The Long Song (6 page)

Kitty took a step so she might wrest July’s hand away from Caroline. But John Howarth shouted on her, ‘Stay!’ Then, flicking his hand at her, he said, ‘Show your mistress your legs.’

Kitty did not move.

‘Lift up your skirt and show her your legs.’ When Kitty still did not take heed of his command he huffed, ‘Oh, good God,’ before grabbing the worn cloth of Kitty’s skirt and raising it almost to her waist. Kitty turned her head to one side as John Howarth beckoned his sister. He commenced rubbing his hand up and down Kitty’s leg saying, ‘Come and feel the muscles.’

Caroline gaped once more, for Kitty’s legs were so dark and stout, like the trunk of a tree they looked to have grown through the solid earth.

‘Come on, Caroline, I have her, she won’t bite. Come and feel their strength.’ Caroline, with July still holding her, stepped forward to run skittering fingers along Kitty’s calf. But Kitty only turned to look at the touch when she felt July’s small hand do the same. ‘It’s the work on the cane pieces, they are absolutely made for it. This one will be in the first gang—cutting cane, holing, manuring, tasks that take a bit of strength. Although with a child . . . nursing mothers usually labour with the weaklings in the second gang. It’s lighter work—feeding the mill, picking up trash from the ground, that sort of thing.’

As Caroline straightened up she asked, ‘And does this little girl work?’

‘Weeding,’ he replied, ‘bringing water to the field slaves with the third gang. Nothing much. For children it’s more like a game. But this one,’ John said whilst slapping Kitty’s thighs, ‘just look at her. The overseer, Dewar, says that when negro women bend over in the field their breasts droop and dangle so much they look to be a beast with six limbs.’

John began to laugh until his sister said, ‘Oh, please do not be so vulgar.’

‘Can you imagine putting silk stockings over these, Caroline. Some in England would say it should be done,’ he said.

Kitty drew away from his touch, but he pulled her back to stand where he had placed her. He let the fabric of her skirt drop, still smiling with the mirth of it all. As John Howarth climbed back into the gig to recommence their journey, he flicked his hand at Kitty saying, ‘Go on, you can go now.’ But Kitty did not move, for she could see that her child, July, was still captured in the thrall of Mrs Caroline Mortimer; her hand still grasped her, her eyes still fixed upon her.

‘Go on, off with you,’ John Howarth said once more.

Kitty called to July, beckoning her with an urgency that cracked in her throat. But her child paid no heed, too busy was she with her new playmate. She skipped at Caroline’s feet, sprinkling the picked flowers upon the floor before her.

‘Oh, she’s adorable,’ Caroline said again.

Her brother, impatient to finish the journey around the estate, called out to Caroline, ‘Well, bring her then.’

Kitty turned to face her master.

‘Come along, Caroline. Hurry. We need to get out of the sun.’

‘Can I take her?’ she asked.

Kitty tried to seize air enough to breathe.

‘Yes, if she’ll amuse you. She would be taken soon enough anyway. It will encourage her to have another. They are dreadful mothers, these negroes.’

‘She’ll be my companion here,’ Caroline said. ‘I could train her for the house, or to be my lady’s maid.’

‘Well, you could try,’ her brother said. ‘But hurry—this heat is getting fierce.’

Kitty stepped to snatch July from Caroline’s grasp. But Caroline slapped at Kitty’s hands shouting, ‘What’s she doing?’

John Howarth raised his whip at Kitty, his face fiercely showing his intent, ‘Be on your way,’ he said, ‘leave the child to your mistress.’

Kitty, letting go of her child, just said, ‘But she go Unity Pen, massa. We have pass.’

‘Be quiet,’ John Howarth shouted, ‘Your mistress here will take her now. She will be up at the big house. Now, go about your business.’

Caroline struggled to get into the carriage for she had July tight in her grasp and the child still carried the stench of negroes; it was hard to lift the child whilst averting her nose from her pungency. As she settled them both upon the seat of the gig, Caroline asked her brother, ‘Don’t you think Agnes will think she’s adorable?’

And he replied, ‘Little niggers no longer make my wife smile,’ as the gig rode briskly away from Kitty.

 

 

 

 

R
EADER, COME WITH ME to peer through a window of the great house. But let me place you upon the inside of this fine dwelling, in a room caressed by a cooling night breeze. Rest there upon a chair cushioned in silken fabric smooth to your touch, within the shadowy gleam of several of the finest beeswax candles that perfume the air with a sweet scent.

Idle awhile. Muse, if you will, on whether to begin a game of solitaire upon the open card table. Or perhaps you may desire a refreshing drink. Yawn wide and stretch, for it is late into the evening. Do as you would. All I ask is that when this waste-wiling is done, you turn your head once more to that window.

Do not worry yourself with the openings of slatted wood which allow the breeze to carry in the raucous rattle of croaking night creatures. Nor that high-arched window on the farthest wall which, during the day, gives you a clear view over the lawn to the horizon, but at night shines so black that your reflection is caught as clear as if in a mirror. No, only concern yourself with the small window. See how the leaves of the plant life crowd out any view but that of the dense foliage that is piled and pushed up against it. With a quick glance some of the palms can appear like fingers pressing against the glass. Come, look closer still, for amongst that unruly undergrowth, if you search with a careful eye, you will see that there are indeed fleshy fingers splaying there. The fingers of Kitty’s right hand as she leans against the window in anguish to glimpse her only child, July, there within.

‘No look so downcast, for your pickney will do her pee-pee ’pon a throne,’ Miss Rose trilled to Kitty when she had returned to her hut without July. ‘In the great house them have chair made of fine wood and them sit ’pon it—straight back and all—and them let them doings drop. And it tinkle like rain ’pon a calabash as it splash into a bowl. And when all is done them close a wooden lid ’pon the waste—so there be no odour to foul up them day. Them be so fine up in the great house. It be where Miss July belong. She knows she be overseer Dewar’s pickney but never does him even look ’pon her. But in the great house she will at last feel to be a white man’s child. Come sit ’pon this bowl to pee-pee, them will tell her. Is merriment you mus’ be feel. Miss July at the great house! Come, she will get shoe!’

Yet every night Kitty would creep along the rutted path, sneak through the cultured garden, scale a low stone wall to crawl through that matted vegetation. At that glass she would strain to keep her leaf shape and not be revealed as an ugly negro field slave who was so out of her place that the cat-o’-nine-tails would surely be sent for if she were caught. And there she would wait—staring in upon a room so sublime that she dared not take a breath for fear the air would prove too noble for her.

 

 

 

 

I
BELIEVED MY HAND to be improving. ‘Too crabbed, Mama, you must take more care,’ was the complaint from my son, Thomas. ‘Look at the stains of ink upon your fingers. See then how your soiled hand prints smudges all across the paper.’

‘It is the pen that drips so,’ I informed him.

‘It is not the fault of the pen that you place too much ink upon its nib,’ said he.

‘Do you resent me the ink?’ I asked him.

‘No, of course not.’

‘Then is it the quantity of paper I might use that is vexing you?’

‘Nothing is vexing me, Mama. I am just cautioning you to take a little care and tap the nib of the pen upon the inkstand to shake off the excess that might otherwise drip across the paper.’

‘But this dripping and staining is not my offence—this ink be inferior,’ I told him.

‘There is nothing wrong with the ink,’ he answered back to me.

‘Then why it drip so?’

‘Because you must tap the pen nib to shake off the ink before you put it to the paper.’

And so this argument went around. Reader, I am not a woman to stay within a household when all welcome is gone. I stood up from my desk and departed the room. Taking up my valise I placed within it only those few possessions that I first brought into this house those many years before—my square of lace and my blue and white plate. I would take nothing away with me that was given by my son. No feathered Sunday hat nor new Common Sense Oxford shoe, not even a spool of embroidery silk would he find about me.

Thomas, seeing me firm in my resolve to leave his house, at once began calling for Lillian. Always when he has wronged me, he calls for Lillian. All his battles his wife must fight for him, like she be his mama and he her pickney.

She entered in upon my room like a howling wind to grab the valise from my hand. How we struggled there we two! I am an old, old woman and she has not more than forty years, yet still she fought me like a fever. It was fear of cracking my plate further that made me stop.

‘Miss July, please put down the bag,’ said she. ‘This is your son’s home and you are welcome here. And you know this. Thomas meant no ill by you.’

Now, reader, although I have suffered hardships much greater than wrestling with Lillian—who would, let me assure you, have been no match for me if our ages had been equal—still I ache. All of my bones have voice to speak to me. Even the smallest of them chats the language of pain. But I bear it as best an old woman can. Yet that quarrel sent me to my bed with a head sore as an aching heart. Even my son’s apology just throbbed at my ear. I believed my deliverance had come; that my maker, be him deity or devil, desired to hear my tale not written as some fool-fool book but spoken close into his ear.

But a little callaloo soup and a few mouthfuls of stewed goat, saw me much improved. Now, back at my desk, I am fitter than when I was taken.

As I write, I can see that if I tap the nib of this new pen—a fine instrument with an ebony holder which my son sent away for from Montgomery Ward in America—against the side of the inkstand that contains the new bottle of glossy-black ink, then no drip occurs across the page. Come, it makes it much easier to read.

‘Marguerite, Marguerite!’ That is Caroline Mortimer calling out for July. She had resolved to call her slave Marguerite, for she liked the way the name tripped upon her tongue like a trill. Yet it was only Caroline Mortimer who did look upon July’s face to see a Marguerite residing there. And so we must return to my tale.

Caroline Mortimer was reclining upon her daybed too limp from the midday heat to raise her hand to ring the bell. ‘Marguerite,’ she screeched once more, before collapsing with the effort that such bellowing demanded. Reader, many years have passed within my tale and it was now eight, maybe nine, years that Caroline has been living at the great house of the plantation named Amity. Nowadays, the heat from that Jamaican sun made Caroline floppy as a kitten from sun-up to sundown. She no longer had spirit to fight its languid thrall. A little light embroidery or the arranging of a vase of flowers were just too much toil for her.