This Strange New Feeling

by Julius Lester

  She shook her head. “It’s too good to get used to, Ras. I want being free to feel like this always.”

  And so did he.

  Where the Sun Lives

  One

  I

  When the overseer rings the bell to wake the field hands, it is not daybreak yet. Sometimes, if Mistress Phillips has had a bad night, I am awake and hear the bell. I am jealous of the field hands, because they have slept through the night. Their work has a beginning and an end. Sometimes mine has pauses.

  Last night Mistress Phillips’s fever came back. I sleep on the floor at the foot of her bed. When I was a little girl, I slept lying across her feet to keep them warm, a thin blanket over me. She turned from her back to her stomach to her side throughout the night, and I would get kicked.

  I’m bigger and older now. Mammy Sukey said she thinks I’m eighteen. In the winter I sleep in the bed with Mistress Phillips to help her stay warm. Before Master moved to the other bedroom, I slept in the bed with both of them. In the summer I sleep on the floor. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to sleep without being waked, to sleep through the night and through the day and through the night again.

  Mistress Phillips coughs and I hold the basin under her chin as she gags. She sinks back into the bed, hatred in her eyes as she stares at me. That don’t mean nothing. She hates me because she’s dying and I’m not. I guess she’s angry, because she’s always had me to do whatever she wanted. Now she wants me to die for her and I can’t.

  “Master be here with the doctor soon,” I tell her.

  She just stare at me. She know the doctor can’t do no good. He might take a little blood, but that don’t seem to help. I guess don’t nothing help when you dying except to die and be done with it.

  I get up from the side of the bed.

  “Where you going, Maria?” comes her hoarse voice.

  “Just to raise the window, Mistress. Let some of the cool morning air in for you.”

  I cross the room and raise the shade of the window that looks out over the yard and down to the slave quarter. I see a man on a horse, a black man riding slow and quiet, like he doesn’t want to wake the morning too rudely. He rides up through the slave quarter and past the stand of pine trees. There’s a big heavy-looking sack tied across the horn of his saddle. I can’t see his face in the light of false dawn, but he must be handsome. I know, because you can tell a lot about a person from the way they walk or sit on a horse. He sits on that horse like it is part of him. He’s past the overseer’s shack and is headed toward the stable. If I didn’t know better, I would swear he knew where the sun lives.

  “Maria!”

  “Yes’m,” I respond, raising the window quickly and hurrying back to the bed. “I’m right here.”

  “What were you looking at out that window?”

  “Nothing. Just looking. That’s all.”

  “When I get well, I’ll give you twenty lashes for staring out that window when you’re supposed to be looking after me.”

  “Yes’m,” I mumble.

  That’s one beating I won’t have to worry about. Everybody know she ain’t going to lay that rawhide whip on nobody ever again. She know it, too. It’s just hard for her to believe it.

  She closes her eyes and I hear the rooster begin crowing down in the chicken house. I wait. Way off in the distance, over on the Bradley plantation, a rooster crows. It’s like that every morning. This rooster over here crows. Then, a minute later, the Bradley rooster crows. They’ll be crowing at each other for the next hour now. I wonder what they be saying to each other? Wonder if this rooster telling Bradley’s rooster about Mistress Phillips? Or maybe this rooster is telling about the black man on the horse.

  I place my hand on Mistress’s forehead. She knocks it away.

  “I’m not dead yet,” she growls, pushing at me weakly. “You think I’m going to die, don’t you? That would make you happy, wouldn’t it?”

  “No’m, Mistress. No’m, it wouldn’t.”

  Her eyes have a wild, crazy sparkle in them as she stares at me. I stare back, trying to put as much life in my eyes as I can. I want her to see all the life that’s in me, all the life that she won’t be able to take from me.

  She closes her eyes.

  “You not going to die, Mistress.” She knows I’m lying, but I don’t think it’s a sin to lie to a dying woman. Especially one whose life wasn’t nothing but one long day of suffering. Mammy Sukey said Mistress was one of the prettiest girls in Virginia. Mammy remember when she was born right here in this room, in this very bed.

  I remember the first time I was brought up from the quarter to be her gal. I looked at her yellow hair and it made me think of buttercups and sitting by Miller’s Creek with my dusty feet in the water. I was seven then. Mistress treated me like I was her little girl. She played little games with me, and at night would tell me stories. After she lost her first baby in the fifth month, she told me that it was all right, that I was her baby.

  It was after she lost the third baby that she whipped me for the first time. I was in the kitchen that morning putting her breakfast on the big round silver tray to bring upstairs. I turned around and she was standing in the doorway, the whip in her hand.

  She told me to come outside. Then she told me to take my dress off. I was shamed to stand there in the yard as naked as when I come in the world. Mammy Sukey was pleading with Mistress, begging her to say what I had done wrong, and she would be sure I wouldn’t do it again.

  Mistress Phillips say that I hadn’t done nothing wrong, just that it was time I learned that I was a slave. I ain’t never felt nothing in my life as bad as the first time the whip cut my flesh. It was like somebody had taken a stick out of the fire and held it to me. I fell down in the dust and I don’t remember nothing else. Mammy Sukey say that Master Byron had to come out of the house and jerk the whip out of her hand.

  Next thing I remember was waking up and I was lying in Mistress’s bed. She was putting cool salve on my back and my chest, and tears were streaming out of her eyes. Mistress was saying how sorry she was and asking me to forgive her.

  Soon as I was well, she didn’t act like she was sorry anymore. After a while I could tell when she was going to get the whip. It was something about the way she would wake up in the morning, a look in her face like her eyes had died during the night. I don’t know which I hated more—the whippings or her taking care of me afterward.

  Now, sitting here on the side of the bed, watching her die, none of that seems to matter much. All that pretty buttercup-color hair is gray now. Her skin used to be as smooth as peach fuzz, and her cheeks were as red as fresh-picked raspberries. Now she looks like an old lady and her face is the color of old sour milk. Mammy Sukey said Mistress Phillips will be thirty in August. That’s one birthday she’ll have in the boneyard.

  I hear the carriage coming up the road. “Master and the doctor coming, Mistress.”

  Her eyelids flutter but do not open. She probably doesn’t care. Mammy Sukey said that Mistress never did want Master to be a lawyer and go into politics. She wanted him to stay on the plantation and run everything. She had been running the plantation since she was a girl of sixteen and her momma and poppa died when their carriage overturned near Cousin’s Bluff. When Mistress married Master, she thought he would run everything then, and she could be a lady and give big parties. Least, that’s what Mammy Sukey say.

  The carriage stops in front of the house, and in a minute I hear the front door open and the sound of boots hurrying across the floor and up the stairs.

  When Master walks in, he smiles at me. Doctor Carson don’t look at me but goes straight to the bed. Master comes around to my side of the bed and puts his hand lightly on my shoulder. I look up into his face. His black, curly hair needs a comb through it and his eyes are red from driving all the way to Richmond and back. But he looks so young and she looks so old. I wonder if that’s because he could never take the whip to any of the slaves. Mammy say that’s why he
decided to go into politics. He just didn’t have the stomach for doing us like Mistress did.

  I remember the argument they had just last month, right before Mistress took to bed for the last time. It was the day Mistress went down to the stable to get Baby, her favorite horse. I was standing behind her, just inside the stable door. Mammy Sukey’s boy, Jim, takes care of all the horses, keeps them combed and pretty-looking, makes sure they get just the right amount of oats, and exercises them every day. With six horses to take care of, plus the mules from the field, Jim don’t get much more sleep than I do.

  When Mistress walked in the barn, Jim wasn’t there. She called him, but he didn’t come. I got scared. I don’t know how I knew, but Jim had gone back to the quarter to take a nap. Mistress told me to go to the quarter to see if he was there.

  He was asleep. When I woke him and he saw me, he knew he was in trouble. There’s some things us slaves don’t have to say out loud. We just know a lot of times what the right thing to do is.

  I went back and told Mistress that he wasn’t there. She said I was lying. I told her to see for herself. She went and Jim wasn’t there.

  That night Master and Mistress had the worst argument I ever heard. He accused her of making all the best slaves run off, told her that Jim was the best man in all Virginia when it came to caring for horses, that he was irreplaceable. She told Master that he didn’t have no say in running the plantation, that he spent most of his time in Richmond drinking brandy and smoking cigars and she would do as she pleased with her slaves.

  Wasn’t nothing Master could say to that, or so I thought. He don’t own none of us. We wish he did. All the slaves are hers, but he told her that if he ever heard of her making another slave run off and if she ever laid the whip on me again, he would kill her.

  I heard that with my own ears. Mammy heard it and she was way out back in the kitchen. They were yelling so loud I wouldn’t be surprised if folks in Richmond didn’t hear. I know our old rooster had plenty to tell that morning.

  When Master told Mistress he would kill her, she just fainted dead away. Me and Master carried her up to her bed and she hasn’t set foot on the floor since. Maybe she going to die just to make Master feel bad. But as I leave the room to see if Mammy has breakfast ready yet for Master and the doctor, I think Master will probably look even younger once Mistress is in the ground.

  When I walk out the back door, the sun is up. The roosters always stop crowing once the sun is all the way out. It’s almost like they think their crowing is what makes the sun rise, and once it’s up, then it can get across the sky on its own.

  I cross the few feet from the house to the building behind, which is the kitchen. I notice the thin trail of smoke rising through the chimney, which means Mammy has the fire going and is probably kneading the dough to make biscuits.

  When I enter the kitchen, a man is sitting at the table, drinking a glass of water. It is him. I can tell by the easy way he sits in the chair, his legs stretched out like snakes sunning on a rock down by the creek. His skin is brown and smooth like acorns. His face is serious. I could make him smile.

  He sees me and I feel shamed in my thin dress that is so short he can see my knees. I don’t want him to see me with my hair sticking out all over my head like porcupine quills. But I walk past the table, looking as if he’s not even there. I lift my chin up a little, like I wouldn’t stoop to speak to him if he was the last man in the world. I don’t know why I act just the opposite of how I feel.

  “How is she?” Mammy asks, her long thin fingers digging into the mound of dough and squeezing it quickly.

  “About the same,” I say, going over to the bucket in the corner and taking a sip of water from the gourd dipper.

  “Was you up again last night?”

  “Yes’m. Mistress’s fever was pretty bad.”

  Mammy Sukey is as thin as a limb that broke off a tree in a storm. Master say she’s as old as the wind. She not too much bigger than a spring breeze, but she work as hard as anybody around here. Wouldn’t nothing be the same without Mammy.

  She has put the kettle of water on the stove, knowing I like a good strong cup of coffee in the morning. I take a can off the shelf beside the stove and dump some coffee grounds in the water. I want to ask her about Jim, but don’t dare with him sitting there. But I can tell by the calm way Mammy is rolling out the dough that Jim is still safe. Mammy will send word for him to come back when she’s ready. Master won’t let Mistress put the whip to Jim. Everybody knows that. About the only whipping there’s going to be around here now is the one Death is putting on Mistress.

  “What the doctor say?” Mammy asks as she cuts out the biscuits.

  “Nothing while I was there.”

  I want to turn and see if he is staring at me like I want him to. But I keep my eyes on Mammy’s bony black hands cutting circles from the white dough. I don’t want to know how I would feel if he wasn’t looking at me.

  “Doc Carson is a good doctor, but even he can’t beat ol’ Death.”

  His voice is soft. It makes me think of horses grazing in a meadow in the springtime.

  “I suppose not,” I manage to say, turning slowly to look at him.

  He is looking at me and I’m ashamed, because I want him to and I don’t want him to. He is looking at me and I know he can see through my thin dress and is looking at all the ugly scars and welts on my stomach and across my breasts. Mammy Sukey said that even if I did have babies one day I wouldn’t be able to suckle them, not with breasts scarred and torn and flattened like mine.

  “I’m Forrest Yates, the blacksmith.” He smiles.

  “How do you do?” I say, remembering my manners. “They call me Maria.”

  “That’s a pretty name.”

  “Thank you.” I’m smiling now, smiling too much, because what I really want to do is laugh. But you can’t laugh when there’s nothing to laugh about. That’s what I want to do, though.

  He stands up to go. “Thanks for the water, Mammy.”

  “You don’t need to be thanking me, Forrest. I don’t know what I can ever do to thank you. You be careful and don’t let Jim do nothing that would jeopardize you. You hear me?”

  “You needn’t worry. Jim wouldn’t do anything like that.”

  “You come back in an hour or so and I’ll have a nice big breakfast for you. With her being sick and Master being in Richmond most of the time, I can cook up some of this good food for us.” She laughs.

  “Thank you,” Forrest says, but he is looking at me.

  “That is one nice young man,” Mammy Sukey says after Mr. Yates leaves.

  “Yes,” I say, trying not to sound interested but hoping she keeps talking.

  “He free.”

  “Free!” I exclaim. I understand now why he rides his horse slow, like he don’t have nothing else to do.

  “Born free. Never slaved a day in his life. But he cares more about us slaves than a lot of us do for ourselves. White folks think the world of him too. He’s supposed to be the best blacksmith in Virginia. I heard Master say once that he wish he could find him a bootmaker to put shoes on his feet as good as the ones Forrest makes for horses.”

  “How did a black man get to be born free?” I want to know.

  “His mama was Mistress Bradley’s serving girl, and when Mistress Bradley died, she leave it in her will that his mama was to be set free. She was carrying Forrest at the time. He missed being born a slave by three months.”

  The water in the kettle is boiling now and I look at it, but it is only beginning to turn muddy. I like my coffee black.

  “Hadn’t you better get on back to the house to see if you needed? That coffee be here when you get back. You tell Master and the doctor that breakfast be ready in about twenty minutes, soon as these biscuits get done.”

  Forrest. That’s perhaps the prettiest name I’ve ever heard in all my life.

  “Did you hear me, girl?”

  “Yes’m,” I say quickly, hurrying from the
kitchen, but once outside I stop and look toward the front of the house and then run across the road. The pines and oak trees and elm are silent and still in the early morning light. It is cool here in the forest. The birds sing and tiny animals run quickly on tiny feet across a floor of fallen leaves and pine needles.

  II

  Mammy Sukey says that you can tell how evil a person was by how long it takes them to die. Mistress must’ve been the Devil. She was all of three months dying, and if she had lasted five more days, she would’ve seen her thirtieth birthday.

  But last evening after supper we heard the screech owl. That’s always a sign of death. Yesterday morning a bird flew in the house. So we knew the end was near.

  It was way up in the night when I was awakened by the sound of her thrashing in the bed. That wasn’t anything new. The last month she thrashed around a lot, like she thought she could fight ol’ Death off. She would thrash and curse. Cursed just about everybody in the state of Virginia, but especially her momma and poppa for getting themselves killed and leaving her alone to run a big plantation when she should’ve been putting on pretty dresses and going to balls in Richmond with handsome boys.

  I listened to her cursing her momma and poppa for leaving her like they did, as if they wanted to or could help it. My momma and poppa left me, but I don’t curse them. Maybe Mistress sold them because she wanted me to feel all alone like she did.

  Last night she got to thrashing and cursing again, and then all of a sudden she started gagging and coughing and then breathing real heavy. It sounded like there was rocks and sand in her chest. She raised up in the bed and her hair looked like a dust rag with the moon shining on her. I was standing at the foot of the bed looking at her. She reached out her arms for me, but I didn’t move. I knew Death had come in the room to stay this time. I didn’t want her touching me as Death put his arms around her. Her eyes got big and they seemed to be calling my name. I didn’t move. I just looked at her and then she fell back in the bed. I lay back down on the floor and listened to her breathing. It sounded like a big dog scratching at a door.