Mind Of A Slave

The Alligator Necklace

25.

THE FIRST THOUGHT that comes to mind when I am woken the next morning, by Noah pounding on the door, is that Mama is dead. Dead, and never coming back.

I get to my feet groggily and realise that I am still holding the coded message in my fist.

I hastily slide it into my pocket before anyone has the chance to see it. I can't let anyone else know about Mama.

Throughout the day, everything I look at seems to remind me of her.

The view of the treetops, where Mama met with the foreign man in the woods.

The gate, through which Mama and I entered the Plantation for the first time.

My head wrap, which was once repaired by Mama after I had torn it.

People send kindness to me in the form of sympathetic glances, and sometimes a few words are spoken, expressing sadness and regret and comfort.

Mostly, their sympathy washes over me, unable to reach my heart. It's not that I don't appreciate their benevolence, I just seem to be wilting, like a dying flower whose petals are drooping and will not open up again.

That evening I return to the cabin earlier than usual, simply because I have nothing else to do. Amos is working in the garden. Beckey is preparing a late dinner for the Ramier family in the kitchen. There will be no private meeting in the forest tonight. There is nobody I need to talk to. There are no more secrets left to uncover.

I told Amos everything I knew about Mama, and I told Hannah too. They listened to me and comforted me just like I did for them.

I showed Amos the paper with the coded message, and I was somewhat glad to discover that he was equally as shocked as I was. He sat still, squinting at it for a very long time, just the way Beckey did, as if he was desperate to know what it means.

"Was there more?" He asked.

I shook my head. "Don't think so."

"She musta known that strange white man real well. They coulda been frien's since they was born."

I frown, feeling uncomfortable with the thought that Mama might have been best friends with a white man, the type of person who I have been taught to despise.

Just before dusk, I lugged the clothes I was wearing last night, which were layered in mud, to the well near the outhouse. Agnes was washing several of her garments, but she scooped mine out of my arms without a word and dumped them into the bucket with her own.

"That's real kin' a you, but I can do it," I said.

She just shook her head and pretended that she couldn't hear any further of mine.

I watched the monotonous motion of her arms, pumping the clothes in and out of the water.

"Go an' rest, Cass," she ordered, without pausing her actions to look at me, "You know, sleepin' gonna help you wid your loss. I'm gone give you clothes back to you t'morrow mornin', alright?"

So I left after deciding to accept her generosity.

My cabin is empty when I enter, yet I feel overwhelmed and slightly panicked. Nothing seems right. Mama should have been waiting for me inside the cabin, preparing my dinner, but now I have to do it myself, and although I am definitely capable, it feels so unnatural.

I throw some raw potatoes into the pot of water above the fire. I wait until it bubbles for a few minutes and they I take the potatoes out. I bite into one. It's undercooked so I chuck it back into the water.

A woman walks in to grab her head wrap from under her bed. She doesn't look at me.

I dump the potatoes in a wooden bowl and sit on my bed, holding the steaming bowl in my lap.

Across from me is Mama's bed. I stare at it, trying to visualise Mama in my mind, as if conjuring up an image of her will make her return. My eyes pour over the folds in the sheet and the imprint of her body in the hay. She used to lie on her back when she slept, and her foot hung where the indent ends at the side of the bed.

I want to lie on her sheet, with her scent in the air around me. I want her to hold me closely while she asks me "So, what do you think, Cass?" and while she tells me to "be careful, Cass."

I just wish someone could have warned her to be careful, like she warned me.

I try to get up but ropes that have appeared from nowhere are tying me down. My stomach is filled with lead and all of a sudden my hands begin to vibrate.

I close my eyes, take a deep breath.

I open my eyes. There are no ropes holding me in place. There is no lead in my stomach, only a hollow, sickly feeling. I watch my hands as they shake violently, urging them to calm their movement. I form fists and clench them as tightly as I can, so tightly that my knuckles begin to ache.

Then I stand up. I move my left foot, then my right, and I walk steadily to the end of Mama's bed. I touch her brown sheet with my fingertips. It is thin and scratchy, like mine. I run my nails along the fabric until my hand drops off the edge. I put my palms on the sheet. The fabric around them shakes with each of my small tremors. I touch my forehead to the sheet, inhaling the remaining scent my Mama has left in this world. Slowly, I crawl across the bed. I reach the place where her head used to lie, and I rest my forehead there, breathing deeply to capture every tiny part of her existence that is left. I lie down, and I feel something hard and cold against my leg. I know what it is as soon as my hand wraps around it. Mama's necklace, hidden between her sheets.

My fingers trace the rough metal skin of the gator, the thin nose and the round shiny eyes. I press it against my chest, and I wonder if Mama knew, when she left the Plantation that morning, that she wouldn't come back.

I put the string around my neck and I lie down on her bed, with the alligator clasped between my fingers.

From where I'm lying, I can just about see the stars through the window, becoming brighter as the night darkens.

I'm thinking about Papa, about where he is, about what he's doing. Maybe he's looking up into the sky right now. Maybe he's staring at the same small star that I'm staring at, and maybe at this moment we are linked through that tiny spot of light.

I know that Mama is gone, but Papa is still there, somewhere on our planet, waiting.

Waiting for the war to end.

Waiting to see me again.

He once told me that Mama was an alligator, but I was young and I was unable to figure out what he meant.

Now I think I understand. Alligators are clever, alert, patient, secretive. Mama was all of those things. Some people say alligators are cruel creatures, with purely evil intentions, but to me alligators always seem calm and harmless, constantly in the mist of deep slumbers, their heads just breaking the water's surface. People can be judgemental, and their problem is that they don't understand. To many different people, alligators appear to have many different characteristics. Mama was the same in the sense that she had two sides to her existence. She was secretive, she was faithful. She was sly, she was trustworthy. She was an alligator, clever, alert, patient, secretive.

Papa understood her for what she was, and I think I'm starting to understand, too.

I am exhausted but I can't sleep. Women filter into the cabin throughout the night and Beckey is one of the first to arrive. Her fingers stroke my cheek. She thinks I'm asleep. She leans down, and loose strands of her hair tickle my skin as she plants a soft kiss on my forehead.

"I'm sorry," she whispers with a small sob.

"I'm sorry too," I say, and her hand twitches in surprise at hearing my voice.

"You's awake Cass?"

"Yes," I whisper, "An' I gone get through this, Beckey, 'cause Papa's out there somewhere, sendin' me strength."

Beckey sniffs as she weaves her fingers gently through my hair.

"You's right," she says. "He's out there, an' he's waitin' 'till you can fin' him."