A Tall History of Sugar. Curdella Forbes
water would stain the clothes and so was used only to fill cattle troughs, but Foster-Reach River to the southeast, the river which if you tracked it to its head led you to the next district, Jericho, the place where it sprang up from underground. The districts were joined to each other in many such ways.
Rachel did her washing on Sunday mornings (Saturday was Yahweh's holy Sabbath). Sometimes other women came, balancing their wash pans on cottas on their heads. They washed in the river while their children played. They looked at Moshe curiously, and spoke openly of his deformity. Deformity did not seem to them something to be sensitive about, since the district was full of such. People with feet turned backward, the result of being pulled from the womb the wrong way with forceps. Men with hernias weighing more pounds than they could balance in their hands. A child with a cleft palate. A grown man with the brain of a child, young men who fell down in trances at the sound of excitable words, such as preaching, and foamed at the mouth until their jaws were pried and kept open by a metal spoon. Others who sought physical love with animals. Yet others who acquired a deformity from being taken away by unseen forces while young, and afterward returned.
The women prescribed remedies.
"Yu ever rub him down wid castor oil a night an put him in di shady sun a mornin? Dat can mek di skin come harden, yu know. Him won't look like dead croaking lizard so much, an him won't bruise so quick so much."
Rachel, looking up in alarm once this well-meaning and insensitive conversation began, breathed a sigh of relief when she saw that Moshe was out of earshot, paddling by himself along the river in search of crayfish, while the other children watched him with curiosity and wonder. But the fact that he could not hear what was being said did not make her any less angry.
The women were in full flow, not noticing her anger as she bent, tight-lipped, over her wash pan of clothes, rubbing them with Guinea Gold brown soap after beating them on the river rocks to get out the worst of the dirt.
"Yes, castor oil good, but not too much. Yu want to harden di skin, not mek it too dark. Yu can si seh him a Red Ibo, him jus a dundus one. If yu can tone down di dundus, mek di Red Ibo come out clear, wi bi good."
"Dis a nuh dundus. Dis a dundus double. Furthermore, dundus usually have two pink eye, nuh one blue an one brown. Some curse is on di child from di way him born. Down in Ora dem seh is retribution. Dat is how dem talk bout it, but mi nuh know. Yu carry him out yet, Rachel? You need fi bruk di curse, enuh. Carry him to Madda Penny."
"Or Bredda John. Bredda John can help him too. Him a myal man."
"Di hair funny too, ehn? But it can easy tek care of, more dan di skin. Yu can dye it one color. Tek out di dundus color in di front, mek it all black. Den him wi look like Indian, like coolie royal."
"True, but wha yu go do wid di picky-picky back part? It nuh match up." The woman who said this made a face, and added comically, "No coolie royal hair nuh look like dat under di sun." You cannot fix the nigger half. It will always be mismatched.
The women laughed at this declaration. Up to this point the conversation had been intense, committed, serious, but now it exploded in laughter. And quickly became serious again, pushing back aganst the descent into charade.
"Shi can press it wid pressing comb, like how dem-girl do theirs. Bring di whole ting in one. If all-a it look straight it wi better."
"But look like yu nuh ha no sense. Yu waan bun-up di pickni head? Yu don't si di back part of di hair too short fi press? Pressin comb ooda fry him scalp."
"Yu carry him go a doctor, Rachel? Wha doctor seh?"
"Doctor seh mi pickni healthy, nutten nuh duu him, Suzie Q Francis."
The warning edge in Rachel's voice made some of the women back off, irritated others.
"Fi heaven sake, Rach, nuh go on so. Wi nah seh nutten, a jus try wi a-try help. Be reasonable, him nuh healthy. No doctor nuh tell yu seh him healthy. Him cyaan healthy an look so strange. A lie dat yu a-tell."
"Lef mi pickni alone, Clareese Bell." Rachel, trembling with fury, hauled up her wash pan, dumped her wet unrinsed clothes in it, and, heaving it on her head, walked away to another part of the river. "An all-a oonu, nuh mek mi haffi tell oonu sinting tiddeh." The real words she wanted to say revolted in her head; later she would kneel in shamefaced, bitter repentance before Yahweh. Yu bombo, Clareese Bell. Di whole-a oonu kiss mi arse. If oonu faas wid mi pickni again infronten mi, I chop up oonu rass. Oonu lef him. Lef him. Him nuh trouble oonu. How him look nuh none-a oonu damn business. A Yahweh mek him. I abjure oonu, contradiction of sinners. What God bless, no man curse.
The words she did not speak hung in the air like smoke everyone inhaled.
"But oonu si ya, sah. Mind a sinting yu a-hide. Mind a nuh yu have him wid di likkle white man fi true. Gi Noah bun an jacket down a Ora while him gone a-sea."
Driven to her limit at this unspeakable insult, Rachel was provoked to answer. "Yu mus know, fa di amount a waistcoat wheh heng up inna fi-yu man closet, no color nuh inna di rainbow fi describe dem, so yu mus know."
At this, Suzie Q let out a big malicious laugh, enjoying Rachel's riposte. Clareese was well-known as the chief burn-giver, jacket-
and-waistcoat-maker; her husband, a ship's cook who came home once a year, was thought to be the father of none of her numerous offspring, whose births had followed each other a year apart, so that if they were lined up in order from the oldest to the youngest, they would form a neat stepladder.
☙
Avoiding her neighbors altogether was impossible, but after this bitter encounter, Rachel contrived to meet as few of them as she could by the simple expedient of arriving at the river while the dew was still on the ground. She waited only long enough for the mists to dissipate off the surface of the water before plunging in with her wash load. Most of the women came later, after morning service, or went on Saturday, after marketing.
This meant she now met very few, if any, neighbors at the washing. And if any arrived before she finished, their attitude took care of any potential reconciliation. Still enraged, the women decided to either ignore Rachel or resort to trowing wud. If their paths crossed with hers, they said howdy, or not, and Rachel said howdy, curtly, pleasantly, and concentrated on her washing. The others either then chose a spot far enough away from her to underscore her exclusion or plunked down in the same pool to show how much they were ignoring her. Which is to say, to provoke a confrontation via the undirected slinging of words.
Female malice in Tumela Gut was always religious. Rachel's adversaries lifted up their voices in song:
How great is our God!
How great is His name!
He the greatest one forever the same,
He roll back the water from the mighty Red Sea,
He said, I'll lead thee, put your trust in me!
Praise the Lord!
Hallelujah, praise His name!
"Clareese oh, yu sun di dawg yet?"
"Sun which dawg, Suzie Q? Mi dawg born white, is di color God give him, why yu tink sun gwine change dat?"
"Lef di ooman dawg alone, Suzie!"
"But wha yu si mi a-do, Pretty Teet'? Mi ongle a-suggest seh shi give di dawg a tan, so him can stan blackpeople climate!"
"Some people love dat deh color, a dem Jesus dat! Dem nah let it go!"
"Hol him, dawg, nuh let him go!"
"Hol him, dawg, nuh let him go!"
"Come, Rex. Come, Rex, whu, whu, whu!" And the long whistling call, summoning the imaginary dog, would be emitted through the lips pursed in the direction of the little boy, who hunted fish within hearing distance.
The truth was, they were not malicious women, except when rejected (and then they were vicious),