an early age, she still yearned for the tales her mother used to tell and sought ways to protect her spirit in the strange, new land called Barbados (Conde 5). Abena was afraid to sleep at night in her new home, so she conjured the forces of nature to keep the vampires from attacking her at night while she was sleeping (Conde 5). So, in some sense, although the slave traders had displaced Abena from her native land and people, Abena retained her Ashanti spiritual beliefs. Abena later passed on her African spiritual beliefs to her illegitimate daughter, Tituba.
Tituba's father was an English sailor who raped Abena while they were sailing from Africa to Barbados on the ship Christ the King (Conde 1). So Tituba's life begins out of an act of hatred and aggression. Obviously, because Abena was raped by a white man, Abena learned shortly after leaving her native land that the white man was evil and could not be trusted. Abena's attitude toward white men is an important aspect of her character; only after the reader understands how Tituba was conceived can the reader understand the effect that Darnell Davis later had on Abena when he pulled his penis out of his pants and began approaching Abena (Conde 8). Although Tituba was only a young girl at the time that her mother was assaulted by a white man for the second time, Tituba responded to her mother's call for help and quickly handed Abena a cutlass which Abena used to strike the white man, albeit in self-defense (Conde 8). Abena did not strike Darnell hard enough to kill him, but nevertheless, Abena was hanged because she gashed Darnell's shoulder with the cutlass.
Tituba effectively repeats the phrase "they hanged my mother" three times. Conde repeats this sentence for effect; the repetition emphasizes horror and disbelief that Tituba felt after watch
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