My ole mammy was true to form African
she was from way over them waters
she was Asetewa the first
and me you can just call me the second coming everybody else do
so I guess you shouldn’t be no different
on matthews plantation, I was christened Eliza Mae
but in the company of my mammy
I was spoken to and of as Asetewa the second
white man lay claim to my body this ole human flesh
but a child’s name the right to be given any justifiable interpretation
should be rightfully decreed by their mama
the same woman who strain and struggle battling against rivers of death and blood
to push into this world of pitchfork deeds a baby that she don’t own once it taste air
to hell with them white folks names
them conjuring of mind shackles
if they figure you look like an Eliza then they pass that name on to you
course the master would only allow nigger names as he call them nothing African nothing from that heathen land
excepting us excepting our flesh
I was promised a long time ago
before my hair started turning as white as them bales of cotton
I was promised to Lyman Kinder Henry
it was bout as honored a promise as me telling you
I didn’t miss him cause I do
and for a long time after
I just sat in the doorway of his old shack and closed my eyes
with my eyes closed, I ventured off following his music through
ole master charlie’s fields where Lyman would reach his hand out to me and say
come on now woman
us got to move fore them hounds pick our skin
and I see myself grabbing hold of Lyman’s hand gripping it so tightly he’d breath
in all the air surrounding us and just as we find each other hand in hand
that great big sankofa bird would swoop down
and Lyman and Asetewa would jump up on them wings
and not even the sun would challenge us
we’d be back in Africa by the time Lyman
would say we’s fixing to be man and wife
and my mammy and yours and all our kin
they’s waiting at the shore
waiting Asetewa like I been waiting
to make you my woman on free soil
yes I’se sit and dream but back then I wouldn’t dare walk off matthews
I’se a woman with a mama and two ailing aunts
I understand Lyman never allowing himself to get attached to me
one time my mama grab his hand and run it over my cheeks and chin
and throat and neck and she tell him
that his grandmamma and her were from the same tribe
so if he chose me Asetewa to wed
he’d be getting pure Malinke woman
time-honored blood
Lyman just smiled a plenty
and I smile
and he say Asetewa second coming
you sure is got a beautiful throat-line
I say back course not knowing how to thank somebody
for complimenting my throat
why Lyman you sure is got hands fit for more than fiddling
I shoulda been born a fiddle lawd knows I got the right color skin
just ain’t made of wood
Lyman laugh some then he whisper in my ear
I can’t have white men take away something
I ain’t near ready to part with
I can give up my fiddle tomorrow she born of tree meat
All she got to offer are tears of sap
she’d understand
but you gon cost me my flesh and bones my soul woman
Asetewa I’ma need my soul one day
but if I’se ever in the condition to love
I’d carry you away on the back of sankofa you hear this blind man talking to ya
I’d love you worse than ole Charlie love them fields
but I ain’t meant to love
not even you woman as pretty as your throat may feel
then he stumbled on way from us
and I was so mad with ole Charlie
that I wound up giving two of his hounds
the evil eye them dogs didn’t eat for a week
but even that didn’t settle my heart for a man I knew loved me
all them years we had been sitting and barely talking but me listening to his fiddle
on route to bringing food to the fields I’d tell him who I was
and how I sometimes sit up in the night and my mama and aunts
would tell me to sleep and stop rattling the cover but I’d listen to that fiddle
I’d listen as she sang her heart out
I’d close my eyes and say to my mama
that damned fiddle is the luckiest gal I know
I’d offer Lyman that story over and over
cause it worked to get him smiling and asking my name again
I’d go up to his ear and slowly whisper Asetewa tween you and me
but to the rest, Eliza Mae and I’d scurry way way from him
like I had swallowed a mouth full of cayenne
not long after Lyman had got up the nerve and ran away from matthews
not long after Solomon, the driver spent most days
primping himself in Lyman’s boots
about that same time I was brought before master Charlie
to address as the master put it Solomon’s right to a wife
cause of all Solomon’s dedication to keeping us niggers inline
and even though he wasn’t no spring chicken
which he wasn’t at 54 years and since I had a history of losing every baby the master two best bucks tried to plant in me
I was the best sort of nigger gal that master could get up off of
so he say here yo husband Eliza Mae take Solomon to your bosom
then ole Charlie go to laughing and rocking back and forth in his chair and every once in a while
he’d bat a mosquito with his hands
and then he’d stare at Solomon
Solomon was looking at me like a hungry hound on the scent of a runaway nigger
and master began to laugh with Solomon and master lit a cigar and after about five puffs
we were made to hug in the face of god and ole master Charlie
Solomon took it upon himself to carry me out cradled like a baby
and ole Charlie screamed go on Solomon
take your pickaninny gal home
and when we was a great distance
I jumped out of Solomon’s arms and screamed
you can crawl your hound dog body upon my flesh
and take to wandering round my woman parts
but you’ll never have all of me you’ll never own my heart and that’s the part
that makes the difference you fixing to take to bed a dead woman Solomon
a body that don’t never intend to give you one days worth of happiness
many men ole Charlie done sent to my bed when I was young I’m 49 now
so what you getting Solomon ain’t no sweet reward
ole Charlie giving ya scraps just like all niggers get so come on and eat yo slop nigger
you want to take me you want these fields to be your troth eat like a pig Solomon
cause that’s all you are
then I took off running slapping my heels back home to mama
who had fainted in the fields a short time ago
and died on top of seven bales of cotton
housed together to cushion what was left of her body
she was 88 Louisiana years old
Solomon would get the last laugh
for my act of defiance in the field
ole Charlie sold my aunts to his Charlie’s brother’s plantation
I was told it wasn’t far and if I had become
a half-decent wife to Solomon I might earn weekend visits
but I had been a slave too long to believe
people you walked out to the wagon would ever return
so us stand there Malinke sweat and flesh
not crying cause you spend your whole life crying
when they boil my daddy in oil cause the master’s uncle’s wife
took to hiring him out for love
I cried and when they beat my brother to death
for striking the white man who lit the pot I cried
my mammy’s body all wet from sweat
her feet all blistered and raw bits of bone poking out
blinking at ya as she lie there dead to the world
I screamed for sankofa but I had forgotten how to push out the water
so when my aunts prepared themselves I made it my business to kiss every lingering jaw,
eye, neck, arm, hand, bosom, of my mama’s tribe
the back of their heads would be the last patch sewn into the quilt of my flesh I’d know
my anguish leaving dust tracks in place of tears
I never intended to get nowhere
but Solomon as a husband was more than I’se willing to take
so I run you shoulda saw me in plain daylight running something awful here and there
I wasn’t use to my feet having that much control over themselves
at first, nobody paid any mind Solomon thought I was losing my mind bout my mama
and that might make me easy to bed so Solomon let me run
as far as the sound of my feet would hammer against earth a false freedom was gathered tween trees huddled together their branches hugging wide hips
somewhere in the middle where stalks of flesh were satisfied to sway their wind songs
African rhythms I could hear em sankofa I tell myself
is flapping his magical wings awakening the trees from their forest dreams
their stillness violated by my run
Solomon watches me
Lose myself in the thicket arms and fingers become machetes
Laying waste to the stalks blocking my view of sankofa
Solomon full of disgust and a man’s need to release his seed
screams to the hounds tear that pickaninny
who don’t want nothing to do with me
don’t want my body next to hers
don’t want take me in when I knock at her door under the moon
eat her hound dogs eat her
and before I could jump up onto the wrist
of one of them outstretched branches
the two hounds sink their jaws into
my legs and drag me to the foot of that green-headed woman
out of sight of sankofa
and I close my eyes as they work their way
round to my breast the fattest part of me the part where it seems all my food must hide
there on top of the broken branches
and tears of shredded bark and mud and dead hair leaves
my breast hang there undetached from the rest of me
going out on their own struggling to make their own leap at free soil
but the dogs have noticed the satchels of meat and make supper at them
till nothing remains but two matching holes of spitting blood
I scream for sankofa and watch the dogs teeth grind then swallow the fat
pawning the black skin churning it round on their tongues
one of them hounds spits up a nipple with a violent force
he sound like it damned near choked him
by this time Solomon done made his way to what I hopes would be my death bed
he slaps one of them hounds across his forehead laughing stuffing my nipple back
into the mouth of the dog who give it up then he say
well Eliza Mae seem like your pride now rest in the belly of these hounds
you ain’t even a woman no mo
just a ugly pickaninny no breast no nothing worth
eyeing beneath that dress
make you wanna just close your eyes and die
bet now you’ll take me as yo husband
cause right now I’m the onliest thing would want you
the only fool nigger take the bone and claim it for gold
then after he figured he had belittled me enough
he got two slaves to tote me back to his cabin
then he sent for the herb women to bandage me
and time they had done sealed me up and left
I took it upon myself to conjure sankofa
I somehow made it to that porch where I could sit
and think about Solomon returning
returning to climb up on top of me
feeding his seeds to my womb
day after day
and I thought of killing him with oleander cornbread
but if found out that would leave me beaten seasoned with cayenne and salt
till I cooked to death under the sun
I sat there on that porch and it came to me that I should do what my mama use to tell us her peoples some of them did ones who knew nothing but fear and blood and death
Sprouted from the soil beyond our waters
so I did just like her stories told and cut a slab of my tongue
set it free from my mouth then swallowed
what you hearing from this point on is a dead woman
who in life had her back split so many times
for so many years she forget how to sit still
I have died already
at the foot of that tree SANKOFA took my spirit
we fly past Solomon doing what he do best
showing off for ole Charlie beating niggers till they bones rattle
but ole Solomon wait till he visit that dead body lying across his front porch
he gon curse his Lawd cause he done lost his final chance to be a man
a man who could tame more than a pack of dogs
but in the end he wasn’t nothing but a nigger driver
Solomon couldn’t tame the thing men want most
couldn’t tame a wild-hearted woman
couldn’t tame her vacant womb