Wench (15 page)

F
or the next three days, Drayle traveled with the men to hunt and fish. Lizzie kept herself busy by going to the hotel each morning. The colored servants readily doled out chores, and Lizzie was glad for the work. She tried dutifully to get everything done, all the while observing the white women as they preened over their hair, chatted about the latest fashion, fussed over their children. They were mostly cincinnati women, up for a short vacation with their husbands, wives of elected officials, lawyers, businessmen. The hotel offered suites of rooms for families choosing not to rent cottages.

While working in the main hotel, Lizzie learned that while the men went off together, the women stayed behind and relinquished secrets to one another.

One woman whispered of a lover half her age who liked to kiss the soles of her feet.

Another spoke of her ill mother and how she would be relieved when the elder woman finally “met her Maker.”

A petite woman who looked very young to be married, even to Lizzie, spoke of how she sometimes spanked her servant on the bottom, giggling as she described how she forced the woman to pull down her underpants and bend over.

Between snatches of gossip, Lizzie admired their dresses—floating affairs that were fuller than any dresses she had ever seen. She was so curious about these that she sneaked into one of the rooms so she could rummage through the armoire. She found a hoop with wires of metal. Did they put this over their petticoats? Lizzie knew she would never recover from the thrill of these skirts. Even Miss Fran didn’t own one. Before the white women headed into town, they put on the finishing touches: bonnet, gloves, a small cape, and sometimes a parasol. And the shoes! Delicate little things held tight by ribbons.

When they wanted to bathe in the outdoor spring, the women changed into dark, woolen dresses with weighted hems. They met in the hotel lobby, tugging at their puffy hair bonnets as they chatted excitedly.

But Lizzie was especially impressed by the marvelous expense of the children’s outfits. She had never seen children so adorned. From the cover of her broomstick or dusting rag, she observed the young ones—the smart hats, expertly gathered knickers, ruffles, lace, ribbons, and bows. She had never known a child to wear silk before. It was too expensive. But some of the older girls wore dresses in the style of their mothers—in cotton and silk.

On the day before Drayle was to return, Lizzie took Mawu with her to the house. They chose to clean the front parlor where a group of white women sat around a table with bowls in front of them. A woman dressed in white spoke as she circled the table. The women stirred their concoctions. Lizzie and Mawu tried to get close enough to peer inside the bowls. The substance was yellowish brown and smelled like lemon. After much stirring, they spread the thick substance onto their faces. Then the leader of the
group told them to wait for a few moments while it hardened. One woman claimed that her face burned. But the others said they felt they could feel their complexions clearing up.

“Quick!” the leader called to Lizzie, clapping her hands. “Refill these buckets with fresh water,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am,” Lizzie answered under her breath.

“She’s a
slave
,” Lizzie heard someone say behind her as she and Mawu left the room, a bucket in each hand.

They returned with the water and watched as the women splashed their faces over the bowls.

Later, Lizzie and Mawu tried to reproduce something of the same. They sat on the steps of Lizzie’s cottage and mixed aloe with lemon juice and egg. Mawu was certain that she had heard mention of tree sap. Lizzie disagreed, arguing that the tree sap would be too hard to rinse off.

Reenie and Sweet arrived just as the two arguing women had agreed to let Lizzie win.

“What in Sam hill are y’all doing?” Reenie asked. Sweet put down a rag stuffed with dirty clothes.

Lizze paused. “We’re…” she thought of a word she’d read once, “…beautifying.”

“Well, I’ll be. Do it to me, too,” Sweet said. She sat beside them on the steps, and Lizzie spread it on her face. Surprisingly, Reenie sat too and turned her face up to be lathered with the thick mixture. When Lizzie was finished with everyone else’s faces, Mawu did the same for her.

They sat patiently waiting for it to dry.

“Y’all seen them white women doing this?” Reenie asked.

“Mmm hmmm,” Mawu said. “Some citified woman was showing them how.”

Lizzie tracked a ground beetle as it made its way toward her foot. The sun in the sky was almost reaching dusk, and even though they had passed the hottest part of the day, she still felt the
moisture dampening the back of her dress. The four women were quiet for a few moments, not wanting to mess up their faces.

Lizzie finally spoke, “Y’all think this gone make our faces white?”

“Maybe,” Sweet murmured.

The women left their things and walked down to the pond. They crouched close to one another beside the bank and splashed water onto their faces. Afterward, they studied their reflections in the pool. Lizzie picked at the mole on her nose. She wished she could pull it off.

Reenie dried her face on her dress. “I reckon this ain’t gone change the years on this old face.”

“Can y’all imagine,” Mawu began, “what the slaves back home would say? They would think us done gone plum crazy!”

“Is I white yet?” Lizzie asked.

Reenie put a finger on Lizzie’s chin, lifting her face to the light. “No’m. You is still the color of maple.”

They made their way back up the bank to the steps of Lizzie’s cottage. Even after Sweet had tied her laundry to her back and Reenie had tucked the reading primer back into her skirt and Mawu had pinned her hair, the women did not leave.

“Y’all wait here,” Lizzie said. She disappeared into her cottage and returned with a small bundle. She untied the knot. Inside were four small candies wrapped in red paper and two pamphlets.

“Miss Lizzie, you didn’t!” Sweet exclaimed.

Lizzie folded the top of the cloth back over her prizes. “If you don’t want it, just say the word. I’ll eat this candy myself.”

Mawu reached out to grab the bundle, and Lizzie jerked it back. “I’ll beat you first!”

“Hush, now!” Lizzie shouted above their laughter. She pressed a candy into each woman’s palm. They carefully unwrapped their treasures and placed them into their mouths.

Lizzie closed her eyes. She sucked it, scared that if she chewed,
it would not last as long. When Lizzie had swallowed the last bit of it, she relished the lingering taste of caramel on her tongue. She put the wrapper to her nose and smelled it. It made a soft crinkling sound.

Only Reenie ate hers quickly. “You got to enjoy thangs before they is taken away,” she murmured when she was done.

Lizzie opened the cloth again. The two pamphlets remained.

“What them is?” Sweet whispered.

Mawu snatched one up.

“Abolition,” Lizzie whispered.

Sweet took a step back. “Marse will kill me for sho if he catch me with that.”

“I can’t read yet nohow,” Reenie said. “You keep it.”

Lizzie sighed. “Y’all meet me here tomorrow night. I’ll read it to you.”

“I can read it my own self,” Mawu snapped even though they all knew she was not literate.

“We can read it together,” Lizzie said, fingering the wrinkled pages of the stolen pamphlet.

L
izzie’s hands were black with coal dust. Even though the coal chips were in bags, its edges were covered with soot. She took two bags from Philip and put them behind the stove in her cabin. She did not use coal often during the summer. The cottage was hot enough as it was. She tried to do most of her cooking outside, only using the stove every now and again to reheat. So she knew instantly that his gift of coal was only a pretense.

He offered to carry the bags for her, but she refused. When she turned around, he was standing in the middle of the parlor, his bulk dwarfing the room. He looked different somehow, as if he had combed his hair and greased his face. Lizzie hesitated before offering him a seat.

Not surprisingly, he refused. He was not supposed to spend any time inside the cottages except to enter and exit on the occasional chore. Both of them knew how dangerous it was for him to accept a seat inside.

“You look like you’ve got something to say,” Lizzie said.

He wiped his hands on his pants, streaking black marks down each leg. That gave Lizzie something to do. She brought over a washbasin and dipped a rag into it before passing the rag to him. He used it to wipe his pants, unintentionally spreading the smudges. Then he mopped his hands for longer than it took to clean them. The cloth grew dark. Before he gave the dirty rag back to her, he folded it neatly. He dried his hands on his shirt while he waited for her to clean her own hands in the water.

“It’s that woman, huh?” she said when she was done.

Philip looked surprised. “How you know?”

“Cause you’re making a mess. It’s got to be that woman.” They had only been in Ohio a little over a week.

“She’s probably forgot all about you by now, Philip.”

He shook his head and shifted to the other foot. “Naw she ain’t. I seen her last night.”

“Last night?” Lizzie had not seen the girl around the hotel this summer. And she did not think the barber had visited since their arrival. But Philip did look as if he had been grooming himself. She did not doubt his words.

He nodded.

“Where?”

He hesitated and Lizzie knew why. The memory of her betrayal of Mawu was still fresh. He was wondering if she would do the same to him.

“Philip, you’re like my brother. Ain’t no woman on earth closer to you than me.”

“Not no more.”

She felt her throat burn.

He started toward the door. She followed him and grabbed his forearm as he descended the back steps.

“Don’t you do that. Don’t you make me feel like I’m a stranger,” she said.

When he turned back to look at her, his eyes were red. She wanted to tell him that she had learned her lesson. She would not tell again. Even if it meant trouble for somebody she cared about.

She looked around to see if anyone saw them. They sat down on the step beside one another.

“Her name Virginia. She born free, but her daddy used to be a slave. He crossed the river with her mama when she was still in her stomach. He got his own barbering shop in Dayton.”

Lizzie gave Philip her most thoughtful expression. She tried not to let him see that she felt his love was even more impossible than hers. “He doesn’t mind his daughter loving a slave?”

She felt Philip tense beside her and she knew she had touched a sore spot. Surely he had thought about that. Surely he’d considered that the woman’s father might feel Philip was beneath his daughter.

“That woman love me!”

Lizzie nodded, determined to remain quiet this time.

“He want to free me. But if something don’t happen soon, I reckon he’ll tell his daughter to move on. He got three daughters, and the other two is already married. I don’t know nothing about no barbering business, but she say if I get freed, her daddy gone help me learn a trade. Only thing I know is horses. I reckon I got to learn about city living.”

He looked off toward the main hotel. Not far from them, a tall, slender colored servant fed a group of oversized ducks that had been preening their feathers on the edges of the pond. They squawked in anticipation of the bread and flapped their wings, sending bristly feathers into the air.

“If she don’t love me, I don’t know what I’m gone do.” he cupped his forehead in his palm.

Lizzie really wanted to know how and when he was sneaking off. At night? Through the woods? But she knew better than to ask. Philip was only asking for her ear, nothing more.

He turned and took Lizzie’s hands in his. “I got to ask something of you.”

So he wanted more than an ear. “What?”

“You close to Marsuh. I reckon you can talk to him about selling me. If anybody can change his mind, you can.”

Lizzie shook her head. “He already said no when the barber asked him outright. And Philip, if I can’t get him to free my children, what makes you think I can get him to free you?”

Philip dropped her hands and slapped his thigh. “Hell, Lizzie, those ain’t just your childrens. Those his childrens, too. He won’t free them cause he don’t want to lose them. They his blood. But I ain’t. He can always buy another slave with the money he get for me.”

Lizzie felt dizzy. Philip had spoken of Drayle freeing her children as if he had given it some thought. She had never heard Philip talk that way. He had an opinion.
Drayle would never free the children.

“Lizzie. Lizzie.”

“You’re like blood to him, too, Philip. When he bought you, you were just a boy. He doesn’t say he thinks of you as a son, but when he talks about you it sounds like he’s talking about Nate.”

“You and me different, Lizzie.”

“He won’t sell you neither,” she said. He stood, and she saw the wound she had carved into his shoulders. “He’ll beat you before he sells you,” she added, unable to stop herself.

Philip didn’t turn around to see the slash of malice on her face. He just walked away without saying another word.

T
hey were on their way to see the white woman. Lizzie couldn’t remember whose idea it had been in the first place, but Mawu was leading. And she was rushing. Lizzie wanted to walk slowly and enjoy the cool shade of the trees. Their steps competed with one another. Lizzie also wanted to forget her conversation with Philip earlier that day. But she couldn’t. “Hey girl, slow down!”

Mawu stopped and looked back at her.

“I’ve got something to ask you.”

“All right.” Mawu slowed until they were walking side-by-side.

“Philip wants me to ask Drayle about freeing him.”

Mawu tilted her chin and turned to look at her. “That woman?”

Lizzie nodded.

“So what you asking?”

“Should I?”

“Why not?” Mawu stopped walking.

Lizzie grabbed the long, arching stem of a butterfly bush. She pulled it to her nose and inhaled the flower. “Because it might be him or my children that get freed and not both.”

Mawu waved a hand. “Oh, Lizzie. Is that why you feeling that way? Pssh.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Mawu didn’t say anything.

Lizzie frowned. It was as if Mawu agreed with Philip that Drayle would never free the children.

Mawu stopped and placed the side of her hand against her forehead. “That way, right?” She pointed. They had not seen the woman yet that summer, and they were expecting her to still live on the same plot of land.

“I hope she ain’t dead.”

“Why do you care?” Lizzie asked.

Mawu shrugged. “I don’t suppose I care much about no white woman.”

“This one is different, huh?”

“Maybe.”

Lizzie stopped and scooped a grasshopper off a nearby leaf. She closed her hand around it and it scrambled in her palm, trapped.

“I’m glad you ain’t still mad at me. I never meant for you to get hurt.”

Mawu stopped and turned to look at her. “Your man. He God to you?”

“Yeah, he’s good to me,” Lizzie replied.

“No. I say is he God to you?”

“What do you mean?”

Mawu paused for a moment. “Tip done got another slave-woman pregnant. He ain’t bring her cause she pregnant. He don’t
like to mess with no pregnant womens. So he brung me. Say he got a thing for me even if I does hate him.”

Lizzie let the grasshopper go and it jumped out of her palm onto the ground beside them. For a moment she thought it had hurt itself. The jump from her palm to the ground had been a long one. But then she saw the blur of it as it leaped into the bushes beside the path.

A majestic cedar rose before them like a spirit. Lizzie couldn’t tell if it was welcoming or warning them. Two of the arms looked as if they had been sawed off. Or perhaps fallen off during an ice storm. She had heard about the harsh Ohio winters. She knew all about ice storms, but she couldn’t imagine the amount of snow they said Ohio got. She had only ever known Tennessee winters. Sometimes a bit of snow and sometimes not.

They approached the cabin from the back and threw pebbles at the back door from their cover in the woods. The weeds had grown up tall around the yard, but it did not look as if the cabin was abandoned. Lizzie thought she recognized the husband’s hat hanging beside the door, but she couldn’t be sure.

Just as Mawu gave a look to signal they should turn back, they heard someone moving. Then they saw her. She looked the same from a distance. Hair covered. Long plain dress. Wide hips and shoulders ambling along and then as she neared them, slowing down. She squatted down before a patch of yellow flowers and rifled through them. She searched carefully, as if for the perfect one, finally selecting four. She stretched and stood, rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead.

“Hey!” Mawu called out.

Glory turned around. Even though Mawu had called out to her, neither she nor Lizzie revealed themselves. Glory pulled the bonnet back a bit so she could see around her. The sun peeked from behind a cloud.

“Who’s that?”

Lizzie stepped out from behind the tree. “Us.”

Glory shocked them with the speed with which she dropped her bag of flowers and rushed toward them. Lizzie thought the woman would hug them both. But just as she got close to the two slave women, she stopped, as if she had checked herself.

“You’re back. I knew you’d be back,” Glory said, breathless.

“How come us ain’t seen you around the place?” Mawu asked.

“Some other farmer is providing for the hotel this summer.”

“Why?” Lizzie asked.

Glory rubbed at her cheek. “My husband took sick this winter. He really never got better. A bad cough. He still works as much as he can, but he can’t do too much. It’s just enough to keep us fed and to sell some in town.”

Glory was still stout and healthy looking, but her eyes had taken on more of a sunken quality. “Everybody come back?”

Lizzie nodded.

“What brings y’all out here?”

There was no hiding the fact they were too close to Glory’s cabin to just happen to be nearby. There was nothing else nearby but the cabin. So the question was really,
what do y’all want with me?

Lizzie looked at Mawu and waited to see what her friend would say.

“Where your husband at?” Mawu asked.

“Gone,” Glory replied, falling easily into the clipped cues the women knew they had to speak in order for their friendship to remain secret. What she meant was that
he is gone for a spell and yes we have time.

“I got something to ask,” Mawu said.

Lizzie scratched a bug bite. She had no idea what Mawu was about to say.

“Shoot,” Glory said.

“I need you to help fix me.” Mawu looked down at her waist. Then she put her hand over her private area. “I need you to help fix me permanent.”

Glory shook her head.

“I don’t aim to give him no more childrens,” Mawu said, eyeing Glory steadily.

Lizzie coughed and then coughed again, as if there were a hair in her throat that she couldn’t get to.

Mawu hit her on the back. “You all right, girl?”

Lizzie nodded.

“What you got to cook in that cabin?” Mawu asked.

“Some potatoes. A fresh rabbit,” Glory answered.

“Well, that’s all us need. My mammy taught me how to make the best rabbit stew you ever sank your teeth into.”

Mawu showed a mouth of crooked teeth as if to prove it. Glory removed her capelet. In a few moments, the three women were walking toward the cabin, Mawu stopping here and there to pick an herb.

Lizzie couldn’t help but wonder what the sight of them must have looked like: a brown woman, a red woman, and a white woman. Thin, short, and fat. Tennessee, Louisiana, and Ohio.

The three women were just as different on the inside, too. One of them was hoping to give up what the other cherished and the third longed for.