The Wedding Gift (2 page)

SARAH CAMPBELL

THIS CHRONICLE COMMENCES WITH THE MONARCHS of my heart: my mother, the woman who gave me light, and my sister, to whom I clung in dire times. Both were beautiful, with delicate features and dark skin. I, however, am tall and big-boned and, as the Alabama newspapers described me, “yellowish.” Like the man who fathered me, I have a pointy nose and meager lips.

I do not know precisely how old I was when I realized that I was a slave, but I think that I was six, the year I began helping with cooking, cleaning, and all that we had to do in the Allen household.

One morning, when we were still sleeping, someone knocked on the door of our cabin. My mother rose and wrapped herself in a shawl, telling us to do the same and to sit at the table. When she opened the door, two men were standing outside holding lanterns and guns. I trembled and Belle held my hand.

“Why they here, Mama?”

“Shush, baby. Don’t say nothing.”

“Your key,” one man said.

“Yes, sir,” my mother said.

My eyes were sensitive to the light from their lanterns. I heard them walk everywhere, near the beds, cabinets, and in the kitchen area. One of the men had a persistent cough. Their rancid smell permeated the cabin. The lock clicked and the lid creaked when they opened the chest where my mother kept the money that she earned from trading baked goods, quilts, and dried cooking herbs in town.

When they were gone, my mother sat at the table and put her arm around me. She was shaking.

“Why those men come here, Mama?”

“Mr. Allen tell them to.”

“But why?”

“Stop asking questions, Sarah. He tell them to and nobody got to tell us why.”

One afternoon, I filled two pails at the well behind the kitchen. Two boys, about my age, were there playing with clay marbles. An overseer approached.

“What you little niggers doing?”

They did not answer him.

“You hear me, you black bastards?”

The boys continued to ignore him.

“You fucking niggers say something when I talk to you.”

He slapped and kicked the boys, and the boys and I screamed. I dropped my buckets, spilling water. I heard people running and my mother’s voice rising above the clamor saying that she was coming to me.

She told someone to take the boys to our cabin. She kissed me and carried me home, but when she tried to put me on our bed, I grasped the sleeve of her dress.

“Sarah, baby, you going to be all right. Stay here. Let me go look after the children.”

The boys were crying.

“Your mama’s going to be here soon. Now let me see how bad you get hurt,” she said to them. “I’m going to clean and put something on your cuts so they can heal. It’s going to sting a bit, but you all is big boys and I know you going to be strong.”

When the boys’ mother arrived, I recognized her voice. She was one of the washerwomen for Allen Hall.

“Miss Emmeline, thank you for looking after my boys. Thank God you was there and that man didn’t do no worse to them.”

“You’re welcome, but that’s what we got to do, we got to look after each other’s children, and I know you do the same for my girls. You let me know if they don’t get better soon.”

The washerwoman took her boys home. I felt calmer by that time, but my sight was blurred. My mother said that I should stay in bed and rest.

“Sarah, I got to get back to the kitchen so I can finish making supper. Let me wash you up first. All right, baby?”

“No, Mama. Don’t leave me here by myself. What if that man is out there? And why did he hit those boys?”

“Mr. Allen ain’t going to like it when he hear what they did. But Sarah, listen, you always got to do what the overseers tell you. You got to obey them the same way we obey Mr. and Mrs. Allen. You understand?”

“Yes, ma’am. But I’m scared of that man. What if he come back?”

“I’m going to be looking out for you, baby, and ain’t letting you go no place by yourself until you’re older. Baby, you know I can see our cabin from the kitchen, and I’ll watch to make sure nobody come inside. And Belle and me going to come here to see you every so often.”

That year, I began listening to the pastor who had a service in the kitchen for the Hall slaves and their families on Sunday mornings. We did not attend church with the Allens in town because we had to prepare dinner. The field hands and tradespeople had their own house of worship on the plantation. After his sermon, the preacher spoke to us about the slave laws and our activities off the plantation.

One afternoon in the wintertime, after the Allens and their guests had their dinner, my mother took Belle and me into town to purchase goods for the Hall. An overseer met us at the gate before we left and gave the wagon driver a traveling pass.

As I had noticed when we were walking in town on prior occasions, men stopped to stare at my mother. She did not pause and looked straight ahead. That day, we went to different shops to retrieve items that the merchants had ordered from abroad for the Allens and dried cooking herbs from the Indies for my mother. At six o’clock, the driver met us at the last shop to help us with the packages.

“Johnny, I got something else to do. Please wait for us here.”

Johnny gave my mother a lantern, and as we were walking toward a side road, I heard people yelling and saw them running to the square in the center of town. My mother held my hand and steered us back to the wagon. I heard someone scream, and she told me to move faster.

“Mister, please, let us go. We wasn’t doing nothing wrong. We was just talking. Please don’t whip us,” one man said.

“Shut your mouths and take your turns on the post. You keep arguing and we’ll add to the number of lashes.”

“Please, mister, don’t. I won’t do it again. We was just talking.”

“I hear one more thing from any of you and you’re each getting the full thirty lashes.”

“Mama…”

“Sarah, stop. Not one word. I’ll tell you what that’s about later. Now we just got to get out of here.”

We were silent on the way to Allen Estates. When we arrived at our cabin, my mother told me that the people I saw about to be whipped in town were being punished because they had done something that the preacher warned us about on Sundays.

“Sarah, some people in town was talking in a group. I’m only telling you this so you know not to do the same thing when you’re older. If the patrollers see a group of slaves without a overseer to watch them, the patrollers can whip every one of them.”

Around this time, I observed other aspects of my life and the people at Allen Hall that troubled my young head. Clarissa, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Allen, had a sixth birthday celebration that began on a Thursday and ended Sunday night. There were about thirty guests, including her paternal family from Montgomery and Macon counties and neighboring planters and their families. My mother cooked all the meals and made Clarissa’s cake.

When we were alone, I asked my mother about my birthday.

“You remember when I made that cake for you a little while back and we and the others had it after supper in the kitchen, don’t you?”

“But you didn’t sing to me, and you didn’t say it was my birthday.”

“I know, baby, but it was. Mr. Allen said he wrote it down in his book where he writes all the babies’ birthdays.”

“When is my birthday?”

“Mr. Allen said it’s June 25. But you keep that just between us, all right, baby? And don’t tell the other children. Not everybody know their birthdays. I know mines and Belle’s because Mr. Allen’s father wrote them down and Mr. Allen told me.”

When the Allen relatives visited the plantation, I was not Clarissa’s playmate, as I was when no one else was around, but her maid; and when she spoke to me, it was to give me orders. During one of these visits, I asked my mother about her kinfolk, who they were and where they might be.

“Don’t know about my pa, he was sold. I don’t know where. Mommy, we bury her after the overseer beat her bad. She step in to help Pa when they catch him after he try to run. We buried Mommy at the graves by the fields. If you want, I’ll take you to her grave on Sunday.”

Later that day, my mother asked a carpenter to make her a cross and she borrowed a large shovel from a gardener. That next Sunday, after the preacher read us the Bible and we made dinner, my mother took Belle and me to the area where, I learned, the Allen slaves were buried. When we arrived at the graves, we dug in different places and my mother said that she would recognize my grandmother’s coffin because she had asked the carpenter who made the burial box to carve a flower on the lid. We never found it, only a clump of hair, which we reburied. We placed the wooden cross on top of the soil over where we laid that clump of hair.

That year, I watched Mrs. Allen and Clarissa when they were together. When Clarissa sat on her mother’s lap or embraced her, I was envious because my mother worked the entire day and most nights she was away from our cabin. I missed her when she was not with us and could not sleep until she returned, always before dawn. The mornings after she left, if her eyes met mine, she seemed ashamed and her anguish made me miserable.

Once, when we were having our breakfast, she seemed preoccupied. I tickled her under her chin, which normally made her laugh. That time, however, she barely smiled. I asked her why she was so sad.

“I’m just tired, is all, baby. Just tired.”

I asked her why we could not go where she would not have to work so hard, and she spoke to me in a fierce voice.

“Don’t you never, never talk about that again. And you listen to me good. Just talking like that can get us sold. You know what it mean to be sold? It mean they send us to different places and we ain’t never going to see each other again. Maybe you think just because Mrs. Allen let you play with Miss Clarissa all the time that you’re just like her, but you ain’t nothing like Miss Clarissa. She can say what she want. You got to watch every thing you say. And don’t you forget, we is all we got.”

I wanted my mother to stop going away; I was afraid that she would not come back. One night, I held onto her.

“Don’t go, Mama, don’t go.”

She smoothed my hair.

“Say you won’t go, Mama. Say you won’t go.”

“Sarah, I got to, baby.”

I do not remember how many weeks elapsed before she finally tired of my attempts to prevent her from leaving.

“Belle’s right here with you. Come on, Sarah, stop it.”

She handed me over to Belle, who folded me in her long arms. I gave my mother a foul look. “I hate you, I hate you. Go, and I don’t care if you never come back.”

She sat on the bed and cried. I buried my face in the pillow. After some time, I heard her walk across the cabin floor and close the door behind her.

The battle between us continued, but I learned to wound her with silent reproach. One evening, after our prayers, I asked her why she had to leave us.

“Sarah, you too young for me to say what I’m about to tell you, but you need to hear it. You and Belle is smart girls. I been blessed that way. I was hoping to have this talk with you when you was grown. But in this life, we got to be older than our real years.

“I’m going to tell you something that you can’t repeat to nobody, not even Miss Clarissa. You’re going to have to promise me before I tell you.”

“I promise. I’ll be a big girl and I won’t tell.”

“Sarah, I go to…I go to…Mr. Allen. That’s where I go at night.”

“Why?”

“Because he say I got to.”

“Why do you have to?”

“I already told you. We got to do everything him and Mrs. Allen, the overseers, and even Miss Clarissa say.”

“Why?”

“We…we belong to Mr. and Mrs. Allen.”

“What do you mean?”

“You know how when the preacher read us the Bible he told us stories about what happened to the Israelites, how they was in bondage and they had to do everything Pharaoh say? How when they was too tired to work, they got whipped? You remember the story about how Moses prayed to God to set the people of Israel free? And at first, Pharaoh won’t let the Israelites go but then, after God put him through many trials, he had to or God was going to keep making bad things happen to him and his family and the Egyptians.”