Dessa Rose (22 page)

I had cried a long time in that box, from pain, from grief, from filth. That filth, my filth. You know, this do something to you, to have to lay up in filth. You not a baby—baby have clean skin, clean mind. He think shit is interesting; he want to show it to you. But you know this dirt. Laying up there in my own foulment made me know how low I was. And I cried. I was like an animal; whipped like one; in the dirt like one. I hadn't never known peoples could do peoples like this. And I had the marks of that on my privates. It wasn't uncommon to see a negro with scars and most of us carried far more than we ever showed, but I felt as crippled as Dante and I didn't want Harker nor no one else to see me.

He come and got me one night and we went down to the fishing hole. He spread a blanket under the trees. I wasn't no Christian then and he wasn't one neither. I sat up afterwards and kind of draped my dress across my hips and scooted so my back was against the tree.

Harker was laying up there, naked as a jaybird, calm as you please; his hands folded behind his head, his legs crossed at the ankle just like he was in his own self's bed, in his own self's cabin. “Dess?” Voice quiet as the night, “Dessa, you know I know how they whipped you.” His head was right by my leg and he turned and lifted my dress, kissed my thigh. Where his lips touched was like fire on fire and I trembled. “It ain't impaired you none at all,” he said and kissed my leg again. “It only increase your value.” His face was wet; he buried his head in my lap.

Kaine was like sunshine, like song; Harker was thunder and lightning—Oh, not in the way he act towards me; never in the way he act. But in the way he come into my heart, way he shook me. “I never wanted at nothing till I met you,” he told me one time; we was down to that place in the woods. “I let the white man worry about how we going eat, where we going sleep.
I
always kept
me
a change of clothes and I knowed how to eat even if he didn't.” He figured free negroes wasn't that much better off than he was and they had a whole lot more to make do and worry about. So Harker let the white man worry and never hankered after being free. And he never wanted at nothing, he told me, “till I wanted you.”

He said, “I don't want to love you in the woods cause we don't have no place else to be.” This was another time. Seem like I could be with him for hours and never know tiredness, never be weary the next day. “That's part the reason I pushed at you to go long with this deal. I want to see at that Mony child I helped you birth and give you more. I can't do that if I'm slave to someone.”

And I knew he meant it. I had known him a long time by then; not in years, no. I had known him only weeks. But he had brought
me out that cellar, had birthed my baby and sat beside me while I laid in that bed. We'd talked and I felt I knowed him deep. And here he was promising hisself to me, talking about a future he wanted for us, and this frightened me. Kaine hadn't done this. You know, the future did not belong to us; it belonged to our masters. We wasn't to think about no future; it was a sign of belliousness if we did. So it scared me to hear Harker talk this way. I felt sometimes that if I hadn't pushed Kaine to think about running, he would never have hit Master. What was that banjo compared to us? He could've made another one. Now here was Harker showing them same signs. Oh, Harker knowed the laws and rules was set against us, but he act like that was just so he could sharpen his wits on them, make doing what he wanted to do more interesting, you know, a little exciting. And this was how he went at that scheme, like all our fears about slips and what-it's was just something to make everybody think a little deeper, a little faster.

He taken us over that plan time and time again while we waited for Red to get back with his wife, Debra. Harker, Castor, Ned, and Flora was the ones we sold. Most any one of our peoples would bring eight or nine hundred dollars easy at public auction—so Nathan said, and after three years with that slave dealer we figured he ought to know. I'd never had no experience of money before, you understand, so the number didn't mean that much to me. What I went by was how he said it and he said it like it was a right smart amount. Harker, neither Nathan wanted to sell any of the womens, though we was likely to bring us much, if not more, than the mens. Womens was subject to ravishment and they didn't want to put none of us back under that threat. This the way it was during slavery. The woman was valued more because her childrens belong to the master; this why they didn't like the mens being sweet with nobody from off the home place, because the childrens would belong to someone else. Increase someone else's riches. But the womens couldn't handle the harvest by theyselfs, so Flora—big, roebuck woman with that brown, brown skin, brown to the bone—she volunteered to go.

We figured to do well enough without selling me or Nathan,
and I wasn't sorry about not being sold. This was a scary thing to me, to flirt so close with bondage again. All the mens could see was the trick—those that stayed was put out. Even Nathan felt he would miss some of the “fun” on account of his driving the wagon. But I could see risk and slips, and wasn't for the West, I wouldn't've been in it.

We was to go by wagon to Wilkerson on the shores of Lake Lewis Smith and take a boat from there down the Warrior River to Haley's Landing, just over the line in Tuscaloosa County. Harker knew the country all the way down to Mobile and cross to the Georgia line—that's where all that gambling and scheming had caught up with his old master, in Opelika, not far off the Georgia line. And he had roamed all up and down by hisself. From Haley's Landing, we would go overland, working the towns between the Warrior and Sipsey rivers in Tuscaloosa, Pickens, and Greene counties.

Miz Lady would tell some story about her husband being laid up with the fever or a busted leg; a couple of times, I think he was dead. We was to meet at such-and-such a place, by such-and-such a day after the sale; we'd wait two days at a meeting place, then we'd all go on to so-and-so. We was not to come back for no one. We was not to talk. We had to be as careful with slaves as we was with the masters. Our life depended on no one speaking out of turn. We was slaves; wasn't posed to know nothing nor do nothing without first being told. She was Mistress; wasn't no Mis'ess, no Miz Rufel to it. If they was caught, they was to act dumb and scared and show the pass from Miz Lady, which they all had hid in the toe of they shoes. She was to act high-handed and helpless if she was in a tight spot. We would end up in Arcopolis near the junction of the Warrior and Tombigbee rivers. From there we would take a boat back to the Glen. We spected to be back before the second picking of the cotton in October.

Red, Debra, Janet, Uncle Ned, Dante, and Cully was to take care of what needed doing in the fields. Ada cut Cully's hair down so none of the kink showed and Miz Lady taken him into town and give out that this was her brother from Charleston, come to
visit a spell. This was so there would seem to be a white person on the place while she was gone. Uncle Joel was known to belong to the place, so between them, we figured Cully and him would keep suspicion off. You know, a peddler or a traveler lost his way might stop by. But the House was off the Road and people in the neighborhood didn't visit her.

Harker had me fix up some belts for me and Miz Lady to carry money in under our clothes, and fix our petticoats so we could hide money in the seams. I grumbled about this cause, tell the truth, I didn't believe we could actually fill up all these things with money. Me and Miz Lady was to keep the money with us at all times; never pack it in our baggage, never leave it in a room less one of us was there, never accept no credit. Harker favored gold or “gotiable certifieds.” He never did care too much for paper money.

He couldn't read nor write proper—though he could do this better than most slaves and he could cipher like nobody's business. He had made up some marks that wasn't writing but he used it like that and this is how he got us in the way of understanding where we had to be and what we had to do. He was something to watch; he made us feel wasn't nothing we couldn't handle long as we stayed on our toes. It scared me to want him so.

We drove out before dawn, silent as the dark we traveled through, fording the creek not far from the House and skirting the town. We wanted to be well out the neighborhood before too many peoples was up and stirring. Nathan drove the wagon and I rode up front holding the baby, Clara, setting between him and Miz Lady; Harker-nem rode in the wagon-bed.

I didn't want to leave Mony; he already knowed me and smiled when he seed me, and, oh, I didn't want to go nowhere without him. Specially since Miz Lady was taking Clara. But I was the one'd made the point about the nursing and I could see Harker's about white folks being more liable to take kindly to a white mother and baby, go out they way to help them.

I wanted to ride in back with Harker, but I was “Mammy” now, taking care of Little Missy, keeping proper distance between Mistress and nigger. I was with “Mistress” about the way I was with
Nathan. We spoke (Harker wouldn't allow no surliness)—good morning, how do, nice day—but I kept my feelings to myself. Setting up there between them that morning, seemed like I could feel them
wanting
at each other. Not with they hands, now; they didn't even hardly touch
me
. But it was something between them and it made me mad. I sat there hoping they'd feel
that
. This wasn't no time for fooling and I wished I had Harker beside me stead of one of them.

We didn't see too many peoples that day, nor houses; this was sparse-settled country and Harker was taking us a way not too many peoples came. We traveled along a ridge that sloped gentle in some places, sharp in others, and everywhere was forest. Now and then we saw smoke curling white against the sky. Once we saw a place where a big fire had burned; charred trunks fanned out from us far as we could see in one direction. About midday, Nathan pulled off into the woods and we shared out the food Ada had packed for us. I was glad for the chance to get down from between Nathan and the white woman. We ate, stretched our legs, then got back on the road. It was nothing more than a track really, and hadn't've been for Harker's saying so, I wouldn't've known it was there.

Round dusk we come up on a sizable plantation. The House didn't look near as grand as the Glen but it was built of regular clapboard, not chinked logs like the rest of what we'd seen, with what looked like two real stories. Miz Lady sent Nathan up to the door to ask shelter for the night. Far as I was concerned, we could've camped by the side of the road—we had bedding and provision enough to do that. You know, I wasn't particular about this in the first place and I wanted to put off the start long as I could. I think the others felt some of this, too, but we hadn't spoke much and the longer we traveled that day, the more quiet we got. When I mentioned about camping out, Harker said no. He didn't want us arriving in Wilkerson looking too wore out. Attract too much tention; white lady with all these negroes bound to attract enough.

We stayed that night at the plantation of Mr. Oscar; Nathan
was sent round to the Quarters with the rest of our people but I stayed with Miz Lady. This is where I began another part of my education. When I come to myself in that bed, I accepted that everyone I loved was gone. That life was dead to me; I'd held the wake for it in that cellar. Yet and still, I was alive. At first I couldn't put no dependence on what I was seeing—a
white
woman nursing a
negro;
negroes acting good as
free. I
wasn't even posed to be there. I didn't have no words to make sense of what my eyes was seeing, much less what I'd been doing. I was someone I knowed and didn't know, living in a world I hadn't even knowed was out there. So that bed was grave and birthing place to me. I had come into the world, had started on it the minute I said run to Kaine, said north, or maybe when he told me go see Aunt Lefonia. I had never been around white peoples much before I was sold away. Except to bow my head and be careful how I spoke, I didn't know much about how I was posed to do. That's how I could be so hankty with Miz Lady, cause I didn't know no better, and didn't know enough to listen to the ones what did. But when I walked into that parlor with Miz Lady, I began to learn what I had missed as a field hand.

Mr. Oscar's wife and two childrens was off visiting her peoples over by “Elyton,” wherever that was, but he made Miz Lady welcome, inviting her into the parlor and ringing the bell for some tea. He was a big, what you call ruddy-faced white man, skin very red; he had a bushy, sand-colored mustache and he smiled a lot and seemed to bow before her almost as much as a negro. She smiled a lot at him and seemed to like the way he hovered around her. She told him she was Miz Sutton, taking some hands to help with the harvest down to her daddy's place on the Mobile River. This was the story she would tell until we got farther down country, then she would tell another one; she had several. Harker had drilled her on them same as he did me.

Mr. Oscar didn't have a lot of servants in the house; the cook had answered the door, then gone back to fixing on his supper—which he graciously invited Miz Lady to share and she graciously accepted. I'm standing there watching all this you understand,
holding Clara, kind of shifting from one foot to the other cause Miz Lady ain't told me to go or stay. Well, long about this time, they had finished saying all this, a young girl come in and said Mistress' room was ready. “Mistress” got up out the chair and happen she drop the hanky she been using to pat her face with. Before she could bend down to pick it up, he grab her arm, say, “Allow me. Nigger,” he say, turning round, “pick that up.” I had my hands full with Clara, and he wasn't looking directly at me, understand. So I just stood there.

“Dessa!” Miz Lady hiss at me, yanking on the tail of my dress. “Nigger!” he say real sharp, and even I knowed he meant every nigger in hearing this time, but the other girl reached and got the hanky before I could move. He seemed satisfied with that. “Get them bags,” he say over his shoulder. Miz Lady ain't have to yank my dress that time; I shifted Clara to one arm and picked up the small satchel. Other girl grabbed the two big bags and we struggled out the room behind them.

It was some more bowing and smiling up in the bedroom but finally he left. She closed the door, and I put Clara down on the bed to change her. “Somebody,” Miz Lady say, looking all out the windows, “somebody better start paying tention, else they going ruin the whole thing.” It made me hot that she could signify like that; yet and still, I knowed I'd been slow. This what Harker meant when he say don't speak out of turn, neither act out of it. I was slave; I was “nigger” I couldn't forget that for the rest of the journey. And I was mad at myself that she'd had to remind me.

She taken a green dress out the bag and told me to go iron it. I looked at her. Black, brown, gray, dark blue, that's all Harker allowed, and hats that covered up that red hair. Harker didn't want her in nothing showy and didn't seem to me was nothing plain about that dress, way it was cut low cross the bosom. I picked up a blue one from off the top of the bag. “This seem more like what Harker said you should wear,” I told her.

“That's a afternoon outfit,” she told me; “you can't wear that to no dinner.”