Dessa Rose Page 12

  Dessa stared at the white woman. She was crazy, making up this whole thing, like, like—

  “…pretend their clothes came from a fashionable modiste, but I always said, ‘Oh, this a little something Mammy ran up for me.’ So when I walked into the great hall at Winston, I had on a dress that Mammy made and it was Mammy’s—”

  “Wasn’t no ‘mammy’ to it.” The words burst from Dessa. She knew even as she said it what the white woman meant. “Mammy” was a servant, a slave (Dorcas?) who had nursed the white woman as Carrie had nursed Young Mistress’s baby before it died. But, goaded by the white woman’s open-mouthed stare, she continued, “Mammy ain’t made you nothing!”

  “Why, she—” The white woman stopped, confused. Hurt seemed to spread like a red stain across her face.

  Seeing it, Dessa lashed out again. “You don’t even know mammy.”

  “I do so,” the white woman said indignantly, “Pappa give her—”

  “Mammy live on the Vaugham plantation near Simeon on the Beauford River, McAllen County.” This was what they were taught to say if some white person asked them; their name and what place they belonged to. The white woman gaped, like a fish, Dessa thought contemptuously, just like a fish out of water. Anybody could make this white woman’s wits go gathering.

  “My, my—My Mammy—” the white woman sputtered.

  The words exploded inside Dessa. “Your ‘mammy’—” Never, never had that white baby taken Jessup’s place with Carrie. “Your ‘mammy’!” No white girl could ever have taken her place in mammy’s bosom; no one. “You ain’t got no ‘mammy,’” she snapped.

  “I do—I did so.” The white woman was shouting now, the white cloth crushed in her trembling hands.

  “All you know about is this kinda sleeve and that kinda bonnet; some party here—Didn’t you have no peoples where you lived? ‘Mammy’ ain’t nobody name, not they real one.”

  “Mam—”

  The white woman’s baby started to cry and the white woman made as if to rise and go to it. Dessa’s voice overrode the tearful wail, seeming to pin the white woman in the chair. “See! See! You don’t even not know ‘mammy’s’ name. Mammy have a name, have children.”

  “She didn’t.” The white woman, finger stabbing toward her own heart, finally rose. “She just had me! I was like her child.”

  “What was her name then?” Dessa taunted. “Child don’t even know its own mammy’s name. What was mammy’s name? What—”

  “Mammy,” the white woman yelled. “That was her name.”

  “Her name was Rose,” Dessa shouted back, struggling to sit up. “That’s a flower so red it look black. When mammy was a girl they named her that count of her skin—smooth black, and they teased her bout her breath cause she worked around the dairy; said it smelled like cow milk and her mouth was slick as butter, her kiss tangy as clabber.”

  “You are lying,” the white woman said coldly; she was shaking with fury. “Liar!” she hissed.

  Dessa heaved herself to her knees, flinging her words in the white woman’s face. “Mammy gave birth to ten chi’ren that come in the world living.” She counted them off on her fingers. “The first one Rose after herself; the second one died before the white folks named it. Mammy called her Minta after a cousin she met once. Seth was the first child lived to go into the fields. Little Rose died while mammy was carrying Amos—carried off by the diphtheria. Thank God, He spared Seth.” Remembering the names now the way mammy used to tell them, lest they forget, she would say; lest her poor, lost children die to living memory as they had in her world.

  “Amos lived for a week one Easter. Seem like he blighted the womb; not another one lived till she had Bess.” Mammy telling the names until speech became too painful.

  “Them was the two she left, Seth and Bess; Seth was sold away when she come with Old Mistress to the Reeves place. Sold away like Jeeter, whose real name was Samuel after our daddy—only Carrie kept saying Jeeter when she meant Junior and that was the name he kept. Bess, born two years before Old Mistress married Old Master Reeves; left cause she was sickly; died before Rose reached her new home.”

  Even buried under years of silence, Dessa could not forget. She had started on the names of the dead before she realized that the white woman had gone. Both children were crying now but Dessa’s voice continued through their noise:

  “Jeffrey died the first year she come to the Reeves plantation; Caesar, two years older than Carrie: head kicked in by a horse he was holding for some guest. Carrie was the first child born at the new place to live. Dessa, Dessa Rose, the baby girl.”

  Anger spent now, she wept. “Oh, I pray God mammy still got Carrie Mae left.”

  Four

  How dare that darky! Seething, Rufel blundered blindly out of the back door, slamming it behind her. She went quickly down the steep steps, pushing roughly past Ada—who had just set foot on the bottom step—without a word. Wench probably don’t know her own name and here she is trying to tell me something about Mammy. She strode across the yard, automatically turning down the path to the stream. Uppity, insolent slut! Ought to be whipped. And if she was mine, I’d do it, too, she thought venomously. She took the faint path to the left and entered the thin strand of trees that boarded the upper creek. It was cooler here in the dappled sunlight and Rufel slowed her pace. Of course she knew they were talking about two different people. Though how that crazy gal could think she could know anyone I would know—forgetting that she herself had half-hoped the same thing. Rufel knew the darky often shammed sleep but she had also sensed the girl’s puzzled wonder at her words, and her wide-opened eyes had seemed to invite confidences. Rufel had not talked of Charleston with the raw yearning that Mammy had come to hate and fear, but as simple proof that that life had existed; the darky’s credulous, if drowsy, attention had seemed somehow to confirm that existence. Rufel flushed angrily. She had acted no better than the wench; she had fallen into reminiscing with a strange darky.

  Mammy would say she was too trusting, Rufel knew, too openhearted. The wench had been sassy, but it was Rufel who had first forgotten her place, gossiping like common trash. She could hear Mammy’s voice plain as day. I was just trying to cheer her up, she thought defensively. Must be dull as straw laying up in that bed all day. If she had chatted a bit long, well, Rufel admitted that she was lonely, that the silence since Mammy’s death sometimes came near to crushing her. And to be invited to speak—Resentment flared in her. Anyway, she thought sullenly, there had been no call for the wench to turn so hateful. Making up all that stuff just to be mean.

  Rufel came out on the narrow shoreline and was almost upon the dark figure by the tree before she noticed him, or he her. One of the darkies who came to see the girl, recognized in the instant before she could scream. Fishing: the pole propped between his knees, his back propped against the tree trunk, battered hat over his face. Sensing or only hearing her, he moved. Hat slipping, pole falling, body struggling to rise, he seemed at first all arms and legs, a shapeless darkness contained by ragged clothes, topped by the light-colored hat, and she covered her mouth to laugh. Balanced now, he rose, fluid, looming black against the sky, stopping the laugh in her throat. She would have screamed, but he spoke.

  “Don’t.” Softly, arm out, hand up, open, looking straight into her eyes. “I’m just fishing.” He gestured with the pole toward the creek. “No trespass intended.” But he made no move to go.

  Confused she stopped. “Why—” It was her place, she thought indignantly. “You—” Everywhere; they were everywhere, her house, her bed—And Mammy—Rufel burst into tears. Of course she knew Mammy’s name, she told herself, and she would think of it as soon as she got over being so upset. She—

  “Mis’ess.” Close to her, body heat drawing her…“Miz—” She threw her arms around the shoulders, her head seeking that spot where the frayed collar lay open against the black neck.

  “Mammy,” she hiccuped against the soft, supple cloth, and, remembering with
painful clarity: “Dorcas. It was Dorcas.”

  Dorcas. Pappa had not given her Mammy as a birthday present as Rufel sometimes claimed. Dorcas was a lady’s maid extraordinaire who had traveled with her former mistress in France and, at eleven hundred dollars (you could get a good field hand for that!), far too expensive a present for a thirteen-year-old girl. Dorcas did for all three of the Carson ladies, sewing, laundry, hair, dressing them, choosing their clothes. They called her Mammy because Mrs. Carson thought the title made her seem as if she had been with the family for a long time. She cared for them all, restraining Mrs. Carson’s taste for low-cut dresses and Rowena’s penchant for gaudy furbelows. She kept five-year-old Benjamin junior in starched shirt fronts when company came and introduced the senior Carson men to the comforts of the soft tie, which had not then come into the general vogue. She made Rufel stand up straight, rinsed her baby-fine hair in malt water and lemon, and arranged it becomingly about her childlishly thin face. And loved her. It was Rufel Mammy had loved, Rufel whose heart she had stolen from the moment she smiled.

  “Dorcas,” spoken promptly in response to Rufel’s startled question at finding a strange slave in her room. Her face was like coffee with nothing of cream in it, Rufel had thought in confusion, feeling gangly and graceless, conscious of her rumpled pinafore and the hair that straggled limply about her face. “Dorcas” was neat as a pin: Her long, narrow white apron was spotless, pinned under the bust rather than tied at the waist of her dark gown; a white kerchief was arranged in precise folds over her broad bosom; a cream-colored bandanna—No, Rufel corrected herself. The silky-looking cloth on the darky’s head bore little resemblance to the gaudy-colored swatches most darkies tied about their heads. This was a scarf, knotted in a rosette behind one ear. Rufel, used to the rather haphazard dress of the other house slaves, was made uncomfortable by the darky’s tidy appearance. Why, she thought, again in confusion, she’s almost stylish. “I’m to be taking care of you and Miz Rowena and your mamma,” the darky said pleasantly. She put away the last of Rufel’s undergarments in the chest, closed the drawer, and turned, for Rufel had remained silent. “You are Miss Ruf—?”

  “Ruth. Ruth Elizabeth,” she said then, the spell broken. The darkies never could get her name straight, slurring and garbling the syllables until the name seemed almost unrecognizable. The careless pronunciation of the two household servants annoyed Mrs. Carson; often she dealt offenders a sharp slap across the mouth. Automatically, sure of herself now, firm and clear, “Ruth Elizabeth.”

  “That’s quite a mouthful for a young beanpole like yourself.”

  And Ruth Elizabeth, drawing herself up in offended dignity—for she was agonizingly conscious of her height, her suddenly expanding breasts, and tried to minimize both by slouching—was arrested by the smile flashing like a firefly across the dark face. The eyes lit with laughter, yet for a moment, Rufel sensed some hesitation, felt the dark eyes question, May I? Is it all right to tease? Drawn by that firefly grin, yet disturbed by the darky’s obvious assurance, Rufel was relieved by that hint of uncertainty; it made the darky seem more natural and herself a bit more comfortable.

  Rufel had been lonely, had felt herself ugly and awkward. Mammy talked with her, admired her hair and rather full-lipped smile, showed her how to walk erectly. She praised where Mrs. Carson had criticized, hugged where Rufel’s own mother had scolded. Whatever Rufel had not taken to that pillowy bosom seemed insignificant to her now; and she had been taken to that cushiony bosom, been named there ’Fel, Rufel. To hear the names on Mammy’s lips was to hear, to know herself loved.

  The hands in her hair now were hard, the chest, the arms. Rufel sat up sniffing. A dark hand obligingly offered her a ruffled cloth. She blew her nose with dainty precision, only then realizing that she had used her own petticoat. She turned to the darky aghast, and caught her breath. Never had she seen such blackness. She blinked, expecting to see the bulbous lips and bulging eyes of a burnt-cork minstrel. Instead she looked into a pair of rather shadowy eyes and strongly defined features that were—handsome! she thought shocked, almost outraged. She looked again, surreptitiously this time, conscious of herself, the darky, a male, herself, on the ground, together. He had dropped his arm from her shoulder at her first start of surprise; stiffly now, she drew further away from him.

  “Dorcas.” He cleared his throat. “Dorcas; that was the lady that died?”

  Rufel sniffed again and nodded. “She treated me just like, just like—” She stuttered and could have wept again, seeing with an almost palpable lucidity how absurd it was to think of herself as Mammy’s child, a darky’s child. And shuddered. A pickaninny. Like the ragged, big-bellied urchins she had seen now and then about the streets of Mobile, running errands, cutting capers, begging coppers. Mammy was a slave, a nigger, and, and “She—She was my maid,” she finished lamely, confused; “my personal servant.” But Mammy was my friend, she thought. Embarrassed by her own recoil from the cherished memory, she said stoutly, “She loved me. And no darky can tell me different!” she added fiercely. She hiccuped and scooted closer to his comforting warmth. “That wench,” she continued angrily, “the one you-all always making over—”

  “Dessa?”

  “—said Mammy didn’t love me, couldn’t possibly have loved me.”

  “I don’t see that as much to take on about.” The darky spoke quietly. “Something some darky said.”

  “She—”

  “Dessa didn’t even know Dorcas, and just met you. Why you so upset?”

  Rufel opened her mouth to speak, closed it, and turned away. “I was just remembering Mam—” tongue stumbling over the familiar name, “remembering her.” Unable then to recall the familiar face, she blinked away angry tears, seeing then the loved features, the coffee-black skin and cream-colored head-scarf, the full lips, but subtly altered so the face seemed that of a stranger.

  “Guess you must have cared for Dorcas a lot.”

  She nodded and wiped her nose, warming to the quiet voice. “I talked to her every day of my life from the time I was thirteen. I don’t think I ever thought a thought during all that time that I didn’t tell Mam—Dor—That I didn’t tell her. Well,” seeing his skeptical look. Had he known Mammy? she thought wildly, and looked away. “Not everything. When I was—After I got married, there was certain thoughts a married lady can’t share. But I told her everything else,” she said hurriedly, grabbing among memories she and Mammy had shared. “I’d come home from a ball or even just a little walk with the Misses Greyson, Regina and Dolly—they were my particular friends.”

  There was no special day she remembered, just the feel of those strolls about the city with Pompey, one of the Greysons’ darkies, walking along behind, or the taste of the buttery little biscuits the Greysons’ cook made for afternoon tea. Mammy had not always been there when Rufel returned from an outing; often as not, Mammy had been dressing Mrs. Carson or trying to comb the tangles out of Rowena’s thick, honey-blond curls. But always she found the time to review the happenings of Rufel’s day, to exclaim over any small triumph, to console, advise, coax, chide—Rufel had started to describe the dress she had worn to Abigail Sorenson’s ball when she became aware of movement at her side. The darky stood, hat in one hand, fish at his side in the other; Rufel stood also, her face burning. She had done it again, she saw; memory, mouth had run away with her—As if darkies could ever know the life she spoke of.

  “Scuse; scuse me, Mistress, for intruding.” The darky was bowing and backing away. “Scuse me.” He was gone.

  Rufel stamped her foot angrily. They were jealous of course, jealous of her memories, jealous that her life had been so much better than theirs, that it would be again. She was crying because she missed Mammy, she told herself as she sat under the tree and wept.

  Ada had made the darky a pallet on the floor in the bedroom, she reported when Rufel returned to the House. Rufel, her breasts throbbing, said nothing to this as she bent to pick up Clara.

  �
��I fed Little Missy a soft egg and some custard,” Ada said quickly.

  Rufel ignored this, too, as she fumbled to open her bodice. She could hear the baby crying through the closed bedroom door, but she shrank from the thought of nursing him, a pickaninny, seeing this for the first time as neighbors might—would—see it. His dark skin might as well be fur.

  “When the baby sleep through the night, Dessa move back of stairs.” Ada spoke loudly.

  Just like the reason I don’t answer is cause I can’t hear, Rufel thought irritably. Clara had done as much playing as nursing and now settled sleepily in the curve of Rufel’s arm. The tightness in one of her breasts had eased but the other continued to throb.

  “Where Dorcas used to sleep,” Ada continued. “—if that all right with you,” she added quickly.

  So you finally realized you have to ask the mistress round here, Rufel thought spitefully, enjoying Ada’s obvious discomfiture. Aloud, she said angrily, “I don’t care where that wench sleep.” She would have to feed the baby, Rufel thought wearily. She took the sleeping Clara into the bedroom and laid her in the crib. The darky was awake but Rufel avoided her eyes as she picked up the squalling infant. Ada hovered in the background looking uneasily from one to the other.

  Mammy would have had the story out of us in a minute, she thought as she returned to the parlor, forced an apology from the instigator—if not from both!—as she used to do when Rufel and Rowena quarreled. Rufel caught herself up short. There you go again, she told herself angrily, expecting all darkies to be like Mammy. Like family, a voice wailed silently within her.

  Rufel sank gratefully into the rocker in the parlor and freed her breast to the baby’s searching mouth. The baby planted a tiny fist on her breast, sucking hungrily, his shoe-button eyes glittery with tears. She turned her head from his stare, uncomfortable under his unwinking gaze. Almost of their own volition, her fingers stroked his silken curls, so different from the bald heads of her own newborns, the utter brownness of him a striking contrast with the pallor of their skins. Willfully, she closed her eyes and, sighing, gave herself over to the sensual rhythm of his feeding.