“No. I will give them land and seed. Others will teach them to live in their new country. It is a good place. People need not stay poor there if they will work.”
“Children of mine will work.”
“Then all will be well.”
He left her and she wandered around the deck looking at the ship and the sea and the dark line of trees on shore. The shore seemed very far away. She watched it with the beginnings of fear, of longing. Everything she knew was back there deep within those trees through strange forests. She was leaving all her people in a way that seemed far more permanent than simply walking away.
She turned away from the shore, frightened of the sudden emotion that threatened to overwhelm her. She looked at the men, some black, some white, as they moved about the deck doing work she did not understand. The yellow-haired white man came to smile at her and stare at her breasts until she wondered whether he had ever seen a woman before. He spoke to her slowly, very distinctly.
“Isaac,” he said pointing to his chest. “Isaac.” Then he jabbed a finger toward her, but did not touch her. He raised his bushy pale eyebrows questioningly.
“Isaac?” she said stumbling over the word.
“Isaac.” He slapped his chest. Then he pointed again. “You?”
“Anyanwu!” she said understanding. “Anyanwu.” She smiled.
And he smiled and mispronounced her name and walked her around the deck naming things for her in English. The new language, so different from anything she had ever heard, had fascinated her since Doro began teaching it to her. Now she repeated the words very carefully and strove to remember them. The yellow-haired Isaac seemed delighted. When, finally, someone called him away, he left her reluctantly.
The loneliness returned as soon as he was gone. There were people all around her, but she felt completely alone on this huge vessel at the edge of endless water. Loneliness. Why should she feel it so strongly now? She had been lonely since she realized she would not die like other people. They would always leave her?friends, husbands, children … She could not remember the face of her mother or her father.
But now, the solitude seemed to close in on her as the waters of the sea would close over her head if she leaped into them.
She stared down into the constantly moving water, then away at the distant shore. The shore seemed even farther away now, though Doro had said the ship was not yet under way. Anyanwu felt that she had moved farther from her home, that already, perhaps she was too far away ever to return.
She gripped the rail, eyes on the shore. What was she doing, she wondered. How could she leave her homeland, even for Doro? How could she live among these strangers? White skins, yellow hairs?what were they to her? Worse than strangers. Different ones, people who could be all around her working and shouting, and still leave her feeling alone.
She pulled herself up onto the rail.
“Anyanwu!”
She did not quite hesitate. It was as though a mosquito had whined past her ear. A tiny distraction.
“Anyanwu!”
She would leap into the sea. Its waters would take her home, or they would swallow her. Either way, she would find peace. Her loneliness hurt her like some sickness of the body, some pain that her special ability could not find and heal. The sea …
Hands grasped her, pulled her backward and down onto the deck. Hands kept her from the sea.
“Anyanwu!”
The yellow hair loomed above her. The white skin. What right had he to lay hands on her?
“Stop, Anyanwu!” he shouted.
She understood the English word “stop,” but she ignored it. She brushed him aside and went back to the rail.
“Anyanwu!”
A new voice. New hands.
“Anyanwu, you are not alone here.”
Perhaps no other words could have stopped her. Perhaps no other voice could have driven away her need to end the terrible solitude so quickly. Perhaps only her own language could have overwhelmed the call of the distant shore.
“Doro?”
She found herself in his arms, held fast. She realized that she had been on the verge of breaking those arms, if necessary, to get free, and she was appalled.
“Doro, something happened to me.”
“I know.”
Her fury was spent. She looked around dazedly. The yellow hair?what had happened to him? “Isaac?” she said fearfully. Had she thrown the young man into the sea?
There was a burst of foreign speech behind her, frightened and defensive in tone. Isaac. She turned and saw him alive and dry and was too relieved to wonder at his tone. He and Doro exchanged words in their English, then Doro spoke to her.
“He did not hurt you, Anyanwu?”
