“You’d have to ask Momma Hazel. She has a lot to do with this ceremony,” Katherine explains.
No wonder it takes all night. The entire village is in attendance. The drums, the goombah, and the chanting soar, and the freedom of movement is intoxicating. Such abandon of spirit that Katherine has put aside her notebook. There are no photos to document this experience. It’s felt in the heart. In the soul. That is where the memory of the ancestors come to life within each of us. I start to giggle. I do believe the atmospherehas caught me off guard, or has simply caught me. I feel a warrior spirit inside me, bursting to be set free.
Katherine holds my hand. “This ceremony,” she gestures across the pavilion, “is the living embodiment of rebellion and identity.” She taps her foot to the frenetic rhythm of the drums.
“Do you want to join them?” I nudge her.
“I always want to dance,” Katherine says, squeezing my hand. “And since we have adversaries, a war dance is for us, too.”
“Yes, it is,” I reply, more seriously than I meant to.
“Maybe a war dance will show them their place. With the spirit of Cudjoe, the mighty warrior, they will think again about standing against us. So, yes, we should dance.”
“And we aren’t being sacrilegious.”
“It’s not a religion. The Maroon people call upon the heroes of their past to give them strength, cunning, and victory in the present.”
“All right, you’ve convinced me. Let’s dance.”
Katherine stands up gracefully, while I get to my feet with less elegance.
I kick off my sandals. “Do you think we can do it?”
“Do what, dance?”
“Yes, but dance until dawn.”
“Finally, you understand me,” Katherine says.
I stomp my bare feet, striking the hard ground stroke after stroke, jump, jump, jump. Then I circle my hips and drop my head forward, look up at the sky and down at the dirt, then up at the sky again, and twirl and twirl. Stomp. Stomp. Stomp. I sway from side to side, my hip thrusting toward the ocean, then toward the mountains; my body tumbles down and rises up. I don’t know if you call it dance or something mythical, something spiritual, but it has control of my limbs, has control of the center of my body, and just lets me do whatever comes next without thought, without choice. It’s freedom. And the ancestors are watching.
Only the stars can tell how long we danced, but my spirit feels so free. I am not concerned about time or exhaustion; my feet might be. I stumble, and Katherine steadies me with a firm hand.
“I want to shout this to the moon.”
“What? Tell me.”
“Art and history bring balance to our world, Vivian Jean. Humanity cannot survive without acknowledging its past. We stagnate if we don’t honor and study the creativity that has thrived through generations.”
She twirls away from me. “Without dance, music, and our ancestors’ wisdom, we wouldn’t survive.”
“I understand.”
She twirls back. “Do you? Understand? Then answer my question.”
“Which one?”
“Do you believe in Obeah?”
I let my head tilt back and gaze at a sky blanketed with more stars than I’ve ever seen. “Yes, I believe in Obeah, in the duppies, in the sacred silk cotton tree and that it can heal my wounds.”
She opens her arms, and we embrace. “I do, too.”
And once more we are dancing.
CHAPTER 35
OTHELLA
