The path was quiet and gray-dark. Green lizards scurried through the grass around her and frogs whistled among the palms, but there was no sign the indentures were awake yet. In the distance she could hear the low voice of Atiba, lecturing courage to his brave Yoruba warriors.
The preto fools.
She knew a woman would not be welcome, would be thought to "defile" their solemn council of war. Let them have their superstitions. This was the New World. Africa was finished for them. They weren't Yoruba warriors now. Here they were just more preto slaves, for all their posturing. Once more she was glad she had been raised a Portuguese, not a Yoruba woman bound to honor and revere whatever vain man she had been given to as wife.
As she neared the first hut, she stopped to look and shake her head sadly. What would the slaves in Brazil think of these thatched hovels? She knew. They would laugh and ridicule the backwardness of these saltwater preto, who knew nothing of European ways.
Then she noticed a new drum, a small one only just finished, that had been left out for the sun to dry. She had heard once what these special drums were for. They were used in ceremonies, when the men and women danced and somehow were entered and possessed by the gods. But there were no Yoruba women on Briggs' plantation. He had not bothered to buy any yet, since men could cut cane faster. She wanted to smile when she realized the Yoruba men here had to cook their own food, a humiliation probably even greater than slavery, but the smile died on her lips when she realized the drum was just a sad relic of a people torn apart.
She examined the drum, recalling the ones she had seen in Brazil. Its wood was reddish and the skins were tied taut with new white cords. She smoothed her hand against her shift, then picked it up and nestled it under her arm, feeling the coolness of the wood. She remembered the goat skin could be tuned by squeezing the cords along the side. Carefully she picked up the curved wooden mallet used to play it and, gripping the drum tightly against her body, tapped it once, twice, to test the fluctuation in pitch as she pressed the cords.
The sharp, almost human sound brought another rush of memories of Brazil, nights when she had slipped away to the slave quarters and sat at the feet of a powerful old babalawo, an ancient Yoruba priest who had come to be scorned by most of the newly baptized slaves. She was too young then to know that a mulata did not associate with black preto, that a mulata occupied a class apart. And above.
She had listened breathlessly night after starry night as he spun out ancient Yoruba legends of the goddess Oshun—who he said was the favorite wife of Shango. Then he would show her how to repeat the story back to him using just the talking drum.
She looked toward the gathering in the far hut, thinking again of the verses of the cowries. Holding the drum tightly, she began to play the curved stick across the skin. The words came easily.