It could’ve been some powerful women, too. Several held positions of authority without reputations of excellence. Like Fortee of the Bassa. She loved nothing like she loved riches. Elders whispered that she’d married her husband only because he’d had countless cows and goats and barns of yams. Her arms were always covered with gold bangles, and, even outside of rituals, rare stones hung from her neck. Her vanity could not be disguised. Many resented her. But could she have loved those things more than us? We didn’t know.

Perhaps it had been the one they called Kadiatou of the Fulani. She had been found suspect in her people’s hearts. Her attitude stank like rotten fish. She could’ve done it. She didn’t like anyone. No man ever sought her company. It was sad, really, being so young and bitter. No one knew what caused it, but everyone saw it. She cursed the world with her sarcasm and scorn. It could’ve been her. It could’ve been anyone. It was definitely someone. Small wonder our gods wouldn’t save us. We hadn’t saved each other.

The evening and the morning were the forty-sixth day.

* * *

Over time, we trained ourselves to forget. Survival was easier that way. We remembered truths, certainly, but facts were dispensable. Like the fact that more of us died than survived on this journey. Or the fact that we didn’t let the land rest every seven years as we were supposed to. Or the fact that some of our men married girls before they were mature in their bodies. Or the fact that some of our chiefs had been chosen not for their integrity, but for their beauty. Or the fact that some children were exempted from communal duties because of who their parents were. Or the fact that some women—men, too!—spent more time adorning themselves than rearing their children. We simply let details dissolve into the atmosphere as the ship rocked to and fro.

We forgot many other things, too. There was no room in our hearts for newfound sorrows. Most of our tears had been shed. Every distress we experienced was a distress from the day before. The human heart has limitations, we discovered, which we reached long before our voyage was over. But we had not given up. We could not. We simply wanted to live. We knew how to die. That had been proven. Now we wanted to live. For those who had died and who’d been forced to die. For those back in the motherland who had taught us the value of life. For children we would birth in a new world. For ancestors who let us get our lesson but loved us still. For those who lay beside us for weeks—raped, maimed, dehumanized, belittled, insulted—we wanted to live! To speak the truth, one day, about a people too strong to be destroyed completely. To tell the world how we’d survived what no human should’ve survived. To sing songs that reminded us forever of the price we’d paid to exist. To create new dances that explain far more than the tongue can say. To sculpt images—dark, beautiful, black, sacred images—of warriors, prophets, and healers whose blood aligned in the bellies of those slave ships and became one blood. To paint canvases of stoic men and women standing together with little but themselves and their children, and making that enough. We were tired of dying. We wanted to live!