Wench (18 page)

I
t was only after Sweet’s death that they decided to read the pamphlet, as if the loss of her had stirred in them a more urgent reason to know about these freedom-loving whites. On the first morning that she read, only Mawu and Reenie sat beside her. Later, Philip and George would join them. But that first time, it was just the three women sitting in the parlor of Lizzie’s cottage. Lizzie pulled the couch over to sit just in front of the two women. Reenie put out a plate of bread, and Mawu sipped from a cup of tea.

Lizzie cleared her throat, and decided to start at the beginning. She had looked the pamphlet over several times and there were words she could not accurately pronounce because she had never heard them said aloud before. But she was pretty certain
of the general meaning of what she was about to read. Even so, her hands shook. She wondered what the women would think if they knew that it had been Glory who had stolen the pamphlet and given it to her. Glory, the faithful Quaker, had stolen it out of the bag of a man at the post office.

Lizzie wanted to stop and read those words again. She had never heard a white man talk in such a way. For a moment, she faltered, wondering if she’d mispronounced the word “heinous.” But she continued:

Lizzie read slowly, and when she noticed Reenie picking at the hem of her dress, she decided to skip ahead a bit.

Mawu whistled. “Ooh, I didn’t know you could read so nice, Miss Lizzie. I can’t hardly understand for listening to the sound of them words. What that man saying there?”

“He’s saying that the abolitionists have been accused of being too…too vicious, too mean, and he doesn’t believe this to be true. He believes these folks that accuse them of this don’t know what they’re talking about. He believes that the cause of freedom is just and right and they must do all they can to get rid of slavery.”

Reenie’s eyes were wide. “Oh my sweet Jesus. Go on,” she urged. “Go on.”

T
wo days after Sweet was laid to rest, the white men discovered Philip sneaking off the resort to meet his woman. No one knew how they found out. But the word got back to the slaves that Philip had been meeting her halfway between the colored resort and the white one. Lizzie thought of how often slaves did this back in Tennessee, meeting halfway between plantations and making their love felt on the forest floor. In contrast, she thought of how direct Drayle was back on their place, exercising his rights wherever and whenever the mood hit him.

They all waited around wondering what would happen next. No one had seen Philip, and Lizzie searched frantically for Drayle, but he, too, was nowhere to be seen. From her porch, Lizzie could make out Reenie hanging laundry behind her cottage and Mawu walking on the other side of the lake carrying something on her head.

Lizzie swept the dust out the front door of her cottage. Back at the plantation, Drayle might have gotten away with giving Philip a light scolding and perhaps having the slave trader visit the place to scare the slaves into thinking that Philip might be sold off. But here, in this northern climate, where he was under the scrutiny
of the other Southern slaveholders, Drayle would probably decide to take a sterner approach.

Lizzie had to get to Drayle first, remind him that Philip was still his favorite slave. It was no longer a rumor but a well-known fact that this would be their last summer at the resort. Most likely, Drayle figured that if he could get Philip back to Tennessee without this woman, he would be able to get his slave’s mind off her.

Once, Drayle had bought a beautiful woman for one of his slaves after the man’s wife died in childbirth. The young woman had been intended to salve the older man’s grief. They had taken up residence together in one of the slave cabins, and it was not long before the young girl had genuinely fallen for the kind old man. It had been an unexpected but welcome outcome to the forced coupling. Lizzie thought this was probably what Drayle was hoping for now, that he could purchase a woman for Philip that would solve everything.

Lizzie tried to block out any image in her mind of Drayle having Philip beat. Besides, who would beat him? There was no overseer here to perform Drayle’s dirty work, and Drayle had never been one to perform such an unpleasant task himself. There was that one hotel porter who would do anything the white men told him for a price, the one with the watch who had accompanied them to Dayton. George would do it if so ordered, but she doubted that he would complete the task with any zest. And the slaveholders knew this.

As the different scenarios passed through her mind, she saw a figure that looked to be about Philip’s size approaching from the distance. He was flanked by two men holding him by the arms. Lizzie shaded her eyes with her hand. From where she stood, it looked as if Philip’s legs were chained. As the three men got closer, she heard the telltale clink of metal against metal. She clutched the arm of her broom.

The men led Philip to a tree just off the edge of the pond. It
was a scrawny young pawpaw tree that even in the height of summer had never bore any fruit. Nor was it full enough to offer very much shade. They chained him to the tree and walked away. Philip scooted along the ground until he was beside the tree and rested his back against its narrow trunk.

Lizzie leaned the broom against the wall of the cottage. She wiped her palms across the front of her dress. Even though she could not make out Philip’s face, she knew he had already been beaten. He did not have the walk of a beaten man, but she knew how such things worked. He had been beaten and left out in the hot sun.

She heard someone moving inside the cottage, and it startled her. She pulled open the door and saw Drayle moving about the room, packing a bag. “Drayle? What did you do to Philip?”

He ignored her and continued to move around the room. She watched as he put the tin cup and plate he used for camping into the bag.

“Where are those socks you mended for me?”

She went into the bedroom and took a thin pair of socks out of the drawer with a patch across the toe. She returned and gave them to him.

“Talk to me, Drayle. What’s happening?”

“Hand me my fishing rod.”

She took the rod out of the closet. Considering the time of day, she knew he would probably camp overnight. But surely he didn’t plan to just leave Philip there.

He hoisted the pack of supplies over his shoulder and finally turned to her. “Don’t you even think about going near him, Lizzie.”

“What?” She tried to shame him with a certain look she used now and again. “You’re going to just leave him there?”

“You hear me? This is between me and him. Don’t you even think about going near him. You or nobody else, but especially you.”

Surely he didn’t plan on leaving Philip out there all day and night. There wasn’t much shade out there, and the Ohio sun was as hot as the one in Tennessee.

She remembered when she was a child and still lived on the plantation in Weakley county where she was born there had been a dog that hung around the slave cabins. It hadn’t belonged to anyone in particular and no one had ever given it a name. They just called it “Dog.” The dog lived on scraps thrown to it here and there when the slaves had finished eating. As it got old, its back legs started to give out. So it took to sitting around more and more until finally it stopped walking altogether. No one had the heart to kill it. One morning, as the slaves went off to the fields, someone placed the dog in a shady spot near a tree.

When the children gathered around the tree that evening to hunt for the sticks they used for toys, they discovered the dog lying in the same spot where it had been left. One of the children called his father who came and picked up the dog’s lifeless body. He told the children to run along, and he went off somewhere to bury it. Lizzie could remember the dog’s skin: it had been raw and peeling beneath the dog’s thin brown and white pelt. She had dreamed that night of what it must have felt like to be that dog, becoming so hot until her vision blurred and she could barely suck in enough air to cool herself. She had heard of adults complaining of such symptoms while working the field all day, but even they wore hats to cool themselves. The dog had been unable to do anything to lessen the punishment of the sun once it moved its position in the sky.

“Who’s going to feed him and give him water?” she demanded.

“You stay away from him, now. You hear me?”

Lizzie must have looked as if she intended to follow no such order because his voice turned cold.

His words were slow. “I’m going to leave instructions for the
hotel servants to keep an eye on that tree.” he spoke of the tree as if it existed and Philip didn’t. “If I so much as hear that you or anyone else has gone near it, I will have Nate whipped until he’s black and blue.”

Lizzie froze. He had never threatened to do such a thing. Nate had never been whipped in his life.

“Nate? Whipped? have you lost your mind?”

She felt it and saw his hand swing back at what seemed like the same time. It happened so quickly she didn’t have time to dodge out of the way.

“I have told you time and time again to watch your mouth when you are talking to me. You are just a woman and, on top of that, nothing but a slave woman.”

The blood on Lizzie’s lip didn’t taste like anything. It wasn’t salty like sweat or sweet like mucus. She lapped it up with her tongue and squeezed her lips together.

His eyes were red, the look of a parent who has just slapped his child. She had seen that look in Big Mama’s face before.

“I’ll be back in a day or two,” he said. He turned away from her and left her standing there wearing a new feeling.

A
t first, no one dared go near Philip because they did not know who had been set up to watch him. The slaves watched the hotel servants and the hotel servants watched the slaves. Lizzie, Reenie, and Mawu tried to devise ways they could sneak out in the middle of the night and get him water. Philip was tied to a tree right at the edge of the water, a tree easily visible from any of the nine cottages surrounding the pond and also from the hotel’s main lounge. The white women set up a picnic nearby on the first day and watched him while they ate. Two children threw rocks at him, narrowly missing for the most part.

George spent the first couple of days watering the flowers along the water’s edge. When he got close enough for the water to reach him, he doused Philip down. Philip tried sticking his tongue out and drinking water that way. On the second day the two men got smarter, Philip digging a hole in the ground and George manag
ing to fill the hole with water. Philip used his tongue to lap up the water before it soaked into the surrounding dirt.

Another day went by and Lizzie walked by the tree, close enough to Philip to see that his lips were white and cracked. He tried to say something to her, but his words got muffled by his swollen tongue. Lizzie went to Reenie’s cottage and sat in a chair while Reenie folded clothes.

“We can’t just leave him out there,” Lizzie said. “It’s too hot.”

“He can survive,” Reenie said. “Philip a strong man. Strong as an ox.”

“That’s what everybody thinks about him.” Lizzie shook her head. “But he ain’t strong as people think. He’s got a soft spot. I’ve seen it. And it’s probably worse now that he’s got that woman on his mind.”

Reenie picked up Sir’s overalls and folded them down the front of her dress.

“And Drayle ain’t never been too hard on none of his slaves, let alone Philip.”

Reenie stopped folding and eyed her. “Every slave got the survivor in him. You don’t got to get beat every now and then to remember how to make it through something.”

Lizzie tried to believe what Reenie was saying.

The next morning was the fourth day since Drayle had left and no one had been allowed to feed or water Philip. It was only because he moved a bit here and there that they knew he was still alive.

The three women sat on the steps of Mawu’s porch. George came and sat down on the grass in front of Mawu’s cottage.

“Somebody done fed and watered him,” George said.

“Who?” Lizzie asked.

“I don’t know. One of the coloreds at the hotel, I reckon.”

Mawu sucked her teeth. “Them people ain’t never helped nobody but theyselves. I doubt it.”

“Why do you think somebody fed him?” Lizzie asked.

“Cause look at him. He look a little better today than he did yesterday,” George said.

“I haven’t gotten close enough to see,” Lizzie responded.

“I did. And as far as I know, he ain’t had water in two days. Can’t nobody survive that long in this sun without at least a dip or two of some cool water.”

“Maybe it was that Quaker woman,” Mawu said.

“I ain’t seen her in a spell,” Reenie said.

“She could be sneaking on the property at night,” Mawu said. “Maybe.”

“Maybe it was one of those abolitionists,” Lizzie offered, thinking of the pamphlet.

“Look,” George said. They all looked east and saw the group of white men returning, long fishing poles hanging from their shoulders.

The women stood, their respite over. Lizzie hastened back to her cabin, eager to convince Drayle to end his punishment of Philip. Over the past couple of days, she had decided to try the tactics she’d used on him in the service of her children. She would not refuse him this time.

When she heard Drayle’s footsteps swishing through the grass, she met him out on the porch and pushed him into the wooden rocker.

“Let me help you with your boots,” she said.

She pulled each boot off and lined them up beside the door. Then she pulled off his socks and massaged his feet. They stank like the outdoors, but she rubbed them anyway, paying particular attention to the large bunion on his right foot.

He enjoyed her attention for a few minutes before smiling down at her.

“Lizzie?”

“Hmm?”

“If I tell you that I’ve already decided to sell Philip, will you still take care of me?”

She dropped his foot and it fell with a thud onto the wooden porch.

“For real?”

He nodded.

She studied him for a moment, then leaned down and kissed the stinking, sweating toe.

T
his time, Philip and George joined them. The four slaves sat mute before Lizzie as she read.

“Slow down, Miss Lizzie. I don’t want to miss a thang,” George interrupted.

Lizzie’s next words were slow and deliberate:

Lizzie stopped reading. She paused for a minute although no one asked her to explain.

D
rayle told Lizzie that while camping he had decided to let Philip go. But first, the barber would have to agree to a price Drayle would set himself. A price that would allow him to buy another slave with a reputation as good as Philip’s. He had come to this decision because Reenie’s man had convinced him the slave would be no good anymore. He would either try to flee or spend the rest of his days resenting Drayle for it. Philip had a permanent pass that allowed him to run Drayle’s errands or exercise the horses throughout the woods. Sir insisted that those days were over. And even though Drayle objected, Sir ominously reminded him that some slaves had even killed their masters over such disappointments.

Drayle convinced Lizzie he was doing this for her as well. Because she’d asked and he respected her wishes. She’d known it all along, she said to herself. This would be the good deed to answer all other favors. A man, he would most likely argue later, could only give up so much of his property.

When the barber arrived to bring the money, the small group of slaves watched from afar, Philip among them. The daughter was not present to help, so the assistant laid out the tools and rinsed the brass bowl. It appeared to Lizzie that the barber’s arms moved
with especially exaggerated flourishes as he whisked the cloth off Drayle’s face and brushed the white man’s shoulders clear of fallen clips of hair.

The assistant removed the rocks from the back legs of the rocking chairs so the men could sit upright. The other three white men paid the barbers and took their leave. The assistant cleaned up the tools and left Drayle and the head barber on the porch alone. The slaves could see the gray-haired man resting against the rail, his white coat blending with the white of the wood.

“You reckon you gone be able to leave with him today?” George asked.

It sank in for Lizzie that Philip would not be returning to Tennessee this time. And if this were really their last summer at the resort, she would never see him again. She tried to etch his features into her memory as she had done to her friends when she was nine years old and being sent to the auction block. She hoped this time the memory would stick.

“I don’t know,” Philip said, unable to hide his joy.

“Well, it ain’t like you got nothing to pack,” Mawu said. “You probably just gone climb in that there wagon and be on your way.”

“Maybe you’ll get a whole new suit of clothes,” George said. “You gone enter the barbering trade?”

“I don’t know. I gots to pay the man back his money. But the onliest thing I know is horses. I ain’t like these cityfied folks.” Philip brushed at a fly crawling on his forehead.

“You gone learn quick,” Reenie said. “Tell me, Philip. How do freedom taste?”

Philip looked at her and smiled. “Miss Reenie, I got to say I honestly don’t know just yet. I reckon I won’t know till I get my free papers.”

Lizzie studied Drayle and the barber and saw that neither had changed position. She knew that Drayle had Philip’s papers in
his pocket. She had looked at them just that morning and run her fingers over them. The papers looked real, sure enough. Written up by someone in a flowing and official-looking script, even better than those of the old man on the train up from cincinnati.

“You be sure to send me a letter, Philip. Even if you’ve got to get somebody to write it for you.” Philip could not read and write, and Lizzie wondered if he would learn now that he was free.

Philip reached out for her, and she hugged him for a long time. His chest felt warm against hers. She remembered the nights she had spent in his cabin, how he had kept a respectful distance. She’d always appreciated that. But now she wished she would have let him take her just one time. To remember him by. It wouldn’t have been much for her to give herself to him. At the time, though, she’d felt differently. She’d seen being with Philip as a way of disrespecting her children’s father. But now she knew she could have done it. She could have shared something with him a little more than friendship and a little less than love.

The good news was that now he would get real happiness. She felt protective of him. Tender. And jealous all at the same time.

“He got them!” George exclaimed. “He got the papers!”

Philip released her and they both strained their eyes to see if it was, indeed, a paper in the barber’s hand.

“Hallelujah!” Reenie shouted.

Mawu turned to Lizzie and spoke quietly. “That was a good thing you done.”

J
ust as they’d thought, Philip left with the barber that very afternoon. Each of the slaves gave him a token to take with him. Reenie gave him a wooden cross her brother had carved for her years before. George gave him a nectarine he had stolen from a nearby orchard. Mawu gave him a sack containing some herbs
she said would protect him from evil spirits. Lizzie gave him a note she had carefully written the night before containing the address of the plantation in Tennessee.

That night, Reenie told Lizzie as they drew water at the well she would no longer have sex with the hotel manager. Lizzie replied she had not known that it was still going on. Reenie looked at her with a half-surprised expression and continued to pump water. Lizzie remembered the summer before when Reenie’s own brother and master had promised her to the hotel manager. All of them had seen Reenie making the evening walk to the hotel for the remaining days of the summer. But since none of them had seen Reenie making that walk this summer, they’d figured that the relationship had ended.

But it obviously hadn’t. If he was bold enough to continue the relationship across summers, then he would not take no for an answer. Reenie’s master had made a trade of some kind, and most likely he would have to give up whatever the manager was giving him in order to free Reenie of her obligation.

In the days that followed, Lizzie saw less and less of Reenie. A week after their conversation, she went to Reenie’s cabin to see if the woman had really been able to end it. The men were gone for the night on an overnight camping trip, and since she figured Reenie would be obligated to the hotel manager on a night they were gone, she wanted to see if her friend was in the cottage.

She saw a light in the window and went around to the back door. She tapped.

“Miss Reenie?”

She saw the lace curtain in the kitchen window inch back. A moment later, she heard the floorboards creak. The door cracked open.

“What you want?” Reenie answered. Her eyes moved past Lizzie.

“I just came to talk.”

“You by yourself?”

“Course I’m by myself.” Lizzie looked behind her just in case. Reenie was making her nervous.

Reenie opened the door just enough for Lizzie to slide through.

Lizzie looked around once she had entered. “Are
you
alone?”

Reenie grabbed her arm. “What you mean?”

“What’s wrong with you? I’m just asking. And I thought I heard something besides.”

Reenie scooted a chair into the middle of the floor. “Sit,” she commanded.

Lizzie obeyed.

Reenie went to the closet and stood before it. “If you tell anybody, she dead. If you tell anybody, you gone have blood on your hands.”

“Tell what?”

Reenie opened the closet door. A girl peeked out.

Lizzie’s hand flew to her mouth. “Who is this?”

“Shh!”

The girl began to cry.

“Hush, baby,” Reenie said. “Miss Reenie gone take care of you.” She took a piece of bread out of the basket and handed it to the girl. The child broke through its hard crust with her teeth. Then she scooped out its soft whiteness with her finger and stuck it in her mouth.

Lizzie looked the girl up and down. She was dressed like a slave. Or, at least, she was dressed like a slave trying not to dress like a slave, wearing pants like a boy and a large shirt tucked into them. The shirt wore a patch across the arm as if the sleeve had been ripped off and then put back on. Her hair was cut short like a boy, too, but there was no mistaking the soft feminine features.