Wench (11 page)

H
er pregnancy changed. From the moment his eyes caught the hilly landscape dimpling her thighs and the bumpy terrain of her buttocks, Drayle retreated. Each time he moved to take her, his penis got soft. He told her he was afraid he would hurt the baby. She became terrified by thoughts of him with other women. A whisper reached her that he had taken up with another woman down in the quarters. She felt a pain in her stomach during those months that she feared had nothing to do with the baby’s strengthening kicks.

And that wasn’t all. Drayle had never asked her to put her mouth down there, and she never would have thought of such a thing. But in the final weeks of her pregnancy, that was what he wanted. Each time he made her do it, stroking the curls around the nape of her neck, he told her she would grow to like it. But she never did. When her feet became too swollen to fit into her shoes, Drayle had a new pair made for her. He thought this
would be enough to change her mind about the thing he wanted her to do.

She gave birth to a boy that winter and the first thing she did when they lay the baby on her chest was count out the toes and fingers. As a house slave, she wasn’t allowed to nurse, so she sent him down to a woman in the quarters who’d been nursing babies for the past seven years straight. Drayle resumed his regular visits soon after the baby was born. She wasn’t ready, but he didn’t appear to care. The only good thing was that he no longer asked her to do that other thing.

Before she could get used to the idea of being a new mother, she was pregnant again. By the time she came into her sixteenth year, she had two children, a boy and a girl. When her daughter was born, Lizzie examined the skin around her nails and waited anxiously for it to darken. The child had smooth pale skin with watery blue eyes and a bald head. She had expected the baby to be light in color but she was whiter than Drayle. After nine months, the girl baby still had not darkened. The only change was a new sprout of yellow curls on her head. Lizzie kept the baby covered as much as she could, both to protect her from the sun and because she was ashamed of her appearance.

She named the boy Nate after his father and the girl May because that was the month she was born. But one day, when the child was hopping around the workyard, Big Mama called the girl Rabbit and it stuck.

A
s the years passed, Lizzie learned to use her new status as the mother of Drayle’s children more and more. But she was unable to help the field slaves out of a situation that all started when the overseer Roberts fell out of a tree. Roberts had been on the plan
tation for over two years, but was still widely mistrusted. Overworking or beating was not what they feared most about him. He fancied himself a doctor of sorts. Whenever a slave complained they could not work or that they weren’t feeling well, he would examine them. He had a wooden table in his cabin expressly for this purpose. Whatever the injury—stubbed toes, broken fingers, stiff wrists, sprained ankles, knee pain—it required a full-body examination. The possibility of an exam had the same effect as overworking the slaves since no one wanted to complain they weren’t feeling well. Rather than mention whatever was bothering them, they worked through it.

Roberts usually sat in a big hickory nut tree, cracking nuts between his teeth as he watched the slaves work. One day he dozed off and fell out of the tree, breaking his leg. A doctor was called who set the leg, but Roberts did not heal. He stayed in bed and sent his wife to watch over the slaves. She was a tall woman covered in a thin coat of white hair, a fair amount of it grazing her upper lip and chin. She assumed the same position in the tree as her husband. When someone slowed, she called out to them in a great booming voice that sounded so much like her husband’s a few of the slaves forgot it was a woman in a dress straddled across the largest branch.

She began to walk between the slave cabins and peer through open windows and doors in the evenings after work hours. Up until this time she had mostly kept to her cabin, but her curiosity seemed to get the better of her as she strode down the lane shamelessly staring at children playing and women preparing the evening’s supper. For those first few days, she didn’t say much but after a while she called out a short greeting here and there. The slaves did not raise their eyes when they spoke back.

But one of the slaves did not like the overseer’s wife at all. Jeremiah wasn’t known to speak much, but the longer folks were around him, the more they got to know his way of communicat
ing. His right eyelid jumped twice when he was angry. He shook his knee when he was impatient. He’d had a nervous way about him since he was a child.

But that Sunday, after prayer meeting, Jeremiah had something to say.

“Ain’t right, I tell you,” he said.

“What’s that?” mumbled one of the men. The women had gone back to the quarters. Four men sat around chewing leaves, whittling, resting for a few minutes before returning to the labor that never ceased.

“A woman bossing us round, that’s what. Woman ain’t sposed to boss a man.” Jeremiah’s right shoulder flinched.

“That ain’t just any old lady. That’s the bossman wife. We got to do right by her till he get well.” Young Joe sat next to his daddy who would be too old to work in the fields within the year, leaving Drayle with the decision of what to do with him. The old man’s hand shook and Young Joe placed his own on top of it.

“That don’t make it right,” Jeremiah said.

“At least she don’t doctor on us,” Young Joe added.

“You does have a good point,” said the one they’d always called Baby.

“Well what do you plan on doing about it?” Young Joe said. “March your nappy-headed self on up to Marsuh’s house and tell him you ain’t working for no woman?”

“I aims to do just that,” Jeremiah said.

“Y’all hush up,” Old Joe said. “Ain’t nobody marching up to Marsuh house. Bossman’ll be back in no time and won’t nobody have to work under no woman no more.”

Baby rested a hand on his wide thigh. “It ain’t right for no nigger to work under no white man and it sho ain’t right for no man to work under no woman. I say we all sits down in the fields tomorrow and don’t start working till Bossman Roberts come back out here.”

“The man can’t walk,” Young Joe said. “How he gone come back out here?”

“He can pick up a stick and use it, same as everybody. Remember that time I broke my leg?” Jeremiah said. “I was made to hop right back out in that there field, cripple and all. Ain’t nobody care. And I did it, too. Roberts don’t want to work. He just trying to shame us by sending his woman out here.”

The men weighed Jeremiah’s words as he shook his knee. Somebody rang the supper bell in the slave quarters and the men stirred. Young Joe held on to his father. Jeremiah had to hold onto the tree for support as he helped pull Baby to his feet. They walked slowly to the quarters.

B
y the time the slaves heard about Jeremiah’s visit to the big house, it was dusk. Bellies were as full as they were going to get, and the children had finished the final chores of washing plates and cups. A group of women sat around the workyard mending shirts.

The word passed with the speed of most rumors on a plantation. Jeremiah had gone to the house and their master was coming down to see about Roberts. From the cracks of their cabin doors, women watched the path leading from the Big house. One woman sat her five-year-old out in the yard to keep watch. They figured they would not know the outcome of it all until the next morning when they had to report to the fields again.

As the night grew dark and they sank into the thin soft of their pallets, they slept lightly, anticipating the crowing of the cock so they would know if they would have to work under the white-haired woman again.

In the morning, the slave women rose earlier than usual to begin breakfast. They looked to their tow sacks for the grain
they used to round out their meals, but found that the sacks were empty. The women went from cabin to cabin to see if the same was true for everyone. And then the slow realization sank in that the food had been rationed.

Master Drayle had taken their food in order to punish them for complaining about the woman overseer. They were certain of it. When they reported to the fields that morning, there perched the hefty, white-haired white woman high in the tree, the heavy folds of her dress snapping off tips of branches.

“Get to work!” she yelled, fiercer than usual.

The slaves began their toil, their stomachs rumbling with emptiness. No one spoke to Jeremiah, even those who had encouraged him. He was back to his usual silent self. A sack of nuts made its way from slave to slave, and the sound of shells being crunched between teeth rumbled among them. That night, the women barely spoke to their men, blaming the lot of them for the empty sacks hanging slack by their doors.

O
n Fran’s fortieth birthday that year, the slaves cooked a celebration dinner. Fran’s best childhood friend, Yancy Butterfield, arrived in a sea of green. Taffeta, earrings, necklace, jingling bracelets. Green shoes peeking from beneath her dress. All set against a skin so translucently white that Lizzie had to force herself not to stare. Mr. Butterfield and Drayle retired to the library where they defied Fran’s wishes by having a before-dinner cigar.

The two women settled in the parlor and waited for Lizzie to stoke the fire.

They began their visit by taking turns admiring each other’s jewels. Lizzie couldn’t help but notice that Yancy’s were more exquisite. Fran seemed to note it, too.

“What a lovely dress, Yancy. You outdo me on my own birthday.”

“It’s all in the fabric, dear. That’s why I brought you something special.” She lifted her chin toward Lizzie. “Miss Dessie. Would you mind fetching that box out of my carriage?”

Lizzie forgave Yancy for calling her the wrong name. All because she said “miss.” Because she said “would you mind.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Wash up first,” Fran added.

“Yes, ma’am.”

Lizzie knew that the women had grown up together and were closer than Fran was to her own sister, but the two friends seemed different to Lizzie. Whereas Fran was moody and subject to extreme changes in temperament, Yancy exhibited a mild steadiness. There was a genuine pleasantness to her that Lizzie sensed to be more than a public offering, and when Lizzie saw the woman sitting next to her husband in the parlor, she observed a tenderness between them that she had never seen between Drayle and Fran. At one point, the man had even fondled the bracelets on her arm. Lizzie felt that if she lived with the Butterfields, she would not be so guiltless in her betrayal of the mistress. In a way, Fran’s spite made it easier.

Lizzie was transfixed by the Butterfield carriage. She had never seen one so fine. Leaves swirled around it, its dark fabric a stark contrast to the fall foliage. She poked her head inside and inhaled. Lilac sweet, just like Yancy Butterfield. Lizzie climbed into the carriage and closed the door behind her. She shut her eyes and pictured her and Drayle, riding along, his head on her shoulder, her hand on his knee.

She leaned back into the seat and felt a soft package dig into her back. She pulled it from beneath her, hoping it wasn’t ruined. She perched it on her shoulder and went into the house where she carefully deposited it in front of their guest.

“Thank you, dear.”

Yancy placed the package in Fran’s lap. “Why don’t you open your present now? The men don’t have much interest in these things, and I can hardly wait.”

“Why not?” said Fran. She tore back the paper.

“I hope you like it.”

Lizzie took her time exiting the room.

“Oh my. Ohhhh my.” Fran pulled out yards and yards of blue fabric, the same fabric as Yancy’s green.

“This is why I wore this dress. I wanted you to see how beautiful it looked all put together.”

“I love it, Yancy. I just love it.” Fran disappeared with the fabric trailing behind her. “This must have cost you a fortune,” she called from in front of the hall mirror.

“If you need me to, I can get my seamstress to make the dress for you,” Yancy said. “You don’t want slaves fooling with this fabric.”

“A slave? With my fabric down in that old nasty workyard? I wouldn’t dream of having a slave touch this!” Fran came back into the room, her hand on her cheek as if the very thought made her flushed. “And I don’t need your seamstress. What would I need your seamstress for? I have my own.”

Dessie brought in cold drinks on a wooden tray and placed them on the table beside the women. Fran watched Dessie closely as she took the blue fabric and folded it into a neat square before placing it on the settee.

“Y’all be needing something else ’fore dinner, Missus?”

“No, Dessie. That’ll be all.”

Lizzie and Dessie nodded at the women before they went back to the kitchen.

Lizzie’s children sat at the table slurping milk, white mustaches above their lips. Nate was big for his age—only five and already taller than other boys his age. His legs bumped against the chair beneath him. Although Rabbit was just a year younger, she was smaller. She held the cup in her pale hands and smiled at her mother.

“Who gave y’all milk?”

“Master Drayle,” Nate said. He had learned recently that
Drayle was his father, but was still unsure what this meant. He called Drayle by the name everyone else did—Master—and he had not connected that Drayle was his “pa” as some of the other slave children called their fathers or called men who were like fathers to them.

Lizzie patted at the milk stains above their lips with the tail of her apron. “Well stay out of the way, y’all hear? We’ve got to serve this dinner. If y’all want to play, go on back in the storeroom. Go on now.”

Dessie stirred a big pot of onion soup, bringing up slivers of the red and white bulbs to the surface. That would be followed by fried frog legs, Fran’s favorite. The rest of the meal had been planned by Drayle who insisted the only thing Fran cared about were the frog legs. So he’d ordered up his favorites: pork roast, mashed potatoes, collard greens. Dessie had made soda biscuits from scratch, the same kind she made for breakfast. Mrs. Butterfield’s husband still remembered Dessie’s soda biscuits from his previous visit, years before.

During dinner, Lizzie tried not to concentrate on the conversation. Serving dinner when there were guests present, whether a special occasion or no, was always a serious affair in the Drayle household. Nothing could be spilled on Fran’s hand-tatted tablecloth. Plates had to be taken at exactly the right time. Lizzie and Dessie had to distinguish between when a guest was actually finished and when they were merely taking a break. On days when there was no company Fran played games with them by pretending she was done—nudging her empty plate away from her and then picking up her spoon as soon as one of them approached. Whenever they made a mistake, she shouted at them so loudly that whenever they did have guests, the memory of her criticism was strong enough to make them nervous.

The dinner went off without any major slip-ups, and Lizzie offered dessert—a blackberry pie. Everyone declined except Mr.
Butterfield who looked pleased with everything that had been served so far.

The others asked for coffee and Dessie instructed Lizzie to pour the coffee while she spooned up some dessert for Mr. Butterfield. Lizzie hated pouring coffee because the slightest mistake could cause it to spill into the saucer. She was convinced Dessie had assigned the task to her on purpose. But the head cook was older, and among slaves that meant something.

Lizzie managed to pour all of the coffee without any mistakes, but as she moved to go back through the kitchen door, the door swung back toward her. The coffee pot hit her chest and the hot brown liquid soaked the front of her dress.

“I didn’t mean to do it!” Nate’s voice was shrill and scared.

Dessie grabbed Nate’s shoulder and pushed him into the kitchen. Lizzie rushed through the kitchen to the well outside to pour cold water over her dress.

When she returned to the dining room, she found Rabbit on Yancy’s lap. Nate stood behind the woman’s chair watching his sister. His thick eyebrows came together between his eyes. Lizzie tried to think of something to say. The room was dead silent. Surely everyone at the table knew these were Drayle’s children, especially the boy who looked just like him.

Yancy kissed and hugged May. “She’s like a little white doll!” she murmured. Rabbit fingered the woman’s bracelets and stared at her earrings.

“You didn’t tell me you had such lovely new slave children, Fran.”

“Well, they’re not that lovely.”

Drayle cleared his throat. “If you’re done with that dessert, we could have another drink in the library.”

“Sure thing,” said Mr. Butterfield, following Drayle’s lead.

The two men left their cooled coffee on the table.

Yancy reached for Nate to pull him onto her lap, but he stepped
back. He didn’t appear to be as enthralled with her as his sister was.

“Boy, go to Mrs. Butterfield. She asked for you. Now go on,” Fran said.

Nate shook his head. Lizzie looked helplessly from one to the other. She wanted to entice her children back to the kitchen with the promise of more milk, but Fran was giving a different order.

Yancy reached out to touch Nate’s hair. This time, he didn’t retreat.

“Such lovely children,” Yancy said.

“I suppose,” Fran said.

Yancy waved her hand. “Now you know I would give anything to have some little colored children in my house. Now that we live in town, Mr. Butterfield only allows us to keep that old couple we’ve had for so long. I tried to convince him to buy me a girl—especially after our own children grew up—but he wouldn’t have it. Said he didn’t want a nigger child living in our house. Do these live in the house with you?” She tilted her face down, as if smelling Nate’s hair.

“No,” Fran said, watching Yancy. Then she did something that surprised Lizzie. She reached out for Rabbit and brought her close. The child leaned back between Fran’s legs. “It’s too bad you don’t have children in your house, Yancy. I’ll have to speak to Mr. Butterfield and convince him to buy you a new slave.”

“Lizzie, have these children eaten?” Fran said without looking up.

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Well, bring them some dessert. Do you like blackberries, boy?”

Nate was unable to resist the offer. “Yes, missus.”

Lizzie didn’t move.

“That’s a great idea!” Yancy said. “Let’s take it in the parlor. Let’s take the children with us and fill them with sweets.”

Lizzie stood there for a moment after the women and children had left the room.

When she returned to the kitchen, Dessie hissed at her: “Your childrens don’t do what they told. You told them to stay out the way. Even you won’t be able to save them this time. And they gone deserve whatever they get.”

“You leave me and my children alone,” Lizzie said.

Lizzie stood outside the parlor door listening with the plates of pie in her hands. Yancy Butterfield was laughing.

Lizzie pushed open the door with her foot and found the two women sitting with a child perched in each lap. Nate was telling them about Brother Rabbit and Brother Partridge. He was telling them how both Rabbit and Partridge liked the same girl. Partridge pretended his head was cut off by tucking it in his feathers, and convinced Rabbit that he should do the same because it was a noble thing. So Brother Rabbit went around trying to find someone to cut off his head. When no one agreed to do it, Partridge obliged him. After Partridge cut off Rabbit’s head, he untucked his own and went down to the dance where he could have the girl all to himself.

Lizzie had not known Nate knew the story well enough to tell someone else. His speech came in short, excited bursts. The women laughed hard, as if they had never heard such a story.

Lizzie backed into the kitchen.

“What’s wrong now?” Dessie asked when she saw Lizzie.

That night Drayle slept beside Lizzie while Rabbit and Nate slept beside Fran in her bed.

And Lizzie didn’t sleep at all.