Skins

by Sarah Hay

  ‘Where I come from it’s against the law. A black can’t love a fair woman because their children will be brown.’

  Instead of sounding angry, his voice was soft and regretful. He sighed and then he started again.

  ‘When I was a boy my father was an old man. A British sailor owned him. But he was freed after his ship was captured off New England. So he went to live in Hartford. There were other free blacks there and they elected him leader. I was named after him. He wanted us to be good Americans. Good black Americans. He always said that we would earn the respect of our white neighbours if we worked hard and were sober and honest.’

  He laughed then. A harsh-sounding laugh that startled her for his voice had been like a lullaby. She hadn’t really been listening to the words.

  ‘But we couldn’t go to school with their children. Nor could we sit with them at church. The old man wasn’t beaten though. He had his own school and our book was the Bible.’

  He paused then and breathed deeply as though the burden had grown heavier.

  But he just muttered: ‘He was a foolish old man.’

  He brought his hand down, which had been resting in the curve of her neck, to her stomach and rubbed it as though he wanted to erase the past.

  ‘What am I saying? What is this story I’m telling? The albatross I wear round my neck is black,’ he said with a quiet fierceness.

  Then he stroked her lightly across the ribs and her heart beat quickly beneath them. He lifted her skirt and when he was done he lay on her with his head buried in the soft skin of her neck. He slept with her that night and she woke to his arm across her belly and his eyes on her face.

  ‘I will buy you a beautiful gown,’ he said.

  After that it was as though he had said all he had wanted to say. There was much about him that puzzled her but she didn’t know the questions to ask. The weather had become distinctly wintery with stormy squalls that brewed in the south and spat slanting rain. But between the storms there were days of calm, of sparkling stillness when the sun caught the sea’s brilliance and the white edges of the island. The mind cleared like the pale crystal water and smoothed away the ripples. The men and the black women would go sealing then. And she would be left on the island with Church and her sister.

  It was hard now because Mary continued to build the wall between them. Her outrage became her armour and she never weakened. Dorothea was lonely. And Mary must have been too. At first she had tried to explain that Anderson wasn’t bad. That he wasn’t like the others. But Mary didn’t want to listen. Dorothea sometimes felt that the silence screamed between them. Didn’t Mary realise they were all safer if she was with Anderson? After a while she began to see that it was more than just Anderson and her betrayal of Jem. Mary had sprung into life. She suddenly seemed to have found a purpose. It made her stronger. Her helplessness had turned to anger and she directed it towards Dorothea because she could.

  So on those days Dorothea would find work in the camp: bringing rocks from the granite to line pathways, or she might rake up the leaves that lay under the trees. There was always water seeping from the rock so she would dig gullies to head it off into the sand, and then there was the garden. Sometimes, though, she would just walk along the beaches and over the rocks, collecting shells and watching the birds. Then she would sit and feel on her head the weak winter sun when it was high in the sky. And the sea’s currents would run one way and then another.

  It was on one of those days that she found a beach of shells. Beautiful, intricate art forms washed up from the deep. The little beach faced east and jagged black rocks lay between it and the rolling swell. They would break over a large square-shaped boulder and the white spray would shoot high above it. But where she knelt it was protected. She wondered how the shells had got there. How they could be deposited by such a violent sea and remain unbroken. They must be stronger than they looked, she thought. Her hands sifted through them and she discovered a treasure-trove of coloured coral and spotted molluscs. Coral that was pink and purple and orange. Tiny fronds punctured with holes that dried hard. Shells, browns and dusky pinks, which were striped and washed with the colour of sunset. She collected a bundle of the best of them and wrapped them in the folds of her shawl.

  She retraced her steps, walking around the long narrow headland instead of continuing to an area of the island she hadn’t been before. As she came over the flat rock she could see the whaleboat sailing into the other end of the beach in front of the camp. She hesitated for a moment, unsure at first as to whether it was Anderson. Reassured by his dark silhouette standing tall at the stern, she continued down onto the beach.

  She reached them as they hauled up on the sand. Sal remained in the boat as they lifted it up to the sandhill, her head bent down to her chest. Anderson acknowledged her with a quick glance and got on with the business of unloading the dripping skins. But the two black women stayed at the side of the boat and reached in to help Sal. They half dragged and lifted her and although it was clear that she was in pain she made no sound. Dorothea followed a little way behind as they carried her up to their camp and laid her down.

  On Sal’s leg was a gaping wound that revealed the white of her bone. Against her black skin, her red flesh was startling. Dorothea sat beside Dinah who was chanting in her language and separating pieces of bark. Mooney left with her digging stick and wooden trough.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked. Her hands supported her as she knelt on the ground. She couldn’t look directly at the wound and so she watched Dinah. Dinah explained that Sal’s leg had been jammed between the rock and the boat by a wave. Mooney returned with a bowlful of slow-moving larvae. She crushed them with her digging stick and packed them into the wound. Dorothea turned away as her mouth filled with the acid of her guts and she coughed. She got up then but looked back over her shoulder as Dinah wrapped Sal’s leg with bark.

  When she walked through the door Mead was talking about his encounter with a bull seal. No one seemed to be listening but that didn’t stop him. Anderson had laid out slabs of seal meat for cooking and she began to prepare it for roasting.

  ‘Sal is hurt badly,’ she said.

  Anderson shrugged.

  ‘Stupid black bitch got in the way,’ said Isaac and he flicked his head in the direction of Anderson. ‘He’s got two of them anyway.’

  Then he grinned, his yellow moist grin. She looked at Anderson. He was staring into the fire and when he noticed, he frowned.

  ‘What’s wrong with you?’ he asked crossly.

  She shook her head slightly but she kept her gaze on him. He picked up a cup and threw it against the stone at the back of the fireplace. It clanged and dropped into the ashes. They looked at him.

  ‘Daft bitches,’ he muttered and left the room.

  When she lay with him that night, she asked whether he had taken them into his bed. He didn’t speak and she thought he was angry that she had gone too far.

  ‘It ain’t the same,’ he said after a while. ‘They don’t have feelings.’

  She thought about what he said. She couldn’t remember when she had begun to notice the women and the way they talked to each other. She listened to the sounds in their language which could be flat and sad and at other times sweet and high. She saw how they looked after one another. She felt how they suffered and sensed that it was eased a little by the strength of their companionship. If Sal died, she had no doubt that Dinah would too. She knew too that they carried a heavy sadness and a longing for something. She didn’t know what it was. She thought perhaps it was family. She asked Dinah one day and discovered it was more than that. But Dinah found it impossible to explain in white man’s language. She knew Anderson was wrong. But then she was only a woman, what did she know?

  The southerly wind had strengthened the next morning. She wrapped her seal-skin coat around her and put on her shoes, thinking as the soft fur of the tammar caressed the soles of her feet that they were the most comfortable she had ever worn. She took with her
the seal meat and walked through the trees to where her sister and Matthew were camped. Mary looked up as she tended her fire. It lay between them.

  ‘I have some meat for you,’ she said.

  Mary’s mouth tightened.

  ‘We have some. Matthew brought it yesterday.’

  Dorothea sighed and stood with the plate out in front of her.

  ‘Does it have to be like this?’

  ‘Like what?’ shrugged Mary.

  ‘You know what I mean.’

  ‘Nothing’s changed,’ said Mary. ‘Except you. Look at you. You look like a savage.’

  Dorothea’s fingers tightened around the dish and she fought the urge to scream. She wanted to yell that she was sick of looking out over the rock, the beach, the mainland that never got any closer. She was sick of it all too but what was there to do? She hated the island. The ugly black streaks in the rock and the mess of broken shells left by the gulls and the dead-looking spindly shrubs that edged it and were bent over by the wind like old hags.

  Instead she turned away and went back to the hut where she came across Dinah and Mooney collecting wattle seeds. She asked after Sal.

  ‘Very bad,’ said Dinah, shaking her head, and her eyes were large in her face.

  Sal rested on a skin beneath the paperbark dome. The fire smouldered weakly beside her. She raised her head and smiled at Dorothea and then slumped back in the dirt. Dinah squatted at the fire and poked the wattle pods into the ashes.

  ‘She my sister,’ said Dinah sadly.

  Dorothea sometimes found her English hard to follow. But from what she understood, Dinah and Sal were of the same family from an island across the sea. Another man had taken them. Not Anderson, she said, a very bad man who hurt them a lot. Dorothea remembered the shells she had collected and she gave Sal the one she had liked the most. Her hot hand held it tightly and her eyes moved to Dorothea’s face but she lay still.

  When she returned to their camp two days later, Sal was sitting in front of the dome and had tied the shell around her neck. Her eyes were clear but she couldn’t stand on her own. They offered Dorothea some hot seeds to eat, which they shelled from the wattle pods like peas, except they were black. The little dog growled and sniffed around them and chewed on a stick. Dinah picked it up and cradled it in her arms and it licked her hands. She grinned.

  ‘He good now, very happy. Look here. He fat,’ she said, rolling him over.

  Dorothea nodded but she wanted to know something. If Anderson hadn’t taken them from their home then how did they come to be with him? Dinah stared sideways and back. She let the dog go and rubbed the heel of her hands over her thighs which were grey with ash.

  She muttered to herself for a bit and then said: ‘Big fight.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Island.’

  Dorothea asked her to explain and as she listened to her words, spat like the husks of the seeds, she began to piece together the story. It seemed that the man who captured them was the leader of a large sealing gang. They had a camp on a small island a long way to the east. She and Sal were forced to swim in water where there were sharks, and when they weren’t hunting or cooking they were tied to the fireplace by a long chain. Then a big black man, who was Anderson, appeared one day. They didn’t know where he came from but he was very hungry. Instead of giving him food, their master flogged him. His clothes were taken from him and he was tied with the women. But when they came back from sealing he was gone. The chain was broken and their master was very angry. Dinah looked sideways and rubbed her arms.

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Jack, he come back in the night. He kill him.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Dorothea.

  She watched Anderson at the fireplace. She watched the way his body reflected the firelight as he turned. He looked up under his brow and his eyes were warm. But she looked away. She noticed the rough edges of the timber and the ants that drew a line from the roof to the floor and where they went to after that she had no idea. Anderson lit the lamp on the table. Mead and Isaac were playing cards. She didn’t know where Church was.

  Anderson came around behind her and placed his hands on her shoulders. It was nearly a month since he had left Jem and Manning on the mainland. She wondered if they were dead. Then it would be at least three people she knew of who would have died by Anderson’s hand. Her neck stiffened and she stared straight ahead. It wouldn’t take much for him to wrap his big hands around her and squeeze the life from her. In some ways she wished he would. Then he stroked the sides of her bare neck with his thumbs and she shivered. His thick dry lips were beside her ear and his voice rumbled through her.

  She couldn’t refuse him. Although as he led her into his room she wondered what would happen if she did. Would he harm her? Despite what she had learnt about him, somehow she couldn’t imagine it. His touch was too soft.

  Later she lay on her side facing him, his arm tucked around the hollow of her back. He wasn’t asleep and neither was she. The wind lifted the cladding. They wouldn’t be sealing tomorrow. He stroked the curve of her hip and her face rested on the hard skin of his shoulder. And when he breathed her head rose slightly. She was thinking about what Dinah had told her. If the story was true. But it would be. Then she realised that it didn’t matter. His breathing changed and she knew he was asleep. His muscles twitched, sometimes quite violently, and they jerked her head. She moved away from him and he rolled onto his side, facing away from her.

  She stepped over the water that ran from the rock. It had carved gullies in the dirt. The black soil was sticky and waterlogged, the granite shiny with rain. Awkwardly she held an armful of damp firewood, the sticks rubbing dirt onto the front of her gown. She shivered and her hands were covered with wrinkles that were black lines crossing her palms.

  When she stood in front of the fire, her gown steamed. She took off her shoes and turned them towards the fire. Her toes were numb. Her gown stuck to her like a second skin for since being on the island she had never taken it off to wash. The grey coarse cotton was soiled and torn. She had grown used to it but suddenly it had become unbearable.

  She noticed Anderson in the doorway. She remembered him washing clothes in a barrel that had the top cut off. She asked where it was. He offered to help for there was nothing to do when it rained. He brought it in and placed it in front of the fire. She decided then that she would wash as well. If she sat with her knees bent she would be able to have a bath. Anderson told her there was whale lye she could use for soap.

  The first pot of water steamed over the fire.

  ‘I need to bring it in there,’ she said, pointing to his room.

  Although there wasn’t anyone about, she could hear voices from under the verandah.

  He raised his brow.

  ‘I want to take off my gown,’ she said, knowing that with him she was safe.

  He dragged the barrel into the other room and filled it with hot water. They heated some more until there was about a foot and half steaming at the bottom. He brought in the lamp and placed it on the wooden chest. After he closed the door she removed her gown and her undergarment that had once been white. He stood in the shadow, leaning against the door. Moist, warm air filled the room and his face glistened. Rain thumped on the roof and drips splatted on the ground beneath the eaves. Naked, she looked up at him and smiled slightly.

  The yellow light was kind to her skin and she glowed. Her nipples were dark and erect like a seal’s. She moved deliberately, and slowly filled with a strange, tingling lightness. She knew she could do anything and that she was safe. She didn’t look at him again, not directly, for there was no need, for every inch of her skin soaked his gaze and it was nourishment. Like the whale lye she rubbed over her skin and into her breasts. She stood up, rubbing it between her legs.

  Still he remained in the shadow. She bent over and scrubbed the gown, wringing it out and hanging it over the side. Then she knelt and scooped the water over her face and her hair, eyes closed as the warm liqui
d caressed her skin and ran down her neck and dripped off the end of her breasts. Lightly, he took the drip with his fingers and her nipples puckered. She looked down at his hands, which had come from behind. And with his arms under hers, he gently raised her out of the water. Her body leant against his and he was naked and hard against her. She was wet when he lay her down and their bodies fused moistly. Her skin was pink and soft. She was warm and expansive, a woman who could nurture and forgive.

  While her gown dried over the fireplace, they lay in the other room wrapped in skins, feeling as though they were the only ones who existed. But then over the top of the sound of the waves they would be disturbed by the sound of Isaac’s barking laugh or Mead’s steady drone. The water had long gone cold in the tub when she asked him about what Dinah had said. The crows on the other side of the wall spoke tonelessly to one another. The light wavered on the ceiling. They didn’t really need a lamp but it gave them a feeling of warmth and security, as though they were enclosed in a cocoon that no one could penetrate.

  He sighed deeply and then began to speak: ‘The story is too long. You have to know the beginning to know the end.’

  He paused and looked up at the ceiling.

  ‘I think it is better to be ignorant: to not know of God’s promises. The British sailor, he taught my father to read. My father thought it was a gift. For me it has been a curse. That’s not what you want to know, is it?’

  He smiled and placed his hand over her arm.

  ‘I’ll start with when I went to sea. I was to be paid at least. But there was hatred too. We were packed in the forecastle and fed hard tack and salt junk. The first time it was four years.’

  ‘If you could read, why did you go to sea?’ she asked quietly and to show she was listening.

  His hand left her arm to clasp his other hand across his chest.

  ‘On a whaler green hands are paid the same for they take the same risks.’