Dessa Rose (27 page)

I heard her before I seed her: “Sheriff, what is this nonsense about my girl?” Sheriff come to his feet; even Nemi stood up. “I couldn't make no sense out what this man said.” She had Clara in her arms, petting her back like she was pacifying her but she looked some upset. “Is somebody trying to steal Dessa? Is that what he was trying to say? It's just scandalous how peoples will prey on defenseless womens.” She stopped in front the desk, turned, and saw me standing there, holding on to them bars. “Odessa!” she say starting towards me, “You come out there right this minute!” like she was going to open the cell herself; Lawd know I was ready for her to do it. Sheriff hurried round his desk and blocked her way. “Ma'am,” touched his hat, “beg pardon, ma'am.”

And there was the white man, bowing at her. “Madam. Adam Nemi.” And smiling, reaching for her hand. She drawed back but that was all the mind she give him, too busy looking questions at me like, What going on; who is this?

“I don't even know this master, Mistress.” Talking loud cause they wouldn't let her come no closer.

“But I know you,” Nemi say, “know you very well,” and he tapped his chest.

“Nemi,” sheriff say, trying to frown Nemi down. “This the law job. Ma'am, this darky cused of being a scaped criminal with a price on her head.”

Well this give Miz Lady a little setback. “Why, why that's impossible,” she say, looking round them at me.

I couldn't tell what she was thinking, but she had to be surprised. Harker hadn't thought up no story for this. In all his travels, he hadn't heard nothing about no reward, not for me, not for none of our peoples. The cellar, the coffle, all that had happened way over east of where we was working; none us spected to hear nothing about it here. Oh, Harker said he'd heard some talk about a devil woman at one of the places he was sold, but this was like a hoodoo story to the peoples, a conjure tale. Something that don't
have to be real to be true. The white folks hadn't made no mention of no scapes. “They mistook me for another Dessa, Mistress,” I called out. “Tell them who I am, Mistress. Can't be no reward on me.”

“This girl mines,” Miz Lady say. “Can't be no reward on her.”

“This gal belong to the state, madam,” Nemi say. He hooked his thumbs in the arm holes of his vest, poked his chest out a little. “I put up fifty dollars of the reward myself.”

“Sheriff,” Miz Lady say, just like she hadn't heard Nemi, turning to the sheriff, smiling, holding Clara so Clara could play with his badge, “we just come in from Aikens to meet some hands my daddy sending to help with the harvest. He”—she looked over her shoulder at Nemi—“just mistook my girl for someone else.”

“You would lie for her, madam?” Nemi ask real sharp.

Well, she drawed up at that; white man ain't posed to call no white lady a lie. “Sheriff, who is this person?”

Nemi told her his name again, and put two or three more high-sounding words after it. “He done dragged other girls in here, Mistress. And undressed them,” I said quick.

Her eyes flew open at that and the sheriff turned red when she looked at him. “Sheriff, this true? What is going on here?”

“Evil, madam,” Nemi say. “Oh, she pull the wool over your eyes; she pulled it on mines, too—at first. Nice white lady like you can't know the blackness of the darky heart. Sing and laugh, and all the time plotting.” This not exactly what he say, you understand; what none of them said. I can't put my words together like they did. But I understood right on, now; wasn't nothing wrong with my understanding. And this what Nemi meant; I was something so terrible I wasn't even human. I had lusted with the master, then knifed him; this why I was sold. My heart about leap out my mouth when he mention Master. His voice didn't even not change, and it was a minute before the sheriff and Miz Lady caught on to what he was saying.

The white man could talk, I don't deny him that, open his eyes all wide, use all kind of motions with his hands, spoke in a whispery voice so you had to listen real careful to make out what he
said. Oh, he was something; Miz Lady couldn't seem to take her eyes off him. And I was sweating now; some of these was things I'd told him. “I got it all down here,” tapping his chest again. I'd strangled Mistress, he said, and conjured the white mens and laid with all the “bucks” on the coffle; I'd called up the devil there in that cellar. A danger to womanhood, he called me.

Miz Lady sniff at Nemi. “One little pesky
colored
gal do all that?” And she smiled at the sheriff.

“The law handle this.” Sheriff, cutting Nemi off. “Maybe the gal Nemi looking for didn't do all that, but she done something, else wouldn't be no poster out on her.”

“Well, it can't be my Dessa,” Miz Lady say, like that settled that.

“She fit the description,” Nemi say, waving that paper, grinning in her face. “Madam—” looking now, “madam, what you say your name is?” like he was studying on it. “Seem like I know you…”

Miz Lady drawed away from him but not before Clara grabbed that paper out his hand. “I bet that description fit fifty negroes.” Real busy now, taking the paper from Clara. She give it to the sheriff, but she wasn't smiling so fresh. This was something I hadn't looked for, that the white man might know Miz Lady, that she might have something to hide.

Sheriff cleared his throat and turned a little redder. “They branded the one we looking for, ma'am.”

“Yes,” Nemi bust out, “let's look under that dress!”

Well, she was startled sho enough, now, cause all this time she'd thought it was some mistake, especially after Nemi started his spiel. But even if she never seed them, she knowed about my scars. “Why—” she say, looking at me and petting Clara real quick, biting her lip, and looking away. “Why, I—Sheriff—.” Petting Clara and batting her eye.

They thought she was stuttering about Nemi being so crude up in her face, talking under a darky's clothes. I knowed she was wondering about the rest of what Nemi said. Lusting with mens, killing white peoples, working roots, this was what she'd thought
about me at first, what she thought about all us. I'd laughed about how scary she was of us with Ada; and I had done some things to make her think the worst of me. I guessed she was membering that, too. And she knowed about my scars, about the coffle, something about how the white folks done me; Nathan had told her. But these was things I'd never spoke about to her. If one thing was true, I knowed she must be wondering what else was, too.

Sheriff made Nemi beg pardon, but Nemi stuck to his point; he could prove who I was by the brand on my thigh. Sheriff looked at Miz Lady. She was petting Clara, looking at me—and what could I say in front the sheriff, in front that dirty Nemi? All the time we'd rode together, all those nights we'd laid in the dark almost side by side, silent. Now we just barely knowed how to read each other's eyes, each other's smile. “Odessa ain't got no scars.” She heist Clara round to the other side and commence to fan herself with a hanky. She bat her eyes at the sheriff; sheriff looking at his feet, trying not to pay her no mind.

“The law need proof,” Nemi say. He smiling now, tapping that watch case. “Now I come to see you, madam, I believe—” looking at her close in the face and she was looking at him like a chicken watching a snake.

I really wanted to make the white man smell himself, like I'd smelled in my own nose. That's what he was to me, a stank in my face, tracking me like a bloodhound, setting mens on to peek under my clothes, offering a
re
-ward on me. “Mistress.” She turned her head. I patted that money belt under my dress. I looked at her and down at the hand patting my waist. Whatever she thought about me, whatever Nemi knowed on her, that money was real. And what was he beside what we'd done? “Mistress.” I looked at her and I looked at Nemi—that crumpled suit and stained shirt front, the shadow long his jaw made his face look dirty. And she looked at him, the suit, the shirt, like she was seeing them for the first time.

“Sheriff”—she put that hanky up to her nose—“can I talk to you?” No smiles now, no bat the eye now. “In private,” she say when Nemi start to follow, and walked over to my cell. Clara
reached for me and started babbling soon as she got near me. I grabbed her hand and looked at Miz Lady. She licked her lips and kind of smile. Friend or not, best she could do for me then was to prove I wasn't nothing but her slave.

“Sheriff,” Miz Lady say, “we carrying a lot of money for the hiring of these hands. Open your dress, Odessa—” I unfastened it partway there at the waist and turned so he could see without Nemi seeing, too. “We traveling alone. This why I can't have my girl undress in front no one I can't trust.” She looked over her shoulder at Nemi. “And I certainly not going have her make no show of herself before no man—like them other girls had to.”

“I had a old auntie look at them.” Sheriff was moving toward the door. “I send someone at Chole.”

And Nemi howled: “You can't set no darky to check a darky, catch a darky; that's the mistake they made at the last place. You can't take no darky's word on this.”

“You take the word of the law and be done with it, man,” the sheriff say and went on out the door.

Nemi stormed up and down the room and Miz Lady looked at me. I just shook my head. I was scared but I'd take my chance on any auntie before I'd let Nemi see under my clothes.

Well, Aunt Chole came, old woman smoked a nasty pipe and mumbled a lot. I guess they called her auntie cause she still worked, but way she hobbled round she might've been a granny and then some. Sheriff made her known to Miz Lady and Nemi. Miz Lady say it's a outrage to shame a good girl on the word of just someone, looking at Nemi and sniffing. Nemi say, don't look her in the eye, granny; she got the devil in her. Sheriff say, see if this gal whipscarred about her privates. “Yes, suh,” Aunt Chole say, bowing her head, mumbling; “Miz Ma'am,” mumbling some more.

She had some cloth folded over her arms, and she put this up round the cell mumbling the whole time. I could hear Nemi: “I bet she got callus on her legs from being on that chain.” And I did, too. My heart was beating so fast I couldn't speak but in a whisper. “Granny,” I said; I was unfastening my dress. “Oh,
granny, I was scarred as a child; girl was watching me dropped me in the fire. I'm much ashamed of them scars.” I was trying to catch her eyes.

Aunt Chole looked at me just once; her eyes was so milky, I think she might've been blind, anyway. I still had the quarter coin to buy the pastry; I give this to her, then I pulled down the top of my dress and my shift. She ran her hand over my back, heavy, calloused hands; never forget how gentle they felt. When I reached to pull up my skirt she stopped me. She put the coin in her mouth, bite it, then put it down her bosom. “Masa Joel, Masa Joel,” she called out, “I ain't seed nothing on this gal's butt. She ain't got a scar on her back.”

“You lying,” Nemi yelled. “Sheriff, I told you about these darkies.” I could hear the sheriff trying to quiet him down. I finished fastening my clothes and Aunt Chole pulled the cloth down from round the cell.

Clara reached for me soon as I come out that cell and I took her, her little arm going around my neck, her little baby hand patting in my face. Oh, it was good to feel that baby in my arms again.

From being red, Nemi went white when he seen me walk out that cell. “You can't mean this, sheriff. You taking the word of some nearsighted mammy? Let me see for myself.” And he reached for me. I dodged back and the sheriff pushed him into the next room. “Nemi, you out your mind? Leave that gal alone.”

“I know it's her,” Nemi say. “I got her down here in my book.” And he reach and took out that little black-bound pad he wrote in the whole time I knowed him. I membered him reading to me from it; even in that heat, I'd turned cold when I learned he tried to write down what I said. The book made me fear him all over again. Miz Lady was pulling on my arm, but I couldn't move.

“‘I kill Mistress,'” Nemi say, reading, walking up on me, “‘cause I can!' That's what she say,” pointing at me. “Here's some more”—he was flicking through the book. “Here,” he say shaking it in my face. Clara reached for the book and knocked it out
his hand. The pages wasn't bound in the cover and they fell out, scattering about the floor. Nemi started grabbing the papers, pushing them in the sheriff's hand, into Miz Lady's.

“Nemi, ain't nothing but some scribbling on here,” sheriff say. “Can't no one read this.”

Miz Lady was turning over the papers in her hand. “And these is blank, sheriff,” she say.

“What?” Nemi say, still on his knees. “Naw, it's all here.” He lurched to his feet and the sheriff grabbed him. “She walk on the insides of her feets from being on that chain. I know this darky, I tell you; I know her very well. Her hair fit like a cap on her head underneath that scarf. I know her. Miz Janet,” he say, reaching at Miz Lady, “you understand. Science. Research. The mind of the darky.” And he tap his temple.

We moved then. “You-all in this together”—grabbing at us—“womanhood.” He was down on his knees, scrambling amongst them papers. “All alike. Sluts.”

“Nemi, for God sake,” sheriff say; Miz Lady sucked her breath and almost stopped, but I was behind her and kept on going. I could hardly see for the rush of blood in my head when we went out the door. Nemi was low; and I was the cause of him being low. He'd tried to play bloodhound on me and now some bloodhound was turning him every way
but
loose. He knowed me, so he said, knowed me very well. I was about bursting with what we'd done and I turned to Miz Lady. “Mis'ess,” I said, “Miz—” I didn't know what I wanted to tell her first. And it was like I cussed her; she stopped and swung me round to face her.