Wench: A Novel

by Dolen Perkins-Valdez

  Lizzie heard the crack of a rifle in the distance.

  “Wasn’t the first time the womens had done it. But I was a youngun. Fourteen and my baby was still nursing. I was still peering in her face near about every day wondering when God was gone strike his fury on her.” The dead bird lay limp, belly up in her lap, its head cradled in the crook of her groin. “But didn’t nothing happen. She just got prettier and prettier. And smaaaaaart, too. No sooner than her teeth start to growed, and she was walking and talking.”

  “Did he…did he still mess with you?”

  Reenie grinned, her false teeth eerily large and white. “Sho, honey. Ain’t nothing change. Ain’t nothing gone ever change about that, I reckon.”

  So different from what she had with Drayle. She loved him. He loved her. And even more, he was good to her. Hadn’t he fixed the leaky cabin roof that was dripping on his children’s heads? hadn’t he given the slaves Sunday mornings off when she told him about their secret worship meetings? hadn’t he rubbed her feet countless times when she was tired from cooking all day? hadn’t he protected her after she was attacked on the ship?

  “Sir’s daddy took my own mammy before she got her first blood. She give him three childrens before he died. He weren’t yet cold in the ground when the missus had my ma whipped in front of everybody. As a punishment for her sins, she called it. Not long after, my ma disappeared. Just up and disappeared while we was working in the fields one day. None of us knowed what happened. Maybe she run off. Maybe she was sold off by the missus in the middle of the night. Maybe she dead.”

  Lizzie tried to picture Reenie’s mammy. Such things were possible. A proud woman, tall with Reenie’s stiff back and long neck, rose in Lizzie’s mind. Like Reenie, she would be so strong that even a beating couldn’t break her. Some folks couldn’t be broken. Lizzie didn’t believe a woman in her right mind would just “up and leave” her children.

  “Us wasn’t treated right, but the missus kept us on. Me and my two brothers still live in the same cabin Sir’s daddy built for my ma. When the missus got married again, her new husband decent enough. At least he ain’t go messing off in the slave cabins, and I reckon she would shoot him dead if he did.”

  “But his son…”

  “Made us call him Sir when he was still a boy right after his daddy died. Only took one beating for the whole lot of us to get the hang of it. I been calling him Sir ever since.”

  Reenie picked up the bird in her lap and stretched out a wing. She pulled at the feathers along its edge.

  But Lizzie didn’t feel like pulling feathers anymore. She took one of the birds that had already been plucked and cut through its neck with a small, sharp knife. She removed its head and pulled out the bloody gullet and the windpipe. She kept digging, and she was only satisfied when she had hooked her fingers into the lungs, pulled them out, and tossed them into the dust beside her.

  NINE

  Nearly a week after the dinner, more than ten days into the collective breath holding that had been gathering pressure since Mawu issued her challenge, the colored barber arrived to line the white men up in chairs along the porch of the hotel. The barber visited the resort once or twice a week. Some of the men wore beards, and would have the barber trim them after their haircuts. Others such as Drayle preferred a more clean-shaven look, and the barber would use a straight razor over their faces. This barber had a sterling reputation for keeping his razors sharp.

  The barber’s daughter typically helped him. She worked as a maid in the hotel, but whenever her father visited she would come outside to assist. She’d wheel a tray onto the porch and open the leather carrying case holding his tools. Straight steel razors. Brushes. Scissors. Two leather strops. Cup and soap. She would moisten the bar of soap in the bowl of hot water so the lather would be ready to spread. Or she would hold the brass shaving bowl at the man’s neck if her father requested it.

  She was a prettier and fatter version of her father, with softly rounded cheeks and light brown eyes. She had the kind of skin that came alive in the heat, glowed like a smooth dark stone. She kept her hair bound in a dirty rag, as if to diminish her beauty so the white men would not notice.

  The white women had left early that morning to go bathe in one of the resort’s five mineral springs. The men stayed behind to be trimmed and shaved, and those who were not patiently waiting for the barber to service them had ventured out on the fifty-four-acre property to hunt for passenger pigeons. Except for the steady toil of the servants inside, the hotel was quiet.

  Sweet was in her cottage repairing pants. Back on her plantation, she was considered a wizard with a needle and thread. So her master had given her several pants belonging to men staying at the resort. Reenie was in the private room of the hotel’s manager, waiting for him to return as he had ordered her to do.

  Lizzie and Mawu stood at the well near the hotel pumping water into pails. Every few minutes, a hotel servant came out with two empty pails and carried two more full ones inside. His task was to empty and refill the washbasin in each room with fresh water. The two slave women had been instructed to help. Even among the most free-thinking of whites at the resort, no one seemed to relish the sight of the colored visitors idling. It was recognized that their primary duty was to their rightful owners, so the slaves tried to appear busy at all times. Lizzie and Mawu had been caught sitting under the tree in the shade, trying to escape the heat, when the manager ordered them to the well.

  The two women could hear Drayle and Sir chatting on the porch. They had seen the ritual enough to know what was happening. The daughter was lathering the soap. The barber was stroking the razor across the strop. Back and forth in long even strokes, they could hear the whisking sound. Then silence. Then metal against leather again as he worked to keep the razor sharp.

  “Sho, Mr. Drayle. I bought a slave before. They learn under me the barbering business.” The gray-haired barber was speaking exaggeratedly, as if he were not accustomed to the southern way of speaking but was making every effort to imitate it. They could tell when he was talking because air slipped through his teeth with a whistling sound.

  Lizzie and Mawu strained to hear what they could. Mawu kept edging closer to the porch until she was crouched just beneath it. Lizzie continued to pump. It was hard to hear over the squeak of the pump, and she did not want to get in trouble. But Mawu changed the air around Lizzie, made her do things she normally wouldn’t. She stopped pumping.

  “How do I know you’re going to treat my Philip right? he’s a right good hand, and I treat him better than most. What are you going to do with him? he doesn’t know anything about city living,” Drayle was saying. “He’s a horse man.”

  Lizzie heard the words, but she was not sure she believed them. Was it possible the barber was trying to buy Philip? Mawu waved at her, then crouched down and disappeared beneath the porch. Lizzie looked at the back door, and ran over to the dark space beneath the porch to join Mawu. She crawled under it and followed. She looked behind her and saw the hotel servant come out of the back door. He put his hand to his eyes. He set down the empty pails and grabbed the remaining full ones. Then he went back into the hotel.

  The ground was hard and dry against Lizzie’s knees. She placed a palm against it to steady herself. Sunlight peeked through the cracks of the porch. She looked up. She could just make out their silhouettes.

  “You right, Mr. Drayle. I couldn’t never treat him good as you. I ain’t rich and powerful like you—”

  Lizzie and Mawu waited tensely, listening to the dull scrape of the razor gliding across a face.

  “Well, how can you afford his price? I don’t get how you can afford to just throw away that kind of money and get nothing in return,” Sir said.

  “Oh, he’s getting something,” Drayle said. “Philip is a first-class nigger.”

  “That nigger is liable to run off and leave you,” Sir added, ignoring Drayle’s comment. The last couple of words were muffled as if the barber working on him had
placed a hot towel over his mouth.

  “You right, you right. I can’t afford it. Your man is gone have to pay me back,” the barber said.

  “Philip is one of my best hands. I just don’t think I can let go of him.”

  “I understand, Mr. Drayle. I do understand.”

  The girl coughed. She placed the strop back into its carrying case. The barber tipped Sir up and brushed the clipped hair off his shoulders.

  Hard-soled shoes dragged across the wood porch and stopped with a thud right above their heads.

  There was silence for a few long minutes. Lizzie frowned. True, Philip was a hard worker and a good slave, but Drayle could buy another horse man. And it sounded as if this barber had offered Drayle a fair price. It wasn’t like they were haggling over price. Drayle could easily buy a new slave the next time the trader came through. If Drayle wouldn’t let Philip have a fair shake, then…She couldn’t complete the thought.

  “Well, what you say?” It was Sir’s voice. “You gone sell the nigger or what?”

  “That’s my final answer, I’m afraid,” Drayle said, so softly they almost didn’t hear him. “I just couldn’t let go of Philip. Francesca—that’s my wife—would never forgive me.”

  “I understand, Mr. Drayle. I do understand,” the barber said.

  Even though the bargain had not been struck, Lizzie couldn’t help but be proud of Drayle. He had discussed the matter with the barber as if he were a white man. Most slave owners wouldn’t even have entertained the discussion, particularly with a free colored. They would have dismissed him outright. They might have even dealt him a blow just to remind him that his papers meant nothing, that he was only a train ride away from washing a white man’s feet, sharing his woman’s bed, toting bales of hay across his striped back.

  Mawu motioned to her. It was time for them to leave. In a few minutes, the men would be up and moving quickly and the house servant would be returning for the next buckets.

  “What you think about that girl?” Mawu asked. “The barber daughter.”

  “What?”

  “She clean rooms in the hotel.”

  Lizzie thought it was an odd question. Why was Mawu asking her about the barber’s daughter? What did she have to do with this? Didn’t Mawu understand the significance of what they’d just heard?

  “You don’t know?” Mawu looked at her.

  “Know what?”

  “The barber’ daughter and Philip. Them two got something going on.”

  “Since when?”

  “Hell, I don’t know girl. Ain’t this your second summer?”

  So that was how Philip had gotten the barber to make an offer for him. “And the daddy is already trying to buy him?”

  “I reckon so.”

  “What kind of love is that?”

  Mawu looked at her. “The real kind, I reckon.”

  Something had definitely been going on with Philip. Lizzie and Philip were as close as brother and sister, and Lizzie knew when his mind was occupied. She had thought he might have a thing for Mawu. Why hadn’t he told her? Lizzie squinted at the sun as they pumped.

  “Girl, it’s only one way out of slavery,” Mawu said once the hotel servant came out and told them these were the final two buckets of water. They splashed water onto their faces and dried their hands on their dresses. Lizzie fingered her mole, and Mawu walked toward the cottages. Lizzie tried to catch up.

  “What do you mean?” Lizzie asked.

  They spotted Philip helping a white man load large sacks onto a cart. He looked over at them. Mawu sped up without giving Philip a second look and without answering Lizzie’s question. And Lizzie realized she would be the one giving him the bad news.

  TEN

  How many?” he asked her.

  She had heard that some rivers flowed upstream, but she did not believe it. A slave had once told her that some insects and animals did not need a mate to have a baby. She did not believe that either. She’d once watched two flies, one humpbacked on the other, as if hitching a ride.

  “How many?” he grabbed her by the shoulders and started to shake her.

  Recently, Lizzie had stared into Massie’s creek and understood with a surprising clarity that life did not imitate its peaceful ripples. Her own experiences had always been as rutted as a rotting log. Even now things seemed to move without any kind of structure. She could see Drayle throwing things about, spit sliding down his chin.

  And far away, she could hear her own voice murmuring inside her head.

  “…And you were a part of this plot as well?” he demanded.

  “No, no,” she protested, wondering how long she had been silent. “There weren’t any others. It was just Mawu’s idea. She’s the one who planned to run.”

  “Should’ve known, should’ve known better.”

  “What are you talking about? Any slave with half a mind would try it, Drayle.”

  “So you’re saying you did think about running?” he grabbed her by the shoulders again.

  Lizzie squeezed her eyes shut, trying to figure out how to lessen his anger. He was reacting worse than she had anticipated. His face was red. They weren’t back on the plantation. And it wasn’t like she had told him that Philip was plotting to escape. It was Philip who had every reason to run. Mawu wasn’t even his slave.

  But Lizzie understood the anger even if she hadn’t expected it. She forgave him for it. He loved her, and he was afraid she would leave him, too. That was what made him so upset. Her leaving. His beloved Lizzie. The mother of his children.

  “Don’t let him hurt her, Drayle. I just told you so you’d stop her.”

  “I’ve got to tell Tip, Lizzie. I wouldn’t be a man if I didn’t.”

  Lizzie kissed him. “I’m just saying. Talk to him and don’t let him beat her hard. Just enough to keep her from—”

  In the past week or so, after telling Philip that Drayle had refused to sell him to the free colored barber, she had noticed something new between the slaves. Tremors in their hands, unusually meek mock-smiles, glib “yessirs” and “thank yuhs.” Their movements were slack, tame, sluggish. She recognized the overextended supplications. And between the words, there was a quiet.

  Lizzie did not believe Reenie would really try to escape. Reenie had family back at her place. But the forced nights with the manager could make any woman reckless. And George might follow her, if given a plausible chance. Maybe henry. Philip was more distant than she’d ever seen him, so she was counting him as a possible runaway, too.

  She would have to warn Mawu, caution her to lay a trick on Tip so he wouldn’t beat her too hard. Lizzie didn’t believe in spells, but since Mawu did it ought to work. She began to think of ways to sneak out to Mawu’s cabin before the night was over.

  Drayle planted both hands on her shoulders. “What am I thinking, my sweet Lizzie. Of course you wouldn’t leave me. Why would you come tell me about these plans if you were going to go with this woman? come here.”

  Lizzie walked willingly into the trap of his arms.

  Y’all need to know one thang and one thang only. These here United States will never be free for you. Y’all are slaves today and you will be slaves tomorrow. Your children will be slaves. And your children’s children will be slaves.”

  He wielded the riding crop onto Mawu’s back. He was the only white man present. The others had excused themselves. Lizzie stood among the slave men and women. Even Sweet, with her protruding belly, was made to stand witness. Two white women sat on chairs fanning themselves and watching intently from a distance.

  The whip was small, a thin riding crop that barely broke the skin. But just as Lizzie congratulated herself on Drayle keeping his promise by making sure that the whipping would not be so severe, Tip showed them who he really was. He stripped off Mawu’s clothes, tearing her dress into shreds until she was lying flat naked.

  “Look at her! Look at her!” Tip prodded Mawu between her butt cheeks with the whip. “I won’t stop until every eye is
on me.”

  They all turned in Tip’s direction, but Lizzie knew they had each carefully shuttered their eyes to keep from seeing. From the look of Mawu’s limp body, it appeared the girl had passed out. Lizzie thought she herself would pass out, too. She could not pick up her feet, move her arms. She had only told on Mawu because she cared about the woman, admired her.

  Tip undid his pants and mounted Mawu from behind, pulled her up onto her knees. With the first thrust into her, Lizzie knew Mawu was still conscious. Mawu yelled like an animal, a shriek so cold and shrill that Lizzie knew that he had done something unnatural. And he had done it in front of all of them.

  One of the white women uttered a high-pitched “oh” and placed a handkerchief to her mouth. But neither of them stopped looking. A line of blood trailed down Mawu’s thigh.

  When he was done, he said in a hoarse whisper that carried above the wind as he turned toward them: “If I hear word that any of you other niggers is thinking about escaping, I swear as God is my witness I will do that and worst to every last one of you. I will make you wish you was in the fields under the lash. I will make you wish you was dead. And I won’t leave a mark.”

  Lizzie tried to stop the pain in her head. The resort had lulled her into feeling human again. Had she glanced around at the others, she would know it had done the same to them. They had forgotten to protect themselves.

  “Don’t touch her. Don’t nobody touch her,” Tip said, stumbling back to his cottage.

  The slaves started to move off, heading back to their unfinished tasks as if nothing had happened. Only Lizzie stood rooted. Her eyes clung to the ground a few feet away from Mawu’s still body. She put her forearm into her mouth and bit down until she tasted blood. She wanted to hurt herself.

  She sucked at the blood until it no longer flowed, until she felt dizzyingly empty.

  ELEVEN

  Somewhere between Mawu’s beating and Philip’s disappointment and Reenie’s long walks to the hotel each evening, their spirits buckled one by one. Sweet allowed her pregnancy to get the better of her and simply sat down. Reenie’s lips set into a straight, emotionless line. Mawu no longer talked back, the words she did speak taking on an air of vapidity. Philip was chained at night, no longer trusted. So it was no wonder that Lizzie sought out the white woman then.