Prologue

In the antilles north within the leewards there sits a tiny island. On this tiny island there once was a plantation. And that is where Ife’s story began just after the seven years war.

The English landowner hoped for a baby boy. But Ife would become a legendary woman. She would be as powerful as any huracán - a terrifying force infiltrating souls of the most savage men. 

Ife’s mother Omotola considered the baby girl a gift from the gods. She nursed her little bundle in the cane fields. While carrying Ife in a sling she knelt to fertilize the crops -  staining her palms with manure and ash. Omotola weeded and dug ditches. She swung a blade and collected the stalk. All with a child in tow. But for the grace of everyone in the quarters they made her a small bassinet made of vine. Some of the other captives went without food for a spell to feed young Ife and Omotola wept at their kindness. She kept careful watch of her precious girl during her field work and laid Ife upon her bosom at night. 

They lived in a small enclave between the beach and the tall grassland that stretched from the bottom of the green mountain to the lemon grove where Ife witnessed her first death. Their tiny mud huts thatched with discarded cane leaked when it rained. And they slept on pallets of burlap and straw. Candles and food were scarce. Starvation tormented them. They worked so long and wearily it seemed skeletons walked the earth. Diseases like yellow fever and the bloody flux plagued the captives. But somehow little Ife survived.

After a few seasons little Ife began calling for her mama. She played in the dirt and on Sabbath Days she splashed in the surf. Women treated her with mangoes and sweet yams and they told Ife fables of their homeland while they braided her hair. Ife developed the pidgin of English common among the Africans. Omotola was proud to raise such a healthy child. 

At night the cricket chirp and coqui whistle lulled them to sleep over the steady rhythm of hissing surf. Omotola taught Ife that life was but a wave and lasted only for a moment and once that moment washed away a new wave began and so it was for all living creatures. But even as a little girl Ife argued that it made no sense. Then Omotola told her that life and death were just passages and more lay beyond. But the stubborn little Ife believed not.

Constantly they harvested. And constantly they sowed. The harvested cane was milled and boiled by larger estates for trade. And Ife worked the fields. She fed the mules and fetched water and gathered chopped cane next to Omotola. They washed their linens with rainwater. They bathed and relieved themselves in the sea. Omotola taught Ife how to make fire with flint and kindling and how to carry the hot embers in a clay pot. Ife learned how to harvest maize and yams from their garden. The men showed Ife how to swim in the bay and cast a net for catching fish in the surf. 

Ife’s first glimpse of a ship in the bay stunned her. To her it was magic. For the giant hull of timber stood as high as the green mountain. And it moved across the water - like an island of its own that could go anywhere and do anything. Men ferried barrels and crates on and off the mighty vessel. Young Ife imagined where they came from. And she wondered where they were going. Maybe the ships came from cool dry places. Places free from illness and starvation where everyone had boots and linens and candles. Omotola explained to her daughter that sometimes the boats brought Africans and on rare occasions they took Africans. But the boats always came to trade with the English. Then they floated away.

And so Ife learned the way of life on the plantation island. She learned how to survive. She watched the beatings in the fields and the suffering of the people from the brutality and the exhaustion and the sickness and the hunger. And there Ife witnessed her first death. The Englishman and his overseer gathered all the captives near the lemon grove one day. And there tethered to the big palm tree a shackled man.