Dessa Rose

by Sherley A. Williams

  Sometimes now she took Clara, as she had once taken Timmy, and spread a quilt for her under the trees. Now and then Timmy and Dante, pausing between the vague but exciting adventures that drew them to the fields and woods, or taking a rest from picking the fruit that Ada had started to can and dry for winter use, would sit with her. Most frequently it was Nathan who bore her company. He took his turn at the plow, he assured her when Rufel laughingly taxed him (“Harker going see to that,” he added with a laugh), but his luck with snare and fishing pole were valued more than any furrow he could plow. He had shown Timmy and Dante how to make snares to trap the small game that abounded in the woods. The two youngsters had yet to make a contribution to the pot, but Nathan’s skill kept a variety of fresh meat on the table. And he told fascinating stories—animals that talked, trees that had spirits, people who refused to die, and tales that he swore were “true to life.” Often Harker figured in these; between them, the two of them seemed to have done everything possible for a darky to do and much that Rufel knew to be impossible.

  Nathan had a gap between his two front teeth that gave his grin an open, carefree quality, and little red-rimmed eyes that he could make dance or sparkle almost, it seemed, at will. His company came, in large measure, to replace the companionship Rufel had shared with Mammy. She could not see him as she had seen Mammy, almost as an extension of herself—his observations were, by and large, too racy for that. His opinions and positions were sometimes mildly outrageous—he would rather come back to life as an animal or bird with a chance to work his way back to human form than sit around heaven drinking honey; women were as smart as men; there were some people who could see into the future—but he could make even the driest crop report sound scandalously funny. He treated her with a semblance of the deference and indulgence that had characterized Mammy’s attitude toward her. Now and then, she might speak of some incident she had seen or heard of in Charleston or Mobile, but she felt little need to talk about herself. Mostly she was content to listen.

  Through talking with Nathan, Rufel came to know something of the people who lived in her Quarters: Ned, a young rascal given to playing pranks; Red, who longed after a “wife” down around his homeplace; Castor and Janet and the others—and once again became aware of the daily routine of the farm. She used him much as she had Mammy, as the means through which she participated in the life beyond the yard. These were not Sutton darkies, of course, so she was mindful of what she said. Nathan could shut his face just as tight and quick as Ada or that wench, but he was far friendlier.

  Rufel still felt some resentment that the wench had destroyed her comfortable, and comforting, image of Mammy, but she no longer held that silly argument against the wench. However hateful and spiteful the wench had been, she couldn’t change the way Mammy had cared for Rufel. Even if Mammy herself had been spiteful, bitter, secretly rebellious, Mammy, through caring and concern, had made Rufel hers, had laid claim to her affections. Rufel knew this as love. She would have said as much, but the wench’s stiff civility made her hesitant to reopen the subject.

  She had heard the story of the escape from the coffle and the wench’s rescue from the cellar again and again from Nathan. She knew there must be some element of exaggeration as in his other “true-to-life” tales. She would not admire the action—one couldn’t, of course, approve any slave’s running away or an attack upon a master—still, something in her wanted to applaud the girl’s will, the spunk that had made action possible. The wench was nothing but a little old colored gal, yet she had helped to make herself free.

  Nothing Rufel said or did made either the wench or Ada more at ease with her. Once Rufel had entered the bedroom to find Ada combing the wench’s hair. The older darky sat in a ladder-back chair; the girl sat on the pallet, her back leaning against the rungs of the chair. Her head rested on Ada’s knee as Ada’s fingers wove rhythmically through the stubby strands of the girl’s hair. They looked so companionable and content that Rufel almost felt an intruder. The moment the darkies became aware of her they started nervously, the wench vailing her eyes and bowing her head, Ada rising clumsily. Almost, Rufel begged pardon for entering her own room.

  When Nathan told her that the wench was trying to settle on a name for the baby, Rufel did not immediately suggest one. She called him Button, a name that Timmy and Ada had picked up from her, which seemed like a perfectly serviceable one to her. Almost, she offered it in jest, but it was obvious that Nathan took the matter seriously. He was all for naming the baby Kaine, after the baby’s daddy, and Harker agreed with him. The wench wanted to name the baby in honor of her rescuers. The baby’s daddy, like that part of her life, was dead; she would not rake it up each time she called her son’s name. Rufel saw both sides and suggested, half humorously, that the baby be named for all of them, or at least a name that represented them all, and, on impulse, offered “Desmond” as a pretty compromise. “Des” for Odessa, “mond” to represent the men, Nathan, Cully, and Harker, who were responsible for his free birth.

  Button became Desmond Kaine (called Mony because Odessa, so Nathan told her, felt him to be as good as gold) with little ceremony that Rufel could see. She said nothing, but felt that, as mistress of the place, she ought at least to have been advised. She added it to her secret count against the wench, which already included her coldness toward herself and the wench’s growing chumminess with Ada. Now she took a private pleasure in having had some hand in naming Button, feeling repaid in some measure for the wench’s continuing aloofness. Maybe this was what Mammy had felt when she had changed Ruth Elizabeth’s name, that somehow she had snuck a little piece of the child for herself, had marked at least some part of him with something of her own making.

  She sought Nathan’s company more often—he at least treated her like a person—and took out her pique at the wench by teasing Nathan, insisting that he must be sweet on her. “You talk about her all the time,” she would say innocently, as if she herself took no delight in hearing of the girl’s exploits.

  At first Nathan had ignored her teasing remarks, then laughingly denied them. One day, he burst out in genuine annoyance. “Course I’m sweet on Dessa. Cully have a crush on her and I’m ‘sweet on him,’ too.” He laughed harshly. “You been through with someone what we been through together and you be ‘sweet’ on em, too,” he said turning away from her.

  Rufel realized with dismay that he was really upset. “Nathan,” she said contritely, “you know I’m only teasing.”

  After a moment, he turned back to her. “You see so many people beat up by slavery, Mis’ess,” he said wearily, “turned into snakes and animals, poor excuses even for they own selfs. And the coffle bring out the worst sometime, either that or kill you. And it didn’t in Dessa.” He sighed. “I feels bad for all them that didn’t make it, worse for all them that didn’t die, that even now living in slavery after we been free. But us three—we did it and we made it. It’s gots to be some special feeling after that.”

  “What going to happen when the master come back here?”

  It was high summer, the weather hot, sultry. Rufel and Nathan had sat in companionable silence, sweating, speaking lazily, now and then, of one thing or another. This question made Rufel’s stomach lurch. “Why—why nothing.” She had not thought about Bertie in weeks and even now his name did not awaken the familiar terror over his whereabouts. Rather, she was uneasy that Nathan should ask about him.

  “He going to give us a share of the crop like you did?” Nathan asked almost idly.

  Share the crop. The words echoed in Rufel’s mind. That might mean something this year. Harker said they were likely to make thirty bales of cotton and close to a hundred bushels of corn in addition to the oats and potatoes. Cotton was the only cash crop but it was ridiculous to suppose that Bertie was likely to share any part of the harvest.

  “Or he going to try to claim us as his?” Nathan continued quietly.

  Rufel looked at Nathan, unable to answer truthfully. He might, s
he knew; Bertie might do anything. Her stomach tightened at the thought. He would want to enslave them. He didn’t believe in sassy negroes or smart negroes or free negroes; that was why he couldn’t keep a field hand on the place. He drove them hard and stinted on their food and clothing. Rufel knew this without ever having really seen it. Mammy had made sure that any darky who worked in or near the House was clean; Bertie had not encouraged Rufel to roam much beyond the House and yard. She had seen the hands from a distance when she rode out to the fields with Bertie now and then. They did look wretched, he had admitted, but then slavery was a wretched lot. And she had accepted this as long as she didn’t hear the screams. Rufel bit her lip. Could she be that blind again? And these people would not be beaten or sold. She licked her lips. “I—I wouldn’t let him sell you-all.”

  He looked at her with a humorous lift to his mouth and Rufel flushed. She would have no more rights than they when Bertie came back.

  “We don’t have to be here when he come back,” he said, leaning toward her. “Harker got a plan let us be far way—if you help us.” Uneasy but intrigued despite herself, Rufel listened as Nathan continued earnestly, “Member I told you his old master was a flimflam man, a confidence man? Well, they had one scheme they used when they was down on they luck. They would go into a strange town and his master’d sell Harker, auction him off. After a couple of days Harker would run off and join him at a place they’d already picked out. They do that in a couple of towns till they got a stake together again. Harker figure we could go down in the black belt and run that scheme three or four times using me and him, maybe two or three others, we could make maybe nine or ten thousand dollars. And we’d split it, split the money. That’d be five thousand cash dollars for you; five thousand dollars for us to get away from here on.”

  Rufel was a little repelled by the scheme, yet amused, too. It was like Nathan, she thought, to propose that she do the very thing she wanted to keep Bertie from doing. “What would I do with so much money?” she asked skeptically.

  “What couldn’t you do?” he asked with a hoot of laughter. “You say your husband went off looking for a new stake; well, you’d have one waiting for him right here when he come back.”

  When he came back. Bertie would take the money. They would resume their trips to Mobile and perhaps beyond; they might finish the second story. He would buy more slaves, clear more land, plant more cotton and their life would begin again: the poorly timed extravagances, the arguments with the neighbors, the wild schemes and dashed expectations, the single-minded dependence on cotton. Nobody around here planted more than a few acres of cotton; Harker said the soil was too thin and sandy to nourish the hungry cotton plants. Rufel shook herself. Bertie had made a good home for them, she told herself staunchly; only a greedy, ungrateful fool would think otherwise.

  “What if he don’t come back? What you going do then?”

  The question opened the door on the bottomless terror that, in the settled heat of summer, she had thought gone forever and she teetered at the edge of panic.

  “Dorcas always thought you’d go back to Charleston.”

  His quiet statement pulled her back from the brink and she turned to him. Charleston. To go back without begging her family’s assistance, without risking their rebuff—

  Profoundly disturbed and unwilling to continue the discussion, she changed the subject nervously. “What, what did you do when you was slaved?” Aside from his true-to-life adventures, he never talked in any detail about his life and she had long felt a curiosity about him. “What did you do?” she repeated.

  He was quiet so long that she thought she had offended him and he would not answer.

  “Worked for a slave trader grew negroes by planting they toes in the ground. Made em drink ink at night to give em color.”

  She smiled, glad to see him restored to good humor, but unwilling to let him turn aside her question with a joke as he often did. “What’d you really do?”

  “Loved pretty white womens like you.”

  Her head snapped around; he was grinning, the gap between his front teeth sparkling, the sherry-colored eyes dancing. The lie was so outrageous that she laughed. “No, seriously,” she said, sobering a little, but still gasping for breath.

  “Serious business.” He watched her steadily, only the twinkle and the grin lurking about his lips belying his outward gravity. “It’s a special kind of white woman can’t keep they hands off a negro. Special breed of nigga won’t let em.”

  She hadn’t laughed like this, she thought, hearing his soft chuckle under her own, since, since she didn’t know when. “All right,” she said suddenly, “what did you all do with the babies?” not even marveling at her own language.

  “I makes love,” he said grandly, “not babies.” He shrugged. “Other peoples makes carriages and clothes. White mens makes labor and”—he cut his eyes at her—“lust. Why can’t I make love to a”—he coughed—“a lady?”

  It was the funniest, most audacious spiel she had ever heard, though she doubted she understood half of what was going on. “What,” she asked, “what, what did Harker do?”

  “Oh, he raised sand.”

  “A grain,” she squealed, giddily, “a grain that grew up to be rock.”

  “No, this was hell,” he laughed, “and when he got through with that, he raised the devil.”

  “And Ada?” she asked. “I know Ada ‘raised’ something strange.”

  He sobered. “Well,” he said. “You know womens don’t never have such a good time as the mens.”

  She expected him to make some further joke, but he said nothing. They were both silent now, and awkward after the shared laughter. “Bertie was a gambler, wasn’t he, Nathan?” she asked suddenly, remembering the avidness with which he had returned to the river, the previous absences from which he had come back flushed, excitable, or, as often, ill-tempered and silent. She hadn’t known herself that she knew enough to ask this and she was frightened at her perception. But having asked she could not quit the subject. “Wasn’t he?” she asked again as Nathan hesitated.

  “Yes’m,” he said. Sighing heavily, he looked at her steadily. “Yes’m, he is.”

  “Why didn’t Mammy tell me?” Rufel wailed, feeling more betrayed by Mammy’s silence than by Bertie’s deception. Had they conspired against her, plotted together to keep her in the dark?

  “It wasn’t her place.”

  “She should have told me anyway,” Rufel insisted.

  “I spect she tried,” Nathan said drily. “And what was you going to do way out here by yourself, if you had knowed?”

  What mamma had written must be true, she thought, a wastrel, a petty scoundrel; how much had he borrowed over the years?

  “Maybe Dorcas was wrong,” Nathan said, “maybe she should have told you flat out front what she knowed. And maybe if she had knowed up front, before you was married, she might’ve tried to say something. But she didn’t know and once yo’all got out here—You was happy; all that time, least she thought you was happy and that was what yo’all both wanted.”

  Rufel looked mutely at Nathan. He was saying that she hadn’t wanted to know; that she had kept herself from knowing the truth about Bertie. She looked away. There would be no Mammy when Bertie came back to abet her in the pretense. “Well,” she said rising, wanting desperately to be alone, to think, “I guess it’s time for me to go.”

  He rose and touched his hat. “Mis’ess.”

  Rufel walked back to the house in a daze. She hadn’t known Bertie either, had purposefully kept herself from knowing him. Even now she could not recall his features; oh, she remembered that he had blue eyes and dark hair, that he was handsome. But for the life of her, she couldn’t see these features in any familiar configuration. What else had she refused to see? she wondered bitterly.

  Bertie was dead. Rufel walked on, considering this possibility more calmly than she would ever have thought possible. He had gone off a week or two without word before. She had r
eceived not so much as a note during the whole time he had gone that first summer. But even he would not go off and stay so long without a word. Truely he must be dead. And if Bertie were dead—Five thousand dollars was more money than she could imagine.

  Rufel entered the House quietly, deep in thought. Hearing a slight noise as she started past the bedroom door, she stopped, pushing the door open silently. The wench stood by the window, her back to the door. Rufel paused, uncertain; the wench wasn’t supposed to be on her feet yet. “Just a minute, Ada,” the wench said without turning and bent to step into her drawers; briefly her breasts and hips were reflected in the dresser mirror. Only then did Rufel realize that the wench was naked; her bottom was so scarred that Rufel had thought she must be wearing some kind of garment. “I know you said tomorrow,” the girl said without looking up, as she secured the drawers about her waist.

  Barely managing to suppress the quick gasp of sympathy surprised from her by that glimpse of the dark body, and acutely embarrassed, Rufel closed the door. The wench’s loins looked like a mutilated cat face. Scar tissue plowed through her pubic region so no hair would ever grow there again. Rufel leaned weakly against the door, regretting what she had seen. The wench had a right to hide her scars, her pain, Rufel thought, almost in tears herself. Impulsively, she opened the bedroom door.

  “Odessa—” and stopped, unsure of what to say. The wench had snatched up a dress and stood stiffly with it clutched in front of her bare chest. Rufel sensed the smoldering hostility beneath the girl’s obvious embarrassment and flushed painfully, recalling how she’d tried to argue the girl down about Mammy. “That other day”—she stopped and cleared her throat—“that other day, we wasn’t talking about the same person. Your mammy birthed you, and mines, mines just helped to raise me. But she loved me,” she couldn’t help adding, “she loved me, just like yours loved you.”