Underground. Mudrooroo

cups, when my mother Ludjee glanced up and gave a short scream. I grabbed for my pistol as she got to her feet and ran towards two women who had crept out of the thicket and were staring at us.

      My mother rushed to the two strangers, stopped in front of them and stared wildly from face to face. Suddenly, the three fell to ahugging and both exclaimed, ‘Ludjee, Ludjee’ over and over again while Mother cried, ‘Nadjee, Lorimee,’ gazing from one to the other. Now all three began laughing and crying. At last they settled and came to the fire where we were sitting. It was then that I heard that these were my mother’s long lost sisters who had been stolen in front of her eyes by a boatload of ghosts, one of whom was the one they were now with. Malone was his name.

      Before we had been exiled to the northern island where I had been born, Ludjee and her sisters were living on another island to the west of the mother land. The times were unravelling there as the ghosts had come through to take the mother. The tribe stayed on, waiting and wondering how things would turn out and if the times would ever again become aligned. One day, the three young sisters were sporting in the surf when a whale boat came rowing into the bay. They were used to such watercraft by then and took no notice, continuing their play until it bobbed next to them. ‘Come my pretties,’ one of the ghosts called, holding out a yellow ribbon, which fluttered in the breeze. Ludjee hung back as her two sisters swam to the boat and taking hold of the side with one hand stretched out the other for the gaudy piece of cloth which flapped in the breeze and eluded their grasping hands. It didn’t help that the ghost who held them, kept pulling the ribbons away as they attempted to snatch them. Then before my mother’s horrified eyes, while her sisters were distracted, the two men at the stern suddenly grabbed the hands holding onto the boat and heaved them aboard. The boat rocked alarmingly, but did not capsize. Now the ghosts rowed swiftly out of the bay and that was the last my mother had seen of her sisters until this day.

      ‘But how come you stay with that ghost?’ she asked them. ‘Haven’t you tried to get away?’

      ‘He’s better than the one we were with,’ Nadjee replied. ‘He doesn’t hurt us like the first brute who had us. Why we were only little girls and he almost split us in half ...’

      ‘How come you got to be with this fellow. He looks evil ...’

      ‘You can’t judge a bloke by his looks you know. You mob for example look a rum lot in your furry skins; but then so do we. We look like great lumpy monsters, so give us another hug before I tell you how we became Malone’s sluts, for that is what they call us.’

      Again the three fell to embracing, then Lorimee took up the story. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘When those ghosts kidnapped us, they took us along the coast. They hoisted their sail and coasted along on a breeze until night fell when they put in to shore and made camp. It was then that they began squabbling over us and the brute that laid claim to us decked an even more loathsome one with an oar. It broke off and he jammed the shattered end into the bloke’s throat and leant on it. He guffawed as his mate squirmed and then when he had had enough fun, he jerked the end of the oar out and with it came his life blood. That cowed the others and he got them to bury his victim while he turned to us. They had tied us to a tree with a rope about our necks leaving our legs and hands free. That didn’t do us much good, then he got first Nadjee down, then me. He laughed as our tiny fists punched his face, then his own fist soon put a stop to it. When we came to, the last man was just finishing off with me. I ached and pained all over and all I could hear as he heaved away was Nadjee groaning softly to herself and then I heard someone else sobbing on and on and it was me. They didn’t care if we were sore or bled, and kept at us until we were nigh crippled. If it hadn’t been for Malone, we most likely would have ended up dead. We couldn’t run off as we could barely walk, and later when our bodies had gotten used to the violation and they had eased off, when we did try to escape, they just about flogged the life out of us. You should see our backs.’

      Both sisters pulled off their heavy skin jackets and turned their dark backs towards the fire as if to warm them. The flames seemed to reach out through the misty air to gleam off the crisscrosses of white scars that marked the black. There were gasps from us and then sobs and even the sky wept a gentle rain. Ludjee shed tears as she traced out the pattern of torment and murmured: ‘You cannot call them beasts, for never have I met a beast that did such a thing. Surely it is true as those to the north believe that they are moma, devils who lack an affinity with humans.’

      ‘Yes and we know how they handled their moma, don’t we,’ Hercules growled, not shouting for a change. ‘I was betrothed to Kaddinee. She was only fourteen and I had to wait and while I was waiting they got her. We could not understand their ferocity as we came across first her head which they had left in a fork of a tree to mock us, then her violated body. They had cut off her breasts, though they had had to scrape along the breast bone for she was a mere child, then hammered a stake between her legs. Well, this ghost or moma will pay!’

      His head fell onto his knees and he went quiet as death. There was a feeling of impending violence in the air and Wadawaka tried to lessen it by asking if anyone knew that this ghost had mistreated women.

      Nadjee scowled and then spat into the fire. ‘He treats us well enough and only now and again makes us go to his mates. It is their way and sometimes when they come and there is a party there is much singing and dancing, and we have a fine time. We are used to it now.’

      Lorimee added: ‘Where could we go, if we left him and who would take us in? We have been defiled by them and even those blackfellows on the mainland opposite are frightened of us. So we stay, work for him and sometimes party. It’s not all bad, though. See that garden and that pile of wood, it’s not him that tends the plants or cuts the wood. It’s us. He sits around in that hut of his and dips his pannikin into his rum cask and ...’

      ‘He trades us for that rum,’ Nadjee exclaimed.

      ‘He’s not so bad, not like the others,’ Lorimee broke in. ‘It was far worse with them. It was lucky for us when he won us, for strangely he likes a bit of the lash himself though you have to be careful not to hurt him, or else he bellows like a stuck pig.’

      ‘Won you?!’ Wadawaka exclaimed, as if he was re-living other horrors invoked by the women’s story.

      ‘Yes at cards. They were using us, all of them, but only that brute owned us. Malone, our ghost, had taken a fancy to both of us. Even then he had thought of settling on this island and “living the life of Riley” as he put it. This meant that he wanted us to do all the work as well as touching him up with the lash every now and again. So, he waited and seized the opportunity when it came. He got the brute drinking and out came the cards and he finally got us with a couple of red queens which he had palmed.’

      ‘And that’s why he calls us the Queen of Spades and Clubs,’ Nadjee broke in, ‘though he got us with the red, but he says that it was the black that made him lucky and when he gets into a game these days, he rubs our skins for luck. ’

      ‘To get back to what happened next,’ Lorimee raised her voice above that of her sister, ‘that brute, he let us go just like that, saying that there were more birds in the bush and he only liked to sample them, not own them.’

      ‘True,’ Nadjee regained the story. ‘Just like that, but that Malone once said that he was off to some place up the coast and didn’t need to be lumbered with two black women.’

      ‘Well,’ Lorimee said, ‘whatever made him do it, he did it and that was good for us.’

      Wadawaka picked up a glowing stick from the fire and flung it out into the darkness. He watched. A tiny flame flickered up, then disappeared. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘it is the same everywhere for us black folks. The whip, the lash, manacles and degradation. It is too much and ...’ Suddenly he broke off, staring hard into the gathering darkness. Such was the intensity of his gaze that we all began looking into the blurred outline of a tree where something, light and indistinct fluttered among the leaves. Then it was gone and all that we could think was that some spirit had been listening to the women’s tale of woe.

      Wadawaka, more agitated than he had been when he was speaking, got to his feet