When she gave birth to Elizabeth, Beatrice cared for the girl as if she were her own. Dark hands lifted her, cleaned her, cared for her, held the child, spoke life into her. Elizabeth was her slave’s daughter, their hearts knit together from her baby’s first breath.
She was too bitter to fill her arms with the babe. That night, Michael took one look at the child that brought her to the brink of death and with a nod, left, out to the slave quarters. That night, she vowed never to allow him in her bed again.
A month later, a bitter root sprang up on the Kelly plantation and it scared Emma speechless.
Each harvest she had watched Beatrice in the gardens. Intrigued by the woman’s interest, one dawn she followed her out to the rich ground of soil, setting the soles of her shoes in the footprints of the one who traveled ahead.
Beatrice walked nearly a yard before she paused. Glancing over a bony shoulder, the edges of her lips curved.
“I want to come with you,” Emma announced.
“Come.” The wide neck of her burlap dress had slipped back against her throat, baring a narrow back and the sharpest of blades. The early-morning rays cast a glow around her as she high-stepped across the field. From behind, her dark brown legs and elbows looked like broken twigs, thin and fragile.
Emma gripped her woolen shawl around her shoulders against the wind and trotted faster until she clipped the back of her friend’s heel.
When they reached the rows of vegetation, Beatrice squatted, her skirt hiked up over dark patched knees. Even from the front, she was all angles, except her head, made especially round by the tightly tied gingham scarf covering it. Emma leaned over her and watched. Beatrice teetered forward as she yanked on tiny, feathery branches then steadied herself with her left hand. Plucking the carrot from the dirt, she wiggled it at Emma. “This is a nice one. Nice and smooth, don’t you think?” Earth packed into half moons under her nails. “You try it.”
Emma looked around. She knew little about gardens, even less about reaping.
“Go on.”
She scrunched up her skirt over her calves and knelt beside Beatrice. The damp soil caved around her as she leaned over ruffled green foliage.
“Watch it!” Beatrice warned when Emma’s fingertips grazed a purple trimmed leaf. “Look at that. That’s no carrot, ma’am.” Wide-eyed, Beatrice shook her head. “That there is dangerous. See here.” She held her long, curved fingers inches under the limp leaf. “See those four corners and that there purple on the outside, that’s not good. That’s poison. I ain’t seen nothing like this since I been here. Seen it all the time on your father’s land.”
Emma stared at Beatrice’s trembling hands and listened to her fear now bound in whispers.
“Back home, this here plant killed nine folk, Emma. Nine! You remember that?”
She nodded. Scarcely, just barely she recalled the incident.
“Three men, five women, and a child, no bigger than this here.” She held her dark palm a couple of feet from the ground. “Barely walking, he was. It was something awful. Nine Coloreds gone just like that.”
Emma stared at the olive plant. Hard to believe something so small, so fragile, had so much power.
“Look at it real good so you remember.”
Later that evening, standing in the back corner of her candlelit dining room, Emma leaned against a cold wall, watching her husband. The brisk night air invaded the room and sent a shiver down the length of her.
When Beatrice served him kale, she thought of what else her friend had placed before him, what more he had eagerly received, taken. When she poured olive oil over crusty slices of bread, she thought of the warm liquid she had drizzled over her own body for him. When she served the cherry pie, she thought of her bleeding heart, the softness of a soul devoured.
Michael’s fork pierced the brown crust and a thick red stream oozed onto his white plate. A drip slipped over the edge of the porcelain and splattered into a crimson tear.
Emma’s chest pounded.
Her husband spooned pie into his mouth. With each scoop, Emma saw limp olive and purple chopped so finely, diced so obscurely, sprinkled with venom in every bite. She watched the man of the house eating, enjoying each mouthful, and she imagined his pleasure fading, his smile freezing, his heart stopping….
“Emma? Is that you?” Michael leaned back in his chair, his head cocked toward the corner she was standing. “I didn’t even see you back there.”
But all Emma could do was stare. The vision had strangled her words, smothered her voice.
“Emma?”
She ran out of the room, terrified.
Seasons passed. The poison never erected itself again, except in Emma’s heart.
She became bitter, filled with violent images of her husband’s destruction. Wagons, tractors, men tearing him apart, limb by limb, piece by piece, as he had done her soul. On the few nights she found him asleep in their sitting room, one leg dangling off the sofa, or passed out on the barn floor, hay stuck to the beads of sweat across his forehead, his mouth ajar, his breathing heavy through thin nostrils, she leaned over him and whispered death, begging the heavens the privilege of witnessing his last breath, the honor of watching him draw in the last bit of air cursed enough to fill his lungs.
Every sign of hatred, every wretched thought of his demise, she kept hidden deep inside, reined under a shawl of grace, the guise of a lady, but inside she raged. She was always able to control her fury, except for one drizzly summer evening.
She was reclining, rocking in the white paint-chipped swing on the front porch of their colonial, watching the sprinkle of rain when the front door swung open and Michael stepped out, a gust of wind blowing the wild curls of his hair back over his forehead.
He glanced at her and started for the steps.
“Where are you going?” she found herself asking.
He didn’t answer.
“Where are you going?” she asked again, the question clipped in anger.
Michael stopped.
“Who do you think you’re talking to?” He didn’t even turn around, just waited for the submissive silence sure to follow, then jogged down the steps, but when his feet hit the gleaming grass below, something in her raced. She saw herself going after him, had thought it was just in her mind, but before she knew it, she was moving to the edge of the porch, walking down planks of wood, marching, running, sprinting toward him, her heavy dress swooshing around her legs, confining her movement only slightly because what was in her burst loose. She sprang forward, leapt on his back, her arms locked around his neck, scrambling, gripping, screeching at him, beating his flesh with tiny fists, pounding him, slapping against his skull. He swung around, grabbed at the legs wrapped around him, but he couldn’t shake her. She held on, snatching his damp hair from the roots. Swearing, he stooped, tumbling her forward, farther on top of him now, her stomach curved over the crown of his head, her hands gripping his ears, she grappled, bit down, tasted the hot salt of his cheek. He swung hard, his elbow jamming into her ribs, and threw her off of him, but not before her fingernails dug deep, streaking his neck red.
She scrambled up in the wet grass, heaving, watching, waiting.
He gripped his sun-parched neck, blood dripping down the square nails of his fingers and his cream collar, his back bent as though the weight of her was still upon him. His narrow eyes said everything she felt, but to her surprise no sound came from his lips, just a quiver he bit down against. Not a word exchanged between them.
She swept her hand over her hair, swiped her forehead with her trembling palm, and pulled her dress straight as she staggered to her feet. She took a deep breath and left him in the field alone.
Neither mentioned that day, never spoke of it. In the morning, she had thought it a dream, until she saw the bunched-up shirt in the wicker basket of soiled laundry. She picked it up, the smell of lust still clinging to its fibers, the drops of blood at its collar. She scrubbed it endlessly but never could remove the ble
mish.
As the months passed, she knew, didn’t want to know, there was something growing, flourishing in the womb of the one she loved. She glanced at the small bump under Beatrice’s dress, tried to ignore the pouch of life that made her restless, stole the last of what was in her, her slumber, her hunger to live.
Even Beatrice was different. With each month, she grew sadder, spoke less, spending each day in the garden, each night at the loom.
When she went into labor in the fall, Emma sat at her feet, gripping her hand in the midst of slaves, frail chocolate and mocha arms lifting Beatrice, clenching her shoulders, her wrists, as she squatted, teetering on the balls of her feet in the dirt cabin. Among them, an old, gray-haired midwife, Odessa, mumbling, praying something, in tears, but when Beatrice collapsed and the cry of mother and child united, it was Emma who caught the baby’s slippery body in the folds of her wool dress, sliding to the ground with the new life, her skirt as bloody as the one who birthed her. She stared into the deep-set brown eyes of her husband and wept.
She didn’t know whether Michael knew Cora was his. If he even cared.
Months later when Beatrice was found in the garden, Emma died too. No more reason to fight. Nothing else to give.
She watched the young ladies gleaning the last of the fruit from the bushes, their wooden buckets barely grazed, her husband marching through the fields between them, his boots covered with the juice of everything he had crushed. Emma watched it all.
She saw nothing.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lydia smiled at John as he crossed his outstretched legs, one scuffed boot on top of the other. When he leaned back on his palms, her gaze followed the bulging vein at his wrist, the bicep of his arm, flexing as he twisted himself comfortable, to the rolled-up cotton sleeve and a smile that made her blush. Three candle flames flickered, danced, cast shadows on his face in the muggy storehouse.
Since their secret discussion, thoughts of liberation overwhelmed her as much as they had that night in the woods. She couldn’t shake the idea of being with him loose, boundless, released to stroll through wide rainbow fields of flowers, their locked fingers swinging together against their sides without a curfew or a master to answer to for anything. Sauntering through dark hallways to spacious dining rooms lit with candelabras.
Lydia looked away. It was Jackson’s Victorian she imagined, his laughter she could now hear rising and falling around her.
“You’re not here,” John said.
Was she ever? She could feel his gaze on her, studying her face.
“You’re thinking.”
“I am.”
“About?”
“What you said last night. Do you really think it’s possible?”
He nodded.
“I need it to be true, John.” The feeling was eating at her again. Unrest always started the same way. Bit by bit, bite by bite, it wouldn’t be long before she was completely consumed. Soon peace would become as unfamiliar as a stranger. All joy would be wrapped into wanting. She was slipping into that place again, that space in her soul where she knew, was completely aware that nothing would satisfy like the thing that eluded her. She was nothing without it. What was a person anyway without rights, without a choice?
“You need it?”
“I do.”
“Why? Why so much?”
Why? She blinked.
“Why do you need it? This is not enough?”
“This?” She glanced around the stuffy storehouse that was not even theirs, their backs jabbed with spiky pieces of straw against paint-peeled walls and a ratty blanket he’d brought. “John.”
“I don’t know, Lydia. You’re with me. I’m with you. I can’t seem to think of nothing better.”
Carriage rides, elegant wine-walled rooms, the warm savor of beef set before her, her body graced in smooth folds of satin. Better filled her mind.
She looked down, tugged a string loose from her dress, anything to keep from looking into his eyes.
John didn’t know, hadn’t felt the feeling of running free. The wind whisking around him, the power that pumped his legs through anything, everything against him. Even as scared as she had been, nothing got her heart racing like its call to rise, to fly.
“You don’t understand.”
“I don’t?” He grabbed the white string in her hand and tied it slowly around her ring finger. “I do.”
He stretched out on his back beside her and looked up at the shabby tin roof. “I ran twice before.”
“What?”
“The first time I was about fourteen, working in Master Seward’s cornfield. I started hearing so many men talking about escaping. It became the thing they did every day, all winter. They talked, and I listened. Then finally in late spring, three decided it was time. They left one night, and I never saw them again. I heard one was hung not too far from Seward’s land. They said he wouldn’t come back without a fight so they killed him, but I like to think the other two made it.” He took a breath, his eyes far away. “Every day I waited to see if they would return. When summer came and went I knew I couldn’t wait no longer. One cool night, I said good-bye to my mama and went after the North Star. Got all the way up near the Pennsylvania border before I got caught.” John bit his bottom lip and closed his eyes. “The men in the field always said it was better to die than get caught, and I begged the Lord to kill me first before He left me in the hands of a White man.”
“Who found you?” Lydia whispered. She wanted to know, didn’t want to know. She didn’t want to imagine, picture him captured. Too late. She saw him wrestling, straining to break free from the hands of…”Your master?”
“No. Some slave catcher. Told me he’d blow my head off if I didn’t tell him who I belonged to. I wasn’t going to tell him a thing. Go on, kill me, I was going to say, but one of Master’s overseers was up North looking for some of their runaways and he knew me. Knew right off I was Seward’s. Umm…” He shook his head. “I got thirty-nine lashes, folk said. Master started off then got tired and turned the whip over to the one who found me. Thirty was the last I recall. Woke up raw and bloody, skin hanging off my back.” He sat up and breathed into his palms and for several minutes remained silent, his back curved under the weight of the words. “The pain… My mother cared for me, nursed me back, prayed for me, for my body and my mind. I never did understand why the Lord let me live. Not until now. Not until I met you.”
Lydia moved behind him, cradled over him, and laid her hands on his back. Slowly, she slid her fingertips under the fabric of his shirt, grazed raised scars, and wept. “John.” She wrapped herself around him, her arms pressing his, her hands against his pounding heart, and whispered, “This is no life for a man. For nobody.”
She twisted around in front of him and linked her fingers with his. “What about the second time? You said you ran twice.”
“I think that’s enough telling for one night.”
It was enough for a lifetime. They sat in silence for a moment.
“I just wanted you to know I understand.”
“So you know why I have to have it then. Why even this isn’t enough.”
“Those are your words.”
“John.”
“Even so, I love you.”
She looked up into his eyes. Without thought, she found her hand on his face, her fingers grazing his cheek, his jaw. Black satin. Was there anything, anyone, more beautiful?
He tugged the worn blanket across her shoulders.
“Where did you get this thing?”
“What?” He shrugged, laughed. “What’s wrong with it?”
“This ol’ beat-up rag? You need a new one.”
“This suits me just fine.”
“You’re planning on being a free man with this old blanket? I’m going to make you one. Make us one for when we’re married.”
“Oh yeah?”
She tilted her head. They’d better be getting married.
“No, that sounds good.” He
laughed, pulling her to him. “That sounds good, Lydia.”
The thought of her hands at the loom weaving, creating for him, touched her heart.
“It’s going to be special, John. A freedom blanket. This time it’s going to be different. Isn’t it? This time we’re going to make it.”
Sliding back against the wall, John closed his eyes. Lydia watched a shiny stream trickle down his cheek and bit her lip. She kissed his brow, brushed his lashes with a mouth lost for words. He looked up at her. “Free,” she whispered. He smiled, but even in the dim candlelight she could see it, sense it. Sadness in his eyes and a pang shooting through her heart.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Miss Ruth?” Lydia whispered in the ear of the old lady in the dark. “You up?” She tapped her fingers against her arm until the woman stirred and turned over on the rumpled blanket.
“Lydia?”
“Yes. It’s me.”
“What time is it, baby?” Ruth shifted upright and rubbed her eyes. “It’s late.”
“How do you know that?”
“How do I know? You mean, that it’s late?” Ruth laughed. “I can feel it in my bones, girl. Not a minute goes by without it ticking on the inside.”
Lydia didn’t understand. She never felt life moving through her. For her, it stood still. She glanced at Odessa and Abram sleeping, curled into each other in the corner of The Room. Her life was as still as those who slept, as stagnant as those waiting to die.
“What you doing here, Lydia? You got work to do this late?”
“I just wanted to get started. On my dress.” The thought made her smile. “I think I’m getting married soon.”
Ruth’s back straightened. She turned her face to Lydia. Blue eyes stared past her in the dimness.
“I think I’m getting married.”
“Is that right?”
She nodded, then realized Ruth couldn’t see the gesture. She was grateful she hadn’t. It was a foolish statement. There wasn’t a married slave among them, never would be under the law that marked them as property.
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