in the house (sunburn had kept him confined there for two days), the little boy slipped out through the back door while his mother was cooking in the outside kitchen, and headed down the path toward the river.
He was soon overjoyed. There were ripe naseberries on the path and his conversation with the birds was satisfying. He wondered if he would see the other children there. He hoped he would. He had begun to find friends among them, even though his mother always called him back in that sharp way that brooked no argument whenever any of them came near. One day, out of earshot around a bend in the river, one of them poked his hand into Moshe's skin and when the skin did not come off, he said, "Him skin don't splatter," his eyes round with wonder. The others, emboldened, took turns poking Moshe in various parts of his body to make sure this was true. Their questions came fast and curious.
"Why yu look so? Yu come from foreign?"
"A sick yu did sick? Why yu skin peel off?"
"A bleach him modda bleach him wid Ajax. Him a dundus."
"Look here, him blue-blue. A him a Boy Blue. Don't a-yu a Boy Blue?"
"Yu can ketch crayfish, likkle boy?"
They pulled his hair where it grew long in front, to see it if was real. They knew coolie hair, which was straight and black, but straight and yellow they had never seen, not being used to storybooks or having yet gone to Ora, where the white people from England were.
Happy to be in their company, he allowed himself to be poked and pulled, and explained that he had been born this way but his mother said it was all right, he was only different. The question of his admission to their play was settled when one of the boys said, "Mi si one boy like him inna book, inna mi big sister fairy-tales book," and Moshe put out his arm and shyly offered his fistful of crayfish to them all.
They were only three, four, five, and six years old. The littlest ones had never even noticed his appearance until the older ones said, Look.
But at that age, the wonders of the world do not last; that is to say, no wonder stands out above any others, since all the world is wonder. Moshe's appearance was no different. Once they became used to seeing him, he was just the blue boy; apart from this matter of skin, the same as any other boy.
They played together in the moments caught between their mothers' insistent shouts to come there, out of the way of trouble, which was something you could catch by keeping company or straying up the river to Big Water, the great pool where the intrepid drowned. Often they got slapped for pretending not to hear when they were called. Only Moshe was not slapped, for he was an obedient child, who would come when he was called and would play by himself within sight of his mother for the duration of time it took a small child to forget; only then would he go to his friends again. But Rachel could not spank him, even a little, for he would bleed, and when he bled, the flow could not be stanched.
It was a strange thing that among people deeply knit by kinship and ways of common care, children, not just the singular child Moshe, were discouraged from keeping company and were warned of the dangers of eating from people to the same degree that they were warned of the hazards of talking to strangers. Among these same people, food was always offered to the hungry, the traveler, and the aged in the community if they were indigent, and a stranger knocking at the gate could be assured of a seat in the shade and a drink of water. It was an even stranger thing that among people who lived so closely that everyone's business was everyone else's, a child could grow up living inside the circumference of his body alone, as Moshe did.
For it seemed that in the end, without having discussed this in so many words between themselves, Noah capitulated and both parents made a decision to protect their strange child by bringing him up in hiding, until the time came when they couldn't hide him any longer. People knew about him, of course, but the less he was seen, the more he became a matter of rumor and noise, more part of everyday legend than a living person. And in truth, because he was seldom seen, in the tales that were told it was not so much his appearance as his way of coming into the world that made him most strange. In Ora he was remembered as the Moses baby, the one found in a grung basket.
Now on the road to the river, the little boy hopscotched, chanting in rhythm as he hopped the names of children he remembered, "Maisie, Jonathan, OneSon, Sher . . . Maisie, Jonathan, OneSon, Boukman, Sher . . . Boukman, LikkleMan, OneSon, Sher," hoping he would see them when he reached the river.
He had had no idea before now what it meant to be alone. There was no one there. The winding coils of the river meandering between banks populated only by trees seemed to him vast, hostile, and uncharitable, and he shivered with premonition and turned to go back.
The rustling and panting in the trees and the two larger-than-life figures wrestling a dark object on the ground froze him in his tracks. He had never heard of the slave cooks of Tumela Gut, but his hair rising summoned an anticipation of terror beyond knowledge.
He began to run.
"Come back here, likkle boy." The voice was vaguely familiar, a duppy-relative of Miss Suzie Q, perhaps.
He ran faster. The footsteps thudding behind him were not louder than his heart. He fell on the soft ground, which was wet from rain the night before. Ghostly hands seized him, turned him over on his back. His eyes were squeezed tight with fear, and tears poured down his face.
"Open yu yeye, bwoy, look pon mi." The hands shook him vigorously, hurting him.
His tears scattered across his face and his eyes opened as if prized with a spanner.
"Wha yu a-duu duung ya, bwoy?"
"Mi nah do nutten, ma'am." He was weeping beyond himself.
The man's and the woman's eyes swiveled around the common, across the winding river, up the slope above the waterfall where the naseberry trees marked the boundary between the common land and the village houses. "Yu deh ya by yuself? Wheh yu modda deh?"
He shook his head, unable to speak. The question was repeated, roughly, urgently, and at last he said, "Shi up-a yard."
"So wha yu a-duu yah? Ehn? Yu modda know seh yu duung ya?"
He shook his head again.
Relief crept into the interrogating voice: "Ah-oh, so a-bad yu a-bad. A run wheh yu run wheh widout yu modda know."
Miserable, Moshe nodded his head in affirmation. It was the woman who was asking the questions and shaking him. The man held him by his knees, so that he could not get up or get away, but the man did not speak, only watched him and watched the terrain with a curious, worried intensity in his face.
"So wha yu si? Wha yu hear?"
"Mi nuh si nutten. Mi nuh hear nutten." His voice rose high with his crying.
"Yu sure?"
He shook his head again, his eyes closed tight upon his misery and pain.
"Yu sure? Yu sure? Look pon mi, bwoy, open yu yeye an look inna fi mi. Well, yu betta sure, yu hear mi? An yu betta don't seh nutten to nobody, yu hear me? Yu don't si nobody duung ya, yu understan? Yu understan? Yu don't seh nutten, an yu wi bi awright. Open yu mout, an Tumela duppy go come visit yu. Yu get dat? Awright, gwan home now. Run!"
As they let him go and he scrambled to his feet, the man duppy spoke for the first time: "Lawd God, Suzie Q, di bwoy a-bleed! Look how di bwoy a-bleed! Jesus Christ, yu ever si nutten like dat?"
He
