The child arrived hours later, replacing its mother’s deep, dark wailing with jubilant cries. Even in our despair, we rejoiced. Some said boy, others said girl; we all said ours. When we came up for dancing the next day, we gawked at the most beautiful spirit the ancestors had ever sent. The child’s skin glistened like coffee beans under a brilliant sun. And those eyes! They were the eyes of someone who had already seen what we were seeing, who could look inside us and know our hearts. Though only a day old, the child blinked and beheld each of us as if greeting old friends. We never knew the sex. We never asked. At the end of the dance, crewmen wrestled the child from its mother’s flailing arms, and held it in the air. It cried a strange, moaning lament that lingered in our heads. It was something otherworldly, something reminiscent of the gods. There was no fear in its weeping. Only urgency. For us to listen. To hear beyond our circumstances. To know that one man cannot shape another man’s destiny. We held our breath. The child’s crying ceased. A crewman said something we could not understand, something surely to degrade us, then motioned to return the child to its mother. But instead of releasing the baby, he suddenly turned and buried a dagger in its belly. The mother fought like a trapped rhinoceros. Five shipmates wrestled to constrain her, and even then each panted with exhaustion. Some of us collapsed with agony. Others closed their eyes and begged ancestors to take him back quickly. Some looked across the sea and trembled. Others squeezed their bellies and cried. Some lunged toward the pale monster, but chains hindered them. Others called the names of our gods, furious that they would not come. And some stared at the bloody knife as if it might assume life and plunge itself into the murderer’s flesh.

Belowdecks that day, we hummed a melody so dark it sent us into a trance. We hummed all night long. We hummed until we knew our little son or daughter was home. We hummed until our voices were raw and tender from constant vibration. We hummed for our sister-mother who would never be sane again. And we hummed that same melody for the rest of the journey whenever anguish stole our words. We gave thanks for one who came, merely for a moment, to remind us who we were. Who we are. We called the child Azubuike, which means “The past is your strength.” We would see this child again, we believed.

By morning, the mother was gone, too. Safiya, one of the women from our village, told the story. She said a captor tossed the child into the ship’s furnace. All the while, the mother’s eyes rolled to the back of her head. Like a baby herself, groaning and moaning with pain, she lay limp against Safiya’s breast. By her facial marks we knew she was Mandinka. Together, they sat on deck, beneath a starlit sky, holding each other as only women can, when suddenly the mother raised her head, looked into Safiya’s eyes, and nodded knowingly. She dragged herself to the ship’s edge and plunged into the water. This was the second child she had borne but could not have. Now she would find her children, somewhere in the realm of the spirits, and love them the way a mother should. We wept as we heard the story.