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The Cost of Sugar(3)

By:Cynthia McLeod


Did Pa Levi give in to all these reproaches? Did he perhaps have real feelings of guilt? Be that as it may, a few months after Jonathan’s death he married Rachel, the woman he should have married fifteen years earlier and who herself was now the widow of A’haron and had three daughters. And so it was that Aunt Rachel moved onto the Hébron Plantation along with daughters Esther, Rebecca and Sarith. Sarith and Elza were about the same age, and it was wonderful for the seven-year-old daughter of the house to enjoy the company of someone of the same age. And now Elza could hardly remember the time before Sarith.

Elza looked out of her window and breathed in the fresh morning air. How beautiful and fresh everything looked from the dew. In a few hours’ time it would be dusty. It was the dry season and there had been no rain for three weeks now. Luckily the lawn was still green, and would remain so, for lo and behold there was the elderly slave Kwasi, already busy watering the lawn with buckets and watering cans. He walked to the jetty, lowering the bucket into the river and filling the watering cans from it. Elza turned round and called softly, “Sarith, Sarith, are you awake?”

“Hmmm, no, yes, oh Elza, let me sleep on a bit more,” came Sarith’s voice from a bed on the other side of the room. Sarith turned her back towards Elza and pulled the sheet over her head.

Soft footsteps in the corridor and a modest knock on the door.

“Yes, come on, Maisa, I’ve been up for ages.”

Maisa entered with a tray with two cups of cocoa in one hand and a bucket of water in the other.

“O Maisa, isn’t it a lovely day today?”

“Yes misi,” answered Maisa with a smile while she placed the tray on the table and filled the water jugs on the two washstands with water. She then went to the cupboard and took out a light-green muslin dress and asked, “Will misi be wearing this?”7

A few moments later Elza had freshened up and was sitting on her bed with Maisa kneeling before her, drawing on her stockings one by one after having put her pantaloons on for her. Thin white cotton down to the ankles, with lace at the bottom by the legs. Thereafter a white cotton batiste blouse and two underskirts. Another discreet knock on the door. Upon hearing a “Yes” from Elza, a beautiful brown girl came in. This was Mini-mini, the fifteen-year-old slave-girl who would have to dress Sarith.

Elza peered at the bed, where there was still no sign of movement, and said, “Sarith, get up now: you know that papa wants us ready in time.”

“Oh, blow – all this moaning and nagging, too.”

Upon which the sheets were pulled aside in one single jerk and landed on the floor, and Sarith strode angrily towards the small room where the chamber pots stood. Elza and Maisa exchanged fleeting but meaningful glances and the timid Mini-mini remained standing near the wall while her head dropped and she shuffled submissively over the floor. Elza sighed. Sarith was in a bad mood again, as she had so often been of late. What was up with Sarith? In the past she told her everything, but now no more. But so be it, she wasn’t going to let it worry her. Maisa motioned to Elza to sit down and she lit a candle on the table. Then she held a small curling iron in the flame and began carefully to curl her mistress’ hair.

When Elza went into the dining room downstairs a little later, only her father was sitting at the breakfast table.

“Good morning, papa.”

“Good morning, dear little miss; are you ready? We’ll be leaving the moment the tide is right, and that’s in three-quarters of an hour.”

The elderly slave woman Ashana entered with a plate bearing freshly fried meat, eggs and bread. She set everything down in front of Elza and remarked with an approving nod, “Oh Misi Elza, aren’t you looking pretty!”8

Soft footsteps could be heard, and Rebecca now came in from the rear veranda. Rebecca, twenty-one, was Aunt Rachel’s second daughter. She was deaf. At the age of nine she had contracted typhoid fever. She had survived this, but since then could hardly hear anything. She could still speak, but in a monotone, and she spoke very little. Rebecca lived her own private life, quiet, withdrawn, mostly in her room, where she read, painted, drew and made dolls. Lovely dolls. Everyone who saw them said she could start a business with them. Just now and then Rebecca made a doll to order and accepted some money for it, but she often gave them as presents to people she knew and most of the dolls were simply displayed in her room. People didn’t bother much with Rebecca. She hardly ever saw her mother and she said only what was really necessary to her sister Sarith and her stepsister Elza. The only people she did talk with were her stepfather Levi and her slave-girl Caro. When the widow Rachel A’haron had moved to Hébron Plantation ten years earlier she had brought with her a number of slaves: Kwasiba and her two daughters Caro and Mini-mini, who were at that time eight and five years old, and in addition her own personal slave-girl, Leida. Caro was Rebecca’s slave-girl. She followed her mistress everywhere and helped with washing paintbrushes, mixing paint, sewing dolls’ clothes and so forth. The fifteen-year-old Mini-mini was Kwasiba’s pride and joy. Obviously of mixed blood, Kwasiba had never revealed who Mini-mini’s father was, but people suspected that it must have been Rachel’s late husband Jacob A’haron or his son Ishaak. In any event, Mini-mini had brown skin, slightly curled hair, a slender face and large, dark eyes. Mini-mini was Sarith’s slave-girl, and no-one seeing them together could avoid the impression that there was a striking resemblance in face and figure.