Praise Song for the Butterflies. Bernice L. McFadden
make you feel?”
“Sad.”
“Right, well, it’s the same for black Americans. Imagine Africa as the mother and father of black Americans; a mother and father who they knew they had but never met. Imagine that one day they have the opportunity to meet them, to be reunited. How do you think that would make them feel?”
Abeo had thought about it for a moment. Her eyes lit up when she piped, “Happy!”
“Exactly.”
She had to go to the slave castle. “Papa, pleeeeeaaaasssse,” Abeo wailed.
“Oh, Wasik,” Ismae offered gently, “let her come. I think she’s mature enough to handle it.”
Wasik released an agitated sigh. He couldn’t win for losing with Ismae. He would be happy when Agwe was old enough to help balance the sheet. “Okay,” he acquiesced.
“And you should come as well,” Didi interjected. “It’s your history too.”
Wasik smirked at her. He’d never visited the castle. And if he’d ever harbored a desire to do so, it had been crushed long ago by the warnings and terrifying ghost stories of his elders. But now he was grown: a husband, father, and provider for his family. He received Didi’s words not as an invitation, but a challenge.
“But of course,” Wasik responded, as if he’d planned to come all along.
Ismae’s eyebrows rose. “Well, who will watch Agwe?”
Wasik glanced at their toddler. “Uhm . . .” he started, absently scratching his chin. “I guess we can leave him with Mama Tati?”
It wasn’t the worst idea in the world. Mama Tati was the domestic charged with cleaning and cooking for the visitors at the guesthouse.
On the low side of sixty, rotund, and pleasant, Mama Tati had been in the employ of several homeowners for two decades. She was loved and trusted by her employers and guests and often took on responsibilities that fell outside of her standard duties. Babysitting was just one of those chores.
Ismae nodded. “I guess that would be okay.”
* * *
As they approached by car, Elmina Castle emerged from the horizon like a dream. Its whitewashed walls pressed against the indigo sky, casting shadows over the bucking Atlantic Ocean.
They fell quiet as Wasik eased the car into a parking space and cut the engine. Abeo was confused by the silence—not just the absence of conversation, but the weight of it.
Didi was the first out of the car. She stood on unsteady legs, gazing apprehensively at the imposing structure.
“Didi?” Serafine called out, pointing at the kidney bean–shaped bulge on the underside of Didi’s left jaw.
Didi touched her index finger to the swollen flesh. “Oh, this?” She shrugged. “Nerves.”
“What’s there to be nervous about?” Abeo ventured, perplexed.
Didi thought for a moment. “You see, baby,” she cooed, smoothing her palm across Abeo’s plaits, “my great-great-grandparents were slaves. I don’t know if they were born in America or stolen from Africa. They could have come from Ukemby or Ghana. They might have even been held in this very prison . . .”
It was the first time Abeo had heard the castle referred to as a prison.
Didi shivered with emotion. “Families ripped apart,” she mumbled, turning her attention back to the castle, “never to see one another again.” She swiped a fat wet tear from her cheek.
Abeo wasn’t so sure she wanted to go into the castle prison anymore.
Wasik, who had been standing off to the side, suddenly stepped to Abeo, took her by the hand, and gently pulled her to his hip. All of this talk about slavery and broken families was making him uneasy. “Are we going in or what?” he barked. He’d not meant to sound harsh, but it was out and he couldn’t take it back. He met the women’s stupefied gazes with his own apologetic one.
“Wasik, when did you become so insensitive?” Serafine admonished.
Once inside, Wasik trailed behind, stepping cautiously as if the ground were covered with broken glass.
They stopped to take photos beside the ancient rusting cannons that extended out over the ocean like reaching arms. Nearby, a group of black women holding hands belted out a tearful song in a language Abeo did not understand. To her left, an elderly white couple made the sign of the cross over their hearts before tossing a dozen yellow roses over the wall, into the water. A few feet away, a young Asian woman collapsed to the ground and wept openly.
Eventually, Abeo and her family joined a dozen other people for a tour of the castle. Their guide was a tall, dark man named Morris who had lived his entire life on the Cape Coast and had never ventured into the country’s interior. The group followed him down the narrow stairway into the first dungeon, where Morris abruptly switched off his flashlight, throwing them into darkness. Abeo yelped in surprise and wrapped her arms around Serafine’s waist.
“More than two hundred Africans were imprisoned in this very chamber for months at a time,” Morris explained in a low, ominous voice. “We are a small fraction of that number and you cannot shift one inch without touching your neighbor.”
Abeo tested his claim and the truth terrified her.
“The separation of families began right here, long before they reached the shores of America, Europe, Brazil, and the Caribbean islands. The jailers mixed Ga-Adangbe people with Abron and Adele with Bimoba, and Ukemban with Chumburung—so that there would be no possibility of communication, hence no threat of revolt.”
The crowd shifted uncomfortably. Wasik wiped at the perspiration forming on his neck and forehead. The darkness was clawing. He willed Morris to switch on the flashlight, and after a few more excruciating moments, the yellow beam sliced through the darkness and landed on a rectangular opening in the wall high above their heads.
“Food was thrown down to the captives from that hole.” Morris swung the beam to another opening, this one square, the size of box, a tiny box, one small enough to hold a single teacup or bottle of expensive perfume. Once again, Morris switched off the flashlight.
The opening was so small that not one of them could make out the blue sky or the lingering yellow sun. So minute that not even the daylight could trickle in; it just rested on the lip of the cavity, glowing like a flawed diamond.
“That is all of the natural light they were allowed,” Morris continued.
Abeo glanced over her shoulder but couldn’t make out the look on her father’s face in the darkness. Wasik stood completely still, staring, gnawing his lower lip.
Morris switched on the flashlight and aimed the beam at the uneven floor beneath their feet. “Do you know what this is?” he questioned. “Do you know what you are standing on?”
Abeo studied the ground. It looked like mud, like shiny hardened mud.
A lone voice cried out, “Stones? Old stones?”
“Yes, old stones, as well as centuries of calcified blood, bone, flesh, and excrement.”
The crowd groaned. Abeo did not understand the words excrement or calcified, but she did understand blood and bones and closed her eyes, because she did not want to see those things in the cobbled floor.
Wasik’s stomach lurched. He suspected he was treading perilously close to bringing up his breakfast.
The group moved on to the various dungeons that once held the weaker men, women, and children.
“Children too?” Abeo asked Ismae, who responded with a slow, sad nod.
The final room they entered was dungeon number five, where those Africans who were ready for export had been kept. Back then, Morris told them, the