Women and Other Monsters (2 page)

Her windows were open to keep the smell of sickness from wading into the rest of the house.  Drums sounded and voices chanted in the far off fields.  “What is that music?” Clarissa said. 

The nurse ignored the question as she quickly collected her medical instruments and placed them into her bag.  “I am glad you are awake, Miss Rutherford.  I will tell your father.” 

Her departure was followed by the sound of running in the hall and Francis Jennings bursting into her room.  “Praise be to God!” he said. 

Mr. Rutherford followed him, weak and disheveled.  Her father trembled as he took her hands in his and tears spilled down his face when he pressed his lips to her hand.   

Henry Jim, one of the house slaves, knocked lightly on the door and coughed.  “Boss?  Dem negroes is at it again, suh.  Mr. Paul went to look for a few dat run off, and the others is acting up.  Want me to go fetch him?”

Rutherford waved Henry Jim away, focusing only on his daughter.  Jennings pushed out his chest and said, “Mr. Rutherford is busy.  I shall address it.”

Clarissa watched them leave and scowled.  “Now strangers and house negroes handle our affairs for us, father?”

He hushed her.  “That young man has not left your side since you were attacked by that vicious creature.  He is the one who saved your life.  He is the one who prayed for a miracle, and it happened!”

“I did not ask him for such a thing,” she said.  “I would have been better off dead than like this.”

“Stop speaking nonsense.  You must rest.” 

“Now that I’m a cripple?”

“Be silent!”

“What else would you call it?”

“You should have died, Clarissa.  Do you understand that?  The doctors could not understand why you survived the attack, let alone the amputation.  It is an actual, proven miracle done by God’s hand.” 

She touched her father’s face gently and said, “Poor father.  Only a devil would do this.” 

Rutherford pushed his daughter’s hand away and called for the nurse to bring more morphine.       

***

When night fell, she woke feeling ill and needing fresh air.  She slid out of bed and crept along the wall, using furniture to prop herself up.  She hopped toward the window and heard angry voices in the courtyard below. 

There was a beaten slave strung up by the wrists from a large wooden post at the edge of the field.  Francis Jennings unraveled the length a long leather whip that he made dance in the grass like a snake as he moved within the ring of onlookers. 

The bound slave begged for mercy, but Jennings ignored him and wound up his arm, snapping the whip forward so that it leapt into the air.  It struck the negro’s back with a sharp crack and split his skin wide.  Jennings twirled the whip again, using the grass to clean the blood from its leathery surface.  “Only nine more to go,” Jennings said.       

Clarissa looked out past the courtyard, seeing the same pale man, incandescent in the dark fields, staring up at her.  She pressed against the window and called out to him so loudly that some of the slaves looked up from the courtyard.

The man turned and disappeared into the fields.  Tobacco flowers collapsed from their stems in his wake and floated to the earth like falling stars.

***

Francis Jennings proposed marriage directly to Clarissa’s father, who accepted on his daughter’s behalf.  When Rutherford went into his daughter’s bedroom to tell her, she hurled things at him until he left the room. 

She lay there beating her fists against the bed futilely, screaming like a barn owl.  She caught her reflection in a cheval glass and rolled out of the bed with a thud.  She dragged her body across the floor elbow-by-elbow, until she was close enough to smash the mirror’s surface with a fist.  Razor edged shards of glass rained down on her, slicing open her back and arms. 

Pieces of glass were scattered all around her, and she reached for the biggest shard, wrapping her fingers around it tightly until blood trickled from them.  Clarissa turned the point toward her chest and extended both arms.  “I have had enough,” she whispered, and plunged the tip directly into her heart.  She collapsed on the floor and waited for death. 

Death did not occur.  She wrenched the glass side to side, at first confused and then enraged that death eluded her.  The shard broke in her hands, and she peeled apart the wound, inspecting the severed heart. 

She grabbed a larger piece of glass, lifted it to her chest, and was immobilized by the sight of the pale man staring down at her.

He scooped her up with one arm, keeping her close to his chest and pinning her arms to her sides. He pulled her hair back to see the wound and pressed his mouth to it, blowing into her with the same radiating heat that had brought her back to life at the creek’s bank.  She screamed and kicked against him but by the time he released her, the hole in her chest was already sealed. 

Clarissa sobbed, “Why are you doing this to me?” 

He stepped back and vanished into the shadows. 

***

Mr. Rutherford brought in the finest craftsmen to carve Clarissa a wooden leg that would attach to her stump.  The household’s seamstresses fashioned a wide skirt for her wedding dress that would hide the contraption when she stood.  She used a cane to walk down the aisle to where Francis Jennings stood waiting, passing a long line of attendees who attempted not to look at her with pity. 

Mr. Rutherford was barely strong enough to stay awake during the dinner after the ceremony.  It was a sparse affair, attended by the white members of the house and several rough-looking men that Francis had brought over from his family’s company to help run the plantation.  Clarissa heard Mr. Paul say to another overseer, “Look at these bastards.  They think nothing of handing out beatings until our darkies are half-dead.  But our slaves have been through worse, and they don’t fear much.”  He glanced in Clarissa’s direction and said, “Unless she’s around.”

Clarissa turned to him and said, “Why is that, Mr. Paul?”

Paul smiled nervously and said, “I am sure I have no idea what you mean, Mrs. Jennings.” 

Clarissa found him later in the stable, catching her breath as she balanced against the wall.  “What is it about me that the slaves are afraid of?”

Paul continued stroking the mane of one of the horses and said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Is it my deformity?”

Paul turned and looked at her sharply, “You check your tone around me, young lady.” Paul had worked for the Rutherford’s since he came off the boat from Ireland, when Clarissa was still a child.  He’d taught her to ride cart horses and slid her sips of whiskey during long, boring holiday dinners.  These things crossed his mind as he said, “You are still a beauty, leg or no, aye?”

“Well, what is it then?”

“Some old witch is saying you’ve made some sort of compact with one of their African devils.  It’s getting the others all stirred up.” 

Clarissa laughed quickly and touched her chest when she said, “What rubbish.”

“Don’t fret about it, love.  I put a beating on the ones who were making the most noise about it.  I don’t expect any more trouble.”  

***

The next day, one of the youngest field negroes was caught stealing a chicken from the hatchery.  He was not even twelve but he fought like an animal as Francis’ men dragged him toward the chopping block.  A crowd of hardened, dark-skinned faces looked on, speaking to one another in urgent voices.   

The workers held the boy down and stretched out his arm across the stained wooden surface of the block.  One of them picked up an axe and pumped the pedal on the sharpening stone, filling the air with the sound of screeching metal and sparks that popped in the disappearing daylight. 

Mr. Paul broke through the ranks and shoved the man with the axe away from the stone, “This is an outrage.  You touch that axe to that boy and I’ll kill you myself.”

The axeman grinned at him and told him he had the permission of the master. 

“Mr. Rutherford would never disable his own worker.  It makes no sense.  The boy will be useless.”

“Aye, but Mr. Jennings is in charge now,” the axeman said.  “And he is willing to sacrifice one thieving darkie to keep the other scum under control.”

The boy’s mother pushed Paul out of the way and went after the axeman.  “Don’t you hurt my boy!  Don’t hurt my boy!”

Paul grabbed her and dragged her back toward the others.  “They will do worse to you next.  Stay back!”

The axeman lined up his weapon just below the boy’s elbow.  The boy gritted his teeth and cursed at the men as the axe blade touched his forearm.  He raised the axe high overhead and was about to swing it down when Clarissa’s voice boomed “Stop!”

Henry Jim hurried across the field with Clarissa on his back.  He huffed and caught his breath while the slaves parted to allow him through.  “Let go of that boy immediately,” Clarissa said.

“But Mrs. Jennings, we caught him stealing.”

“I said let him go.  That is my property and if you harm one hair on his head, I shall see you lynched.”     

The workers released him and glared into the crowd as he ran toward his mother.  Clarissa told Henry Jim to let her down, and she balanced on one foot when she said, “Every white man here is to leave immediately.  Go back into the house until I return.  That includes you, Mr. Paul.” 

“Absolutely not,” he said.  “And leave you alone with these animals?”

“Henry Jim will stay with me.  He will make sure nothing happens.”

The field negroes eyed Henry Jim suspiciously, but he stood firmly at Clarissa’s side and extended his arm for her balance against him.  Once the others left, Clarissa said, “Who among you says I have been consorting with this African devil?” 

“Him is not a devil,” a voice called out.  “Him is tasked with taking souls across to dey other side.”  An old woman limped past the others to face Clarissa.  She wore a necklace of carved ornaments and beads that rattled as she walked.  “You was meant to cross too, but Lord Gauna refused to take you.”

“Don’t you listen to none of their mumbo-jumbo,” Henry Jim said.  “They just stupid mammies.  We should go back now-”

“Why did he refuse me?  I did nothing to him,” Clarissa insisted.

The old woman shook her head, “Maybe to teach you a lesson.  Maybe because him have other interest in you.  That don’t matter.  All that matter is that if he don’t want to do his job, we must make him.”

“Then make him,” Clarissa said.  Henry Jim’s eyes widened and he began to protest, but Clarissa spoke over him, “Let us go at once.” 

The woman looked at her and said, “First get me that chicken.” 

***

“Lord, have mercy,” Henry Jim muttered, lifting a lantern over his head.  He stumbled in the darkness, following the old woman through a narrow alley of makeshift huts.  Clarissa was clinging to his back and Henry Jim turned his head to say, “I don’t like nothing about these people.”  

“Stop sounding foolish and be silent, Henry Jim.  These are your people.” 

“No, ma’am.  I’m with you folks up there on the hill, through and through,” he said. 

The old woman took them toward one of the last dwelling and threw back the blanket covering the entrance.  She ducked inside and waved for them to follow.  Henry Jim bent his knees to go in and said that it smelled, “Worse than a hog house in August.” 

 There was a rusted pot on the floor, set above a smoldering fire.  The old woman told them to sit and asked for the chicken.  “We must call Gauna to us in order to bind him,” she said.  “It is him that blocks your path to the next world.” 

She held the chicken over the pot and wrenched its neck, twisting until its head came off in her hand and chucking it past Henry Jim’s ear.  She stifled a laugh when he flinched.  Blood from the flapping carcass went into the pot, bubbling on the surface until white smoke rose from the broth.  The old woman pulled out a bottle of whiskey and yanked the cork out with her teeth, pouring the bottle into the cauldron.  She dipped a ladle into it and brought up a spoonful of steaming muck.  “Drink,” the old woman said.  “This potion make you irresistible to Gauna.  Him come running.”  

Henry Jim put his arm around Clarissa protectively.  “Ain’t no way.  That’s enough of this mess.  I’m taking you back up to the house, Miss Clarissa.” 

Clarissa shrugged him off of her and took the ladle from the old woman.  It smelled foul and tasted of iron, but Clarissa slurped it down quickly.  She passed back the ladle to the woman and wiped her mouth with her shirt sleeve.  “What now?”

“You must finish it.”

Clarissa grimaced and said, “Let me do it then.”  She leaned over the pot and scooped as much of the soup into her ladle as it would hold.  There were living things inside the drink that slithered into her mouth and squirmed inside of her stomach.  Small bones rattled against her teeth but she crushed them and swallowed.

“All of it.  You must drink all of it.”  The old woman picked up the chicken carcass and slit it open with a knife.  She pulled out the animal’s heart and squeezed it in her hand, making blood drip onto the dirt floor of the hut.  She drew a circle with the blood, making symbols inside of it then sprinkling powder from a rusted can along the borders of the circle.  “Stay back, stupid,” she shouted at Henry Jim.