Dessa Rose (21 page)

I could see Ned when I opened my eyes, burr-headed and mallet-shaped as he was. I know Harker made him apologize; by him being young and so rude like that, somebody had to tell him something. But I don't know how long it took or how Harker done it. I'd come to a flash somewhere between “mule” and “humph” and I was still shaking from remembrance, from feeling. This was the flash that'd nelly-bout killed Master and almost strangled Mistress, that rode me in the fight on the coffle. It scared me to see it almost loosed against one of us; and, pesky as he was, Ned was part of us. Yes, I trembled; that feeling, that anger was like a bloodhound in my throat, a monster that didn't seem to know enemy nor friend, wouldn't know the difference once it got loose.

Harker was speaking to me. He'd sent Red back down to Dallas county to bring out Red's wife, Debra, and they baby; she was still nursing and could nurse Mony while we was gone. All they needed now was for me and Miz Lady to come on in. I swallowed down; that bloodhound was still at my throat and my voice was rough. “Get another mule,” I told him; “this one don't know how to be no maid.”

 

They finished stripping the corn and the work slacked off some; it didn't never just stop. Seem like it was always something to plow, plant, pick, or peel at that place. We rose at the same time but now they sat a little later and talked a little longer in front the cabin at night. One night they encouraged Uncle Joel to play that mouth organ. Music didn't flow there as I membered it doing in my old home. We got up with the chickens and nobody raised a call on the way to the fields and it was seldom and seldom anyone gave out with a holler as they worked.

Uncle Joel started out with a lively little tune and soon we was
all clapping; Ned struck up a lyric and Annabelle got to cavorting. She was something to see there in the moonlight. She hadn't combed her hair since I knowed her—Ada said she was too tender-headed and sometimes my fingers itched to pull a comb through her hair and fix it up regular, corn rows or seed plaits, least put a bandanna over them kinks. But that night all them naps looked like curls and ringlets hanging about her face. She was light as a feather on her feet, her body supple as a willow and it wasn't long before others joined in.

The nights could be like velvet there, like another skin, it would be so warm and close. This was like times at my old home, and somehow, that night, I was glad to have something familiar instead of sorrowing that the old times was gone. Something in me still listened for that banjo, but I was glad that I had lived to have such a time again and I sat there patting my foot.

Harker asked me to dance, bowing to me, smiling. I hadn't heard him the first time—he was standing off to one side of me and I was watching them dance off to the other. When I turned to him, he said, “Dansay?” Something like that. I didn't understand the word but I knew what he wanted and I looked up, smiling, my heart beating fast. I'd been acting like they acted, like it didn't make me no never mind that we didn't talk no more. But sometimes I'd see him or Nathan or Cully about the yard or round to one of the outbuildings and my heart would about bust, I'd want so bad to see them smile or have them say a word.

“That's French,” Harker told me then, and dropped down beside me where I was sitting there on the ground. “How many times you been asked to dance in French?” This tickled me and he told me some more French. “Negro” meant black man; “negress” was black woman; “blank” was white. I laughed at that, thinking about Miz Lady. She could sure look like it wasn't nothing shaking behind that face. Harker had learnt these words down in N'Orleans, he told me. This was the way the black peoples spoke there; they said it was some islands way out to sea, somewheres out from there, where black peoples had made theyselfs free. This was what they had talked about on the coffle and I asked Harker why we couldn't
go there, stead of West like he was always talking about, where it take so much of money to go.

“Maybe,” he told me, “maybe there is some islands out there where black peoples is free, but we got to depend on strange whites to get us there. Once we get on a boat—which ain't no sure thing—but once we get on the boat, we totally under the dependence of the whites. Or, say we make for the north; probably Nathan, with the way he handle horses and all, and Cully, cause he young, could make a living, but me and the rest—including you—we farmers. Land expensive in the north and things I know to do in the city ain't zactly what the law allow. And I don't have no white man to front for me this time,” he add, trying to make a joke. “There's a lot of slavery between here and there. And if they catch us up there, they'd just bring us back south.”

I knew all this was true; I had heard it before; I had proved some of it myself. You could scape from a master, run away, but that didn't mean you'd scaped from slavery. I knew for myself how hard it was to find someplace to go.

“No, Dessa,” he say, “I want to go West cause I knows for a fact it's no slavery there. A black man told me that. He been there, come back
from
there (and I never met no black man come back from these so-called islands). Slave catchers, neither patterrollers troubles no one there. But whichever way we goes, Dessa, going to take money.”

It was like Harker was saying to me, here's the plan I found to handle this problem, and finally, that night, I heard him.

“Dessa,” he say, “Ada tell me you and the mis'ess don't even much speak to each other.”

I wasn't foolish enough not to say something to her, and anytime she spoke to me I answered. But if she sat down outside, I'd generally find something to do back at the House or down to the shed where Milly was struggling with that loom. So I said kind of careless like, “Slave don't generally have too much to say to the master that I knows of.”

“She ain't your master.”

“I knows that, but do she?”

Well he sucked his teeth at me, which, though I do it myself, have always irritated me with other peoples. “What have she done you?”

Well, put like that, I couldn't think of nothing right off and I got mad. “Why you taking her part?”

“It ain't taking no one's part to ask what causing trouble between two peoples.”

“Why don't you ask her?”

“She say you called her out her name.” Well, everybody knew that was true. “It fit her,” I said. I was tired of them acting like I was the main one in the wrong. “Nice white lady living out here, alone, amongst all these ‘darkies.'”

“Damn it, Dess,” he start off and I stiffen up right away; I don't like no man to cuss at me. “Dess,” he say and it was like he'd never called my name before, just “Dess,” soft like that. “What going on here?” He sounded about as hurt as me. I didn't know myself what was going on; I just knew I didn't like it. “Walk out here with me a ways,” he say; “I want to talk with you.”

Wasn't no privacy to speak of round that cabin, so we walked out towards the fishing hole a ways. We stopped in a little clearing there in the woods and sat down on a log. We was quiet for a while.

“You liking Nathan for your man now?” he ask all of a sudden.

His asking about me and Nathan surprised me so much that I laughed. Well as he knew us, Harker ought to knowed it hadn't been no time for thinking about liking and belly-rub. Not that Nathan wasn't a fine-looking man—and I loved him. I had a powerful feeling for him, but as a brother; he was like a brother to me. Then I got angry; that was all they could think of when it come to a man and a woman: Somebody had to be lusting after somebody else. I had to be wanting Nathan for myself; I couldn't just be wanting him to have something better than I knew Miz Ruint was. “That's all it come down to, huh?” I ask Harker. “Somebody fumbling under somebody else's clothes?”

“I didn't mean you no offense, but—You must be liking him for something. So why you want to lose him as a friend?” I wasn't
specting this and I sort of turned away from him, but he kept right on talking and his words stayed on my mind. “Maybe he think you ought to be proud of him for doing something like this,” and “Maybe she wouldn't do it just for the money,” and “All we know is she willing to do it.”

“And what they going continue on to do?” This was a sore with me, that Nathan could be loving up with her all the while he posed to be my friend.

“I see this ain't no sense thing with you,” Harker say then and I got mad.

“Sense? Why what he feel got to make more sense than what I'm feeling? You got all the sense in the world? Is Nathan?”

“Dessa, Dessa, I didn't mean it that way. What I meant is, you feel about ‘sense' one way and he feel about it another; and that's that. And you-all going lose friendship over a white woman.”

I didn't like it put that way, but still, “He seem like he willing,” I told him.

“Who would you have gived Kaine up for if they had asked you?”

My heart about turned over when he ask that. “It's like that, he feel like that for her?”

“Maybe; I don't know. Nathan can speak for hisself. But you-all won't even talk to each others now. You know, I always did admire the way you-all was about each other. That's why I went back with them to get you. At first I thought you was his woman, some kind of relation to him or Cully, they talked about you so. And I admired it even more when I found out you wasn't.”

I hadn't knowed he felt this way about us. I'd thought it was just the scaping, the idea of that that got his tention. Yet and still, “That mean I can't never say he wrong no more?”

“Dessa, you done said it.”

“And he don't care.”

“Care about as much as you do. Dessa, what you-all got between you don't give you the right to pick Nathan, neither Cully's woman.”

I wasn't trying to pick Nathan's womens, I told him. “If I was,
I sho would find him a more likely one than her.” Harker just looked at me. “I be happy to talk to Nathan, anytime he want to talk to me,” I finally told him, “but Nathan, Cully, you—all you-all seem like you don't have nothing to say to me don't have something to do with some white woman or this plan.” He didn't say nothing to that either. After a while, I said, “You know she wanted to see my scars?”

“I know,” he said. “Nathan told me.”

You know they would sometimes make the slaves strip when they put them up for auction, stand them up naked, man or woman, for all to see. They didn't like to buy them with too many whipscars; this was a sign of a bellious nature. This the first thing flashed in my mind when Nathan told me she wanted to see them scars, that Miz Lady had to
see
the goods before she would buy the story. Nathan didn't urge me to do it, I give him that, but he, neither Harker understood what a low 'ration this was for me. Maybe, by her being a woman, they thought it shouldn't make me no difference; I know they thought I placed too much dependence on it. And I held this against the white woman, too.

“I know she ain't the first person wanted to look under there,” Harker said real rough. Then he was gentle, trying to get me to see his point. “You ain't the only one been hurt by slavery, Dessa. Everyone up in here have some pain they have to bear. Naw, Miz Lady didn't have no right to ask, but what is that compared to what she could've done—and didn't do?”

He stopped, but I didn't say nothing. “You know, girl, you didn't have no business calling that woman out her name. We
been
trusting her all along, just like
she
been trusting us. How you going stop now?”

I muttered something about her trusting in her whiteness and not our blackness. That's when he put his hand on my hands where I had em folded there in my lap. “Dess,” he say to me then, “I'm glad you ain't liking on Nathan cause I think you great myself.”

Well this about took my breath away; it was so long since anyone had been so forward with me. And he said it like he knew just the way I wanted to be great and so was qualified to judge. I
got up off that log real quick. I was nervous and shy as a girl just come into her womanhood. “That what you call me out here to talk about?” I ask real sharp.

“You want me to say it in front of Janet-nem?” he ask real innocent like.

Well, this just seem to me plain foolish so I didn't even answer it. “What this got to do with Nathan and that white woman?”

“Well it ain't no sense in me trying to make up to you if you mooning round over Nathan and jealous of some other female on his account.”

There didn't seem to be nothing else to say and we just stood there in the moonlight looking at each other. I was still flustered, wanting to stay and wanting to go, but when he started kissing me, I didn't stop him. It was the strangeness of him in my arms made me pull away finally. Kaine was slight built; hugging him was like hugging a part of myself. Harker wasn't big like Nathan—Nathan's muscles bulged like a stuffed cotton sack. He was tall as Nathan, but more rangy; even so, wasn't no way I could mistake his shoulders for my own. I pulled back from him; my head was swimming. I was wanting to laugh, wanting to cry, wanting to spite him somehow cause he wasn't Kaine, wanting to kiss him again. So I ran.

I never did like to admit I was wrong but the next day when I went up to the House, I apologized for being rude. I wouldn't say no sorry and I wouldn't beg no pardon, neither. I was raised in a one-room cabin, had worked the fields all my life. I didn't know nothing about knocking before you walk into a room. But
white
woman have a right to say who she want in her room; long as she didn't ask me, wasn't my business who she invited in there.

 

Wasn't no “death do us part” in slavery; wasn't even no “dead or sold,” less'n two peoples made it that. Far as two peoples loving with each other, it was any handy place if you was willing—and sometimes if you wasn't; or you jumped the broom if the masters let you marry. But you couldn't help dreaming. Dreams
was one the reasons you got up the next day. Kaine had been my dream and I didn't spect to do no more dreaming about a man—least not no time soon. Yet, there I was, casting eyes at someone else. Seem like everyplace I look I seed the way Harker hair spring back like a sponge when he take his hat off; or how he move easy, easy when he walk. I tried membering how it was with Kaine. I was mad cause this wasn't him. I was scared and shamed of myself.