Dessa Rose

by Sherley A. Williams

  Red, Debra, Janet, Uncle Ned, Dante, and Cully was to take care of what needed doing in the fields. Ada cut Cully’s hair down so none of the kink showed and Miz Lady taken him into town and give out that this was her brother from Charleston, come to visit a spell. This was so there would seem to be a white person on the place while she was gone. Uncle Joel was known to belong to the place, so between them, we figured Cully and him would keep suspicion off. You know, a peddler or a traveler lost his way might stop by. But the House was off the Road and people in the neighborhood didn’t visit her.

  Harker had me fix up some belts for me and Miz Lady to carry money in under our clothes, and fix our petticoats so we could hide money in the seams. I grumbled about this cause, tell the truth, I didn’t believe we could actually fill up all these things with money. Me and Miz Lady was to keep the money with us at all times; never pack it in our baggage, never leave it in a room less one of us was there, never accept no credit. Harker favored gold or “gotiable certifieds.” He never did care too much for paper money.

  He couldn’t read nor write proper—though he could do this better than most slaves and he could cipher like nobody’s business. He had made up some marks that wasn’t writing but he used it like that and this is how he got us in the way of understanding where we had to be and what we had to do. He was something to watch; he made us feel wasn’t nothing we couldn’t handle long as we stayed on our toes. It scared me to want him so.

  We drove out before dawn, silent as the dark we traveled through, fording the creek not far from the House and skirting the town. We wanted to be well out the neighborhood before too many peoples was up and stirring. Nathan drove the wagon and I rode up front holding the baby, Clara, setting between him and Miz Lady; Harker-nem rode in the wagon-bed.

  I didn’t want to leave Mony; he already knowed me and smiled when he seed me, and, oh, I didn’t want to go nowhere without him. Specially since Miz Lady was taking Clara. But I was the one’d made the point about the nursing and I could see Harker’s about white folks being more liable to take kindly to a white mother and baby, go out they way to help them.

  I wanted to ride in back with Harker, but I was “Mammy” now, taking care of Little Missy, keeping proper distance between Mistress and nigger. I was with “Mistress” about the way I was with Nathan. We spoke (Harker wouldn’t allow no surliness)—good morning, how do, nice day—but I kept my feelings to myself. Setting up there between them that morning, seemed like I could feel them wanting at each other. Not with they hands, now; they didn’t even hardly touch me. But it was something between them and it made me mad. I sat there hoping they’d feel that. This wasn’t no time for fooling and I wished I had Harker beside me stead of one of them.

  We didn’t see too many peoples that day, nor houses; this was sparse-settled country and Harker was taking us a way not too many peoples came. We traveled along a ridge that sloped gentle in some places, sharp in others, and everywhere was forest. Now and then we saw smoke curling white against the sky. Once we saw a place where a big fire had burned; charred trunks fanned out from us far as we could see in one direction. About midday, Nathan pulled off into the woods and we shared out the food Ada had packed for us. I was glad for the chance to get down from between Nathan and the white woman. We ate, stretched our legs, then got back on the road. It was nothing more than a track really, and hadn’t’ve been for Harker’s saying so, I wouldn’t’ve known it was there.

  Round dusk we come up on a sizable plantation. The House didn’t look near as grand as the Glen but it was built of regular clapboard, not chinked logs like the rest of what we’d seen, with what looked like two real stories. Miz Lady sent Nathan up to the door to ask shelter for the night. Far as I was concerned, we could’ve camped by the side of the road—we had bedding and provision enough to do that. You know, I wasn’t particular about this in the first place and I wanted to put off the start long as I could. I think the others felt some of this, too, but we hadn’t spoke much and the longer we traveled that day, the more quiet we got. When I mentioned about camping out, Harker said no. He didn’t want us arriving in Wilkerson looking too wore out. Attract too much tention; white lady with all these negroes bound to attract enough.

  We stayed that night at the plantation of Mr. Oscar; Nathan was sent round to the Quarters with the rest of our people but I stayed with Miz Lady. This is where I began another part of my education. When I come to myself in that bed, I accepted that everyone I loved was gone. That life was dead to me; I’d held the wake for it in that cellar. Yet and still, I was alive. At first I couldn’t put no dependence on what I was seeing—a white woman nursing a negro; negroes acting good as free. I wasn’t even posed to be there. I didn’t have no words to make sense of what my eyes was seeing, much less what I’d been doing. I was someone I knowed and didn’t know, living in a world I hadn’t even knowed was out there. So that bed was grave and birthing place to me. I had come into the world, had started on it the minute I said run to Kaine, said north, or maybe when he told me go see Aunt Lefonia. I had never been around white peoples much before I was sold away. Except to bow my head and be careful how I spoke, I didn’t know much about how I was posed to do. That’s how I could be so hankty with Miz Lady, cause I didn’t know no better, and didn’t know enough to listen to the ones what did. But when I walked into that parlor with Miz Lady, I began to learn what I had missed as a field hand.

  Mr. Oscar’s wife and two childrens was off visiting her peoples over by “Elyton,” wherever that was, but he made Miz Lady welcome, inviting her into the parlor and ringing the bell for some tea. He was a big, what you call ruddy-faced white man, skin very red; he had a bushy, sand-colored mustache and he smiled a lot and seemed to bow before her almost as much as a negro. She smiled a lot at him and seemed to like the way he hovered around her. She told him she was Miz Sutton, taking some hands to help with the harvest down to her daddy’s place on the Mobile River. This was the story she would tell until we got farther down country, then she would tell another one; she had several. Harker had drilled her on them same as he did me.

  Mr. Oscar didn’t have a lot of servants in the house; the cook had answered the door, then gone back to fixing on his supper—which he graciously invited Miz Lady to share and she graciously accepted. I’m standing there watching all this you understand, holding Clara, kind of shifting from one foot to the other cause Miz Lady ain’t told me to go or stay. Well, long about this time, they had finished saying all this, a young girl come in and said Mistress’ room was ready. “Mistress” got up out the chair and happen she drop the hanky she been using to pat her face with. Before she could bend down to pick it up, he grab her arm, say, “Allow me. Nigger,” he say, turning round, “pick that up.” I had my hands full with Clara, and he wasn’t looking directly at me, understand. So I just stood there.

  “Dessa!” Miz Lady hiss at me, yanking on the tail of my dress. “Nigger!” he say real sharp, and even I knowed he meant every nigger in hearing this time, but the other girl reached and got the hanky before I could move. He seemed satisfied with that. “Get them bags,” he say over his shoulder. Miz Lady ain’t have to yank my dress that time; I shifted Clara to one arm and picked up the small satchel. Other girl grabbed the two big bags and we struggled out the room behind them.

  It was some more bowing and smiling up in the bedroom but finally he left. She closed the door, and I put Clara down on the bed to change her. “Somebody,” Miz Lady say, looking all out the windows, “somebody better start paying tention, else they going ruin the whole thing.” It made me hot that she could signify like that; yet and still, I knowed I’d been slow. This what Harker meant when he say don’t speak out of turn, neither act out of it. I was slave; I was “nigger” I couldn’t forget that for the rest of the journey. And I was mad at myself that she’d had to remind me.

  She taken a green dress out the bag and told me to go iron it. I looked at her. Black, brown, gray, dark blue, that’s all Harker allow
ed, and hats that covered up that red hair. Harker didn’t want her in nothing showy and didn’t seem to me was nothing plain about that dress, way it was cut low cross the bosom. I picked up a blue one from off the top of the bag. “This seem more like what Harker said you should wear,” I told her.

  “That’s a afternoon outfit,” she told me; “you can’t wear that to no dinner.”

  I didn’t know nothing about all that, a course, but I knowed it wasn’t part of the plan for her to be showing herself off before no white folk. “Harker said you posed to be quiet and respectable.”

  “Harker said I’m a high-class lady and to make everybody treat me that way,” she say real sharp.

  The girl knocked at the door just then with the tea and we both held our tongues while she set the tray down. Just as the girl turned to go, white woman shove that green dress in my hand. “Iron this, Odessa,” she say. “You-all do have a flatiron, don’t you?” smiling round at the girl. I felt like snatching her and that dress, but the girl was in the room and wasn’t nothing I could do but take it. “Thank you,” she say kind of careless like. Then, “Guess I wear the shawl, too.” And she throwed that cross my arm, too.

  Actually, I got that girl to touch up them clothes some; mad as I was I might would’ve burned them. It wasn’t so much the dress itself that made me angry. I didn’t think way out there what she wore could matter that much; I mean, Mr. Oscar had already noted her. It was just the idea of her acting like she didn’t have to go according to plan; she could correct me but I wasn’t posed to say nothing to her. I let her have that dress, but I was going speak to Harker about her ways.

  There was a lot more to being a lady’s maid than I had thought. It wasn’t just the fetching and carrying, though Lord know it was enough of that. You be toting some hot water, let me tell you, specially in them two-story places. Which this was. Seeing at that baby wasn’t no problem. She babble at you all the while you doing for her, then wrap them little pudgy arms around your neck when you pick her up. Never cried less she was hungry or sleepy or wet. No, Little Missy wasn’t no problem. But seeing at Miz Lady liked to give me a fit.

  White women wear some clothes under them dresses, child. Miz Lady hadn’t had no call to rig out in full style since I’d knowed her, but she put it all on that night. There was slips and stays and shifts and hose and garters, petticoats and drawers (and I still feel that all this is unnecessary. You need all that to protect “modesty,” person have to wonder just what kind of “modesty” you got). I didn’t bit more know how to do up all them hooks and ties and snaps than nothing; she had to talk me through it. She wanted me to put her hair up, but I drawed the line at that. I still remembered that night I waked up with that stringy stuff all in my face, and I didn’t want to touch it. She finally ended by braiding it in a big braid and piling it on top of her head—where it commence to fall right down.

  After she left, I fixed my pallet cross the hearth, on the cool brick there that was even with the floor, hoping maybe I could catch some breeze down there. She woke me up with her giggling when she come in. I think that they’d been standing at the door saying good night for a long time, but she closed the door when she heard me stirring. The candle had guttered out long since, but I could see her by the light of the one she held. She was laughing. “Mr. Oscar the most engaging rogue,” she say. “Why, I had to leave the table, he had me laughing and blushing so much.” She hiccuped and laughed. Seeing her like that put me in mind of how she acted when I first seed her, all giggly and fly, like she didn’t have two thoughts to rub together in her head. She’d been drinking, too; smelt like peach brandy to me. I hurried her out that dress and into bed, uneasy at having her like this—what if she’d slipped in front that white man? But steady, too. She wasn’t acting no better than what I’d said and I had a earful I was going give Harker that next morning.

  I was wakened by some muttering and it took me a minute to realize it was him and her in that bed. At first I was embarrassed and surprised. If she’d wanted to do that, I could have slept in the kitchen. And glad, too, cause this would show Nathan just what kind of old thing he’d taken up with. She get in heat and pick up with whatever was handy. Oh, I had a lot I was going to tell him and Harker, honey. Then I realized she was trying to get him out the bed; she was whispering but she still sounded angry, and scared. “Mis’ess?” I said; I didn’t call out all that loud, just in case I was wrong, but she heard me.

  “Dessa,” she called. “Odessa, help me get this man out the bed.”

  Well, I got up and started looking round for something to hit him with. Nearest thing come to hand was a pillow and I started pounding him all about the head with that. We was all shouting and carrying on by then. I could tell he was drunk—letting two womens beat him up with pillows! We managed to push him out the bed, tried to stomp him to death with our bare feet. He crawled cross that floor and got out the room somehow. I slammed the door and we pulled a chest cross in front of it. We leaned against it, panting a little now.

  “That what you was using?” she ask, pointing at me. I still had one them pillows in my hand. She did, too, looking like a ghost in that white nightgown, her hair screaming every which where. I started laughing, trying to keep it quiet, you know; and she was laughing now, herself. The more we tried to be quiet, the more we laughed. Well, that peach brandy commence to act up about then and she barely made it to the slop jar.

  I helped her over to the bed. She looked plumb miserable setting there. I wasn’t feeling all that good myself. What if Mr. Oscar hadn’t been drunk? I asked myself; and, What if he come back? Knees shaking now, and just wanting to get to that pallet.

  “Dessa?” Miz Lady, calling me, patting the bed like she couldn’t think of the word for it; but I understood. I didn’t too much want to be by myself right then neither.

  I laid awake a long time that night while she snored quiet on the other side the baby. The white woman was subject to the same ravishment as me; this the thought that kept me awake. I hadn’t knowed white mens could use a white woman like that, just take her by force same as they could with us. Harker, neither Nathan could help us there in that House, any House. I knew they would kill a black man for loving with a white woman; would they kill a black man for keeping a white man off a white woman? I didn’t know; and didn’t want to find out.

  I slept with her after that, both of us wrapped around Clara. And I wasn’t so cold with her no more. I wasn’t zactly warm with her, understand; I didn’t know how to be warm with no white woman. But now it was like we had a secret between us, not just that bad Oscar—though we kept that quiet. I couldn’t bring myself to tell Harker, neither Nathan about that night. Seemed like it would’ve been almost like telling on myself, if you know what I mean. I was posed to be keeping an eye on her and something had almost got by me. Sides, I told myself, that bad Oscar had paid Miz Lady back twice over for coming on so hankty with me. But really, what kept me quiet was knowing white mens wanted the same thing, would take the same thing from a white woman as they would from a black woman. Cause they could. I never will forget the fear that come on me when Miz Lady called me on Mr. Oscar, that knowing that she was as helpless in this as I was, that our only protection was ourselfs and each others.

  We reached Lake Lewis Smith and sold Harker and Ned there at Wilkerson. We hadn’t looked to sell anybody so early but the man paid “sixteen fifty for the pair,” which Nathan said was a decent price, what with the country about Wilkerson not being planted so much to cotton. It hurt to see Harker, even Ned, led off again, back into that prison house. But I knowed, I believed that if anybody could get out again, it would be Harker; he had that kind of mind, you see. And if it was anybody could keep that pesky Ned in line it was him.

  Miz Lady used some of this money to buy me some clothes. This was Nathan’s idea; he said I didn’t look like I belonged to no proper lady, proper lady wouldn’t own me as no maid. What clothes I had was cut down and took in from some of her old things. Th
ese was clean and neat as I could make them, but they did look pretty cobbled up. Good enough for a hand, yes, but not for no respectable lady’s maid.

  She bought me two dresses, a plaid gingham and a sumac-colored cotton, two bandannas for my head and a kerchief to go across my shoulders, three full changes of underwear, shoes (not them old russet brogans they used to give slaves—if they gave anything at all—but sho enough shoes, good as a white person would wear), and some stockings. These was the most clothes I’d had in my life and I treasured them the more cause they was bought from selling Harker and Ned.

  She also bought some pepper and two little snuff boxes for us to carry it in; got so we could open them with the flick of a thumb, with either hand. And hatpins. A long one she kept pinned in the crown of her hat and a shorter one I wore in the folds of my shoulder kerchief, the point buried in the knot at my bosom. We wasn’t troubled by no more bad Oscars again.

  We could have sold Castor and Flora, Nathan and me, too, for that matter, several times over before that boat let us off in Winston. But we decided to keep to the story about Miz Lady’s daddy until we reached Haley’s Landing. This was a larger town than Winston, not big as some I had seen on the coffle but pretty big for that region. We waited for Harker and Ned in Winston at the south end of Lake Lewis Smith. They arrived shortly after we did and we went on to Haley’s Landing.

  Me and Miz Lady put up at the hotel there and lodged Nathan at the livery stable and Harker and them in the slave pen behind the jail. Then Nathan went with her to have some handbills printed up announcing a “private sale,” “through no fault,” of “likely negroes.” Back in them days, every negro was “likely.” “No fault” meant wasn’t nothing wrong with the slave and in the bill of sale they was always “warranted sound.” Sometimes, so Nathan said, dealers would say “no fault” in their handbills and print this in the newspapers to make people think it was a planter on hard times selling and they could get a better deal. The “private sale” was to keep from having to sell to speculators and traders or anyone else didn’t look right. We didn’t want none of our peoples in the hand of a trader. Only way we was likely to get someone off a coffle was to buy them—we didn’t fool ourselves about how lucky Nathan and us had been before—so it didn’t hurt to be too careful. For this same reason, the handbills always said something about first choice going to planters and city residents “who want for their own family use.” (Nathan had all these sayings by heart and sometimes on a lonely stretch of road, we would pass the time making up rhymes with them. I can’t member a one now, but the sayings from the handbills stays in my mind.)