The Woman in Elmina
By Nicole Tanquary
There is a coastal village called Elmina. An abandoned slave castle sits at the village’s highest point. The castle walls stand in stark white stone that burns in the sun, the paint achingly fresh—the castle is now a museum, and it has money to keep itself restored, more than can be said for the village spread out at its feet.
In Elmina lives an old woman. She dresses in traditional kente cloth her son bought for her long ago. On clear days she sits beneath a palm tree in the shadow of the castle, on a stretch of green lawn leading to the castle’s entrance, where the tourists tend to wander. A bowl carved from a coconut shell sits in front of her. She does not beg but rests with her eyes closed and her back against the palm tree. If you come up to her and speak, she will open her eyes and you will see cataracts, filmy as ocean clouds. Once, her son fed her, but he was a fisherman, and sometimes fishermen drown.
If you come up to her, she may nod to acknowledge you or she may not. If she does not, set some money, cedis or pesues, in her bowl. The clinking of the coins will bring her awake.
If you take out a bottle of palm wine and hand it to her, saying, “Madame, will you drink with me?” the numb will drain from her face and leave behind a thoughtfulness. She will take the bottle and uncork it with expert hands, pouring some onto the ground for the ancestors to drink. She will take a sip of it herself and then offer you the same. If you drink it, it will be tangy, not quite sweet but with a good, settling warmth in your belly.
She will make another offering to the ancestors, and the thirsty earth will drink it away. And then she will tell you a story.
“The castle guides … they tell lies.” A tiny headshake, the movement swaying in time with the palm leaves above. “They are Ashanti, the ones who sold the Ewe to the white men. The Ashanti are ashamed, they try to change history. But we remember. We listen.” She will look towards the castle, its white walls reflecting in her eyes. When she speaks again her voice will fall to a monotone.
“The white governors, they empty the women’s dungeon into the courtyard and pick through them, take who they want. Guides say that if the women have governors’ child, they be looked after.” The old woman will spit onto the ground. “Lies. If a governor pick you, you be washed up, sent to private room, and afterwards go back to dungeons—no treated special. If you a favorite, it not matter that you carry child. You still his slave. Always a slave.”
Her eyes will go wet, and she will take another long drink of palm wine to steady herself. You may want to ask her how she could know these things when they happened so long ago, but if you wish to hear the rest of the story—if you wish to see what it will call forth—do not interrupt.
“The Ewe people brought down from the north, they be scared, so scared. Never see white men before. Never see ocean. They not know how to swim. If they sick, they thrown off ship into water, and they not know how to swim.”
Then, in a quieter voice, one with a tremble to it, she will say, “You feel them if you go in castle—all the ghosts. I hear them come through the walls, chains still on they ankles, in one big line … no one see them. I not see them,” she will admit, “but oh, oh I do hear them.” The palm wine will shiver in its bottle as her hands tremble. “The worst be in the water. That is why I never go there,” she will say, nodding at the ocean. “That is why my son should never have gone there. So much anger.” Her voice might drop to a whisper, “It drag down.”
The palm wine might sour in your mouth. Keep drinking. Even as you see echoes of the ghosts over her shoulders, their sun-bleached bones picked clean of flesh, the slack jaws saying nothing but the eye sockets boring into you, boring deep. Keep drinking. The woman will finish her story.
“Even when they no die … it is the same to us who stay. The Ewe who left on white men’s ships never came home. You,” and she might nod to you now, her eyes squinting to try to make out your face, “You, trying to find your history here, you the child of ghosts.”
Then she will start to smile, blearily. You will decide to leave her the bottle of palm wine because you think she will need it. Even when she does not tell you that she has dreams, terrible dreams of dead mothers and fathers and daughters and sons rotting together in the water … well, even if the ghosts have mostly left now with the end of the story, you can still see faint skeletal fingermarks, dug into the skin on her shoulders.
Before you leave the woman, stop long enough to pour your own offering of palm wine into the earth. Libations must be made to keep the ancestors at peace.
Especially the ones in the water.
Nicole Tanquary lives and works in upstate New York, although she will soon move to Pittsburgh, PA, to pursue a PhD degree in Rhetoric. She has over thirty speculative fiction short stories available from a variety of publications, some of the most recent being Crone Girls Press, Mithila Review, and The Society of Misfits Stories. When not writing or working, she likes to eat, sleep, follow mysterious trails into unknown woods, and play with her three adorable pet rats.
Photo credit: Stephen Johnson via Creative Commons license.