"You are wrong." She straightened. "Here in the Americas you are whatever the branco says. You will never be a man unless he says you are." She noticed a tiny race in her heartbeat and told herself again she did not want to feel desire for this preto, now or ever. "Do you want to know why? Because your skin is black. And to the Ingles black is the color of evil. They have books of learning that say the Christian God made Africans black because they are born of evil; they are less than human. They say your blackness outside comes from your darkness within." She looked away, shamed once more by the shade of her own skin, her unmistakable kinship with this preto next to her. Then she continued, bitterly repeating the things she’d heard that the Puritan divines were now saying in the island's parish churches. "The Ingles claim Africans are not men but savages, something between man and beast. And because of that, their priests declare it is the will of their God that you be slaves. . . ."
She had intended to goad him more, to pour out the abusive scorn she had so often endured herself, but the softness of the Yoruba words against her tongue sounded more musical than she had wanted. He was quietly smiling as she continued. "And now I order you to take me back before Master Briggs discovers I'm gone."
"The sun is many hours away. So for a while yet you won't have to see how black I am." He laughed and a pale glimmer of moonlight played across the three clan marks on his cheek. "I thought you had more understanding than is expected of a woman. Perhaps I was wrong. We say 'The thread follows the needle; it does not make its own way.' For you the Portugues, and now this branco Briggs, have been the needle; you merely the thread." He grasped her shoulder and pulled her around. "Why do you let some branco tell you who you are? I say they are the savages. They are not my color; they are sickly pale. They don't worship my gods; they pray to some cruel God who has no power over the earth. Their language is ugly and harsh; mine is melodic, rich with verses and ancient wisdom." He smiled again at the irony of it. "But tonight you have told me something very important about the mind of these Ingles. You have explained why they want so much to make me submit. If they think we are evil, then they must also think us powerful."
Suddenly he leaped to his feet and joyously whirled in a
circle, entoning a deep, eerie chant toward the stars. It was like a song of triumph.
She sat watching till he finished, then listened to the medley of frightened night birds from the dark down the hill. How could this preto understand so well her own secret shame, see so clearly the lies she told herself in order to live?
Abruptly he reached down and slipped his hands under her arms, lifting her up to him. "The first thing I want to do tonight is give you back a Yoruba name. A name that has meaning." He paused. "What was your mother called?"
"Her name was Dara."
"Our word for 'beautiful.' " He studied her angular face gravely. "It would suit you as well, for truly you are beautiful too. If you took that name, it would always remind you that your mother was a woman of our people."
She found herself wishing she had the strength to push his warm body away, to shout out to him one final time that he was a preto, that his father was a preto and her own a branco, that she had no desire to so much as touch him. . . . But suddenly she was ashamed to say the word "white," and that shame brought a wave of anger. At him, at herself. All her life she had been proud to be mulata. What right did this illiterate preto have to make her feel ashamed now? "And what are you? You are a preto slave. Who brings me to a hilltop in the dark of night and brags about freedom. Tomorrow you will be a slave again, just like yesterday."