Antebellum

by R. Kayeen Thomas

  “Ma’am?” Liza was still partially asleep, and unable to comprehend what Aunt Sarah had said. Without hesitation, the boss lady trotted over and slapped Liza across the face. Liza’s head turned from the force of the blow, and when she regained her balance her eyes were wide open.

  “You wake now, girl?”

  “Yes’m!”

  “How’s about da rest of you girls? Y’all wake, too?”

  All three girls responded like a choir.

  “Yes’m!”

  “Good! Liza, you go on down to da well to fetch some fresh water! Nessie and Bennie, y’all get yourselves suds and buckets and scrub dis boy till he shine like silver! He gots skin on ’im that’s dead as dis floor, and it ain’t doin’ ’im no good. Nessie, when Liza come back with da water, you make sure he drink every drop! Liza gon’ keep bringin’ it till I tells her stop, and aslong as she bring it, you make sure he drank it. Hear?”

  “Yes’m!” Again, the women responded as a trio, and as soon as they heard themselves speak, they jumped up to do as they had been told.

  “Don’ nobody feed dis boy nothin’ but what I give ’im!” The matriarch spoke up again, before the women went their separate ways. “You give ’im da water, and dat’s it!”

  Once again, the ladies nodded in obedience, and then rushed off to follow her orders. Aunt Sarah went to her table in the back and began lining up the different herbs and roots she would need. She spoke to each plant as if they were her babies, giving them all affectionate names and patting them gingerly with her middle finger. She soothed the nerves of each piece of foliage as she ground it in the bottom of her mud bowl and poured enough water in to make a paste out of the ingredients. As she finished her concoction, Liza burst through the door with her first pail of water.

  “Good, chile. Now takes it over to them two! Y’all splits it in half and do as I told you!”

  Liza ran the water over to the other two women, who had their own pails ready. Nessie poured half the water into her bowl and gave the rest to Bennie, who immediately began scrubbing my skin with a cloth that had aspirations of being a brick when it grew up. Nessie grabbed a ladle and began dipping water out of her bowl and pouring it slowly down my throat. When Liza saw that her bowl was empty, she checked with Aunt Sarah, who gave her a nod, and then ran out the door and back to the well.

  The matriarch stood and walked up behind Nessie with her mud bowl in hand. The paste left a stench behind that was only rivaled by my own. Nessie finished pouring the water she had in my mouth, and then turned back to look at her instructor.

  “Dis here gonna make his insides burn like fire, but it get the rest of da trash out ’im. Leeches c’only do so much. The rest too small to come out. Gotta kill ’em in da inside.”

  Aunt Sarah leaned forward, scooped all of the paste out of the bowl with her index and pointer fingers, and spread it all throughout my mouth. She nodded at Nessie, who grabbed her utensil and quickly dipped out some more water. Carefully, she poured it into my mouth, washing the paste down my throat.

  “Keeps doin’ whatcha doin’, but keeps an eye on ’im. Them roots come callin’ and he ain’t gonna be still for much longer.”

  The women went back to work while Aunt Sarah returned to her table and began picking roots for another concoction. I’d heard everything, but felt nothing. I wondered if the paste that my antebellum physician had put in my mouth would actually do anything to bring me back to health.

  I got my answer in the form of a gentle sting in my belly. Having existed for the last day or so entirely in my head, I was excited to feel anything at all. My jubilation was shortlived, however, as the stinging sensation turned to an all-out nuclear explosion inside of my gut. And then it began to spread, from my stomach to my sides, to my chest, to my arms and legs, my hands and feet, and finally my neck and face. Whatever Aunt Sarah had given me was waging an all-out battle against the poison that was left over in my blood. I could feel every attack, every gunshot, the maiming and disembowelment happening inside of me. It felt as if I was going to explode.

  Bennie seemed to notice my slight murmur. At first, she probably dismissed it as just her hearing things. But when she heard it a second time, she stopped scrubbing and called out to Aunt Sarah. “I thinks he jus’ made noise, Auntie...”

  Aunt Sarah stood and walked over to me again. She felt my forehead, my hands, and my stomach, and then stood very quietly and listened.

  “Mmm...” The sound escaped from my lips. The explosions inside me were so loud, I didn’t realize I had made a real sound.

  Aunt Sarah nodded her head in anticipation.

  “Yep, he comin’ back, alright. Y’all prepare yourselves now. When he gets here, ain’t gonna be pretty. Dis boy gon be in more pain than you ever felt before. All you can do is’ talk soft n’stay with ’im. Dat’s ’bout to be our job till he let up. Gives ’im water, clean ’im, and stays wid ’im. That’s gon be all we c’do.”

  Less than an hour later, I was back to full consciousness, but I wished with every ounce of my being that I was dead. The rising pain inside of me kept getting worse, enough to make me periodically lose consciousness, before bringing me right back to recognition. My body didn’t fully react to the pain it was in because my muscles were all but destroyed. I could only move seven of my fingers and four of my toes, lift my arms about an inch, and slightly shake my legs. I couldn’t even open my eyes all the way. My only saving grace was that my throat was no longer swollen, and even though I couldn’t move my head, I could scream as loud as my vocal chords would allow. And so that’s what I did—I screamed. I screamed until I passed out, and when I came to, I screamed some more. It was the only release I could muster.

  Despite Aunt Sarah’s warning, Bennie, Liza, and Nessie weren’t ready for the kind of pain I was in. They seemed to brighten just before the short periods of time when I blacked out, and looked all the more weary when I would awaken and start up again. They fought their fatigue, however, and kept attending to me. Liza ran back and forth to the well as needed, which was quite frequently. Liza tried to force me to swallow the water in between screams, and Nessie sang songs to relax me as she continued scrubbing. Aunt Sarah, having known how daunting the task of my care would be, remained. She kept a close eye on each of the girls, and when it seemed as if one of them was getting ready to crack, she’d send them outside. If it happened to be Liza, she’d send her on another run to the well. If it was Nessie or Bennie, she’d have them temporarily switch jobs with Liza.

  At one point in the late afternoon, Roka showed up in the doorway. After hearing my cries echo throughout the air for most of the day, he was beginning to believe I had already died and just didn’t know it yet. Aunt Sarah walked over to meet him, recognizing the concern in his face. She looked up at him and spoke through her exhaustion. “Long as’ he yellin’ we knows he alive,” she told him. He nodded his head in acceptance, and proceeded to make his way back out the door.

  I suffered through the night. The supernovas in my body wouldn’t let me rest. I stopped screaming, but more from exhaustion than from the subsiding of the pain. The women slept in shifts, making sure there was always two people awake to tend to my needs. By morning they were all zombies—performing their tasks as if programmed to do so and with barely enough energy to make a difference. But they were successful. The dynamite going off in my stomach had downgraded to low-grade firecrackers, and the sun’s face was the last thing I saw before my body finally allowed me to sleep.

  I didn’t know it, but I was a new man. Nessie had repeatedly cleaned me from head to toe for almost a full day. Dead skin and dirt covered the bed, but my skin and my hair no longer looked as if it had been coated in sewage. Bennie had given me buckets upon buckets of water, but I had been so engulfed in my pain that I didn’t realize when I was urinating. Many times the appearance of liquid on the lower sheets was Nessie’s indication to begin her cleaning ritual, again. Now, it seemed as if the same liquid going in was what was coming
out. Aunt Sarah recognized as much, despite her fatigue. When she saw that I had nearly fallen asleep, and not passed out, she turned again to address her helpers.

  “Y’all need to know you saved dis here boy’s life...ain’t no way he be still livin’ now if y’all hadn’t been here. Takes yo’ rest, now. We still gots work to do, but ain’t nothin’ gon’ be harder den what you jus’ did. I’m proud of you. Nows rest, chirren.”

  Without a word, the women collapsed as if someone had cut their power off.

  The sun hung patiently in the sky during the day while my body rested in a bubble of peace that I hadn’t known since my arrival. The women rose, one by one, in the late afternoon. Aunt Sarah had stolen some rest for herself after the girls fell asleep, but had awakened long before the first assistant shifted her weight on the hard floor and opened her eyes. It probably seemed to the apprentices as though their teacher never slept; just spent the hours humming Jesus songs to energize herself. She did so now, as Nessie gently shook Bennie and Liza, rousing them as well.

  “What we doin’ now, Aunt Sarah?” Liza wiped the sleep from her eyes as she spoke.

  “Nothin’, chile. Da boy restin’ now, makin’ himself strong. He gon’ be powerful hungry when he get up, tho. We make sure we gots food for ’im to eat little by little when he come fully wake, but till then, we leave ’im alone. He fight for himself now.”

  Without me to focus all their attention on, the three women seemed lost. They fumbled around for a while, trying to figure out what to do. Their supervisor laughed as she observed their awkwardness.

  “Listen, y’all get to cleanin’ dis place up. Been filthy in here since we got da boy. After that, y’all go on to your homes. Ain’t no way to tell how long he’ll be sleepin’. You comes by every few hours, check to see if he woke. When that happen, I’ll be needin’ y’all again.”

  “Yessum!” Again, all three women answered in unison, and began looking around the hut for specific things to start cleaning. The dirt from my body seemed to cover everything else like soot. The area around the bed was especially foul, with a day’s worth of grime collected on the bed and the floor underneath it. The women looked with new eyes at the filthiness they had been working in, and promptly began scrubbing everything from top to bottom. The job took twice as long as it should have, but each of the women knew that leaving Aunt Sarah’s place was dangerous. There was a protection they had there that didn’t exist anywhere else. Aunt Sarah let them clean the abode three times over before she made them stop.

  “Y’all go on home, now. Da boy be needin’ rest.”

  She saw uncertainty on the faces of her surrogate daughters.

  “I can’t keep you here forever, now. If you leavin’ now, you come back when da boy opens his eyes. I tell Massa you left and come back, so he don’t get no mind dat we’s schemin’. If they know ’bout dis boy, ’bout what Elizabeth say, they kill ’im sures I standin’ here. Gotta be careful...”

  Each of the younger women nodded their heads in understanding.

  “I know what’s waitin’ for you out there. Just know you gonna be back quick, y’hear?”

  Each of the women nodded again, but this time with somberness that quickly flooded the room. They each walked over and gave Aunt Sarah a hug, and then they sulked out of the door. When she was sure they were gone and far enough away, Aunt Sarah slowly walked over to my bed. She looked down at me, and stood there for a long while before she let her thoughts escape. “You better be da man everybody hopes you is...”

  She stood over me for a few seconds longer, then made her way back to her table, humming her Jesus music as she went.

  My mind and body charged for another twenty-four hours, as I slumbered in a place where no one could reach me. My mind was too tired to dream. Unaware of what to expect next, it suspended itself in a state of partial animation. It floated within the confines of my skull, afraid to commit to any one reality anymore. If I didn’t expect to wake up somewhere, then I could wake up anywhere and not be affected. Thus, my brain took the idea of home, with Big Mama and SaTia, and put it in a place where it couldn’t do any harm once I awoke.

  When the time came, my mind woke before my eyes opened. I slowly became aware of what was happening around me, as if someone was deliberately turning the distortion off from a sound recording. The first thing I was able to make out was sobbing—soft and low, yet pregnant with pain. Aunt Sarah was whispering just loud enough for me to hear.

  “...you can’t believe it were your fault, chile...dem crackas gonna do whatever dey wants to...Lawd, Nessie chile, he done beat you some terrible...”

  Nessie kept on weeping, head in hands, as Aunt Sarah tried to stop some of her bleeding. She looked up once and kept herself from calling Aunt Sarah her Mama.

  “I...I try...to...stop him...ma’am...”

  “Chile, you ain’t gotta tell me! Don’ no woman return from da other side of da field lookin’ like you ’less she been in a fight....”

  “Don’t...I don’t know why he...?”

  “Ain’t no use in askin’ what you can’t answer. You hush now, girl. Lemme clean you up...”

  For almost the next hour, I listened to the saddest song I’d ever heard. Nessie kept sobbing as she was being cleaned, but Aunt Sarah began humming a low, drawn out tune behind Nessie’s sounds of sadness. Together they made a ballad that reached up to heaven and made the angels gasp. When my heart could take no more, I shed a tear through my closed eyes and felt it run down the side of my face and form a tiny puddle by my earlobe.

  Apparently, I also moaned.

  Nessie jumped up from the bed and Aunt Sarah from her seat. They ran over to me just as my eyes began to flutter.

  “My Lawd!” Aunt Sarah exclaimed as she placed her hand on my forehead. “Boy, can you hear me?”

  I moved my lips to speak.

  “Yyyyyyeeeeee...yyyyyyeeeeee...” My voice came out as a series of hoarse chokes.

  I still couldn’t speak clearly, but Aunt Sarah got the point. Before she could say anything else, Bennie and Liza popped through the door. Liza spoke first, with Bennie as her backup.

  “We jus’ comin’ to check and see...”

  “Get yourselves in here! Boy’s wakin’ up!”

  It took the ladies a split second to let Aunt Sarah’s message sink in, and then they were tripping over themselves trying to get back in the room. They each stood around my bed in anticipation.

  When I opened my eyes, I saw the four ladies looking down at me with smiles on their faces. I thought, just for a second, that maybe I had just been born and these three women were midwives of some sort.

  “Can you nod yo head, son?” Aunt Sarah asked me in a voice so soft I wondered if she thought her tone would hurt me. I tried to nod with the little energy I had, but was unable. My neck lay stiff and tight on the bed. I took a breath and concentrated my energy. It was bad enough I couldn’t talk right. I needed to be able to do this.

  Focusing solely on the muscles in my neck, I was able to slowly raise my chin. It felt as though I was lifting a barbell with my neck, but I managed to get my chin up as far as it could go and bring it back down again before letting my head fall to the pillow in exhaustion.

  “That’s it...that’s it...good, son. You done real good. Now, let’s see what else you can do...”

  Aunt Sarah’s soft voice disappeared, replaced by a harder, more dictatorial tone. After she realized I was conscious and improving, she made it her business to learn what she needed to do to get me back to where I was when she’d first seen me.

  Over the next few hours, Aunt Sarah and the ladies found out everything that was wrong with me. Because I was now awake and responsive, they told me everything they found out. My jaw was still healing and my vocal cords had been shocked, which is why I couldn’t talk right. With some practice, and continued healing, Aunt Sarah believed I’d be talking in the next few days. The rest of my body wasn’t so cut and dry. My arms and legs had been broken in numerous
different places during my time in the cage. I could raise both my forearms high enough off of the bed to wave hello to someone, but that required more pain than I thought it was worth. The rest of my arm and shoulder I couldn’t move at all. Even though it hurt, I’d turn my head as far as it could go and look at my arms. They both looked like a little child had broken them apart and tried to put them back together again. My makeshift physician said it was because the bones had been broken and hadn’t healed correctly. From what I could see of my legs, they looked the same way. I could wiggle my toes and lift my legs up about an inch, but no more than that. When Liza tried to bend my legs at the knees, it felt as if someone was trying to convince the ligaments to emancipate themselves from my leg altogether. Aunt Sarah explained that it was the same problem—broken bones that hadn’t healed correctly.

  “I can try and fix ’im, but ain’t gonna be pretty doin’ it,” she said after she explained the condition of my mangled limbs.

  I wanted to grab her and scream out to do whatever she had to do to get me well again. I was forced to settle for a mumble and a head nod.

  I slept off and on for the next three days, continuing to feel myself get stronger. Every day I was able to keep my eyes open longer than before, and I grew familiar with my surroundings. I felt safe, which I would later discover was because I hadn’t seen a white person since I’d been brought into Aunt Sarah’s triage space. At times I felt as if I had forgotten something important—as if I had started to watch a movie from the middle and had forgotten about how the film started. But I was safe, and I was being cared for, and considering what I’d gone through with Bradley, that was more than enough for me.

  I later found out that Mr. Talbert, Bradley, and Reverend Lewis had been by the hut numerous times since I was first brought here. Aunt Sarah, with all her wit, made up a tale of a disease that niggers could stand, but God forbid any good, pure white folk came across it, because they would surely die. The three white men, not wanting to endanger their lives, decided to stay outside the quarantine zone until they received an okay from the expert, who had already decided to keep up the façade until the last possible moment.