Homegoing(16)

“Why should he thank him? They are going to eat us all,” the woman behind Esi said. Esi had to strain to hear through the haze of tears and buzz of insects that surrounded them.



“Who will eat us?” Esi asked.

“The white men. That is what my sister says. She says the white men buy us from these soldiers and then they cook us up like goats in soup.”

“No!” Esi cried, and one of the soldiers was quick to run up to her and poke her side with a stick. Once he left, her flank throbbing, Esi pictured the goats that walked freely around her village. Then she pictured herself capturing one—the way she roped its legs and laid its body down. The way she slit its neck. Was this how the white men would kill her? She shuddered.

“What’s your name?” Esi asked.

“They call me Tansi.”

“They call me Esi.”

And like that, the two became friends. They walked all day. The sores on Esi’s feet had no time to heal, so soon were they reopened. At times, the warriors would leave them tied to trees in the forest so that they could go ahead and survey the people of new villages. At times, more people from those villages would be taken and added to the rest of them. The rope around Esi’s wrists had started to burn. A strange burn, like nothing she had ever felt before, like cool fire, the scratch of salty wind.

And soon, the smell of that wind greeted Esi’s nose, and she knew from stories she had heard that they were nearing Fanteland.

The traders slapped their legs with sticks, making them move faster. For almost half of that week, they walked both day and night. The ones who couldn’t keep up were beaten with the sticks until suddenly, like magic, they could.

Finally, once Esi’s own legs had started to buckle, they reached the edge of some Fante village. They were all packed into a dark and damp cellar, and Esi had time to count the group. Thirty-five. Thirty-five people held together by rope.

They had time to sleep, and when they awoke they were given food. A strange porridge that Esi had never eaten before. She didn’t like the taste of it, but she could sense that there would be nothing else for a long while.



Soon, men came into the room. Some were the warriors that Esi had seen before, but others were new.

“So these are the slaves you have brought us?” one of the men said in Fante. It had been a long while since Esi had heard anyone speak that dialect, but she could understand him clearly.

“Let us out!” the others tied to Esi began to shout, now that they had an ear that could listen. Fante and Asante, fellow Akans. Two peoples, two branches split from the same tree. “Let us out!” they shouted until their voices grew hoarse from the words. Nothing but silence greeted them.

“Chief Abeeku,” another said. “We should not be doing this. Our Asante allies will be furious if they know we have worked with their enemies.”

The one called Chief threw up his hands. “Today their enemies pay more, Fiifi,” he said. “Tomorrow, if they pay more, we will work with them too. This is how you build a village. Do you understand?”

Esi watched the one called Fiifi. He was young for a warrior, but already she could tell that one day he would be a Big Man too. He shook his head, but didn’t speak again. He went out of the cellar and brought back more men.

They were white men, the first Esi had ever seen. She could not match their skin to any tree or nut or mud or clay that she had ever encountered.

“These people do not come from nature,” she said.

“I told you, they have come to eat us,” Tansi replied.

The white men approached them.

“Stand up!” the chief shouted, and they all stood. The chief turned to one of the white men. “See, Governor James,” he said in fast Fante, so fast Esi hardly understood him and wondered how this white man could. “The Asante are very strong. You may check them for yourselves.”

The men started to undress the ones who still had clothes on, checking them. For what? Esi didn’t know. She remembered the stone tucked in her cloth wrapper, and when the one called Fiifi reached her to undo the knot she had tied at the top of it, she launched a long, full stream of spit into his face.



He did not cry like the boy captive she had spit on in her own village square. He did not whimper or cower or seek comfort. He simply wiped his face, never taking his eyes off her.

The chief came to stand next to him. “What will you do about this, Fiifi? Will you let this go unpunished?” the chief asked. He spoke low, so that only Esi and Fiifi could hear.

Then, the sound of the smack. It was so loud, it took a moment for Esi to determine whether the pain she felt was on her ear or inside it. She cowered and sank to the ground, covering her face and crying. The smack had popped the stone from her wrapper, and she found it there, on the ground. She cried even harder, trying to distract them now. Then she laid her head against the smooth black stone. The coolness of it soothed her face. And when the men had finally turned their backs and left her there, forgetting for a moment to take off her wrapper, Esi took the stone from against her cheek and swallowed it.

*

Now the waste on the dungeon floor was up to Esi’s ankles. There had never been so many women in the dungeon before. Esi could hardly breathe, but she moved her shoulders this way and that, until she had created some space. The woman beside her had not stopped leaking waste since the last time the soldiers fed them. Esi remembered her first day in the dungeon, when the same thing had been true of her. That day, she had found her mother’s stone in the river of shit. She had buried it, marking the spot on the wall so that she would remember when the time came.