The Wedding Gift (3 page)

“But why were they in bond…bondage?”

“Because most of the people ain’t want to worship God. The people of Israel was in slavery for 430 years, but God told them that, if they believe in him, they was going to be free when they died. We got to believe the same thing, because if we don’t, we ain’t going to get through this life on earth. Whatever happen to us, Sarah, if we’re ever separated, we’re going to see each other again when we get to heaven. You see what I’m telling you?”

“Yes, Mama, everything but why Mr. Allen want you to be with him.”

“Girl…humph. Baby, you really is too young to know that. But we’re going to have that talk. We’ll have that talk when you’re older.”

She caressed my cheek for a bit before she went to our owner. I did not tell my mother the entire truth. I did not understand most of what she told me or how we could belong to Mr. and Mrs. Allen. I did comprehend what she said about having to believe that God would reunite us after we died. That belief helped to calm the fear that I felt every time she left us to see our master.

As I was a child, I remained resentful and provoked quarrel after quarrel. One late night, she sat, took off her shoes, and rubbed her feet. She did not change into her nightdress.

“Why do you have to go to him? Stay and rest.”

“Sarah, stop it. I got to do everything they tell me.”

“Well then, why don’t we go someplace else?”

She slapped me. I wiped the tears from my eyes.

“How many times do I have to tell you? Are you deaf? Maybe you ain’t as smart as I think you is. I’m going to tell you one last time. If I ever hear you say that again, or if I ever hear that you say that to somebody else, I’m going to take a switch to you and beat you so bad you is every color but yellow. You hear me?”

“Yes, Mama. I won’t ever say that again.”

“Y’all go to sleep.” She pointed at me. “And Sarah, you ain’t putting me through this mess again.”

“Yes, ma’am, I mean…no, ma’am.”

Belle later told me why it frightened our mother when I spoke about running away. “Sarah, you need to know what happen to people who try to run. They hunt and bring them back. Then they beat them. Them that run away more than one time, they get a foot or toes cut off. The beatings always happen in front of all the slaves, even children like us. They gather us around so we all see. They strip the person who ran and put them in the stock with their hands screwed down and their feet tied together. Some they just sell to nigger traders. It better for us here than someplace else because we with each other and we don’t work no fields.”

Belle was the daughter of a blacksmith who was born in Africa. He was sold when she was about a year old. When our mother went to Allen Hall at night, Belle told me stories that Mama learned from Belle’s father.

“When he was a boy, Papa live in a village by a great river called the Senegal, where many birds, of all sizes and colors, fly through every year. In the dry season, the little boys always finish their chores fast so they can play by the river.

“One afternoon, the men is fishing on the other side of the village. The ladies and girls is at the market, trading. The old people and the babies is in their huts because it’s too hot for them to be outside. About fifteen boys is playing by the river when they see strange men in a big boat. The men wave at the boys and sail right up to them.

“One of the men ask the boys if they want to go in the boat. A boy say no, we’re too little to go fishing. The man laugh. ‘We ain’t fishing. We just want to show you what it be like in the ocean. Come with us. The ocean is bigger than your little river.’ Well, that is the wrong thing to say to the boys because they’re proud of their river, but they’re also very scared.

“The men get out the boat. A boy yell to the others and they run. Just then, some of the old people come out their huts and scream that strangers is in the village. By the time the old people reach the riverbank, the strangers have some of the boys and is chasing after others. They have guns that nobody in the village ever seen before. The old people try to stop the strangers from taking their boys, but a man shoot. When one old man fall down from the shots, the village folk all stop to stare and the strangers grab most the boys and put them in chains.

“They take the boys to the boat and start sailing away. The villagers is saying, ‘Stop, don’t take our little boys.’ But it ain’t too long after they’re sailing that Papa can’t hear the people no more.

“That night, because a full moon is shining, the black ocean is made of glass. It’s so cold that the boys sit close to each other to keep warm. Every now and then, they see a big fish jump up, fly through the air, and go back in the water.

“The stars is so big and bright that you think you can take one down. Papa tell one of the boys who can’t stop crying to look up. He tells him they’re the same stars they got back home so they can’t be too far from the village.

“The next morning, they get to a island where the houses is all in pink, peach, yellow, or blue. The men take the boys off the boat. There’s people walking on the sand. A boy say to them, ‘Don’t you see what they is doing to us? Help us.’ But the people just keep looking ahead.

“Then, for the first time in their life, the boys see a man with pink skin on his face and hands. They stare at him. The men who took them pull on the chains. ‘Keep moving, keep moving, you country boys,’ they say.

“They get to a pink house and put them in a room that’s crowded with other boys. The room stinks because they don’t let them wash and they only let them use the outhouse but one time a day. One thing they ain’t expecting, the men who took them give them a lot of food and water. The pink house have a hole where they put you if you try to run. You have to stay in there for two days with nothing to eat or drink.

“When they been there about three weeks, they take a bunch of boys out the room. Then they take more. None of them boys come back. They take a group with Papa in it to another part of the house. Papa smells something nasty.

“When they get to another room, they tell the boys to wait outside a closed door. The stink is worse. The boys outside don’t hear nothing. They keep taking the boys in one at a time and none of them ever come out.

“They take Papa in the room and close the door and tell him to take his shirt off. One man is kneeling in front of a fireplace with his back to everybody. Two men put Papa on a table, face up, one man on each side of him, holding him down. One man cover Papa’s mouth. Even though it’s hot, Papa is shaking, like it’s cold. The man who was kneeling in front of the fire get up and turn around. He’s holding a steaming iron like the field hands use on sheep and cows.

“Papa try to get the men off him, but they don’t let him go and they keep his mouth covered. The man holding the iron press it into his chest and Papa faint. When he come out of it, he forget where he is and look for his mama. But just the men is there. Papa look down at his chest and it look like meat that just start to cook.

“They get him up and walk him through a different door to another room where they have all the boys. All of the boys is staring at the wall looking at something that ain’t there. When all the boys is branded, they take them back to the room where they put them when they first got to the island. There, the men look at the boys from time to time to see if their wounds is healing.

“After about a month since they get there, they take everybody back to the water and put them on a bigger boat than the one they bring them in. When the boat is sailing, Papa look back and stare at the island until there is no more spots of pink, peach, yellow, or blue.”

CHAPTER TWO

THEODORA ALLEN

FROM THE DAY I FIRST BREATHED AIR, AS SHE OFTEN told me, I was the center of my mother’s life. Her objectives were to envelop me in harmony and protect me from odiousness. She taught me how to paint watercolors before I learned to read, and I began music lessons at the age of five. She allowed me out-of-doors only in the early evening, when there was no danger of ruining my complexion.

I had my own maid, Bessie, when I was ten years old. Bessie was twelve when she came to live with us, and before she became my servant, she worked in the fields with her parents and siblings. Bessie told me that she missed her family because she only saw them from Saturday afternoon through Monday morning. I told Mum and she asked Papa if he could build a cabin for them closer to our home. Papa obliged her and Bessie and her family were grateful.

Mum called those who worked for us “servants,” and she told me that I should treat them well. She did not use harsh language with them and delegated their discipline to Papa. From an early age, Mum advised me on the principles of household management.

“The lady’s responsibility is to teach servants how to perform their labor, and that is why I will show you how to cook, clean, sew, iron, polish silver, and how to receive and entertain guests as well as other domestic arts.”

Papa sometimes took me to our farm, where I watched about fifty hands, men, women, and children, working the fields. I did not know that our servants and field hands were in bondage until I was about thirteen years old, when my cousin Eliza told me that she had seen an auction in Atlanta. Eliza did not know much more than the servants were slaves and that her father had complained about the exorbitant prices he paid for them.

When I was sixteen, Mum persuaded Papa, who was a professor at the University of Georgia at Athens, to tutor me at home at the same level as his students. Papa gave me courses in advanced mathematics, science, literature, and the history of the European continent. He hired a music master and a painter and encouraged me to practice writing letters.

“When you marry, your husband will have to leave you for lengthy periods of time to travel for business. You will feel less lonely if you write him about events involving your family and home.”

Papa laughed when I told him that I had aspirations of being a writer and that, when my husband was away, I would write books.

“No, no, dear. Gentlemen do not find lady novelists feminine. But you should keep a journal that I shall read. Speaking of your future husband….”

“Papa, no. I’m too young for marriage.”

“You are not. Your mother was sixteen when we married.”

That year, my parents presented six or seven gentlemen to me, none of whom I could tolerate. Papa was patient with my rejection of these gentlemen, but Mum worried that no one would meet my approval. One evening at supper, she reminded me that gentlewomen who did not marry and have families had no rank or distinction in society.