First Chapter: "The Salt Roads"

I poked and prodded at Georgine's belly while she tried not to squirm. I took my time, in no hurry to get back to the fields. My back was thanking me for having a rest. "When did you get pregnant?"

"I don't know, Auntie," she said in a small voice. Know-nothing girl child.

"When did your courses stop?" I asked, trying another way to get the answer from her.

"Stop? They only started"- she was frowning, looking up into the ceiling while she did her figuring-"ten months ago. My first blood. Then I bled three times, three months, then pretty soon I started puking a lot, then I realised the bleeding had stopped. I thought it was going away and I was glad, for I didn't like the pain and the blood. I felt like the whole thing was only fatiguing me.

When the bleeding came every month, I didn't have the strength to lift the washing down to the river. Marthe beat me one day, told me I was too lazy. So I was glad when the bleeding stopped, yes? It's Marie-Claire who told me I was pregnant." Her face got red and she smiled, glancing down. "For Pierre."

Seven months, maybe more. But the child under my hands was too small for a seven-month baby. "How are you feeling?" "I'm tired all the time, matant. Even more than when I used to get my courses."

I went and looked under her eyelids. Her colour was poor. Her blood was thin. "You and Pierre are eating good?" "Yes, matant! I'm keeping a nice garden Sundays when I have the day off. I'm growing cassava and pumpkin, plenty pumpkin. Pierre says I don't have to take none of it to market, for Master's paying him a wage we can both live on, if we're careful. Pierre says-"

"Pierre says, Marie-Claire says. I'm asking about you, not about them."

She looked chastened. "Yes, matant. What should I do, then?" Back in my home, back in the kingdom of Dahomey, every Allada girl child and woman would know what to do if a woman wasn't strong enough to carry her baby. Eat foods to strengthen the blood. "You have beets in your garden?"

"No, matant. I should grow some?" "Yes. I wish if you could get liver too." "I get meat sometimes."

Eh. Maybe she thought her Pierre was a fine hunter as well as all his other talents? "How do you mean, meat?" "Sometimes Pierre gets meat left over after the great house is finished eating dinner." "Don't eat that meat!"

She jumped, startled to hear me speak so strong. "No, child," I said, "I don't mean nothing by it. Just that white people don't know about food. Plenty times their meat is spoiled and they're still eating it."

"Oh. It tastes nice, though. Boeuf au jus with red wine sauce." Little bit of girl was making airs that she got to eat great house food. "You can't stay weak and tired like this and have a baby." "Oh," she said fearfully. "I'm going to die?"

Pride made me speak to her as I did to other women. "You've ever seen an African live more than ten years once he set foot on this island?"

Georgine shook her head no. Too right. Sickness and torture killed most of us on the journey across the bitter water, then the backra worked the rest of us to death when we got here. Plenty more were coming on the ships to replace us.

"Well, I've been here twelve years. Was apprentice to my midwife mother before I came. That's why they made me doctress. Don't you worry. I've taken dozens of babies on this island live from their mothers' wombs and put them in their mothers' arms."

She smiled. So I didn't tell her how many of those mothers had died of fever soon afterwards. Didn't tell how many of the babies had got the lockjaw, never breathed again. Didn't talk of my little dead one, so many years ago. Returned beneath the water to the spirits before his ninth night, so he had never really existed. No name for him. Except in my head. He was so beautiful, I called him Ehioze, "none can envy you." Should have been Amadi, "might die at birth."

Back in my home, we cared for women when they were breeding, gave them the best foods. They rested for days afterwards with their babies, getting to know them. Here I must help starving women squatting in sugar cane whose children were fighting their way free of their wombs. Afterwards, I strapped their children to their backs and if they were lucky, they got a day's rest in the slave hospital before they had to get their black behinds back to work.