“Sheriff”—she put that hanky up to her nose—“can I talk to you?” No smiles now, no bat the eye now. “In private,” she say when Nemi start to follow, and walked over to my cell. Clara reached for me and started babbling soon as she got near me. I grabbed her hand and looked at Miz Lady. She licked her lips and kind of smile. Friend or not, best she could do for me then was to prove I wasn’t nothing but her slave.
“Sheriff,” Miz Lady say, “we carrying a lot of money for the hiring of these hands. Open your dress, Odessa—” I unfastened it partway there at the waist and turned so he could see without Nemi seeing, too. “We traveling alone. This why I can’t have my girl undress in front no one I can’t trust.” She looked over her shoulder at Nemi. “And I certainly not going have her make no show of herself before no man—like them other girls had to.”
“I had a old auntie look at them.” Sheriff was moving toward the door. “I send someone at Chole.”
And Nemi howled: “You can’t set no darky to check a darky, catch a darky; that’s the mistake they made at the last place. You can’t take no darky’s word on this.”
“You take the word of the law and be done with it, man,” the sheriff say and went on out the door.
Nemi stormed up and down the room and Miz Lady looked at me. I just shook my head. I was scared but I’d take my chance on any auntie before I’d let Nemi see under my clothes.
Well, Aunt Chole came, old woman smoked a nasty pipe and mumbled a lot. I guess they called her auntie cause she still worked, but way she hobbled round she might’ve been a granny and then some. Sheriff made her known to Miz Lady and Nemi. Miz Lady say it’s a outrage to shame a good girl on the word of just someone, looking at Nemi and sniffing. Nemi say, don’t look her in the eye, granny; she got the devil in her. Sheriff say, see if this gal whipscarred about her privates. “Yes, suh,” Aunt Chole say, bowing her head, mumbling; “Miz Ma’am,” mumbling some more.
She had some cloth folded over her arms, and she put this up round the cell mumbling the whole time. I could hear Nemi: “I bet she got callus on her legs from being on that chain.” And I did, too. My heart was beating so fast I couldn’t speak but in a whisper. “Granny,” I said; I was unfastening my dress. “Oh, granny, I was scarred as a child; girl was watching me dropped me in the fire. I’m much ashamed of them scars.” I was trying to catch her eyes.
Aunt Chole looked at me just once; her eyes was so milky, I think she might’ve been blind, anyway. I still had the quarter coin to buy the pastry; I give this to her, then I pulled down the top of my dress and my shift. She ran her hand over my back, heavy, calloused hands; never forget how gentle they felt. When I reached to pull up my skirt she stopped me. She put the coin in her mouth, bite it, then put it down her bosom. “Masa Joel, Masa Joel,” she called out, “I ain’t seed nothing on this gal’s butt. She ain’t got a scar on her back.”
“You lying,” Nemi yelled. “Sheriff, I told you about these darkies.” I could hear the sheriff trying to quiet him down. I finished fastening my clothes and Aunt Chole pulled the cloth down from round the cell.
Clara reached for me soon as I come out that cell and I took her, her little arm going around my neck, her little baby hand patting in my face. Oh, it was good to feel that baby in my arms again.
From being red, Nemi went white when he seen me walk out that cell. “You can’t mean this, sheriff. You taking the word of some nearsighted mammy? Let me see for myself.” And he reached for me. I dodged back and the sheriff pushed him into the next room. “Nemi, you out your mind? Leave that gal alone.”
“I know it’s her,” Nemi say. “I got her down here in my book.” And he reach and took out that little black-bound pad he wrote in the whole time I knowed him. I membered him reading to me from it; even in that heat, I’d turned cold when I learned he tried to write down what I said. The book made me fear him all over again. Miz Lady was pulling on my arm, but I couldn’t move.
“‘I kill Mistress,’” Nemi say, reading, walking up on me, “‘cause I can!’ That’s what she say,” pointing at me. “Here’s some more”—he was flicking through the book. “Here,” he say shaking it in my face. Clara reached for the book and knocked it out his hand. The pages wasn’t bound in the cover and they fell out, scattering about the floor. Nemi started grabbing the papers, pushing them in the sheriff’s hand, into Miz Lady’s.
“Nemi, ain’t nothing but some scribbling on here,” sheriff say. “Can’t no one read this.”
Miz Lady was turning over the papers in her hand. “And these is blank, sheriff,” she say.
“What?” Nemi say, still on his knees. “Naw, it’s all here.” He lurched to his feet and the sheriff grabbed him. “She walk on the insides of her feets from being on that chain. I know this darky, I tell you; I know her very well. Her hair fit like a cap on her head underneath that scarf. I know her. Miz Janet,” he say, reaching at Miz Lady, “you understand. Science. Research. The mind of the darky.” And he tap his temple.
We moved then. “You-all in this together”—grabbing at us—“womanhood.” He was down on his knees, scrambling amongst them papers. “All alike. Sluts.”
“Nemi, for God sake,” sheriff say; Miz Lady sucked her breath and almost stopped, but I was behind her and kept on going. I could hardly see for the rush of blood in my head when we went out the door. Nemi was low; and I was the cause of him being low. He’d tried to play bloodhound on me and now some bloodhound was turning him every way but loose. He knowed me, so he said, knowed me very well. I was about bursting with what we’d done and I turned to Miz Lady. “Mis’ess,” I said, “Miz—” I didn’t know what I wanted to tell her first. And it was like I cussed her; she stopped and swung me round to face her.
“My name Ruth,” she say, “Ruth. I ain’t your mistress.” Like I’d been the one putting that on her.
“Well, if it come to that,” I told her, “my name Dessa, Dessa Rose. Ain’t no O to it.” I didn’t even not think about my tongue. This was the way she was, you see, subject to make you mad just when you was feeling some good towards her. And she was good.
“That’s fine with me.” We was both testy. Clara started petting me in the face and I hugged her to me. I wanted to hug Ruth. I didn’t hold nothing against her, not “mistress,” not Nathan, not skin. Maybe we couldn’t speak but so honest without disagreement, but that didn’t change how I feel.
“Ruth,” “Dessa,” we said together; and “Who was that white man—?” “That was the white man—” and stopped. We couldn’t hug each other, not on the streets, not in Arcopolis, not even after dark; we both had sense enough to know that. The town could even bar us from laughing; but that night we walked the boardwalk together and we didn’t hide our grins.
Epilogue
I missed this when I was sold away from home.—“Turn your head, honey; I only got two more left to do.”—The way the womens in the Quarters used to would braid hair. Mothers would braid children heads—girl and boy—until they went into the field or for as long as they had them. This was one way we told who they peoples was, by how they hair was combed. Mammy corn rowed our hair—mines and Carrie’s—though she generally wore plaits herself, two big ones that stuck out like pigtails over her ears. My fingers so stiff now, I can’t do much more than plait, but I learned all kinds—corn row, seed braid, chain, thread wrap. After we got up in age some, girls would sometimes gather and braid each other’s heads…Child learn a lot of things setting between some grown person’s legs, listening at grown peoples speak over they heads. This is where I learned to listen, right there between mammy’s thighs, where I first learned to speak, from listening at grown peoples talk…
First time Ada braided my hair there at the Glen—her hands, her legs, the feel of the chair rung at my back, the woman scent rising faint behind my head—I membered so many other times between other knees, the feel of other hands in my hair; I cried. Ada rocked my head on her knee, pet my shoulder; finished up that braid and went on
to another…
She didn’t too much like fooling with no one’s head; kept her own hair short under that bandanna and never combed Annabelle’s. Oh, she washed it now, and rinsed it in flower water, but you couldn’t get neither one to put a comb to it; put her too much in mind of how she’d had to dress her mistress’ head. She could fair turn your stomach talking about white folks’ hair, way it flew every which-a-way; said it smelt like dog fur when it got wet. So Ada only combed my head a few times, just till I got strong enough to where I could do it myself. I don’t say this to fault her. Slavery had sucked Ada about dry; what was left was tied up in Annabelle. That was her blossom, her flower…. No, I wouldn’t press Ada about no hair; Debra was always glad to braid so we did each other’s. Flora and Janet got so they’d come round and have they heads braided now and then. This seemed to make us more respectable, something more than just a ragtag bunch of runaways. The children have joked me about this, say anytime something go wrong, Ada take to cleaning house and I get to braiding hair. It do give me pleasure. Simple as it sound, just the doing of it, the weaving of one strand with the other, have seen me through some pretty terrible days…
Harker…touch me—even now; sometime, just get close to me…he still overcome my senses and never mock at me for my weakness, say I’m his weakness, too; say…He walked all round Council Bluffs looking for a wagon train would let us go West with them. No one want to take us, said West was closed to the black…Laws was against us everywhere on that trip. Even in the so-called free states; we couldn’t settle, couldn’t settle no place between slave territory and Council Bluffs, couldn’t stop no longer than overnight, had to pay five hundred dollars to pass through a place. That madness, that hate roiling round in Harker, everytime a wagon master told us no; way he waited, trying to fall with that break, blaming hisself. And Nathan walked with him…They walk such a tightrope, such a tightrope. This country have set us a hard task…give us so much hurt. Only way Eckland would take us on his wagon train was for Ruth to sign that we was her slaves and she was freeing us to go West. That was the last train left that spring…
We come West and Ruth went East, not back to Charleston; she went on to…Philly-me-York—some city didn’t allow no slaves. I guess we all have regretted her leaving, one time or another. She couldn’t’ve caused us no more trouble than what the white folks gived us without her…. Miss her in and out of trouble—(Do she call my name to Clara?…Negro can’t live in peace under protection of law, got to have some white person to stand protection for us. And who can you friend with, love with like that? Oh, Ruth would’ve tried it; no question in my mind about that. Maybe married Nathan—if he’d asked her…but Ruth went East and we all come West….
I told that West part so often, these childrens about know it by heart. Mony tell it to his babies like the memories was his, stead of things he heard when he was coming up.—“There, darling; finish.”—That’s the kind of story childrens like—Indians and buffalo stampedes, even that devil woman stuff. After that last jail, I couldn’t mind Cully and them keeping up that name. Maybe, like Ruth said, Aunt Chole was mumbling about the devil—but she didn’t put no woman on it.
…I have met some good white men—Eckland, he was always fair with us; Nathan rode for him on two wagon trains. Many the time he have sat at my table. And Brim live down the road; the Steeles down to the Junction. But none the equal of Ruth…I hopes I live for my people like they do for me, so sharp sometime I can’t believe it’s all in my mind. And my mind wanders. This why I have it wrote down, why I has the child say it back. I never will forget Nemi trying to read me, knowing I had put myself in his hands. Well, this the childrens have heard from our own lips. I hope they never have to pay what it cost us to own ourselfs. Mother, brother, sister, husband, friends…my own girlhood all I ever had was the membrance of a daddy’s smile. Oh, we have paid for our children’s place in the world again, and again…
Reader’s Guide
This acclaimed title is a Quill Book Group Selection. To read an interview with the author and suggested questions for book group discussion, please log on to our website:
www.harpercollins.com/readers
“I loved history as a child, until some clear-eyed young Negro pointed out, quite rightly, that there was no place in the American past I could go and be free.”
—From the Author’s Note in Dessa Rose
Dessa Rose was inspired by two historical incidents. One involved a black woman sentenced to death in 1829 for helping to lead a slave uprising. The other involved a white woman living on an isolated farm in 1830, reported to have given sanctuary to runaway slaves. What would happen, Williams wondered, if these two women had met?
To answer this question, Sherley Anne Williams begins a compelling fictional journey into the American past—a process of reclamation for the characters and for Ms. Williams herself. This story of a complex friendship between a slave woman and a white plantation owner dares to treat controversial subjects: a black woman who is proud, intelligent, and vocal; a white woman who chooses a black man as a lover; how these women unite, after guardedly circling each other, in a bold scheme to undermine the patriarchal systems that enslave them both.
Dessa Rose has been used frequently in African-American literature and in women’s studies courses. It was with the publication of Dessa Rose (William Morrow, 1986) that Sherley Anne Williams, already a respected poet and critic, came to the attention of the literary establishment.
Williams was born and raised in the Central Valley of California. As a high school student in Fresno, she searched for books by and about black people. Upon her mother’s death when she was sixteen, her sister Ruby became her guardian. It was Ruby who cultivated Williams’s literary interests. Her first published story, “Tell Martha Not to Moan,” appeared in The Massachusetts Review in 1967. Narrated by a welfare recipient whose gullibility in love relationships causes her problems, this early work showed Williams’s ability to confront difficult issues that face a large portion of the working-class or welfare-bound black population. The story was also noteworthy for Williams’s experimentation in creating a narrative voice free of the encumbrances of standard English. Later, she would give the characters in Dessa Rose “real” voices that stun us with their immediacy and power.
Following graduate work at Howard University, where she wrote her first book, Give Birth to Brightness: A Thematic Study in Neo-Black Literature, under the tutelage of esteemed professor, poet, and critic Sterling Brown, Williams received a master of arts degree from Brown University in 1972.
Now a professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego, Williams is a widely published author of stories, poems, and a play. She received a Caldecott Honor for Working Cotton, her first work for children, and her first book of poetry, The Peacock Poems (1975), was nominated for a National Book Award.
The Peacock Poems, grounded in the blues aesthetic and often expressing pain and anguish, established Williams as a writer who seriously employs indigenous forms of African-American culture. A major theme of the poems is the loneliness of black women, who, like female peacocks, are robbed of voice and, in the eyes of some, of beauty as well.
Dessa Rose can be seen as such a woman: When we meet her she’s huddled in chains, heavy with child, sentenced to die, grieving her lover’s death, desolate, angry, and alone. As the novel unfolds in three large sections—The Darky, The Wench, and The Negress—Dessa Rose literally finds her voice over the course of these three evolutions, redefining herself and claiming her full status in the world not only in the eyes of others but in her own eyes as well.
By the novel’s end, we understand the liberating power of language and the imagination: Through her brilliant reenvisioning of history, Williams has given Dessa Rose a story to tell and a voice to tell it with: “Well, this the childrens have heard from our own lips. I hope they never have to pay what it cost us to own ourselfs.” It is a history that is hard-won, but it is a history in which
Dessa Rose, the author, and we—who live Dessa’s story as it unfolds—are finally made free.*
For more information about this and other Quill Book Group Guides, go to the HarperCollins website at www.harpercollins.com.
About the Author
SHERLEY ANNE WILLIAMS is the award-winning author of numerous poetry collections, plays, and short-stories. She was a National Book Award nominee for her first book of poetry, The Peacock Poems, and received a Caldecott Honor for Working Cotton, her first work for children. A professor of literature at the University of California, San Diego, she frequently lectures and speaks nationwide.
Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.
Copyright
DESSA ROSE. Copyright © 1986 by Sherley Anne Williams. Reader’s Guide copyright © 1999 by William Morrow, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Dessa Rose Page 24
