by Gigi Amateau
MA BELIEVED. One Sunday before sunrise, she headed out early for church at Young’s spring with her infant, Gabriel, swaddled and slung across her chest. She walked briskly along the footpath that she and so many others before had worn to the creek. Later, Pa would join them for worship, bringing the oldest boy, Martin, while toting the middle one, Solomon.
Since Gabriel’s birth, Ma kept most of her days at the great house; away from the field, which she was glad to be, but away from her husband, which left her empty. The cook, Kissey, often reminded her to give thanks for Mrs. Prosser, who granted Ma a weekly Sunday reunion, but Ma yearned for more than half a borrowed morning with her family.
Ma did give thanks for her friends. “Praise the Lord for Kissey and Old Major,” Ma said aloud now as she set her baby down.
In her pocket nestled the apple seeds; she had kept them safe and deep in her apron until the captive ground of winter gave way to spring’s rightful thaw. The morning smelled of sunshine, new grass, and flowers to come. Before she reached the stream where all the people from all the quarters would gather to pray, Ma squatted down on the still side of the hill. There at the south end of Brookfield plantation, she tugged, and the reluctant earth opened enough for her to place the seeds.
She could hear the tinkle of the creek beyond the field. When the rain comes, before long, that trickle will be a roar, she thought.
Gabriel began to root around for his second meal of the day, and Ma could not help but think of the other hungry babe. Brookfield’s infant master, little Thomas Henry Prosser, would need to eat soon, too. The missus could produce no milk of her own, so Ma fed both boys.
For times when Ma would be away from the great house, Old Major had fashioned a wooden spout from persimmon wood so that Kissey could feed Thomas Henry the early milk Ma squeezed from herself. If that milk ran out and the little master turned fussy, Kissey would placate him with a sugar teat until Ma returned. The missus rarely asked for her son before noon on Sundays, anyway.
Praise the Lord for Ann Prosser’s Sunday sick headaches. Ma gave thanks for this, too. She stretched out long in the grass and nursed her six-month-old son without interruption. After while, Gabriel opened his walnut eyes, and Ma gave him her other breast. On some Sundays, he got his fair share.
Ma stroked Gabriel’s troubled brow. “Eat all you like, child. Take what’s yours.”
When he finished, Gabriel protested being wrapped up so tight. He pushed away from Ma with his head, the only part of him unhemmed and unbound. Kissey had warned her not to loosen his dressing; the crude March air might do the child harm.
Ma unswaddled her son. “Another baby’d fall fast asleep from such a full little belly. You wide awake, my Gabriel.”
She swept him up and then swung him down — from the earth to the dawning sky and back. When his tender bare feet brushed along the downy grass, the baby laughed. He tried to stand on his own, and Ma approved. “Oh-ho! Where you off to, my strappin’ boy? You got business at the market, work in the city? My baby boy off to the sea?”
What Ma believed was this: her youngest son would grow strong and grow free. He would run pick an apple anytime he pleased, even if only to taste the good fruit given by the Lord, and see, from this spot, the amber sunrise painted by His hand.
She reflected on the talk so often heard in the quarter and the stories Pa brought back from the city, stories of a people insisting on freedom. Tall tales, she had first thought. Tall tales of a David thinkin’ to slay a giant. Yet Pa had been right all along. Virginia and the other colonies had condemned rule by tyranny and were now at war with England.
Ma prayed aloud for the apple seeds and for Gabriel, her youngest-born. “Lord, set my Gabriel free, too. One way or another, set my angel-boy free.” She kissed the baby in the hollow of his tender neck and refused to bind him up again.
The Lord sent a gentle rain that same afternoon and a blessed sunshine the next morning. From the soil once full enough to grow tobacco, now completely spent, God and Ma together helped the apple tree’s roots grow deep and its limbs slowly full on the protected shelf in the hill overlooking the spring. Gabriel grew, too.
GABRIEL LIVED with his mother and his two brothers in a small hut at the edge of the woods, just up the hill from the creek, only a short ways from the swamp, and a fair enough distance from the great house. Their home’s only window served also as the doorway to one room, where they cooked and ate, where they prayed and slept.
A hole in the ground held an ever-burning fire for cooking, warming, and keeping away bugs. A second hole, knocked in the wall, drew the smoke out. Beside the fire hole stood a table made by Pa, and at the east end of the room, a bed of Pa’s hand, too. To make it, Pa had felled a black-walnut tree, stripped the bark, smoothed the boards, and turned the posts.
Ma had delivered Gabriel in that bed, with Pa at her side. Even under threat of a well-laid-on lashing, Pa had not left his wife in her time. And when Gabriel entered the world, Pa breathed on the boy first.
Nowdays, Ma slept alone on the mattress pieced from coarse, heavy Negro cloth and piled with corn husks. Martin, Solomon, and Gabriel slept on the floor — Gabriel right at the door. So that the breeze would cool his skin, on hot nights he slept atop a wool rug, issued him by Mr. Prosser. In cold weather, Gabriel curled up beneath his rug and tried to keep warm. And by full-moon light, Gabriel could see well enough to memorize words from the book given him by Mrs. Prosser. He liked his sleeping spot; from this place Gabriel could see and hear everything in the night.
Whenever Old Major, who lived just across the yard, got up to grind his weekly corn ration with the hand mill that all the folks shared, Gabriel knew Ma’s turn would come next. Every time, Old Major’s hound dog let Gabriel know when to rouse Ma. Whether Dog counted up the minutes or whether she detected the slightest finishing-up shift in Old Major’s weight, Gabriel did not know. But whenever Ma’s turn came, Dog always gave a half howl, and Gabriel would then wake his ma. Soon after the little yowl, Old Major and Dog would appear in the yard between the huts.
Last summer was when Dog had first come to them, snarling and growling, seeking refuge in the quarter. At first, the year-old pup had acted more like a rattlesnake than a hound. The women and children hid from her; the men tried to beat and subdue her — all except Old Major, who said to the insolent beast, “Keep still; you all right. Set down here. I know just how you feel.” And soon after, Dog let the people in the quarter come to know her.
Old Major would only call her Dog. The quiet man’s own given name had been put away ever since Gabriel could remember. Ma said a dash toward freedom was what got the master started on saying “Old Major.” Ma said Old Major’s run happened before Gabriel was born.
According to the women, Old Major had changed since being hunted down and dragged back to Brookfield. Even Gabriel knew the story of how Prosser’s man had tied the captured freedom fighter to a tree and hit him with a tobacco stick until Old Major’s true spirit left him and took up in the ebony heartwood of the persimmon to which he was bound.
Even when the night was still, such olden memories lived on in the quarter, keeping Gabriel awake.
On some rare Saturday nights, he would listen to Old Major playing the fiddle and calling a dance in the forest, right below the quarter. He could hear Kissey’s spoons, too, holding the rhythm of every tune. When the two of them got going strong, the neighbor kin would holler out, “Go on! Go on!” Often, an old voice Gabriel recognized but could not place would shout above the music and the laughter, “Shine it up! Shine out!”
Sometimes the slowest mournful ballad would fill Gabriel with delight. Sometimes a fast jig could make him cry. And sometimes a piece that was supposed t
o sound happy and content could draw out moaning and wailing from the very earth, from the trees, the creek — as if all the peoples’ sufferings were alive and lingering there in the notes, as if all the people were calling out Come, freedom. Come, freedom. Freedom, go on and come. Those times, Gabriel knew in his heart that the familiar voice he heard was Old Major’s true spirit, now binding to the dance from the deep, black heart of the persimmon. He wondered whether everyone else heard it, too.
On these nights, when the grown folks made music and dancing together — when they practiced at joy — Gabriel suspected that every chestnut and cedar, hickory and oak, in the night forest united to sway and rock the people into a little place of happiness to help them bear another day. He loved nothing so much as to fall asleep tapping his feet to the sounds of his beautiful people, safe in the dark woods.
He had once overheard Mrs. Prosser laughing with another missus. “Virginians would rather die than not dance!” From his place by the door, he could tell she was right: dancing was a dangerous pastime for his people, but even so, they would not stop.
On occasion the fierce urgency of his kin’s dancing seemed to rise up out of the woods, insistent on reaching the great house. Now and then, through a cracked window, an open flue, or the propped-wide kitchen door, the people’s singing even breached Mr. Prosser’s dreams and woke him. Come, freedom. Come, freedom. Freedom, go on and come. On those dangerous nights, the trees could not protect the people. The whole forest could not help.
When the fiddle turned suddenly silent and the lively sounds of the dance fell hush, Gabriel knew that Prosser’s man was coming down. On those nights, he would suspend his breath and pray Ma’s psalms while the people slipped off into the shadows and melted away into the trees. During the eerie quiet, Gabriel would stay awake until he heard all return, and until he didn’t hear the shot of a gun.
Ma never went to dances anymore, not since Prosser’s man took Pa off to Richmond. Prosser’s man had come back to Brookfield with the cart full of new people from the city, packed with fine goods from the market house, but empty of Pa. At first, after Pa and his stories of freedom vanished, Ma took to the bed built by her husband.
From his place by the door, Gabriel watched his mother weeping. At night Ma cried, “Tell me, why would the Lord take my husband? What can a woman do, Lord? Tell me.”
Ma seemed deaf to Solomon’s tears and blind to Martin’s retreat into himself. She would not rise even to grind corn. When her turn came around, Gabriel went instead, and Dog went with him. At the mill, with no one to see but Dog, Gabriel wept, too.
Like Pa and for Pa, Ma resisted what life Brookfield had to offer her. After a short little while of Ma’s absence from the field, Gabriel saw Prosser’s man crossing the yard toward their hut.
“Ma?” Gabriel had said. “Somebody’s coming.”
Gabriel’s mother had curled up tight against Pa’s bedpost. But the man picked her up and hauled her to the woodshed next to the tobacco barn. Solomon could not stop him, and Martin dared not try. All three brothers pretended still to sleep when Ma staggered back to the quarter with her white slip in bloody shreds.
The smell of Ma’s torn flesh filled up their hut — a reminder that theirs was a family always at the mercy. Martin and Solomon could not stand to be near her. For a while, they slept elsewhere. Martin, who at the age of eighteen often found reasons to leave the quarter, took to the forest. Ten-year-old Solomon went to stay with Kissey.
Gabriel remained in his place on the floor, but he hardly slept for keeping watch over Ma. During the day, he went with his mother instead of to the great house for his lessons with Thomas Henry. From here on, he thought, I’ll keep Ma from all danger.
After the beating, Ma returned to the field where the people trudged through the tobacco, digging up cutworms and plucking away hornworms. Kissey came at night to doctor her up and to show Gabriel how to wash the gashes in his mother’s back with a tincture of apple-cider vinegar and herbs from the kitchen garden. To Gabriel, Ma’s whip marks resembled the earth between the tobacco hills, newly tilled and ready for planting.
GABRIEL COULD see how Ma feared to ease up in the field after the whipping. He was still too young then to be made to work all day in the ’baccy, but he took to walking alongside his ma — helping her — so that she would not fall farther behind.
Pa had left Ma in the family way, but despite her imminent condition, she had to labor alongside the other women to save the crop from the ravenous hornworms. Crooked and bent between the tobacco, Ma turned over the thousands of leaves on the hundreds of plants in her rows. From each victimized leaf, she plucked off the grubs and popped off their heads. She saved the hornworms in a basket, for bait when fishing at the brook with her boys on some Saturday evening when they were permitted a few daylight hours away from the field, away from the heat, away from Prosser’s man.
In the tobacco rows, Gabriel went behind Ma, pinching back the long suckers. Ma reminded him, now and then, to wipe the sticky tar from his bare arms and hands. Solomon came next down the line, topping off the flowers to keep the tobacco from going to seed.
Around noon, the man blew the breakfast horn for the first meal of the day. Some workers knelt and ate their sweet potatoes in the field. Some ran back to the quarter to check on the little children. Gabriel and Solomon fought over who would care for Ma. The tobacco field offered no easy shade, no cooling breeze. While the boys argued, Ma stood and arched her back — low, middling, and high up — then collapsed into the yellow-green leaves. The thick tobacco canopy closed up around her.
Solomon bossed Gabriel, “Run, Gabriel. Run get water for your ma.”
Gabriel, who was only nine but strong enough to lift Ma up onto his arm, did not run as his brother said do. “I’m taking Ma to rest, Solomon.”
“Rest here!” Solomon shouted. “If the man finds her gone, be hell to pay — a whippin’ for you both and likely a whippin’ for me, too, Brother.”
Gabriel kept walking, with his arm around Ma’s waist. He hollered to his older brother, “Don’t let him find us! Stir the roosters; make up a fuss. We’ll get back before the second horn blows.”
So Solomon ran; Solomon made a ruckus that drove Prosser’s man toward the house and away from the field while Gabriel tended to Ma.
In the fallow meadow below the tobacco, Gabriel helped his ma to the shade under the low branches of their apple tree. Its king blooms and petals had already fallen, and the crisp, eager smell of new fruit set upon the hillside breeze. Nearby, great whorls of honeysuckle softened the edges between the old field and the ancient forest. All sorts of songbirds darted about the forest glade, flashing gold, cobalt, and, now and again, cherry red. The clover would go uncut until time came to make hay.
Stretching out her swollen feet into the cool clover to comfort them, Ma scraped her thumbnail down each of her fingertips to clear away the green hornworm crust built up from her morning’s work. Her dress was wet from sweat, as if she had waded into water to her neck, wearing all her clothes.
Gabriel thought of her going back to the field, bending over the tobacco plants in the full sun. Let the grubs and suckers ruin all the ’baccy. She’s done enough today.
“Too hot for you to be working so hard, Ma.” He tore the tail from his own shirt — his only shirt — and wiped the sweat from her face. In the distance, he heard the faint, low call of the first work horn. People would soon set down their children; the man would soon start his count.
Ma patted her son’s leg. “My baby, run on. I’ll come along. Get to the field before that man finds you with me. Run on, now.”
“Let him come on. Why am I scared of him?” Gabriel bit his bottom lip to stop its trembling.
Ma smiled at her youngest. “Should have named you Daniel, hmmm? Scared of nothin’, run from nothin’, walk right on into the lion’s den. Daniel.” His mother braced against the trunk of the young tree, and in return their tree cradled her body and her burden in its
bend.
Ma called on God to keep put the child inside her and let this new one live to play under Gabriel’s tree. Ma still believed, now that the war was ended and a new America waking, that freedom would surely soon come.
Gabriel traced the rise and fall of each birthing pain across Ma’s face. His eyes fell toward her hands, pulling her knees up high. From someplace dark in Ma, he saw the blood soaking her dress red. Ma cried out, “‘My God, I take refuge in you — save me from all my pursuers and rescue me!’”
Because he wanted to please Ma, Gabriel recited the next verse. “‘Or my enemy will savage me like a lion, carry me off with no one to rescue me.’”
The second work horn sounded. Ma pressed against the tree and stroked her stomach while the blood continued to flow; Gabriel wiped pearls of sweat from her brow. He blew a cool breath over Ma’s temple, the way she always did for him on every August night.
Ma leaned on Gabriel to deliver her fourth son. The child crowned quickly and, with a cord wrapped around his neck, took not one breath.
Holding her stillborn infant close to her heart, Ma said to Gabriel, “Your brother here, he’s like Pa. Little One couldn’t wait around for freedom to reach Brookfield. He went on made his own way free, your brother.”
The house dogs bayed. Gabriel heard shouting in the distance. “Ma?” He shook her shoulder. “Somebody’s coming.”
Gabriel knew his brother might have confessed. Solomon looks after Solomon first.
“What do we say when Mr. Prosser’s man comes for us?” he asked Ma.
Ma shut her eyes and continued the psalm. “‘God is a shield that protects me, savin’ the honest of heart.’”
At Ma’s neck and in the tuck of her arms, spilling out of her dress, Gabriel saw the whip marks made not so long ago by Prosser’s man. Her wounds were pale scars now, all healed up. Gabriel’s hidden wounds, however, cut even deeper. Let Ma do the praying, he thought. One day, I’ll fight for our freedom like Pa.
