Blonde Roots by Bernardine Evaristo Read Free Book Online Page A

droon and The Tragic Octoroon. One poster made me do a double take. It was for The Whyte and Blak Minstrel Show.
    The Ambossans still flocked in their thousands to see it at the Palladia Arena during the rainy season. It featured Am‘ bossan performers as whvte-face minstrels, faces smeared with chalk, lips thinned down to a red slit. They sang out of tune in reedy voices, their upper lips stiff as they danced with idiotic, jerky movements while attempting the hop, skip and jump of Morris dancing. They wore clogs on their feet, bells on their ankles, waved hankies in the air and rubbed their bottoms up against each other. All the while singing music hall songs about being lazy, lying, conniving, cowardly, ignorant, sexually repressed buffoons.
    Bwana and his huge extended family went to the Palladia every year. They took up the entire stalls and returned singing the minstrel songs very loudly, thinking they were being so damned funny. It was a kind of madness, because the performing caricatures they mimicked bore no relation to the whytes in their service. Still, credit where it’s due, it was the only time they tried to entertain the staff.
    Suddenly my guide did a sharp right, jolting me back. He led me down a short set of stairs that opened on to tunnels on either side.
    One dusty sign on the wall read BAKALO LINE—Southbound via Baka Street, Marbone, Ox Fordah Crossroads, Embankere, Wata Lo, Londolo Bridge, Kanada Wadi.
    The other sign read BAKALO LINE—Northbound via Pharoah’s Plains, m’ Aiduru Valley, Kenshala Dunes, Harlesdene, Kentouni, Harro Wa.
    We did a right turn onto a platform with rail tracks, and standing before us was my gift from the Resistance-a one-carriage train. Another man was sitting in the driver’ seat in a little cabin at the front. Perhaps Tuareg, he wore an indigo turban, which was wrapped around his mouth and jaw, hiding most of his face. Only his eyes and nose peeked out, deep creases running down either side.
    He nodded, once, clearly a man of few gestures and, as I discovered, even fewer words.
    This was it, then, one of the famous Tube trains that had shunted back and forth for an age underneath the city. It was a wreck-no windows, no doors, no seats.
    We had not spoken for the entire journey.
    My guide gripped my shoulders, and I surprised myself by wanting to cry. He was risking his life for me.
    Captured Resistance members were tortured, but I sensed this man would never spill the beans. If caught, his fate was inevitable.
    “Take care, Doris,” he said. (This time it came out as “Duoro-sisi.”)
    “The driver will take you to Doklanda. My task is done but I pray that you will reach your homeland. When you do, you must send word to the Co-op. I want to hear you are safe.”
    His gaze held mine. This really was it.
    “Do not drop your guard until you reach home safely.”
    He clasped my shivering hands in his warm, stubby ones.
    “Trust only those who earn it.”
    Before I could reply he had vanished from whence we came. Now I couldn’t disappear back into the labyrinth of tunnels and return to Mayfah even if fear got the better of me, and it had been tugging my arm like a child.
    The driver stared ahead and started the engine. I walked into the shell of a carriage, found a spot in the middle of the floor where I could hold on to a metal pole.
    The Tube started to move with the quiet stealth of a cobra.
    I had visions of hundreds of angry Ambossan men descending into the tunnels in loincloths, torchlights searching, the cracking of muskets, bloodhounds braying.
    Bwana was a major mover and shaker in this city. News of my escape would spread like bush fire. He’d suffer public humiliation if I wasn’t captured. Slave and master alike would gloat. As his PA, I wasn’t your common or garden-variety house wigger. I’d be the talking point around every communal eating bowl in the city. I was probably at that very minute going down in recent history.
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