“What?” Louvenia said, skeptical. “Sarah, that’s a baldhead lie. You ain’t readin’ that! Bet you can’t read it nohow.”
“Can, too! He said it right here,” Sarah insisted, pointing, feeling guilty for lying but unable to stop herself. It might be true, she thought. At school tomorrow, she would ask Miss Dunn to read the letter to her, so she’d know what it really said.
Maybe Alex had found his gold and was sending for them, after all.
Chapter Five
SEPTEMBER 1880
“It don’t seem real, do it?” Louvenia said in a hush, smoothing out the lovely fabric of the white dress she’d sewn, which hugged all the burgeoning curves of her body. To Sarah, Louvenia had never looked prettier. Her sister was sixteen, but this was the first time Sarah had really noticed how much she looked like a grown woman. She had a full bust like Mama’s, and rounded hips. Louvenia’s dress was plain cotton, but it still reminded Sarah of the magical white dress Missus Anna had been wearing when she came to their cabin that night because she was afraid of Yellow Jack. Six years ago. The memory made Sarah’s stomach squirm.
“Sho’ don’t seem real,” Sarah said. She’d tried to sound cheerful, but couldn’t.
“Sarah, I’ma be Missus William Powell. Me a missus!”
Sarah and Louvenia were in Miss Brown’s bedroom, and Louvenia stared into the mirror over the table Miss Brown had called a vanity; the table’s wood was so shiny Sarah had touched it when she first saw it, wondering if some of the shine would come off on her fingertips, but it hadn’t. Miss Brown’s neatly made bed, draped in an intricately sewn quilt that looked old, was built very high off the ground and seemed like it was big enough for four people. Their feet sank into the lovely, plush rug that covered most of her hardwood floor.
“But Lou . . . you don’t even hardly know this man,” Sarah said.
Sarah had met William Powell only twice; once when Lou took her to see him working at the blacksmith shop, and another time when he went with them both to the big summer picnic across the river in Delta, where colored folks from all parts had gone to eat, dance, laugh, and talk about politics. Sarah hadn’t known how many people were there; she stopped counting at two hundred, delighted with watching their loud laughter and dances where they flapped their arms, swaying and bucking to the fiddle players’ music. But Missy Laura had been there, and lots of other croppers she and Lou knew. Sarah had a good time that day, one of her finest times in years—she’d eaten her fill of fried chicken, catfish, pound cake, candied yams, and chitterlings, more food than she could remember eating in a single sitting—but she hadn’t thought very kindly of Mr. William Powell.
First of all, like all the men Louvenia favored, he just seemed old. Lou said he was thirty, which was old enough, but he seemed older to her. He had a bushy mustache that grew all the way to his cheeks and nearly covered his lips, and the whites of his eyes looked red and runny. He also had tobacco-yellowed teeth and breath that smelled of smoke, which Sarah didn’t like. Mr. William Powell and his men friends had sat around their jug at the picnic, laughing more and more loudly as the day went on, and by late afternoon the tip of his nose had turned purplish and he was slurring his words. If Sarah hadn’t known he was the one who had paid their fare across the river, she would have forgotten Mr. William Powell was accompanying her and Lou at all that day. Sarah had noticed the way the other “courting” couples danced together and leaned close to each other, and she decided her sister was not being properly courted at all.
She’d been as surprised as Louvenia when, two weeks later, Mr. William Powell had told Lou he wanted to get married. He’d told her the date and the church, as if it were all settled.
“I know enough,” Louvenia answered Sarah, her face unchanged in the mirror except for slightly rigid lines that appeared at her jaw. “I know he got a house, so we won’t be on top o’ each other in that chinchpad no mo’. I know he work hard, which mean we all gon’ have more money. An’ I know I’m full up with worryin’ ’bout how we gon’ get by. I’m tired, Sarah. I’m tired through an’ through.”
Sarah remembered once asking Papa what he had felt when he first met Mama. Colored people didn’t get legal-married in those days, not like Louvenia and Mr. William Powell were going to. Papa had told her jumping the broom was the only way most slaves were allowed to show their love. Yo’ mama? First day I seen her in the field, I knowed she’d be my wife. I couldn’ sleep the whole night through for thinkin’ ’bout her. She b’longed to a man ’cross the way, an’ Marse Burney axe to buy her special fo’ me.
Sarah was pretty sure her sister had never had a sleepless night thinking about Mr. William Powell, and she felt even more certain he’d never stayed awake thinking about her. Still, Louvenia was gazing at her image in the mirror with dancing eyes, admiring her dress she’d made from the fabric Miss Brown had given her as a wedding gift, as if Mr. William Powell had promised her all the world.
“Things gon’ be better fo’ us, Sarah,” Louvenia said, locking her eyes to Sarah’s in their reflection in the mirror. “We gon’ have a good home now.”
And for the barest instant, despite her gnawing reservations about making a life with a stranger, Sarah actually believed her.
By the winter after Sarah and Louvenia began living with Mr. William Powell, Sarah began to think Louvenia’s optimism on her wedding day had been well placed. As the sky filled with dreary gray and the wind began to bite through her clothes, Sarah was grateful for the heavy coat Mr. William Powell had bought for her with his own money, and pleased with the gleaming, sturdy ankle-high shoes on her feet that fit just right. Finally the dark, hard corns she’d grown on her toes from so many years of wearing too-tight shoes throbbed less all the time, and walking was no longer painful. And instead of having a single good dress, she now had three, all of them made of calico, and only one of them handed down from Lou. Sarah cherished her dresses, and she was careful to wear a long apron when she worked at Miss Brown’s so she wouldn’t accidentally stain or tear her precious clothes. Miss Brown even smiled at her when she noticed the hair bows Mr. William Powell had bought for her when he took a train trip to St. Louis, a big red one, a white one, and a sky blue one that brightened up her hair.
Now Miss Dunn had begun to take a special interest in Sarah, since there were only two or three other students in her class who had been coming almost every day. Mostly the class was filled with new people who were far behind; Miss Dunn tried to catch everyone up, even if it meant she had to begin with the ABCs, but most students didn’t stay long. Either their families moved away or they had to go out to the plantations for picking or planting. But not Sarah. Hard as it was, Sarah had been coming to Miss Dunn for more than a year.
One day after class, Miss Dunn called her aside just as Sarah was about to make a dash through the door so she wouldn’t be late to Miss Brown’s. Miss Dunn’s manner was much softer than Miss Brown’s, and she smiled at Sarah often with those familiar warm eyes. “You’re at a second-grade level, Sarah,” Miss Dunn said. “It might not sound like much, but you’ve been learning fast, compared to where you were when you started. And your penmanship is glorious.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Sarah worked hard on writing her letters in script, practicing late at night so that her writing matched the letters Miss Dunn had written on paper for her to mimic.
“If you’re ever a teacher one day,” Miss Dunn went on, “you’ll understand what it means to have a student with both determination and intelligence. Believe me, some people in my family don’t understand why I ever came to Mississippi, but you make me glad to be here.”
At that, Sarah lowered her eyes shyly, still smiling.
“Did you think you might ever be a teacher?” Miss Dunn said.
Sarah shook her head. She couldn’t imagine herself ever being like Miss Dunn, speaking so proper and knowing so much. “No’m,” she said. “I ain’t thought ’bout nothin’ like that.”
“Well,
I think it’s about time you did. How old are you now?”
“Twelve,” Sarah said softly, still feeling too bashful to look back up at Miss Dunn although she knew it was impolite to avoid her teacher’s eyes. “I be thirteen come Christmas.”
“You’ll be old enough for high school soon,” Miss Dunn said. “Have you ever heard of Campbell College?”
Sarah shook her head. Then Miss Dunn explained that the African Methodist Episcopal Church had established a school for Negroes called Campbell College in 1887, with one branch in Friar’s Point and the other right in Vicksburg. Even though it was named a college, she explained, the school taught many students at the grammar-school level. It wasn’t public like a free school, and Campbell College didn’t have much money because it wasn’t supported by any white organization, Miss Dunn said, but she thought she might be able to help Sarah attend at a fee she could earn through her washing.
“They’ve already asked me about my promising students, and I mentioned you,” Miss Dunn said. “I don’t think you’re quite ready now—I’ll need to give you some special instruction—but you will be soon. And the best part is, you could learn a trade, something other than washing and domestic work. I’ll probably be teaching there myself after next year. Would you like to go to Campbell?”
Sarah’s senses swam into a blur. Miss Dunn thought she could go to a college! Sarah knew Miss Dunn had attended a college somewhere, but the only other people she’d heard about who attended college were the children of the white families they delivered laundry to. Sarah’s heart was suddenly pounding so loudly that she felt dizzy.
“Well?” Miss Dunn said, and Sarah realized she’d forgotten to answer.
“Yes, ma’am!” Sarah said, nearly shouting.
“Fine, then,” Miss Dunn said with a pleased laugh. “I’d like that, too.”
Sarah’s head wasn’t any more clear when she got to Miss Brown’s and began her washing alongside Louvenia, watching her hands disappear into the soapy water that devoured her arms up to her elbows. You could learn a trade, something other than washing. She’d been so happy to be free of cotton that she’d never imagined a life beyond washing. All the colored women she knew, except for Miss Dunn, were either washerwomen, croppers, cooks, or maids. In her most fanciful imaginings, the most she’d hoped for was that one day she would make so much money washing that she might have other washerwomen working for her, like Miss Brown. What had Miss Dunn meant when she said a trade? That she could learn to be a teacher? And what else?
“Sarah, where yo’ head is at?” Louvenia hissed at her. “Didn’t you hear me jus’ say I got sump’n to tell you?” For the first time, Sarah noticed her sister, who was smiling girlishly the way she’d been smiling the day of her wedding. “I’ma have a baby,” Lou said in a loud whisper.
Stunned, Sarah lifted her sister’s apron to gaze at her slim belly. Lou had looked a little rounder in the cheeks since she married Mr. William Powell, but she didn’t look big like women who were expecting. “How you know?” Sarah asked.
“I ain’t had my monthly since October,” Lou said, more privately this time. “William say it look like we gon’ have a baby. He so happy!”
Even though Sarah hadn’t started bleeding between her legs yet, Lou had told Sarah about the monthly, so she understood how women’s cycles worked. She even thought she understood how women made babies, from watching the roosters, hens, and horses when she was younger. And she had certainly heard Lou and Mr. William Powell making the same latenight sounds as Mama and Papa, even though she slept clear on the other side of the house.
“I’m happy too, Lou,” Sarah said sincerely, with only the smallest tug of disappointment. Suddenly her news about going to college one day seemed very small.
It was dark outside when Sarah walked through Mr. William Powell’s front door, and she was surprised to find him waiting for her, sitting on the sofa she slept on as her bed at night. His leg was crossed over his knee, and he held his gold pocket watch in his hand, the one he’d paid $10 for when he went to St. Louis. He was still wearing his clothes from the blacksmith’s, his worn work pants and a gray shirt spotted with mud. He was also smoking his pipe, which Sarah hated because the sharp smell lingered in her nostrils when she was trying to sleep. “Evenin’, Mr. Powell,” Sarah said uncertainly, wondering why he was sitting in the front room alone, without Lou. He didn’t usually pay her any attention, except obligatory conversation.
“It sho’ is evenin’,” he said, lifting his watch closer to the lamp burning on the small table next to him. “It’s ’bout . . . five after seven o’clock, ’cording to this here.” He was so pleased with his pocket watch that he constantly recited the time, a habit that annoyed Sarah to no end.
“Yessir,” Sarah said, fidgeting. “Miss Brown tol’ me I had to—”
Mr. William Powell thrust up his palm, a gesture Sarah knew meant she should be quiet. She and Lou couldn’t talk when he wanted to talk. “Lou done fixed supper, but she ain’t feelin’ good so she went to lay down. She tol’ you she havin’ a baby?”
Sarah nodded.
“Well, we gon’ have some changes,” he said, and Sarah’s heart quickened. Changes, in her experience, were rarely good ones. “Lou need help back in the kitchen. She ain’t as good a cook as you, an ’sides, don’t make no sense for her to have that burden all her own.”
“Yessir,” Sarah said quickly. “I can git up early in the mornin’s an’ . . .”
But Mr. William Powell was shaking his head, and Sarah knew what he was going to say before he spoke again; somehow she felt she’d known it since she first walked in and found him waiting: “I won’t have you comin’ home this late. You gon’ go early to washing like Lou an’ come back with her to help cook an’ tidy. An’ that’s all.”
For an instant, Sarah couldn’t speak. Mr. William Powell’s eyes were unblinking as he gazed at her, and they seemed to hold her silent. Still, somehow, she opened her bone-dry mouth. “But Mr. Powell, I gots school in the mornin’.” Sarah rasped the words.
Suddenly Mr. William Powell was on his feet. “I said that’s all,” he told her, his voice angry, and he turned to walk away.
The sight of his back turned, and the thought of how easily he had dismissed her, both infuriated and frightened Sarah. “But my teacher say I kin go to college! She say—”
“College?” At that, he stopped short and turned to look at her. Instead of softening, his face seemed to have grown harder. “What the hell a li’l nigger gal gon’ do in a college?” he said, practically spitting, and Sarah felt as if her heart had been shorn in half. “I knew it! One o’ them yallow niggers from up north fillin’ you up with nonsense, wastin’ yo’ time. Lou say you wants to read—well, you readin’! You read better’n me, better’n Lou. What you want next? What you think gon’ happen? You think you read ’nuff, you won’t be a nigger no mo’?”
Sarah’s face was coated with stinging, sticky tears. “N-no,” she choked.
“Well, you damn right,” he said. “Niggers can’t hardly feed theyselves, but they talkin’ ’bout college an’ walkin’ ’round dressed like they got a hunnert dollars in they pocket, thinkin’ they’s white folks. Well, you ain’t. An’ here’s what you gon’ do: You gon’ do yo’ washin’ like I say an’ come home an’ help Lou so you can earn yo’ keep under this roof, an’ I ain’t gon’ hear another word ’bout you goin’ to school or college. You lucky you got a damn home.”
The pain burning in Sarah’s chest and midsection nearly doubled her over. Miss Dunn had believed Sarah could have something different, but now Mr. William Powell was taking it all away. He was taking Miss Dunn away.
“You ain’t my papa!” Sarah shrieked at him suddenly. “You jus’ some man Lou married! You don’t own me, and I’ma go to school if I want!”
At that instant, Mr. William Powell’s eyes felt like fire, too, but his face held no emotion at all. He quickly walked away without a word, toward his bedroom. Sarah watche
d his purposeful strides as he left, her shoulders heaving with deep, silent sobs. Her heart drummed loudly. Had she convinced him? Was it over?
No, Sarah, a certainty-filled voice inside her said. Run, Sarah. Run right now.
But she couldn’t move, even when she saw Mr. William Powell walk back into the room with that strangely vacant face and his thin razor strop dangling from his hand. In a mere instant, it seemed, he’d grabbed her arm and was tugging at the buttons on the back of her dress so roughly that she felt them popping. Panicked, Sarah screamed.
“I don’ know who you think you talkin’ to,” Mr. William Powell said, pulling the dress off her back, until she could feel cold air against her bare skin. He yanked the dress down one of her shoulders, exposing her chest and one of her budding breasts, and Sarah screamed again, mortified, wriggling with more strength than she knew she had.
But her strength couldn’t match Mr. William Powell’s. His grip on her arm never loosened, until she thought he might pull it from its socket.
Then Sarah felt the strop sear into her back with a loud snapping sound. This time Sarah didn’t scream so much as yelp. Mama, Papa, Alex, and Lou had all hit her with a switch before, but she’d never been hit with something that bit into her skin. She’d never felt a bright, lingering glow of pain.
“Next time,” Mr. William Powell said—snap!—emphasizing his words when he brought his lashes down, “you gon’ keep yo’ mouth shut an’ do what I say.” Instinctively, Sarah tried to turn her back away from him and succeeded, so his last lash landed across her chest, setting her nipple afire. Sarah did scream then, from unexpected pain.
“You hear me? You answer me, girl. Answer me.” He never raised his voice, but his blows landed as if they were accompanied by shouts.
Sarah couldn’t answer him; her throat was clogged with sobs. She paid for her silence with a rain of lashes that came in silent succession across her back until she was sure Mr. William Powell was ripping away her flesh.
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