When You Were Born

Trigger Warning: This story covers sensitive themes around fertility and child loss.

Chapter 1: It’s Time

The orange sunlight ached in the gold-purple sky. It was barely noon.

“You’re going to need a new name for when you find them” said the brown man whose linen raiment, beard, and shoulder-length dreadlocks were the most dazzling white imaginable.

Ā nodded in agreement, as he sipped cold water from his unglazed terracotta cup. The autumn breeze rustled Ā’s black and brown locs.

“Have you even thought about a name you might like?” asked the the woman who had been Ā’s mother in the ‘Before Times’. She had curly hair, peanut-butter complexion, and wore a sunflower-print kaftan and was reclined on the sofa next to Ā.

Ā scratched his beard thoughtfully. Looking to the man in white, he replied, “You should name me.”

The man in white smiled and walked over and placed his right hand on Ā’s forehead.

“J, any objection to Ā keeping the title as part of his new name?” asked the man in white.

His question directed his question to the cocoa-skinned gentleman with the gray streaked beard who had been Ā’s father in the ‘Before Times’.

“None at all,” J replied. Looking to the woman in the sunflower kaftan, he queried “Do you, CC?”

“He should keep the title,” replied she.

“Since you will be as a father to them, your name going forward will be… ‘Baba Griot’,” said the man in white, his voice filling the room like crashing oceans, though he just barely whispered.

In that moment, Ā was transfigured from his apparent 30s to his seeming mid 60s. His dreadlocks were now mostly white, streaked with brown and gray. His long full beard was now nearly all white and his eyebrows were now salt-n-peppered. His body was still that of a strong warrior and his brown eyes were still kind. He took his first breath in his new form and stretched his limbs. He could feel calm and certainty in his spirit.

Baba Griot turned to the man in white and asked, “Can you give me some hints for finding them? You’ve led me wandering the earth for a long time but I still haven’t found them.”

“Your journeys haven’t been for naught, Baba. You needed some of your own stories to tell besides ones J taught you,” replied the man in white.

“So…no hints?” Baba gently insisted.

“Go back to where it all started and where it all ended,” replied the man in white who turned and vanished as he walked toward the door.

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Baba awoke in the predawn ink. He lay there a moment, rubbing the dream of The Maker and his family renaming him, from his eyes. Starlight twinkled through the canopy above. The first dregs of summer humidity hugged him as he sat up slowly. Chuck-Will’s-Widow songs painted the darkness in company with cricket sonnets.

By returning to the Sea Islands, he had followed The Maker’s first clue: “…where it all started.” He figured he would just…automatically know what to do and where to look once he arrived. He had been wrong. He’d walked the island from end to end for months and found nothing.

The dream, however, had given him fresh inspiration. Baba rose to his feet grabbed his black ironwood rod. The rod once concealed a hidden sword but had been reforged by his dear friend, Zeh’Ev, into a reliable walking stick with pruning hook built into its crook. He began to walk toward the clearing where his family’s homestead once stood in the deep past.

The sweet smell of muscadine blooms hung in the air. The dawn’s breaking whispered just beyond the treeline. Baba strode quietly through the wild grasses and past the ancient fruit and evergreen trees. While he walked, he rehearsed a refrain that appeared in each story of the family’s oral history. He recited it uncustomarily in the common tongue rather than in the Gullah language, timing his steps to the meter of the song. Sometimes the act of translation helped him think of things from a different angle.

“Humans ruined the Earth,

The sky was poisoned, The continents shifted, Humans became scarce, Spirits and monsters roamed the emptied wonderland.”

He came to a giant solitary oak at the center of the clearing. Thousands of summers old, its limbs yawned wide. Its green tresses housed nests for squirrels and birds alike. Like many trees predating to The Espousal (the global event where Heaven appeared on Earth and The After Times began), the oak’s colossal trunk and limbs were streaked with the opal colored light of The Maker’s own life. The tree glowed softly, almost pulsing. A mixed flock of normal and Espousal-spawned sparrows (glowing with the same light of the tree) watched Baba from the lowest hanging boughs as he rested on the sprawling roots.

Baba felt sure this was the right place at last. He had heard the story of how CC sat here eons ago, lamenting the loss of her first pregnancy in the shade of this tree. J had relayed the enduring imagery of the baby’s blood on the tree’s roots in one of the early stories imparted to Baba. Wondering to himself how The Maker would comfort her in that moment of grief, Baba noticed a singular adolescent branch hanging from the lowest bough that was entirely opal-colored rather than streaked like all the other limbs.

On instinct, he stood and hooked the bladed handle of his walking stick over the base of that sparkling branch. With a gentle stroke, he clipped the tender switch from the tree. The switch landed upright in the soil. Baba Griot gently grabbed it and began to draw it out. As he did, something mysterious occurred. The switch wriggled and extended itself. Where Baba’s fingers clasped the tender shoot, a hand formed and grabbed his hand in reply. With a gentle pull the fresh clipping grew into a goodly cocoa-skinned boy with curly hair and charming brown eyes.

The boy appeared to be about 10 years old. His features were a blend of J and CC. Baba removed his outer robe and covered the boy. Their eyes met.

“yo name duh ‘Asa’,” said Baba Griot to the boy in Gullah.

The boy smiled, echoing his name: “Asa”.

Chapter 2: To Wake Up

Asa and Baba Griot spent many days walking along the tidewater marshes in quiet contentment. Baba unfolded “The Griot’s Tales of the Emptied Wonderland” to the boy a night at a time. Rain or shine, they walked the island. They ate the delicious produce that was in season. They made base camp in the ancient clearing and began construction of a homestead hidden among the Spanish Moss draped evergreens.

Asa quickly learned the common tongue, but Baba spoke to him mostly in Gullah. Asa possessed startling talent for building things and was preternaturally strong. His busy fingers were often sketching plans in the dark earth. The homestead they were building was Asa’s design.

One evening following a long session of drawing in the dirt, the pair set to exploring the deep woods near Cuffy’s Field. In the tale “Opossums in the Chicken Coop”, Griot J once dispatched an evil spirit living in those woods that had been tormenting the nearby villages. It was said there were also many Haints roaming the island during those long ago days. Haints were malevolent female spirits famous for causing strife and mischief. They were especially attracted to pregnant women, often stimulating miscarriages and stillbirths, or so it was said.

One of Baba's earliest memories was of CC weeping in those woods. She prayed aloud angrily for peace. For healing. For understanding. For reality to be reversed. She sobbed her prayers bitterly while digging furiously by a boulder resting deep under the evergreen canopy. Her hands were covered in soil and blood and she buried a small cloth bundle under the rock. Baba, being only 3 autumns old at the time, did not understand what he was witnessing then. He did now.

When Asa and Baba happened upon the boulder, they paused, examining it. Asa noticed that his guardian seemed…not sad…but knowing…and far off. He tugged at the hem of the old man’s robe.

“here, Baba??”

Baba nodded and extended the rod to touch the rock. Before contact was made, the rock shimmered with the opal light of The Espousal. Music, something like drums and keys could be heard on the breeze. Asa touched the rock with his fingers and the light immediately extinguished and the rock split cleanly in two!

Alarmed, Asa reeled backward but Baba steadied him.

“look dey,” the old man whispered, pointing to cleavage in the rock. From either side a pair of small mahogany hands sprouted from the boulder halves.

Baba took off his robe and rolled up his sleeves.

“Asa, hep me pull dem.”

Baba grabbed the pair of hands on the left half and Asa grabbed the hands on the right half. Out of the rock they drew twin boys appearing to be about 8 years old. The little boys were very handsome with bold dark eyebrows and slightly crooked teeth. Each twin respectively bore an identical gap between his upper two front teeth.

The twin that emerged from the left half of the rock came out first. Baba considered him the elder of the pair and named him “Ūr”. The younger twin, by a split second, he named “Eugene”. He wrapped both boys in his cloak and picked them up into his strong arms and the odd family of 4 marched out of the deep wood.

In the days that followed, Ūr and Eugene increased the joy of their family with their boundless energy and creativity. Much like Asa, Ūr also loved to design and build things. Eugene, however, possessed a deep affinity for understanding and growing any manner of plant life. Both twins, preternaturally strong, were of great help in the homestead’s construction. Every day was filled with discovery, laughter, and joy. Every night ended with a tale from Baba Griot’s vast knowledge of The Before Times. But….

There was still one last child they needed to find.

Chapter 3: And Start Living

Today was the day. Baba prepared special clothes for the boys. A blue linen kaftan and trousers for Asa. A green linen kaftan and trousers for Ūr and purple for Eugene. Baba donned his breezy white linen kaftan and linen robe (despite the flagging late summer heat) and grabbed his rod. The 4 began their march down the Spanish Moss-bannered road toward Deep Hole.

Deep Hole was a mysterious place. In the Before Times, it was a spot for fishing, crabbing, and harvesting oysters. It was also the site of great events like an angel crash landing on the embankment or Griot J’s battle against The Three Mockers as described in the tale entitled “Last Down”. At a glance, you may not think this unassuming clearing at water’s edge was anything special.

At high tide on a full moon, it was a patchy embankment slightly elevated above Caper’s Creek next to mostly submerged oyster beds. At low tide on a new moon, it was a cliff overhanging the exposed boggy creek bed which was only accessible via steep decline of the embankment. In The Before Times, the water of Caper’s Creek was all but opaque and reflected the blue sky like a rippling mirror. In The After Times, the creek was now clear and luminous, but the pungent aroma of the salt water marsh still abode.

It was about half an hour til low tide. Asa, Ūr, and Eugene marveled at the view from the cliff down into the “hole” of the ebbing waters.

Asa gave Baba an inquiring look, gesturing his head toward the water.

Baba nodded silently, setting his rod down on the grass. Ūr and Eugene shuffled beside Asa as Baba crept closer to the edge. The three children and their guardian took a moment to breathe in the calm. The eastward breeze rolled past, carrying the sparrow songs. Ūr giggled, his crooked white teeth gleaming. Infected with glee, his brothers also laughed as joy became palpable.

In the distance over the river, something gold shimmered as a school of minnow congressed near the surface, troubling the water. Baba Griot motioned to the children to sit on the grass as he descended the embankment. They watched as Baba walked on the surface of the water toward the frantic minnows.

Asa, Ūr, and Eugene could hear the world-song beginning to sound on the wind as it did at Ūr and Eugene’s birth. They joined in, Asa playing the djembe, Ūr plucking his nyatiti, and Eugene sang and clapped. As they played, they watched with building excitement as bright light shown upward from the water where Baba stood. Stooping down and reaching into the water where the minnows congressed, he pulled a little brown girl from beneath the waves!

Still clutching his palms, she stood on the surface with him. Baba covered her with his robe and taking her into his arms, he carried her over the water toward the embankment. The boys put down their instruments and drew closer to their newly born sister as Baba set her down next to Asa. She appeared to be about 7 years old. She had freckled brown skin and gorgeous crown of onyx coils. Her mysterious eyes were jeweled ochre.

Beaming, and vibrating with excitement, the boys placed their hands on her shoulders to bless her.

“sista, welcome,” they cooed approvingly.

Asa turned to Baba Griot and asked, “what duh um name?”

Baba drew close to the little brown girl. He breathed on her and touched her forehead with his thumb. He gently peered into her ochre eyes, smiling.

“yo name duh ‘Camille’,” said Baba to her gently.

“Camille!” Asa, Ūr, and Eugene proclaimed in unison. Camille smiled brightly, eyes gleaming.

“Baba, Baba, tell we a story,” chirped Ūr.

“yeah! tell we! tell we!” echoed Eugene.

Baba reclined on the grass and breathed thoughtfully. He quietly glanced for a long moment at the boys and then at Camille. He continued to ponder as he twirled a few strands of sweetgrass between his fingers.

“Camille, yuh pick” said Baba.

She looked pensively at her carer and then at each of siblings. She opened her new mouth to voice her very first words.

“Baba, tell we a story from wen de sun bin still new.”

Baba Griot sat up and took a long deep breath. In a rousing ancient baritone, he began the tale.

“befo de stars come home to ress,

befo heaben open op,

wen mans ruined de wol and de end bin close,

dey bin a man name ‘J’.”