Dessa Rose

by Sherley A. Williams

  Ada had been on the place even before the master took off. She’d come from up around Huntsville and she and Annabelle was pretty wore out by the time they got that far. They stole or grubbed what they could in the woods. This is what all the people came there did: run, beg, steal, starve, run. And all the time not really knowing where you going, just that you can’t go back. See, they couldn’t go to no House and ask for work, ask for food; sometimes, if there wasn’t no dogs, they could get food in the Quarters. But it wasn’t too many Quarters round there, wasn’t too many farms. That’s why Ada stayed around. White folks there didn’t keep too close watch over black people; they thought it was so few up that way that they knew them all.

  Well, Dorcas friended Ada; Ada taken a chance when no one else wasn’t about and asked Dorcas for food, which Dorcas gived her. She and Annabelle had found a cave not far from the Quarters; they stayed round there in the day, slept there and only come out at night. When the master left, Ada moved into the cook-shack. So she had good reason to know about the white woman’s business. And she did run on about her: Miz Ruint think that shiftless husband of hers a gentleman; she don’t know nothing about slaves.

  “Tell you, dearie, she can’t come from too good of a peoples, she don’t know how to talk to no darky.” We was setting out there at that big slab-top table under the tree where Ada was canning. We had made up; she really was glad someone had said something to Miz Ruint. She just wished I hadn’t called Annabelle’s name—which, a course, I hadn’t. But wasn’t no use trying to tell Ada that; once she got an idea in her head, it was like trying pull hen teeth to get it out. I knew I wasn’t entirely without fault myself—I really was trying to watch my tongue—so I just went on and begged her pardon. Anyway, it was that fool negro (meaning Nathan) that Ada was most put out with.

  “You know this ain’t the first white woman Nathan done loved with,” she told me, like this ought to make some difference in how I felt. But I didn’t believe her. Ada thought I was just jealous-hearted; she would say anything to get me out the way of making what she called a fool of myself over a negro didn’t have no better sense than Nathan. He’d stayed with his first mistress because he was doing her “a…a service,” she told me.

  Well, I almost laughed at that. For a black man to even think under a white woman’s clothes was death and here she was telling me Nathan had a habit of doing this with them? It was bad enough, his doing it with one; only way I could splain that was that they was both crazy. But, stead of arguing, I agreed with her about the sense part—though I knew for a fact Nathan had plenty. But, see, Nathan was one of these what you call red-eyed negroes. You know, the kind of negro get his shirt soiled in hell and go to heaven for a change of clothes—so he can go back and “study” hell some more. You knew this was wrong, but you couldn’t help but admire it. And the mens thought Nathan’s rutting up there with a white woman was a fine turnaround, so Ada said, after the way white mens was always taking our womens. Not all white mens acted animals towards us, understand, but enough of them did till this is what we always feared with them—and what our mens feared for us. I was spared this in bondage, but I had seen the way some white mens looked at me, big belly and all, when I was on that coffle.

  The womens didn’t get as much kick out of Nathan and Miz Ruint as the mens. Janet said Nathan should’ve raped her or at least knocked her round a little since this what he was going be cused of anyway. Even Milly didn’t see how neither one of them could go round the place so unconcerned like what they was doing wasn’t a danger to us all. By and large though, no one had too much to say. Harker said it was Nathan’s business and if people wanted to talk about it, they ought to do it to Nathan’s face. Ada told me this, you understand; didn’t nobody say nothing to me. I was the “devil woman” this was between me and “my mens.” The rest of them was all trying to keep out of it.

  I know the peoples didn’t mean no harm by that name; in fact, they was proud of it—one of our womens helping to best the white folks, scaring a white man half to death. I didn’t no ways look like I could do all that. I mean, I was sturdy—you had to be sturdy—but I ain’t built big. All the peoples got a kick out of this, me so small, jumping white mens. But I hadn’t never liked that name, not from the first time I heard Jemina say it. And now they begin to take this in another way and look at me like maybe that “devil woman” wasn’t such a joke after all. This, where before they was saying Miz Ruint was the one touched in the head. Looking at me funny like I was the one ungrateful—or lame-brained, choosing corn husk when I could’ve had feather. Didn’t no one just come right out and say this, you understand. They just act like it. Didn’t no one say nothing to me; and Ada was about the only one I said something to. Still, they was uneasy about Nathan; man or woman they was uneasy. White mens would kill to keep something like this quiet.

  We was all worried that another white person would find out about this—though really, the onliest white person I’d seen since I’d been there was a peddler she bought some flower seeds off of. Didn’t no one visit her. This is why we felt a little safe there; she lived so cut off. But this with her and Nathan—seem like it was something white folks would just know.

  White woman sent word by Cully that she wasn’t going no place with me till I begged pardon for calling her out her name. Well, that was fine with me, I told him, cause I wasn’t going no place with her, no ways. Ada hooted. We was setting around to the side of the cabin in the shade when Cully walked up, so I guess this must have been a Sunday. The others was about, mostly I spect down to the fishing hole cause it was hot.

  Cully wasn’t nothing but a boy, remind me of my brother Jeeter, way his wrists was always showing under his sleeves—big, heavy bones, look like they going pop the skin. Oh, they wasn’t nothing alike in color; Jeeter look like midnight beside Cully’s day. But something in the way Cully carried hisself put me in mind of Jeeter. I think this how I first come to note Cully. I wasn’t nothing but a little girl last time I seed Jeeter and he was the age Cully look to be. Jeeter never got old in my memory and I call him up now, sharp as the day they sold him.

  “Nathan put you up to this, huh, and Harker?” I asked Cully. He was like a little puppy dog when it come to them, wasn’t nothing they could say or do was wrong to him. Used to be wasn’t nothing I said wrong with him, neither, till all this come up. Oh, I had a lot to be hot with Miz Ruint about and I would’ve bit my tongue before I said sorry.

  “This what Miz Rufel say,” he told me, coloring up like a white girl, he was that light. It made him look about ten years old, which he knew, which made him madder—and redder—still. He hadn’t even started hair on his chin, so wasn’t nothing to hide that blush. For a minute I felt kind of bad about taking my spite out on him. But then I thought about him carrying word for her and I got hotter, adding just for spite, “Specially not on no cork-brained scheme like the one Harker talking about.”

  Well, this answer put them all out with me, cause they was all hot behind Harker’s plan. Even Castor and Milly—they was the scariest ones—thought it was a good trick to pull on the white folks. Harker couldn’t do no wrong, far as they was all concerned.

  Castor and Flora and them had worked the fields all they life (me, too, come to that) and they could do that—hoe, plant, plow; but hadn’t none of them ever decided when to plant or what or how much. They just knew how to work; they didn’t know how to direct it, to set it up from plant to harvest of all the crops. And this is what Harker could do. He knew all these things about the land, about planting and keeping it healthy, but he wasn’t so set up in his own opinion that he wouldn’t listen to someone else experience. And he took what he knew and what they knew and put it together so the crop that year was looking to be double what they had harvested the year before. This was one thing made all the peoples respect him.

  Even after Harker come to the Glen and decided to stay a spell, he wandered a lot. (This is one of the first things I noted about him, that he had been
places. I had never known a negro who would just pick up and walk. I mean, I knowed ones to run; you know, trying to delay that lash, or go off to see someone—sweetheart, mother—but not just to go cause you feel like it. This was unheard of, far as I knowed. We all belonged to a place and seemed like you was born knowing not to move too far from it. But here was someone who walked around where he wanted to—more or less—wasn’t scared to do this. It was one of the first things I come to admire about him, that he was not afraid of coming or going.) Harker had come upon Cully and Nathan about three or four days south of there. They had made it that far before Nathan’s leg give out. Oh, yes, a bullet had pierced him in the leg when they scaped from the patterrollers that caught me. Neither one of them knowed what to do with it and it festered. Well, Harker stumbled up on them where they was hid in the woods and got them both back to the Glen, where Ada doctored his leg; quite naturally they thought highly of him. So, when Harker started talking about leaving everyone was all set to follow him. This was they leader, they saver, and they was some upset that I was scoffing at his plan.

  I had a deep admiration for Harker myself but I really didn’t like the idea of us selling ourselves back into slavery. Though, to tell the truth, the plan wasn’t so foolish as I made out. There was no doubt the peoples could be sold. White folks had asked the same question in every town the coffle went through, “Got any niggers for sale?” Oh, we would fetch some money. And white folks didn’t really start thinking someone had run off till they had been gone a day or so and, on a big place, a new person might not be missed for two or three days. Only reason more didn’t run away was there was nowheres for them to run to; and even nowheres was a hard ways to go. There was terrible whippings if they caught you, which, having nowheres to run to, they mainly did.

  But, by the time our peoples was looked for, they could be in another town, getting ready to be sold again. If they was caught, they would have a pass; and they so-called owners might not even recognize them. I had seen what Harker could do with a little of that greasepaint. He didn’t make no amazing changes but he did enough so, if you didn’t know the person, they looked enough different that you’d think you mistook them for someone else. All this was just in case; wasn’t no reason for no one to be caught. Running away was how most everybody had got there in the first place. A gang of peoples could probably work this scheme several times without making no stir. No, there was no doubt it could work from our part, the ones who would be sold. It was the part of the one doing the selling that I had my doubts on.

  I just knowed there had to be some way for us to get away without having a white person in it at all. And I knowed if Nathan and Harker thought about it, they could find whatever way that was. I put a lot of faith in mens’ minds—I thought my brother Jeeter could turn the world around. And, generally speaking, I do believe that if you think about a thing long enough, man or woman, you will find some way to handle it. So that’s what I was trying to say to them—to Harker especially, cause he was the one with the most ideas—find this way.

  Ada argued that we had to trust someone, but I couldn’t see placing all our dependence on a white woman, white anything for that matter. We all knowed they was wicked and treacherous—that’s why we was in the position we was in. And even though I could understand Harker’s point that this didn’t necessarily have to turn on that, I didn’t want no part of it.

  “Miz Ruint ain’t turned on us yet; this deal benefit her same as it do us,” Harker said.

  This was another evening, maybe a day or so later. We was setting out there front the cabin again; even Ada had walked down. Nathan was up there at the House and though no one mentioned it, we all knowed that, too. Still, the idea of her, a white person, working for negroes was so comical to me I had to smile. “She talk to herself,” I told him, “Ada vouch for that.”

  “Maybe she ain’t had nobody else to talk with,” he say. “Dessa, she do got some stake in doing right by us.”

  “She crazy; we all know that. You put yourself, your freedom at the mercy of a crazy white woman?”

  “It’s not the white woman holding up the deal. She say she willing to do it,” Ned spoke up. I could see Harker shushing him but I wasn’t going to pay that old mallet-head boy no mind no way. He was always playing tricks on peoples—you know, tie your pants leg in knots, rig a bucket to dump water on you as you go in the barn. He was always getting up some devilment like that. Thank God he growed out of it, but he was a pest. And this the way they all act, like I was the only one could play the maid. Janet or Flora could do as well as me. But I was the one Miz Ruint was putting it on; I was the one had called her out her name.

  “How you get here, wasn’t for taking a chance?” Harker ask.

  “You talk about chance,” I told him, “but I know chance. Chance called master, chance called mistress.” Wasn’t for chance I be loving Kaine right now, I thought, be with my family today. He was right about chance putting me where I was that day. “How long you think we going last amongst white folks with Nathan in her bed?” I ask him.

  They was all quiet for a minute; this was the first time someone had brung this up when we was all together like that since the night I moved down there. Then Janet spoke up. “Well, that is a dumb thing for a negro to do—” she start off. But before she can even finish, there was that old mallet-head Ned squawking about “Dumb? Dumb! Yo’ all just jealous cause he not diddling you.” Then he say under his breath, “Don’t nobody want no old mule like you,” but loud enough for everyone to hear. And somewheres in the darkness a voice went, “Humph,” like it wanted to laugh but caught itself before the laugh could get out good. And then there was a silence. Silence and a fire-burst where Ned’s head should’ve been when I looked at him. I had to close my eyes. Was this what they thought of us? Mules. I was so choked I couldn’t speak. I used to warm my feet against Kaine’s legs in winter; time they got me out that cellar, my heels was so rough they snagged a tear in them sheets up to the House. Janet had that kind of skin remind you of hickory—red-brown and tough; Flora’s skin was smooth as peach peel, hands big and hard; Ada—But Ned wasn’t talking about no color, no feel.

  Mules. Milly who had birthed seventeen children in eighteen years and seen them all taken from her as she weaned them, been put outdoors herself when she went two years without starting another child. They had taken Flora’s baby from her, put her out to nurse with someone else cause Flora could do much as any man in the fields. This is what broke Flora from slavery; this why she runned, so she could keep her babies for herself. Janet was mistreated cause she was barren; Ada’s master had belly-rubbed with her, then wanted to use her daughter. I had been spared death till I could birth a baby white folks would keep slaved. Oh, we was mules all right. What else would peoples use like they used us? And still I wanted Kaine’s lips to nibble at the kitchen on my neck, dirty and damp with sweat, would’ve cried to feel the hard chap on his hands catching in my hair. He had smelled like good earth after a short rain, kind make your mouth water for a taste of it and drive pregnant womens to eat dirt. I was glad he wasn’t Master, wasn’t boss—these wasn’t peoples in my book. Had he really wanted me to be like Mistress, I wondered, like Miz Ruint, that doughy skin and slippery hair? Was that what they wanted?

  I could see Ned when I opened my eyes, burr-headed and mallet-shaped as he was. I know Harker made him apologize; by him being young and so rude like that, somebody had to tell him something. But I don’t know how long it took or how Harker done it. I’d come to a flash somewhere between “mule” and “humph” and I was still shaking from remembrance, from feeling. This was the flash that’d nelly-bout killed Master and almost strangled Mistress, that rode me in the fight on the coffle. It scared me to see it almost loosed against one of us; and, pesky as he was, Ned was part of us. Yes, I trembled; that feeling, that anger was like a bloodhound in my throat, a monster that didn’t seem to know enemy nor friend, wouldn’t know the difference once it got loose.

&n
bsp; Harker was speaking to me. He’d sent Red back down to Dallas county to bring out Red’s wife, Debra, and they baby; she was still nursing and could nurse Mony while we was gone. All they needed now was for me and Miz Lady to come on in. I swallowed down; that bloodhound was still at my throat and my voice was rough. “Get another mule,” I told him; “this one don’t know how to be no maid.”

  They finished stripping the corn and the work slacked off some; it didn’t never just stop. Seem like it was always something to plow, plant, pick, or peel at that place. We rose at the same time but now they sat a little later and talked a little longer in front the cabin at night. One night they encouraged Uncle Joel to play that mouth organ. Music didn’t flow there as I membered it doing in my old home. We got up with the chickens and nobody raised a call on the way to the fields and it was seldom and seldom anyone gave out with a holler as they worked.

  Uncle Joel started out with a lively little tune and soon we was all clapping; Ned struck up a lyric and Annabelle got to cavorting. She was something to see there in the moonlight. She hadn’t combed her hair since I knowed her—Ada said she was too tender-headed and sometimes my fingers itched to pull a comb through her hair and fix it up regular, corn rows or seed plaits, least put a bandanna over them kinks. But that night all them naps looked like curls and ringlets hanging about her face. She was light as a feather on her feet, her body supple as a willow and it wasn’t long before others joined in.

  The nights could be like velvet there, like another skin, it would be so warm and close. This was like times at my old home, and somehow, that night, I was glad to have something familiar instead of sorrowing that the old times was gone. Something in me still listened for that banjo, but I was glad that I had lived to have such a time again and I sat there patting my foot.