Wench (9 page)

H
e brought her books. The first word she learned to read and write was “she” and it delighted her so much she wrote it everywhere she could. She wrote it in the biscuit batter with her spoon. She dug it in the dirt out back with a stick. She sketched it in the steamy windows when it rained. When she pricked her palm with a kitchen knife, she squeezed the skin until she could write her new word out with blood on a scrap of cloth. She traced the word with her fingers on the smooth parts of his body while they lay together in the storeroom at night.

She was afraid of him, but with each reading lesson she allowed him to take one more step with her. At first, he told her he just wanted to touch her tiny breast. Then he said he just wanted to place his hand on her hip. At first, he
asked
to touch her. Later, he did not. Each touch was like a payment for his kindnesses.

She waited for him without clothes because he liked her that way. He said he wanted to drink her. He stared as if her thirteen-year-old body held a great secret, a miracle milk that would cure
him if he drank of it only once. He seemed to savor each night, the anticipation arousing him to a point that stretched his penis as taut as a pig’s belly.

She gathered a stockpile of books, precious gifts from him, and hid them behind the flour sacks in the storeroom. She couldn’t read most of them yet, but she enjoyed turning the pages, fingering each book’s binding, making out the page numbers as she learned how to count and figure.

He told her to call him Drayle, his last name only. Most of the slaves called him Master. He asked her to drop the title. At first she couldn’t bring herself to do it. She felt if she dropped it he would take the final step and hurt her in the way she hoped he wouldn’t.

Big Mama had once told her she had to prepare for a life in which she would be violated:
it hurt the first time
, she’d said,
but you get used to it
. It was that first time that frightened her, and Lizzie hoped that for him, looking and touching would be enough. It had been for Baby.

He asked her if she had a wish and taught her the word
genie
. She said she’d once heard she had a sister. Somewhere close by. Her only living blood relation that she knew of. Could he find her? he promised with a serious face. She believed him and permitted him an extra touch.

He said he enjoyed teaching her to read because she had a keen intellect. She liked the word
keen
and turned it over in her mouth. She realized her phonetic ability to sound out words. He appeared to have endless patience as she mouthed the words on the page with her lips before saying them. He only interrupted to remind her to lower her voice. The nights were quiet, and they remained undisturbed in their secret meetings. He had been educated in the north and she admired his knowledge.

When she had no more room to store her books, he brought her food. She enjoyed the food more than she had thought she
would. She already ate better than the field slaves, but he showed her there was even more food to discover. He brought her cocoa, which she mixed with hot milk and sugar in the dark kitchen. They drank it together, sucking its thick sweetness with their tongues. He brought her johnnycakes from town, and she made a gravy to go with them. They devoured them, licking the gravy from their lips.

When he learned how much she craved sugar, he used it to tease her. When he didn’t have any more sweets, she stole sugar cubes from the kitchen and sucked on them while she worked.

Finally, she dropped the Master and called him Drayle.

These were the things that happened in the night. In the day, she had to hide that she now looked at the other slave women through new eyes. Before, she had felt like a child among them. But she was no longer the timid girl they’d given a bucket of potatoes and ordered to peel on her first day in the house kitchen. She felt she was something else. Her skin had begun to clear, her shoulders broadened, and even though she still did not believe in her beauty, she was aroused by this new awareness of her body.

She moved quickly around Miss Fran, Drayle’s wife, certain that if the woman looked her in the eye, she would know her newest house slave was betraying her. Fran’s eyes were never the same. Sometimes, they were listless and empty, staring down at her needlework as if wondering how it had appeared in her hands. Other times, they were alert and watchful. At these moments, they looked as though they could see right through Lizzie.

As Lizzie learned the meanings of new words and what the letters looked like on the page, it became more difficult to hide the fact that she could read. She wanted to read everything. She scanned the spines of books along the shelves in Drayle’s library. She looked over Fran’s shoulder as she cleaned around her, straining to make out the handwriting of Fran’s mother. She wanted to read to the slaves in the cabins. There was only one man among
them who could read the newspaper, and Lizzie thought she might be able to read as well as he could. She wanted to show him up, prove that women could learn, have everyone’s eyes hungry for her mouth to open and turn the piece of pulp in her hands into hope.

The summer stretched into August, and work around the farm picked up as the season for cotton harvesting began. Drayle came to the storeroom less and less, and gave fewer gifts. Lizzie was relieved she had escaped unharmed. She believed she had been like a toy to Drayle, and he was now tired of playing with her. He gave no explanation as to why he stopped coming, but she saw how hard he was working. It was the first time she’d examined the great muscles in his back and the texture of his face. He was built like a slave, only white. She did not know how old he was, but his hair was a vibrant blond color and his skin reddened in the sun. She thought his face might have been perfect were it not for his slightly long nose. She was enchanted by the color of his eyes.

And then she discovered something she had never before seen in her life: a mirror. She had seen her reflection in the nearby pond many times, but this piece of glass was magical. It was in Fran’s bedroom, and each time she passed it she found herself pausing to get a good look at herself.

She stole a brush from Fran’s drawer, stripped the hairs from it, and boiled it. She tried to brush out her knots. It took her three days of brushing and cutting the tangles. But when she was finished, she discovered she had a mound of hair that hung in frazzled coils around her face. She made excuses to be in Fran’s room every chance she got.

There was only one other slave woman who lived in the house. Lizzie sensed the older woman’s demeanor begin to change toward her a few weeks after Drayle began visiting her at night. Not long after his visits subsided, Lizzie found Dessie in the store-
room, holding the brush in her hand as if it were a giant vermin. Lizzie tried to figure out how she could have forgotten to put it away.

“Where you get this from, ’liza?”

“My name be Lizzie,” she said.

Dessie had lived in the house attic for years. Lizzie knew her from the shape of her back; it was a form she was used to seeing bent over a tub or the fire in the kitchen. Her face looked as if it had been pretty once.

“Give it,” Lizzie said, her lip twitching.

“Not unlessen you tell me where you got it. Is you a plum fool, girl?”

She started toward her but something in Dessie’s posture stopped her. Lizzie was certain that had she been within arm’s reach, the woman would have knocked her in the head with the brush.

“You don’t know what you done brung in this house,” Dessie said, setting the brush on the shelf with a loud clap.

Lizzie moved to the side as the older woman, stooped again, walked past her. “You don’t know what you done brung in here,” she repeated as she scooted through the kitchen.

Lizzie was too frightened to move. Dessie knew. She was sure of it. She wanted to tell her that she hadn’t asked Drayle to come in the first place. And he had stopped coming anyway. Not altogether, but mostly. She wanted to tell her that. She wanted to say more than “give it.” She wanted to ask her what she meant about bringing something into the house.

Two nights later, Lizzie knew. Two nights later, when Drayle finally took what he had been lusting after for so long, Lizzie understood the something that had been brought into the house was her.

T
hey entered the woods behind the slave cabins, the one-eyed horse following a barely cleared trail. Fat spiders rested in opalescent traps. Drayle brushed at his face, cleared the webs for her. Lizzie reached out to pull at a strand of web lingering in his hair and stretched it out, stronger than she’d expected, tensile.

“This here is what they call a smooth-gaited horse.”

Lizzie wanted to laugh. Smooth-gaited? She was certain she would tumble off at any moment. If this was smooth, she didn’t want to ride the others. She held on.

After a few minutes of walking, she felt him squeeze his legs and they took off into the woods at a slow trot. She bounced in the saddle. She clenched Drayle’s waist, feeling for hardness beneath the fat of his stomach. When the trail split, Drayle merely looked the way he wanted to go and the horse followed.

She felt sore in her saddle area and asked Drayle to slow down. He responded after she had repeated her request twice.

When Drayle had told her that morning they would be taking a ride, she tried to hide her fear. As friendly as she knew the horse to be, it was massive, the haunches of the beast taller than her shoulders. She followed Drayle, praying the horse would recognize her as the girl who sometimes stopped and gave him a bit of sugar or a pat on the head. Until recently, she had been afraid to do even that, the mouth of the horse a giant hole threatening to swallow her up.

Philip had walked the one-eyed horse down to the woods from the barn. Drayle mounted first, and Philip gave her a hand while she stepped into the stirrup. After trying to gain her balance for a few moments, she felt comfortable enough to let Philip go. She tied a cloth around her hair.

“Hold on tight now,” Drayle said.

“Where we going?”

“Where
are
we going?”

“Where
are
we going,” she repeated.

“You’ll see,” he answered.

Now they were stopped in the middle of a trail and the horse had begun to empty its bladder. Lizzie felt the urge to empty hers.

“Drayle?”

He turned around to look at her.

“I got to do it, too.”

He eased himself off the horse before helping her down.

Lizzie looked behind her at the stretch of trees. She’d only left the place two or three times in recent memory. Drayle had bought her when she was seven years old. In the years since, his farm had become her most familiar place.

He pointed to an area behind a bush, and she went behind it grateful for the privacy. It occurred to her that some white men wouldn’t think enough to point to a bush. Modesty was for ladies. When she’d been brought to the auction block, she’d been chained
to a line of slave women, ready to board the trader’s wagon. As the smallest, Lizzie had led, but she’d felt the jingle of metal when two of the women in the back kneeled down so the very last woman could squat right there in the middle of the road. Her skirt was the only privacy she had, and Lizzie had noticed the woman’s eyes close as if to shut out her audience.

When Lizzie was done, she came back to him. She listened to him breathing in the air, his nostrils flaring like the horse’s. His tall form cast a shadow over her, and she felt safe in the cool of it. They walked along for a bit. He did not hold her hand as she had seen some slaves in love do from time to time, but she felt his nearness. She looked over at the horse to see if it was watching her as it had so many times before, but its good eye was focused straight ahead. After a while, they climbed back onto the horse.

A barn peeked over the crest of the hill and she shaded her eyes with her hands. They reached a small house. Drayle whistled and a slave girl of about ten years old came out onto the porch. Lizzie took off her cloth to better show her face.

“You belong to Leo nesbitt?”

The girl nodded.

“I’m looking for his slave Polly.”

“Which one?” the girl said. “They’s two.”

Drayle shrugged. “How the hell should I know?” he pointed back at Lizzie. “Is there one that looks like this one?”

Lizzie was sweating beneath her dress. She did not like that he referred to her as “this one” although she was not sure why.

The girl came off the porch to get a closer look. “I’ll be right back, sir.” She ran off, leaving a cloud of dust behind her.

It took the girl a while. Drayle got off the horse and helped Lizzie down.

“What you up to?” Lizzie asked.

“Didn’t you tell me you heard you had a sister around these parts?”

Lizzie was finding it hard to breathe. She shook her head back and forth and patted down her hair.

“Didn’t I tell you I’d do anything for you?” he said.

The girl returned with a woman following her. The woman carried a basket.

“Polly?” Drayle called out.

The woman stopped about five yards away. She was staring at Lizzie.

“Yessir?”

“I believe that this here is your sister. Come here. Let me get a closer look at you,” he said.

The woman didn’t move, but Lizzie did. She closed the distance between them until she was standing right in front of the woman. Although the slave was older than Lizzie, they were the same height, the same shade of mud brown. And even more, both were covered with a spattering of moles that ringed their necks like precious stones. Lizzie did not know how to feel. It was as if she had been locked in a closet all her life, and someone had just opened the door to reveal her first bit of light.

“You my sister?” Lizzie asked.

The woman studied her. “Maybe you wants the other Polly. I don’t know nothing bout no sister.”

“My mammy died when I was young. But they say I got an older sister who lives in Shelby county. Where were you born?”

The woman’s face lit up as if this would solve the mystery. “Weakley.”

Lizzie’s hand flew to her mouth. She turned back to Drayle. He nodded.

Polly put down the basket. Then she stretched back up, as if ready to examine this stranger who might not be a stranger after all.

“What your name is?” she said.

“Lizzie. I mean, Eliza. But they call me Lizzie.”

She touched Lizzie’s face and ran her fingers along Lizzie’s jawbone. Then she took Lizzie’s hand and turned it over in her own, as if the lines would reveal the truth.

“You my sister?” Polly said, finally.

Lizzie blew out a yes.

Polly reached out and slowly folded Lizzie in her arms. Their embrace was awkward. Neither seemed to know what to do. The slave girl who had fetched Polly sat on the edge of the porch, legs dangling, watching them.

“That’s enough,” Drayle said after a few minutes. “You can come back to visit her, Lizzie.”

Lizzie held fast to the woman, not believing him. Polly kissed her on the eyelids. Her lips were wet. She smelled like peaches, and Lizzie sucked the scent through her mouth. For the first time in months, Drayle did not exist. This was her blood, her real blood kin. But Polly felt fragile, light, as if she would disappear. She was thinner than Lizzie, not as well fed. Lizzie had a strange thought. If she could crush this woman, crumble her into dust and take her back to Drayle’s plantation, she would.

“I promise,” he said. “I’ll write you a pass. Long as you don’t try to run off. I’ll write you all the passes you need.”

He walked over and pulled Lizzie by the hand. He helped her onto the horse. He turned the horse, but Lizzie did not take her eyes off the woman. She turned almost completely around in the saddle as they rode off. Polly waved and Lizzie tried to memorize her face. The barn disappeared behind the hill.

When they arrived back at the edge of Drayle’s place, he told her to get off the horse. Then he rode on up through the cabins without her. He did not have to tell her it would not look good if they returned together. He did not have to tell her to hang back and wait until she thought he’d had a chance to dismount and hand the horse over to Philip.

That night, she thanked him by giving him what he wanted.

W
hen it was almost morning, she thought she heard something in the kitchen. Drayle never stayed all night, but they had both fallen asleep. When she saw the lantern light up in the kitchen, she shoved Drayle awake. He jumped up while she pulled the shirt over her head. He leaned to peek through the door, but whoever it was must have been headed straight for the storeroom because before he could open it, the door pushed toward him.

Fran. Matter-of-fact. Unsurprised. As if she had not just caught him in the room where the slave girl slept.

“Nathan? I thought I heard something. Did you hear something?”

Drayle shielded Lizzie with his body. “I didn’t hear anything,” he said. “Go back to bed, dear.”

Lizzie could not see Fran’s face, but she imagined it wore a quizzical expression. She wanted to shrink into the corner until she became another lump in the blanket Drayle had given her.

He closed the door behind his wife and returned to her. She didn’t realize she was shivering until he touched her.

After a while, she said: “She might sell me.”

“Oh hush, Lizzie. Besides, I reckon Fran doesn’t mind. She’s a Southern woman. She expects a man to do certain things.”

Lizzie didn’t believe him, but he kissed her and she convinced herself his words were enough. Nothing would come between them. Drayle was the man of the house.

He reached beneath the blanket and pinched her nipple until it hurt. She had told him that she did not like her nipples pinched, but he did it anyway. He trailed his fingertips down the front of her stomach, dipped into her navel, and circled it.

“I want you to have my child, Lizzie,” he said between his lips and her skin. “Can you do that for me?”

Lizzie went soft. “Your child?” she repeated.

“I gave you your sister. Now you give me a son. Can you do that for me?”

He pressed against her.

Lizzie tried to think straight. Tried to keep her mind and body separate. She had never been drunk before, but she imagined this was what it felt like.

Drayle didn’t stop. “A son, Lizzie. My first son.”

She had not thought of this. She did not feel ready to be a mother. She knew Fran hadn’t given him a child, and she tried to think of what it would mean for her to do this for him.

He entered her forcefully while she was still muddled in her thoughts. And then she could think no more except to understand that his desire for her was all she had. He moved on top of her, and it was as if a world moved on top of her, its weight at once delightful and burdensome.

When he was done, when they were done, she fell asleep.