Dessa Rose (15 page)

“What a horrid story,” Rufel breathed after a moment, imagining the agony of those thighs, to walk with that burning—“That vicious trader.”

The darky shrugged again. “Master Wilson wasn't like some, cruel just cause he could be; he didn't believe in damaging goods, though if he could get em cheap enough, he bought em. That what he done then was mostly for show, impress the mistress with how slaves ought to be handled. Soon as we was out of sight, he let me take her up on the horse with me; she rode in the supply wagon till she healed enough to walk. He wasn't trying to kill her.”

“I know,” Rufel said softly. Which made it all the more horrible. To violate a body so. That's if it happened, she told herself. She had sat, at some point during the darky's recital, on a low stump; the darky sat on his haunches a few feet from her. Rufel rose now, conscious that they had talked a long time, brushing carefully at her dress, yet reluctant to go. “How did you-all get way out here?” she asked curiously.

He hesitated, then said tersely, “Escaped off the coffle.”

Rufel looked at him in some disbelief. She had seen coffles; they were a common enough sight on the riverboats, the men loaded with chains, the women with scarcely enough rags to cover them decently, all of them dirty and desolate. She found it hard to reconcile that memory with the presence of this darky. They seemed to personify wretchedness; he glowed with life. For that matter, the wench looked remarkably healthy to have been through all the darky said. She looked at him sternly. “She must have done something pretty bad,” she said, unable herself to imagine such a crime.

“I don't know about that.” The darky rose also. “Some owners, it don't take much. Maybe Dessa's was one like that. Whatever she done, it wasn't enough to ‘impair her value.'”

The gently gibing tone seemed to mock her and she retorted, “I bet she was making up to the master; that's why the mistress was so cruel. I bet that's what it was.”

“Dessa was breeding when Wilson bought her, Mis'ess,” he said. “What she was carrying laying right up there in your house now. No white man ain't had no hand in that.”

“Well,” thinking of the nut-brown face, but—“His hair,” remembering its silken texture. “You not going to tell me darkies have hair like that,” she said stubbornly.

“Mis'ess”—he was shaking his head and laughing softly—“every negro baby I ever seen come in the world got curls shine like satin…and nap up”—he snapped his fingers—“inside six months. You see that boy in a year, he won't even be able to get a curry comb through that crop.”

“Truly?” smiling at the idea. He nodded mock-solemn; startled by his drollery, she laughed. Catching herself a little guiltily, she asked more sharply than she had intended, “Are you the baby's father?

“No, Mis'ess,” he said steadily.

“
I
think you-all are sweethearts.” She smiled at him encouragingly, thinking that would explain his evident protectiveness of the girl.

He shook his head. “Dessa ain't been in too much of a position to think about no sweetheart,” he said without looking at her.

“Well,” she began, moved in spite of herself by the simple statement; she faltered. Still, something inside her urged, you didn't just up and whip a slave, without some reason. “Well, I know it must've been something happen to cause all that.”

“Whatever it was, she paid for it. Man gone, mammy gone. Dorcas, now,” he said abruptly, turning toward her again, “her I can't tell you too much about. She talked mostly about you, things yo'll had done. She set a lot of store by you. And mostly, aside from just general conversation, you was what she talked about.” He shrugged. “Ada say she believe Dorcas was from Virginia,” he continued. “Near as we can figure—cause you know Dorcas didn't just sit down and tell no one her life story—was maybe she had a couple of kids. But they was sold away or maybe she just lost touch with them early on. The peoples she belonged to seemed to have moved round quite a bit, least ways she seemed to know something about a lot of different places. White people don't hardly travel with no pickaninnies, so, much as she moved round, it's doubtful Dorcas even know her own children, if she had any.”

That was worse, Rufel thought, blinking back a quick rush of tears.

“Mis'ess?” She looked up. “I wouldn't take what Dessa say much to heart. She been through a hard time. You know you been through a hard time, too—your man gone, Dorcas dying.”

It was what her own common sense told her but she was outraged to hear herself compared to the wench. “I knew that little hellion couldn't be no kin to Mammy,” she said tartly.

“The mistress have to see the welts in the darky's hide, eh?”

“Ye—” His tone implied that her desire for proof was mean and petty and she flushed hotly, as the image of herself inspecting the wench's naked loins flashed vividly to life in her mind. “Well—” How else was she to know the truth of what they said? “I know it's more to this than you telling,” she flung at him as she turned to go. “And I'm going to get to the bottom of it.”

Rufel hurried toward the house in some agitation, yet she was relieved that the wench wasn't related to Mammy—though after hearing that horror story she could well understand the wench's
confusion, her hysterical insistence on her mammy's love. But just because her mammy had loved her don't mean that Mammy didn't love me, Rufel thought, wanting desperately to believe that Mammy had loved her not only fully, but freely as well. Almost she felt personally responsible for Mammy's pain, personally connected to it, not as the soother of hurt as Mammy had always been for her, but as the source of that pain. She, Rufel, who would never have knowingly hurt a hair on Mammy's head. It was not so, of course. Rufel's footsteps slowed as she neared the House. If anything, she had been the center of Mammy's world—And the children, Mammy's children—girls or boys? Had Mammy been taken from them? How did they bare such pain? she wondered, thinking then of a branding iron searing tender flesh. Surely whipping was enough; there was nothing she had ever heard like the scream of a darky under the lash. Had Bertie stopped the beatings as he'd said or merely moved them, as Ada had once implied, to the woods? And Mammy—Had anyone ever whipped her? Rufel wondered, surprised at how angry the thought made her. Why, the very quality of her relationship with Mammy might have been grounds for a beating with some masters, she realized with alarm, remembering Mammy's tart answers, her way of forgetting to do what she didn't want to do when she felt such forgetfulness was in Rufel's best interests.

It didn't take much: remembering the darky's words. Often it had taken no more with Bertie than a broken plowshare (which cost money) or a darky who didn't move fast enough. That was only at first, Rufel protested to herself; Bertie had become a good master. Why, she couldn't remember the last time a darky had been whipped at the Glen; certainly she would have heard the screams
(unless Bertie had taken to whipping them in the woods)
or Mammy would have told her—Wouldn't she? Rufel recalled Mammy's tight-lipped face the first time they had heard that peculiar, high-pitched screaming. The ashen skin and pained expression had seemed to demand that she, Miz 'Fel, do something. And she had, hadn't she? Coaxed and pleaded with Bertie, though it had seemed to do little good at first. But the screams had stopped,
she repeated to herself. This, with this wench, was unusual. And they had branded her, too. That's if she took the darky's word for it, branded her and sold her away. She must have done something pretty terrible. Rufel clung to this belief, although it gave her little comfort.

The wench was dozing on the pallet when Rufel returned to the House, the baby snuggled carefully in the crook of her arm, and Rufel stood a moment in the doorway watching them. They were as peaceful as a painting, the girl a vivid chocolate and jet against the whiteness of the sheets, the baby as bright as toast against the bedding and the darky's arm. The darky's tale of beatings and brandings seemed, in that moment, a lie to cozen the gullible and trade on the goodwill of the openhearted. Rufel stalked across the floor and knelt by the pallet. The wench awakened almost immediately, her eyes gleaming forth from the darkness of her face, quickly hidden as she ducked her head under Rufel's gaze. “What's your name, gal?” Rufel asked sharply.

“Dessa. Dessa Rose, ma'am,” she said in a raspy voice.

Rufel was slightly taken aback; she had not expected the wench to answer so readily. “Why'd you run away?”

The darky kept her eyes downcast and plucked nervously at the coverlet. “Cause, cause I didn't want my baby to be slaved,” she said finally in a rush and still without looking at Rufel.

Rufel looked at the baby, seeing in him the pickaninnies at Mobile. And that's what he'll look like, too, if I put you all out of here, she thought pettishly. “I mean, why your mistress use you so?”

“Cause she can,” the wench said on a long shuddering breath as she turned her face away.

Rufel was stunned for a moment by the ring of utter truth in the statement, yet, almost of its own volition, her hand reached to draw back the covers from the darky's body. She drew back at Rufel's touch, her eyes popping open in alarm. Rufel blushed, thinking for the first time of how humiliating she would find such an inspection. “Are you—are you healing properly?”

“Yes. Yes'm.”

Why, Rufel thought, this wench is actually afraid of me. Con
scious for the first time that she herself could be in physical danger from these strange darkies, she realized that she had fallen into the habit of thinking of the runaways as a slightly malicious means of evening the score in their continuing estrangement in the neighborhood. Somebody somewhere was using the Sutton slaves; why shouldn't she use these—especially since she had neither enticed them away from wherever they came, nor encouraged them to stay here? She associated even Ada with the stock cuts used to illustrate newspaper advertisements of slave sales and runaways: pants rolled up to the knees, bareheaded, a bundle attached to a stick slung over one shoulder, the round white eyes in the inky face giving a slightly comic air to the whole. She still thought Ada and the others no more than casual truants, avoiding work or even punishments. But this wench and that big darky—especially him, she thought, remembering his size and self-possession—even that yellow boy who came to see the wench, were all, no doubt, hardened rogues. Had to be, to get clean away from a coffle as they apparently had done. Yet this wench was afraid of her. Rufel sat back on her heels, fighting a panicky urge to laugh. Like I was the criminal; her mouth quirked involuntarily. Calmed by the wench's fear, she rose and left the room.

 

The wench began to sit up, to take notice of her surroundings, though she said little to Rufel and that in a voice barely above a whisper, eyes downcast. The darky's diffidence irked Rufel and she was offended by the way the girl flinched from her when she reached for the baby, by the girl's surreptitious examination of the child when Rufel returned him after nursing. For all the world like she was going to find some fingers or toes missing, Rufel thought indignantly. Exasperated, she told the wench, “Just because one mistress misused you don't mean all of us will.” She did stop flinching at Rufel's approach, but it was plain to Rufel that the wench did not like having to let her nurse the baby; and she seemed incapable of even casual conversation with Rufel. Some
times Rufel wanted to laugh—she had thought that “devil woman” business no more than a joke. At other times, remembering the silly, passionate argument over Mammy, she knew the wench's reticence and timidity were feigned, and was angry and bewildered by the deception.

The wench talked freely enough with Ada and the other darkies who came to see her. Rufel often heard the murmur of their conversation as she sat in the parlor; now and then she heard a soft chuckle or muffled giggle and was surprised at how envious the laughter made her feel. She watched the wench covertly when she was in the bedroom, wondering what she could have done to make the other darkies, even laughingly, call her “devil woman.” There had been only admiration in the big darky's tone when he spoke of her, no hint of fear or amusement in his voice. Though it would probably take more than this little pesky gal to frighten that darky, Rufel thought, recalling the breadth of his shoulders and the hard muscled arms. Rufel sensed somewhere in the general outline of the wench's tale a deeper story and one not entirely unrelated to her concern for Mammy, though she could not say just how. She blamed the curious restlessness she felt on her unanswered questions about the wench and one afternoon she gave in to impulse and wandered out to the stream.

Rufel and the darky were each aware of the other's presence this time. He stood and touched his hat. “Evening.” He bowed his head slightly.

She stood awkwardly, shifting her weight from one foot to another. “Fishing?” she asked.

He nodded, then as though remembering himself, “Yes'm,” and touched his hat again.

“Nice spot for it.”

He shrugged. “Not as good as the spot down by the pool, but quieter. Everyone trying to fish down there this evening,” he explained.

It seemed somehow rude to tell him that darkies were not allowed to use either, so Rufel merely nodded. She saw the stump she had sat on the other day and sat again, tucking her skirts
carefully about her. After a moment he picked up the pole he had laid aside, cast, and sat on the ground a short distance from her. They were silent.

She cleared her throat. “Why you-all call that wench—”

“Dessa?” he asked quietly.

“Yes, that darky. Why you-all call her ‘devil woman'?”

“Where you hear that?” he asked sharply.