The Pull Of Freedom (16 page)

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- The Empty Hammock

“Ana,” a deep voice intoned beside her.

The furry fringes of sleep still held her in its clutches; her limbs felt like weights were tied to them.

“Ana,” the voice was closer to her ears now. The person smelled like jasmines.

“Leave me alone, Carey. I am on vacation unless the welder guy is here,” she mumbled and then opened her eyes a little. She saw a bronzed arm with an armband.

“What are you doing, playing dress up? By the way that shade of body paint is just not you.” Ana closed her eyes again and felt the gentle breeze caress her face.

The air felt different, colder… fresher. She bolted upright and the hammock started to swing in earnest. She looked toward the house and gasped. Neither the house nor her mother’s flower garden was there. Instead, there was a huge rectangular hut. She blinked again; the hut was still there.

“Carey?” she whispered frightened. She could not believe that her brother would move her while she was sleeping.

There was a man leaning on the palm tree. He was looking at her curiously.

“Dreaming again?” He asked laughing at her. “What great vision have you seen?”

Ana looked down at herself and screamed. “I am naked.”

The man left the palm tree and stood in front of her. “Calm down, Ana.”

“Who are you? Where are my clothes? Why am I talking like this?” She was thinking English but talking something else.

Oh my God.

“Ana this is not funny,” the man in front of her looked stern. “You will become my first wife. I want no other but you. Stop pretending.”

“Wife?” Ana looked at him properly. He was about 5’ 9; his hair was long and caught up with a thong. His body was lean and hard. He was bronze all over. His eyes were deep-set and dark. His forehead broad and slightly dented. Very handsome…exotic looking… where did he come from?

“Where is Carey? And where are we?”

“Why do you keep asking for a sea turtle? Was that your vision?”

“Carey!” Ana yelled. “Ma! This is not funny. How can you allow a stranger to see me naked?”

The silence that greeted her was more frightening than the strange man who was staring at her with a wry twist to his lips. “You were always a dreamer, Ana, but calling an animal?” He chuckled.

“Carey means sea turtle,” Ana said. How did she know that? What was going on?

“Where is this?” She whispered, looking at the man in front of her bleakly.

“This is Yamaye. We are in the village of Bieke.” He smiled slightly as if he were humouring her.

Oh no, Yamaye is the Taino word for Jamaica, the land of springs.

Ana jumped from the hammock. Her head felt messed up like she was rearranged in there.

“This is a hammock,” she said out loud. She was speaking his language.

Where was the English? Where was the twenty-first century?

The man looked at her and shook his head. “Ana, I would build many canoes for you but I never understood you. When you are back in your right mind, I will be at the Behique’s hut.”

He walked off, his bearing proud ,and Ana looked around at her surroundings. The two palm trees were there and she was hanging in a hammock that looked decidedly different from the one she fell asleep in. The material was coarser and looked like thick threads.

That was where the resemblance to Jamaica 2007 ended. Beyond the palm trees were round huts made from dried palm leaves and what looked like bamboos. They were a few feet apart and extended to the seaside. The sea looked much nearer than it was in the future. The blue frothy waves beating against the tree hugged shore. The beauty was breathtaking, like a cameo dream.

There was no asphalt road, just a dirt track that seemed as if it had seen the trampling of many feet. There were more trees here than Ana had ever seen in her life. They were tall and thick of trunk. There were no coconut trees or breadfruit trees and her mother’s East Indian mango tree was absent. These trees had an unusual beauty and Ana wished that she were familiar with the flora of the times.

How did she arrive in this place? This was unlike any of the dreams she ever had. To assume that what she was seeing was real would be to assume that she was in the past.  That was unthinkable.

She cringed as a mosquito, three times the size of the ones in the future, latched unto her hand. The sting was twice as hot; she rubbed the spot and winced in pain. Her dream was certainly vivid; she fell asleep in clothes and woke up naked.

“There you are Ana,” a stocky woman with black waist-length hair walked up to her. Her round belly was slightly hanging over a stiff cotton-like skirt. She had a ring in her nose and her full lips were slightly black. She had her hands akimbo and she sighed.

“Why do you run from the feast of the joining? Don’t you want to be joined with the cacique?”

“Joined?” Ana gasped. She was so engrossed with the place she had forgotten the handsome stranger that had assumed she did not want to be joined with him. The word joined sounded so primitive and faintly erotic.

Most people did not have such vivid dreams. She glanced down again at her naked body and shuddered, she was never an exhibitionist or a nudist and this was strange for her. The lady did not think anything of it though, she grasped Ana’s hand and dragged her down the path; they passed huts with thatched roofs and straw covered sides. 

Little, brown children were running around the clearing, which looked like a mini lawn. They were kicking a large oval object that resembled a football.

Women sat at their doors carrying out a number of chores such as cooking, weaving, and planting within their gardens. It all looked so domesticated and surreal.

There were hammocks strung up behind most huts. Ana craned her neck to see behind them as she tried to keep up with the stocky woman pulling her. She stumbled over a soft object and looked down. At her feet was the ugliest dog she had ever seen.

The dog was small and had large ears. Its tail mid-length, it had huge, intelligent bright eyes. There were other dogs as well, their small bright colored bodies curled up at the doorways of the huts.

“They are the alcos,” Ana breathed. “And history said they no longer existed.” She marveled at the little brown animals and collided abruptly with the woman who had stopped pulling her.

They halted before a small hut, the sun dappled patterns of the trees created patterns on her hands. There was a large stream running alongside the hut, its clear waters had a slightly green color. It looked inviting and the location intimate, far enough away from the rest of the village, she could hardly hear the children playing.

“This is a dream,” Ana said loudly, and one woman looked through the darkened interior of the hut. Then another joined her.

“I do not see what Orocobix sees in that one,” one female snarled. “Since our parents left to see the Great Spirit; she has not been the same. It would not surprise me if she forgets my name again. He should be marrying me for his first wife, I am older.”

“What do you dream Ana, my flower? Do not mind Tanama she was born to be in your shadow,” a kindly female whispered beside her as Ana stood stunned.

Her parents had departed to see the Great Spirit?

She had a sister? She looked over at the girl in question, she was copper-toned, her legs were long and graceful, her breasts high and her waist trim. Her waist length hair hung loose down her back and dabs of paint could be seen on her body.

There were so many questions she wanted to ask. Was she in another Ana’s body? She had parents, a sister and now a husband-to-be.

What year was this anyway?

“I am not who you think I am.” Ana looked at the bunch of women gathered around her. They were of different skin tones, their facial features distinct.

She always thought all Arawaks looked the same, lumped together in her history book as a short and muscular people with copper-toned skin.

Tanama growled in her throat, jealousy stamped on her face. “You should tell that to Orocobix, I have been trying to convince him of that since your thirteenth summer.”

“Tanama stop it,” an older looking woman pronounced. She had on a bright red skirt that ended mid thigh with shells mixed with chunks of gold along her top and in her hair. “My son, the chief has spoken. He wants Ana. Come, girl,” she said, holding up her hand as Ana opened her mouth.

“No more dawdling. We have three moons to prepare you for the joining. All the unmarried women please leave.”

About five females, including Tanama left the clearing. Their naked bodies disappeared above the incline as they headed back to the village. Three women remained, the woman who identified herself as Orocobix’s mother, the one who dragged her to the site and the one who called her ‘my flower’.

“I am Basila, your grandmother.” The gentle woman gazed in her eyes. “I knew this day would come. The Behique told me it would. The other women are Farisa,” she said, pointing to Orocobix’s mother. “And Antia. She’s my daughter.”

Ana looked deeply at the older woman and felt safe. “You know that which day would come?”

“The day of your joining to Orocobix what else?” Farisa and Antia glanced at each other.

“Ladies give me a moment with my granddaughter.” The women nodded and walked toward the stream.

“What is happening to me?”

“Who am I, Basila?” Ana asked earnestly.

You are Ana.” Basila looked at her knowingly. “The great prophet Guacanagari had a great vision of birds with large white wings, gliding against the sea. What does it mean?”

“Tell me who I am first, one second I was sleeping in my present world and the next, I am here.”

“You are Ana, you are my granddaughter.”

“I can’t be. I am from a different time.”

“When you go back to dream, Ana will still be here,” Basila said and looked at her wisely.

“I don’t understand,” Ana said desperately. “What is this magic? Sci-fi? The twilight zone?”

“You speak a different language.” Basila looked at her curiously.

“Well there are some words that are not in Taino,” Ana said exasperatedly.

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