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

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  The crack in Aggie’s ice began one evening, during the time of cotton chopping. She was sitting in the yard, while Pop George told stories to the very young children. Tess was asleep and tied with a cloth to Aggie’s back, but her other child had been patient for too long. She hadn’t played with Nick for many months, since before the new baby was born. He spotted Aggie and began their old game, “See and catch me.” Nick ran very fast, and, sighing, Aggie rose and called after her son, she was gone get him. She laughed to herself: she hoped this activity would tire him out, as much as she was tired. It was more than a notion to care for a little boy and an infant, as well as the Quarters-children besides. She began to walk, but Aggie came upon Nick sitting in a red dirt puddle. His child’s linen shift and face were wet with mud and he was shrieking.

  Aggie saw that they were nearly upon the left cabin, and she hissed at her son, quick, give her his hand. Yet Nick sat in the puddle and refused to rise. Suddenly, Samuel appeared. He’d watched his child from afar, but because Nick was in Aggie’s care, Samuel kept his distance. He didn’t want to get within even a few feet of that woman, but he knew to harm her would be to hinder the life of his child.

  Yet that day, Samuel’s love overcame him: Nick was his only seed, he told himself. And Samuel was not a young man anymore. He was near forty years old, though there was not one line on his face. His blond hair wasn’t even silver at his temples; he seemed to be both a young and never-aging man.

  Samuel pulled the child into his arms, unconcerned that the mud on Nick would ruin his clothes.

  The mother snatched her son away.

  “Don’t you be touching him,” Aggie said. “Don’t you never put your hands on this chile again.”

  At her words, fear seized Samuel: he quaked throughout his entire body. He turned on his heel, opened the leaf- and flower-covered iron gate of the left cabin’s fence, and walked inside. In moments, there was the high-pitched sound of a child screaming.

  The Day of the Selling

  After the scene at the left cabin, Samuel decided he’d had enough. He was tired of deferring to Aggie, who was nothing but a nigger and a woman. Until he’d encountered her, he’d only felt shame over his long-dead father’s assaults. Not when he read his Bible, for Samuel only pulled out those scriptural pieces that assured him, as a white man, he was next to God. Not when he heard the screaming of his Young Friend, for the more he hurt her, the more powerful he felt. Yet the sense of power he had felt that evening in anticipation of hurting his Young Friend had leaked out of him when Aggie had snatched Nick from his arms. He’d wanted to punch her, but the strength had left his bones when he’d tried to raise his arm.

  His night with the Young Friend had ended too quickly, and when he returned to his own bedroom in the house, Samuel decided he would have to sell Aggie. He could tolerate her no longer, and once Aggie was gone, all would be well, no matter the potential demonstrations among the Quarters-folks. If they wanted to slow down their work, he would allow Carson to use his whip. No one would stand in the way of Samuel and his son. He sat down at the desk in his parlor and wrote two short documents: a letter to Lancaster Polcott and a pass for Claudius.

  Samuel expected to sleep well that night, but he had nightmares of someone’s lips touching his ear, whispering, giving him instructions, though he couldn’t remember what they were when he awoke in the dark, sweating. He heard footsteps over his shiny pine floor and saw the outline of a small figure, though he couldn’t see the face. And when Samuel lit his lantern, there was no one in his room. The door was tightly closed as before. In the morning, Samuel was uneasy, as he walked to the kitchen house, and had Tut send for Claudius. The master gave him the two notes, and told him, make haste. He held out the pass, explaining what it was—as if Claudius couldn’t read—and said, if he encountered white men on the road, to give them this paper. Not the other. And don’t lose his pass, because a nigger on a horse was bound to be challenged. It was twenty-five miles to where the trader lived—too far to travel quickly on foot.

  Lancaster arrived four days later, with his Negro helper. Beside the wagon, Claudius rode the horse. The trader got down to business quickly, saying he might be able to get a prime price for Aggie, since Samuel had figured her as in her early twenties, but with the bad birthmark that Samuel had described on Aggie’s baby, that would surely diminish the baby’s price. He and Samuel stood in the yard. Though the sun was high, and Samuel had drunk three cups of black coffee, he was groggy and rubbed his eyes.

  “That’s not right,” Samuel said to the trader. “That’s not right at all. I said I had a buck to sell . . .” In his confusion, he couldn’t remember the words from the note he’d written to Lancaster, nor what he’d intended it to say, only what had been whispered in his ear from the night before.

  “No, sir,” Lancaster said. “With the greatest of apologies, I fear you are mistaken. Wait . . .” He patted his breast pocket. He reached inside, searching. “I don’t know what I did with that paper, but I distinctly recall what this nigger gave me.” He gestured to Claudius, who had climbed down from his horse. Asked, boy, what did that paper indicate? And don’t pretend he hadn’t read it.

  Claudius looked from Samuel to Lancaster. He was caught like a catfish on a line. One of these white men was his master, and a nasty sumbitch at that. Yet he could not accuse Lancaster of lying, either—this would assure that he’d be whipped at the least. So Claudius looked down at his shoes, until Samuel said to him, go into the fields and tell Carson Franklin to get his son, Jeremiah. And then bring back a Quarters-man. Anyone, as long as he was strong.

  A half hour passed, and Carson and Jeremiah walked to the yard. They had taken hold of the struggling Midas. Aggie was sitting in the small yard in front of her cabin and saw the braided head of her husband. She began to run toward the big house, but Samuel made a gesture, and she was caught by Claudius. He whispered that he was so sorry. He was only doing the best he could, as she called him a white man’s nigger. Samuel urged Claudius to hit her. Make her shut up, but Claudius only held her arms and rocked her. He pulled Aggie closer and pressed her face into his chest. He whispered, look away from her man, ’cause it was too much. Just look away, and she fainted in Claudius’s arms.

  In the wagon, the overseer’s two sons held on to Midas, who yelled and kicked as the trader’s helper locked him in chains. He screamed Aggie’s name. Pop George’s name. Then, repeatedly, the names of his two children, Nick and Tess.

  “Papa love y’all!” Midas cried. “I won’t never stop! Y’all ’member me! Papa love his babies!”

  His voice could be heard as the trader drove off. Hours later, it seemed as if his voice screamed still, like the ghost of somebody who had died.

  A Family’s Grief

  We do not need to tell you that Aggie and Pop George grieved after the selling of Midas. That evening after he was taken away, Aggie was senseless in the bed she had shared with him, where Claudius had carried her and laid her down. Outside, the Quarters-folks had congregated and sang their sorrow songs around a fire. That night, no one in the Quarters slept. Even the children refused to lie down on their pallets in their cabins. In their mothers’ arms, the babies cried throughout the night. Sadness was a wounded animal crouching in every corner.

  In the years after her father’s selling, Tess would not remember him, but she would withdraw into quiet, except when she sat underneath the large pecan tree that was feet away from the general store that Samuel had built. Then she talked to herself, laughing, and sometimes jokingly hitting the pecan tree. Tess insisted that the tree and she had long conversations, and Aggie left her in peace to her fantasies, the way she’d left Mamie to the same tree. Aggie reasoned that life was long and full of suffering; let children have their scant happiness.

  Yet Nick would not forget his father, and in the days and weeks after the trader’s wagon had pulled away, he would ask Aggie, where was his papa? Where had he gone? Aggie would cry and hug herself, and Nic
k would ask her, why ain’t she say where his papa had gone? Until the day that Pop George took the child aside, saying that he needed him to be a big boy now. Didn’t nobody know where his papa had gone, and his mama was sad about that. And every time he be asking about Midas, Nick be making his mama even more sad.

  Thus, Nick hushed his questions and became stoic, but one morning, he announced to Aggie, “I know where my papa be. He be gone to Jesus.” His mother asked, where’d he get that notion? and her son told her the Good Lord had told him in a dream. The child was so serious that Aggie did not have the heart to correct him. And when Nick said he wanted to put a rock in the graveyard for his papa, so he could pray, Aggie assented.

  Then came the day when Nick was put to work. This was a ritual in the life of every Quarters-child: in their seventh summer (or rarely, their sixth or eighth year), the top milk teeth of the Quarters-children fell out, leaving the empty homes as the marker of a new time. Most of the children that Aggie and Pop George tended would go to the fields, but some would help Claudius work the two large vegetable gardens, one supplying the House and one the Quarters. These same children would help Claudius tend the hens and the milk cows, which supplied the butter, cream, and cheese to the House. They would not be allowed near the left cabin, however, to trim the flowers that wound through the spires of the fence that imprisoned the Young Friend.

  When it came to Nick’s labor, Samuel decided that the child he loved would not be a field hand. He wanted to keep Nick close in the big house. The little boy didn’t yet know that Samuel had sired him. He was not yet of an age to consider logic, that Midas’s skin had been dark-dark, and Aggie’s only a few shades lighter. The brown eyes of both, while Nick’s were like a light-eyed cat’s. That both had black hair, while their son’s was blond, though tightly kinked like any Negro’s. When Quarters-children had tried their hand at teasing Nick, Pop George had scolded them. They was a family at Wood Place, and that made Nick they brother. And they was supposed to take a brother to they bosoms, not make him shame over how he looked. ’Cause didn’t nobody make theyselves. Only the Good Lord did all that.

  When Nick was assigned as Tut’s kitchen helper, he displaced another little girl, who was sent back to the fields. That evening, when Nick tried to settle with the other Quarters-children in his own years, to listen to Pop George’s stories, they moved away from him. He didn’t like the feeling, and he asked his mother, why couldn’t he work the fields like the other children? And Aggie said, she didn’t know, because their master did all that. That next morning, when Nick approached the cook, saying, please put him back in the fields, she told him the same.

  In the ways of children, Nick began a protest. When sent on an errand, he went the other way and stayed absent for a long stretch. When he returned, Tut said nothing, for she’d been instructed by Samuel not to whip Nick. Even if he hadn’t spoken to her, any fool could see the boy was this man’s son. Except for the wool on Nick’s head, he was Samuel’s spit. Yet when Samuel came to the kitchen with smiles and candy for the child, Nick did not act as another slave child would. He was sullen and looked at his new shoes, which had been given him when he started working in the kitchen. The shoes hurt his feet. When Tut pushed him forward, saying, didn’t he hear Massa talking to him? Nick was quiet. And when Tut was questioned by Samuel, who asked, had she done something to this child to make him so unhappy? she hasted to tell Samuel, oh, nawsuh! She loved this child just like her own. She fed him well, and spoke soft-like to him, but it seem like the boy didn’t know his blessing. He kept crying to go to the fields with them other pickaninnies.

  The next morning, Carson Franklin came to the kitchen, bringing Tut’s previous helper. He told her he’d come to take Nick to the fields.

  Though the labor was difficult and the days long, Nick was happiest with the Quarters-children, whom he’d won over again, when he exchanged his privileged place to be near them. He won their respect further when he shielded them from Carson Franklin’s whip by taking credit for what Carson perceived as misbehavior. Nick didn’t know that the overseer was forbidden to whip him, only that whenever he took the blame, nothing happened.

  In four years, when Tess was assigned to the field—for her birthmark still covered half her face, and Samuel did not like to look upon imperfection—Nick worked even harder to fill her cotton sack as well as his own.

  Lady’s Desire for Children

  Lady desperately wanted to feel the smooth, fat hands of a child on her cheeks. That would be her only consolation in life, since she despised her husband, but Samuel did not visit her bedroom, no matter how she arranged her hair or how elaborately she dressed. Lady consulted her own mother about how to draw her husband closer, but Mahala never took her daughter’s side. Mahala told her she knew nothing about superstitions, and if Lady would learn only to submit to her husband’s every wish, he would seek her out. Mahala had become old and petulant before her time. Her trust and adoration of white people had gained her nothing, and she was jealous of her daughter. She refused to see her daughter’s unhappiness.

  So Lady sought out Aggie about the means to conceive. The two continued meeting in the moon house, for they were still linked in their bleeding, and through the years, they had become friends.

  Aggie’s grandmother had not taught her how to urge seed into a womb, only how to keep it from taking hold and how to expel it. One night in the moon house, however, she considered that Samuel depended upon women for his food. And she remembered her grandmother’s story of the Creek warrior who had been felled by a maiden. The next morning, Aggie headed to the kitchen house, though she was still bleeding. She smiled at Tut, telling her, she must be so tired. Aggie would watch her pots and pans while Tut sneaked to the keeping room of the kitchen house for a nap. The cook sighed in gratitude and disappeared, and Aggie shooed away the child who was the kitchen helper. Go outside and play, Aggie told the girl. Go on, now. Then Aggie began to stir the bubbling pots on the stove, and spit in the pots. She pulled a small jar from her skirt pocket and poured blood into each pot. She did this every day, until the blood was gone.

  By the time Lady ended her monthly interval in the moon house, Samuel was greatly weakened. His attention to the farm’s business was blurred. His strength had waned, and he slept later and went to bed earlier, neglecting his visits to the left cabin. At night Lady would slip into his room and nudge him, but he would not wake. She would reach under his nightshirt to rouse his manhood, as Aggie had instructed her. Then Lady would quickly climb on top of her husband, swallowing her pain and disgust.

  By the time he discovered Lady was expecting, Samuel was confused as to how his wife had gotten with child. He had no memory of her climbing astride him and was dumbfounded when he discovered her condition. He accused her of infidelity with one of the farmers in the territory, but she assured him that was not the case. How would she meet anyone? she asked. He did not allow her to leave the plantation. And Lady feigned shyness when she asked Samuel, did he not remember their nights together? She had enjoyed those times very much, and Samuel decided, however these children were conceived, he was a white man. He needed legal heirs, even if they weren’t of his own seed.

  Assisted by Aggie, Lady gave birth in the moon house. She bore a set of twins named Gloria and Victor. Both were golden-haired like their father, and Lady wept. Thinking her friend was upset by the white appearance of her newborns, Aggie told her, do not blame these babies for their blood. After all, Nick was Samuel’s seed, too, but she loved the boy as her own.

  Yet Lady told her she was weeping for joy, for her children had no appearance of Indian blood. She had lived in fear during her pregnancy. And Aggie was silent, considering that her friend still seemed unaware of her African line. In her heart, she was sympathetic, however, that a burden had been lifted from Lady.

  Of Warriors and Prophets

  The love of our land was a fever that would not be chilled. It called white man after white man to our place, which the
y labeled a “frontier.” To these men, our people weren’t even as good as animals, because our people could not feed the hungry or keep others warm with their hides. They were inconveniences, sitting upon spots that these men coveted, and as more treaties were signed by more self-appointed leaders of our people giving away our land, more white men came. They came with the rights they had given themselves and the rights they had taken away from others. They sent word from mouth to mouth that our earth was free. Come and split down the pine, the cedar, the pecan. Come and shoot the deer. Come and bring your pigs and cattle that trample the earth. Here is a place where a white man can make himself a king.

  There had been skirmishes and battles between the Creek people and white men. And there were traitors to the Creek people and there were loyalists and a civil war fought between those factions: the Red Stick War. Our people fought against each other, one side supported by the British and the Spanish, who wanted to get back at the Americans, who held up the other side. Yet whichever side the white men were on, they urged our people, turn on each other.

  Then there came warriors, such as Tecumseh of the Shawnee, a tribe in the north of the continent. And there were prophets, such as Tecumseh’s brother Tenskwatawa. Together these men were the Shooting Star and the Open Door, and they rode down to our land to unite our people of the south with our people of the north. Tecumseh held a weapon and Tenskwatawa held a dream, and the dreaming brother’s sights led him to tell the Creek, unite against the white man. Abandon eating his cattle and pig and chicken and wheat and return to the bison and the deer and the corn, as should be the way. And give up the white man’s god—his ugly god, his lying god, his torturous god, his thieving god, his tricking god, and rebuke his missionaries who had one set of rules for white Christians and another for Christians among the people, and who, when asked, talked crossways, so that one word followed the next down a line leading to a place where buzzards roosted and called out beaked noise.