Dessa Rose

by Sherley A. Williams

  Later, lying awake in the big bed, she welcomed the soft regularity of the girl’s breathing in the larger silence of the night. She hated the stillness, the quiet. Listening to the crickets, hearing Timmy turn in sleep, or Clara’s occasional sighs, was like listening to some extension of the hush, as if she were the only waking, thinking being in the vast emptiness she had not even been aware of when Mammy was alive. Ada had said the name so easily, had always called Mammy “Dorcas,” Rufel knew. Dorcas. She mouthed the name, seeing Mammy’s face now, but finding no comfort in the familiar image. It was as if the wench had taken her beloved Mammy and put a stranger in her place. Had Mammy had children, Rufel wondered, suckled a child at her breast as she did the wench’s, as she did with her own? And how had Mammy borne it when they were taken away—That’s if she had any. Rufel interrupted that train of thought. She had only the wench’s word for that. And they were not, she repeated, talking about the same woman. But Mammy might have had children and it bothered Rufel that she did not know.

  Mammy had liked blackberries, Rufel knew. Every summer they had put up jam and Mammy had coaxed tarts from whatever darky was trying to cook. They had not had much luck with cooks, with the cook-stove, but Mammy could talk the roughest field hand through a creditable tart, Rufel thought with a smile. Mammy had liked to work with silk and had directed the work of the household from a chair under the oak tree in the kitchen yard as long as fair weather held. Had she a sweetheart? A child?

  In all the years she’d known her, Rufel had never seen Mammy without the rosette-knotted cloth on her head and the snowy kerchief tied across her bosom, until Mammy got too ill to rise from her pallet back of the stairs. So changed, the dark face framed by darker hair with a strand or two glinting silver, softer than a skein of the silkiest wool. And yet the same, making light of her ailment, humoring Rufel, who had the darkies move the mattress from the cramped quarters under the stairwell into the parlor where Rufel nursed her. Both of them enjoyed the brief reversal—though Mammy only let Rufel do so much and no more—neither believing that Mammy could come to harm over such a little cold.

  Mammy was kind and wise and strong; her short black hair curled about the fingers with a will of its own; she had narrow-fingered hands, the thumb and second finger calloused from sewing because she hated wearing a thimble; she liked blackberries and silk and the oak tree in the kitchen yard. That much and no more, Rufel thought, somehow shamed; eleven years and only then to know the feel of a loved one’s hair under a loving hand. Truly, such ignorance was worse than grief. She thought feverishly. Mammy had not liked France. Oh, it was pretty enough, she said when Clara Carson asked, or so Mrs. Carson had reported often to their friends, when she still talked about her new slave before company, before she learned, Rufel thought with new bitterness, that it was better to have an old servant named Mammy than to have a “French” maid who couldn’t talk French. Had Mammy minded when the family no longer called her name? Was that why she changed mine? Rufel thought fearfully. Was what she had always thought loving and cute only revenge, a small reprisal for all they’d taken from her? How old had Mammy been? Why had they gone to France? Rufel had never asked. Had she any children?

  The wench’s breathing seemed to fill the room. Slaves were free in France, Rufel thought; it was like going north where the Yankees tried to entice slaves away. Had Mammy loved that other mistress so much? Sudden, foolish jealousy spurted through her, about a woman you don’t even know, she berated herself. Mammy made the same choice for you, staying when she could have run like the rest of those shiftless darkies. But Rufel knew, even as she told herself this, that escaping to the woods or even running away to the north was not the same as being free in France. And Mammy had passed that up to return. She would have returned if she had a child, Rufel knew, thinking of the wench’s words that afternoon. Mammy have children. What had the colored girl called her Mammy? Rose. Dorcas. Rose—smooth black. She remembered the phrase, the fresh airish smell that seemed to follow Mammy—Dorcas. Rose? Would the wench call that coffee-dark skin “smooth black”? Rufel herself had seen Mammy’s eyes in the wench’s face. The wench was from Charleston. Mammy had returned to Charleston all those long years ago.

  Rufel was awakened sometime before dawn by the baby’s muffled cries. She lay still a moment, consciously struggling out of sleep, feeling puffy-eyed and heavy-lidded, breasts throbbing faintly. He had been crying, she realized as she stumbled out of bed, for some time, and wondered why the stupid wench hadn’t brought him to her or at least called her. She bent to pick him up, her muttered complaints abruptly silenced by the memory of how reluctantly she had nursed him earlier in the evening. Wench still should have enough sense to know I wouldn’t let him go hungry, she thought a trifle self-righteously; yet, she was rather pleased to realize that she had some real power over the wench and Ada. The baby seemed to recognize her touch for he stopped crying and turned his face to nozzle at her bosom. He was such a tiny thing to have so big a voice, so fierce a will, she thought. A careless hug could kill him, yet he demanded care and trusted that someone would provide it. Shaken by a sudden wave of protectiveness and remorse, she climbed back in bed and bared her breast to his searching. She had used the baby’s hunger to spite the wench and was shamed by the knowledge.

  Rufel knew she ought to ask Ada about Mammy and the wench, too, but she could not bring herself to do so, Ada could act so funny, even when asked the most harmless question—as though anybody but Rufel would already know the answer. And in this case, Rufel would almost agree with her. She, Rufel, had been Mammy’s friend and she was chagrined by her own ignorance. She would send for Ada after dinner, Rufel temporized, or go out to the kitchen herself after supper. She whiled away the day, angry at her own past thoughtlessness, unwilling to expose her present uncertainty to Ada’s view.

  Harker came to visit the girl after supper. On impulse, Rufel followed him outside when he left, calling to him as he crossed the yard. Harker had known Mammy and had brought the girl here. She hurried down the back steps, determined to have her questions answered. He waited for her at the edge of the yard, hat lifted slightly above his bushy head, pleasant-faced as always, yet conveying a certain guardedness that in turn made her feel rather awkward in his presence. Thus the question she asked now was not about Mammy as she had meant, but about the wench and more challenging than she intended. “That wench from Charleston?”

  He hesitated, then admitted rather sheepishly, “No’m. You know some of them places so little, only people know of em is the ones that live there—and it’s not many of them.” A grin moved slowly and easily across his face. “We just said Charleston cause we thought you being from that area you might know something of the hardship she had to bear.”

  So it was to play on my sympathy, she thought triumphantly; then blurted, “Did Mam—Dorcas have any children?”

  “Why—She never spoke of none that I know of.” And then, with dawning comprehension, “You don’t think Dessa related to Dorcas, do you?”

  She didn’t think so, but that question had been there in her mind nonetheless. Now she asked with more coolness than she felt, “Well, is she?” Almost she expected him to laugh; the question was so ridiculous.

  He looked at her quizzically. “I wouldn’t think so,” he said slowly. “But I don’t know so, either. Nathan might; and he’d be the one to ask.”

  “Nathan?”

  “Tall, dark-skinned fellow—”

  She remembered the darky at the creek. Dark-skinned; so that was what they called it, picturing the dusky skin that had seemed like jet to her.

  “You want I tell him come see you?”

  The darky’s question startled her. “No. No.” She felt slightly panicky at the thought of questioning the darky with Ada in the parlor or the wench across the hall. “No; it’s not important,” she said quickly. “Thank you, Harker,” she said turning away. The darky was probably at the creek, fishing again when he ought to be working, she thought.
She could look for him there herself.

  After dinner the next day, Rufel made sure that both babies were asleep then went to look for the darky. The best fishing on the whole property was at the pool some distance downstream from the spot where she had seen the darky the day before. Bertie had given her that spot as her own; he allowed the darkies the use of some streams west of the fields but he had forbidden them the watering places close to the House. The darkies had generally abided by the rule as far as the spot on the upper creek was concerned but the fishing at the pool had drawn them like flies to honey. It had been one of the most frequent causes of punishment. There was no one at the pool that afternoon, nor at the spot upstream, and she had turned to go when the darky seemed to emerge from the trees.

  “You sent at me, Mis’ess?”

  “No,” she said startled. Face to face with him, she was not at all sure of what she wanted to know.

  “Well, not exactly sent.” He paused as though waiting for her to speak, but Rufel could think of nothing to say. He continued, “Harker said you was asking about Dessa.” He paused. She scrambled about in her mind for something to say, but found nothing. “He thought maybe there was something you might want to ask me about her.”

  He did not say he would answer, she noticed, just as he had made no excuse or move to go when she surprised him loafing yesterday. It was as if they didn’t know how they should act in front of a white person, she thought, amazed and uneasy. She had never met darkies who seemed so unversed in what was due her place as these. Harker, Ada, Annabelle, none of them offered her anything that she had not specifically requested; they volunteered no act that she had not specifically directed; they never sought to oblige her. Mammy had attributed this to Annabelle’s slowness and refused to see it in Ada, whose manner now, Rufel thought, often bordered on the presumptuous. Harker had never displayed any suggestion of Ada’s cheekiness but she knew he volunteered his knowledge of the land and how to work it out of something other than loyalty or duty to her. She felt, too, in him a certain reserve; he would give this much and no more. He could just as easily have told me about that wench, she thought crossly now. Certainly he must know more about Mammy. Instead he had put her off on this stranger who was no more obliging than he. She eyed the darky with disfavor.

  “He said”—the darky spoke as though in response to her look—“he said you was asking about Dessa and Dorcas.”

  She nodded, hoping her continued silence would force him into further speech.

  “Dessa wasn’t no ways related to Dorcas,” he continued after a moment. “Not that I knows of, anyway. Dessa come from a plantation up around Monks Corner, mammy, pappy, sisters, brothers—all of em from up around that way.”

  “You-all said she was from Charleston.” She still felt a sense of satisfaction in having at least exposed that fabrication.

  He shrugged. “Charleston, Augusta; don’t matter all that much. Ain’t likely she’d know anyone you know. She—”

  “You-all lied.”

  “Yes, Mis’ess,” he admitted without a trace of guilt, “and we didn’t mean you no harm. Dessa been through a hard time and if stretching the truth a little get her a spot of rest—” He shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands palm up.

  As though that explained it all, she thought indignantly. She turned away fuming. “Wait,” he said touching her arm suddenly, lightly; and withdrew his hand as quickly. He rubbed it slowly along his pant leg, looking at a point just over her shoulder. “I seen her when she come out that sweatbox they put her in. Know what that is, Mis’ess? It’s a closed box they put willful darkies in, built so’s you can’t lie down in it or sit or stand in it. It do got a few holes in it so you can breathe, but plenty people done suffocated in em. They whipped her, put her in that, let her sweat out in the sun.”

  “That wench don’t have a scar on her back,” she said quickly.

  He looked briefly in her face, and she turned away, uneasy at the boldness of that glance. “They lashed her about the hips and legs, branded her along the insides of her thighs.”

  Rufel shivered; that couldn’t be true, it was too, too awful, she thought; and how did this darky know anyway? “How do you know?” she challenged; yet, she was interested despite herself. “How you come to see all this?”

  He did not look at her this time, rather he looked toward her. “I was slave to the trader what bought her. He was buying up around Minifree when he heard about an experienced field hand, already breeding, for sale at Simeon. Master Wilson ride a pretty mile out his way to look at a proposition like that and he taken me with him. So I was there. I seen her when she come out the box.

  “They’d just about whipped that dress off her and what hadn’t been cut off her—dress, drawers, shift—was hanging round her in tatters or else stuck in them wounds. Just from the waist down, you see, cause they didn’t wanna ‘impair her value.’ That’s what her mistress told Wilson. She drove a hard bargain; I was there and I heard that, too.” His face had a stubborn cast to it, as though he expected her to challenge this. “Mistress told Wilson out front that the girl was scarred and she still got four hundred dollars for her.” He shook his head and chuckled ruefully. “Not too many could get the best of old Master like that.

  “I don’t know how long they had her in that box. Her face was swolled; she was bloody and dirty, cramped from laying up in there. I didn’t think she could stand up; but she did.” He spoke with quiet intensity. “She stood up.”

  Rufel could see the scene as he described it. The darky himself tying the wench’s hands, looping the lead rope over the pommel of his saddle, walking the horse across the yard and around to the front of the house as she stumbled along behind, seeing the darkies lining the drive, some, as he said, hiding their faces, others staring straight ahead. Had her own people been there, Rufel wondered, her own Rose? She could almost feel the fire that must have lived in the wench’s thighs.

  “The mistress was standing on the front porch, talking to Wilson. He was already mounted up and when he saw me, he started off at a trot, calling to me to hurry up. I knowed that girl couldn’t bit more run than I could fly and I didn’t want to drag her. Well, Master Wilson, he rode back and hit my horse, piya! like that cross the rump. By the time I got the horse under control, Dessa’d been drug about the yard a good bit. And Wilson was right there beside me, his hand on my hand when I moved to help her up. ‘No,’ he told me. ‘That her first lesson on this coffle. She got to keep up.’

  “She was crying, you know, tears making mud on her face, dirt from head to toe so she looked like something bandoned longside the road. She picked her own self up and I know her skin must’ve been screaming. But she didn’t ask that white man for no mercy; not then, not ever that I knows of.”

  “What a horrid story,” Rufel breathed after a moment, imagining the agony of those thighs, to walk with that burning—“That vicious trader.”

  The darky shrugged again. “Master Wilson wasn’t like some, cruel just cause he could be; he didn’t believe in damaging goods, though if he could get em cheap enough, he bought em. That what he done then was mostly for show, impress the mistress with how slaves ought to be handled. Soon as we was out of sight, he let me take her up on the horse with me; she rode in the supply wagon till she healed enough to walk. He wasn’t trying to kill her.”

  “I know,” Rufel said softly. Which made it all the more horrible. To violate a body so. That’s if it happened, she told herself. She had sat, at some point during the darky’s recital, on a low stump; the darky sat on his haunches a few feet from her. Rufel rose now, conscious that they had talked a long time, brushing carefully at her dress, yet reluctant to go. “How did you-all get way out here?” she asked curiously.

  He hesitated, then said tersely, “Escaped off the coffle.”

  Rufel looked at him in some disbelief. She had seen coffles; they were a common enough sight on the riverboats, the men loaded with chains, the women with scarcely enough rags to cov
er them decently, all of them dirty and desolate. She found it hard to reconcile that memory with the presence of this darky. They seemed to personify wretchedness; he glowed with life. For that matter, the wench looked remarkably healthy to have been through all the darky said. She looked at him sternly. “She must have done something pretty bad,” she said, unable herself to imagine such a crime.

  “I don’t know about that.” The darky rose also. “Some owners, it don’t take much. Maybe Dessa’s was one like that. Whatever she done, it wasn’t enough to ‘impair her value.’”

  The gently gibing tone seemed to mock her and she retorted, “I bet she was making up to the master; that’s why the mistress was so cruel. I bet that’s what it was.”

  “Dessa was breeding when Wilson bought her, Mis’ess,” he said. “What she was carrying laying right up there in your house now. No white man ain’t had no hand in that.”

  “Well,” thinking of the nut-brown face, but—“His hair,” remembering its silken texture. “You not going to tell me darkies have hair like that,” she said stubbornly.

  “Mis’ess”—he was shaking his head and laughing softly—“every negro baby I ever seen come in the world got curls shine like satin…and nap up”—he snapped his fingers—“inside six months. You see that boy in a year, he won’t even be able to get a curry comb through that crop.”

  “Truly?” smiling at the idea. He nodded mock-solemn; startled by his drollery, she laughed. Catching herself a little guiltily, she asked more sharply than she had intended, “Are you the baby’s father?

  “No, Mis’ess,” he said steadily.

  “I think you-all are sweethearts.” She smiled at him encouragingly, thinking that would explain his evident protectiveness of the girl.