The Storytellers Goddess Part 28

"Like a dream."

The boy said yes, that seeing the snake made him think of the job he'd had lambing, where the newborns slipped into his hands, still connected to the ewes with cords like b.l.o.o.d.y snakes. He'd cut a cord when the throbbing stopped if the mama couldn't bite through it herself.

"You feel scared when you do it," the boy said.

"But it makes you feel good afterward. Seeing the lambs walking around, knowing they wouldn't if you hadn't helped." The boy stretched his lips again in his lonely, trembling smile and held Orestes while the older man drank from the jug of mead.

Because the Snake Woman stayed in the mind of Orestes, the storyteller, it so happened that Lamia, the Wet One of the Deep, became part of the stories of the land across the sea. But Orestes, the storyteller, knew neither Her dance nor the power of copying Her motions of life and death. Instead, he knew only the terrible cold that had swept him when he watched, ill from the night and unable to talk with Her people. He saw Her power and was afraid, and so he made in his own language a story of a Snake Woman who terrorized and could be subdued only by the bravest of men.

And so it is to this day. We are the people with both stories. Like the slender shape of Lamia Herself, our fear has followed the ripples of time, and we ask ourselves, as we have from the beginning, what to do with it. When we were the First People of Lamia, we watched Her and we copied Her. We learned and we were comforted. But when we are the people of Orestes, our oasis is only in our minds: there we crawl for comfort against the trampling and the slavery. We are afraid of this Lamia. Of Her imitation we know nothing. We try to control Her instead.

In our fear there is power; in Her power there is fear. Shall we copy Her? Can we control Her? We thirst and circle the winds in the deserts of our souls, wondering and dancing our decisions.

Yemaya (yeh-my-YAH) and lamanja (hee-ah-mansh-YAH) She Who Continues (Yoruba People and Brazil) Introduction Often depicted as a mermaid, Fish Mother Yemaya, G.o.ddess of the Ogun River and the Sea, was wors.h.i.+ped by the Yoruba people of Nigeria who were enslaved by traders and carried in the stinking death holds of s.h.i.+ps to the Americas. Sent by the thousands mainly from the cities of Ife and Benin which had stood for four to five hundred years before the arrival of the Europeans in 1500 the Yoruba people unwillingly settled British, French, Spanish, and Portuguese holdings in the "new world." There they kept alive their pride and their G.o.ddess to the present day in Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, and Trinidad.

In Brazil, Yemaya is called lamanja. She is a powerful Sea Mother, a Virgin Mary-like deity in the joyous Afro-Indo-Catholic religion in which rapturous, ecstatic dance and song summon Her might, power, and mana.

Brazilian slaves and free blacks maintained ties with Africa almost entirely absent in the United States. For economic reasons, slave trade ended in the northern hemisphere by 1808. Subsequently, most North American slaves were born in the United States, and memories of Africa grew dim. Slavery in Brazil, however, was not phased out until 1888, and crossings of blacks to Africa and back were frequent until 1905. Malembos, or friends.h.i.+ps of solidarity and resistance among fellow captives, were nurtured by newcomers who spoke African languages and brought life-giving myths and stories of home. Malembos enabled the rise of quilombos and mocambos (forest hideouts), found all over Brazil from the sixteenth century on. On the quilombos, fugitives could protest the system that bound them; return to a life free of a master's role; and practice African religions in freedom. Other slaves organized open resistance in the spirit of male mbo or found ways to buy their freedom. Former Brazilian slaves often returned to Africa, sometimes to become important figures in society there.

Urban, rather than rural-dwelling, blacks in Brazil were most able to maintain African rites and customs since they had the greatest freedom of movement and the strongest likelihood of meeting newly arrived slaves from their own nation who spoke their own language. To this day, Brazilians of many colors offer gifts of candles, food, perfume, flowers, and champagne to their Great Sea Mother. On New Year's Eve, they wash away the impurities of the old year in the waters of Iamanja.

On December 8, they honor Her limitless mercy and protection. On the Summer Solstice, they float boats full of offerings on Her waves.

Bathers count seven swells in Her name, reminiscent of the seven petticoats She is said to wear, before entering the sea. Fishermen call on Her for protection for their precarious, raft like vessels.

Iamanja's color is blue.

Unlike the radical tampering endured by the Libyan G.o.ddess Lamia when Her story survived the crossing to Greece, the Nigerian Water G.o.ddess Yemaya underwent changes that preserved Her glory and comfort for the people who call Her la-manja in Brazil. Lamia's story was undoubtedly carried back to Greece by outsiders visiting Africa. Yemaya, on the other hand, became lamanja when Her people, victims of the slave trade organized by the culture of control, brought Her story themselves to the new continent. Tellers who thought they could gain from the patriarchy changed Lamia from wondrous to horrendous, lamanja's tellers had everything to gain by psychologically defending themselves against a way of life that had broken their connections with the land they called home.

I wrote the story of Yemaya and Iamanja to honor the organic process of change that stories undergo when their peoples change. It is also the story of people who mend the rents in the fabric of their lives with threads of rage, courage, love, and joy.

The Journey to the New Land When we were the people of the round houses in the forests and the savanna, when our mornings were peopled with spirits, You, River Woman, Yemaya, were the flow that beat in our legs and hearts.

When time un twirled under Sky Keeper and clouds sang over the heat of Your waters, You, Yemaya, floated and continued.

When Iron Maker cut the trees and we were the people in the square house kingdoms at the edge of the land, You, River Woman, widened Your skirts and continued into the sea.

When we were the people who knelt to Allah in the afternoons, when we were the people who forgot Your name, You, Yemaya, Sea Woman, continued.

When the bleached skins came and the stealing and selling of people began, when the screaming and whipped of the round houses were kicked to the coast to be branded and raped; when square-house people took money for the round-ho users when the wail tore from our guts, You, River to Sea, surged and continued.

When we were the people in chains, huddled against the nursing among us who soothed us, wounds and mouths, with milk, when we were the strangled and the starving and stood sobbing, You, Sea Woman, salted our tears and continued.

When the bleached skins jerked us to the prison boats and we, the people, took the journey of putrefaction, when we prayed to die, when we danced off the decks into Your arms, You, Yemaya, Endlessly Swelling One, cold, clean, deep sleep, You continued.

When we were the people at the markets of the new coast, when the bleached skins had clothes and we could cover only our genitals, when we were taken sister from brother, mother from child, father from kin, when our livers were broken inside us, You, Lady of the Sea, Star of the River, You, Yemaya, continued to pulse.

When in the light and the air once again we could feel Your sureness, when we wove a language of homes in this new place, when we called You Iamanja and dressed You in seven waves for petticoats, You, Star of the Sea, Lady of the River, drummed in our shoulders and feet.

When we were the people in the cities of the new land, when we moaned for the trees and curves of home, when we knew rage and sorrow like knives and bile in our throats, You called us to You, Iamanja, and continued.

When we were the ones who wanted to die, Your waters carried to us new arrivals from our homes, new ones for us to care for and comfort, new ones with old stories of You in words that were lullabies in our ears and sweet home fruits in our mouths. When we would curse You and forget You, You continued, Lady of Compa.s.sion, You continued.

When the new ones' fury filled our spines with hope, when we planned and ran, when we made quilombos away from the masters, safe in the balmy woods, when we drank of You free and in peace far from the coasts of the new land, You blessed us, Lady of Purification, You continued.

When we braided You, lamanja, Star of the Sea, with the Lady Maria of the Cross and the Spirits of the brown skins deep in the forests, when we knew You newer, wider, feasting, bathing, nesting us with the tender pride of the grandmothers we could never know, when You continued to undulate, Water Woman, our souls found a way to be quiet and dance.

When the rapes and the loves, Iamanja, made skins no more just black and brown and bleached, but all the shades between, when we were the people who bought our own freedom and the people who returned to the home of the beloved trees and curves, when the square-house people of Allah listened to our slave stories with shame and respect, when we became leaders in the old land, You, Protectress of Journeyers, You continued. When we were the people the law loosed from bondage, You surged, Lady Maria, You continued.

When we were the people in the new land folding like meat into broth magic, desire, and pa.s.sion into the wors.h.i.+p of Maria, when we taught You could not enter us if we did not dance, when we said the bravest ones in the world are those who love, You, Iamanja, Mighty Woman of the Ebb, of the blind swaying plants, of the seven sacred petticoats, You continued.

When we are the sisters and brothers of the many skins who gather in a house, when we, coming together, break the shackles of the city and hoist You up to ride us, horses galloping through Your waves, ride us, arms clinging, to meet ourselves, when we are the sweaters of ecstasy, the fish people of the deep, You, Queen of the River, Empress of the Sea, You of the Flowers, the Perfume, Precious One, You continue to continue.

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