never been outside the borders of Fairfield Farms, yet here she was teaching the boys directions to places that existed only in stories that adventurers and foiled escapees told. It was a rudimentary map, but to the boys it represented a world of dreams out there. It was an attainable world; the mother drummed that into their heads. Dreams could be lived.
“One day you gonna see all them places,” she told them. “One day you gonna cross the River Jordan.”
The boys loved her beautiful voice as she sang to them about the River Jordan and about the Promised Land and about wading in the water. She taught them that there were two promised lands: “One happens after we is dead and gone. But before you get to that one you better reach the Promised Land across the big river.”
This was rather confusing to the boys, but they imbibed the songs and the stories until they were utterly intoxicated by their beauty and promise. It was like the happiness that the preacherman spoke about in the makeshift church on Sundays. But the difference was that the Abyssinian Queen’s promised happiness did not happen after death like the preacherman’s. It happened in this life, in a real Canaan that existed beyond the river.
In the evenings the boys sat under a quilting frame and listened to stories of escape. Though the mother, it seemed to them, had resigned herself to a life of slavery, she had high hopes that her sons would grow up to carry on the great tradition of plotting escapes established by their forebears from the first day they were shackled into slave castles on the old continent. She relentlessly brought them up on a daily diet of stories of great flights and heroic attempts—often repeated with variations and embellishments to make them sink deeper into the boys’ minds.
Soon word of her wonderful stories spread and children from neighboring cabins came to listen. Even white children from the big house came some evenings. They gathered around bonfires of fall leaves to hear of Ananse the wily spider who came with the ancestors from the old continent and whose bag was always full of tricks. She developed a performance where she played all the parts, and incorporated the shadows and the flames and the smoke as characters in the elaborate tales that she seemed to improvise on the spot. To the frenzied drumming of Abednego, who had developed into a keen and nimble drummer, she draped herself in layers of quilts and donned masks of feathers and leaves and woven grass and frayed feed sacks. She pranced around and walked on air; becoming a demonic monster in one story, the wily Ananse spinning a web of deceit in another, and a kindly spirit that guided the children from the world of the unborn through the maze of birth in yet another one.
She climbed the sycamore tree in front of the cabin, stood on the highest branch and flapped her wings like a hawk. Then she swooped down in a spinning flight and landed in the midst of the open-mouthed children. Her gleaming black face reflected the flames and became purple as a result. They danced on her smooth skin until they jutted out of her eyes like red-hot blades. She became the sun as she narrated the story of The Sun. The Sun was very lonely because she was the only living thing in the whole wide world. She sat there brooding and feeling sorry for herself. The sharper children noted that the sun was now female whereas it was usually the moon that gloried in that gender. Yes, she sat there brooding and feeling sorry for herself. A big tear rolled out of her eye and dropped on the ground. It rolled on and on down the hill, gathering dust until it hit a boulder and divided into many tears that became children as they continued to roll. They were Children of the Tear. They lived in peace in a dust bowl and did not have any need for food, clothing or labor. Then one day The Sun farted. Instead of the bad wind coming out, a giraffe and Divided came out. A giraffe is a long-necked animal
“One day you gonna see all them places,” she told them. “One day you gonna cross the River Jordan.”
The boys loved her beautiful voice as she sang to them about the River Jordan and about the Promised Land and about wading in the water. She taught them that there were two promised lands: “One happens after we is dead and gone. But before you get to that one you better reach the Promised Land across the big river.”
This was rather confusing to the boys, but they imbibed the songs and the stories until they were utterly intoxicated by their beauty and promise. It was like the happiness that the preacherman spoke about in the makeshift church on Sundays. But the difference was that the Abyssinian Queen’s promised happiness did not happen after death like the preacherman’s. It happened in this life, in a real Canaan that existed beyond the river.
In the evenings the boys sat under a quilting frame and listened to stories of escape. Though the mother, it seemed to them, had resigned herself to a life of slavery, she had high hopes that her sons would grow up to carry on the great tradition of plotting escapes established by their forebears from the first day they were shackled into slave castles on the old continent. She relentlessly brought them up on a daily diet of stories of great flights and heroic attempts—often repeated with variations and embellishments to make them sink deeper into the boys’ minds.
Soon word of her wonderful stories spread and children from neighboring cabins came to listen. Even white children from the big house came some evenings. They gathered around bonfires of fall leaves to hear of Ananse the wily spider who came with the ancestors from the old continent and whose bag was always full of tricks. She developed a performance where she played all the parts, and incorporated the shadows and the flames and the smoke as characters in the elaborate tales that she seemed to improvise on the spot. To the frenzied drumming of Abednego, who had developed into a keen and nimble drummer, she draped herself in layers of quilts and donned masks of feathers and leaves and woven grass and frayed feed sacks. She pranced around and walked on air; becoming a demonic monster in one story, the wily Ananse spinning a web of deceit in another, and a kindly spirit that guided the children from the world of the unborn through the maze of birth in yet another one.
She climbed the sycamore tree in front of the cabin, stood on the highest branch and flapped her wings like a hawk. Then she swooped down in a spinning flight and landed in the midst of the open-mouthed children. Her gleaming black face reflected the flames and became purple as a result. They danced on her smooth skin until they jutted out of her eyes like red-hot blades. She became the sun as she narrated the story of The Sun. The Sun was very lonely because she was the only living thing in the whole wide world. She sat there brooding and feeling sorry for herself. The sharper children noted that the sun was now female whereas it was usually the moon that gloried in that gender. Yes, she sat there brooding and feeling sorry for herself. A big tear rolled out of her eye and dropped on the ground. It rolled on and on down the hill, gathering dust until it hit a boulder and divided into many tears that became children as they continued to roll. They were Children of the Tear. They lived in peace in a dust bowl and did not have any need for food, clothing or labor. Then one day The Sun farted. Instead of the bad wind coming out, a giraffe and Divided came out. A giraffe is a long-necked animal
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