Tunde

Her feet cracked and calloused into a ruggedness as tough as tree bark, her legs long and coarse. With burning muscles, she sweated, swinging her blade. A swollen belly tormented her.

Eban mocked her as she squatted in the dirt. “No man will touch you now.”

Vomit soaked into her braids and her back ached, but she chopped cane through sickness and hunger, pushing past the nausea.

She bloated, resisting the urge to sleep on her side and let her back go numb. Then toiled under the choking hot glare.

When Tunde wailed his way from her womb, Ife wept. She swaddled him in burlap and cradled his weight against her, smiling at his sleeping coos.

She furrowed through the sowing rains with the boy in a sling. The workers kept watch while Ife snuck between the rows to nurse, whistling when Eban rode past.

Auntie slid her pallet into Ife’s hut. Another girl from the Narrows, her own teat dry, carried her wailing infant over, resting him silently against Ife’s chest while her milk still pooled. In return, salted mackerel and yams appeared just outside the hut flap.

When the boy stared up at Eban with those pale eyes, Auntie stepped into the dust, blocking the old Carib’s view with her broad shoulders. He belonged to Ife.

Tunde ran until the foam rushed at his shins, screaming when the water broke against him and chasing it back as it hissed into the sand.

Ife sat against a dry drift timber and punched her thumbnail through an aloe leaf, smearing its pulp over her thighs. She worked the aloe into Tunde’s cheek. The leaf’s bitter nectar touched his lips. He spat.

His tailclouts rotted away and Auntie stitched him a stiff pair of breeches hanging past his knees. He shuffled from the hut.

“Time the boy wash himself, Ife mi.” The old woman said, jerking her chin toward the wooden cask Tunde outgrew.

Ife shook her head, watching her son crouch far behind the Narrows, clawing a shallow ditch in the dirt to cover his stool.

In the faint grey of dawn, Ife pulled on his smock and pressed her knuckles under his arms, tickling him until he twisted away, both of them laughing so hard their cheeks ached.

She hummed in the canerows, pacing her machete swing and singing in the grassland, soaking every ray of sunlight before the shadow of the night took her.

When the sun fell behind the mountain, Auntie tended the pot, boiling yams over the fire.

Just under the ridge, the shallow graves loomed in the dusk. Jamari’s escape lasted only days before they dragged him back to lie beside Omotola. Ife still smelled the flintlock powder burning in her teeth.

Down by the fire, Tunde sat in the dirt with a stick, carving lines in the earth.

Ife pointed. “What is that?”

He etched crude squiggles. “Fish.”

“‘Tis a nice fish.”

Tunde never looked up, staring straight through the dirt fish. Ife bent down and grabbed a stick of her own.

She scraped her stick beside his. He slapped her hand away. “Mama, no!”

Auntie laughed, stirring the pot. “Careful, Ife mi. Those teeth look sharp.”

Two men stopped at their fire carrying a string of fish.

“Nice yams,” one said.

“Nice fish,” Ife replied. She presented them with three large yams. They handed over two mackerel and went about their way.

“Tunde look,” Ife said.

Her little boy gazed wide-eyed. His jaw fell and he yelled, “Fish, Mama! Fish!”

Stumbling over to Ife’s leg, he embraced her knees, looking up at the mackerel still wet with ocean brine. Ife beamed.

“Tonight we feast,” Auntie said.

Ife cleaned the fish. Tunde made a sour face when she cut off the head and the fins. The flame crackled while Auntie stirred the pot of yams. Tunde scrunched his face when Ife sliced the fish belly and pulled out the innards.

“Give me your hand, Tunde mi,” Ife said.

Tunde shook his head.

“Go on, child. Give mama your hands.” Auntie grinned.

Tunde shoved his hands behind his back. Ife cocked her head and gave him a stern look. “Tunde, your hand.”

He held them out with his eyes squeezed shut. When Ife dropped the fish guts into his hands, he gasped. His eyes snapped open, and he squirmed, gasping at the wet entrails.

“Put that in the dirt for the maize,” Auntie told him.

He carried the sludge to the garden and packed it into the soil. When he returned, grime coated his hands.

“That is the thing for boys, Ife mi. No shame for filth,” Auntie said.

Ife bent down. “Child, look at those hands.”

Oily dirt clumps covered his palms.

“Wipe it in the grass, Tunde. Now!"

They ate fish and yams around the fire. Auntie told stories until Tunde dozed, sprawled on the hard ground.

In the night, the cricket chirp and coqui whistle lulled them under the distant roll of breaking waves. Ife lay on her pallet, sore and weary, drifting in and out of a dream with the sound of the surf.

Then Richard Whistler’s voice called out in the dark.

“Ife, come.”

Ife roused and checked on Tunde. Auntie stirred awake.

“Ife, come now,” Whistler hissed.

He led her away from the Narrows into the darkness. Down by the beach, he forced her to the ground next to the big palm tree. The same place she lay the night before. And the night before.

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