tired, dilapidated, old shack. Looking, still looking, yearning, toward his old, true home.
When Suwaibu's master was informed of his death by a man Suwaibu had trained to tend the special cattle, the master leaned back in his chair, &...
Once upon a certain year, 1764 or so, over 200 years ago, someone in the world requested a number of African longhorn steer and the African men who knew these cattle and could breed and raise them on a foreign soil; the southern states of America.
Later, along a river in Africa where slavecatchers did not usually seek their prey, and where tribes did not sell their people to slavecatchers (a lie made bigger from a kernel of the truth), these cattle and men were sought for. There were two quiet and content villages at least forty miles apart in this area. These two villages did not socialize much, they were working people and only seldom married others from the different tribes. Even so, some of them were related. Some of the cattle herders knew only in passing the herders from the other village. But Suwaibu and Kola knew each other and when they passed each other in the nights, would stop and talk awhile, exchanging knowledge and small gossip. They liked each other; were friends. Kola wanted Suwaibu to meet and love his younger sister; to marry and become part of his family, to exchange knowledge with him. Suwaibu had sneaked one night to peek at the sister; she was beautiful, he liked her and planned to speak to his father and mother.
These villages did not know their young and able people were in danger at that time and so there were no precautions taken along the river against the heartless thieves of life and men.
Suwaibu, sixteen years old, from the upper river, was herding his father's cattle because he loved the beauty of the land and loved being out on it living under the stars and the sun. His father was a merchant and traveled many places even as far East as Egypt and as far North as Timbuktu, to the University of Sankore. Suwaibu, the eldest son, traveled with him sometimes and loved most the Northern lands where the University of Sankore was. His father was a supplier of paper, salt and books to the university and knew some of the learned people there. Suwaibu could read, write and certainly count, as his father could. Because Suwaibu had begged him, his father was making arrangements for Suwaibu to attend the University at some future time when he could spare his son for a while.
Kola, twenty years old and from the middle river, was married with two children. His father was a keeper of livestock, content with his lot in life; he had an excellent wife and a family of many children, plenty to eat and the whole world, it seemed, to roam in at will.
Soon thereafter, these young men, and other cattlemen from both villages, happened to be out at the same time, late one night, to prepare for a cattle drive along the river, were taken by the thieves, along with their livestock. When these stolen men were thrown into the hold of the ship, mixed amongst each other, no one could explain what had happened and even living so close to each other the dialects were not the same and most of them did not always understand each other.
Suwaibu and Kola were shackled together. They were crowded in the hold face to back over the thousands of miles. Smelling the breath and the body odors of the other, lying in their combined urine and waste. Blood and pus from their wounds mixed as it oozed from their bodies. Some of them who could not understand the language of their brother spoke to each other with their eyes and the tone of their moans when conscious. But what was there to say except of terror and pain, fear and loss, which all those in the hold understood from all the others in the hold. You know of these cruel, unwanted voyages, what more to add?
Finally arriving in a town in the Southern United States, they were taken from the ship to holding cells in a rough-hewn building. There were not too many other buildings in this town, but there was this one new, solid, sturdy and strong building where human beings were stocked. Human beings for sale. To become slaves.
Hosed down and scrubbed (Suwaibu losing much of his skin), they were fed at troughs like animals and prodded into cells with dirty, vermin-filled straw on the floors. Some captives had died on the ships, some died at the trough, some died in the cells. Oh! they had died all along the way! Suwaibu and Kola, among others, did not die; they survived to be taken, at last, to the auction block. Suwaibu and Kola were bought, with the remaining cattle that had survived, by different plantation masters. After breathing each other's breath and mixing blood daily for months, they were separated. They were never to see each other again. Suwaibu was taken to Texas; Kola was taken to Mississippi.
They both grieved for their old homes of family and warmth, love and a future. They looked, often, toward what they thought was the direction of their old homes and Gods over long and miserable months as days grew into a blur of time. Their work was long, hard and heavy. In time and finally, in lonely desperation, Kola was forced to take a woman (a wife?) and begin his life, for true, in America. He fathered children that reminded him of his children back in Africa. In his lifetime in America he had three wives (?) and all his children sold away from him. His grief, daily, became too huge and heavy to bear and so he died after fifteen years. He was about thirty-five years old. An old, old young man. His children all sold or dead, he was leaving no one behind him to grieve for him (which men of all nations try to have), only a master who cursed him for dying and said not a good word about Kola or the beautiful cattle roaming his fields that Kola had raised for him. Not even the master's money could buy more slaves that knew how to raise the cattle as Kola had.
The master raged, "These black devils cost too much to just die and leave you! I blive they only do it for meanness, the good-for-nothin black bastards!"
Another female slave had died the day after Kola died. She died giving birth in the sugarcane fields where she should not have been sent to work. She might have survived it anyway and given birth, but the overseer did not believe the child was coming yet and she was whipped, unmercifully in the heat of the afternoon sun for "trying to get out of work," he said. She and the child gave up the ghost, gladly. Kola was thrown in a pit with her and the baby, back to face, and covered with dirt. So Kola was buried in this new country the same way he was brought to it. Back to face, though now, with someone he did not know; a crying, desolate stranger whose dying blood and child still clung to her and now, with him. All uncared for, unwashed, just thrown away.
These kinds of whipping deaths happened so often, the whippers would have been called serial killers or psychopaths, by an honest people, had the words been in use.
Yes, Kola died . . . but he had had children and his blood was still living in this new world of pain. His blood still rushing, striving, pulsing on toward some future.
Suwaibu was living his pitiful life as a slave and he chose to live it alone. For many years he did not want a wife or woman or children, to lose to the vast unknown space beyond his vision. Sold . . . or killed. Many years he dreamed of and longed for his home and family in Africa. Thought of the future he had had before him, the university, his father's commerce. His reading, writing and speaking in four different languages he had learned working with his father did him no good here; they did not recognize there was no "th" sound in his language. They called him ignorant and savage in this country where his Master could not even speak his one language well. He grew to hate his cruel and ignorant masters.
He was not allowed to remain alone, however. Though he was very religious and wanted to maintain his honor to his God, Suwaibu had to be forced on pain of death to father several children. He worked all the days of his life, dying a truly beaten, bent old man, full of hate and rage. He had been beaten many times when they sold his children and even the wife he had grown to care for. He had raged and grieved. They said that was only the savage part of him. "Animals!" they said. From the day he was taken from his home, Africa, he was not happy One day, One hour, for all the days of his life. Not One. Not even when his children were born was he happy, because he knew they were born to be slaves.
When Suwaibu was about fifty years old, grayhaired and almost sightless, for his tears had washed away his sight and the tears of his body, called sweat, had drained his soul. He died, sitting in front of a tired, dilapidated, old shack. Looking, still looking, yearning, toward his old, true home.
When Suwaibu's master was informed of his death by a man Suwaibu had trained to tend the special cattle, the master leaned back in his chair, &...
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- EditoreDoubleday
- Data di pubblicazione1998
- ISBN 10 0385487045
- ISBN 13 9780385487047
- RilegaturaCopertina rigida
- Numero di pagine373
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