So I’m not going to whisper a thing about who just yet. I hardly got any power to speak of, but I got my silence.
I’m not going to say why our masters were murdered either. You’re going to have to discover that for yourself. And it’ll make sense to you or it won’t. Just like Mantis is either out there on the plantation or he ain’t. No perhaps and no maybes about it.
So I can’t help you with the why just yet. Even so, you’re going to have to know a slip about Big Master Henry. Him first. Then the other masters who came along after him.
You’re going to have to know about him alive if you’re going to understand how important it was to have him dead and buried. Because it sure meant a good many things to us when we laid his casket in the ground on that glorious day of September sun. For one thing, it meant that Mantis might be out there in the wild grasses sprouting up along Christmas Creek. Inside us too, getting us ready. Waiting beyond our master’s reach for a chance to lead us toward that everlasting fortress in our minds where snow is always falling.
*
So there Big Master Henry is, standing on the piazza with his hands on his hips like he done own the sky over all of Carolina. Big, because he’s over six feet tall and wide too, like a wagon filled with horse manure. Some folks think he’s handsome, but they haven’t seen him with an empty bottle of whiskey clutched in his hand, his face all puffy and his eyes darting like spiders figuring out a way to get at you. Ain’t nobody look maw o’nery den dat man, my mamma used to whisper. And if you ask me, she was right. Not that anybody’s waiting in line to ask me much. Though I’ve got plenty to say, because I got fifteen years of keeping my mouth shut sitting behind me.
So now you know why there’s a Big in Big Master Henry. We always call him Master because he may not own the sky, but he owns every weed, wattle, and Negro from Christmas Creek in the east, to the Cooper River in the north and west, on down to Marble Hill in the south.
Yes, Massa, I’s do jus’ what ya seh, Massa…. I talk like that sometimes in front of the white folks, since they don’t much appreciate me speaking like I’ve got any education. But my papa won me the chance to read and write when I was barely done crawling. Not that I’m any different from the others. The scars on my back that are never going to come off, no matter how hard I scrub, remind me of that every day. That’s why I sometimes reach around to feel them just before I go to sleep. Pain that makes you the same as people you love can be a good pain, I think.
Marble Hill used to be Marylebone Hill back when my mamma came over from Africa, but she and the others shortened the name because Marylebone didn’t fit in their mouths too good. Papa still called it that though, because he liked the sound. He used to say the strangest and most beautiful things, though he hardly ever wrote anything down. He left writing things down for me.
Most folks call me Morri, but that’s not my real name — it’s Memoria. I tried to keep it secret, because at first I wasn’t too happy with it. No, ma’am. But I don’t mind telling everyone now. It means memory in Portuguese. My papa knew a bit of that language, owing to his having lived in Portugal for a few years.
Grandma Alice was called Blue because she was so Cabinda-black that folks said she shined blue in the moonlight. She used to call Big Master Henry by the name he had as a boy — Hennie. She’d been his wet nurse and was allowed a few liberties beyond the reach of the rest of us. “Ya must nevah feget yasself, chile,” she used to tell me. “Ya feget yasself, Morri chile, ya like on die.” Once, when we were stooped in the fields, I called Big Master Henry a fat old hyena for ruining the neat border of rice plants we’d just made. I spoke so loud that he nearly heard me. Mamma lifted me up and shook me like a rag doll. She shrieked that I had to keep my lips as still as sleep because she was never ever going to see me tied to the whipping barrel. I had to sit her down right in the mud and comfort her because she was so upset at losing her temper. Later, that made us both laugh till the tears were falling down our cheeks and I had to beg her to stop making faces. My mamma laughed better than anyone, even my papa. She was much taller than him — tall as most any man. With high cheekbones and eyes so black they reflected things nobody could normally see — even the future, some folks thought. Looking at my parents together made me smile because they looked so different, but it was like they fit together.
Mamma carried herself high, and when she aimed those black eyes at you in anger she made your spirit just shrink away in shame. Or if she was feeling goodly toward you, she made you think you were better because she was watching.
Mamma died of the fevers seven years ago, in June of 1817. Papa was the next to go. He left me all alone three and a half years later. After that, I was the only one from my family still around. That’s why I just had to write these things down. Otherwise, nobody’d know anything about us, and that would be like being swallowed up by the ground. Like we were never here.
*
It was the rough boots and the bunions. And the moonshine. That was why I thought Big Master Henry never had a kind word to say. He’d side-shuffle all ’round, always smirking — “Comin’ up at ya sideways like a rattlesnake with its rattle hidden,” Weaver used to say. Weaver used to be allowed to go hunting with Big Master Henry. He could spot a mole’s nose poking pink out of the grass from half a mile away, Papa used to tell me. And know just what the mole was thinking too!
Weaver was a good friend of my parents. As I grew older he became a friend of mine too. I always liked older folks. I never had much luck with the ones my age. They used to say I was too yellow-skinned and skinny and that my eyes were peculiar. Likely some of them thought I used to act superior. Maybe I did think I was better than them because I could read and write. Till I got myself whipped. After that, we all knew that I was just the same as everybody else.
Weaver had two children and his wife, Martha, over in Comingtee Plantation, which is just across the Cooper River to the north of River Bend. He’d get a pass to go there on Sundays. It was mighty hard on him not being with his family most of the week, but he didn’t mind it all the time, if you want the truth. Because he liked teasing some of the young girls around here. He was a rogue, if you ask me, with them light-brown eyes always shining at the shapes of girls.
He’s dead now, and mostly because of me. That sits heavy on me when I lie down at night and think of my life and what’s gone right and what’s gone wrong. Likely it always will. But I wouldn’t want a man to die with a bullet in him and me not to think about how I helped put it there. It would be like claiming he was nothing and ain’t never been anything but nothing.
*
Big Master Henry liked hurting each person differently, I think, in the way that would do the most damage. It was a Friday evening in July of 1820 when my turn came. The night was moist, the air clinging so tight at your face that you didn’t really sleep, you just kind of fainted away. I was nearly twelve years old and was working in the Big House. I slept in a shed next to the kitchen, and one evening the Master sent his personal slave, Crow, to fetch me from bed, saying that he had some more silver for me to polish, which was one of my jobs.
Big Master Henry grabbed my arm as I stepped into his room. Maybe I hadn’t polished something right, I thought. My heart began thumping something fierce. But then he kissed me on my forehead, like he was an old friend. “You’re soft, Morri,” he said. Then he offered me a glass of wine he’d already poured. “You’ve never had any, have you?” he asked. His eyes were kind and he didn’t seem drunk.
When I shook my head, he lifted the glass to my lips. It tasted sweet and syrupy. He said my tongue was real pink. He wondered why nigger girls always had such pink tongues. Then he gave a laugh and said not to mind him, that he was just being curious in his own way, and he hoped he hadn’t offended me.
He knelt on the ground, took my shoes off, and rubbed my feet.
“Morri, you just keep drinking and let me do the rest,” he whispered.
When I had finished my glass, he s
tood up and took it from me. He licked the rim with his tongue, winking, then put it down on his night table. Seeing him unbuttoning his trousers, I knew the real reason I’d been asked to be a house slave, and it didn’t have nothing to do with how well I did my polishing and ironing.
Maybe I only thought these things after he’d had his way with me. I can’t recall so well what I thought at the time, because I was so afraid of how ashamed Papa was going to be when he found out.
“Please don’t hurt me, Big Master Henry,” I pleaded. I was worried he’d make bruises on me that everyone could see.
“It won’t hurt unless you want it to,” he said. “You’ve got your woman’s blood by now. So you must have been expecting it sooner or later.”
“I ain’t ready,” I said.
“You’re plenty ready.” He laughed. “I’ve been feeling how ready you are, and my hands don’t lie.” He took my hand and brought it up to just where he wanted it. “You see what I got for you?” he said, grinning because of how quick I pulled away. “It might frighten you now, but you’re going to think it’s real nice once it’s all yours. Trust me, I know what you girls like.”
Pretty soon he was on top of me, pushing and grunting, and I could smell the perfume on him, like he’d bathed in it. “Please, Big Master Henry, don’t do this to me.”
“In a few minutes you’re gonna wonder why you fought me so hard. And you’re going to know why God put you on this good green earth, nigger girl.”
Him talking about God must have made me remember the leather-bound Old Testament I kept under my pillow. Papa said it had been printed all the way over in London, a hundred years before, so I figured it must be worth some money. I told the Master I’d give it to him.
He said, “Don’t you know the only scripture I want is right up between your legs.”
There comes a moment when you know that there’s no use fighting, and I knew it then. So I shut my eyes and tried to make myself go dead. But it didn’t work. It felt like he was pushing broken glass into me. No matter how much I begged, he just kept on going. I couldn’t risk shouting for help. If I was going to die, then I was, and there was nothing to be done about it. I’d have chosen death any day of the week over having anyone find out.
I remember he whispered in my ear, “You’re mine now, down to your little nigger soul.”
No, I’m not, I thought. And I began whispering a line from Ezekiel as if it could protect me: Nor shall wild beasts devour them …
Strange, but that’s mostly what I remember about that first time — whispering crazy things, anything I could remember, as if the sound of my voice could save me.
Afterward, he said, “You’re just about the worst I ever had, Morri. You ain’t got no crackle, no spark. You’re dead inside, nigger girl.”
He patted me on my behind and sent me back to my room, but I ran out of the house all the way to Porter’s Woods. I wanted to slip out of my soiled skin so bad I couldn’t stop trembling. I knew I had to put what had happened way behind me or I’d have to tell my papa. I had no control over time, but of distance I had a little, and it was the only thing I had to help me keep quiet. When I was far enough from the cabins and the Big House, I started hollering for Mamma, because I didn’t want to give anyone alive the burden of my truth. I fell on my hands and knees like the ruined animal he’d made me into, and I pleaded with her for help. It was as if he’d cut out the best part of me and left only blood behind. I told her that. And I told her that the worst thing was that I didn’t know who I was now.
I told her it frightened me too, not being myself, and him having my soul. She didn’t answer. Though I know she would have if she could.
When I stopped crying, I cupped my hand in the river and brought the water to where he’d broken me. Then I stepped into the river itself and sat down in all my clothes. Maybe I was just trying to reassure myself I was still alive and could feel something like being cold. It’ll sound right peculiar, but when I stepped onto the bank again I took some Spanish moss from a low branch of a cypress tree and held it there too. I held it there to me and whispered from Ezekiel that he’d not devour me, and tried to become the wind carrying away my voice and nothing else at all, so I wouldn’t have to feel anything ever again.
A twelve-year-old girl isn’t ready to have who she is taken from her. No one is.
So many times I wanted to tell my papa what the Master was doing, but I could never find the courage. That secret of mine was just about the worst part. It made me believe I was nothing.
The Master seemed to be cutting new things out of me each time he touched me. All I knew was that they were gone and that they must have made me who I was. I was moving further away from the person I’d been every day.
All that bloody moss I made down by the river … Maybe I wanted someone to find it, to leave some trace of what had been done to me out in the world in plain sight.
I read my Old Testament too, by the light of a single candle: Deal kindly with us, O Lord, for we have suffered insult enough….
I slept with that good book open to Psalm One Hundred and Twenty-Three right on top of where he was hurting me, spine up, like a shield, praying I wouldn’t have his baby. I was thinking, too, that maybe if he cut enough of the deepest things out of me, I wouldn’t be able to have a child and that would be a good thing. So sometimes when he was on me, I admit I was thinking, Cut more, cutit all, leave nothing behind that can grow….
*
After that first time, I saw my papa in the morning. I’d hardly slept, so I couldn’t keep from crying in front of him. But I lied and said it was just me missing Mamma. He hugged me tight, and when I winced he said, “You’re not ill, are you?”
I told him his touch reminded me of her even more, which was true, since love has always felt alike to me no matter who it comes from.
Once Crow heard me hollering in the woods. I told him I’d nearly been bit by a big old rattlesnake, and he nodded like he believed me. But he knew what was going on. He listened to everything that went on in the Big House. And he knew just as well as I did that we ought not to say anything to my papa, because he might try to kill Big Master Henry and end up getting lynched.
“The woods ain’t safe, Morri girl,” he said, taking my hand.
We walked most of the way home in silence, but near the Big House he held out his arms to me. “Let me hug ya, girl, ’fore we get so close that they can see,” he said. “Don’t be ’fraid a me. I ain’t like him. I ain’t gonna hurt ya evuh.”
*
The Master was getting pretty fed up with my lying still as death beneath him and might have stopped his wickedness all by himself, but one day he got one of his spells of weakness real bad and had to leave me alone. Then that ugly giant got so ill that he couldn’t move. He just lay there and moaned.
Die, I thought, because no one’s going to regret it, not even your wife.
After a few days of suffering like that, he got himself the kind of burning fever that brings demons. He was so misty-minded that he started asking questions that made no sense at all. Who’s inside the lantern? Where’s the river riding to today?
This is September of 1820 that we’re talking about.
He’d always recovered before from his spells, so we weren’t too concerned. Not that it was Dr. Lydell who ever once pulled him back from death. No, sir. It had always been my papa and his curing work. He knew just about everything about herbs and potions. He was famous for that — even among the Indians, because he once cured a deathly ill medicine man who came with a group of Creek braves to River Bend when I was only five or six. He began teaching me most of what he knew about that same time. Though I wasn’t born to it, like him.
Papa told me years before that he’d studied curing in Portugal. He’d lived with a family there and worked with a Jewish magician who had his own apothecary shop. He learned all about which European plants could be used to cure most anything. He’d even been to England to see a man named Jenner who
’d discovered a way of preventing smallpox.
Mistress Holly was counting on Papa to save her husband once again. Even though this time he was worse off than ever. I remember her saying in that breathy voice of hers, “Ahm a-cantin’ on ya, Samuel, no wun aylse.”
That was my father’s name — Samuel. In Africa, they called him Tsamma, which is the name of a melon that grows there. His master in Virginia was the one who changed it.
With the Master out of the way in his sickroom, the air of the plantation had lost its bite. We almost believed we weren’t being watched, but we were, since the overseer and the black foremen were always waiting for one little sign of tiredness to call us just plain nigger-lazy, then drag us off to the whipping barrel. Even so, I’d begun thinking nothing would bother me again if the Master would just let me be from now on.
On the night of the Twentieth of September, when the tea-room clock rang its nine o’clock bells, I knocked on Big Master Henry’s door, just like I was supposed to, to bring him his glass of hot lemonade. Lily the cook had made it for him every day for the past decade, just as my papa had told her to. It was made with lemons grown right on the plantation down by Christmas Creek, with honey that my father collected from his hives in Porter’s Woods and Wilson’s Meadow. He had special permission to wander the plantation to collect his honey.
One time the Master told me that the Israelites lived on honey and lemon in the desert, so that was why he drank it. Big Master Henry supposedly knew these things because his papa had been a minister in Charleston. But I’d read the Old Testament from front to back by the time I was ten and never saw any such claim. It was then that I knew for sure that he made up the Bible as he went. Nearly all the white people do, even when they get their quotes right.
“You can remember the words and still not know anything about the meaning hidden underneath,” Papa used to tell me.
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