The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  Samuel considered himself a happy man, except for his hungers, which he had difficulty feeding. He would mount his horse and ride through the countryside, until he found a yeoman farmer who would accept money for the use of a little Negro girl. Samuel learned that he couldn’t be choosy during these times. He paid the dollar or two for these moments.

  Darker-skinned children had been his favorites at first, but he began choosing bright-skinned girls after he’d expanded his body of scholarly knowledge. He had been surprised to learn that, as Ezekiel had patiently explained to him, the majority of mulattoes were sterile, except in extraordinary cases. Samuel had also examined the works of Petrus Camper, Immanuel Kant, and David Hume from the eighteenth century, how they’d measured the skulls of Negroes and compared them with great apes’ and found them very similar. In his own century, he’d found the treatises of Samuel Morton to be immeasurable—and was very pleased that this brilliant scientist had carried his same name—but if Samuel Pinchard were honest (and not at all arrogant), these learned observations were not earthshaking, only logical. Samuel’s regret was that he had no inclination for the written arts himself, for if he had, he believed he could have given the scholars a run for their money. And he read the Bible, learning that, along with Cain, Ham, the son of Noah, was responsible for the cursed color of the Negro. God had placed them on the earth to carry burdens, the Negro men and boys were ordained to exhaust themselves in brutish labor, and Negro women and girls to tolerate the weight of white men on their bodies, and if it pleased God, to nurture the seed of their white masters within their wombs. That was the prescribed order of this world, and even in Heaven, Negroes would be expected to serve cheerfully.

  And thus Samuel had bought Mamie, the beautiful dark girl whom he chose to work in his kitchen. But he’d forgotten Ezekiel’s teachings and so miscalculated: Mamie was not a sterile mulatta, as his past mentor had talked about. She was a full-blood Negress, and she conceived; though her frame had been thin and she’d given every appearance of not having yet bled, Samuel’s assault had made her pregnant. Yet her hips had been too narrow for labor, and she died after giving birth to a baby boy. So much miscalculation: Mamie may have given the impression of childhood, with her short height and minuscule frame, and the high-pitched octave of her voice, but in fact, Lancaster Polcott, the trader, had no provenance for her birth. When Samuel had discovered Mamie’s pregnancy, he’d estimated her to be around twelve. Yet she was older, though her exact birth date had not been recorded by her original owner. There were many stunted slave girls and women like this: in their early years, their growth was abridged by a lack of hearty mother’s milk, and then a lack of proper food.

  The death of Mamie had cast a pall over the plantation. Work slowed, even when Samuel allowed Carson Franklin, the overseer since his father had passed, to use his whip. Samuel ignored the accusatory looks thrown his way from the Quarters-folks. He was the master of this plantation, and as Micco had in times past, when Samuel walked the earth of his plantation, he whispered that this land belonged to him, as did everything that grew upon it. The blossoms, the greenery, the trees, the peaches and other fruit. The creatures: the horses, the cattle, the pigs, the chickens, the Negroes. Under the law, Samuel could do as he willed with any of his creatures—even kill—and no one would take him to task. Thus, any little girl he wanted was his to ruin as he saw fit.

  Yet Mamie’s death threw permanent shadows into Samuel’s life: Nick, the child she would bear, and the wrath of Aggie. Nick would become the only person that Samuel would ever love, and Aggie the only person who would acquaint Samuel with shame.

  He had been shocked by both emotions that morning when Aggie had brought the baby out to him, wrapped in clean cloth. She’d told him only the Lord could save Mamie. She’d described the girl’s condition, how she was weak and in pain and couldn’t stop bleeding. Her frown had accused Samuel, though her words had been devoid of expression, and suddenly, shame had assaulted him. He’d thought he was suffering from a bout of indigestion, for his stomach lurched. Then he felt weeping coming on, and a feeling he’d never experienced before: self-recrimination. For several seconds, he’d known himself to be a bad person. To push the feeling aside, he’d pulled the cloth off Nick. The baby was white-skinned and blond. His eyes were tightly closed, but in six months, they would change from a newborn’s blue to the eyes of his father. Samuel made a sound—an “oh” of marvel and gratitude—and tears stung his eyelids.

  He wanted to protect this child. It was an unsettling yet pleasurable emotion. Yet the feeling he had in Aggie’s presence—the shame she called instead of offering him obeisance—roused something in Samuel akin to terror.

  The Building of the Left Cabin

  After Mamie’s death, Samuel began to stalk his own fields for child victims, but within three years, he decided that was not for the best. He didn’t feel badly for using what he owned, but conducting his pleasures with his Negroes’ own children led to a slowdown of work. And Samuel was a businessman; he could not allow his inclinations to affect his fiscal ventures.

  When Samuel would visit the Quarters to seek out the only lasting happiness in his life—Nick—sometimes he would run into Aggie and her deepening frown. And that same ugly feeling would coat Samuel’s skin: Aggie believed he was a horrible person, a man hidden from the glare of God. Thus, he began to avoid the Quarters entirely.

  For a time, he again sought out yeoman farmers in the territory and paid to assault their little Negro girls, as he had done in those years before choosing Mamie. Yet within another two years, these moments had stopped satisfying Samuel. He had become a cultivated, rich man, and he decided to act accordingly. He directed Carson to pick strong Quarters-men from the fields to cut down trees, and their labor didn’t take long to build a new structure on the left side of the big house. A beautiful one-room cottage, which Samuel had copied from a picture in a book of Brothers Grimm tales. He ordered new furniture and toys. A hobbyhorse, a dollhouse with tiny furniture of its own, and porcelain dolls dressed in elaborate clothing that matched the children’s dresses he had ordered as well. And he stocked up on infusions of poppy flowers and mixed them with cane syrup, for children loved the taste of sugar.

  The day Samuel purchased a mulatta child at Lancaster Polcott’s auction, he was the happiest he’d ever been. Since the government had outlawed the transport of slaves over the Atlantic Ocean, an equally thriving trade for Negroes had erupted along the federal road. And since the expansion of the federal road, the southern transport in slaves was much easier, and the choices in humans were dizzying. The little girl Samuel would buy was a specialty item of Lancaster, who had begun to hold auctions the next county over from Chicasetta. His Negroes were quite expensive: the little mulatta cost Samuel seven hundred dollars, but Samuel was pleased to know she was only nine years old. He thought he’d have several years of use until she blushed into maturity. Lancaster Polcott allowed Samuel to enter the tiny pen where the child was kept. In the corner, a blanket was pulled over a cot fitted neatly with sheets and a pillow: she was special and did not sleep on straw. The child was bright-skinned with long, wavy hair pulled back in a woman’s bun. She wore only a sheer, clean chemise. When Lancaster ordered the child to completely disrobe and turn around slowly, there no marks anywhere on her body. Samuel became quite agitated, as his need came upon him—even though the child was weeping—but Lancaster warned him, he could only look at the child, until money for their transaction exchanged hands, and he delivered her to Wood Place. Samuel told him he wanted to take possession of the child right now. Right this second—he had cash and he had his wagon outside—but Lancaster refused. He gave the excuse that he wanted Samuel to gain control, but really, he wanted to dangle the child over the other man. Lancaster was a churchgoing soul, and though slave trading was an honorable profession—wasn’t it right there in the Bible?—Samuel’s particular appetites turned his stomach. Yet Lancaster reasoned with himself: he had a family to
support.

  In addition to ordinary field hands (and such), Lancaster offered a variety of specialty merchandise, such as the little girls and young women for boudoir purposes. He was open in this selling of females, and when he put them on the block, ribald in his language. Yet—though he didn’t dare to speak the words out loud—at other, discreet, unadvertised auctions he also traded boys and young men as expensive “butlers and valets” for the use of white men who paid three times the price for a field slave. Lancaster smelled a lifetime of money, if he could keep Samuel Pinchard—and others like him—on the leashes of their desires.

  Samuel would purchase a tall Negro for a discount. He had been the slave of a liberal type in Milledgeville, a minister who had taught his slaves to read so that they would know the Bible. Yet this minister had been in defiance of the new law that forbade anyone to teach slaves to read. The minister had been jailed and could not pay his five-hundred-dollar fine. His two slaves had to be sold to cover the cost. That Negro Samuel had bought, though young and strapping, had only cost one hundred fifty dollars because none of the other white men at the auction wanted a Negro who could read. He was very homely, and his name was Claudius. Samuel would put him in charge of his garden and his barn animals, as well as tending to the landscaping around the cabin he built for his little mulatta. Similar to Rappaccini’s garden in that tale by Mr. Nathaniel Hawthorne, lush plants had been trained to grow near the gate and between its spokes, obscuring her view. Claudius kept the plants growing in all seasons. Along with studying the science of Negroes, Samuel studied horticulture and would instruct Claudius what he wanted him to plant or cultivate.

  In two days, Lancaster Polcott delivered Claudius and the mulatta child to Wood Place. The child was taken inside by his cook, Tut; fed, bathed, dressed again in fresh clothes down to the skin; and settled into the little cabin to await her owner’s visitation. Claudius would begin to trim the flowers and pluck the weeds. He would sleep in a lean-to on the side of the barn and eat his meals in the kitchen with Tut. Samuel didn’t want the man to develop any friendliness with his fellow slaves, in the same way that Tut had no allies, because she had allowed Mamie to be abused in the kitchen house by Samuel, and even lied to protect her master. Samuel wanted no loyalties forged between the ordinary slaves and the caretakers of the little girl he would call his “Young Friend.”

  The Quarters-folks eventually discovered the terrible purpose of the little house Samuel had built to the side of his big house. They called it “the left-handed cabin,” or, more simply, “the left cabin,” as the Devil favored that direction. When Samuel overheard his slaves talking about the structure, he would not comprehend that they were calling it a place of evil: soon, he would call it the left cabin, too, and smile at the simple ways of Negroes.

  VII

  Consequently, though we ordinarily speak of the Negro problem as though it were one unchanged question, students must recognize the obvious facts that this problem, like others, has had a long historical development, has changed with the growth and evolution of the Nation; moreover, that it is not one problem, but rather a plexus of social problems, some new, some old, some simple, some complex . . .

  —W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Study of the Negro Problems”

  For You to Love

  If Lydia Garfield’s life were a song, it would have been a blues, like her uncle Huck sang down at the family reunion every summer. Plucking his banjo, crooning in a baritone, while Mr. Luke, the man who was the love of Uncle Huck’s life, clapped his hands and patted his feet. And everybody in the yard urged Uncle Huck to sing, sing that song, but they didn’t pay attention to the words, that Uncle Huck sang the pain of his life. That he had to call Mr. Luke his “best friend,” though Mr. Luke and he were joined forever, as tightly as if they’d stood in front of a preacher and said vows.

  The folks ignored the tender, bold touches between the two men. The pats on the shoulder, the forehead kisses. The folks called out praise instead. Boy, that Huck shole could sing. Got that voice smooth like butter.

  Maybe that’s what Lydia had done when she’d picked up her habit. She was trying to sing her pain, knowing that for the rest of her life, she had a burden to tote. She couldn’t ever put it down. It didn’t matter how pretty people said Lydia was. Pretty wasn’t shit. Pretty didn’t mean a goddamn thing. When people called Lydia that, they might as well have spit in her face. Because the man who’d first called her pretty had been the one who’d handed her this load.

  There were other names she was called at school. Redbone. High yellow. Light-skin-ded. Siddity heifer. The-one-who-think-she-cute. But Lydia was never called ugly. Her beauty was assumed, because of her paleness, her hair that reflected light. Her eyes that changed colors, depending on her outfit. Pretty, pretty girl. Her grandfather had called her that, when she was six years old. Back when he used to hurt her. She didn’t remember when it started, only that when she emerged into memory, the hurting already was a fact of her life.

  She was in the station wagon with her mother and Coco. They were in the City. Lydia knew that much. Her mother was driving to Lydia’s grandparents’ house, because Mama and Daddy were taking a trip to New York. She’d finally convinced him to take her on a honeymoon, after all this time of being cooped up in the house with two children. A woman needed more than housework, she told Lydia. She talked to Lydia a lot, as if a child were a short, small-boned girlfriend in a pinafore with ankle socks and Mary Janes. As if a little girl could understand the trials of motherhood and being a wife.

  Mama would turn to her daughter and ask, “Darling, do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Yes, Mama. Uh-huh.” She knew that she had said a pleasing thing. That her mother would be satisfied: she would receive a pat on the knee.

  Mama didn’t trust a babysitter for her children. Where she came from, mothers relied on other women they knew to take care of their children. So she drove her daughters to Nana’s house, that big place in the neighborhood where the high-class, wealthy Black folk lived. She deposited her girls and a pleather suitcase with Miss Delores, a brown-skinned lady with skinny legs and a soft bosom that was smaller than her belly.

  Coco was asleep that day. She was an early riser, waking in predawn darkness to stand in her crib and bump it against the wall, until Mama came into the room and picked her up. I’m hungry, Coco would say. She knew exactly what she wanted. Biscuits with butter. Or cheese and grits. Whatever she asked for, she demanded it immediately in sentences free and clear of baby non sequiturs. The only indication that she was a toddler were her sudden, long naps, after the day was high.

  In the hallway, Miss Delores balanced the sleeping Coco on her hip, then took Lydia’s hand. In the kitchen, she gave Lydia half of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with the crusts cut off. They watched Sesame Street while she washed the breakfast dishes.

  “That Cookie Monster gets on my nerves,” she said. “He acts like he’s drunk.” But when The Electric Company came on, she turned appreciative of the brown Dracula. “He needs a haircut, but it’s easy to fix up a good-looking man. My husband is like that. A fixer-upper, but he cleans up nice. I have to watch these fast-tailed heifers around him.”

  Coco roused. “A heifer is a female cow.” Then she went back to sleep.

  “Lord, this child!” Miss Delores whispered. “She’s too smart for her own good!”

  After The Electric Company, there was Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood and the cardigan-clad white man. He talked to puppets as if they were real people in his patient, whispery voice. He made Lydia believe they were real people, too. Then they headed upstairs to the guest room, where two fancy dresses lay on the bed, a sign that there would be company soon. Lydia knew how to dress herself and fit the fancy frock over her head. She took off the days-of-the-week panties her mother had put on her and pulled on the ruffled bloomers. Coco had ruffled panties, too, only with plastic sewn inside. She stayed asleep throughout her outfit change; when Miss Delores laid
the little girl on the bed, she tucked her legs under her bottom.

  Then there was her grandfather calling, girls, girls, where are you?

  “Hello, Dr. Garfield,” Miss Delores said.

  “Hello, Delores. Did you have a good morning?”

  “Yes, sir, I sure did. And you?”

  “I suppose.”

  “I believe I’ll wake up the little one from her nap. We should take a walk in the park. She likes that. Mrs. Garfield has gone shopping already.”

  Lydia grabbed her hand. “No! Don’t go! Please don’t!”

  She pulled away. “Child, what has gotten into you? Your granddaddy took off the afternoon, just to take care of you. Dr. Garfield, I’m so sorry. She must be having a bad day.”

  “Oh, I’m not mad. Not at all. You’re my pretty little girl, aren’t you?”

  He chucked Lydia under her chin, and Miss Delores left the kitchen.

  Then it was time for a reading lesson in the study with Gandee. They sat together on the dark, shiny couch. She knew her colors already, as well as her ABCs. Her mother had taught her not to rush though the middle part, LMNOP, but it was Gandee who’d tried to teach her how to read in his study. At first, short words, like “cat,” “rat,” and “dog,” but it was hard for Lydia to grab hold. So Gandee gave up, and read to her from The Brownies’ Book, with Black children in the pictures, and Gandee began to read: “‘When Blanche was a boy, he had to work as a slave on a plantation in Mississippi. Like many a slaveowner, his master needed him too much to allow him any time to get an education. But young Blanche made up his mind he was going to learn his abc’s the best way he could . . .’”