Lose Your Mother by Saidiya Hartman

Author:Saidiya Hartman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Published: 2007-01-08T05:00:00+00:00

THE GIRL WAS SICK from the time she set foot on the Recovery. It was gonorrhea, the surgeon was sure of it. The pox was what they called it. A few days after she had come on board, he perceived it. Pus-filled sores covered her skin, a discharge ran down her legs, and she was falling away in the flesh. It was definitely not the bloody flux, which when bad so covered the deck with blood and mucus that it resembled a slaughterhouse. The venereal distemper was common among the blacks, which was no surprise. The other dead one, Venus, which was what the crew called her, had it too. No, the girl didn’t die because of it. It was a simple discharge, which was why he hadn’t given her any mercury. Bleeding, purging, injections, and medicine of niter (potassium nitrate) and gum arabic—he had used all the precautions in his power. It was his first voyage as a surgeon on a slaver and he didn’t intend to set foot on another.

The disease had been stable, although the girl could not eat as the other slaves did, or join in any of their amusements. Had the surgeon not been much interrupted in his treatment by the captain—that is, by the captain beating her—the girl would have recovered. The pox didn’t kill the girl, the captain did. She died in consequence of the flogging. If it had not been so, she would have gone to market.

None of the other sailors besides the surgeon himself and the third mate and the two boys who assisted the captain ever talked about what happened with the girl. Such things were customary aboard a slaver. Everyone knew murder was part of “work at sea.” “Outrages of that nature were so common on board the slave ships that they were looked upon with as much indifference as any trifling occurrence; their frequency had rendered them familiar.”

The surgeon meant the flogging, but taking the women was customary too. It was common knowledge. Any seamen would tell you, “Sailors were allowed to have intercourse with such of the black women whose consent they can procure. The officers were permitted to indulge their passions among them at pleasure, and sometimes were guilty of such brutal excesses, as disgraced human nature.” When the girls came on board, the sailors decided which ones they’d take for themselves. “The prey was divided, upon the spot, and only reserved until opportunity offered. Where resistance or refusal would be utterly in vain.”

He had not mentioned the girl or any of the others in the journal he handed over to the customhouse in Grenada because he was afraid. It was a record of the white people only. He would not swear to the dead book, the journal of the black people who died on board. There happened so many deaths among the slaves and so many cruelties committed by the captain that the surgeon couldn’t swear to the dead book. He pretended to kiss the Bible and muttered the oath, but he kissed his thumb and not the book.

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