Dessa Rose

by Sherley A. Williams

  Nemi. Never forget that name now, it’s wrote in my mind. Oh, yes, I knowed the white man, now. “I belongs to Miz Carlisle,” I said, “staying down to the hotel. I takes care of her baby, Clara—”

  Sheriff say real rough to someone over my shoulder, “You can’t keep kidnapping niggers off the street looking for that gal of yours—”

  “That’s all a lie, sheriff.” This was said right in my ear; I jumped cause I didn’t know it was Nemi holding me, and he yanked my arms backwards. “When I caught up with her she swore she belonged to some Suttons. This a dangerous criminal and I want her held.”

  Someone say, “He right, sheriff, I heard her say she belongs to the Suttons.”

  “Who are you, gal?” sheriff say to me. “And turn her loose, Nemi. Ain’t likely she could get too far with all of us in here.” He pulled out a chair, told me to sit down; he sat down on the edge of the desk facing us. The white man let go my arms and I sat down, thankful to have something under me, my legs felt that weak. I started to say again I belongs to Miz Carlisle, but the white man don’t let me finish.

  “Sheriff,” he say, “she match the description in the poster.” He took a paper out his coat and start unfolding it.

  Sheriff say, “Speak up, gal.”

  “Master, I never seen this master before in my life,” I said and it wasn’t no act when I started to cry. “This master scare me so. I been stayed with Mistress Sutton—Oh please, Master, just go to the hotel and ask Miz Carlisle.”

  “The one I wants got scars all over her butt,” Nemi say real nasty. “Let’s have that dress off; let her prove she ain’t the one.”

  It was several other white mens in the room and all them seemed to like that notion. “Ware the goods,” I cried, scared to death at the way they was looking at me. “Ware the goods!” I didn’t even not know what this meant then, but this what they said on the coffle when they got a pretty high yellow on the rope, “Ware the goods, Master saving that for the fancy trade.” Only the trader would touch her then. And this what stopped the white mens: that I might belong to someone be upset about damaged goods.

  “Damn it, Nemi, you had your last peep show in here,” sheriff say. “All right, you mens, clear the office. This a jail, not no carnival.” He sent one the mens down to the hotel to see could they find Miz Carlisle and everybody left but him and the little white man. White man say I had to be locked up and started reading from that paper. “Hundred-dollar reward. Scaped. Dark complexed. Spare built. Shows the whites of her eyes—”

  Sheriff say, “Nemi, that sound like about twenty negroes I knows of personally.”

  “Branded,” white man say real quick, shaking that paper, “branded, eh, sheriff, R on the thigh, whipscarred about the hips. What about that, eh, sheriff?”

  Sheriff just look at him. “You ought to go on home, man; let the law take care of this.”

  “Like they took care of it already?” the white man yelled. “The law the ones let her scape in the first place!”

  Sheriff sucked his teeth at that. “Come on, girl,” he say to me, and I followed him through a wide doorway into the next room where the cells was. There was three of them, all empty. He locked me in one, then went back and sat at the desk.

  I stood at the cell door holding on to the bars and waited. I was in puredee misery. West, the Glen, all our ventures, the whole last few months wasn’t nothing to me then. I felt almost like I hadn’t never left that first jail or this last white man. To come so close to what I had suffered for, to see, to have freedom in me—. I had to be real careful with myself.

  I doubted everything. Harker and them would never scape bondage. And we had sold Nathan; I had let her sell Nathan. I had to sit down on that. Last time Harker and Nathan and Cully had come as answer to a prayer I was too numb, too blind to pray. But I wasn’t blind then and I could feel every one of them scars, the one roped partway to my navel that the waist of my draws itched, the corduroyed welts cross my hips. And R on my thighs. This was the place Harker had kissed, had made beautiful with his lips. I would never have thought anyone would want to love this, that my blood would be stirred when they did. This was what would betray me. Nemi wouldn’t even have to say nothing. Sheriff would see that for hisself. And these white mens would kill me.

  I grieved for Mony, for Harker, for myself. I tried to tell myself I had Miz Lady—standing now, walking; afraid to keep still. White lady good as two or three negroes any day, trying to make a joke to myself, you know, keep my spirits up. But I wished she’d said “friend” while I was still in that room. No, I couldn’t make myself laugh. Laughing was too close to crying and crying to begging, to screaming. If I let myself, I would moan; I would foul myself. I was being real careful with myself.

  The white man stood in front of me, and I jumped. He was fingering that watch chain; that’s what caught my tention, that clicking where he knocked his fingernail against the watch. That’s what I heard above me the whole time I sat under that tree, him clicking that watch and breathing.

  “Smart gal like you don’t have to end on the gallows,” he say, and it was like “Nice day,” or “Morning.” That’s the way he say it, “Morning; know you been laid with some buck,” licking his lips, “—won’t hold that against you. Woman like you need,” he say. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This white man—and I’m backing away, you know, and thinking, stuttering; I couldn’t be subject to this, not now, not no more. And he commence to curse at me. “Sly bitch,” he call me; he wasn’t no more than two, three feet in front of me, and quiet. “Caught you,” almost whispering, but I heard him right enough. “Got you now.” He tapped his chest. “Right in here. Roots, you lying sow,” and all such nonsense as that. He looked plumb wild, way he was throwing his head back like a horse and brushing at that hank of hair. Closer he got to me, the more I backed up till I bumped against the edge of the bunk. He was right at the bars by then and he reached for me. I couldn’t help myself. I screamed.

  Well, the sheriff called him up sharp then, and Nemi went on back in the other room. He kept on walking in and out my view, brushing at the hank of hair; it kept falling. I stayed on the bunk. I didn’t put no dependence on that sheriff but the fact that Nemi did mind him calmed me some. White man come on me so sudden he hadn’t peared subject to no rules; least not the same ones I was. But he didn’t seem to back-talk that sheriff too much. This gived me some comfort; I didn’t think the sheriff would let him do me nothing till Miz Lady come.

  I couldn’t think of nothing good that would happen when she did. Nemi knowed me without looking at scars. I couldn’t hide them no way and they told plain as day who I was. I didn’t see how Miz Lady could dimple her way round that. The sheriff looked to be a steely-eyed white man; you know, the kind we always joke about know what’s in a darky’s mind before the darky even think it hisself; maybe he wouldn’t care for big eyes and quick smiles, neither. He was kicked back in one chair with his feet propped on another one, whittling. He didn’t put me so much in mind of Boss Smith no more, but I couldn’t tell much else about him from just looking—though it was something that he didn’t seem to care that much for Nemi.

  The white man had taken a seat where I could see him and he could see me. He sat with his legs crossed. Now and then he would brush at his hair or flick something on his lap, but he didn’t seem too concerned. This the way he’d always been with me at that farm, like he had all the time in the world and might lend me a little if I would talk. And I had talked. I’d had to say something to get out that cellar; now, I didn’t know what all I had said. Just about Kaine, I told myself, just about Master busting in his head with that shovel. But I was scared I’d talked more than that, had to be more than that. Else why this white man track me down like he owned me, like a bloodhound on my trail?

  White man hitched his pants at the knee and switched up legs, crossing the bottom over the top one. I looked at his ankles showing gray and bony above his low-top shoes. I membered how he sat on them c
ellar steps with his hanky stuffed round his nose. I really hadn’t smelled myself till then. Lawd, it’d shamed me to have to sit up there in them chains and know I was the one he was smelling. Sometimes I just wanted to go over and wave my arms all over him or break wind in his face; you know, breathe on him so he would know that he could be made dirty just like me. Now, I thought, now his shirt don’t even have no collar; his ankles dirty. My eyes filled with tears then. To be brought so low by such a trifling little white man. This what chance will do, children, trample over all your dreams, swing a bony ankle in front of you.

  And I got warm. I mean, crazy white man, tracking me all cross the country like he owned me. Why, he didn’t even not know how to call my name—talking about Odessa. And here he’d just taken it on hisself, personal, to see I didn’t get free. And he was crazy; had to be crazy, walking round with no hose, no collar, his cuffs frayed. This the first thing that gived me hope. They couldn’t take the word of no white man like that, not against the word of a respectable white lady. I stood up on that. See, this had been a precise white man; even when he took his coat off, his sleeves was rolled just so. He’d sweated; you couldn’t help but sweat, not in that heat. But, I mean: The sweat did not bead; it wouldn’t roll down his face. And here he was sitting up here with no hose on his feet. Course it was something strange in that. And sheriff said he’d dragged other girls in there. The white man was crazy; I’d make them see that. My fingers touched them money belts hidden about my waist, there where I hugged myself. Miz Lady couldn’t let them see under my clothes. We wasn’t posed to let no one know we had this money; she would member that. Cept for them scars, it was the word of a crazy white man against a respectable white lady. This was how I calmed myself till Miz Lady come.

  I heard her before I seed her: “Sheriff, what is this nonsense about my girl?” Sheriff come to his feet; even Nemi stood up. “I couldn’t make no sense out what this man said.” She had Clara in her arms, petting her back like she was pacifying her but she looked some upset. “Is somebody trying to steal Dessa? Is that what he was trying to say? It’s just scandalous how peoples will prey on defenseless womens.” She stopped in front the desk, turned, and saw me standing there, holding on to them bars. “Odessa!” she say starting towards me, “You come out there right this minute!” like she was going to open the cell herself; Lawd know I was ready for her to do it. Sheriff hurried round his desk and blocked her way. “Ma’am,” touched his hat, “beg pardon, ma’am.”

  And there was the white man, bowing at her. “Madam. Adam Nemi.” And smiling, reaching for her hand. She drawed back but that was all the mind she give him, too busy looking questions at me like, What going on; who is this?

  “I don’t even know this master, Mistress.” Talking loud cause they wouldn’t let her come no closer.

  “But I know you,” Nemi say, “know you very well,” and he tapped his chest.

  “Nemi,” sheriff say, trying to frown Nemi down. “This the law job. Ma’am, this darky cused of being a scaped criminal with a price on her head.”

  Well this give Miz Lady a little setback. “Why, why that’s impossible,” she say, looking round them at me.

  I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but she had to be surprised. Harker hadn’t thought up no story for this. In all his travels, he hadn’t heard nothing about no reward, not for me, not for none of our peoples. The cellar, the coffle, all that had happened way over east of where we was working; none us spected to hear nothing about it here. Oh, Harker said he’d heard some talk about a devil woman at one of the places he was sold, but this was like a hoodoo story to the peoples, a conjure tale. Something that don’t have to be real to be true. The white folks hadn’t made no mention of no scapes. “They mistook me for another Dessa, Mistress,” I called out. “Tell them who I am, Mistress. Can’t be no reward on me.”

  “This girl mines,” Miz Lady say. “Can’t be no reward on her.”

  “This gal belong to the state, madam,” Nemi say. He hooked his thumbs in the arm holes of his vest, poked his chest out a little. “I put up fifty dollars of the reward myself.”

  “Sheriff,” Miz Lady say, just like she hadn’t heard Nemi, turning to the sheriff, smiling, holding Clara so Clara could play with his badge, “we just come in from Aikens to meet some hands my daddy sending to help with the harvest. He”—she looked over her shoulder at Nemi—“just mistook my girl for someone else.”

  “You would lie for her, madam?” Nemi ask real sharp.

  Well, she drawed up at that; white man ain’t posed to call no white lady a lie. “Sheriff, who is this person?”

  Nemi told her his name again, and put two or three more high-sounding words after it. “He done dragged other girls in here, Mistress. And undressed them,” I said quick.

  Her eyes flew open at that and the sheriff turned red when she looked at him. “Sheriff, this true? What is going on here?”

  “Evil, madam,” Nemi say. “Oh, she pull the wool over your eyes; she pulled it on mines, too—at first. Nice white lady like you can’t know the blackness of the darky heart. Sing and laugh, and all the time plotting.” This not exactly what he say, you understand; what none of them said. I can’t put my words together like they did. But I understood right on, now; wasn’t nothing wrong with my understanding. And this what Nemi meant; I was something so terrible I wasn’t even human. I had lusted with the master, then knifed him; this why I was sold. My heart about leap out my mouth when he mention Master. His voice didn’t even not change, and it was a minute before the sheriff and Miz Lady caught on to what he was saying.

  The white man could talk, I don’t deny him that, open his eyes all wide, use all kind of motions with his hands, spoke in a whispery voice so you had to listen real careful to make out what he said. Oh, he was something; Miz Lady couldn’t seem to take her eyes off him. And I was sweating now; some of these was things I’d told him. “I got it all down here,” tapping his chest again. I’d strangled Mistress, he said, and conjured the white mens and laid with all the “bucks” on the coffle; I’d called up the devil there in that cellar. A danger to womanhood, he called me.

  Miz Lady sniff at Nemi. “One little pesky colored gal do all that?” And she smiled at the sheriff.

  “The law handle this.” Sheriff, cutting Nemi off. “Maybe the gal Nemi looking for didn’t do all that, but she done something, else wouldn’t be no poster out on her.”

  “Well, it can’t be my Dessa,” Miz Lady say, like that settled that.

  “She fit the description,” Nemi say, waving that paper, grinning in her face. “Madam—” looking now, “madam, what you say your name is?” like he was studying on it. “Seem like I know you…”

  Miz Lady drawed away from him but not before Clara grabbed that paper out his hand. “I bet that description fit fifty negroes.” Real busy now, taking the paper from Clara. She give it to the sheriff, but she wasn’t smiling so fresh. This was something I hadn’t looked for, that the white man might know Miz Lady, that she might have something to hide.

  Sheriff cleared his throat and turned a little redder. “They branded the one we looking for, ma’am.”

  “Yes,” Nemi bust out, “let’s look under that dress!”

  Well, she was startled sho enough, now, cause all this time she’d thought it was some mistake, especially after Nemi started his spiel. But even if she never seed them, she knowed about my scars. “Why—” she say, looking at me and petting Clara real quick, biting her lip, and looking away. “Why, I—Sheriff—.” Petting Clara and batting her eye.

  They thought she was stuttering about Nemi being so crude up in her face, talking under a darky’s clothes. I knowed she was wondering about the rest of what Nemi said. Lusting with mens, killing white peoples, working roots, this was what she’d thought about me at first, what she thought about all us. I’d laughed about how scary she was of us with Ada; and I had done some things to make her think the worst of me. I guessed she was membering that, too. And s
he knowed about my scars, about the coffle, something about how the white folks done me; Nathan had told her. But these was things I’d never spoke about to her. If one thing was true, I knowed she must be wondering what else was, too.

  Sheriff made Nemi beg pardon, but Nemi stuck to his point; he could prove who I was by the brand on my thigh. Sheriff looked at Miz Lady. She was petting Clara, looking at me—and what could I say in front the sheriff, in front that dirty Nemi? All the time we’d rode together, all those nights we’d laid in the dark almost side by side, silent. Now we just barely knowed how to read each other’s eyes, each other’s smile. “Odessa ain’t got no scars.” She heist Clara round to the other side and commence to fan herself with a hanky. She bat her eyes at the sheriff; sheriff looking at his feet, trying not to pay her no mind.

  “The law need proof,” Nemi say. He smiling now, tapping that watch case. “Now I come to see you, madam, I believe—” looking at her close in the face and she was looking at him like a chicken watching a snake.

  I really wanted to make the white man smell himself, like I’d smelled in my own nose. That’s what he was to me, a stank in my face, tracking me like a bloodhound, setting mens on to peek under my clothes, offering a re-ward on me. “Mistress.” She turned her head. I patted that money belt under my dress. I looked at her and down at the hand patting my waist. Whatever she thought about me, whatever Nemi knowed on her, that money was real. And what was he beside what we’d done? “Mistress.” I looked at her and I looked at Nemi—that crumpled suit and stained shirt front, the shadow long his jaw made his face look dirty. And she looked at him, the suit, the shirt, like she was seeing them for the first time.