Up to this point the conversation had been intense, committed, serious, but now it exploded in laughter. And quickly became serious again, pushing back aganst the descent into charade.
"Shi can press it wid pressing comb, like how dem-girl do theirs. Bring di whole ting in one. If all-a it look straight it wi better."
"But look like yu nuh ha no sense. Yu waan bun-up di pickni head? Yu don't si di back part of di hair too short fi press? Pressin comb ooda fry him scalp."
"Yu carry him go a doctor, Rachel? Wha doctor seh?"
"Doctor seh mi pickni healthy, nutten nuh duu him, Suzie Q Francis."
The warning edge in Rachel's voice made some of the women back off, irritated others.
"Fi heaven sake, Rach, nuh go on so. Wi nah seh nutten, a jus try wi a-try help. Be reasonable, him nuh healthy. No doctor nuh tell yu seh him healthy. Him cyaan healthy an look so strange. A lie dat yu a-tell."
"Lef mi pickni alone, Clareese Bell." Rachel, trembling with fury, hauled up her wash pan, dumped her wet unrinsed clothes in it, and, heaving it on her head, walked away to another part of the river. "An all-a oonu, nuh mek mi haffi tell oonu sinting tiddeh." The real words she wanted to say revolted in her head; later she would kneel in shamefaced, bitter repentance before Yahweh. Yu bombo, Clareese Bell. Di whole-a oonu kiss mi arse. If oonu faas wid mi pickni again infronten mi, I chop up oonu rass. Oonu lef him. Lef him. Him nuh trouble oonu. How him look nuh none-a oonu damn business. A Yahweh mek him. I abjure oonu, contradiction of sinners. What God bless, no man curse.
The words she did not speak hung in the air like smoke everyone inhaled.
"But oonu si ya, sah. Mind a sinting yu a-hide. Mind a nuh yu have him wid di likkle white man fi true. Gi Noah bun an jacket down a Ora while him gone a-sea."
Driven to her limit at this unspeakable insult, Rachel was provoked to answer. "Yu mus know, fa di amount a waistcoat wheh heng up inna fi-yu man closet, no color nuh inna di rainbow fi describe dem, so yu mus know."
At this, Suzie Q let out a big malicious laugh, enjoying Rachel's riposte. Clareese was well-known as the chief burn-giver, jacket-
and-waistcoat-maker; her husband, a ship's cook who came home once a year, was thought to be the father of none of her numerous offspring, whose births had followed each other a year apart, so that if they were lined up in order from the oldest to the youngest, they would form a neat stepladder.
☙
Avoiding her neighbors altogether was impossible, but after this bitter encounter, Rachel contrived to meet as few of them as she could by the simple expedient of arriving at the river while the dew was still on the ground. She waited only long enough for the mists to dissipate off the surface of the water before plunging in with her wash load. Most of the women came later, after morning service, or went on Saturday, after marketing.
This meant she now met very few, if any, neighbors at the washing. And if any arrived before she finished, their attitude took care of any potential reconciliation. Still enraged, the women decided to either ignore Rachel or resort to trowing wud. If their paths crossed with hers, they said howdy, or not, and Rachel said howdy, curtly, pleasantly, and concentrated on her washing. The others either then chose a spot far enough away from her to underscore her exclusion or plunked down in the same pool to show how much they were ignoring her. Which is to say, to provoke a confrontation via the undirected slinging of words.
Female malice in Tumela Gut was always religious. Rachel's adversaries lifted up their voices in song:
How great is our God!
How great is His name!
He the greatest one forever the same,
He roll back the water from the mighty Red Sea,
He said, I'll lead thee, put your trust in me!
Praise the Lord!
Hallelujah, praise His name!
"Clareese oh, yu sun di dawg yet?"
"Sun which dawg, Suzie Q? Mi dawg born white, is di color God give him, why yu tink sun gwine change dat?"
"Lef di ooman dawg alone, Suzie!"
"But wha yu si mi a-do, Pretty Teet'? Mi ongle a-suggest seh shi give di dawg a tan, so him can stan blackpeople climate!"
"Some people love dat deh color, a dem Jesus dat! Dem nah let it go!"
"Hol him, dawg, nuh let him go!"
"Hol him, dawg, nuh let him go!"
"Come, Rex. Come, Rex, whu, whu, whu!" And the long whistling call, summoning the imaginary dog, would be emitted through the lips pursed in the direction of the little boy, who hunted fish within hearing distance.
The truth was, they were not malicious women, except when rejected (and then they were vicious), and though they found the child strange, he was no stranger than most of what or whom they knew, except that his particular strangeness had no precedent. They wished Moshe no ill. And indeed they longed to lay down arms, but could not surrender in the face of Rachel's unyielding pride.
It did not take Moshe long to learn that it was he who was being talked about in this coded way. And he felt how his mother's contained rage, a bitter thing, roiled over him to withstand the neighbors' barbs. Rachel was determined not to answer or show in any way that their taunts affected her, but her anger and fear for her son were impossible to hide. In her effort to shield him, her disguised rage, the cloak of her protection, burned through her hands helping him undress for bed at night, and his skin broke out in great rashes that confined him to his bed once more.
Noah was at home irregularly. He went to sea in the night and sold his fish in the morning. He did this from Monday to Thursday, when he would return to Ora to sell the last of his catch and caulk the boat if it leaked. Then he would head for home and a long sleep. He sold his fish as he caught it, putting in to port at various places on the long route where he tracked his fishing pots. He laid the pots at evening and harvested them before dawn when the fish were still asleep in the cunningly fashioned cages of mesh. Working alone, Noah came in early before the sun's rays could fall on the catch and spoil it, putting out again before people had had their breakfast. His fish, with scales so fresh they were translucent, sold well, and the higgler women retailed them for good prices in the markets.
It was this habit of aloneness on the open sea that made Noah rough and impatient with standing in line, and distrustful of how to find his footing in polite company. (Rachel's aloneness was more a matter of choice, and pride, but she had great self-confidence.) Yet Noah, who, despite his social diffidence, was afraid of no one, was in awe of his adopted son, the delicate waif-child whose bleeding skin reminded him of his own long-running sore that would not heal even when Rachel took matters in her own hands and, ignoring the hospital's directives, dressed it with poultices made from bizzi mixed with oil and gave him molasses in his tea instead of sugar.
And yet the matter of sore and blood that bound father and son together was somewhat of a contradiction, for the surfeit of sugar that had given Noah his sore was the exact opposite of Moshe's affliction. The child was born allergic to sugar and could not eat it. Between the father's overconsumption and indigestion, and the
