Wench (6 page)

“How could you?” Mawu said to Sir.

He cracked his hand across her cheek.

“Don’t you ever come between me and my slave woman again, you hear me?”

Tip rose out of his seat. “Goddamnit, that’s my property!”

Mawu felt her face where the still-fresh scar had just been opened up again. She examined the blood on her fingers as if it weren’t her own. Sir returned to the table and a servant slipped through the side door and passed him a wet cloth to wipe the blood from his hands.

“Now, what’s this y’all are saying about a one-eyed horse?” Sir curled his lips into a grin. The servant returned with a bottle of wine. Sir took it from him and drank a long swallow directly from the lip of the bottle.

Lizzie looked at the light twisting through her empty glass. She couldn’t drink or eat another bite. The music and the sound
of the men’s voices faded. She let the silence take her. When she finally looked up, the seat beside her was empty and Mawu was nowhere to be seen. Her master Tip was gone also.

But across from Lizzie, in the place where Reenie was supposed to be sitting, was a yellow-haired white woman with red-rouged cheeks. Sir had his face in her neck.

R
eenie and Lizzie were told to pluck and prepare the birds the men brought back from their hunting trip. The two women sat on the ground and spread the dozen or so birds out. The evening sun was behind them and the half moons in their armpits had dried. Each woman took a bird, dipped it in a washtub of hot water, and pulled out the feathers in handfuls, their hands slick against the warmed skin. Once they had established an easy, quiet rhythm, they spoke in hushed tones.

“Tell me your story, Reenie.”

Reenie looked up at her younger friend sharply. Stories didn’t get told unless they had to. Stories were for remembering, and none of the women wanted to tell how they had gotten there. When they told their stories, they preferred to tell the ones about that faraway place. They preferred to tell ones they had patched together in their heads, hundreds of oral remnants whispered in dark slave cabins.

This was what Lizzie knew about Reenie: She lived on a plan
tation not far from Lizzie in Tennessee. They hadn’t known each other before visiting Tawawa, but when they spoke about it, they thought they might be kin. Two of Reenie’s cousins had been hired out the previous winter to work where Lizzie lived, and she had gotten to know them well. The first summer at Tawawa, Lizzie and Reenie had spent hours exchanging names, searching for a real connection and the fact that they hadn’t discovered any blood didn’t lessen the affection between them.

Reenie had an extended family on her plantation, and though some had been sold off over the years, they were remarkable for the numbers that remained. In fact, her plantation was made up of several families. The way Reenie told it, each of these families did their work together, and if one member fell ill, the others took up the slack. If a new slave was bought, the families would meet to decide which “family” he would join. Sometimes, according to Reenie, there was even a bit of friendly competition between families. This was different from Lizzie’s plantation, where the slaves toiled each for himself, suffering their individual punishments if they failed to complete a day’s work.

“Why you asking?”

Lizzie shrugged. “Wondering is all.” She did not say she had been worried about Reenie ever since the older woman had begun her nightly visits to the manager’s suite in the hotel.

Reenie stuck her finger in a hole on the bare skin and dug out the bird shot. She tossed it to the side and continued to pull feathers, more slowly and deliberately than before.

“He my brother,” she said, her voice low and flat.

Lizzie almost dropped the bird she was dipping into the tub. “Who’s your brother?”

She wiped at her runny eye with the back of her arm. “Sir.”

Lizzie tried to digest the news. She had heard about such things.

“So your daughter, the one that got sold off…”

“Sho. She my daughter and my niece.” now Reenie was yanking the feathers out, one by one. Her dark forehead shone in the red dusk.

“So I fixed myself,” Reenie said. “I fixed myself so he couldn’t make no more childrens. My family helped me. All the womens and mens gathered round me and prayed over me. All night, they went right on praying. Then right before the sun started to gather herself up, us fixed it so it wouldn’t happen no more.”

Lizzie heard the crack of a rifle in the distance.

“Wasn’t the first time the womens had done it. But I was a youngun. Fourteen and my baby was still nursing. I was still peering in her face near about every day wondering when God was gone strike his fury on her.” The dead bird lay limp, belly up in her lap, its head cradled in the crook of her groin. “But didn’t nothing happen. She just got prettier and prettier. And smaaaaaart, too. No sooner than her teeth start to growed, and she was walking and talking.”

“Did he…did he still mess with you?”

Reenie grinned, her false teeth eerily large and white. “Sho, honey. Ain’t nothing change. Ain’t nothing gone ever change about that, I reckon.”

So different from what she had with Drayle. She loved him. He loved her. And even more, he was good to her. Hadn’t he fixed the leaky cabin roof that was dripping on his children’s heads? hadn’t he given the slaves Sunday mornings off when she told him about their secret worship meetings? hadn’t he rubbed her feet countless times when she was tired from cooking all day? hadn’t he protected her after she was attacked on the ship?

“Sir’s daddy took my own mammy before she got her first blood. She give him three childrens before he died. He weren’t yet cold in the ground when the missus had my ma whipped in front of everybody. As a punishment for her sins, she called it. Not long after, my ma disappeared. Just up and disappeared while we was
working in the fields one day. None of us knowed what happened. Maybe she run off. Maybe she was sold off by the missus in the middle of the night. Maybe she dead.”

Lizzie tried to picture Reenie’s mammy. Such things were possible. A proud woman, tall with Reenie’s stiff back and long neck, rose in Lizzie’s mind. Like Reenie, she would be so strong that even a beating couldn’t break her. Some folks couldn’t be broken. Lizzie didn’t believe a woman in her right mind would just “up and leave” her children.

“Us wasn’t treated right, but the missus kept us on. Me and my two brothers still live in the same cabin Sir’s daddy built for my ma. When the missus got married again, her new husband decent enough. At least he ain’t go messing off in the slave cabins, and I reckon she would shoot him dead if he did.”

“But his son…”

“Made us call him Sir when he was still a boy right after his daddy died. Only took one beating for the whole lot of us to get the hang of it. I been calling him Sir ever since.”

Reenie picked up the bird in her lap and stretched out a wing. She pulled at the feathers along its edge.

But Lizzie didn’t feel like pulling feathers anymore. She took one of the birds that had already been plucked and cut through its neck with a small, sharp knife. She removed its head and pulled out the bloody gullet and the windpipe. She kept digging, and she was only satisfied when she had hooked her fingers into the lungs, pulled them out, and tossed them into the dust beside her.

N
early a week after the dinner, more than ten days into the collective breath holding that had been gathering pressure since Mawu issued her challenge, the colored barber arrived to line the white men up in chairs along the porch of the hotel. The barber visited the resort once or twice a week. Some of the men wore beards, and would have the barber trim them after their haircuts. Others such as Drayle preferred a more clean-shaven look, and the barber would use a straight razor over their faces. This barber had a sterling reputation for keeping his razors sharp.

The barber’s daughter typically helped him. She worked as a maid in the hotel, but whenever her father visited she would come outside to assist. She’d wheel a tray onto the porch and open the leather carrying case holding his tools. Straight steel razors. Brushes. Scissors. Two leather strops. Cup and soap. She would moisten the bar of soap in the bowl of hot water so the lather
would be ready to spread. Or she would hold the brass shaving bowl at the man’s neck if her father requested it.

She was a prettier and fatter version of her father, with softly rounded cheeks and light brown eyes. She had the kind of skin that came alive in the heat, glowed like a smooth dark stone. She kept her hair bound in a dirty rag, as if to diminish her beauty so the white men would not notice.

The white women had left early that morning to go bathe in one of the resort’s five mineral springs. The men stayed behind to be trimmed and shaved, and those who were not patiently waiting for the barber to service them had ventured out on the fifty-four-acre property to hunt for passenger pigeons. Except for the steady toil of the servants inside, the hotel was quiet.

Sweet was in her cottage repairing pants. Back on her plantation, she was considered a wizard with a needle and thread. So her master had given her several pants belonging to men staying at the resort. Reenie was in the private room of the hotel’s manager, waiting for him to return as he had ordered her to do.

Lizzie and Mawu stood at the well near the hotel pumping water into pails. Every few minutes, a hotel servant came out with two empty pails and carried two more full ones inside. His task was to empty and refill the washbasin in each room with fresh water. The two slave women had been instructed to help. Even among the most free-thinking of whites at the resort, no one seemed to relish the sight of the colored visitors idling. It was recognized that their primary duty was to their rightful owners, so the slaves tried to appear busy at all times. Lizzie and Mawu had been caught sitting under the tree in the shade, trying to escape the heat, when the manager ordered them to the well.

The two women could hear Drayle and Sir chatting on the porch. They had seen the ritual enough to know what was happening. The daughter was lathering the soap. The barber was stroking the razor across the strop. Back and forth in long even
strokes, they could hear the whisking sound. Then silence. Then metal against leather again as he worked to keep the razor sharp.

“Sho, Mr. Drayle. I bought a slave before. They learn under me the barbering business.” The gray-haired barber was speaking exaggeratedly, as if he were not accustomed to the southern way of speaking but was making every effort to imitate it. They could tell when he was talking because air slipped through his teeth with a whistling sound.

Lizzie and Mawu strained to hear what they could. Mawu kept edging closer to the porch until she was crouched just beneath it. Lizzie continued to pump. It was hard to hear over the squeak of the pump, and she did not want to get in trouble. But Mawu changed the air around Lizzie, made her do things she normally wouldn’t. She stopped pumping.

“How do I know you’re going to treat my Philip right? he’s a right good hand, and I treat him better than most. What are you going to do with him? he doesn’t know anything about city living,” Drayle was saying. “He’s a horse man.”

Lizzie heard the words, but she was not sure she believed them. Was it possible the barber was trying to buy Philip? Mawu waved at her, then crouched down and disappeared beneath the porch. Lizzie looked at the back door, and ran over to the dark space beneath the porch to join Mawu. She crawled under it and followed. She looked behind her and saw the hotel servant come out of the back door. He put his hand to his eyes. He set down the empty pails and grabbed the remaining full ones. Then he went back into the hotel.

The ground was hard and dry against Lizzie’s knees. She placed a palm against it to steady herself. Sunlight peeked through the cracks of the porch. She looked up. She could just make out their silhouettes.

“You right, Mr. Drayle. I couldn’t never treat him good as you. I ain’t rich and powerful like you—”

Lizzie and Mawu waited tensely, listening to the dull scrape of the razor gliding across a face.

“Well, how can you afford his price? I don’t get how you can afford to just throw away that kind of money and get nothing in return,” Sir said.

“Oh, he’s getting something,” Drayle said. “Philip is a first-class nigger.”

“That nigger is liable to run off and leave you,” Sir added, ignoring Drayle’s comment. The last couple of words were muffled as if the barber working on him had placed a hot towel over his mouth.

“You right, you right. I can’t afford it. Your man is gone have to pay me back,” the barber said.

“Philip is one of my best hands. I just don’t think I can let go of him.”

“I understand, Mr. Drayle. I do understand.”

The girl coughed. She placed the strop back into its carrying case. The barber tipped Sir up and brushed the clipped hair off his shoulders.

Hard-soled shoes dragged across the wood porch and stopped with a thud right above their heads.

There was silence for a few long minutes. Lizzie frowned. True, Philip was a hard worker and a good slave, but Drayle could buy another horse man. And it sounded as if this barber had offered Drayle a fair price. It wasn’t like they were haggling over price. Drayle could easily buy a new slave the next time the trader came through. If Drayle wouldn’t let Philip have a fair shake, then…She couldn’t complete the thought.

“Well, what you say?” It was Sir’s voice. “You gone sell the nigger or what?”

“That’s my final answer, I’m afraid,” Drayle said, so softly they almost didn’t hear him. “I just couldn’t let go of Philip. Francesca—that’s my wife—would never forgive me.”

“I understand, Mr. Drayle. I do understand,” the barber said.

Even though the bargain had not been struck, Lizzie couldn’t help but be proud of Drayle. He had discussed the matter with the barber as if he were a white man. Most slave owners wouldn’t even have entertained the discussion, particularly with a free colored. They would have dismissed him outright. They might have even dealt him a blow just to remind him that his papers meant nothing, that he was only a train ride away from washing a white man’s feet, sharing his woman’s bed, toting bales of hay across his striped back.

Mawu motioned to her. It was time for them to leave. In a few minutes, the men would be up and moving quickly and the house servant would be returning for the next buckets.

“What you think about that girl?” Mawu asked. “The barber daughter.”

“What?”

“She clean rooms in the hotel.”

Lizzie thought it was an odd question. Why was Mawu asking her about the barber’s daughter? What did she have to do with this? Didn’t Mawu understand the significance of what they’d just heard?

“You don’t know?” Mawu looked at her.

“Know what?”

“The barber’ daughter and Philip. Them two got something going on.”

“Since when?”

“Hell, I don’t know girl. Ain’t this your second summer?”

So that was how Philip had gotten the barber to make an offer for him. “And the daddy is already trying to buy him?”

“I reckon so.”

“What kind of love is that?”

Mawu looked at her. “The real kind, I reckon.”

Something had definitely been going on with Philip. Lizzie
and Philip were as close as brother and sister, and Lizzie knew when his mind was occupied. She had thought he might have a thing for Mawu. Why hadn’t he told her? Lizzie squinted at the sun as they pumped.

“Girl, it’s only one way out of slavery,” Mawu said once the hotel servant came out and told them these were the final two buckets of water. They splashed water onto their faces and dried their hands on their dresses. Lizzie fingered her mole, and Mawu walked toward the cottages. Lizzie tried to catch up.

“What do you mean?” Lizzie asked.

They spotted Philip helping a white man load large sacks onto a cart. He looked over at them. Mawu sped up without giving Philip a second look and without answering Lizzie’s question. And Lizzie realized she would be the one giving him the bad news.