An Unlikely Friendship (15 page)

It had red mud in the cracks between the logs. The roof was made out of regular boards that had so much space between them that when it rained we had to move our bed. And at night I could look up and see the stars through those boards.

Our bed ticks, or mattresses, were stuffed with wheat straw. Some of our people slept on rye or oat straw. The fireplace was a good size and even though we ate at the big house, Mama always kept a fire going with 'taters and corn pone roasting in the ashes for anybody who might want to stop by.

We didn't see much of Robert since he went to the Theological Seminary part of the college. Robert wanted to be a minister. But shortly after we arrived it was his birthday so Grandma Sarry made him a special cake. Aunt Charlotte's daughters Amy, Hanna, and Lucy brought it into the dining room with me in tow. We brought it right to his table. And that sweet-talking Robert didn't have a thing to say, he was so surprised.

"Are these your slaves, Robert?" one of his friends asked.

"In so many ways they are like family," Robert said.

The other boys at the table hooted at that. "Well said, old man. I couldn't have put it better myself," one called Josh said.

They called Robert "Old Man," because he was so serious.

T
HE COLLEGE CHURCH
had a new pastor by the name of Reverend J. D. Paxton.

We all went to his Presbyterian church of a Sunday, where he reminded us slaves of the importance of our faith. He talked right at us, telling us to be patient and obedient. He was a kindly man who had a dozen slaves of his own.

It didn't take us servants in Massa's house long to see that Paxton's slaves were better clothed than we were. Even his older boys, who measured out and fixed the stock feed and fetched in wood and water, had good sturdy trousers to keep them warm and not just long linsey-woolsey shirts and ragged pants. The women and girls wore fringed shawls to church and had poke bonnets with ruffles around them. Their dresses looked store-bought while ours, also store-bought, looked shabby in comparison.

Their chillun slaves were all the time sucking peppermint candy, and they told us about Raw Head and Bloody Bones who lived in the woods and waited to eat up little chilluns.

One day, after we had been there about six months, the Reverend's chillun slaves told us that they would soon be free, that they were going to a place called Liberia in Africa.

Their names were Alma, Francine, Allie, and Joan. The boys were Hal and Jupiter.

"Free, free, free," they chanted in front of me and Jane and Aunt Charlotte's girls. "We're goin' home."

"You got no home there," Jane told them. "You never lived in Liberia."

"We all do," said Joan, the oldest. "Reverend says he sees the error of his ways. He says he is having a crisis of conscience. Whatever that is. And he can't make it right in his heart to keep us anymore."

The rest of us did not know what a crisis of conscience was, either. But we understood the all of it, all right. Reverend Paxton and his wife had joined something called the American Colonization Society. These people freed their slaves and had set up a colony in Liberia for them to go to.

For a while everything went along the same. Winter came and went and then one day when I was helping Grandma Sarry in the kitchen garden, Allie, Francine, Alma, and Joan came through the gate.

They were all gussied up in their store-bought dresses and ruffled bonnets.

"We came to say good-bye," Joan told us. "We're leaving."

I noticed, beyond the fence and in the road, the Reverend's carriage. And there he stood waiting with his wife and Hal and Jupiter.

"You're leaving?" I couldn't believe it. "Just like that?"

"Master freed us," said Joan. "We're going with him and Mistress to meet the people who will take us to Liberia."

"We're going on a boat!" Alma's eyes were shining.

Free?
The word went into my mind and whirled round and round, but found no place to rest. It was not understood, not welcomed.
How do you get free?
I wondered. "Can you be a slave one minute and free the next?" I asked.

"Master has to free you," Joan said. "He has the important mens make out papers. Only our master can do it because he's a reverend."

I must have looked like my spirit was on the ground because Grandma Sarry put a comforting arm around my shoulder. The girls left. I stood watching at the gate until the carriage was out of sight.

"It's not that your massa has to be a reverend to free you," Grandma said.

I looked up at her.

"Any massa can do it if he takes it in his mind to," she explained.

"Will our massa ever send us back to Africa, Grandma?"

"Don't count on it, child. There's only one way to get free if you want it bad enough."

"Run?"

"That, too. Only there's too many dangers in that. A better way is to be patient, like the reverend says. Learn your sewing. Learn your book. And grow up being extra special at something. Then have Massa hire you out and get paid for your services and save some money so you can buy your own freedom."

"Buy my own freedom?" Never had I heard such a thing.

"Buy yourself," she said. "Your daddy is trying to do just that right now, don't think he isn't. He's got his master to agree to hire him out so he can make the hundred and twenty dollars a year he needs to buy his own freedom and come to us."

"Oh, Grandma!" I hid my face in her skirt. "How can I do it?"

"First you grow up," she said. "And then if'n you still want it bad enough, you'll find a way to do it." And with that she turned and went back to the garden.

I
FORGOT TO TELL HOW
, when we left the plantation, Massa did two things that turned out bad for us.

He brought along Big Red to oversee his slaves and he purchased Uncle Raymond, Mama's brother, who was at the same plantation where my daddy lived. I like to think he purchased Uncle Raymond for Mama's sake, because he couldn't purchase my daddy.

Uncle Raymond was a man of good parts. He was gentle and he laughed a lot, and once at Hampden-Sydney he taught us chilluns to dance. He played the banjo and taught us the turkey trot and the buzzard lope and the Mary Jane.

He taught us to hold hands and dance in a ring, to sing, "
You steal my true love and I steal your'en.
"

The men and women usually joined in, carrying big, fat lighted torches of kindling wood while they danced.

In no time at all Uncle Raymond became uncle to every child on the place, nigra and white. That is, when he wasn't doing his job of making bricks.

There was building going on at the college, and when Massa brought along Uncle Raymond he right off hired him out to the college to make bricks out of the red clay that was all around.

He had to keep all the farm tools in order, too. Part of those tools were harnesses and plow lines.

In spring, around about April, Uncle Raymond lost a set of harnesses. Massa gave him a new set and told him that if he lost those he would be punished real bad-like.

All I can say is that Uncle Raymond must have known a side of Massa that the rest of us never knew about. Because of how it turned out in the end.

E
VERY MORNING WHEN
Mama got up, she took a bucket and walked down to Dry Fork Creek to get some water to wash herself with.

One morning we heard her outside, screaming. I was in the kitchen with Grandma Sarry, having breakfast.

"That's your mama," Grandma said, and she ran out the kitchen door.

I ran out after her. And sure enough, there was Mama running up the hill from the creek, her skirts all flapping and her hair all askew. You'd think Raw Head and Bloody Bones were chasing her.

"Child, what is it, child?" Grandma yelled.

"Raymond," Mama sobbed. "Oh, Mama, he's dead."

"Dead? How? Why?"

"What happened, Aggy?" A door slammed and Massa came out of the residence.

"Raymond. Oh, Massa, he done kilt himself. He done hang himself on the tree down by the creek."

***

U
NCLE
R
AYMOND HAD
lost the second set of harnesses. "He hanged himself rather than be punished the way Massa punishes his servants," Grandma said.

As it turned out in the end, we found that the harness had been stolen. Big Red found the man who stole it, a nigra who was not punished for it because everybody was in an uproar over Uncle Raymond.

Mama never again took up her bucket in the morning and went down to Dry Fork Creek to get her water. I had to do it for her. But after that I learned that there were better fears to have than Raw Head and Bloody Bones. And they were the people all around us all the time.

T
HEY CUT
Uncle Raymond down and washed him good and wrapped him in a winding-sheet, then laid him on a cooling board where he would stay until his coffin was made. The cooling board was like an ironing board, only it had four sturdy legs.

They put a suit of clothes on him, what looked like an old suit of Massa's.

After the slaves came in from the fields that night we held his funeral. They dug a grave in the slave graveyard, which was different than the regular one behind the church. Some white folks came to the funeral. We sang "Hark from the Tomb" and "Amazing Grace," and Mama cried something fierce. All the children cried.

I heard Massa say in a low voice to Big Red, "Damn, I lost a prime nigra. Worth from three to five thousand."

R
OBERT AND SOME
of his friends had gone possum hunting. Robert missed the hunting he used to do at home and so Massa let him go. Grandma Sarry said if he fetched in five or six she'd cook them up just as Robert liked them, sprinkled with butter and pepper and baked down till the gravy was thick and brown. Robert liked to gnaw the bones.

Tonight, Grandma Sarry promised, she would make up a whole mess of possum for Robert and his friends.

M
ASSA LET THEM
have the dogs. Robert knew how to tote possum home: split a stick and run their tail through the crack, then carry the stick across your shoulders. That way you didn't get bit. Sacks are no good. They gnaw their way out of sacks.

I was out in the quarters awaiting Robert's return when Mama called me into the house. I hated going inside because the June air was so soft and sweet. The baby was sleeping, so I thought I'd be free for a while.

Mistress had had her baby, a girl named Elizabeth Margaret, in May, the sweetest little baby girl with a beautiful little mouth and nose and fingernails like a real lady's. And true to Mistress's word, I was the baby's private nurse. I would belong to her, Mistress had explained, all of my life. I was the Burwells' gift to little Elizabeth Margaret.

Of course, that meant moving out of Mama's cabin and into the big house. I slept on a straw pallet on the floor next to the baby's cradle all night in case she cried. And cry she did, every two hours at first, and I was to run and get Ellie, the wet nurse brought up from the quarters to feed and change her. I was not to wake Mistress, and I was not to pick the baby up.

I did my chores well that first month. All day I kept the flies off little Elizabeth Margaret's face. I sang to her when she was awake, all the slave songs I knew. And I didn't even cry, though I missed my own bed, my own Mama next to me at night. I was still just five years old.

I
WENT INTO
the house. Sure enough little Elizabeth was crying. I went to look for Ellie, the wet nurse, but she was nowhere to be found. So I went back into the baby's room and did what I was told to do when she fussed. I rocked the cradle.

I reckon I rocked it too much because it tipped over and little Elizabeth Margaret fell out. There she was on the floor, crying as if Raw Head and Bloody Bones were both coming to get her. Well now, I was in a fix all right. I ran out into the hall and called out. I looked over the banister, but nobody was in sight. I could hear them sure enough, from the dining room, where they were eating and laughing.

I ran back into the baby's room. All I wanted to do was stop her from crying.

It was then that I saw the fireplace shovel, sitting there bold as the brass it was. In a wink I knew what to do. And so I grabbed the shovel and tried to pick up little Elizabeth Margaret with it, just like I'd seen servants do with ashes. Could she be heavier than a shovelful of ashes?

I tried and tried, but no matter. That no-count shovel wouldn't pick her up.

"Lizzy, what are you doing?"

Sure enough they came running then. A whole passel of them. The room was full of people of a sudden. People who had been nowhere on God's earth a few minutes ago. My mama, Ellie, the wet nurse, Mistress, even Massa.

Someone grabbed my hand and pulled the shovel out of it. Someone else picked up Elizabeth Margaret who wouldn't stop wailing if Moses himself came into the room. Someone grabbed my arm and handed me over to Ellie. It was Mistress. "Take this child outside and have her whipped good," Mistress said.

I was handed over from one person to another like a piece of meat on its way to the smokehouse. With each person who roughly grabbed me I grew in years. I was no longer five years old. I was every slave on Massa's plantation who'd ever been dragged to a tree to be tied up. I felt the choking fear, the numbing disbelief, the animal instinct to escape.

I felt like a possum treed by dogs.

I knew now why Uncle Raymond had hanged himself, even thinking such was going to happen to him. I recollect screaming, "Mama, help me. Massa, no, it's me, your little Lizzy." I screamed all their names while I felt myself thrust out the door and handed over to a grinning Big Red.

"Finally gonna get your comeuppance, ain't you, little gal?"

He had something to say with every action he took. Dragging me across the portico. "Think you're so special, do you?"

Tying me around the post of the portico. "I'll show you special. Sashaying around here with your nose in the air."

Delivering the first blow. " 'Bout time Massa decided to break you."

I screamed until there wasn't any more voice left in me. He wasn't supposed to brand me with a hot iron, was he? Then why did it feel like a hot iron?