Hell's Belles

by Alison Claire

  Aleta shook her head, but she knew Annabel Walker did what she wanted. She was the only daughter of one of the wealthiest plantation owners on the barrier islands.

  Annabel climbed up first, her long dress trailing behind her as she scooted down the limb towards the trunk. Aleta nervously followed her, a feeling in her stomach telling her that this wasn’t right.

  Annabel reached the trunk first. Aleta was relieved until she noticed Annabel was trying to climb up to the next branch.

  “Annabel, don’t go no higher!” Aleta called to her, frantic.

  “But I want to see the top of the big house!” Annabel called back. “I want to see if I can see the ocean from here.”

  “It’s too dangerous,” Aleta said, her hands shaking as she moved quickly toward the trunk.

  Just as she said it, Annabel’s foot slipped and she tumbled. At first she caught herself on the branch that Aleta was on, but her hands skidded and she fell several feet to the ground, her leg breaking her fall from beneath her.

  Aleta stared down in horror at the bone sticking out from Annabel Walker’s leg. The wail from the young girl was something that would haunt Aleta’s nightmares for years to come.

  Part of Aleta wanted to run away into the thick woods behind the grove of trees, never to be seen or heard from again. She’d join an Indian tribe, assimilate to their way of life. She knew master was going to surely kill her for what had happened to his daughter. As Annabel cried from below, Aleta Indigo wet herself, so frightened was she by the consequences of Annabel’s poor decision.

  Instead, she somehow got a hold of herself. She slid down the tree and knelt next to her friend.

  “I’m goin’ to get your Daddy,” she whispered to Annabel, stroking her auburn hair. “It’s gon’ be alright.”

  “Please don’t leave me!” she cried out. Aleta looked down at Annabel’s leg and it took every ounce of strength not to throw up.

  “I have to. But just to get your daddy. He can help you get fixed. You know I don’t want to leave you, Annabel.” Aleta was crying now, clutching the hand of the only friend she’d ever had.

  “Okay. Hurry though!” Annabel screamed out.

  Aleta ran as fast as her little legs could take her, back to the fields and the house, yelling the whole way. As soon as she hit the fields the overseer noticed her. Seeing that Annabel was not with her, John Walker Jr. immediately ran over to her, his fists clenched.

  “Where’s my sister?” he shouted, and as he said it, he slapped Aleta hard across her face, making her see stars for a moment. She fell to the ground, dirt getting under her nails as she clenched the earth.

  “Sir, she… She fell.” Aleta braced for another smack, and this one hit the back of her head.

  “What did you do?” he screamed, spit coming out of his mouth. The workers in the field stopped what they were doing, their mouths agape. Aleta Indigo never got into trouble.

  “Nothin’, sir. She was climbin’ a tree…”

  John grabbed her by her hair and pulled her up. “Show me now or you’re gonna wish you’d been sold down the river like your lazy good for nothin’ daddy.”

  Aleta’s heart was thumping so hard that she barely felt the pain of a grown man hauling her by her tresses toward the live oak grove.

  Annabel was passed out from either pain or shock now. John Walker Jr., seeing her leg, immediately turned around and began to beat Aleta’s back, fists raining down on her. She didn’t want to cry out, she knew that this might somehow make him angrier, but she was just a little girl, no different than Annabel underneath it all, and she couldn’t help but cry out in pain at his merciless knuckles.

  After he had unleashed his anger, he grabbed the small body of his sister, and ran toward the big house. Aleta lay on the ground, barely able to move. Her body and spirit were broken.

  After a few moments of lying under a live oak, her brother, Emanuel, came for her.

  “Aleta!” he called out. “Master’s son says you were climbin’ a tree and made Annabel do it with you.”

  Aleta shook her head. “No. She wanted to climb, I told her we shouldn’t. I didn’t know what else to do, Mama says listen to Annabel.”

  Emanuel was sixteen years old, tall with broad shoulders and handsome features. Aleta’s mother said he was the spitting image of their father, so Aleta liked to pretend he was. Emanuel pulled up Aleta’s dress and the bruises were already showing up and down her back, and her forehead was already showing a goose egg from John Walker Jr.’s fists. Tears streamed down his face. He held his sister to his chest.

  “It’s okay, baby sister.” He lifted her up and walked toward the fields. “Mama will get you fixed up.”

  As they got closer it was clear that everyone was up in arms over what happened by the live oaks. John Walker Jr. was pacing up and down the backyard of the big house, cursing and screaming, throwing things. Mama stood in the back doorway at the kitchen entrance, watching him, her face marked with terror.

  Emanuel tried to take Aleta to their house, which was on the other side of the yard with the other slave quarters. It was a one room shack that they all shared together. But John Walker Jr. saw them as soon as they were within yards of the house.

  “Let me have her!” John Walker Jr. screamed. Annabel had been taken into the house.

  Aleta shook in her brother’s arms. She knew Emanuel would have no choice but to hand her over. And she also knew she was probably as good as dead if master’s son beat her again.

  “No, sir. She’s pretty bad. Don’t think she can take no more,” Emanuel said, deliberately, his voice shaking.

  John Walker Jr.’s dead eyes fixed on Emanuel.

  “You defyin’ me, boy?” he asked. John Walker Jr.’s face was inches from Emanuel now. Aleta thought she would pass out from fear.

  “I don’t mean to,” he tried to explain. “She’s just hurt real bad…”

  “I was easy on her. My father finds out, he’s gon’ probably kill her.” John Walker Jr.’s eyes narrowed at Emanuel. “Someone’s gon’ have to take the beatin’. You wanna take it?”

  Aleta wanted to scream. Emanuel had crisscrossed trails of scars across his back from whippings in the field, when he didn’t work fast enough or hard enough. She couldn’t bear the thought of him taking more, especially for her. But she was weak and broken from what had happened. Even in her haze of pain and panic she hoped Annabel was going to be okay.

  Emanuel nodded, just once. Her mother, out of nowhere, took Aleta from his arms and carried her toward the shack. Aleta looked up at her mother’s face and could see tears trailing down her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” Aleta cried out. “I told her not to climb. I would never lead Annabel to danger.”

  “I know, baby.” Her mother kissed her swollen head. “I know.”

  The next morning, Emanuel was gone.

  It was rare that a slave had the audacity to run away, especially on the islands. Master Walker and his son had their workers comb the beaches and marshlands looking for him. There was no way he could have gone very far. Frogmore Island wasn’t big and a slave wouldn’t be able to get away on a ferry.

  It took less than a day before they discovered him hiding out on Johns Island, out near Angel Oak and the Weight Plantation.

  He had swum clear across the Bohicket Creek to get to it. Such was his desperation to be free.

  Aleta’s mother could barely sleep that night from anguish. Her prayer was that he would only get a beating. A terrible beating, but something that would mean he would still be alive.

  The next morning, things were cold around the big house. Master wouldn’t look at Aleta or her mother. Annabel was somewhere healing from her break. Aleta had been told she was never to see her again, something that made her incredibly despondent. But the worst was yet to come.

  Around mid-day the workers were told that there would be a ceremony out in the live oak grove; that master had something he needed to show everyone because of things gett
ing out of hand the last couple of days. Aleta’s stomach hurt. They had yet to hear about the fate of Emanuel and she had a terrible feeling it was related to what was going to happen at the trees.

  The slaves were marched toward the live oaks, John Walker Jr. following them while riding on a horse. He’d scream at those in the back to hurry up. At one point he made eye contact with Aleta. He sneered at her and laughed. There was no light in his eyes that Aleta could see.

  Some people are dead long before they die. John Walker Jr., was one of those people.

  As they approached the oaks, Aleta and her mother could see a cart, backed up under a thick branch that hung ten feet in the air. It was the branch that Aleta and Annabel had tried to climb. In the back of the cart sat Emanuel, his arms tied behind him. His eyes were swollen shut and he was naked except for his pants. Aleta and her mother ran up to him but master stopped them before they could touch him.

  “Step on back, ya hear? He’s no good to you now. This man is a dead man walkin’.” Master and three of his farmers stood between them and the cart.

  “Mama…” Emanuel called out.

  Aleta’s mother fell to the ground, her grief so debilitating that she couldn’t stand. Aleta held onto her, not knowing what she could do. When she looked up to the trees she could see only one thing. A noose, hanging from the very spot where Aleta had watched Annabel fall.

  Everything after that was a blur in the memory of Aleta Indigo. Just as she had the power to remove pain from the mind of others, she had long since that day figured out how to repress her own painful memories.

  Master made his workers watch as they lynched Emanuel Indigo. His body jerked, attempting to survive its own demise, even in the wake of inevitability. Aleta’s mother had not watched. Her wails and prayers to God filled the air. John Walker Jr. had pushed forward to whip her but master stopped him.

  “Let it grieve,” he said.

  Aleta would not allow herself not to witness her treasured brother’s last moments. His eyes opened just enough to show all white, the pupils rolled back in his head. His body twitched and lost control of its functions, all in front of a crowd of people too terrified to react.

  Curiously enough, somehow, Aleta could hear Emanuel’s every last thought. They flooded into her mind. In an instant Aleta was in the confines of the deepest part of his soul. It was as if he was speaking directly to her, in a voice as clear as any she had ever heard. Later she would wonder if it was the voice of God Himself, speaking through Emanuel, telling her what she needed to remember for the rest of her very long life.

  “All I wanted was to know a day where I belonged to no one. And all I ever loved was you, Aleta. My sweet sister. I couldn’t live in a world where you weren’t as treasured as Annabel Walker. I die because I loved you. Oh, God I’m afraid. But I see you, Lord. I’m free. Finally…”

  And it was finished.

  Days later, master took them downtown, to the Exchange. Neither Aleta nor her mother, had ever left Frogmore. They were incredibly nervous as they were carted away from the only home they had ever known.

  What was worse was that her other brother was left behind. They hadn’t even been allowed to say goodbye to him. Her brother was fourteen years old, had lost his father, had watched his brother die, and would not ever see his mother or sister again.

  It was a public auction, filled with many different slaves being exchanged and traded for a multitude of reasons. Master had explained on their way in that he didn’t want to deal with a female who was too old to breed and her daughter who was clearly insolent and stupid for allowing his daughter to be injured in such a way. Besides, after rightfully lynching their son and brother, he didn’t want to deal with their possible fantasized need for retribution. Master was ready to be rid of them and obtain one that could help in the fields. He hoped it could all be over in time for him to make it back to the big house for supper.

  After the terrible past few days, Aleta didn’t give much thought to be spoken of in such a way. She was too preoccupied with knowing that the reason she knew he said this, was because Master was thinking it.

  He hadn’t actually said a word.

  Since the death of Emanuel, Aleta couldn’t stop hearing voices. Everywhere she went, even from her own Mama. She could see their thoughts, feel what they felt. Her neck had been sore for days after seeing Emanuel hang. His body lit on fire, she had felt the burn in her own limbs. It was something that kept her up at night, though she tried her best not to give any more grief to Mama.

  The auction lasted for two days. Aleta and her mother had been a last minute addition, and being that neither were appropriate or desirable for field work, there wasn’t a lot of interest in them.

  They watched as others were put on the block and sold to bidders. They were poked and prodded, as if they were hanging pieces of meat in the butcher shop. By the end of it all, Aleta had numbed herself to the humiliation. Her only prayer was that they were sold together.

  On the last day, right before the end, a beautiful woman with two girls that might have been her daughters, showed up. It was unusual to see unescorted women pretty much anywhere in town. Wives tended to stay at the house. They certainly were almost never seen at auctions. The woman had been eyeing Aleta and her mother for a long time.

  Aleta focused on the woman’s face. The woman had auburn hair tucked into a wide brimmed hat, tight spiral curls pinned underneath. The young girls with her were incredibly beautiful, one in particular. The other girl had hair as white as snow, all pinned under blue bonnets. Even in the heat they wore gloves and petticoats. Everyone stared at them.

  Aleta had been hearing voices all day in her head. She had ignored them mostly. They had all been rough and without kindness. But this woman’s voice was soothing. Her thoughts flooded Aleta’s mind.

  “My name is Virginia, Aleta. I know who you are and I know you can hear me, even without me saying a word. You are going to be okay. I am going to be taking you with me. And your mother. Your uncle, Dr. Ibis, has sent me for you.”

  Aleta shook, tears stinging her eyes. Her mother, tired and broken, held onto her girl.

  An hour later, true to her word, Aleta Indigo was in a carriage, the new property of Virginia Embers.

  Chapter 25

  I stared at Aleta, my eyes filled with tears at the horrific story she had just told me.

  “I’m so sorry.” It was all I could think to say.

  Aleta shook her head and smiled. “Don’t be. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

  “But your brother…” I couldn’t say anything else. I couldn’t even speak his name.

  “I think of him every day. As long as you say someone’s name out loud, they never die. And being that I have lived this long, Emanuel is immortal too.”

  I was stunned at her ability to have such a peace about what had happened to him. I could barely breathe when I thought of what had probably been my sister’s last horrendous moments on this planet. But what had happened to Emanuel was one of the most terrible things I’d ever heard. It was something we read about in history books. It seemed so far away, out of touch with anything I knew about today.

  Again, it reminded me of my mother. And something else she had taught me.

  “We inherit loss,” my mother had said. “We inherit pain. The sins of the father stay with his children. And this is something our country will always pay for.”

  It was another history vacation. I was fifteen and my parents had brought us to Louisiana for fall break to avoid the humidity of a bayou summer. We were touring a plantation house, one with slave quarters. Admittedly, Merritt and I were morbidly fascinated with seeing where slaves had lived back in the antebellum days. We were shocked to see their “house” had been no bigger than my bedroom back in California. Maybe smaller. It had a dirt floor. The thought of working such back breaking labor and coming home to this after a long day, was sobering. I could see why my mother felt it was important for us to see it.

 
The tour guide looked at my mother funny when she said that. So had a couple of others in our group.

  “Slavery wasn’t that bad,” a doughy woman with a Jesus fish t-shirt said, speaking to the tour guide, a young black man. “They got treated real nice. Food, clothes, a place to sleep. And besides, some of them even got saved by getting to come to America. So in that regard, they should be grateful.”

  My sister and I kind of looked at the woman with a mixture of shock and amusement. I assumed she was trying to be darkly satirical.

  But her husband then added, “Slavery gets dragged out to make America feel guilty about being the best damn country in the world.”

  The tour guide said nothing, just gave a thin smile. But I noticed his right eye twitched a bit. I was furious for him.

  I could hear my father whispering to my mother not to say anything. Dad was the reserved one, who preferred to avoid confrontation at all costs. She considered it, in her oft-repeated words, “silent assent” to stand quiet at such a moment. Dad simply thought of it as good manners. But my mother was staring at Merritt and me. I knew she felt if she didn’t say something we would think, at best, that she thought their ideas were tolerable. At worst, that she agreed with them. My mother never failed to try to make an example out of everything. Most of the time it induced much eye-rolling and exasperation on our part.

  This would not be one of those times.

  “Slavery gets ‘dragged out’ because it’s a scourge on the timeline of our country’s very short history,” my mother’s voice took a tone of authority, as if she was giving one of her epic classroom lectures. But these, sadly, were not kids. They were adults who should have known better.

  She continued, “And how kind of their masters to feed them and clothe them and give them the barest of essentials. As if it were from the kindness of their hearts and not to keep their property alive so it could do back breaking work for them on a daily basis. Yes, property. Slavery gets ‘dragged out’ because it’s important to remember what human beings are capable of doing to one another.”