“Ezrah’d kill me, you’re his sister,” Jeb finally croaks out, but Selema notices that he has not released his grasp on her waist.
“Well,” she drawls out slowly, tilting her pelvis oh- so- slightly against his, as if by accident, “I’d look at a newfound relationship as a celebration rather than a new fence, wouldn’t you? So celebrate with me, Jeb.” And with that, she stands on the tips of her toes and presses her mouth, warm and soft, against his, feels him groan against her and squeeze her so tight she can hardly breathe, all woman in his arms, imprinting herself on him like a duckling to its mother.
The clearing of a throat startles them, breaks them apart. Ezrah is standing at the archway, looking for all the world like the master of the house that he is, bulky arms folded across a fantastically meaty chest. The look on his face is hungry in a way that makes Selema shiver with both repulsion and interest; she has seen that look before, stamped across dozens of male faces, but this is her brother for heaven’s sake. No matter how backwards the world may be, answering that hungry call with your siblings is sure to be frowned upon. Selema steps away from Jeb, instantly colder when she leaves his arms, and wipes a hand over her mouth; her lips feel bruised from the ferocity of their joining. Jeb looks abashed and hangs his head down lower than a schoolchild being scolded for a transgression. For a full minute, nobody says anything.
“Mother has some papers up in the attic,” Ezrah finally says, unfolding his arms and turning his back to them. “I thought maybe we could discover what ended up happening to your parents, Miss Jameson.”
“Selema,” Selema says.
Ezrah looks over his shoulder. “Come, then,” he says, and walks away.
* * *
Damn the woman, damn it! Not in the house two hours, and she’s already throwing herself on Jeb like some shameless hussy. The sight of his neighbor and newfound sister kissing threw Ezrah for a loop; he did not want to admit to anyone, least of all himself, how much the sight of all of Selema’s creamy chocolate skin pressed against Jeb’s roughness had stirred something inside of him. Best to tamp it down, as he had with his attraction to Jeb for years. Why did she have to be his sister, anyway?
The attic is alive with dust swirling on the rays of sunlight filtering through the windows. The shutters, painted blue, provide the long shadows that are being cast on the stark furniture that remains in the room. Previously, the room was provided to the favored house slaves, but in the final years of his mother’s life, before the long illness she lived with robbed her of the last remaining breaths she had in her body, she spent much of her time up here. Ezrah knows that she spent long hours writing, far away from the bustle of the household, knew it was because his father was not an easy man to love. Did she love him? He had come into her life like a conquistador, he knew, claimed the belle of the town while she was a tender young thing of seventeen, but there are faint memories of childhood escaping through the cracks of the mental wall Ezrah has put up.
Whips. Their overseer, Mr. Langley, a man who was quick to anger and slow to forgive. He could hold a grudge against perceived slights from the slaves for years, punishing their children if he felt so inclined. But worst of all was what Ezrah saw lurking around the corners of his subconscious, the screams that drew him to the shadowed recesses of his mind, where he knew he would find the unwanted memory of Mr. Langley behind a slave shack, trousers down around his ankles, furiously working his manhood into the slave women he was in charge of, many of who were too terrified or to dead inside to speak.
He remembers the first time he came across such a scene; he was no older than six at the time. He and Jeb were tossing a pigskin ball around and it hand landed all the way in the vicinity of the plantation’s oldest chestnut tree, a great flowering monster of a creation, with enough sturdy branches to climb on and a trunk as wide as the world. Soft grunting attracted his attention from the ground where the ball had rolled and when he came closer, his vision was blinded by the naked skin of one of the field hands, stripped to the waist and bent over a low-hanging branch on the tree. As Mr. Langley thrust into her from behind, he wrapped his thick fingers around her neck; the slave was unable to speak, but when her eyes met the young boy’s, Ezrah saw that they were blank, devoid of any of the horror he himself was feeling. It was as if she had sailed up out of her body into a place far away from what was happening.
Ezrah fled, vomiting his lunch into the bushes. He told Jeb, of course, and the two of them committed to a childhood of making Mr. Langley’s life a living hell with whatever schoolboy pranks they could think of. They were mild, ineffectual tricks of the trade, but Ezrah thanked his lucky stars that his father, at the very least, was not like that.
With such goings on, it was no wonder his mother locked herself up in this room so often. He knows where she kept her papers, in the little green desk locked with a key that she had kept around her neck until the day she died. When he kissed her hand goodbye at the last, she had made him promise that he would never open that desk.
“Some things are meant to remain a secret,” she told him, her rheumy eyes desperate as she clutched his fingers in a bony-solid grip.
Were they meant to be a secret if someone like Selema had traveled all this way to look for answers? Ezrah unlocks the desk and removes the papers, many of them yellowed with age, but all dated; his mother always was a very meticulous woman. He turns to Selema and Jeb, who have been watching him quietly, still aflush with being caught in flagrante delicto.
“I’ve never read these before,” he says, his voice grave. “But I think we need answers, don’t you? Just…Mother was a very private person…” he trails off, unable to continue.
Selema walks up to him and puts a hand on his shoulder. “Brother, I know. It is difficult to disrespect last wishes. But think if you were me. Would you want to know?”
He looks up at her, at the tenderness in her large green eyes, with their perfectly spaced black lashes, devoid of any rouge or falseness. Dropping to a chair beside him and inviting the others to crowd on the floor, Ezrah reads.
“May 1st. I saw her again today, all hips and thighs and flaunting that ungodly womanhood in my face again. She thinks I do not know, but I know. I know it as well as her mate knows it, that she has been with my husband again. I could kill him, I would, and I could kill her, too, but I know that he is but a man, and men are often lead in misdirection when there is a woman, many women, around. It is like the cocks in their pen; once they are done with a hen, they act as if nothing in the world could arouse them again, but introduce a new hen to the henhouse and suddenly, it is as if they can go again all night. I hate her; she takes him away from me and I am lonely.”
Ezrah feels queasy, but leafs through a few more pages before something interesting catches his eye. He did not expect his mother to be so frank, but when all her neighbors were prim and proper women, who else could she turn to
“June 3rd. I was taking the evening air on our verandah today when Richard Lee came by. He said he was looking for my husband, but when I informed him that he was off examining new stock a fortnight ago and would be back at any moment. Mr. Lee said he would be glad to partake of some of the lemonade I had in a pitcher on the table in the meantime. I’m well-known for my lemonade, and could not resist showing off a little bit, especially when the person in question was so handsome.
I must forgive myself, I write this in a state of shock, and every detail is hyper-realized, extremely sharp in my memory and of seeming complete importance.
I enjoy Richard Lee’s company a great deal. We always have the liveliest conversations; he is such a knowledgeable man, and one of the most upstanding members of the parish group, as well. His little boy Jeb is always so happy; I cannot imagine that anything untoward happens in that house. Of course, our evening together might be seen as improper, especially given how close we are sitting, but I do not care. I will never care again. Nobody has the right to tell me what is proper ever again.
I say thi
s because of the loud crash that I heard coming from upstairs. Mr. Lee jumped to action almost immediately, that brave man, but I assured him it was a shutter that often came loose in our house slave’s attic quarters and that I would manage by myself. When I went upstairs, however, oh, what I saw!
I will never forget the crescent-moon birthmark on her shoulder. I will never forget the way he had bound her arms behind her and pressed her face into the bed; I felt the bile rise in my throat as I saw his hairy backside clench and unclench furiously as he pumped inside of Big Jim’s slave woman. I saw him finish, heard the tell-tale groan of him leaving his hot, sticky mess inside of her, and that is when I realized that this was not Mr. Langley taking liberties in my household with my property.
No, it was my husband. I swear, I could kill him…”
Ezrah trails off, noticing that Selema has gone white as a sheet. “What is it, Selema? What is it?”
“That mark she describes…” Selema manages to choke out.
“What mark?”
“The crescent moon…”
“What about it?”
Selema looks up at him, her features suddenly haggard. He feels a rush of emotion to his chest and knows that whatever she is about to say, he does not want to hear. He is sick himself, knowing that his father followed in the footsteps of the overseer, although who knows which came first, but from the expression on his sister’s face, he knows that whatever she has just realized is far worse.
“My father used to talk about it all the time. It is all that I remember of my mother.”
The sucked-in breath is collective amongst the trio in the room. Awash with pain, they close their eyes and try not to hear the screams that now echo large in the attic, already a place of wrongdoing, now contaminated forever in a way that fire or water can never wash away.
Ezrah kneels and gathers his sister in his arms. She cries quietly, unwilling to unleash the torrent of emotion within her as she imagines her mother’s hell. There is a warmth inside his arms, a safe haven, but she finally pushes him away and wipes her tears with her hands. “Do you think,” she begins, but her voice goes hoarse and she pauses to clear her throat. “Do you think that is why my father ran away?”
Jeb kneels beside the duo and places a gentle hand on either shoulder, for they are his people, his little humans. “He risked getting caught; I don’t think a case of injured male pride would be enough to risk that.”
Selema fixes Ezrah with a hard stare. “Keep reading.”
“Are you certain?” Ezrah asks, heart beating fast and furious. He is not sure he can read on, learn more about the secret life of the household he grew up in, all its sordid details on display in his mother’s delicate hand. At Selema’s nod, however, he picks up the pages and continues on.
“I watch the girl with the crescent moon on her shoulder constantly now. Was she always this reserved and withdrawn, or has what my husband done to her caused her to be this way? Master, they all call him, or rather, Mas’er, these uneducated brats who have never learned how to speak. No wonder he likes them, he is a brute himself. Mas’er, Mas’er; if I were a betting woman, I would say that that is what gets him going, that feeling of dominion, of being a lord and—oh how I hate to say it—Mas’er.
I have opened my eyes to things that I did not want to see before. The whole ugly truth is now apparent. I heard him in the parlor, having a conversation with Richard Lee, talking about how luscious the little girls on the field are, how they are put there by the devil himself to tempt the man into a life of sin. Mr. Lee, to his credit, kept quiet; as a God-fearing man himself, I suspect he does not want to indulge my husband.
But there is something else, something I wish to close my eyes to forever, but cannot. The girl with the crescent moon. I have seen the flat slope of her belly begin to round, and it has brought back that night, that terrible night. I am caught between my sympathy for her and my utter rage at the situation. How dare he? How dare he? It is not enough that he makes light of his infidelity to me to our neighbors, but now he has gone and impregnated one of our girls? The scandal of it, oh!
More than that, however, more than that, I have investigated and found that the girl has a mate, Big Jim they call him. I have seen him, a giant of a man, like our chestnut tree; what must my husband have felt like there inside her after a bull like that? I do not know how these creatures go about it, but I imagine that if he is anything like me, the rage that he feels now that the girl has quickened might well kill my husband.
Would that it would.
November 22nd. I watch him while he is out in the field. The way the sun gleams on his dark shoulders as he is coming back to his shack. I know why they call him what they call him. He is so powerful, so broad in his shoulders. The way he tucks his shirt in at the waist, the way that his body tapers in the middle, why, he is a sight to behold. And I know he must do anything I ask. That great big beast, and he must do my bidding or else I will get the overseer to pull his whip on him. I wouldn’t mind a whip myself every now and again, but I’d wield it gently, stroking it along the length of him until he asked me for more. More and more and more. That large man, that man who is double my size, why, he might split me in half…
December 5th. And today he nearly has. I pulse and throb from where he entered me last night. I was right, he could not say no to me. The crescent moon girl’s baby was born today, a little half-breed that whose parentage we will never be able to fully discern. It is her stigma to live with, and if she grows up light, mine.
I called him inside on the pretense of offering him some lemonade after a hard day’s work; he was suspicious at first, and I cannot say I blame him. He followed me into the house, hesitantly, and then when I got him into the parlor, I locked the door behind us. He lunged for it, but I hid the key in my chemise and told him to get it. He looked like he felt trapped at first, but I sat down on that little ottoman and lifted my skirts.
‘Go on then,’ I told him, already wet just from the sight of him. ‘Take me. I promise I won’t yell.’
It took a bit more commanding, but finally, finally, those glorious haunches of his bucked in rhythm as he pumped me full of his seed. Oh the ecstasy I knew then! The visceral reality of it all! When my muscles clenched around him and my legs branded his hips, I yelled despite my promise.
‘Big Jim!’ I cried, over and over. ‘Fuck me, fuck me Big Jim!’ “
Here Ezrah breaks off, unable to read any further. His head is reeling with what he has just learned, and he cannot bear to speak it aloud, despite the fact that both Selema and Jeb are staring at him with the biggest eyes in the world. They are new eyes, eyes that see Ezrah in a way that they have never done so before.
That full bottom lip. The dusk on his skin, sure as a sunset, and the curl of his hair, coarse and strangely soft at the same time. They bate their breath, holding it as if not breathing will keep the terrible secret inside.
“Ezrah,” Selema begins, reaching out a hand to him, but he pushes her away and drops the papers behind him on the chair. One of his fists lunges out and punches the wall, startling Jeb and Selema with its violence. And then, most terrifyingly of all, a low chuckle emanates from Ezrah’s throat as he leans his forehead against the wall, resting both palms against the flat surface, a man forever condemned.
“I guess I don’t have a sister after all,” he finally says, and picks himself up off the wall. “It’s the oldest story in the book, is it not?” he says, shooting Selema a terse glance before he walks over to the attic door. “The story of no parents at all.”
* * *
“It’s not so bad, Ezrah,” says Jeb an hour later, wrapping his arms around the darker man. “Your mother took her revenge, and it sounds like her revenge was sweet after all.”
“She asked me not to read it, and now I know why. I know why, and I wish for any God who ever existed that I had followed her dying wish.”
“Shh. The truth is better. The truth is what makes you free,” Jeb says, touc
hing a tender hand to Ezrah’s face. The great manly cowboy does not often show his feelings, but it has been a day of trials and tribulations for them all, and Ezrah allows himself to sink into the familiar embrace of the red-haired man, hoping that that particular version of home will erase, for however brief a period, this nightmare.
“It was not the truth,” comes a small voice from the edge of the bed.
Both men look up, startled. Selema is perched there, looking at the hands turned palms up in her lap. The bed undulates beneath his weight as Jeb makes his way over to her.
“What is not the truth?” he asks sharply.
She does not look at him as she speaks. “What I told you before, it is not the truth, at least not the whole truth. Before he died, Big Jim told me, he told me what happened in this house. Not about my mother, but about why he left. I never knew about…Ezrah’s mother, but I knew that the Master of this house had a special interest in the slaves. Even…”
“Even what?” Ezrah asks, making his way to the foot of the bed to sit by her side, her, this woman who was family to him and then snatched away in the blink of an eye.
Selema sighs deeply. “He said that the Master started lookin’ at me wrong. The way you should never look at a child, no matter how ‘advanced’ they are. He told me that he did not want what happened to my mother to happen to me, and until today, I never knew what that meant,” she finishes, choking back a sob.
Ezrah and Jeb flank her on the bed, and each man wraps an arm around her. Their sidelong glances reveal a throaty little sparrow in her sweetheart-cut dress, the blossom of her breasts blooming into a stem of a neck, cocoa-buttery and lovely. A pulse beating beneath it rapid as a hummingbird’s. One look passes between the three of them, and a silent contract is signed. Selema is not nervous. Instead, she rises from the bed, turns, and stands before them cool as a lake, with one ripple going through it—desire.
She might not have imagined it as such, this excitement of hers bleeding into something far more dangerous, pulsing through her veins like fire, the ebb and backwards flow of it taking her body by storm. She reaches her arms up above to release the butterfly pins that hold her curls in place; they tumble down on her neck, framing her face in a kind of primordial beauty, the type in which there is no place to hide, no modern inventions of clothing or rouge, just the truth of yourself in plain sight. The lushness of her plump bottom lip gives her a childlike air, one that is somehow not at war with her full woman’s body. Everything is in its place, perfectly as it should be.
ROMANCE: CLEAN ROMANCE: Summer Splash! (Sweet Inspirational Contemporary Romance) (New Adult Clean Fantasy Short Stories) Page 32