Wild Seed (15 page)

"Anneke is near her transition," the boy said worriedly. Mrs. Waemans says she's been having a lot of trouble."

"That's to be expected," Doro answered. Anneke Strycker was one of his daughters—a potentially good daughter. With luck, she would replace Lale when her transition was complete and her abilities mature. She lived now with her foster mother, Margaret Waemans, a big, physically powerful, mentally stable widow of fifty. No doubt, the woman needed all her resources to handle the young girl now.

Isaac cleared his throat. "Mrs. Waemans is afraid she'll . . . do something to herself. She's been talking about dying."

Doro nodded. Power came the way a child came—with agony. People in transition were open to every thought, every emotion, every pleasure, every pain from the minds of others. Their heads were filled with a continuous screaming jumble of mental "noise." There was no peace, little sleep, many nightmares—everyone's nightmares. Some of Doro's best people—too many of them—stopped at this stage. They could pass their potential on to their children if they lived long enough to have any, but they could not benefit from it themselves. They could never control it. They became hosts for Doro, or they became breeders. Doro brought them mates from distant unrelated settlements because that kind of crossbreeding most often produced children like Lale. Only great care and fantastic good luck produced a child like Isaac. Doro glanced at the boy fondly. "I'll see Anneke first thing tomorrow," he told him.

"Good," Isaac said with relief. "That will help. Mrs. Waemans says she calls for you sometimes when the nightmares come." He hesitated. "How bad will it get for her?"

"As bad as it was for you and for Lale."

"My God!" Isaac said. "She's only a girl. She'll die."

"She has as much of a chance as you and Lale did."

Isaac glared at Doro in sudden anger. "You don't care what happens to her, do you? If she does die, there will always be someone else."

Doro turned to look at him, and after a moment, Isaac looked away.

"Be a child out here if you like," Doro told him. "But act your age when we go in. I'm going to settle things between you and Anyanwu tonight."

"Settle . . . you're finally going to give her to me?"

"Think of it another way. I want you to marry her."

The boy's eyes widened. He stopped walking, leaned against a tall maple tree. "You . . . you've made up your mind, I suppose. I mean . . . you're sure that's what you want."

"Of course." Doro stopped beside him.

"Have you told her?"

"Not yet. I'll tell her after dinner."

"Doro, she's wild seed. She might refuse."

"I know."

"You might not be able to change her mind."

Doro shrugged. Worried as he was, it did not occur to him to share his concern with Isaac. Anyanwu would obey him or she wouldn't. He longed to be able to control her with some refinement of Lale's power, but he could not—nor could Isaac.

"If you can't reach her," Isaac said, "if she just won't understand, let me try. Before you . . . do anything else, let me try."

"All right."

"And . . . don't make her hate me."

"I don't think I could. She might come to hate me for a while, but not you."

"Don't hurt her."

"Not if I can help it." Doro smiled a little, pleased by the boy's concern. "You like the idea," he observed. "You want to marry her."

"Yes. But I never thought you'd let me."

"She'll be happier with a husband who does more than visit her once or twice a year."

"You're going to leave me here to be a farmer?"

"Farm if you want to—or open a store or go back to smithing. No one could handle that better than you. Do whatever you like, but I am going to leave you here, at least for a while. She'll need someone to help her fit in here when I'm gone."

"God," Isaac said. "Married." He shook his head, then began to smile.

"Come on." Doro started toward the house.

"No."

Doro looked back at him.

"I can't see her until you tell her . . . now that I know. I can't. I'll eat with Anneke. She could use the company anyway."

"Sarah won't think much of that."

"I know." Isaac glanced homeward guiltily. "Apologize for me will you?"

Doro nodded, turned, and went in to Sarah Cutler's linen-clothed, heavily laden table.

Anyanwu watched carefully as the white woman placed first a clean cloth, then dishes and utensils on the long, narrow table at which the household was to eat. Anyanwu was glad that some of the food and the white people's ways of eating it were familiar to her from the ship. She could sit down and have a meal without seeming utterly ignorant. She could not have cooked the meal, but that would come, too, in time. She would learn. For now, she merely observed and allowed the interesting smells to intensify her hunger. Hunger was familiar and good. It kept her from staring too much at the white woman, kept her from concentrating on her own nervousness and uncertainty in the new surroundings, kept her attention on the soup, thick with meat and vegetables, and the roast deer flesh—venison, the white woman had called it—and a huge fowl—a turkey. Anyanwu repeated the words to herself, reassured that they had become part of her vocabulary. New words, new ways, new foods, new clothing . . . She was glad of the cumbersome clothing, though, finally. It made her look more like the other women, black and white, whom she had seen in the village, and that was important. She had lived in enough different towns through her various marriages to know the necessity of learning to behave as others did. What was common in one place could be ridiculous in another and abomination in a third. Ignorance could be costly.

"How shall I call you?" she asked the white woman. Doro had said the woman's name once, very quickly, in introduction, then hurried off on business of his own. Anyanwu remembered the name—Sarahcutler—but was not certain she could say it correctly without hearing it again.

"Sarah Cutler," the woman said very distinctly. "Mrs. Cutler."

Anyanwu frowned, confused. Which was right? "Mrs. Cutler?"

"Yes. You say it well."

"I am trying to learn." Anyanwu shrugged. "I must learn."

"How do you say your name?"

"Anyanwu." She said it very slowly, but still the woman asked:

"Is that all one name?"

"Only one. I have had others, but Anyanwu is best. I come back to it."

"Are the others shorter?"

"Mbgafo. That is the name my mother gave me. And once I was called Atagbusi, and honored by that name. And I have been called—"

"Never mind." The woman sighed, and Anyanwu smiled to herself. She had had to give five of her former names to Isaac before he shrugged and decided Anyanwu was a good name after all.

"Can I help to do these things?" she asked. Sarah Cutler was beginning to put food on the table now.

"No," the woman said. "Just watch now. You'll be doing this soon enough." She glanced at Anyanwu curiously. She did not stare, but allowed herself these quick curious glances. Anyanwu thought they each probably had an equal number of questions about the other.

Sarah Cutler asked: "Why did Doro call you 'Sun Woman'?"

Doro had taken to doing that affectionately when he spoke to her in English, though, though Isaac complained that it made her sound like an Indian.

"Your word for my name is 'Sun,' " she answered. "Doro said he would find an English name for me, but I did not want one. Now he makes English of my name."

The white woman shook her head and laughed. "You're more fortunate than you know. With him taking such an interest in you, I'm surprised you're not already Jane or Alice or some such."

Anyanwu shrugged. "He has not changed his own name. Why should he change mine?"

The woman gave her what seemed to be a look of pity.

"What is Cutler?" Anyanwu asked.

"What it means?"

"Yes."

"A cutler is a knifemaker. I suppose my husband had ancestors who were knifemakers. Here, taste this." She gave Anyanwu a bit of something sweet and oily, fruit-filled, and delicious.

"It is very good!" Anyanwu said. The sweet was unlike anything she had tasted before. She did not know what to say about it except the words of courtesy Doro had taught her. "Thank you. What is this called?"

The woman smiled, pleased. "It's a kind of cake I haven't made before—special for Isaac and Doro's homecoming."

"You said. . ." Anyanwu thought for a moment. "You said your husband's people were knifemakers. Cutler is his name?"

"Yes. Here, a woman takes the name of her husband after marriage. I was Sarah Wheatley before I married."

"Then Sarah is the name you keep for yourself."

"Yes."

"Shall I call you Sarah—your own name?"

The woman glanced at her sidelong. "Shall I call you . . . Mbgafo?" She mispronounced it horribly.

"If you like. But there are very many Mbgafos. That name only tells the day of my birth."

"Like . . . Monday or Tuesday?"

"Yes. You have seven. We have only four: Eke, Oye, Afo, Nkwo. People are often named for the day they were born."

"Your country must be overflowing with people of the same name."

Anyanwu nodded. "But many have other names as well."

"I suppose Anyanwu really is better."

"Yes." Anyanwu smiled. "Sarah is good too. A woman should have something of her own."

Doro came in then, and Anyanwu noted how the woman brightened. She had not been sad or grim before, but now, years seemed to drop from her. She only smiled at him and said dinner was ready, but there was a warmth in her voice that had not been there before in spite of all her friendliness. At some time, this woman had been wife or lover to Doro. Probably lover. There was still much fondness between them, though the woman was no longer young. Where was her husband, Anyanwu wondered. How was it that a woman here could cook for a man neither her kinsman nor in-law while her husband probably sat with others in front of one of the houses and blew smoke out of his mouth?

Then the husband came in, bringing two grown sons and a daughter, along with the very young, shy wife of one of the sons. The girl was slender and olive-skinned, black-haired and dark-eyed, and even to Anyanwu's eyes, very beautiful. When Doro spoke to her courteously, her answer was a mere moving of the lips. She would not look at him at all except once when his back was turned. But the look she gave him then spoke as loudly as had Sarah Cutler's sudden brightening. Anyanwu blinked and began to wonder what kind of man she had. The women aboard the ship had not found Doro so desirable. They had been terrified of him. But these women of his people . . . Was he like a cock among them, going from one hen to another? They were not, after all, his kinsmen or his friends. They were people who had pledged loyalty to him or people he had bought as slaves. In a sense, they were more his property than his people. The men laughed and talked with him, but none presumed as much as Isaac had. All were respectful. And if their wives or sisters or daughters looked at Doro, they did not notice. Anyanwu strongly suspected that if Doro looked back, if he did more than look, they would make an effort not to notice that either. Or perhaps they would be honored. Who knew what strange ways they practiced?

But now, Doro gave his attention to Anyanwu. She was shy in this company—men and women together eating strange food and talking in a language she felt she spoke poorly and understood imperfectly. Doro kept making her talk, speaking to her of trivial things.

"Do you miss the yams? There are none quite like yours here."

"It does not matter." Her voice was like the young girl's—no more than a moving of the lips. She felt ashamed to speak before all these strangers—yet she had always spoken before strangers, and spoken well. One had to speak well and firmly when people came for medicine and healing. What faith could they have in someone who whispered or bowed her head?

Determinedly, she raised her head and ceased concentrating so intently on her soup. She did miss the yams. Even the strange soup made her long for an accompanying mound of pounded yam. But that did not matter. She looked around, meeting the eyes first of Sarah Cutler, then of one of Sarah's sons and finding only friendliness and curiosity in both. The young man, thin and brown-haired, seemed to be about Isaac's age. Thought of Isaac made Anyanwu look around.

"Where is Isaac?" she asked Doro. "You said this was his home."

"He's with a friend," Doro told her. "He'll be in later."

"He'd better!" Sarah said. "His first night back and he can't come home to supper."

"He had reason," Doro told her. And she said nothing more.

But Anyanwu found other things to say. And she no longer whispered. She paid some attention to spooning up the soup as the others did and to eating the other meats and breads and sweets correctly with her fingers. People here ate more carefully than had the men aboard the ship; thus, she ate more carefully. She spoke to the shy young girl and discovered that the girl was an Indian—a Mohawk. Doro had matched her with Blake Cutler because both had just a little of the sensitivity Doro valued. Both seemed pleased with the match. Anyanwu thought she would have been happier with her own match with Doro had her people been nearby. It would be good for the children of their marriage to know her world as well as Doro's—be aware of a place where blackness was not a mark of slavery. She resolved to make her homeland live for them whether Doro permitted her to show it to them or not. She resolved not to let them forget who they were.

Then she found herself wondering whether the Mohawk girl would have preferred to forget who she was as the conversation turned to talk of war with Indians. The white people at the table were eager to tell Doro how, earlier in the year, "Praying Indians" and a group of whites called French had stolen through the gates of a town west of Wheatley—a town with the unpronounceable name of Schenectady—and butchered some of the people there and carried off others. There was much discussion of this, much fear expressed until Doro promised to leave Isaac in the village, and leave one of his daughters, Anneke, who would soon be very powerful. This seemed to calm everyone somewhat. Anyanwu felt that she had only half understood the dispute between so many foreign people, but she did ask whether Wheatley had ever been attacked.