More from Georgia Sea Islands

From Chapter 18:   Are You Ibo?

    She lived on Sapelo. She turned its earth, and breathed its marshy air, and fed her blood each evening to its greedy bugs. She pulled okra from its gardens and cotton from its thorny fields, and in the tidal moon pulled silver fishes from its shallow bays.

    She bore twenty-two children on her bed in the thick, steamy darkness of its longest nights, and in the end, after freedom came, she died beneath its mossy oaks, in a wooden cabin beside her husband–-both of them too old and weak to escape the burning building alive.

She lived on Sapelo. But first, she lived in Africa.

    Before the sack, before the chains, before the terrifying ship, she lived in Africa. Where young men danced and yams grew wild and rice was pounded in the odu, she lived in Africa on a grassy plain. And all night long, before the catchers came, all night long beside her mother in the village, while Onwa the moon drew water through the Niger delta, she listened to the stories by the fire.

    She was old enough by then to understand the trickster tortoise wasn’t real, though in her dreams sometimes he frightened her a little–-but it was just a story now, she knew.  It was a good one though, and when the nwoke told it–-his eyes and hands and words dancing up behind the sparks–-she still let herself believe a little sometimes, before she fell asleep.

    The night she fell asleep in Africa for the last time, she slept beside her mother. In the morning, she helped her auntie tie the baby on her back, and they both set off together for the field where groundnuts grew. By end of day the catchers came, and she was in a sack, tied up with other screaming, frightened children. And in the chains, and on the ship, and during all those weeks across the water, she cried and wailed, and then fell silent like the rest. The chains made sores, and the dead made smells, and the sick and angry made an awful sound. And when it all was done she stood on a block, and they looked at her teeth, and money changed hands, and Hannah became a slave on Sapelo.

    "I bu onye Ibo?" The young man whispered, but Hannah did not trust her ears.

    "I bu onye Ibo?" He asked again–-"Are you Ibo?"

    She answered him in English. "Yes, I am." She had found another one like her, at least a little like her, in this place. Someone who remembered groundnuts and wild yams. A boy who once had danced on grassy plains, and who had heard the stories of the tortoise.

    She took comfort in the sound of Ibo in his mouth, this boy called Carolina. And comfort in the prayers he said, familiar gods and signs and beads. Their grandchildren’s grandchildren would remember the way they used to talk at home, the funny words and chants, and how they prayed each evening on the beads, facing East.

    They built their churches on Sapelo facing East. They sang and danced and worshiped facing East. They taught their children to remember, and even after generations passed and layers of Christian theology settled in over African customs, their children’s children’s children on this island were still praying to the East. East toward God. East toward Africa.

    Another group of slaves arrived on Sapelo–-hollow, frightened, hungry, dragging their chains up the same dusty road Hannah had walked her first day here–-but they had a new story to tell. The Ibo on their ship did not go quietly down to the St. Simons shore. They rose up, those young men who knew the taste of groundnuts and wild yams, those who knew the story of the tortoise, the young men who had danced on the grassy plain, they all rose up together. And when it was time to get off that ship, with the last of their dignity and free will, they gave themselves to the water of Dunbar Creek, and not to Thomas Spalding.

    The story of those Ibo, whispered from mouth to ear on Sapelo, began to grow and change. Some said they did not drown, but that they walked back to Africa, on the water that had brought them here. Some swore they saw the young men lift above the ground and fly. In every telling of the story, they went home. Hannah knew, from listening to Ibo fables told by the nwoke, that the meaning of a story could be true, even if the story wasn’t real.

    This was a good one, a story of hope, a new tradition. And she listened by the fire with her own children as their father gave life to the story of Ebo Landing–-his eyes and hands and words dancing up behind the sparks–-and even then, she let herself believe a little sometimes, before she fell asleep.

    Hannah watched her children playing games that children play. Chase and catch and push and hide, and story-songs that smuggle first flirtations in a lyric, or a shove, or a little piece of cloth. She watched them sing and sway and act out songs they made up new each day, or so they thought. Songs whose rise and fall and meaning was older than they could possibly imagine.

    She watched the boys show off, pretending to wrap a bundle of trinkets in their cloth, treasures to take to the one they love. She heard them sing and chant the rhyme, and couldn’t help but think of young men dancing on the grassy plain...   

    And on and on the songs would go, ring-plays and dance-songs and counting games and more, passing time and creating new traditions that would last 150 years, and others that would be forgotten before this season’s sweetgrass stalks went brown.

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