Tituba Speaks
- Tituba Speaks
The magic I brought wrapped up tight in the bosomof my chest to Salem, Massachusetts,
Came not from slaves, nor from my Guyanese Indian people,but from a white woman
Who taught it to me back in Barbadoeswhere I forcefully taken. She the one, those days we alone
On the plantation, showed me how to curse someoneand how to turn-back-the-curse to cure somehow.
Some nights that woman and I would look upat the flat white face of the moon—
And it is true, we both called the moon mother.She had a black cat about her
She called familiar. There was a broom she never touchedleaning against the far wall in the corner. [End Page 49]
Jacqueline Bishop's most recent book, The Gymnast & Other Positions, has been awarded the 2016 OCM Bocas Award in Non-Fiction. She has also received the Canute A. Brodhurst Prize for short story writing, a James Michener Creative Writing Fellowship, and several awards from the Jamaica Cultural Development Commission.
