House of Rougeaux(16)
A big smile spread over Ayo’s sweet face, but first she looked to her mother, who smiled back. “Oui, Tata!” said the girl, and scampered off to fetch the tea.
Phoebe told Abeje that Ayo spent her days at the Great House. Monsieur Belcourt had six children with his wife and Ayo was nursery maid to the two youngest, two girls a bit older than Ayo herself. Phoebe said these two girls doted on Ayo and treated her kindly, and, when Ayo was not occupied with chores, they included her in their games. So for now, Ayo was sheltered from harsh work.
Phoebe said that soon after Groom brought Ayo to Auxier they were sold to a slave trader who planned to take them in a ship to Trinidad, with a group of eight or nine others. During the voyage one of the women fell ill with a fever and a rash. The rash inflamed her skin so badly that at port the inspector thought it smallpox and turned the ship away. Having no other choice, they sailed back to Martinique and landed at Sainte-Anne, at the south end of the Island. When the sick woman survived, and no others were infected, it was believed she was only attacked by vermin. The trader had to sell off some of the group quickly just to recover expenses from the extra voyage. And that was how Phoebe and the infant Ayo were brought to Mont Belcourt, not so very far from where they started.
* * *
Each evening of that fortnight Abeje sat with little Ayo. She asked the girl to do her a great many favors just for the pleasure of seeing her smile and hearing her say, “Oui, Tata!” But more than that they traded questions. Ayo was a thoughtful child, curious and inquisitive, exactly as Adunbi had been as a boy. She wanted to know about her father and mother, about her grandmother and Abeje herself. During each day she considered all she was told and each night came with a fresh crop of questions ready for her aunt. Phoebe laughed, saying Ayo was always like that. “Like rain on the roof,” she said of her daughter’s endless questions.
Ayo told her what she liked and what she did not, what she did each day, and so on, but Abeje learned most about her from her questions. The way she asked, the way she frowned and nodded upon hearing answers. When Abeje sat with her the plant spirits also came, Mother Baobab, and her brother’s spiky palm. Anaya came, and another, a flowering tree with white and yellow blossoms of five fleshy petals, arranged just so; this was known as arbre de couleuvre, the snake tree. Abeje asked them silently for the child’s protection, for their strength and guidance.
One night she said to Ayo, “Do you know something, child, I have a gift for you, from your own father.”
“A gift?” Her eyes widened again. Abeje brought out the rag doll and placed it in the girl’s hands. Ayo looked upon it in wonder, whispering, “My own father.” Then she threw her arms about her aunt and said, “Thank you, Tata, thank you so! Can you tell my father his Ayo says Thank you?” Then she gazed at the doll again and frowned. Its eyes made of black thread seemed to look back. “But you did not know before,” she said, “that you would meet me.” And so Abeje told her perhaps the doll knew, and stowed herself away in the medicines. Abeje told Ayo who made the rag doll, and how Ayo’s father had gone to Auxier to see her, all those years ago.
In the morning Ayo hugged the rag doll saying, “I call her Claudine. Claudine, Claudine....”
Phoebe smiled. “Claudine is a pretty name.”
Though Ayo was cheerful that morning, Abeje noticed her to be sleepy, and, more than that, a certain shadow hung about her. Abeje asked one of the women to bring a cup of the bitter tea that was brewing for the ill. Some of the needed plants were found growing nearby, and so there was yet a good supply. Already some from the Sick House had recovered. Abeje asked Phoebe to fetch her should the child seem poorly, and she did not come all that day while she worked. But then that night Ayo began to cry. She leaned against Phoebe and whined, “So cold, Maman... so cold!”
“Bring her inside,” said Abeje. They wrapped her in a long shawl. Abeje heard a voice say Do not leave her side. She lay beside the child on the sleeping mat. Fever came upon her, a spell that Abeje herself entered into as well. The hut became a grove where the plant spirits encircled them.
From the dark night rose the two spirits of Abeje and Ayo into a place of gentle sunlight. There they were, walking a road made of two paths, like tracks made by wagon wheels. On either side tall grasses grew, and among the grasses flowers of many colors. The child skipped and laughed, she gathered flowers, and seemed to say, We will take them to Papa!
The waves of grass became waves in the sea, tossing a ship. Three young ladies peered into the wind from a round window, two béké faces and one dark. Then came other visions that shifted and changed. Abeje saw Ayo’s small fingers, playing upon a line of little white plates, that went up and down and gave out music. She saw cold white feathers that fell from the sky. Houses and wagons and roads such as she had never seen before. She saw Ayo much older, and her face much older still, a grandmother who sat beside a candle, with a pair of spectacles on her nose. She held a quill in her hand, and she wrote on a paper....
Abeje then left her niece, pulled away, drawn as a leaf in a current. Below her was the Grove; it breathed. The whole of the Island was breathing, here and there other groves and patches of the old plants, the ones that covered the Island before they were cut away for cane. The sea was swirling around the Island, breathing in its own way. The creatures of the sea were but plants with different structures, able to propel themselves within the body of the sea, to eat and be eaten.