“It seems empty.”
“It is sown with barley now, I think. And perhaps a few oats.”
These English names were familiar to her because he and Isaac had told her about them. Barley for making the beer that the crew drank so much of, oats for feeding the horses the people of this country rode, wheat for bread, maize for bread and for eating in other ways, tobacco for smoking, fruits and vegetables, nuts and herbs. Some of these things were only foreign versions of foods already known to her, but many were as new to her as the anthill city.
“Doro, let me go to see these things,” she pleaded. “Let me walk on land again. I have almost forgotten how it feels to stand on a surface that does not move.”
Doro rested one arm comfortably around her. He liked to touch her before others more than any man she had ever known, but it did not seem that any of his people were amused or contemptuous of his behavior. Even the slaves seemed to accept whatever he did as the proper thing for him to do. And Anyanwu enjoyed his touches even now when she thought they were more imprisoning than caressing. “I will take you to see the city another time,” he said. “When you know more of the ways of its people, when you can dress as they do and behave as one of them. And when I get myself a white body. I am not interested in trying to prove to one suspicious white man after another that I own myself.”
“Are all black men slaves, then?”
“Most are. It is the responsibility of blacks to prove that they are freeif they are. A black without proof is taken to be a slave.”
She frowned. “How is Isaac seen?”
“As a white man. He knows what he is but he was raised white. This is not an easy place to be black. Soon it will not be an easy place to be Indian.”
She was silent for a moment, then asked fearfully, “Must I become white?”
“Do you want to?” He looked down at her.
“No! I thought with you I could be myself.”
He seemed pleased. “With me, and with my people, you can. Wheatley is a long way upriver from here. Only my people live there, and they do not enslave each other.”
“All belonging, as they do, to you,” she said.
He shrugged.
“Are blacks there as well as whites?”
“Yes.”
“I will live there then. I could not live in a place where being myself would mean being thought a slave.”
“Nonsense,” Doro said. “You are a powerful woman. You could live in any place I chose.”
She looked at him quickly to see whether he was laughing at herspeaking of her power and at the same time reminding her of his own power to control her. But he was watching the approach of a small, fast-moving boat. As the boat came alongside, its one passenger and his several bundles rose straight up and drifted onto the ship. Isaac, of course. Anyanwu realized suddenly that the boy had used neither oars nor sails to propel the boat.
“You’re among strangers!” Doro told him sharply, and the boy dropped, startled, to the deck.
“No one saw me,” he said. “But look, speaking of being among strangers …” He unrolled one of the bundles that had drifted aboard with him, and Anyanwu saw that it was a long, full, bright blue petticoat of the kind given to the slave women when they grew cold as the ship traveled north. Anyanwu could protect herself from the cold without such coverings though she had cut a petticoat apart to make new cloths from it. She disliked the idea of covering her body so completely, smothering herself, she called it. She thought the slave women looked foolish so covered.
“You’ve come to civilization,” Isaac was telling her. “You’ve got to learn to wear clothes now, do as the people here do.”
“What is civilization?” she asked.
Isaac glanced at Doro uncomfortably, and Doro smiled. “Never mind,” Isaac said after a moment. “Just get dressed. Let’s see how you look with clothes on.”
Anyanwu touched the petticoat. The material felt smooth and cool beneath her fingersnot like the drab, coarse cloth of the slave women’s petticoats. And the color pleased hera brilliant blue that went well with her dark skin.
“Silk,” Isaac said. “The best.”
“Who did you steal it from?” Doro asked.
Isaac blushed dark beneath his tan and glared at his father.
“Did you steal it, Isaac?” Anyanwu demanded, alarmed.
“I left money,” he said defensively. “I found someone your size, and I left twice the money these things are worth.”
Anyanwu glanced at Doro uncertainly, then stepped away from him as she saw how he was looking at Isaac.
“If you’re ever caught and pulled down in the middle of a stunt like that,” Doro said, “I’ll let them burn you.”
Isaac licked his lips, put the petticoat into Anyanwu’s arms. “Fair enough,” he said softly. “If they can.”
Doro shook his head, said something harshly in a language other than English. Isaac jumped. He glanced at Anyanwu as though to see whether she had understood. She stared back at him blankly, and he managed a weak smile of what she supposed to be relief at her ignorance. Doro gathered Isaac’s bundles and spoke in English to Anyanwu. “Come on. Let’s get you dressed.”
“It would be easier to become an animal and wear nothing,” she muttered, and was startled when he pushed her toward the hatchway.
In their cabin, Doro seemed to relax and let go of his anger. He carefully unwrapped the other bundles. A second petticoat, a woman’s waistcoat, a cap, underclothing, stockings, shoes, some simple gold jewelry …
“Another woman’s things,” Anyanwu said, lapsing into her own language.
“Your things now,” Doro said. “Isaac was telling the truth. He paid for them.”
“Even though he did not ask first whether the woman wished to sell them.”
“Even so. He took a foolish, unnecessary risk. He could have been shot out of the air or trapped, jailed, and eventually executed for witchcraft.”
“He could have gotten away.”
“Perhaps. But he would probably have had to kill a few people. And for what?” Doro held up the petticoat.
“You care about such things?” she asked. “Even though you kill so easily?”
“I care about my people,” he said. “Every witch-scare one person’s foolishness creates can hurt many. We are all witches in the eyes of ordinary people, and I am the only witch they cannot eventually kill. Also, I care about my son. I would not want Isaac making a marked man of himselfmarked in his own eyes as well as the eyes of others. I know him. He is like you. He would kill, then suffer over it, wallowing in shame.”
She smiled, laid one hand on his arm. “It is only his youth making him foolish. He is good. He gives me hope for our children.”
“He is not a child,” Doro said. “He is twenty-five years old. Think of him as a man.”
She shrugged. “To me, he is a boy. And to you, both he and I are children. I have seen you watching us like an all-knowing father.”
Doro smiled, denying nothing. “Take off your cloth,” he said. “Get dressed.”
She stripped, eyeing the new clothing with distaste.
“Accustom your body to these things,” he told her as he began helping her dress. “I have been a woman often enough to know how uncomfortable woman’s clothing can be, but at least this is Dutch, and not as confining as the English.”
“What is Dutch?”
“A people, like the English. They speak a different language.”
“White people?”
“Oh yes. Just a different nationalitya different tribe. If I had to be a woman, though, I think I’d rather pass as Dutch than as English. I would here, anyway.”
She looked at his tall, straight black man’s body. “It is hard to think of you ever being a woman.”
He shrugged. “It would be hard for me to imagine you as a man if I hadn’t seen you that way.”