Bear Bob's Story as told to Edward Summer

Chapter Nine
No Place To Go
 

We could not be alone to go to the bathroom. They would not let us move from our place where we were chained. We could wiggle in the chains, but not very far. Here there were no bushes to hide behind. No place to go. We had to stay where we were in front of everyone. We could not move away afterwards.

     Then once a day, the thin lip men would come with big buckets of water. They would dump the water all over us and the floor and wash everything away. But the air always smelled bad. Bad.

     Many hours would pass and the dark cave in the big boat would creak and rock.

     Then men would come with wooden bowls. They were filled with something soft and tasteless. They wanted us to eat it. We were hungry, very hungry. So we did eat it.

     More hours would pass. No light came through the cracks in the wooden walls and some of us would sleep. I would sleep until I heard someone moan in my dreams and woke up to the sounds of crying.

     When people talked, a huge man who was black like us came with a whip.

     “No talk!” he said in one language and then another. I did not understand his words, but I understood the meaning. “No talk!” the whip cracked.

     He would leave, and the people would whisper. They would lean their mouths close to another’s ear and whisper. What did they say? I could not understand their words even if they spoke loud. There was one of my people, but she was so far across the cave I could not speak to her. Sometimes the sunlight came through a crack and I saw her face for a moment. Her eyes saw mine. Then the light vanished. Her eyes vanished. The look vanished. We were alone again with all the other people in the darkness.

     Mostly I slept. Sometimes I stared at the shadows. Sometimes I held the little bag with the seven baobab seeds. I could feel them through the cloth. I rolled them back and forth with my thumb.

     My eyes closed and I thought of my home. I thought of my family. I thought of the food, and the dancing, and the sunlight, and my brothers and sisters, and the singing, and the running, the running, the running through the fields of grass. And then I would sleep again.

     How many days? How many nights? Where were we? Where were we?

     One day the huge black man came again. This time he had no whip.

     He kicked us. He kicked each one of us. Some sat up and stared at him. Some did not move.

     He kicked me and I turned to look up at him.

     That was when he saw it. He reached down and tore the small bag from around my neck. No one had noticed it before.

     His lips opened on huge white teeth. Perhaps it was a smile. He turned the bag upside down.

     One, two, three, four, five, six, seven baobab seeds poured out onto his huge hand.

     His teeth disappeared behind his closing lips. Perhaps it had not been a smile after all.

     He dropped the seeds onto the floor. They clicked on the wood. They clicked like rain on the leaves above our hut at home. They clicked and rolled away into the darkness. He threw the empty bag at my chest. He realized that it was too soft to hurt. So he kicked me. He kicked me hard in the thigh. He kicked me hard in the ribs. Then he walked away.

     I looked into the darkness trying to see as the seeds rolled away.

     The tears came to my eyes. There was pain in my body, but there was more pain in my heart. The seeds rolled away. In my mind I saw my family shrinking smaller and smaller until they were a dot. Then they were nothing. I was alone in the darkness with the pain in my ribs.

     Then two thin lip white men came while the black man kicked us. When he had finished kicking each of us, the black man pointed at someone. The white men undid a chain. They took one of the women. She had not moved when the black man kicked her. They took another man who had not moved either. They dragged them away, up, out of the cave. Then the chains were fastened again.

     The black man left. He would come back again another day. But the man and the woman did not come back. We never saw them again.

     In the darkness, my hand found the bag. It was empty. The seeds were gone. There were still silent tears in my eyes. I was terrified to make a sound.

     Suddenly, a hand was on my arm. I jumped in fear.

     “Shhhhhhh.” a soft voice whispered. “Shhhhhh.”

     The hand on my arm slid down, lower and lower. The hand found my hand. It pried open my fingers and dropped something there. My fingers closed around it.

     Seeds. One. Two. Two seeds. One. Two.

     Then another hand.

     Another seed. Three.

     “Shhhhhh.” the whisper again.

     A last seed was pressed into my palm. Four.

     Four seeds in my hand.

     One. Two. Three. Four. I put each seed back into the bag. Where would I hide it? Where? Not around my neck. I almost laughed. Almost.

     My thigh hurt terribly where he had kicked me. It hurt almost as bad as the metal loop, the shackle around my ankle.

     The metal! That was it! The metal loop. It went from the top of my foot up past my ankle. It was tight, but there was room for it to move up and down and scrape away the skin of my leg.

     Quickly, I flattened the bag. I shoved it in between the metal and my leg. It just fit! It was tight, but the bag was soft enough to flatten out against my leg. No one would see it there. No one.

     I smiled. And I slept. And in my dream I thanked all the hands that had brought my seeds back to me.