I Am Ayah by Donna Hill

Author:Donna Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sag Harbor;Amistad;history;generations;women’s issues;women’s fiction;slavery;coming home;photographer;anthropologist;New York;Manhattan
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2023-02-05T18:38:50+00:00

Out in the world, Mama calls me Ella. The family, not of blood, but of common good, call me Ella. Our villagers call Mama Sadie for her safety. But at night Mama whispers my real name, the same as hers, the one she keeps in her spirit. To remember.

“Pass it on,” she whispers to me each night before we sleep, and she tells me the tales of home—our real home. Tells me I got to learn to read and write so I will know and pass it on.

When Mama first came to this place, she was protected by woods and swamp and the villagers who sheltered her from the men who wanted her return. For many weeks, she hid during the day in a deep tunnel beneath the home of the village doctor until her rounding belly, with me tucked inside, made it too difficult and dangerous.

I am raised in a village of people who love and protect each other. During the days, the women cook and prepare the meals, sew clothes, play with the children, teach us the letters and numbers in a small room at the center of the village, laugh with each other, and worship on Sundays. The men tend to the houses, make repairs, bring in meat and fish and supplies, talk late into the nights in warm, deep voices that cover us with a blanket of protection.

Mama got a shop in the back of our place to fix up the ladies’ hair now. She make nice-smelling oils and grease for they scalp to smooth the thickness. She make it special in a big vat out back. House always full of ladies comin’ in one way and goin’ out another. Saturday be the busiest day. Ladies want to look dey best on Sunday.

Mama braid and twist, comb and smooth, hum to herself while she work, a faraway look in her eyes.

I ask her how she know to do all that with hair, make up the grease to twist the kinks and curls into crowns? She say she learned from her mama and her mama learned from her mama, and my mama show me how to mix the oils and melt the fat and sprinkle it with herbs and flower petals.

Most days as she works, I play with the other children and help the elders cook and plant and harvest. As time goes, some of the families move away, but before a new moon could rise, another family would take their place. Come from all over, hoping for a better life like the kind we got here, I ’spose.

Seem like every day the village grow, but not really. It is us children that was growin’. Wasn’t right for us girls to run ’round with the boys playin’ tag and go-seek, skippin’ off to sit under the houses and share pieces of hard candy no more. Dem elders always sayin’ to us girls, “Stop yo’ runnin’, no yellin’, fix yo’ skirt, smooth yo’ hair.” Dem elders want us girls to sew and sweep and tend to the food.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.