Magnanimous Warrior! She in whom the spirits come quick and hard. Hunting
mother. She who forages. Who knows the ground. Where the hills of fufu are
concealed. Mother who brews the most beautiful tea from the ugliest bush.
Warrior who sheds her skin like a snake and travels into the darkness a
fireball. Mother who catches the eidon and sees them to their rest.
Warrior who labors in the spirit. She who plants gunga on the graves of
the restless. Mother who carves the power-stone, center of the world.
Warrior who places the blood-cloth on the back of the whipped slave. She
who turns her attention to the evildoer. Mother who binds the female
drumhead with parchment from a goat. Warrior who gathers grave-dirt in her
pocket. Pieces of chalk. Packs of cards. Bits of looking-glass. Beaks.
Feet. Bones of patoo. Teeth of dogs and alligators. Glass eyes. Sulfur.
Camphor. Myrrh. Asafoetida. Frankincense. Curious shells. China dolls.
Wooden images. She writes in her own blood across the drumhead.
Obeah-woman. Myal-woman. She can cure. She can kill. She can give jobs.
She is foy-eyed. The bearer of second sight. Mother who goes forth
emitting flames from her eyes. Nose. Mouth. Ears. Vulva. Anus. She bites
the evildoers that they become full of sores. She treats cholera with
bitterbush. She burns the canefields. She is River Mother. Sky Mother. Old
Hige. The Moon. Old Suck.
Rambling mother. Mother who trumps and
wheels counterclockwise around the power-stone, the center of the world.
Into whose cauldron the Red Coats vanished.
What has become of this warrior? Now that we
need her more than ever. She has been burned up in an alms-house fire in
Kingston. She has starved to death. She wanders the roads of the country
with swollen feet. She has cancer. Her children have left her. Her powers
are known no longer. They are called by other names. She is not respected.
She lies on an iron bedstead in a shack in Trench Town. She begs outside a
rumshop in Spanish Town. She cleans the yard of a woman younger than she.
She lies in a bed in a public hospital with sores across her buttocks. No
one swabs her wounds. Flies gather. No one turns her in the bed. The pain
makes her light-headed. They tell her she is senile. They have taken away
her bag of magic. Her teeth. Her goat's horn. We have forgotten her. Now
that we need her more than ever. The nurses ignore her. The doctors make
game of her. The priest tries to take her soul.
Can you remember how to love her?
- Michelle Cliff, No Telephone to Heaven
*Note: This is from a novel which takes place in
Jamaica.
Some terms you might not be familiar with:
eidon: the spirit or spirits of unbaptized babies
foy-eyed: possessing second sight