Wench

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

  REENIE

  5 FEET 6 INCHES HIGH WITH A STRAIGHT NOSE FOR A NEGRO;

  NO TEETH REMAINING BUT DOES WEAR A SET OF FALSE ONES;

  DEEP VOICE LIKE A MAN. SHE WAS RAISED IN THE HOUSE

  AND WILL LIKELY LOOK FOR WORK AS A COOK.

  The paper made Lizzie go cold.

  She had only meant to walk to the pond and back, but her feet had their own mind. Before she knew it, she had arrived at the cottage and was peering in the window. She wasn’t sure if Drayle would be staying in the same cottage as the one he had shared with Lizzie. A part of her had hoped they wouldn’t, that Drayle would be sensitive enough to know the cottage had been special to them. But there lay the couple, sleeping as sound as babies. Drayle’s arm lay across his wife’s chest. They didn’t look any more comfortable than she had felt in the attic above the kitchen.

  As she tried to make her way back, she tripped over something in the dark that sounded like metal. It clanged loudly. She looked down and saw Drayle’s metal camping dishes, lined up against the outside of the house, still dirty from the last visitor. Surely Fran would wash them for him, she thought, as she put the cup back in its proper place.

  “Who’s there?”

  Jesus! It was Drayle and there was no place to hide. She stepped closer to the side of the house and pressed up against it. She figured if he went left, she would go right. If he went right, she would go left.

  He came out the back door and walked to the water pump, as if he figured he would get himself something to drink while he was up.

  She couldn’t help herself. She needed to claim him, needed to know there was still that connection between the two of them, even if she was angry at him. She crept up behind him and put her arms around his waist.

  He jumped and turned around. “Girl! Don’t you sneak up on me like that. Are you crazy? What are you doing out here this time of night?”

  His eyes moved past her shoulder.

  “You spying on me?” he said.

  Then he pushed her back into the shadows and kissed her. It had been a while since he had kissed her on the mouth. Lately, their lovemaking consisted of a few grunts and then he was through. Most of the time it was from the back with her dress still on. She had noticed that sometimes he couldn’t seem to get it going good enough. Then he would tell her it was her fault.

  She let him kiss her for a few minutes until she started to feel sick again. She pushed him back and lay an arm across her stomach.

  “What’s wrong with you woman? You ain’t—”

  “No!” she said. “Something I ate.”

  He grabbed her shoulders. In the dark, his face looked boyish. He seemed to be enjoying the secrecy of the meeting. He told her to turn around and bend over. She didn’t say what she wanted to say, that she didn’t feel like it.

  It lasted a little longer than it had lately. While she was bent over, she spied a sharp piece of metal on the ground. While he was carrying on behind her, she stared at it. It was just close enough where she could reach it. Swing it around. Hit him with it.

  But she couldn’t do it. I’m not Mawu.

  And then he was quiet. And she knew he was through.

  THIRTY-NINE

  It was the Quaker woman who led her to Mawu. Lizzie had started to know the Tawawa Woods, the deep ravine in its center, the five mineral springs, Massie’s creek, but she still did not know them well enough to navigate directions. Once they arrived, she was surprised Mawu was so close. With that hair, she’d figured Mawu would be long gone by then. All of this time and she had been living right under the slavecatcher’s nose. Only Mawu could do something like that.

  The first thing Lizzie noticed as Glory approached with the two horses was that she was pregnant. The woman’s rounded belly made her pause. Lizzie wanted to share in the news, touch it, give her a silent prayer. But she was in no place for such celebrations. She tried hard to feel warmth, especially since she’d known how much Glory wanted a child.

  She forced words from her lips, “You’ve done it I see.”

  Glory smiled and put a hand on her middle. “Yes. My very own. I’m hoping it’s a girl.”

  “A girl?” Lizzie wanted to chastise her for such talk.

  “Yes. If it is, I’m going to name it Eliza. Like your given name.”

  Lizzie didn’t bother to hide her surprise. Why would this woman want to name a baby after her? Why not Mawu or Reenie or Sweet?

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know I don’t,” Glory said. “But I want to. I need this baby to have a strong love like yours.”

  Lizzie shrugged and climbed onto the horse. It was a gentle mare and not as large as the one Glory rode. As they started off, Lizzie noted she was a better rider than Glory. And she took pleasure in the fact. She had learned a lot about horses from Drayle over the years. The one-eyed horse had finally been sold, and Lizzie remembered him now. This mare felt much less solid beneath her. She coaxed it to follow Glory’s horse off the trail.

  Glory was delivering fresh goods to the hotel again. Her husband wasn’t sick anymore, so he was back in the fields. As they rode at a leisurely pace, Glory described the turnips and tomatoes she grew in her garden. Lizzie asked what Glory and her husband would do once the resort closed this summer. Perhaps they would return to taking their goods into town and selling them, Glory answered. Some were hoping the hotel would be sold to new owners who would maintain it and keep some of the help. Glory hoped for the same thing.

  They picked up the pace a bit, and rode until they got tired. Then they rode some more. Just when Lizzie was about to suggest they stop for a rest, they came upon a cabin. It looked run over. Deserted. A tree grew right out of its side edge, as if the cabin had been built on top of its roots. It cracked the wall and angled south toward the sun. Mold covered the gaping hole. Glory jumped off her horse and tied him up. Lizzie descended more slowly, suspicious all of a sudden. Although she trusted this white woman, they were still in slavecatcher territory and she didn’t want to be mistaken for the wrong runaway slave. If she disappeared, Drayle would assume she’d run away. And Glory would be able to collect a reward.

  A curtain moved in the window. When Glory was certain none of the sounds around them were human, she walked up to the door. It opened without her having to knock. She motioned for Lizzie to follow. They stepped into the dark cabin before they could see who opened it. Behind the door was Mawu, a cloth wrapped around her hair, earrings dangling from her ears. She looked exactly the same, only thinner.

  “Mawu!” Lizzie whispered. Mawu reached out for her. The embrace did not end quickly. Lizzie wanted to kiss her face, wanted to cover her up with joy.

  “Miss Lizzie,” she said.

  When they let go of one another, Lizzie looked around. The cabin was dark because the curtains were made out of a thick, opaque cloth. But even in the darkness, she could see its coziness. There was hardly any dust. The wood plank floors were swept clean. Lizzie wondered if Mawu had been expecting them. How did Mawu and Glory communicate? That had been a long ride.

  “You looking good, Miss Lizzie,” Mawu said.

  Something about her diction sounded different. Lizzie looked in the corner of the room. Three books sat neatly stacked. Had she learned to read? Or did those books belong to somebody else? Lizzie searched for signs of somebody else living there.

  “It’s just me,” Mawu said, watching Lizzie. “Reenie long gone.”

  Mawu brought out three jars of cold tea and the two slave women settled themselves into two ragged armchairs while Glory sat on something that looked like it was carved from a tree stump. A beetle came up through the floorboards. Mawu stomped it with her foot before sitting back down.

  Lizzie crossed her arms over her stomach. “I think I might be having another one.”

  Mawu’s eyes traveled down Lizzie’s body and back up again. “How long have you knowed?”

  Lizzie unfolded her arms. She hadn’t talked to anybody about it yet,
and it hurt to let her secret go.

  “Not long. I don’t even feel it moving yet,” she said. “What am I going to do?”

  “That’s the same thing I was gone ask you.”

  Glory looked from Lizzie to Mawu.

  “Kill it,” Lizzie said, before she could think.

  Mawu’s face didn’t change, but Glory choked on her tea.

  “Don’t,” Glory said. “Give it to me. I’ll take care of it and raise it right alongside this one. Don’t kill a baby from God.”

  “Ain’t from God,” Mawu snapped. “From the devil, if anything.”

  “You don’t know about God. You left your boy behind,” Glory said.

  “He’ll be all right.”

  “What kind of mother.” Glory left the statement unfinished.

  Lizzie had never heard Glory speak so angrily before. She, too, wanted to know how Mawu could have left her son behind. Had she sent him word of her whereabouts? Did she plan to try to buy his freedom? Did she even care?

  Glory was still staring at Lizzie as if to say don’t you do that. Lizzie knew she ought to feel bad about it, pitiful as Glory’s face was, but she didn’t. She really couldn’t say that she felt anything at all. It seemed like lately, her feelings had been drying up.

  “Ain’t no other choice now, Lizzie. You got to escape. You got to get out now,” Mawu said.

  Lizzie looked down into her glass. She’d heard somewhere that there were folks who could look at the bits of tea in their cup and tell the future. She counted the flakes of tea swimming in the bottom of her jar, but she didn’t see a sign. The leaves didn’t form into anything that resembled a hatchet or a rifle.

  “Course if it was me, I’d kill it. If you sick, it’s gone make it hard for you to escape.”

  Lizzie thought about her children like she always did when escape crossed her mind. How could she get word to them? Tennessee seemed so far away. Like a different world.

  “I reckon that man fancy he love you. You don’t still talk that nonsense about loving him, do you?” Mawu watched Lizzie.

  That’s what she’d told Mawu before. She’d told of Mawu’s plan to escape because she loved her, but also because she loved Drayle. But something was shriveling up inside of her. The love she did have left felt old and useless.

  “Where’s Reenie?” Lizzie asked.

  “I don’t know. Us was together for only that first night. Us didn’t have no plan. Us was just running for our lives. Then us split up cause all the slave catchers was looking for two women together. I do hope she made it. I had a vision the other night that us gone meet up again some day.”

  So Mawu still believed in her heathen religion. Most folks would have said they would meet up again in heaven. Mawu probably meant she would meet Reenie in Canada or Africa. Lizzie had begun to believe that slaves had a right to venture off course once in a while when it came to religion.

  Lizzie looked down at Mawu’s hands and saw the burn scars. They were raised and welt-like and lighter-colored than the skin around them, and she could tell that the scarring went up her sleeves. When Mawu caught Lizzie staring, she did nothing to hide her hands.

  “This is what you got to do. Everybody expect you to leave at night. That be when there is the most men out looking for runaways so they can get that there reward money. But you got to fool them. You got to leave in the middle of the day. You got to walk just like you free. I got a man can make you up some free papers look just like the real thing. Course it’s gone cost money. You got money?” Mawu asked.

  Glory took Lizzie’s empty glass and went to refill it. When she came back, she grabbed Lizzie’s other hand. Glory’s hand was cool and wet from where she had been holding the glass. She let go of Lizzie and sat back down on the stump.

  “If you ain’t got no money, us can get some.” Mawu kept on without waiting for an answer. “You know Philip married that woman and now he a barber. Did you ever think he would go from being an outdoors man to cutting hair? They say he picked it up right quick. I bet he rich.”

  “Philip?” Lizzie said absently.

  “Yeah, Philip,” Mawu continued. “He’ll help if us ask him.” Mawu fixed Lizzie with a stare. “But my question is, is you ready? cause I ain’t gone help you if you is gone act the way you acted in the past.”

  Lizzie tried to focus in on Mawu’s features. The woman’s face had not changed. It was still steady and cold. “Why did y’all leave without telling me, Mawu?”

  Mawu stole a look over at Glory. Glory understood and announced she was going to check on the horses. When the door closed behind her, Mawu said: “Wasn’t no time.”

  “What do you mean? You knew what you were doing long before you did it.”

  “No. I mean, I knew what I tried to do. I tried to get rid of Tip once and for all.”

  “You burned down that cottage to kill him.”

  “He never said nothing bout it or they would have had the law after me. I would be a dead woman. But he knowed what happen. I believe the only reason he wants me back is so he can punish me hisself. Lord knows what would happen if he caught up with me now.”

  “Why are you still around here then? You ought to be in Canada by now.”

  Mawu put her glass down. She lifted out of her chair.

  At that moment, Lizzie understood why her friend had remained. She had waited for her, the last of them.

  “You got to leave, Lizzie. This your only chance. Promise me.”

  Lizzie couldn’t say anything. She was too dizzy from Mawu’s love.

  Mawu held on to Lizzie’s shoulders. “Promise me. Promise me, Lizzie.”

  Lizzie shook her head. She couldn’t promise. She couldn’t say anything. She couldn’t even look Mawu in the eye.

  FORTY

  As Lizzie and Glory rode back to the resort from Mawu’s cabin, the rain began. For the next three days, it rained without ceasing. The water came down in gusts, along with a tropical-force wind that sent wetness through open doorways and windows, created troughs of water between the hills, and swelled the streams. When the rain finally let up, mottled gray slugs emerged from the ground, leaving trails of mucus on steps and paths. Dozens of them appeared around the property, and the children who were visiting with their parents that summer collected a few and placed them in jars.

  Drayle had gone on a camping trip with the men, and did not return as promised. While he was gone, Fran instructed Lizzie to tend to the cottage. Lizzie washed and ironed the clothes, scrubbed the floors, dusted the wood, beat the rugs. While she cleaned, Fran sat in the highback armchair with a cloudy look in her eyes.

  In the afternoons, Lizzie spent time with the women in the hotel kitchen, helping them to prepare the evening’s supper. She liked sitting and talking with the free colored women while they peeled turnips, mashed squash, shelled nuts, sliced tomatoes, sifted flour. Lizzie had never spent so much time with them, and she was delighted by their tales. She begged them to tell her more about the men they courted or the monthly neighborhood dances.

  The rain had a calming effect and lifted their moods. But it did not help to dissipate the overall gloom at the resort, the knowledge that the servants would have to find work elsewhere.

  The first morning she woke and did not hear the pelt of raindrops, Lizzie dressed quickly and rushed outside to see the sky. She was hoping for sun, but was greeted with the same dark clouds scudding across the tops of the trees. She could smell another rain shower as she made her way to the Drayle cottage. As she walked, she saw the manager of the hotel and it looked as if he was walking toward her. She wondered what he thought about Reenie’s disappearance, and if Reenie’s master had blamed him at all for the unexpected disobedience of his favored slave.

  Lizzie tried to walk in a different direction so she would not pass him. But he had already spotted her.

  “Hey! You there!” he shouted.

  She tucked her chin down as she neared him. Several pains sprang up at once: an ache in her knee, a shot i
n the elbow. She could feel herself becoming physically ill the nearer she came to him.

  He pointed to a batch of firewood. “Gather up that wood and stack it outside the kitchen door.”

  He walked away.

  She pulled out her skirt and placed the wooden blocks onto it. She moved all the firewood in five trips. Afterwards, she looked around and didn’t see him. She hurried off to Fran, all the while picturing Reenie and the things he must have made her do.

  Lizzie poured a cup of warm water over Fran’s shoulders.

  “Back home, it’s unheard of to take a bath in the middle of the day. Up here in Ohio, I imagine the ladies do this sort of thing all the time. They probably don’t have to work as hard as us Southern women. I’m so tired of working. I’ve told Drayle that we need to sell the farm and all the slaves and everything else and just move to the city.”

  “What city, ma’am?” Lizzie asked softly, scrubbing Fran’s back with a brush.

  Fran waved a hand. “Oh, any city will do. As long as there’s no work involved. I want a husband who comes home at a decent hour. They say city men are always out in the streets, working and carrying on, but I wouldn’t allow that. I want to live in a house that doesn’t have a bunch of slaves walking around. Maybe one of those fancy houses like I saw in Washington, Dc. I think I rather like it up north. I like the way they…carry themselves.”

  “Hmmm,” Lizzie responded. She tilted Fran’s head and cleaned her ears.

  “Of course, my mother is a country woman, a Southern woman through and through. My daddy was always talking about his daddy’s Scottish heritage. I’ve always wanted to go to Scotland. I guess I’ll make it to Europe someday. The farthest I’ve traveled is…let’s see…here or Washington, Dc. I don’t know which one is farther from Tennessee. Now that I think of it, those are the only two important places I’ve ever been.”

  Fran stood and Lizzie wiped her dry.

  “In my next life, I’m not going to marry an ordinary horseman. I’m going to follow my parents’ wishes and marry some kind of aristocrat. Maybe I’ll marry a real European aristocrat. A count or a…or an earl.”