by Londyn Skye
“Lily, you say that like this is your first time on that piano, and you’re a child who knows no betta’! Your deceit has dragged on for ova’ a decade! This simply cannot be ignored!”
Lily erupted in tears, fearing that her back would finally bear the brand of his father’s brutal punishments. “Masa’ James, please…”
“I don’t wanna hear your tearful pleas and apologies, Lily!” James interrupted. “Fourteen years of your deception will not go unpunished!” He crouched down to look her in the eyes. “You’re lucky my fatha’ didn’t catch you sittin’ there. You’d be strung up to the whippin’ tree by now for disrespectin’ my motha’s belongin’s!” After a moment, James finally stood up and marched around the room, his hands gripped around his suspenders as he strutted. “Way I see it, though, I caught you, so I decide what to do about it. You’re my property just as well as my fatha’s.” He began to walk up the stairs but suddenly stopped before reaching the top and turned toward Lily again. “If you wanna avoid yo’self a whippin’ then … well, let’s just say your duties are about to exceed far past fixin’ a cup ‘a coffee and scrubbin’ floors,” he smirked. “You do what I tell ya’ if you wanna keep that pretty little back ‘a yours unscathed, ya’ hear?”
“Yessa’.”
James then turned and walked up the stairs without another word, leaving Lily trembling and crying in the middle of the parlor alone. She turned and looked at the piano through the blur of tears in her eyes. Instead of feeling joy, the sight of it made her feel sick to her stomach.
Chapter Two
Slave quarters:
An oftentimes rundown or dilapidated village of makeshift lodging or homes for slaves to reside in, located on their owner’s plantation.
Slave Code
Article II Section XI
Be it enacted that every master shall provide all slaves, including the sick and the elderly, with a competent diet, yearly health examinations, clothing, and lodging. All such lodging and/or slave quarters are to be searched every two weeks for weapons or stolen goods. Acceptable punishments for these violations include: loss of ears, branding, nose-slitting, and death.
For nearly two weeks, Lily’s fingers had not danced across her beloved piano keys. James’s vague threat left her hesitant to even dust it. Without the comfort of her piano, Lily’s mind never seemed to rest. Notes and melodies drifted endlessly through her head with no way to escape and infuse temporary joy into the suffocating atmosphere of her personal prison. Letting music flow through her fingertips made Lily feel free, but now the music lay trapped in her mind. It was a constant reminder that she too was trapped—like an animal. There was now not a single minute of the day she could escape from that reality.
Since her confrontation with James, the music that floated through Lily’s head was always angry or heavy with sorrow. The dramatic music was always intertwined with the last words James had spoken to her: Your duties are about to exceed far past fixin’ a cup ‘a coffee and scrubbin’ floors. That sentence looped in Lily’s mind along with a new brooding melody, as she stood at the kitchen sink washing dishes. She was in a trance, mindlessly wiping the plate in her hand. The plate had long since been cleaned, but she continued incessantly wiping it, wondering what James was planning as a punishment. The thought of the possibilities always stirred Lily’s tears. She fought to hold them back, though; she refused to give James the satisfaction of seeing or even hearing her cry again. She was humiliated by the way she had emotionally cracked in front of him after he had caught her on the piano. She was now determined to prove to him that he did not have the power to affect her anymore.
Despite trying to summon the strength to ignore the pain that James had caused, Lily suddenly felt a wave of anger sweep through her. Amid the musical madness in her mind, her dishwashing became frantic. She started tossing dishes aside after barely wiping them, until she accidentally cut her finger on a knife. Despite how deep the gash was, she hardly flinched at the pain. She lifted her hand and stared at the blood gushing from her finger. And then, as if ending a symphony with a dramatic crescendo, the music in her head suddenly stopped. “Lord, I wanna be with Auntie. I beg you,” she whispered, her eyes suddenly fixed on the knife in her uninjured hand. It was the first time Lily had ever wished death for herself. There was not one thing she could think of that made her life meaningful enough to go on anymore; James had just made sure of that.
Even all these years later, Lily could not comprehend how a caring young man like James had so abruptly changed into someone capable of such mean-spirited acts. Oddly, the blood on Lily’s hand reminded her of the sort of person James used to be. Her mind suddenly flashed back to a fond memory of when the warmth of James’s heart was still evident and the two of them were still as close as children could be. They were twelve at the time…
“I bet I’ll beat ya’ to the creek today!” James had said to Lily, while looking up at her in her usual hiding spot. She had perched herself in their favorite tree, waiting for him to join her after church. He would usually climb up there with her, but after being beaten by her in foot races every Sunday, he decided to get an unfair head start this time. He sat his satchel down and took off running toward the creek before Lily could even make a move to get down.
“No fair, James! I’ll catch you anyway! You run like a turtle with a broken foot!” Lily teased, as she began quickly making her way down the tree.
James laughed at her comment as he hopped and trotted over the rough terrain toward the creek. With Lily’s blazing speed, he was sure that she would be on his coattails within seconds. But when he reached the creek and turned around, he was only greeted by the sound of the flowing water and the panting of his own breath. He did not even hear the familiar sound of leaves crinkling underneath Lily’s bare feet or her laughter. He quickly looked to the left and to the right. Not spotting Lily anywhere, James instantly had an unexplainable intuition that something was wrong. He then yelled Lily’s name twice. When he got no response, he took off running toward the tree. In the distance, he could see why Lily had not answered. Tears began to flow down James’s cheeks before he reached his destination. He slid on his knees coming to rest near Lily’s motionless body. She was lying face down near the base of the tree. She had sliced her knee open on a branch in her rush to get down. Her reaction to the pain had caused her to lose her footing and fall. She had hit her head hard when she landed and knocked herself unconscious. In James’s twelve-year-old mind, though, her motionless body made him fear that she was dead. He frantically turned her over. “Lily, wake up! Please get up!” he yelled, shaking her. “Lilyyy, can you hear me?! C’mon get up!” he begged, tears gushing from his eyes.
“D-d-did I win?” Lily responded softly, clearly confused.
Relief flooded James’s entire body and returned his heart to a normal rhythm. “A-are you okay? I-I’m sorry. I-I should’ve helped you outta the tree,” he stammered, wiping his tears away.
“Why you cryin’ James?” Lily asked, still confused by what had just happened.
“Neva’ mind that. Are you hurt?”
“My knee. I think I cut my knee,” Lily replied, grimacing from the pain, as she tried to get up and look.
“No, don’t move! Lemme look.” James hiked her dress up and saw blood covering her entire knee. The deep gash instantly reminded him of the way his mother would douse his and his brother’s wounds with a stinging tincture. She always scared them into submission by telling them they would die from infections if they didn’t sit still and let her clean their wounds properly. Infection and death suddenly had James’s heartrate erratic again as he stared at Lily’s bloody knee. “Your knee is bleedin’ bad. The cut’s real deep,” he calmly told Lily. Inside, though, the thought of her dying had him ready to erupt in tears again.
“It’ll be okay. Just help me up. I can go down to the creek and wash it,” Lily replied.
“No! That wata’s filthy! You need some medicated tincture, so it don�
�t get infected!”
“Sorry James. You don’t have to yell at me.”
“Well, it’s just that … that. Well, you need to clean it propa’, okay? I don’t want ya’ to … to…”
“To what?”
“Nothin’. Neva’ mind,” he said, unbuttoning his white church shirt.
“What’re you doin’?”
“Can you lift your leg at all?”
“Ow! Yeah, but it really hurts.”
James helped her lift her leg and then tied his shirt around her knee like a bandage.
“You must’ve gone and lost yo’ mind James! Yo’ mama’s gonna whup you good for ruinin’ that shirt!”
“Neva’ mind that. I gotta stop the bleedin’ and keep it from gettin’ dirty. Can you walk at all?”
“I think so.” Lily tried to stand up but the pain in her knee became even more evident upon trying to bend it.
James then helped her to sit up against the tree instead. “Will you be okay here by yourself?” he asked.
“I s’ppose so, but I don’t really wanna be left alone. Not like this.”
“I’ll be back as fast as I can. I’ll take care of ya’. I won’t be long. I promise.”
“Okay.”
James then ran as fast as he could out of the heavily wooded area. It was nearly a half-mile journey before his feet hit the plantation grass of his home. But still, he kept his pace, running across the fields at blazing speed with his suspenders flapping near his sides. When he made it to the house, he stopped at the kitchen door and peered through the window. Seeing the kitchen empty, he quietly entered. He heard laughter and chatter in the living room between his mother and her guests. While everyone was distracted, he quietly tiptoed up the stairs to find a new shirt. Just before making it to his room, though, he was startled by his oldest brother, J.R.
J.R. certainly deserved to be named Jesse Roscoe after his father. Not only did he look exactly like him, but he was mean just like his father too, especially toward James. “Where’s y’ur shirt, boy?” J.R. asked, towering over his little brother while smacking on an apple.
“Neva’ mind that. Just let me by.” James tried to step past his brother, but he blocked his path.
“You been tastin’ that lil’ nigga’ girl, ain’t ya’?”
“What?!” James snapped.
“I saw you,” J.R. said, still rudely smacking on his apple. “Last Sunday, you were playin’ with that pick-a-ninny.” J.R. smirked when a look of guilt overtook James’s face. “I’s walkin’ in the woods and I saw y’all wadin’ in the creek. She the reason you ain’t got no shirt on, boy?”
“I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about!”
“I don’t blame ya’ little brotha’.” J.R. leaned down close to James’s face. “If she was old enough, I’d be tastin’ that lil’ nigga’ too,” he admitted, a devilish grin on his face.
With all his twelve-year-old might, James pushed and slammed his brother against the wall, breathing so hard that spit seeped through the cracks of his clinched teeth. He was not even sure what J.R. meant by “tastin’,” but he knew it was something vulgar. He was further enraged by hearing him call Lily by such disrespectful names. His rage gave him the strength to keep J.R. pinned to the wall, while glaring at him through lowered eyelids.
J.R was shocked to see this angry side of his normally gentle little brother. But he refused to show it. He simply stared at James and bit calmly into his apple, as if a fly had landed on his chest. “I bet Pa would be real eaga’ to hear you been tastin’ that lil’ nigga’.”
“You wouldn’t!” James spat.
J.R.’s face became hard and serious. He grabbed James by the hair with his free hand. “I suggest you mind me wheneva’ I need you to handle my chores, or else the only thing you’ll be tastin’ is Pa’s leatha’ belt against y’ur skinny little ass, instead ‘a that sweet little nigga’ friend ‘a y’urs. Then you can watch Pa tie ’er up to the whippin’ tree and beat ’er good too. She’ll be up for sale on the next auction block ’fore y’ur little ass stops stingin’.” J.R. bit calmly into his apple again. They both heard somebody coming up the stairs and turned in the direction of the noise. James then broke free of his brother’s clutches and dashed into his room before he could be seen.
J.R. had always been jealous of James. He hated the fact that their father had always gone easy on James with farm work because of his extreme intelligence. J.R. would be seething inside whenever he heard his father bragging about how his youngest boy was going to be a doctor and a fine upstanding man that people would one day look up to. J.R. craved to hear his father boast so proudly about him, but his father’s words only ever made him feel worthless.
Jesse was hard on his two oldest sons. He raised them to never complain about hard work and to take criticism like grown men. J.R. was, therefore, infuriated by the fact that James lived the comfortable life and was exempt from such harsh treatment. But now, knowing about James’s secret, J.R. felt he finally had the leverage to take the easy life away from his baby brother. And with J.R. having the upper hand, James felt he had no choice but to obey if he wanted to ensure that Lily—a little girl who had come to mean everything to him—was never abused and remained a part of his life.
Right now, ensuring that Lily remained a part of his life meant finding the stinging tincture that James was convinced she desperately needed. Infection, death, infection, death, were the only thoughts that were on his mind as he searched for the medication, more so than his brother’s blackmail. Lily’s superficial wound was mountainous in James’s eyes.
After finding the solution, a clean rag, bandages, and another shirt, James made his way out of the house unnoticed and then dashed the half-mile back to where he had left Lily. “You alright?” he asked her, breathing hard.
“I’ll be fine, but my leg is still hurtin’ somethin’ awful.”
“This solution’s gonna sting, but it’s gonna stop it from gettin’ infected. Be tough now,” James told Lily as he began to pour it onto the rag. “It’ll be alright, I promise. Just squeeze my hand to keep from screamin’.” Lily gripped his hand hard as he worked on her leg with the diligence of a doctor. He took great care in cleaning the wound, patching it up neatly, and ensuring her comfort.
When James was finished, he dug in his satchel and pulled out something for Lily to eat. He then went to find Wilbur, brought him back to their picnic blanket, and read Lily’s favorite story to her. Lily had been fine to walk for a while, but James would not let her until it was time for them to part ways. He helped her up and carefully walked with his arm around her all the way back to the slave quarters.
Later that night, James woke up in a panic, struggling to catch his breath. A nightmare about Lily lying face down in the leaves had torn him from his sleep. It took him a moment to realize he was only dreaming. Despite it, worry quickly settled in. He crept downstairs, avoiding every creaky spot on the floorboards on the way down. Too impatient to grab a coat or shoes, he slipped out of his house barefoot, in just his thin pajamas. The temperature had dropped considerably, but he did not let the crisp air stop him from his mission.
James made his way to the slave quarters, which could have easily been mistaken for a rickety barn. Much like horses, each slave slept in stalls with hay for padding. Auntie and Lily shared a room in the back, which was the only area that had a door and a decent amount of privacy. It was James’s first time in the quarters so late at night. He realized that the chill inside was not much different from the cold air on the outside. He walked past each slave in their stalls. Their thin blankets caught his attention; he figured there was no way they were keeping everyone warm. It was not even winter yet, so he could only imagine the discomfort they endured at night during that season. It made him instantly think of Lily. He hoped that maybe she had been supplied with something more suitable for a child. But upon entering her room, he saw the harsh reality that his best friend was also vulnerable to the cold Virginia nights
. James quietly made his way over to her haystack where she lay breathing lightly, none the wiser to his presence. He looked at her for a long time, studying the rise and fall of her chest, trying to convince himself that his nightmare had caused him to worry for nothing.
James then looked over at Auntie, who was snoring lightly. He stared at her for the longest time too, thinking about the fact that she was an ailing, sweet, elderly woman whose back had never known the comforts of a mattress. Suddenly, James felt unbearable sympathy for the inhumane life she had been forced to live. With tears welling in his eyes, James then walked back to the main area and looked around again at all the bodies resting on haystacks that were covered in thin blankets. He then stared up at the holes in the roof that easily let buckets of rain flow through. He could even feel the crisp night air whisping its way through the cracks in the walls. The animals have better accommodations than they do, James thought to himself, as emotion continued to constrict his chest. Thoughts of the slaves his father had whipped, and Lily being sold away from her mother began to weigh heavily on James at that moment. He again looked around at all the slaves surrounding him, and he began to quietly sob. The simple scene suddenly made him question the morals of humanity.