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

by Honoree Fanonne Jeffers

  Yet some Creek did not heed the warrior. They paid no attention to the prophet. And our people kept fighting each other, and an American murderer was able to win the Red Stick War. His name was Andrew Jackson and he and his soldiers murdered many hundreds of Creeks, so that his name would become a curse among our people. Indian Killer, he would be called, but somehow he would become a hero among white men. In a new century, statues of him would be built, and his face would be printed upon money.

  And his name was praised after he brokered a new, treacherous treaty with the Creeks, the Treaty of Fort Jackson, in 1814.

  And more land was taken from our people.

  And there was a traitor, a mestizo named William McIntosh, who presented himself as a leader of the Creeks in 1825. McIntosh signed away the rest of our land in Georgia. In that year, this was the Second Treaty of Indian Springs. And McIntosh would be found guilty by our people and executed, but his damage was done.

  And in time, Andrew Jackson the Indian Killer became the president of his white man’s nation. And in 1830, this murderer signed the Indian Removal Act, after which the Creek people’s hope turned to the mud after a heavy rain, for this law decreed that all Creek people were ordered to leave their homes permanently. Many tried to resist and hide in the forest and in the hills. And many of our people were hunted and killed.

  The Departure of Micco and Mahala

  When Samuel Pinchard read in the newspaper about the new law that forced all Creeks to leave Georgia, he laughed as if this was welcome news. He told Lady it was time for all savages to leave. And he laughed again when he invited her to walk with him to her parents’ home to say goodbye.

  Lady was ashamed, imagining her place beside her husband as he told her parents they had to depart the land they’d once owned. Even Carson Franklin, a mere tenant, had been allowed to stay. It was not right, but Lady was deprived of gumption. She was a woman and an Indian, and the law placed Samuel above her, in both categories. She was quiet as she walked to the small cabin where her parents had been exiled. Her parents had set aside their disappointment in Samuel when Lady gave them grandchildren. It had been a moment that Micco had never expected. Though Micco didn’t speak of his son-in-law’s perversions, he’d seen enough to know they existed. Yet his power was gone, and he was only happy that his family would continue, blond-haired and strange-eyed as his grandchildren might be. As always, whiteness in others pleased Mahala, and she had spent many days stroking the light-colored hair of her grandchildren, and telling them how beautiful, how special they were.

  In his in-laws’ cabin, Samuel spoke directly: the two of them had to leave. They were Indians, and according to the laws of Georgia that had been in place since the previous century, neither the Creek nor the Cherokee were in amity with the government of Georgia. Mahala began to weep. Micco was completely beaten, his shoulders slumped, his frown apologetic, as Samuel advised him that it was time to go west. He would provide a covered wagon and money to get his in-laws settled. Then Samuel slipped the knife in further: he reminded Micco that he was a Negro, because of his grandfather’s African blood. His body was a crime, his presence against the law, and Micco placed all of them in danger. If anyone found out about his blood, not only would Samuel’s marriage to Lady be voided under the law, but her children would be documented as Negroes.

  At these words, Mahala shrieked: in their years of marriage, she had never guessed her husband’s secret. She began to flail, her eyes widened, and then, she fainted on the dirt floor.

  “Papa?” Lady whispered. “Is this true?”

  Micco held out his hand. When his daughter moved toward him, Samuel grabbed her arm, digging in his fingers. He asked, was she a nigger or was she a white woman? She better make her choice, and Lady turned and left the cabin.

  And so, in 1832, Micco left his youngest child in the care of her husband. He took Mahala and left the home that had cradled him. They headed west, crossing the Mississippi River. Micco’s heart was sibilant when he settled in the ultimate destination of the Journey-Where-the-People-Cried, a place called Oklahoma, a land that originally was the home of the Kickapoo, Wichita, and Osage tribes.

  The earth was red in Oklahoma, but there were no trees worth praising. Though Mahala and Micco found their three sons (for they had been required to leave Georgia as well), Mahala still could not find the happiness that had eluded her all of her life. She was surrounded by Indians of all nations out in Oklahoma, including the Creeks, who spoke a language Mahala had avoided since memory. She did not respect them or their ways, but she would never be the white woman she’d aspired to be, either. And she had been betrayed by her husband, whom she now regarded as an African animal.

  Soon, she tired of the stunted pine trees that Micco had planted from saplings he’d taken from their original homeland. Those trees never would grow half as tall as those of her youth. One day, Mahala lay down on the cot that was provided by the American government for the removed Indians, underneath the rough blanket that had been given by the same. She closed her eyes and would not speak to anyone, not even her three sons. She ignored the quiet words of her husband, who had asked her forgiveness for his lies. In six years after leaving Georgia, Mahala would pass away.

  The End of a Bond

  When her parents had prepared for their journey west, Lady had not helped them pack. Nor would she take the days before their departure in early summer to spend last moments with them. When her children whined to see their doting grandparents, Lady spoke sharply to them that she did not have time. It was only after Micco and Mahala left that Lady informed her children that their grandparents had gone on an adventure out west. They had wanted to be near her brothers, she explained. When her children cried, Lady hugged them to her breast, but she did not weep. Her anger at her father was a coal within her, relentlessly bright. Micco had placed her—and her children—in jeopardy, by his inability to keep quiet. How could he not have seen that Samuel was a dangerous man?

  Except her children, everything Lady looked upon was tinged with filth. Even her only friendship was ruined, for though Lady had loved Aggie, she felt diminished to her level. And when Lady next met Aggie in the moon house and confided what she had discovered about Micco, Aggie’s blank expression revealed her lack of surprise. So Aggie had known! That though Lady slept in the big house, wore beautiful clothes, and was served by dark beings, all along she had been the same as these slaves. Lady was no longer superior to Negroes. She suspected that Aggie had been laughing at her over the years. Another month passed, and when she and Aggie met in the moon house, she was cold to her friend. And Lady left her children in the care of Tut, instead of bringing them along. Lady did not want any more contact between her children and Aggie, and when Aggie brought up her years-long disquietude about the Young Friends in the left cabin, Lady replied, they weren’t her concern. They were only pickaninnies, and her husband’s property to do with as he wished. She saw Aggie’s shocked expression and felt pleasure. She hoped Aggie was hurt.

  The next month, Aggie did not appear at the moon house, and Lady did not send for her, either. Lady told herself her life was only about her children. They were her charge, and her only focus. If they succeeded, then her loneliness would not have been in vain.

  Lady had been frightened when she’d given birth to a little girl. She was terrified Samuel would pounce on Gloria. She would not let the child from her sight, for Gloria had no marks that would make her imperfect. Lady placed Victor in his cradle, but she slept with Gloria at her breast. Once, Samuel had tried to lift the baby girl from her body, and Lady let out a powerful, sustained scream until he let go. It was Lady’s idea to find Gloria a maid, a Quarters-girl named Susan who had been sent from the fields to serve as chaperone until Gloria started to bleed. Lady was equally concerned about Victor, though for other reasons, for while she had seen Samuel’s eyes rest lovingly on Nick, he had no such affection for his white son, whose face was identical to Samuel’s father’s. And Victor did
not turn to Lady, though she adored him: he was a boy and white and would one day be master of Wood Place. He would be her salvation and her protection in her old age.

  It had been confusing to Victor when his grandparents disappeared. After they left, he felt all alone. His mother was kind, but he’d watched Samuel treating her as if something was very wrong with her, and so Victor began to draw away from her.

  As a young child Victor had played with Quarters-children. But when the front teeth of those in his age cohort were shed, he had to play by himself. He pined for playmates, but the other two planters ignored Samuel’s invitations. At the general store, he warned his son, the children of the yeomen were not of his class. Victor finally found a companion in the season of chopping, when the weeds are stubborn around the cotton plants. The Quarters-boy was chopping with his hoe when Victor appeared, carrying a basket of cheese, biscuits, and sweet potato pone, which he had ordered Tut to prepare. The meal was nothing fancy, but to a field worker, a feast.

  Victor pulled back the cloth in his basket. “I like you,” he said.

  The other boy had been reared to return kindness from a white person; if he received violence, he was merely to beg for mercy. He nodded his head and smiled. Carson Franklin watched the exchange. He called to the Quarters-boy to get back to work, and, after some confusion—which white male would he obey?—the Quarters-boy followed after Victor. At the creek, he ate quickly, and then he saw no reason to refuse Victor’s handholding or cheek kisses. In five years, Victor would wield more power with this same boy. That would be the year he turned fourteen, and when Samuel would discover his son’s appetites.

  Samuel was walking through the peach orchard. Since the day, years before, when Micco had given him that first delicious peach, Samuel had not lost his craving for the fruit. During the summers, he liked to pass among the trees. He cradled the fruit gently, whispering words of encouragement, and on this day, at a distance, he saw Victor. His trousers were unbuttoned, and he held himself, pushing closer to the face of the kneeling Quarters-boy.

  “Kiss it for me,” Samuel heard his son say.

  The boy shook his head, and Victor slapped him several times, shouting, do it, do it, until the Quarters-boy opened his mouth, and Victor pushed himself inside. After the act was complete, Victor plucked a peach from a tree and took a bite. He walked away from the other boy, who was spitting furiously on the ground.

  Thereafter, Samuel planned to kill the Quarters-boy. He drew up notes for the act, but he was saved the exertion by a rock wielded by another. Emboldened—or anguished—by his relationship with his master’s son, the boy in the peach orchard had taken to bullying other Negro children until he’d picked on the wrong one. This bullied child picked up a rock and bashed in the skull of his oppressor. The mother of the rock-wielder was terrified, but nothing came of the event. Samuel only told Carson, choose some men from the field to dig a grave in the Negro side of the cemetery. Bury the Quarters-boy, and then quickly get back to work.

  A Marriage, a New Set of Twins

  Nick had been discontented, ever since the selling of Midas. Though he worked among his comrades in the fields and sometimes smiled, he was largely a stoic child, who became a brooding young man. In the privacy of his family’s cabin, he expressed his desire to run away from Wood Place, from Samuel, whom he finally understood was his father. Aggie would ask, did he want to break her heart into pieces? Hadn’t she lost enough? How much more did he want her to cry?

  And so Aggie was glad when he approached her and told her he was a man. He wanted to marry. This pleased Aggie—marriage would settle him down—until Nick told her he planned to marry his sister. This change in her children—that they had moved from siblings to sweethearts—distressed Aggie. She turned her gaze upon Nick, looking for signs that he carried the distorted cravings of Samuel Pinchard. Yet he was a good son, always respectful and helpful, after his labors in the cotton fields. Pop George reminded Aggie that her children were not actually blood kin, so she should not feel disgusted. In fact, she should be grateful, since Tess was a curious girl with odd behaviors—the talking to trees, the staring into space. Nick assured his mother that there was a side to Tess that only he knew. And that he would love Tess until the end of his days. She no longer was his sister. Now she would be his wife, and after weeks of stony frowns, Aggie finally gave her consent. She moved into a narrow bed on the other side of Pop George’s room, and gave the newlyweds the front chamber, along with the bed that she had shared with Midas.

  The twin girls of Tess and Nick were born near the Lord’s Resurrection, a holiday that Samuel celebrated in his white man’s generosity, giving two days of rest to the slaves. It wasn’t Easter yet, however, and that morning, Tess’s birth pains began in the field. She walked slowly to her cabin. Some hours passed, and a baby girl was born. Moments later, another baby girl. A week went by, and Tess returned to the fields, leaving her unnamed babies with Aggie, who would carry them to her at nursing time. Aggie would be followed by the other children, two or three of the smallest ones holding on to her dress or her long braid, which fell to her knees. As Tess nursed her babies, she would weep. When her babies opened their eyes, she longed to keep holding them, one in each arm, instead of returning to her work.

  Samuel was no longer afraid of Aggie. He had watched her for seventeen years, since he had sold off her husband. He saw that the sparks in her spirit had died. Thus, two weeks after the twins were born, he walked boldly into Aggie’s cabin without knocking. He took his time in inspecting his newborn property, pulling the quilt off the babies. The baby on the right was very fat and healthy. She had a head full of black hair and was a pretty cradlesong: though bright-skinned, she had the features of the beautiful, dark-dark Mamie. She was born perfect.

  Samuel named this baby after his wife. “Since your mistress is the first Eliza, this child will be Eliza Two.”

  Small and poorly, the other baby was wrinkled, completely bald, and looked only like herself. Unlike her twin, she had no passed-down magnificence from Mamie. She twitched her limbs as if taken with palsy. Samuel decided to give this twin the name Rabbit.

  When the twins lost their front teeth, they were given jobs in the big house, which had changed in its occupants: Victor had gone to the university, accompanied by the much older Claudius, and Tut the cook had died. A new cook had taken over, Venie, a young woman who had been drafted from the fields to replace Tut. With her move, she had been placed in charge of the left cabin, along with Pompey, the young man who had taken over as gardener.

  Because they took care of the Young Friends, and thus, were involved in Samuel’s perversion—despite being compelled to do so—both the cook and gardener were friendless. The Quarters-folks avoided Venie and Pompey, and so, the two were grateful for the attention of Aggie. Along with other Quarters-children, Pompey had been raised by Aggie, before he had gone to the fields. He was devoted to her as much as to his own mother. As for Venie, the bond the two women shared would not have been likely, had they not been lonely. Aggie was twenty-five years older than Venie, but she was equally friendless. Living for years in “the yard” had distanced Aggie from the other women in the Quarters, though they revered her and were grateful for her careful tending of their children. She and Venie had more in common with each other, as both were connected in their different ways to the big house. Venie was a rare individual: she had been purchased as a Young Friend, but when Samuel tired of Venie within only a month, he could not sell her: Lancaster Polcott told him, if Samuel wanted to get rid of a child so quickly, he must have damaged her irreparably. And there were no refunds for human merchandise. So Samuel had purchased another Young Friend, and had cast Venie into the fields. He reasoned that, in time, he would find someone to breed her with, from among the Quarters-men. That way, he could recoup his financial loss when she gave birth to valuable babies.

  Now, Venie was in the kitchen, and it was she who told Aggie that it hadn’t been Samuel’s idea to move
her granddaughters to work in the big house. It had been the mistress’s notion. And Aggie was confused: Had Lady meant this as an overture to repair their friendship? Yet when she traveled to the moon house and knocked, Lady answered with a cold mien, informing her she did not wish for company.

  Aggie wasn’t afraid, however, for she knew how much Samuel loved Nick, and these girls were his own blood. More than that, Samuel had only recently purchased a new Young Friend and had stopped using the children of the Quarter-folks ever since the left cabin had been built. She was certain that her granddaughters would be safe. Eliza Two became the maid for Gloria, and Rabbit was assigned to Venie.

  For these little girls, the days were pleasant enough. In the kitchen, Rabbit was given as much to eat as she desired; she was a tiny girl, but her appetite was unending. And Gloria treated Eliza Two like a live doll, dressing her in cast-off dresses, and Eliza Two learned to be patient with Gloria’s repetitious stories and her childishness, even though technically, her mistress’s daughter was a young woman. Gloria’s former maid had grown too old to listen to the Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Susan’s body had strained at the bodice and her hips flaunted in the outlines of her dress. Yet her age was not the reason she had been replaced. Susan had convinced Gloria to teach her the ABCs, by encouraging her repeated recitation of the letters—which Gloria was more than happy to do, given her fondness for repetition—and then asking her to write them on dozens of sheets of paper. Susan had progressed from small words, sounded out from Peter Piper, which Gloria had kept from her early years, as she had all her dolls and anything else given to her, to longer words and finally to reading. Although Susan had no paper when she returned to her pallet in the attic, because of Gloria’s need to travel the same rutted road in her mind, Susan had memorized long passages from the plays of Shakespeare and from the Bible. At night, when it was dark, Susan would close her eyes and see the words moving. Her mistake was that she took a book that she wanted for her own. When she was discovered she was cast back into the fields.