The Wedding Gift

by Marlen Suyapa Bodden

  “Come on, sugar. Look at your baby. Hold her.”

  Belle did not respond. My mother wrapped Emmie in a cloth and held her. She rubbed her back until Emmie began screaming and turned red.

  “Here comes the next one,” Miss Mary said.

  When Ruby was born, Miss Mary did not try to give her to Belle. The babies had fair skin and they looked more like me than they did Belle or my mother.

  “Belle, sugar, I know what you’re going through, but you got to….”

  “Do you, Mama? Do you know what I’m going through?”

  My mother cried.

  “I’m sorry, Mama, Miss Mary, and Sarah.”

  “You don’t have nothing to be sorry about, baby.”

  “Yes, I do, Mama. You all are just trying to help me. I’ll take the babies now.”

  They put the babies on her chest but they cried when there was no milk.

  “Sarah, go right now, run, and ask to see Mr. Davis. Tell him Belle had the babies but she ain’t making milk. Ask him to send for Edwina down by the washhouse and tell her we need her help. Oh, and stop in the kitchen first and tell somebody to bring me some milk.”

  I followed my mother’s instructions. When I returned to our cabin, the babies were sucking milk from a cloth teat that my mother had made. Edwina, with her newborn baby, arrived within the hour.

  “Edwina, it’s taking Belle time to make milk for the babies. You mind helping us out until her milk comes?”

  “Miss Emmeline, you know I’ll do anything I can for you and your girls, and now your grandbabies, after all you done for me and my husband.”

  As Edwina settled her infant on a bed, my mother told me that she and I had to go to prepare the next meal. Miss Mary turned her attention to Belle, and Edwina sat in the rocking chair to nurse Emmie and Ruby. On the way to the kitchen, I asked my mother why Belle could not make milk for the babies.

  “She don’t feel ready to be a mother, probably something to do with what happened to her at Master Reynolds’. Miss Mary seen this many times before. Mothers without milk happens a lot more often than you realize around here, especially in the fields. But Miss Mary know what she’s doing. She know what to say to these new mothers to get them to take to their own babies. But there is something you can do. I want you to talk to Belle about what happened to her when they took her. I tried, but she won’t tell me.”

  When supper was prepared and served, we wrapped enough food for everyone at home. Emmie and Ruby were asleep, Miss Mary was knitting, Edwina was nursing her baby, and Belle was still in bed, looking outside through the open shutters at a cardinal that was perched on the branch of a crabapple tree. My mother made us tea and everyone but Belle had supper. When we had eaten, my mother asked Miss Mary and Edwina if they would accompany her to the kitchen, where she had to prepare food for the next day. They took all the babies, and I stayed with Belle and persuaded her to eat.

  “Belle, what are you thinking about? Why don’t you like your babies?”

  She did not reply.

  “Belle, won’t you speak to me? Please? We’re worried about you.”

  “Look, I’m going to be fine. Just fine. As for the babies, I ain’t got no say in what happen to them anyway. Mr. Allen will do what he want with them.”

  “Belle, please don’t say that. You don’t mean it, do you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  Miss Mary and Edwina returned about two hours later, and they said that my mother needed me in the kitchen. I went there and told her what Belle said. She closed her eyes.

  “Dear Lord, please take the pain out her heart so she can love her babies. I can’t take care of them and do my work, Lord, and he will sell them if she don’t want them.”

  The next day, we left Belle with Miss Mary. We made a nursery out of a room off the kitchen where we kept the three babies. My mother and I took turns looking in on Belle and taking her and Miss Mary food. The first time Belle saw her daughters that day was when we returned to the cabin at about ten o’clock that night. Edwina had already nursed her own child, and as she was about to nurse Emmie and Ruby, Belle said that she could try feeding one of them. No one said anything. Miss Mary gave her Ruby, the baby wearing a bracelet that my mother made from a green piece of yarn. When Ruby began suckling, Belle smiled. Emmie began crying and my mother put her in Belle’s arms. We watched Belle feed her girls until they were full. Miss Mary and Edwina spent the night and left after breakfast the next morning, Miss Mary declaring that Belle had sufficient experience now to care for her daughters.

  My mother obtained permission from Mr. Allen to permit Belle to rest for a month after giving birth. The girls were two weeks old when Mr. Davis, the overseer, arrived with gifts from Mr. and Mrs. Allen: a large bolt of cloth with a floral pattern, two piglets for our pen, a pig ready for slaughter, six large jars of honey, and two sacks each of flour, sugar, and rice. When Belle returned to work, a woman who cared for the small children of the other Hall servants also looked after Emmie and Ruby.

  One night, when my mother was with Mr. Allen, Belle told me what happened to her. “I know that one day I’m going to forget most of what they did. I know that because I have to forget. Since the day they took me from here, I ain’t been able to sleep straight through one night. You know how after I go to sleep I cry and wake you? Sometimes it’s because, in my sleep, I think I’m back there. Sarah, I ain’t never going to forget that little girl and how she screamed. Not as long as I live. Sometimes, when I wake you and you see me with my hands covering my ears, it’s because I’m dreaming that I’m back at that place, in the cabin where they put us, me and the other girls from here, when we first got to Master Reynolds’ plantation. In my dreams, I’m trying to make the little girl stop screaming, but sometimes it’s me that’s screaming too, and I want to make us both stop.”

  “What little girl, Belle? What happened to her?”

  “Sarah, you can’t tell Mama any of this, you hear? I don’t want her to feel worse than she already feel. They took me and two other girls, field hands, to Master Reynolds’ plantation. They was about your age. One was tall and looked a lot like you. Her name was Billie, but the other girl, Sippie, was a skinny thing. She looked like she was ten or maybe twelve. Two overseers from Master Reynolds’ took us from here. One of them just wanted to do what they told him to do, to take us to Master Reynolds’ plantation. But the other one kept staring at us, especially at Sippie.

  “We went in a wagon. They had some food and pots, and me and the girls had to cook. We slept outside, in blankets on the ground. All of us girls put the blankets next to each other so we could be close, and we put Sippie between us. If any of us had to get up at night, we always went together. We was on the road for about a week. When we got to Master Reynolds’, the overseers took us to a cabin. It had three beds and cooking wares and a chimney and they gave us food to cook. They left us alone for two days. Then a overseer took new clothes for me and Billie. He told us to bathe and change. We did like we was told. That night, when the sun was setting, a overseer and two young gentlemen showed up. The overseer took Sippie outside and closed the door behind him.

  “Me and Billie tried to fight them off, and they look surprised, like they wasn’t expecting us to fight back but like they was glad that we did. When he pushed himself inside me, it hurt more than the beating. He said, ‘Oh, a virgin. It’s tighter than a drum.’ Then I just give up fighting him and cried, pretending like he wasn’t doing it to me but to somebody else. He smelled like wood and earth and it made me want to throw up. When he stopped, he just stayed there, didn’t get up right away. I looked over at Billie. The other man was still going at her. She was quiet, just staring, didn’t even look like she blinking.

  “They switched places. The second one had a different smell, like spices or something. But this time, me and Billie didn’t fight, because we knew it wasn’t no use. I heard Sippie scream. I tried to push him off me then and Billie tried to do the same with the other one. But th
ey didn’t let us up. They just hit us again. Sippie kept screaming, and the more she screamed, the harder the one on top of me kept pushing it in.

  “When they was done with us and left, me and Billie put on our dresses and ran out. We saw Sippie curled up by a tree. We took her inside and cleaned her up and put her on the bed that ain’t had our blood on it. I told Billie to take off the sheets on the other beds and put the blankets on them. I took a lantern and went outside to the garden in back of the cabin. I found St. Charles’s wort and brewed it. All of us drank the tea when it was cool. Then I dipped a clean cloth in it and put the cloth between Sippie’s legs, hoping it was going to help her with the pain.

  “They left us alone in the cabin for the next day and then they told us it was time to get to work. They took us in a wagon to the fields. They told me and Billie to get off the wagon. I asked what about the little girl? They said, ‘This ain’t got nothing to do with you. Who you think you is? Master?’ I went for Sippie, but one of the men pushed me away. She wasn’t crying or saying nothing.

  “That first day in the fields, me and Billie worked with a gang watering the cotton plants and loading weeds onto wagons that the other hands picked. By the end of the first day, my hands was bleeding because there was sharp twigs on the weeds.

  “That night, a overseer took us back to the cabin and there was new clothes waiting for us. He told us to wash up good this time, that the young master and his friend complained that we stink. ‘And clean up this cabin too. There’s new sheets for the beds. And don’t get no ideas. We’re watching you.’

  “The next day, the two men went back to the cabin and took turns with us again. When the second one was on me, his smell made my food come up my throat, but I held it in my mouth. ‘What’s wrong with you, bitch? Answer me,’ he said.

  “I opened my mouth and the vomit came out. He slapped me. ‘Go clean yourself, you nasty whore.’

  “I went to the water pitcher, and he went to the bed where the other one was on top of Billie. He…said, ‘Put her on top.’ He put Billie on top and then the other one pushed inside her from behind. Billie yelled like she wasn’t going to make it through the pain, so with all the strength I had, I kicked him off her. That’s when they beat us again so bad that they busted my lip.

  “After they left, we was too weak to do anything and no way tea was going to help us at all. We just stayed there until they came to get us the next morning. We was beat so bad they told us we didn’t have to go to the field that day and they went for a doctor. He cleaned the cuts and put bandages on us. They had a house servant come stay with us for two days.

  “Then they came to get Billie. She tried not to go with them, said she wanted to stay with me. They said, ‘Come with us nice and quiet. You’ll be all right.’ They took Billie and…I never seen her again. They put me in another cabin that was in the slave quarters. I was by myself and I didn’t see nobody at night. I didn’t want to go out even though I could hear other people outside. At first, they put me in the fields working on the trash gang. It was real hot out there in the sun, and one of the other field hands told me to get a hat from the overseer.

  “I was on the trash gang for about three months when my monthly bleeding stopped three months in a row. I started feeling sick, and one day I fainted right there on the field. They took me to my cabin and got the midwife. She asked me if I had missed my monthly. I said no, that I just finished it the day before. She said maybe I wasn’t eating right. She asked the overseer to give me more food and to let me rest one day. She said she was going to come see me again, but I should send for her if I felt worse.”

  “Why didn’t you tell her that you had missed your monthly?”

  “I was trying to remember what plants Mama told me can bring your bleeding down. That night after I talked to the midwife, I went to the garden but I couldn’t find none. And Mama told me never to talk about those herbs to nobody because we’re not supposed to know about them, so I couldn’t ask the midwife. They let me rest one day, and then I went back to the trash gang for two weeks. Then it was harvest time and they made me pick cotton. They had me and the other hands at the fields at five thirty in the morning. The driver gave me a sack with a strap to put over my shoulder and pins to put up my skirt so the hem wouldn’t be on the dirt. Even though here we have to do it when we wash and polish floors, I didn’t want to pin up my skirt because it showed my legs, but I was afraid of getting hit by the overseer if I didn’t do like he say.

  “Sarah, I hope you never know what it’s like to pick cotton. The bristles on the plants was sharp like knives, so I kept getting cut. My back hurt because I had to bend over to pick the cotton from the bolls and then put it in the sack. But the cotton kept getting stuck in the opening of the sack, so I had to shake the sack to make the cotton go down. Of course, the more cotton you put in the sack, the heavier it get. They let us stop for twenty minutes to eat a biscuit and bacon or ham at about noon. They had a boy coming round with water for the pickers. Then we went back to work until seven thirty at night.

  “One day, I got dizzy and fell again. They took me to the cabin and they had the midwife look at me. She said that I was having a baby. She gave me herbs to make tea. I ask her if she knew what happened to the two girls who went with me there and if she knew anybody at Allen Estates.

  ‘“No, baby. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened to them girls, and Allen Estates is a long way from here. They don’t hire me out that far. This is three years now that master let his son do that. Don’t talk about this to nobody. Master Reynolds’ youngest son go to a college up north, I hear, and his friends come down to visit. The last two years two friends come down and Master Reynolds tell the overseers to get girls, the best-looking ones, so young master and his friends have a good time before they have to go back to school. This year only one friend come down. But this time, hurting you all like that, I bet it’s going to stop.’

  “From that day, they started treating me better. A driver gave me a hen for eggs and chicks to raise, and they gave me more food than I was getting before. They said I only had to pick cotton from five thirty in the morning to five in the afternoon. That was my life, until Mama got Mr. Allen to buy me back.”

  “Belle, you and Mama keep telling me that I shouldn’t talk about running away, so this is the last time I’m going to say this. I will not only get back at Mr. Allen for what he did to you and those girls, and for everything he has done to all of us, but I’m going to get us out of here. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to find a way.”

  Belle shook her head, but this time she said nothing in response.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THEODORA ALLEN

  THE YEARS AFTER WE RETURNED FROM NEW YORK were marked by the births of my three children: Paul, Robert, and Clarissa. Clarissa’s was difficult, and I almost did not survive; but the Lord provided me Mary, the slaves’ midwife, and Emmeline to safely deliver my baby girl. I never used a physician for any of my pregnancies after the miscarriage. I was weak after Clarissa was born and remained bedridden for three months. Emmeline nursed Clarissa and her own daughter, who was a few months older than mine, until they were weaned. I instructed Davis, the Hall overseer, to make a room available in the servants’ quarters in the Hall for Emmeline and her two daughters in order that she would be close to me and Clarissa. I also directed him to get additional servants to relieve Emmeline of most of her duties.

  I began tutoring my sons when each was six years old, but when Paul was twelve and Robert ten, my husband, over my objection, sent them to Wilton’s Academy for Young Gentlemen in Georgia. They attended university at Athens after Wilton’s. Paul married a Georgia beauty, and he stayed in that state, working as a banker. Two years later, Robert married a young lady from Charleston, and he moved there, also to work in banking. I taught Clarissa from the age of eight until she was thirteen, when we retained a tutor for her from Montgomery.

  I learned that Emmeline was expecting one
morning when I went to the kitchen to discuss supper with her and saw her belly. As was the custom among the servants, she did not look at me when I spoke to her.

  “Emmeline, you must be so happy to be expecting.”

  There was silence in the kitchen for several seconds.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I departed after we made arrangements, embarrassed by everyone’s discomfort. I did not see Sarah until she was about five months old, when Emmeline was working in her herbal garden. Sarah, who had golden curly hair, was strapped on her mother’s back. When Emmeline noticed that I was there, she stood and bowed her head.

  “Good morning, Mrs. Allen. Anything I can do for you, ma’am?”

  “Yes, we will have two more guests for supper this evening.”

  After speaking with her, I went to my husband, who was working in his office with a bookkeeper.

  “Yes, Theodora. How may I assist you?”

  “May I speak with you privately?”

  “Is it a pressing matter? We are rather preoccupied, as you can see.”

  “Yes, it is.”

  He dismissed Clark.

  “I thought that you were no longer with Emmeline.”

  He stared at me and tapped his pen on the paper, splattering ink and obscuring the numbers on the page. “Theodora, you misrepresented your reason for being here. You said that it was an urgent matter.”

  “I just learned today that you fathered a child with a servant. How is that not a pressing concern?”

  “I have shipments to account for that are going to Europe and the Northeast, I have an entire plantation to manage, and you think that women’s concerns are important? And really, you have known about Emmeline for…how many years? And I never told you that I was no longer with her. Enough. Kindly depart and tell Clark to return. Did you not hear me? You are dismissed.”