“Yes …” she whispered, surrendering.
“What you say?” Snap!
“Yes!” Sarah screamed, and this time when she tried to yank away from him, she lost her balance and fell to the floor, where she curled in a ball and tried to cover the parts of her that were naked. Her torn, ruined dress lay crumpled at her waist. She heard herself wailing, in part from her whipping, and in part because she felt so helpless to control her life, like always.
Sarah heard Lou’s voice then, alarmed and somehow distant. “William, what’s—”
“Yo’ sister got too much sass. Li’l niggers like her need to be broke,” Mr. William Powell said, breathing hard from his exertion. His voice grew louder. “An’ you gon’ pay me fo’ that dress, too. You hear me, girl? Every cent it cost me.”
Sarah felt as if she would suffocate as long as Mr. William Powell was still standing in the same room with her. If he said another word to her, she might curse at him and get another whipping. She held herself tight, barely breathing at all, waiting for the sound of his retreating footsteps. Finally, thankfully, she did hear him leave. Sarah wished Lou would leave, too.
But she didn’t. Lou knelt beside Sarah on the floor, and Sarah whimpered when her sister put her hand on her back. “Ssssssssss,” Sarah said, drawing away. “Don’t.”
“Sarah, what ’chu say to make him act like that?” Lou asked, concerned. “You can’t be back-talking William. He don’t like that.”
“I don’t care what he like,” Sarah muttered weakly through a sob. “Lou, let’s go away. I ain’t stayin’ here. He don’t want me goin’ to school. I want it like it was befo’.”
Sarah looked into Lou’s eyes, which were first incredulous and then sad. This time, when she spoke, her voice was hushed. “Sarah, you can’t go no place. Me neither. It ain’t like befo’, cuz I got a baby comin’ now. He my legal-wed husband.”
Sarah felt something inside of her give way, tumbling inward, and suddenly she had no strength to try to explain to Louvenia that Miss Dunn had thought she could go to college, that she might have learned a trade or become a teacher. Lou probably wouldn’t think any better of it than Mr. William Powell. Sarah couldn’t ask her sister to choose between her and her husband.
Sarah examined her chest, where a long, red welt was already rising, capped by tiny pricks of blood. Her back must be a mess, she thought. Then, sighing miserably, Sarah curled her head in her arms. Her temples pounded with a headache, she was cold, and she felt sick to her stomach. She never wanted to move from that spot.
In a moment, Lou did walk away, but she soon came back. A soft blanket floated on top of Sarah, bringing warmth and the vague smell of cedar, but Sarah didn’t look up at her sister.
“You know, I wuz gon’ save this for Christmas …” Lou said in a toocheerful voice, “but you seem like you so sad, I speck I better let you have it now.”
Sarah only sniffled in response. Lou couldn’t give her anything now that would make the hollowed-out feeling inside of her fill up again. She didn’t even want to see what Lou had brought, because any gift would probably make her feel only worse that she couldn’t enjoy it.
Lou sighed. “I know you ’member how after Mama and Papa passed, I went out my head fo’ a while. I can’t ’splain it, ’cept I was so wretched an’ mad an’ sad all at once. But seemed like one day I jus’ woke up an’ all the crazy wuz done with.”
“I ’member …” Sarah mumbled, her face still hidden away.
“Well, one thing I feel bad ’bout to this day is how I run off with Mama’s Bible-book. I snitched it from you an’ tore up all the pages an’ threw ’em out in the wind. If I hadn’t of did that, I would’a gave it back to you. But I can’t. So Mama’s book is gone.”
New tears pushed their way through the old ones, wetting Sarah’s eyes as she listened. That was an old hurt, one she tried not to think about. And although she hadn’t realized it until now, Sarah had held a secret hope that Lou had kept that book safe, and one day she would return it to her. A new sob formed in Sarah’s throat, forged by her anger and loss.
“I wants to mend it, Sarah. An’ I don’ know if you gon’ like this, but it wuz so purty… .”
Curious despite herself, Sarah peeked from behind her arm, and she saw a black leather-bound book in Lou’s hands. The gold-colored edges of the pages gleamed in the lamplight.
“The man at the sto’ said this wuz the Holy Bible. Is that what those letters say?” Lou held the book up to Sarah with the cover facing her, and the gold-colored letters glowed, too. H-O-L-Y B-I-B-L-E, it said. Gazing at the book, Sarah’s grief gave way to rising awe. “See, way I figger it, you promised Mama you was gon’ read it, so now you can read it all you want. Maybe you don’ know all the words, but …”
Slowly, Sarah reached for the book and grasped the soft, textured cover in her own hands. Unlike other books she’d had, which she’d borrowed from Miss Dunn, this one was her very own. She could keep it as long as she wanted, and she would never have to give it back. This time, when her tears came, Sarah knew she was no longer crying from sadness. She reached over to hug Lou, ignoring the pain that flared across her back as her sister squeezed her. “Thank you, Lou,” she whispered. “It’s the best present I ever got.”
“What it say on the first page?” Lou said, excited. “Lemme hear it.”
With trembling fingers, Sarah flipped open her fine book. Her eyes scanned over the first letters, past the strange word that began with G, until she saw something familiar. “Chap … ter one,” she said, and took a deep breath so she could read the next part, feeling her sister’s breath against her neck. “In … the … beeee … ginnn … inng,” she read, “God … creeee … aaaaated … the …”
The words were hard, Sarah realized, and reading them would take a long time. But Lou was leaning against her ever so patiently, just listening in still silence, and Sarah had a feeling her sister wouldn’t mind if reading the first page took her all night.
Chapter Six
1882
Sarah Breedlove was fourteen when she met a man who called himself Moses.
After watching the fish lady earn good money frying fish, Sarah had started doing the very same thing on her day off, choosing a busy bluff where she could attract customers on their way to and from the railroad yard. She had become a familiar sight, her head wrapped in a bright red scarf similar to the towel the raw fishmongers waved so they could be spotted from a distance. Amid the spirited cries of “Freeeesssssshhhh fish!” and other calls from the boys selling newspapers, Sarah stood over her fire in silence, hoping the scent of the cooking fish would carry in the wind. She bought her fish early in the morning and prepared them with deft hands, chopping off the heads and tails and flicking off the scales and fins. After she shook the fish in a sackful of cornmeal she’d seasoned with salt and red and black pepper and other spices she’d experimented with until she’d found the right taste, the fish went into her skillet and cooked in the hot grease. Then Sarah would wait and hope, watching people pass.
Moses was one of the people who walked by, and one of the few who ever acknowledged her. He had a brilliant smile, his white teeth contrasting sharply with his deep complexion. And he was so tall and wiry he was unusual, generally standing nearly a foot above even the tallest men around him. He like to be six and a half feet tall, maybe mo’, Sarah thought when she first saw him loping along the street. He belong in that Barnum circus show.
He said hello to Sarah every day he saw her, even though her eyes immediately busied themselves somewhere else whenever he came near. His presence was imposing, and he frightened her despite his smiles. “You ain’t gon’ speak, is you?” he’d said during his last visit, with a lulling deep voice. “Well, I go by Moses. You gon’ tell me yo’ name when you ready.”
Today, already feeling slightly warm in the wave of heat from her fire despite the temperate spring air, Sarah found herself searching for Moses in the stream of early morning risers. She
nearly jumped when his voice startled her from behind: “So … you sellin’ much o’ them fish today?”
Sarah glanced around at him and found she was standing at eye level with his bare rib cage, where his dark skin cleaved to the clearly defined bones and muscles. She looked quickly away. She was standing so close to him, she could smell his personal scent, which seemed sweet and sour at the same time, the smell of a stranger. She’d intended to tell him her name today—what was the harm in that?—but her voice was locked away tight in her throat. She wasn’t accustomed to speaking to men she didn’t know.
“Hope you don’ mind me sayin’ it …” Moses said, hitching his thumbs to his pants, “but it’s a wonder to me you makin’ as much sellin’ these here fish as it costs you to buy ’em. ’Less you go out an’ kitch ’em, too.”
Sarah felt her face burning. That was the same complaint Mr. William Powell made, even though the money she earned from selling fried fish was all hers. He had no claim on it, unlike her washing money. She exaggerated when he asked her how much she’d made each day, saying she’d earned a dollar or two when most days she was lucky to go home with twenty-five cents above what the fish had cost. She would have quit long ago, except she was so desperate to save any pennies so she could move from under his roof. The notion of going to college felt like a hazy dream compared to her immediate goal of moving away from her brother-in-law, even if it meant trying to find work as a live-in maid for a white family. He’d whipped her three times while she’d been living with him and Lou, always ripping off her clothes in a way that felt more demeaning than the whippings themselves, and she was beginning to fear that if he ever laid a strap on her again, she might lose her senses and make her sister a widow. She would not hold still for him, not again.
“I ain’t axed what you think,” Sarah said, still not looking at the man. Now that he’d annoyed her, it wasn’t hard to speak to him at all.
Moses laughed. “Well, that’s the truth! You ain’t axed me nothin’ a’tall.”
When Moses didn’t walk away, Sarah was sorry she’d opened her mouth. Now she’d invited a conversation with him, and she’d rather pay attention to her scaling and cooking. “Ain’t you ’posed to be someplace?” Sarah asked him at last, unnerved by his silent staring.
“Uh-huh. I ’posed to be over at that yard washin’ train engines. But I jus’ been a-lookin’ here, thinkin’ to myself, see, an’ I think I know why you ain’t sellin’ no fish.”
Sarah gazed up at him skeptically. Why was it his business, anyway? But before Sarah could tell him she wasn’t interested in his observations, he pointed toward the white fishmonger near the pier. There were three customers clamoring for his attention. “See that?”
“So?”
“So I reckon he makin’ some money. Know why?”
Despite her irritation, Sarah considered the question. She’d wondered the same thing herself. “I dunno,” she mumbled.
“Cuz he been screamin’ out here all mornin’, an’ I ain’t heard you make a peep. How come you so quiet? How folks gon’ know what you sellin’ if you ain’t gon’ tell ’em?”
“They see me,” Sarah said, a pout in her voice.
Moses paused, assessing her up and down, and Sarah felt herself shrinking under his lingering gaze. Mr. William Powell looked at her that way sometimes, and she didn’t like it a bit. “Oh, yeah, they see you. They see a li’l colored gal in a red head-rag standin’ over a fire. But they can’t see all the way in this pan. They can’t see this here catfish.”
Silently Sarah considered his point. True, the old fish lady who worked on weekdays wasn’t shy about yelling out to the crowds, but to Sarah she sounded coarse and mannish. She couldn’t imagine raising her voice like that, shouting to strangers.
“Try this here …” Moses said, winking, and he heaved his shoulders high, which made him appear to grow even taller. He cupped his mouth with his hands: “Fishfry fishfry fishfry! Friiieeeeed catfish heeeee-yuh! Friiiieeeed catfish heeeee-yuh!” His deep, commanding voice carried in the air and echoed around them.
Sarah’s heart jumped. He was so loud, she almost wanted to cover her face. “Why you hollerin’ like that?”
“Why … ?” Moses looked at her with disbelief. “Gal, I’m tryin’ to sell yo’ fish! Ev’rybody ain’t gon’ come over here cuz they think you purty.”
“I ain’t s-said …” Sarah’s voice faltered as she felt a wave of embarrassment that was foreign to her when she realized that Moses had complimented her. “Stop that,” she snapped. She meant she wanted him to stop making her feel bashful, but her words came out more sharply than she’d intended. Moses’ face fell slightly as he looked at her.
“All right, then, li’l gal …” he said, shrugging. “All I’m sayin’ is, seem to me like colored folks ’fraid to raise up they voices. You ain’t the onliest one—it’s the same with the niggers I work with at the yard. But how I look at it, if you don’t raise up yo’ voice, don’t nobody know what you got to say. What you scared of?”
Sarah didn’t have a chance to answer him, because a ruddy-faced white sailor walked up to her and peered down into her pan, her first customer of the day. “Smells good. How much?”
“Ten cents,” Sarah answered him, but her eyes were on Moses. He was grinning at her with those striking teeth, which intrigued her even though his front teeth were slightly crooked, growing toward each other instead of straight. Tipping an imaginary hat to her, Moses turned and began to walk away in his long, jaunty steps.
Sarah longed to call out to him and tell him her name, since she’d forgotten to do that, but shyness kept her silent. As Sarah served her new customer, she realized Moses had been right: She’d been afraid to raise her voice, and Moses might never know what she’d wanted to say.
Moses’ birth name was Joseph McWilliams, Sarah learned in the coming weeks, but his friends had started calling him Moses because they said he was always preaching. He was twenty-three, his parents had been slaves and then croppers like hers, and he had moved to Vicksburg when he turned twenty-one to look for better wages. His family lived just outside Warren County, he said. He had a mama, a papa, and three younger sisters. He’d never been to school, he told her, and he couldn’t read or write, except the letters in his name.
Sarah listened to him, but she barely talked about herself beyond telling him her parents were both dead and that she lived with her sister, brother-in-law, and baby nephew. When he’d asked if she could read, she said, “Not good,” which was true in her mind but probably wouldn’t be true in his, she knew. In truth, if she really put her mind to it, she could read most of the signs she saw on the street, as long as the words weren’t too long, so she didn’t have to constantly ask folks, “What this say?” like so many colored people she knew. In fact, most folks asked her. But Mr. William Powell constantly accused Sarah of thinking she was superior—in fact, he’d whipped her the second time because he thought she’d tried to shame him in front of his friends—so she didn’t want Moses to think she was bragging. Some days she wished she hadn’t ever gone to school. She’d be happier with her life if she hadn’t had her hopes raised, she thought.
Like Louvenia. Now that Lou had her little baby boy, Willie, she seemed happier than she’d been since before Mama and Papa died. Sarah could hardly imagine ever feeling that way.
Three Saturdays in a row, Moses walked Lou back to Mr. William Powell’s street, although she wouldn’t let him come close to his house. She didn’t want Lou to catch sight of him and begin teasing her about having a beau. Moses, she thought firmly, was not a beau. He was so much taller than her, in fact, that she felt self-conscious when she walked beside him, as if anyone who saw them would think they looked odd together.
“Li’l gal, some days I think you got the saddest brown eyes I ever seed,” Moses said to her one day, standing gallantly aside so Sarah could walk around a pile of lumber blocking most of their path on the sidewalk. He had bought fresh peaches at a stand,
and they were both taking bites into the soft, dripping fruit as they walked. “How come you so sad to go home?”
Sarah didn’t answer, simply shrugging.
“Somebody whipping on you?” he asked bluntly, startling her.
She stared up at him accusingly. “Who tol’ you that?”
“Ain’t nobody had to tell me. You kin tell somebody bein’ whipped same way you can tell with a dog, by the way he jump back. I seen lots o’ whipped dogs. Yo’ sister whippin’ you?”
Sarah shook her head, but she didn’t answer. Everything inside her suddenly wanted to tell Moses about Mr. William Powell’s strop and the way he tore off her clothes, and how his eyes gazed at her while he beat her, but she felt too much shame. After the last time, when he’d pulled her from her bed late at night and whipped her in the kitchen after stripping her completely bare, she’d been too ashamed to tell even Louvenia. She’d struggled not to cry out for fear of waking her sister. Sarah felt her ears begin to prickle, and the skin on her face grew warm. She folded her arms and wrapped herself tight.
For a moment Moses didn’t say anything. “Where he from?” he asked finally. “Who used to own him?”
“Who?”
“That man whippin’ on you.”
“I dunno,” Sarah mumbled. She’d never asked, and she didn’t care.
Moses took another bite of his peach, and a jagged line of juice dripped from the corner of his mouth. “Why I ask is, some of them massas in slave times was better’n others. But some massas an’ oberseers was jus’ low-down mean, an’ treated they niggers worse’n they treated horses an’ dogs. An’ if you came up with one o’ them, well … that cowhide’s all you knew ’bout. Them marks don’t never go ’way. An’ I ain’t jus’ talkin’ ’bout marks on flesh. There’s the other kind, too, marks what come when a man can’t be no kinda man.”
Sarah puzzled over Moses’s words, then she felt a surge of anger when she thought she understood: He was making excuses for Mr. William Powell! Her frame went rigid with rage. “You takin’ his side!” she shouted, not realizing she’d raised her voice so loud. “You ain’t even never met him, an’ you takin’ his side over me!”
The Black Rose Page 10