I looked. The trees tunneled over us, grim and decadent, dark in their green. I wondered what terrified fugitives lurked in the marshes.
“Won’t you please,” he begged.
As is by far his worst habit, Crawford likes me to recite whenever we flee a mob. I leaned back in my seat, tipping my face to the threatening trees:
My Love is deeper than my Desire
To possess. It is a living thing
That doth remain though I expire
To bed the field and turn the page. It sings
Past me, voice an opiate choir.
’Tis more than the love I desire.
Crawford gaily applauded my poem, the prospect of those we shall conquer, and the money we will receive because of it. I only hope I live to again see the East.
Last night, I heard the bell of my girlhood. I began to perspire the lonely revulsion of Virginia, a state sixteen years past. Like one possessed, I left my bed on the Turnwood verandah and drifted along the balustrade to the back of the Great House. From the second-floor window, I saw the slaves coming up through the dark, passing the overseer, his hand itching on a whip of cowhide, and watched them fill their empty gourds in the trough and disappear into the waving cane. By dawn, the fields were burning with song.
Dinnertime now. How on earth will I eat while being served by them? Will read before bed. Am but twenty pages into Mary Shelley’s Mathilda. Though already it is darkly—indeed lavishly sentimental, I am again persuaded by Crawford’s taste in the Gothic. Perhaps I should try my hand at the Novel?
Yours, &c.
Orrinda
August 29th, 1838
This morning Crawford insisted we ride to the slave market in New Orleans. To be brief, I told him I would rather sit in the stocks. To which he replied: “My dear, I should deserve only your trust.” I could hardly persuade my legs to the door. Crawford was Very Much Disappointed in my Lack of Spirit and remained Certain Fine Poetry Shall Come of It. The man is torturous for my Art. I cannot agree with this punitive bent of Philosophy, though I have ever regarded it as a Truth that Pain can yield worthy literary Sentiment, but can it not also give way to the utter tripe of the Sentimental?
Yet as I am but a toy, a jade in a cage, a darling spectacle, I went.
I will confess that since arriving to the Inferno di Turnwood, I am not myself. Though I am treated here in the grand style, my mind misgives. The Widow Turnwood’s gestures are falsely sugared. Ha. And for what purpose? I cannot fancy why the owner of at least thirty slaves would pay me twenty hundred dollars merely to recite?? And there is something more . . . nagging . . . like the spectre behind these the moon-fretted trees: tender and indignant.
And my Crawford. . . . Do I condemn his avidity, which has led me to Turnwood, or do I commend his mad heart, which has, in the liveliest sympathy, liberated me?
Crawford feels we can convert the Widow to the Great Cause. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. But I find in her no Angelina Grimké. If the Widow Turnwood’s conscience is so troubled, why not set her slaves free, or simply leave? Crawford says she has been a widow but a year, is convent-raised, and claims to have been kept up till now utterly apart from the pernicious workings of Turnwood.
Before we left for the slave market, the Widow, not knowing whither we were bound, requested my presence in the parlor for the first time since our arrival. I went upstairs and told Crawford, who gave a Solomon grin, saying: “Her timing is impeccable.”
I followed him down the stairs onto the second-floor landing. “Cannot you tell it?” I said. “I am much too fatigued.”
He stopped. “But it is you who are her curio.” He lifted my curls from my shoulders, turning me to arrange them down my back.
“But I believe you’ve inspired some tender emotions in that lily-white heart.”
“Perhaps.” He smiled. “I was a bit too forward in our correspondence.”
“If by that you mean you encouraged her to harbor romant—”
“I mean,” he interrupted, “I got her up to twenty hundred dollars.” He twisted my hair into a chignon. “My sweet girl, you are too cruel. Think upon the money. Shall we wear it up for the reading? A confection of piety and exposure?” He tucked his chin over my right shoulder. “You shan’t have to tour for a year if you don’t wish. You will have time to compose. Is this not what you wanted?”
“I would rather do a hundred performances in Massachusetts than one here,” I said. “This place exhausts me, it is a reproof to see their wounds, hear their cries while I mince about free.”
“But if this venture is a success—”
“Then what?” I stepped away. “Who knows how many other disconsolate, rich widows secluded in palmetto-fringed oases of bondage would wish to witness the circus of my verse?”
“Why limit ourselves to a Northern audience?” he asked.
“I do not imagine the Widow knows the difference between Byron and Mrs. Sigourney!”
“Remember to touch your collarbone,” he said. “It—”
“Signals fragility. I know!”
He held out his hand. And because . . . O I know not what excuse to give but I took it.
“I adore you,” he said.
We walked down the curling staircase along a painted fresco and into the foyer until we stood outside the parlor door.
“I know that too,” I said, letting go of his hand. “Endeavor to come in on your cue, won’t you?”
How to describe Madam Sop? She is a fair, willowy, round-faced creature. Moon-faced, I would say. This is not to suggest she is not prettyish what with her streaming golden hair and cornflower blue eyes (a poor man’s Lady Rowena) but that her countenance is marred by her perpetually startled expression. She droops like a guilty puppet; head too big for her body. Her manner appears one of cloying docility but her nails are bitten to the quick. In short, she is a pitiable creature so why do I despise her? Why? For she is the sort of Southerner who loves to hear the colored man sing his sorrows but would never forgo the ease of her daily luxuries to not be the origin of his lament.
In the oppressive mahogany of the gilt crimson parlor, we sat in the clock-notched silence until the Widow Turnwood gathered the audacity necessary for speech, uttering: “Thank you for doing me the honor of coming to Turnwood.”
“Indeed no, it is I, ma’am, who must thank you for your gracious and bold invitation,” I said.
She inhaled sharply, “Will you read ‘I Walked in Cambridge’?”
“Whatever you wish,” I simpered.
She gazed into the black marble fireplace. “I wonder if I could ask you . . .”
“Please, ask me any thing at all. For you, I am an open book.”
“How is it that Mr. Crawford discovered you?”
Curtain up. The harmless, belaurel’d Negro takes center stage. I cleared my throat and took a sip of tea: “I was born in Virginia to Mr. William Thomas. He had a plantation some twenty miles from Manassas. My father was Mr. Thomas’s brother. My mother had once belonged to Mr. Thomas, but shortly after my birth was sold to a nearby farm. Her name was Delia. I was Mr. Thomas’s daughter’s slave. Though dear Belinda was more like a sister to me.”
“Do you recall your mother?” the Widow asked.
“Some Sundays she would get a pass and come up to the Great House while the other slaves were congregating for their weekly serving of flour and lard, but my image of her is dim. Every year I imagine a different face . . .” I’ve always hated that line. I am fully sensible of its truth but how long it has been since I experienced it as true!
Crawford burst into the parlor: “Orrinda, I hope—” Then, feigning affectionate surprise: “Mrs. Turnwood? Oh, why good morning! Had I known you were present, I never would have so carelessly interrupted. I beg your pardon.”
A premature entrance overdone. Wasted on the Widow. For him, she is already captive.
“I was telling her of Belinda,” I said.
“Dear Belinda,”
Crawford cried, “whose unpolluted kindness we shall not soon forget! It is she who taught Orrinda to read and write and speak French.”
“Yes,” I agreed flatly. “I was a happy child then for I scarcely comprehended I was a slave.”
“But what happened to her?” asked the Widow.
I stared fixedly into a supposedly unfathomable distance. “One day, Belinda turned blue. Her little neck swelled like a bull’s, and she died.” I swallowed an imagined lump. “After the death of her child, Mrs. Thomas fast followed, and Mr. Thomas quitted the plantation, sending his slaves to the speculator.”
Here, Crawford dropped his head and voice in a compassionate brood and thus began to pace: “Orrinda was made to march for miles to the auction block. Her bare feet bloody, ankles raw from chains. When finally they reached their destination, the stench of the pens was that of human misery. There, rubbed with bacon fat to appear healthy, Orrinda was bought by Mr. Johnson of Southern Virginia. Then one afternoon, when she was but eleven years old, she was sent into the parlor with a tray of refreshments for Miss Julia, Mr. Johnson’s daughter, and Miss Julia’s Northern guests.”
“I was not in good spirits.” I smiled tremulously. “For old Mrs. Johnson had seen me spill molasses and tied me to a tree, stripping me from head to waist and whipping me until she was defeated by her own fatigue.”
“Orrinda had no kin,” murmured Crawford, coming to stand behind my chair. “No Belinda, no mammy to grease her torn back so her dress would not stick. She slept alone in the corner of the attic on a pile of rags. Awake half the night with hunger. But as Orrinda set the tray on the table, Miss Julia, fresh from Lady’s Seminary, began to read from a slim volume.”
“I could not know then,” I said rising valiantly to my feet. “That it was ‘The Lake’ by Alphonse de Lamartine. I knew only of a provoking familiarity and stopped, rapt, deciphering. L’homme n’a point de port, le temps n’a point de rive; il coule, et nous passons. I did not realize that I had been thus standing, when a gentleman of about medium height stepped from the visitors and remarked upon it.”
“It was Mr. Crawford!” breathed the Widow, clasping both her hands together.
“Yes!” I trilled. “Who is this? he asked Miss Julia. Why that is little Orrinda, Miss Julia said. Do you know French, Orrinda? he asked. Miss Julia laughed, Don’t be absurd, Frederick—what a notion! But he said, Connaissez-vous français? I could not help but answer him: Oui monsieur je fais. Ai-je eu des ennuis? Où suis-je pas? Miss Julia, shocked into indignation, ordered me out. But instead of going into the kitchen to grate corn, I hid upstairs in the linen closet. The next morning, when finally my belly overcame my fear, I emerged. But instead of a whipping, I was told to wash, for the gentleman who had spoken French had bought me and would be my deliverer.”
“How peculiar,” murmured the Widow.
Yet I think that Chapter is the least peculiar of all. What of that day we first set out for Boston? Being overawed by this man, differing so widely from any of the men of my acquaintance, I was made mute. I had no very clear notion of what would be expected of me, neither did I know that I now belonged to a Northern man who had no house, no farm, nor any other slaves. The second son of a large Unitarian family, Crawford was intended for Divinity, then perhaps Law, but had instead left Harvard to roam the country.
That night he gave me the corn bread in his saddlebag while he kindled a fire. I stayed by the horse, a creature I understood.
When he sat down to warm himself, he laughed. “I’m not going to eat you, child.”
He has a high, inelegant laugh that makes his eyes slit.
“Wouldn’t you like to sit?” he suggested.
I squat down on the other side of the fire, all agitation; the corn bread molding to my fist.
“You are perhaps wondering why I bought you,” he began. “I admit I am also wondering this myself. But when you stood there, Orrinda, so transported, and answered me in French—French! A single phrase entered my mind: By grace ye are saved. And I knew I had to save you, you poor wretch. I saw that barbarous old witch, Mrs. Johnson, giving you a whipping out by the barn, mutilating your little back.”
I uncurled the corn bread and began to love him.
He closed his eyes and leaned back against a tree. “You know, I saw Buckminster in the pulpit once. I was only a boy, but after seeing his performance I knew I could resign my ecclesiastical ambitions. My family was mistaken in me. You see, I’ve always had grace, but in Boston, they want holy novelty.” He looked at me with eyes cavalier, gray, and acute. “And wouldn’t they flock”—he smiled—“to hear you recite unimpeachable French.”
Thus ended my days as a slave.
Today in the slave market no muse arrived. Only we appeared amid the throng in the form of two subdued visitors. How could we become contemplative when Cato’s back made so great an impression? It was skin made drought, ridged with the memory of fish.
I wish God would see fit to tell me why Cato’s life should have been one of undeserved torture and I should escape. What am I that I do not suffer like him? In the pens, I saw manacled babes destined to be parted without mercy from their mothers whose lives will descend into insupportable grief. I could not stand there idle, well fed in silk.
I leaned forward and squeezed Crawford’s arm. “Do you see him?”
“Who?”
“The one they’re about to bid for. Look at him. Bid.”
Crawford peered round a portly man to glimpse the block. “For that poor, blistered devil? I don’t know that Mrs. Turnwood would appreciate the gift.”
“Not for her.”
He looked at me. “Are you mad? We are here to witness this earthly hell, no more—we’re bound to see a thousand wretches like him.”
“He’ll go for nothing. I’ll pay for him from my earnings.”
“Orrinda, if we dare free this man, Turnwood’s neighbors will string us up before you’ve spoken a single stanza,” he said.
The bidding for Cato began, but no buyers lingered, for the marks were to them a sure sign of rebellion.
“Did you not say that in Louisiana I would be a beacon in this darkest hour of inhumanity?” I hissed.
“We are not here to seek confrontation—not to mention how we are grossly outnumbered! We endeavor to enlighten as we entertain.”
I looked at my Crawford. There is as of yet no white in his hair, but it has begun its peaked retreat and the skin around his eyes is lined and thin. Though his eyes are those same waves in winter and around their dark centers, gold blooms. I have memorized this face and know its every crease, stray whisker, secret expression.
“I believe you claimed to adore me? Then buy him,” I said.
Crawford pinched and slapped Cato’s arms and thighs. Made a show of inspecting his teeth. Then strutted to the back of the market to strip Cato naked and pay $400 for him.
In the carriage, waiting for Crawford to obtain the Bill of Sale, Cato examined me, noting my fine dress, store-bought shoes, and unabashed familiarity with his new master. Gaunt and dusty, his perturbed eyes fairly bent from his face. All I could do was smile and offer water. In such a hostile crowd, I dared not tell him he was to be freed.
He hesitated and with a hunted look asked, “Miss, he a fair marster?”
“Very fair,” I said.
“Because I’se belonged to the meanest white man that ever walked the earth. He liked to whup me then rub some pepper on it. Seem like this Marster don’t even talk mean.”
“He does not believe in whipping,” I said.
Cato grinned at this vision. “Now I hopes that is the gospel truth.”
I do confess I think Cato will be a friend. Bon nuit!
Yours, &c.
Orrinda
September 1st, 1838
Crawford is ill. Perhaps with swamp fever. I would not know since I am not allowed to wait upon him. The Widow Turnwood frets I will catch the sickness, not being native to Louisiana. She assures me she nurse
d her husband all through his dying.
There is no greater hell than this. I cannot be satisfied mewed up here with my disordered heart. All night I stayed outside his door. I could feel Crawford waiting for me. Heard him saying: “Someone has hit me with a plank.”
But she alone ministers to him and the house servants watch me. What can I do?
This afternoon I heard him retching, gasping for the strength to purge yet again, and I had to go to him. I could not keep no I couldn’t from opening the door and finding the Widow wiping his mouth, bending to kiss his forehead.
“Orrinda.” She reddened. “The draft!”
The draft indeed. That bedroom was as sealed as a tomb.
I wanted to put my hands about her neck and squeeze. Feel her Adam’s apple under my thumbs. If he dies without me seeing him, I’ll kill her.
My sole comfort is the now profuse Cato who at length declares: “It ain’t Marster Fred’s time.”
Cato is the best of men. We did right to free him. I must protect Cato should Crawford die. But he can’t. He has to live. Please God, let him live. Please, please, please. I’ll do anything.
Cato’s little boy was sold on the block a year ago. Their Master needed the money. The boy’s name was Frank after Cato’s baby brother who was whipped to death by their mistress. What kind of mother lashes another’s baby dead? These sinners resound throughout Time. You put slivers of glass in their tea but they come again.
Strange to write twice in one day. I ought not. No.
Tonight in the dark before morning again I heard singing. I opened my bedroom door to find Cato gone from his pallet in the hall. Not cool out now but the air has some ease and we sleep indoors. I went past the plantation hospital, the sufferers groaning with swelling, past the sugarhouse and stables. I could not be afraid following the hum for I was a perfect ghost myself, unable to see my hands before me.
A group of slaves stood in a ditch among pine-knot torches. Behind them, a slave graveyard full of wooden posts and crosses, names scratched with no dates. The preacher held up both palms, reading them as he swayed with his sermon, though his hands were naked of any book. When he finished he dropped to sitting on a log, his countenance bright with exultation. There was a shout: “The Debil has no place here!” The untiring congregation made a ring, shuffling right in a circle, the banjo talking and hands clapping. Daring to tap my foot ever so softly, I stood undetected in the brush, or so I imagined, when a field woman snatched up my arms, bending them back. “You ain’t meant to be here,” she said, glaring at me as if I had struck her.
The Man Who Shot Out My Eye Is Dead Page 8