Respectable Trade (20 page)

“She wants your name,” Mehuru said to the woman. His voice was tender, as one would speak to a sister mortally injured. But his resentment burned beneath the quiet tone, and Frances could hear it.

“My name is Shame,” the woman said quietly. “My name is Shame. My name is Died of Shame.”

Frances frowned at the quick low exchange and then turned inquiringly to Mehuru.

“Shame,” he said in Yoruban. “Died of Shame.”

Frances’s stupid white face brightened; she nodded. “Died of Shame,” she repeated, pleased. She pointed to the next. “And who is this?”

Kbara did not raise his head. “Despair,” he said in his language, Mandinka.

“Despair,” Frances repeated happily. “Now we are getting on! And who is this?”

“Homeless,” the girl said in Wolof.

“Homeless!” Frances repeated carefully, mimicking the sound.

Mehuru closed his eyes for a moment at the horror of Frances’s encouraging bright voice mouthing curses.

“And this?”

“Grief.”

“And this?”

“Accursed.”

“And this?”

“Lost.”

“You’d much better give them English names,” Miss Cole interrupted. “No one will be able to say this gibberish. It doesn’t mean anything. Tell them some new names, Christian names.”

Frances hesitated. “I will, when I’ve learned their African names.” She smiled at them. Mehuru recoiled from the horrid paleness of her mouth and the white teeth against the pale, bloodless lips. “They need to trust me,” Frances said. “We need to be friends.”

She rose from her seat at the table and went to the sideboard and rapped on the polished top. “Sideboard.” She waited for Mehuru’s response, sensing his unwillingness. “Sideboard,” she said again.

There was a glass bowl in the center of the sideboard, piled with expensive hothouse fruit from last night’s dinner. Frances took a warm apricot in her hand. She brought the fruit to the table. She laid it before Mehuru as a woman of a village might lay a gift before the shrine of a difficult god. She had the same supplicating, deferential smile.

“Apricot,” she said.

Mehuru looked from the fruit to her intent face. There was a ripple of unease from the others. Frances did not notice; she did not even see them. “Mehuru.” She spoke his name like a caress. “This is an apricot. Apricot.”

He could not bear the appeal in her face. He dropped his gaze to the polished surface of the table. “Apricot,” he said, very low.

Frances exhaled slowly, as if he had made some private, long-sought agreement with her. She took the apricot up to her mouth and bit a little piece from it. She took the mouthful from between her lips and offered it in silence to Mehuru. Their eyes
met; then his hand came up and took the piece of golden fruit from her hand and put it in his own mouth.

“Good,” she said, and nodded at him.

“Good,” he repeated obediently. Then his eyes fell back to watching the table. His face revealed nothing.

Frances took a knife from the sideboard and cut the apricot into small slices for the rest of the class. “Apricot,” she said to each of them. When they repeated the word, she gave each one a piece. They ate their share delicately and in silence.

“Good,” she said.

They repeated the word like automata, without understanding. They kept shooting glances to Mehuru for cues as to how to respond to this strange, dangerous woman who could come for them like Ayelala, the goddess of death and judgment, in the night but during the day was a supplicant, begging for forgiveness, speaking one nonsensical word at a time.

Frances pointed to the fruit plate. “Plate,” she said. “Knife.”

“Plade,” they said nervously. “Knigh.”

Mehuru felt his consciousness back away from reality, as a wounded animal will retreat into its lair, lie in the darkness, and long for death.

“Plade. Knigh.”

Frances looked around the table at the shuttered faces. “Smile!” she suddenly commanded. She bared her teeth at them. “Smile!”

They shrank back from her dreadful white face and the huge, gaping mouth. “Oh, my fathers, save us!” one boy muttered. A woman gave a sob of fear.

“Steady,” Mehuru warned softly. He was still in his lair, his dark eyes watching Frances, his soul tucked safely away from her.

Frances turned to him, her eyes—dark like his own—imploring. “I’m trying to help you,” she said. “You have to learn, and I have to teach you. Smile.”

“Mile,” Mehuru said softly to her. With dead, unfeeling eyes, he curved his lips up in a ghastly parody of joy. “Mile,” he said.

W
HEN THE LESSON STOPPED
at half past ten and the slaves were sent away, Frances remained seated at the parlor table.

“Would you like a dish of tea before breakfast?” Sarah offered.

Frances shook her head. “I shall not be eating breakfast,” she said.

There was a short silence. “Frances . . .” Sarah warned. “I hope you are not getting vaporish.”

Frances’s head came up. “Vaporish!” she exclaimed. “I am not vaporish, I am sick to my heart! I don’t believe I can do this, Sarah. I don’t believe it should have been asked of me. I shall speak to Josiah. I don’t think this scheme can work. They cannot be taught, and certainly I cannot teach them.”

Sarah moved from the window seat and took a chair opposite. “You do not wish to work,” she said bluntly.

“I cannot do this,” Frances said. “I cannot prepare them for a life of slavery where any master can abuse them as he wishes.”

“Not in England,” Sarah said quickly. “They would not be abused in England. They would be treated as servants.”

“Then let them be servants,” Frances replied. “With wages and the right to leave if they find themselves in a disagreeable position.”

There was a pause. “Where would be the profit in that?” Sarah asked simply. “You have forgotten why we are doing
this, Frances. We are doing it to sell them, as we sell sugar and tobacco. We are here to sell them at a profit.”

Frances dropped her head into her hands and clasped her thudding skull through the tight curls. “I cannot do it,” she said miserably.

Sarah watched her for a moment. “But you have no objection to slavery in principle,” she remarked quietly.

“Of course not,” Frances said.

“You have no objection to taking the profits and enjoying the goods which slavery brings us?”

“No.”

“Then your only reservation is that you do not want to do the work yourself.”

Frances raised her head. “Yes,” she said.

Sarah shrugged and rose from the table. “This is not principle, this is laziness. I warned my brother that a fine lady would not be prepared to work for his business as he works and as I work. But he believed that you understood the trade you were making. You wanted a family and a house of your own, and he wanted a working wife. You brought him aristocratic connections, and he gave you a handsome settlement. He is keeping his side of the bargain; the house at Queens Square will be yours. But you wish to renege.”

“I am not lazy,” Frances replied, stung.

“Then keep your side of the bargain,” Sarah Cole said firmly. “As we are keeping ours.”

D
OWNSTAIRS TWO WOMEN SLAVES
were watched by John Bates as they took out the pail and slopped it on the midden. The girl who had named herself Died of Shame fell back as they went through the yard, snatched up handfuls of earth from the foot of the wall, and pushed them down the bodice of her dress.

When they were back in the gloomy light of the cellar, John Bates brought them a pail of food—some bread, some potato
peelings, the scraps and the bone from Sir Charles’s roast dinner. They ate right-handed from the pail, taking it in turns to choose a piece of food and then putting it on the tin plates before them.

Mehuru took the piece of fruit out of his mouth where he had held it under his tongue ever since Frances had given it to him in the lesson. Squatting, he put it carefully on the floor between his bare feet and looked at it for long minutes. The other slaves sat in silence around him. He was the obalawa; he could be talking with the fathers.

“Apricot,” Mehuru said softly.

At the thought of her saliva on the piece of fruit that had gone into his mouth, his throat tightened with terror.

“Will you not eat?” one of the women asked softly.

He shook his head. He would not touch Sir Charles’s leavings. He drank only water and watched the woman who called herself Died of Shame. When it was her turn to take her pick from the breakfast pail, she tipped the earth from her bodice onto her plate and ate mouthful for mouthful with them until her face was stained with mud and her breath smelled of death.

Mehuru did not stop her. He could not ask her to live. He could not reassure her that no harm had been done, that the husband who loved her would never know of it. That the little baby she had left behind her in Africa would never be insulted because his mother was dishonored. That it was a new life, and new and dreadful ways were facing them all, but that they might survive. He had no right to persuade her against her own wisdom. And besides, he had no hope to give her and no hope for himself. They sat in the half darkness, all of them with their faces buried in their hands. When she started moaning very softly, they moaned quietly with her, in a gentle chorus of lament.

“Here,” Cook said upstairs. “What’s that?” She was making pastry for a pie.

“It’s them!” the scullery maid said nervously. “Groaning.”

“Mr. Bates! Mr. Bates!” Cook cried. “What are they doing down there?”

John Bates listened at the cellar door. “They’re just singing,” he said. “And sighing.”

“Why?” Cook demanded irritably. “They never have before. I can’t work in a kitchen with sighing and singing in the cellar. I shouldn’t be asked to.”

John paused. “I’ll beat them,” he offered. He took his whip, unlocked the door, and surged down the steps. The slaves raised themselves up at the noise of his boots, their faces turned toward him and the light and the good smell of baking. He slashed the whip at random in the small space and heard it sing and crack as it found an arm, a face, an ear. Kbara cried out, a woman screamed. John Bates looked around for any challenge. They huddled together and watched his scarlet, angry face and his popping eyes. “That’ll do!” he shouted at them, incomprehensible threatening words. “Stop that noise.” He turned on his heel and marched up the steps again. They heard the door at the top of the steps bang and the key turn in the lock.

They sat in darkness and silence for a while, and then Died of Shame put her hands over her mouth and groaned out her pain as quietly as she could. The other women drew closer to her, and they moaned with her, as soft as the cooing of plantain eaters.

Mehuru started to recite, very softly, the prayers for the dead, calling on the forefathers of Died of Shame to take their daughter home, back over that long, wide sea, so that she might feel the sun on her face again and lie on the fertile earth.

“They’ve started again,” Cook said sharply.

John listened. “You can hardly hear them.”

“But I can hear them! I think I’d better tell Miss Cole I’m no longer suited. I could walk into any place tomorrow; the Cole table is well known in this city. I can’t keep my pastry light with savages groaning in the cellar. They shouldn’t ask it of me.”

John Bates turned in irritation to the kitchen maid. “Find Brown and tell her to tell Mrs. Cole that the slaves are moaning. She’s supposed to be teaching them to speak. She can teach them to be silent, too!”

The kitchen maid peeled off her grimy hessian apron, revealing a cotton pinny underneath, only marginally cleaner. She scurried for the stairs and found Brown polishing the little table in the hall. Brown thrust the duster into her hand, went up to the parlor, and tapped on the door.

“Beg pardon, Mrs. Cole,” she said. “The slaves are moaning in the cellar.”

Frances looked to Miss Cole. “Moaning?”

Sarah waited. “Do you wish them to be left, Frances?” she challenged. “If you will not care for them and I do not have the time, then they will have to moan in their cave until my brother comes home.”

“Bates says he could beat them,” Brown volunteered.

“I’ll come,” Frances said. She led the way down the back stairs, Sarah following her. Cook was standing behind the kitchen table, banging the rolling pin down on a lump of pastry. There was a low, soft sound from the cellar, like the panting of a hurt beast.

“I gave them nothing more than a little clip,” Bates protested. “But they started again. They were quieter for a while. They know they’re doing wrong. Shall I beat them again?”

“No,” Frances said quickly.

“Did they start for any reason?” Miss Cole asked. “Have they been fed?”

“They had the pig pail,” Cook answered without turning around, her broad back expressing her total disapproval. “And good food there was in it, too. Then they started this noise. It’s not right for a Christian kitchen. It’s not what I’m used to.”

“Of course,” Miss Cole said rapidly. “We’ll stop them, Cook. We’ll stop them at once. Frances, go down and see what is wrong.”