Mandingo

by Kyle Onstott

  The other slaves admired Ellen’s jewels without envy of them; after all, she was the master’s own wench and entitled to an ornament to mark her status.

  Blanche, one day in the kitchen, where she had gone to mix a toddy for herself, unknown to Maxwell, glimpsed Ellen’s earrings and knew they were duplicates of her own. Her temptation was to tear them from the girl’s ears, but Hammond was at home and she knew the wrath it would kindle. She forbore. Instead, she went upstairs and unscrewed her own trinkets from her ears, but could not bear to throw the pretty, gleaming things out of the window, as she had intended. She put them in a corner of a drawer of her commode.

  The light was failing when Hammond came in from work, but when he entered the sitting-room he perceived that the earrings had disappeared from his wife’s ears. ‘Drops git to painin’ you?’ he asked, fingering the lobe of his own ear.

  ‘No!’ Blanche bit the word.

  ‘Why ain’t you wearin’ ’em then?’ he inquired naïvely.

  ‘That slut, that dirty nigger slut of yourn. You brung her earrings jest like mine. Think I’d wear ’em? No!’ Blanche began to weep in her anger.

  Hammond now saw how grave was the offence of making identical presents to his wife and to his concubine.

  ‘Now, now,’ he said. ‘It ain’t nothin’.’

  ‘Her time gittin’ near,’ consoled his father. ‘She right squeamish. All white ladies is, about this time.’ He abhorred dissension and sought to quell it.

  ‘Might as well burn your letters right on her face—an’ mine. Bran’ ’em right in, so all the world goin’ to know who we-uns belongs to. Nobody cain’t touch a woman with no red earrings. She Hammon’ Maxwell’s woman, white or black,’ Blanche screamed. ‘I ain’t your whore to be marked off.’ She rose, waving her arms, and made towards the hall.

  Hammond caught her by the shoulder and placed her again in her chair. ‘That di’mon’ ring, I goin’ to take that too, an’ you doesn’t behave. Then whut you goin’ to do? That boy you totin’ in your belly goin’ to be a bastard an’ I does. Want he should be a bastard an’ ever’body sayin’?’

  ‘No! No! No!’ Blanche cried.

  ‘You know our weddin’ don’ hold. Dick, he ain’t no reverend, ain’t no purentee reverend, jest a reverend fer niggers. Ain’t got no right to marry whites. It all I got to do,’ Hammond threatened, ‘jest to say we ain’t married an’ sen’ you home to your crazy papa and have your bastard.’

  The girl knew no better than to believe what Hammond himself half credited. She had no answer, but shrieked hysterically.

  ‘Now, Son, it all right,’ Maxwell tried to calm the storm. ‘You wedded; you know you wedded fast to Blanche here. Hadn’t ought to skear her this time. She slip that chil’, liable to, right here an’ you go to skear her.’

  ‘I don’ care. Ellen mine an’ I goin’ to have her, whutever you says,’ Hammond declared petulantly.

  ‘Have her! Have the slut! I ain’t carin’ an’ you has her, on’y don’ try to mark us off with your ol’ red earrings. You cain’t marry her. She ain’t white. She jest your bed slut. I your wife, I your wife,’ Blanche shrilled, rising again and making toward the door.

  Hammond let her go and could hear her climbing the stairs.

  The father was more distressed by the scene than the son or his wife. It always distressed him to know Hammond in the wrong and he could not deny now that he was behaving brutally. ‘Go foller her an’ love her up, Son,’ he urged. ‘Tell her it ain’t so. Tell her you married fast. Tell her you sorry.’

  ‘She kin go to hell, all I care,’ sulked Hammond. ‘Ellen, she mine, she mine, an’ I keepin’ her. Keepin’ her, do you hear, keepin’ her?’

  ‘Course. Course you keepin’ Ellen. I ain’t findin’ no fault with Ellen,’ Maxwell pacified his child. ‘Only Blanche, she white. She your wife. Hadn’ ought to rile her, ’specially now—how she is. Nobody ain’t stoppin’ you keepin’ your wench.’

  ‘I reckon I hadn’t ought to brung her them earrings like Blanche’s, only they so purty on her ears, an’ I never thought,’ Ham conceded.

  Blanche did not come down for supper, and neither of the Maxwells had any appetite for food. The elder drank toddies, hot and strong, when the meal was over. The younger man abstained and sat in silent contemplation in the flickering candlelight until it was time for bed.

  By next morning the tempest had subsided. Blanche appeared for her breakfast as if nothing had occurred and was as affable as usual. Hammond offered no objection to her after-breakfast toddy, and after he had gone she drank another and another, which Maxwell made no move to curb. She had rather pointedly, however, failed to resume her earrings, which Hammond noted without comment. He also noted and admired Ellen’s, gleaming in her ears.

  21

  Christmas was not ignored on Falconhurst. The three days of idleness granted to the slaves—except the house slaves—were reckoned as a right and not as a mere absence of tasks. The livestock were fed and cared for, but otherwise nobody worked—not even in the patches allotted for gardens. Even Mede was permitted to break his training, which caused his master some misgivings lest he grow flaccid. The house Negroes were relieved of none of their duties, which in any event were not onerous—except Lucretia Borgia’s and she would have been desolated to be deprived of her bossy overseeing of everything and everybody, including her masters. Held to their usual tasks, discipline within the house was relaxed and licence was given for acts and speech that would not have been tolerated at other times. Maxwell shared toddies with Meg until the boy stumbled with tipsiness.

  Presents were few. Clothes and blankets, such as would otherwise have been needed anyway, were issued to the slaves, many of them merely mended and washed, handed down to smaller adolescents from youths who had outgrown them. Each child was given a stick of candy. Some ate it at once and afterwards regretted that it was gone. Others, more prudent, sucked on it charily and required days for its final consumption. A few put it away without tasting to cherish for its beauty. Blanche gave Tense some crumpled ribbons to prink her hair, and Tense was delighted.

  All the boys too old for candy were assembled before the house and each was allotted a hot toddy. Maxwell went out on to the gallery to drink with them. A few relished and savoured the potion, and the others pretended to, for the conceit it gave them to drink with the master.

  ‘Um, um, ain’t it jest good?’ one yellow boy, seeking to deny his distaste for the concoction, asked a somewhat darker one who stood beside him.

  ‘That ain’t nothin’,’ Alph, with no glass in his hand, boasted. ‘I has it anytime I wants, right out of Masta’s glass, ever’ day I has it, right outn his glass.’

  The half-truth begot the wonderment, if not the envy, it sought. ‘Does you now?’ the yellow boy raised his eyes.

  ‘For my rheumatiz, jes’ like ol’ Masta’s. He dreen it into me,’ the urchin bragged.

  The greeting of ‘Chris’mas gif, Chris’mas gif’ ’ was exchanged whenever two Negroes met, all over the plantation throughout the three days. It was all they had to exchange, and none knew quite what it meant. It implied goodwill. Despite its meagreness, the season was jocund and lighthearted. All were happy.

  ‘The way it had always ought to be,’ Maxwell declared. ‘Them young saplin’s got more growin’ into ’em in three days than they gits in three weeks of work time. You kin jes’ see ’em laugh an’ grow.’

  ‘They grows, I reckon it,’ conceded Hammond. ‘Only that sugar-candy rot their teeth an’ not a-workin’ is makin’ ’em triflin’.’

  ‘Whut they got to work fer? Whut it bring ’em? Whut it bring you or anybody? Let ’em grow.’ The old man was no disciple of industry. Let who would labour; the increment upon which he depended was unearned. The hours Hammond devoted to the training of Mede his father did not begrudge, for that was sport, but he deplored the other work, the daily round of the plantation management to which his son devoted so much time which, in the fath
er’s opinion, would be better devoted to sitting swizzling toddies. His concept of Negro husbandry was to feed the stock and to encourage it to reproduce and to grow. He loved his slaves collectively, as if they had been puppies, and valued their homage, and faith, and dependence. His constant anxiety was lest his vassals be underfed or overworked.

  One night late in January Big Pearl had her baby.

  When Lucretia Borgia arose, she found Belshazzar at the door, sent by Lucy with the news.

  ‘Whut you wants me to do?’ Lucretia Borgia assumed indifference. ‘Is Big Pearl bad sick, or somethin’? Sucker livin’?’

  ‘Yas,’um. It livin’. Big Pearl done had it; she ain’t sick no more,’ Shaz explained. ‘Mammy Lucy say tell you to tell Masta, ma’am.’

  ‘Whut reckon I goin’ to pester Masta ev’ time a wench farrow young?’ Lucretia Borgia sniffed. ‘Go on along from here.’

  Shaz, baffled, retreated. He had executed his errand.

  While the masters were at breakfast, Lucretia Borgia, with a casual air, her own infant in her arms, entered the dining-room, ostensibly to ask whether the coffee was hot. ‘Mem so triflin’, cain’t trus’ him to have it hot,’ she said at first. As an afterthought she relayed Belshazzar’s tidings.

  ‘Whyn’t you say?’ asked Hammond, startled in his satisfaction, pushing back his chair. ‘Whut kind?’

  ‘I sayin’, suh, right now. I never axed whether it wench or buck,’ Lucretia Borgia shrugged.

  ‘Eat your breakfast,’ said the father. ‘One would think it was yourn, your own.’

  Hammond ignored the counsel, hurried from the house, and limped toward the cabins.

  ‘It done come. Big Pearl done had it, suh, Masta,’ Lucy greeted him at the door.

  Big Pearl, still on the floor, rose to sitting, the naked baby in her arms, tugging at her enormous breast. ‘You goin’ to give me somethin’, Masta, suh, ain’t you, Masta, suh?’ she asked.

  ‘I reckon it worth a dollar an’ a new dress an’ it sound. Is it soun’? Ain’t anythin’ missin’ ’bout it?’ Hammond had his misgivings of the brother-and-sister relationship.

  He squatted by the pallet, and took the baby in his arms. He felt it over. There was nothing abnormal about the child except its size and vigour. With its bowed legs it lunged and kicked as if trying to escape, and then it broke into a lusty, raucous, tearless cry.

  Hammond placed his palm on Big Pearl’s forehead, but could detect no fever. He patted her shoulder and offered praise for her and her child.

  When he returned to the house for his breakfast, his father had finished eating and was in the sitting-room. Meg had brought him a toddy.

  ‘It fine—a buck,’ he told the old man. ‘Ain’t no more the matter than if Big Pearl never seen that Mede, than if they wasn’t no kin at all. Reckon you got stren’th to walk out to look it over?’

  ‘I’ve seen ’em, seen hunderds,’ Maxwell waved his hand in disinterest. ‘Ain’t no more than worms at first.’

  ‘This ’un a baboon, big enough to be, ’most. Look jes’ like Mede, jest like him.’

  ‘Well, whut did you reckon? Mede got him, didn’t he? That Mede, about the bes’ boar nigger we ever had. Reckon we goin’ to use him on all the wenches hereinafter.’

  ‘You knowin’ whut Mr. Wilson told—not to cross up Mandingo with other niggers. Makes ’em bad.’

  ‘No!’ said Maxwell. ‘Any nigger is bad an’ if he not watched. I wants ’em vig’ous. We sells ’em afore they comes scurvy an’ hard to han’le.’

  ‘Whut we goin’ to call it?’ asked Hammond, reverting to the child.

  ‘Time ’nough, time ’nough,’ said his father. ‘How is Ol’ Mista Wilson?’ he pondered.

  ‘How he?’ Hammond failed to understand. ‘I reckon he dead, this time.’

  ‘I meanin’ callin’ the sucker that—Ol’ Mista Wilson? Good as anythin’. That whure we got him—leastwise whure we got his pappy an’ mammy. He’d like it, even an’ if he dead, Ol’ Mista Wilson would.’

  ‘I reckon it good as any, an’ you thinks,’ Hammond conceded. ‘We ain’t a-sellin’ it anyways.’

  ‘Sellin’?’ the older man bristled. ‘No, suh, we ain’t. It goin’ to live an’ die with us right here on Falconhurst. They doesn’t come like that once in a coon’s age.’

  Lucy’s baby followed her daughter’s earlier than was anticipated. There was some anxiety on the part of the masters lest it might be premature, although the girl baby appeared fully developed. Indeed, except for the comparison with Old Mister Wilson, it was tremendous, approximately twelve pounds, sinewy and viable. Lucy had wanted her baby to be a boy, not for her own sake, not that she would treasure a girl the less, but that she knew a boy’s greater value, especially if it were black. A black wench was of little worth, and Lucy feared her master’s censure for having one.

  Her foreboding, however, was wasted; for the young master welcomed Lucy’s daughter with admiration and praise for its mother.

  ‘That a godsend, a windfall,’ declared Maxwell when his son told him of the child’s sex. ‘Hence, we don’ got to fret us about our Mandingos runnin’ out. We goin’ to raise this one an’ put it to Big Pearl’s buck, soon as they growed enough. It will keep the breed alive.’

  Hammond shook his head in misgiving of his father’s long-range project.

  ‘Heed you do it, if I ain’tn here to carry it through,’ cautioned the old man, and Hammond, who had never before considered seriously that his father might die, promised.

  Blanche, who had contemplated with an indifference that amounted to disdain the birth of Negro infants, was terrified at the prospect of her own confinement, which she knew was near. She knew that it was a painful process for a white woman, and she remembered a Mrs. Jackson, a friend of her mother’s, who had died in childbirth. She wept in self-pity as she sat opposite Maxwell with a toddy in her hand.

  ‘Reckon mayhap I goin’ to die?’ she asked him. ‘I not wantin’ to die yet, not yet awhile. I’m afeared.’

  Maxwell reassured the girl as best he could. ‘You ain’t a-goin’ to die,’ he said. ‘Like, won’t have no trouble at all. Course,’ he hedged, ‘some does.’

  ‘I dies, an’ Hammon’ goin’ to be sorry, sorry he treat me so,’ the girl wept. ‘He goin’ to be sorry.’

  ‘Hammon’ right good to you. He good to ever’body,’ the father defended his son. ‘Course, he right busy, out an’ about, drivin’ an’ overseein’.’

  ‘He find time fer that Ellen. Don’ slight her none.’ Blanche brushed the tears from her red eyes with the back of her hand.

  ‘You don’ un’erstan’,’ argued Maxwell. ‘Hammon’ doesn’ care nothin’ ’bout Ellen. She jes’ a nigger. He a-savin’ you. You know that. His mamma, Sophy, Miz Maxwell, was always right thankful when I pestered with the wenches an’ left her be.’

  ‘Yes. Only Hammon’, he don’ pester none only Ellen. Ifn he pleasured with the otherns, Lucy an’ Lucretia Borgia, an’ all of ’em, I wouldn’t care none.’ Blanche had difficulty with the idea. ‘On’y he don’t. It’s Ellen, all the time Ellen, ever’ night Ellen. Don’ even look at the others, no more than at me. He sweet on Ellen. That whut he is.’

  ‘Ellen, she young an’ handy, an’ he know she goin’ to be clean. It goin’ to be different after you have your boy.’

  ‘I don’ care an’ if I dies. I don’ care. It serve him right,’ Blanche pouted.

  The baby clothes left over from Hammond’s infancy were brought down for the use of his child. Lucretia Borgia knew just where they had been laid away on an upper shelf in a wardrobe in a spare room. She found them—somewhat coarse linen, yellowed by the years, dusty, some of them unaccountably stained. They were all together, the long dresses and underskirts, twice the length of the child, the short ones for later use, and even blue calicoes, picked out with white stars, that Hammond had worn until he was four. Pinning blankets, bellybands, and soft diapers, all that might be needed were included. Lucretia Borgia
put the women to the task of washing the baby clothes and drying them on the weeds in the sunshine to eliminate as much of the yellowing of age as was possible. She herself ironed the dresses that were decked out with pleated yokes and ruffles of hand embroidery. How many times before she had smoothed those self-same garments. She chuckled to remember that this dress he had worn when Hammond took his first step, that one when he had come down with a fit of coughing until they had despaired of his living, the other when he had first garbled her name in speech. What a tyrant he had been, but how sweet the tyranny!

  When all were clean, Lucretia Borgia carried the garments into the sitting-room and stacked them beside Blanche’s chair. Blanche sorted them out, the long from the short. They would suffice for her child, although she had expected to have new ones.

  Maxwell watched her in silence. He revered these garments for the sake of him who had worn them. They were irreplaceable, beyond duplication. He could but wonder that Blanche should prefer new ones. Once, while she sorted them, he reached out and took a well-remembered little dress into his own hands and, gazing on it, he saw again Sophia Hammond and her infant son. Before he handed it back to his daughter-in-law, he had spilled his toddy on it and had wiped his tear-filled eyes upon its hem. He said nothing. Blanche would not understand. He was glad that Hammond was not there to see his weakness.

  The following Thursday Blanche had her child. She arose and came down to breakfast, eating heartily but unaccountably failing to drink the toddy that Meg mixed for her. To her husband’s inquiry she replied that she was tolerably well.

  ‘Tol’able, jes’ tol’able,’ she said, ‘mindin’ how I am.’ She had no intimation that her time had come.

  Hammond went out to his work as usual. He was clearing some unused acres in preparation for planting them to corn, not because he needed the land, but to give his Negroes a task that would keep them employed.