Wench

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

  The chicken clucked, a string connecting its tiny neck to her wrist. She stopped speaking and picked the chicken up, spun it around until its neck broke. The wings started to flap. She turned it upside down and stuck a small knife in its mouth, making a slicing motion. Blood spilled onto the front of her dress. She lifted the chicken in the air and closed her eyes, mumbling something inaudible over the wind and rustling trees.

  “Enough!” Philip shouted. He looked upset.

  The two men rolled Sweet’s body into the grave. George shoved dirt into the hole, mumbling “God bless you” as he worked.

  Reenie took Lizzie’s hand and walked away. Behind them, Mawu walked, holding the chicken out in front of her. Philip and George moved pile after pile of dirt into the hole, the blood of the dead fowl splattered on the ground around them.

  THIRTY-THREE

  It was only after Sweet’s death that they decided to read the pamphlet, as if the loss of her had stirred in them a more urgent reason to know about these freedom-loving whites. On the first morning that she read, only Mawu and Reenie sat beside her. Later, Philip and George would join them. But that first time, it was just the three women sitting in the parlor of Lizzie’s cottage. Lizzie pulled the couch over to sit just in front of the two women. Reenie put out a plate of bread, and Mawu sipped from a cup of tea.

  “The Philosophy of the Abolition Movement” by Wendell Phillips. This is a speech delivered in Boston on January 27, 1853.

  Lizzie cleared her throat, and decided to start at the beginning. She had looked the pamphlet over several times and there were words she could not accurately pronounce because she had never heard them said aloud before. But she was pretty certain of the general meaning of what she was about to read. Even so, her hands shook. She wondered what the women would think if they knew that it had been Glory who had stolen the pamphlet and given it to her. Glory, the faithful Quaker, had stolen it out of the bag of a man at the post office.

  Mr. Chairman,—I have to present, from the Business Committee, the following resolution:—

  Resolved, That the object of this Society is now, as it has always been, to convince our countrymen, by arguments addressed to their hearts and consciences, that slaveholding is a heinous crime, and that the duty, safety and interest of all concerned, demand its immediate abolition, without expatriation.

  Lizzie wanted to stop and read those words again. She had never heard a white man talk in such a way. For a moment, she faltered, wondering if she’d mispronounced the word “heinous.” But she continued:

  I wish, Mr. Chairman, to notice some objections that have been made to our course, ever since Mr. Garrison began his career, and which have been lately urged again, with considerable force and emphasis, in the columns of the London Leader, the able organ of a very respectable and influential class in England. I hope, Sir, you will not think it a waste of time to bring such a subject before you. I know these objections have been made a thousand times; that they have been often answered; though we have generally submitted to them in silence, willing to let results speak for us. But there are times when justice to the slave will not allow us to be silent. There are many in this country, many in England, who have had their attention turned, recently, to the AntiSlavery cause. They are asking, “Which is the best and most efficient method of helping it?” Engaged ourselves in an effort for the slave, which time has tested and success hitherto approved, we are, very properly, desirous that they should join us in our labors, and pour into this channel the full tide of their new zeal and great resources. Thoroughly convinced ourselves that our course is wise, we can honestly urge others to adopt it. Long experience gives us a right to advise. The fact that our course, more than all other efforts, has caused that agitation which has awakened these new converts, gives us a right to counsel them. They are our spiritual children: for their sakes, we would free the cause we love and trust from every seeming defect and plausible objection. For the slave’s sake, we reiterate our explanations, that he may lose no little of help by the mistakes or misconceptions of his friends.

  Lizzie read slowly, and when she noticed Reenie picking at the hem of her dress, she decided to skip ahead a bit.

  The charges to which I refer are these: That in dealing with slaveholders and their apologists, we indulge in fierce denunciations, instead of appealing to their reason and common sense by plain statements and fair argument;—that we might have won the sympathies and support of the nation, if we would have submitted to argue this question with a manly patience; but instead of this, we have outraged the feelings of the community by attacks, unjust and unnecessarily severe, on its most valued institutions, and gratified our spleen by indiscriminate abuse of leading men, who were often honest in their intentions, however mistaken in their views;—that we have utterly neglected the ample means that lay around us to convert the nation, submitted to no discipline, formed no plan, been guided by no foresight, but hurried on in a childish, reckless, blind and hot-headed zeal—bigots in the narrowness of our views, and fanatics in our blind fury of invective and malignant judgment of other men’s motives.

  Mawu whistled. “Ooh, I didn’t know you could read so nice, Miss Lizzie. I can’t hardly understand for listening to the sound of them words. What that man saying there?”

  “He’s saying that the abolitionists have been accused of being too…too vicious, too mean, and he doesn’t believe this to be true. He believes these folks that accuse them of this don’t know what they’re talking about. He believes that the cause of freedom is just and right and they must do all they can to get rid of slavery.”

  Reenie’s eyes were wide. “Oh my sweet Jesus. Go on,” she urged. “Go on.”

  Two days after Sweet was laid to rest, the white men discovered Philip sneaking off the resort to meet his woman. No one knew how they found out. But the word got back to the slaves that Philip had been meeting her halfway between the colored resort and the white one. Lizzie thought of how often slaves did this back in Tennessee, meeting halfway between plantations and making their love felt on the forest floor. In contrast, she thought of how direct Drayle was back on their place, exercising his rights wherever and whenever the mood hit him.

  They all waited around wondering what would happen next. No one had seen Philip, and Lizzie searched frantically for Drayle, but he, too, was nowhere to be seen. From her porch, Lizzie could make out Reenie hanging laundry behind her cottage and Mawu walking on the other side of the lake carrying something on her head.

  Lizzie swept the dust out the front door of her cottage. Back at the plantation, Drayle might have gotten away with giving Philip a light scolding and perhaps having the slave trader visit the place to scare the slaves into thinking that Philip might be sold off. But here, in this northern climate, where he was under the scrutiny of the other Southern slaveholders, Drayle would probably decide to take a sterner approach.

  Lizzie had to get to Drayle first, remind him that Philip was still his favorite slave. It was no longer a rumor but a well-known fact that this would be their last summer at the resort. Most likely, Drayle figured that if he could get Philip back to Tennessee without this woman, he would be able to get his slave’s mind off her.

  Once, Drayle had bought a beautiful woman for one of his slaves after the man’s wife died in childbirth. The young woman had been intended to salve the older man’s grief. They had taken up residence together in one of the slave cabins, and it was not long before the young girl had genuinely fallen for the kind old man. It had been an unexpected but welcome outcome to the forced coupling. Lizzie thought this was probably what Drayle was hoping for now, that he could purchase a woman for Philip that would solve everything.

  Lizzie tried to block out any image in her mind of Drayle having Philip beat. Besides, who would beat him? There was no overseer here to perform Drayle’s dirty work, and Drayle had never been one to perform such an unpleasant task himself. There was that one hotel porter who would do anything the white men told him for
a price, the one with the watch who had accompanied them to Dayton. George would do it if so ordered, but she doubted that he would complete the task with any zest. And the slaveholders knew this.

  As the different scenarios passed through her mind, she saw a figure that looked to be about Philip’s size approaching from the distance. He was flanked by two men holding him by the arms. Lizzie shaded her eyes with her hand. From where she stood, it looked as if Philip’s legs were chained. As the three men got closer, she heard the telltale clink of metal against metal. She clutched the arm of her broom.

  The men led Philip to a tree just off the edge of the pond. It was a scrawny young pawpaw tree that even in the height of summer had never bore any fruit. Nor was it full enough to offer very much shade. They chained him to the tree and walked away. Philip scooted along the ground until he was beside the tree and rested his back against its narrow trunk.

  Lizzie leaned the broom against the wall of the cottage. She wiped her palms across the front of her dress. Even though she could not make out Philip’s face, she knew he had already been beaten. He did not have the walk of a beaten man, but she knew how such things worked. He had been beaten and left out in the hot sun.

  She heard someone moving inside the cottage, and it startled her. She pulled open the door and saw Drayle moving about the room, packing a bag. “Drayle? What did you do to Philip?”

  He ignored her and continued to move around the room. She watched as he put the tin cup and plate he used for camping into the bag.

  “Where are those socks you mended for me?”

  She went into the bedroom and took a thin pair of socks out of the drawer with a patch across the toe. She returned and gave them to him.

  “Talk to me, Drayle. What’s happening?”

  “Hand me my fishing rod.”

  She took the rod out of the closet. Considering the time of day, she knew he would probably camp overnight. But surely he didn’t plan to just leave Philip there.

  He hoisted the pack of supplies over his shoulder and finally turned to her. “Don’t you even think about going near him, Lizzie.”

  “What?” She tried to shame him with a certain look she used now and again. “You’re going to just leave him there?”

  “You hear me? This is between me and him. Don’t you even think about going near him. You or nobody else, but especially you.”

  Surely he didn’t plan on leaving Philip out there all day and night. There wasn’t much shade out there, and the Ohio sun was as hot as the one in Tennessee.

  She remembered when she was a child and still lived on the plantation in Weakley county where she was born there had been a dog that hung around the slave cabins. It hadn’t belonged to anyone in particular and no one had ever given it a name. They just called it “Dog.” The dog lived on scraps thrown to it here and there when the slaves had finished eating. As it got old, its back legs started to give out. So it took to sitting around more and more until finally it stopped walking altogether. No one had the heart to kill it. One morning, as the slaves went off to the fields, someone placed the dog in a shady spot near a tree.

  When the children gathered around the tree that evening to hunt for the sticks they used for toys, they discovered the dog lying in the same spot where it had been left. One of the children called his father who came and picked up the dog’s lifeless body. He told the children to run along, and he went off somewhere to bury it. Lizzie could remember the dog’s skin: it had been raw and peeling beneath the dog’s thin brown and white pelt. She had dreamed that night of what it must have felt like to be that dog, becoming so hot until her vision blurred and she could barely suck in enough air to cool herself. She had heard of adults complaining of such symptoms while working the field all day, but even they wore hats to cool themselves. The dog had been unable to do anything to lessen the punishment of the sun once it moved its position in the sky.

  “Who’s going to feed him and give him water?” she demanded.

  “You stay away from him, now. You hear me?”

  Lizzie must have looked as if she intended to follow no such order because his voice turned cold.

  His words were slow. “I’m going to leave instructions for the hotel servants to keep an eye on that tree.” he spoke of the tree as if it existed and Philip didn’t. “If I so much as hear that you or anyone else has gone near it, I will have Nate whipped until he’s black and blue.”

  Lizzie froze. He had never threatened to do such a thing. Nate had never been whipped in his life.

  “Nate? Whipped? have you lost your mind?”

  She felt it and saw his hand swing back at what seemed like the same time. It happened so quickly she didn’t have time to dodge out of the way.

  “I have told you time and time again to watch your mouth when you are talking to me. You are just a woman and, on top of that, nothing but a slave woman.”

  The blood on Lizzie’s lip didn’t taste like anything. It wasn’t salty like sweat or sweet like mucus. She lapped it up with her tongue and squeezed her lips together.

  His eyes were red, the look of a parent who has just slapped his child. She had seen that look in Big Mama’s face before.

  “I’ll be back in a day or two,” he said. He turned away from her and left her standing there wearing a new feeling.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  At first, no one dared go near Philip because they did not know who had been set up to watch him. The slaves watched the hotel servants and the hotel servants watched the slaves. Lizzie, Reenie, and Mawu tried to devise ways they could sneak out in the middle of the night and get him water. Philip was tied to a tree right at the edge of the water, a tree easily visible from any of the nine cottages surrounding the pond and also from the hotel’s main lounge. The white women set up a picnic nearby on the first day and watched him while they ate. Two children threw rocks at him, narrowly missing for the most part.

  George spent the first couple of days watering the flowers along the water’s edge. When he got close enough for the water to reach him, he doused Philip down. Philip tried sticking his tongue out and drinking water that way. On the second day the two men got smarter, Philip digging a hole in the ground and George managing to fill the hole with water. Philip used his tongue to lap up the water before it soaked into the surrounding dirt.

  Another day went by and Lizzie walked by the tree, close enough to Philip to see that his lips were white and cracked. He tried to say something to her, but his words got muffled by his swollen tongue. Lizzie went to Reenie’s cottage and sat in a chair while Reenie folded clothes.

  “We can’t just leave him out there,” Lizzie said. “It’s too hot.”

  “He can survive,” Reenie said. “Philip a strong man. Strong as an ox.”

  “That’s what everybody thinks about him.” Lizzie shook her head. “But he ain’t strong as people think. He’s got a soft spot. I’ve seen it. And it’s probably worse now that he’s got that woman on his mind.”

  Reenie picked up Sir’s overalls and folded them down the front of her dress.

  “And Drayle ain’t never been too hard on none of his slaves, let alone Philip.”

  Reenie stopped folding and eyed her. “Every slave got the survivor in him. You don’t got to get beat every now and then to remember how to make it through something.”

  Lizzie tried to believe what Reenie was saying.

  The next morning was the fourth day since Drayle had left and no one had been allowed to feed or water Philip. It was only because he moved a bit here and there that they knew he was still alive.

  The three women sat on the steps of Mawu’s porch. George came and sat down on the grass in front of Mawu’s cottage.

  “Somebody done fed and watered him,” George said.

  “Who?” Lizzie asked.

  “I don’t know. One of the coloreds at the hotel, I reckon.”

  Mawu sucked her teeth. “Them people ain’t never helped nobody but theyselves. I doubt it.”


  “Why do you think somebody fed him?” Lizzie asked.

  “Cause look at him. He look a little better today than he did yesterday,” George said.

  “I haven’t gotten close enough to see,” Lizzie responded.

  “I did. And as far as I know, he ain’t had water in two days. Can’t nobody survive that long in this sun without at least a dip or two of some cool water.”

  “Maybe it was that Quaker woman,” Mawu said.

  “I ain’t seen her in a spell,” Reenie said.

  “She could be sneaking on the property at night,” Mawu said. “Maybe.”

  “Maybe it was one of those abolitionists,” Lizzie offered, thinking of the pamphlet.

  “Look,” George said. They all looked east and saw the group of white men returning, long fishing poles hanging from their shoulders.

  The women stood, their respite over. Lizzie hastened back to her cabin, eager to convince Drayle to end his punishment of Philip. Over the past couple of days, she had decided to try the tactics she’d used on him in the service of her children. She would not refuse him this time.

  When she heard Drayle’s footsteps swishing through the grass, she met him out on the porch and pushed him into the wooden rocker.

  “Let me help you with your boots,” she said.

  She pulled each boot off and lined them up beside the door. Then she pulled off his socks and massaged his feet. They stank like the outdoors, but she rubbed them anyway, paying particular attention to the large bunion on his right foot.

  He enjoyed her attention for a few minutes before smiling down at her.

  “Lizzie?”

  “Hmm?”

  “If I tell you that I’ve already decided to sell Philip, will you still take care of me?”

  She dropped his foot and it fell with a thud onto the wooden porch.