did not look behind him. Halfway along the path he met his mother searching for him, frantic, and he ran to her and was scooped up, mud, red-gushing knees, and all, and held so tight he could not breathe. His legs locked around her and she carried him home.
This was when his mother's already dwindling excursions to the river finally almost stopped because he no longer liked to go, though he would not tell her why. But on the few occasions that for one reason or another they had no choice but to go, Suzie Q no longer led a war against Rachel. Instead she said good morning with surly, downcast eyes, and from this time forward Moshe's appearance was not commented on by any of the women, and he was left alone. But he was afraid to look in the direction of Miss Suzie because he could feel her eyes on him, inimical and secret, willing him to silence. He understood that she was making an incredible exchange: his safety and his mother's freedom from harassment in return for his silence.
Rachel surmised that he had had an encounter with the colony of ghosts who had set up kitchen under the ceiba cotton tree and were famous for their wanderings and cantankerous interrogation of children walking alone as much as for their cooking. She anointed him with oil and put the psalm of protection, number 91, on his head for a period of three days and three nights until he slept without dreams.
This was his first encounter with fear, and the occasion on which he added an ability to keep secrets to the store of competencies he acquired from being alone. He had no idea what it was he was supposed to have seen, or who the man was who had held him down with Suzie Q or where he came from, or what the dark object they had pulled on the ground among the trees was, and after a while he forgot almost all of it except for the memory of the strong smell that remained in his nostrils, the odor of crab soup.
In the nights while the little boy slept, Rachel stood over him, searching his face for signs of the face she had seen that first day she hid him in her shawl. Driven by fear that it might come back, she scrolled him like a book, but the child's features remained the same as how they had appeared after she prayed, as if a veil, not made with hands, had been drawn over the former face and sent it deep within to hide behind his bones.
"We praise thee, O Yahweh of might and glory," Rachel murmured over her son, using the same voice that in the morning she would use to curse her husband like a slave.
Chapter IV
i
The summer before Moshe went to school, Rachel took Suzie Q's advice and tried to give him some color by anointing him with castor oil, mixing it for soft with aloe (castor oil was known for its harshness), and sitting him, not in the direct sun, but in the lee of it, on the half-shaded verandah. She thought of using molasses, but did not want to run the risk since molasses was a stage in the making of sugar, and she did not know how it would interact with his allergy.
Noah, on the other hand, swore by molasses, which he called the johncrow batty of sugar. "A fi wi part a di sugar dat," he quipped, "jus like how di johncrow batty a fi wi part-a di rum. It well strong, das why backra cyaan manage it. A Yahweh gif to poor people. Yu nuh si how it thick an black like sufferation? Rub di bwoy wid di molasses."
"Him a half backra, so mi cyaan put it pon him," Rachel retorted, measuring out the castor oil. She did not say, Look how long mi a-gi yu molasses fi drink an yu nuh better. In truth, he had not got worse either.
"All-a wi a half backra," Noah said, laughing his feral laugh. "Backra cloth, backra book, backra hospital." He pronounced it aasspital, mockingly drawing out the long a. "Wi kotch inna all-a dem. Even yu grung wha yu plant, look long enough, yu si wheh backra siddung in deh, chap him ten. Ongle ting, a nuh backra sea." We are all halflings, and all our halves belong to backra. We settle on the edge of our possessions. Even where you farm, look close, look softly, under the leaves, there he crouches, legs crossed in relaxation. But the wide sea escapes his conquest.
"Yu tink yu escape backra because yu a fisherman? Heh. Nuh bi so sure. A over sea him walk come tief."
"A under sea shark bite him."
"All dat palaver well an good, Noah Fisher, but it nuh put coco inna pot." Talk is easy, but it cannot solve a practical problem. "Di coconut oil nah work an mi nah gi him di molasses. Story done."
Noah counseled patience, and indeed by the end of the summer the boy's blue edges had given way to a more opaque texture of skin, like clotted cream. But his front hair acquired a reddish tinge, like carrots, and it worried her that this might be worse than blond, so she stopped the treatments.
On the first day of school, he saw again the children from the riverside, their hands gripped in their mothers' hands to prevent them darting away or getting lost, like mislaid parcels. They greeted him with exhilaration: "Koo blue boy! Blue boy, yu come-a school? Mi come-a school too. Look mi slate."
Shyly, overjoyed, he showed his own slate, and his new slate pencil, standing close against his mother.
Others, seeing him for the first time, stared. One boy, who had been removing his suck-finger intermittently from his mouth so he could weep at intervals in terror at this new experience called school, stopped crying and sucking his thumb, both, and opened his eyes wide.
Among the first-day crowds of mothers and children milling in the yard, hunting for classrooms, registration rooms, friends, pencils, exercise books lost, dropped, or snatched in the confusion, not half as many as might otherwise have done so noticed Rachel's son. Still, curious strangers gathered around him. These were older children who had come by themselves, or were escorting their younger siblings. Some of the new children walked with their faces turned backward like douen, staring in his direction as their mothers urged them on, hastening to get registered before the crowd of new applicants got too large and the best seats, in the front of the class, near the teacher, were taken.
For the second time in his life Moshe felt fear. He was overcome by the stares, the shy and bold questions directed to his mother about him—his lineage, his looks, why he had two different-colored eyes and two different hair, which fascinated them even more than his milky skin which was like no skin they had ever seen; why she had pressed the front of his hair but not the back, why his hair was pressed in the first place when he was not a girl, could he speak, what was his name, the origin of his strangeness, what class he was going to be in—and he struggled not to cry. But no one mocked him; it was not their habit to be rude in front of adults, and moreover, many were only curious, or puzzled.
His mother admonished them in a stern voice: "Him is jus an ordinary boy, him jus look different from the rest of you. I don't want any of you to tease him or trouble him, because if you trouble him I am going to the head teacher and your parents."
"Yes, miss."
"Yes, Miss Rachel, ma'am."
And some, thinking from her sternness and her deliberate use of (near) English that she was one of the teachers, said, "Yes, Teacher. Yes, Miss Teacher, ma'am."
To him, his mother said, "Don't come home widout mi. If school over an yu don't si mi, wait inna yu teacher Miss Yvette class. Yu hear mi? Shi know everyting bout yu an shi wi tek care-a yu till mi come. I talk to her aready. Yu stay wid her, because mi nuh want nobody trouble yu. Yu hear mi?"
"Yes, Mama."
Rachel crossed herself, Psalm 32:7, and departed.
ii
Relief flooded him at last; he wasn't the only one who was strange. And now it was a good strange, a happy strange. The teacher made
