Dessa Rose Read online

  And we did not even know that she was gone, had, in fact, sat down to eat the supper left warmed on the fire-half against our return, to talk of the futile venture of the last few days, to conjecture on God knows what. Unsuspecting we were, until the darky that sleeps with Jemina came asking for her. Hughes went to inquire of his wife—who had not risen upon our return, merely called out to us that she was unwell and that food had been left for us. I was immediately alarmed, prescience I now know, upon learning that the woman had not seen Jemina since the wench had taken supper to Odessa earlier in the evening. And Hughes’ assurance that Jemina was a good girl, having been with the wife since childhood, did nothing to calm my fears. Such a slight indisposition as his wife evidently had was no reason to entrust the keeping of so valuable a prisoner to another darky who is no doubt only slightly less sly than Odessa herself. I protested thus to Hughes, too strongly I now see, for he replied heatedly that if I did not keep my tongue from his wife, my slight stature would not keep me from a beating. I am firm in my belief that these impetuous words of mine were a strong factor in his early abandonment of the search and I regret them accordingly. There are stronger words in my mind now, but I forebore, at that time, carrying the discussion further. I knew even then, without really knowing why, that time was of the essence. But Hughes shall find on the morrow that even one of my slight stature has the means of prosecuting him for criminal neglect. To think of leaving Odessa in the care of another nigger!

  Hughes’ darky was, of course, incoherent—when was a nigger in excitement ever anything else?—but we finally pieced together, between the darky’s throwing her apron over her head and howling, “Oh, Masa, it terrible; they was terrible fierce,” and pointing to her muddied gown to prove it, what must have happened. There were three niggers (she said three the first time; the number has increased with each successive telling. Perhaps there were only one or two; I settle upon three as a likely number. These were obviously the niggers with whom Odessa was in league in the uprising on the coffle. I could scream to think that even as we were out chasing shadows, the cunning devils were even then lying in wait to spirit her away. And to think that she—she was so deep as to give never an indication that they were then lurking about. Both Jemina and that woman of Hughes’ swear that except for a natural melancholy—which in itself was not unusual—I have been the only one to succeed in coaxing her into animated spirits—there was nothing out of the ordinary in Odessa’s demeanor these last days. And knowing now the cupidity of which she is capable, I must believe them). The three bucks overpowered the darky just as she opened the door to the cellar to hand down the evening meal to Odessa. At this point, Hughes ejaculated something to the effect that it was a good thing “my Betty” was not present, at which the darky began what must have been, had I not intervened, a long digression on the “Mist’s’” symptoms and how she might, at long last, be increasing. But I could feel those niggers getting farther away with Odessa, and so could not bear the interruption. The darky swears she heard no names called, that except for one exclamation from Odessa, of surprise or dismay, she could not tell which, they fled in silence; swears also that she could not see well enough to describe any of the niggers, save to state that they were big and black and terrible, as though that would help to distinguish them from any of hundreds, thousands of niggers in this world who are equally as big and as black and as terrible.

  Hughes’ jocular, and inappropriate, prediction that we should find Odessa and her newborn brat—for what female as far gone as she could stand the strain of a quick flight without giving birth to something—lying beside the trail within a mile or so proved incorrect. Both the nigger and the one bloodhound Hughes keeps were alike worthless in finding their trail. And then the rain came up, driven by a furious wind, lashing the needlelike drops into our faces; washing away all trace of Odessa. Hughes, in giving up the hunt, charged that I acted like one possessed. I know this was merely his excuse for failing in his own lawful duty. But the slut will not escape me. Sly bitch, smile at me, pretend—. She won’t escape me.**

  The Wench

  “…I have plowed and planted and no man could head me….”

  —SOJOURNER TRUTH

  Three

  “…I chooses me Dessa.”

  There was a murmur from the crowd gathered in the torchlit area between the corn cribs and the Great Barn. Dessa looked at Charlie. Ellis, Sara, and Neely, Charlie’s first three choices for his team, stood beside him looking as surprised as she felt. She was young to have been chosen so early. Though she was a steady worker (“steady sometimes be better than quick,” mammy said, “and it all ways better than flashy”), she was not as good at husking corn as Harriet, say, or Petey, or any of a number of other people whom Charlie could have chosen. He was probably joking, Dessa thought, trying somehow to show up Alec, the general for the other team of corn huskers. And Alec—Alec was obviously courting. He had chosen Zenobia at his fourth turn, passing over the experienced hands whose quick methodical shucking would make short work of the huge mound of corn piled in the middle of the area. That kind of funning was usually left until after the best workers had been chosen.

  “Charlie going try for ‘Youth’ now he done lost ‘Booty,’” someone called out.

  People laughed and she hid her own grin in her hands. Charlie could choose whomever he wanted. Dessa, though young, was no more foolhardy a choice than Zenobia, who was not known for her quickness at any chore, had been. Alec’s side had groaned when he called out Zenobia’s name; Brud, his second-in-command, had tugged frantically at his arm. Alec had shaken him off impatiently. “This strategy,” he said loudly. “Strategy.” And taking Zenobia’s hand, he pulled her to his side with a sweeping bow. That gesture had really loosened tongues and it was this amazed and ribald tribute to audacity that Charlie had sought to capture for himself in choosing Dessa. He probably meant to say Martha, she thought, as the older girl hunched her in the side.

  “Come on over here, baby.” Charlie beckoned to her, then folded his arms across his chest and waited with an air of such evident satisfaction that she was tickled in spite of herself. Still, she hesitated; maybe Charlie would choose Martha next. And—She glanced around. Mammy was sure to think that Charlie had chosen her because she had put herself forward and not because Charlie was just trying to shock people. Dessa craned her neck, her eyes searching among the dark faces, but she couldn’t tell if mammy were anyplace in the crowd.

  “Well, if that don’t—” Alec slapped his thigh in disgust that no one took seriously. The good-natured wrangling over selections was customary—though that, too, usually took place later. Alec’s public courting had swept them all into early gaiety.

  Dessa eyed Zenobia curiously. She was not above average looking, her brown skin rather muddy and, even in the torchlight, given to ashiness. But Zenobia had, as Alec told anyone who would listen, ass-for-days (and said like that as one word, it wasn’t cussing, just repeating what someone else had said. Anyway, she would never say it in front of mammy or any other grown person; with them it would be Zenobia’s “long booty.” Even this she would not say too often). And now that Zenobia was no longer with Jake, Alec was determined to have her.

  This was common knowledge. Even the children know about it, Dessa thought with a smile as she watched the older woman. Zenobia looked like she wasn’t studying about anything as she stood with her arm casually brushing against Alec’s sleeve. She did jiggle when she walked; the way her firm buttocks jostled the coarse cloth of her dress was generally admired among the men and envied, at least a little, among the women (and not just a certain kind, as mammy and Aunt Lefonia maintained). Dessa herself preferred Martha’s figure, she thought, and glanced at her friend, whose full bosom and high narrow behind seemed to be driving two or three young men on the plantation wild. And there was nothing about Zenobia—if you discounted her booty (and after tonight, no one in the neighborhood would)—that Dessa could see that would inspire a man to risk
Master’s accusation of playing around with the work. A corn husking was not, strictly speaking, work, true enough. Master provided music and food—Jeeter said his stomach itched everytime he thought of the night’s feasting—and invited the masters of neighboring plantations to bring their people to the husking. The white folks, of course, danced and feasted at the Big House while the people shucked the corn. The food, the music, the competition over who would be the corn general, over which side would finish shucking its pile of corn first, all these made you want to come. And though some of the more religious people (for Master served up the persimmon beer in barrels) and some of the older people stayed away or only came later, like the white folks, to watch the dancing, everyone knew that all Master’s corn, down to the last rounding, would be shucked before victual one was eaten or the fiddler bowed one note.

  “In that case,” Alec sputtered now, “I wants Martha.”

  Dessa felt a quick spurt of disappointment; they would not be on the same side after all.

  “‘Booty’ and ‘Beauty.’” This from the crowd amid rising laughter.

  “Martha?” Charlie squawked. He was definitely into his act now, playing to the laughing crowd. “Man, how you going choose Martha when Santee ain’t been chosed, and Monroe; neither Hank?”

  “Now, look here, Charlie, you know these two pretty little ladies don’t be doing too much of no kind of work”—here she started up: Why Alec want to say something like that, even in fun?—“let alone shucking corn, when they’s right long side of each other.”

  “And they don’t be doing too much of that even when they ain’t together,” Sara said laughing.

  Though she and Martha looked indignantly at Sara, Dessa was relieved that the older woman had spoken up. The whole business of choosing sides had come to a halt. She felt torn between pride at being the subject of the men’s fast-talking raillery and mortification at having her name bandied about before every darky on the place. Mammy would pitch a hissy (“Another one want to be noted, huh? Note ain’t never got a nigga nothing but trouble”).

  “Now, you just hold on a minute here, Sara—” Alec began.

  “Aw, man, get on with the choosing.”

  “Don’t make me no ne’ mind which’n choose me.” Martha spoke for the first time. “I ain’t never been particular about scratching up my hands on no corn husks no way.”

  Dessa smiled at her whispered commentary. Martha was used to all this; somebody was always trying to trade words with her, to get next to her. But Martha paid none of them any mind. “Now, if it was Masa…” she’d said once, looking at Dessa sideways out of innocently widened eyes. Dessa had felt a faint brush of fear at the idea. To do that with…She had turned away from the thought uneasily and Martha had continued. “Why not? Least that’d be one man can’t be sold way from you.”

  “Sold way” the words echoed eerily in Dessa’s mind and the brightly lit, laughing faces of the people wavered before her eyes. She heard a clanking noise, her own labored breathing. She stumbled and would have been dragged down by the pull of the ankle chain had it not been for a hand on her elbow.

  “Oh, drat!” Martha held out a stubby muscular hand, the nails broken, the skin ashy. She licked a forefinger and rubbed it delicately at a roughened place between her little and ring fingers. “Them cotton boles do tear a hand up so.”

  Dessa laughed; Martha could tear up herself. That Robert boy who worked with Luke’s gang in the timber lots came into her mind. Lawd. He was fine and maybe they would end up on the same side tonight or at least sitting across from each other. She imagined the pile of corn reduced between them, his face appearing above it in the moonlight, the pointed chin and little shiny eyes that got lost in the crinkles of his face when he laughed. He had some eyes for looking; they seemed to follow her whenever she was around him. She couldn’t see him in the crowd but there was no doubt in her mind that he would seek her out before the evening was over.

  “Come on, girl.” Martha tugged at her arm. “We on Charlie’s side.”

  She stood a moment, her eyes frantically searching the scene: Someone was missing. They rested a moment on mammy’s wide dark face, her uncovered head, the thin hair gathered into three plaits that stuck out from her head Dessa’s heart beat fast

  Mammy didn’t go out without something on her head—She turned…Jeeter? Her insides opened up. Jeeter? Was this the hole in the blackness? The brother sold south

  It was dark; the square was lit almost as bright as day by flaring torches and moonlight, but there were shadows on the faces. The people milled about—men, women, children (When I wasn’t nothing but a chile…)—oh, someone was missing

  Charlie and Alec scrambled up the corn pile and finally succeeded in laying the rail across the top of it to everyone’s satisfaction. Last year, the mound had been so lopsided and there had been so much argument back and forth about which side—if either—were larger that Master had had to divide the pile

  No. That hadn’t happened since she was a real little girl. When Old Master was alive. Master Vaugham didn’t get any closer to a shucking than that wagon seat. She could see his face gleaming whitely across the heads of the people. Blood had crusted on his temple and a cut above his eye oozed wetly. She backed away, her head pounding, suddenly, painfully…Masa? Masa bleed—Someone

  “Slip shuck corn a little while,” Alec gave out. He stood at the top of the pile, hands on his hips, his feet planted solidly in the corn. “Slip shuck corn a little while.

  “Little while, little while I say.”

  She was a steady worker, picking up an ear with her left hand, stripping it with her right, tossing the shuck onto a pile at her right side and the ear into a basket in front of her.

  “Slip shuck corn a little while.”

  Charlie and Alec strode across the pile of corn, shouting encouragement to their teammates, now and then husking an ear of corn with a flourish or dropping down to work and trade words among the shuckers seated around the edge of the mound. And most of all lining out some tale or commenting on some topical situation, improvising on an old theme that the singing made new.

  “Little while I say.”

  She saw mammy down the line and waved. That Robert boy caught her eye and winked. She dropped her own as Martha nudged her with a sly laugh.

  (I wasn’t nothing but a child

  “Possum up the gum stump, racoon in the holler;”

  Someone was missing

  “Rabbit in the old field fat as he can waller.”

  Maybe it was the torchlight on the faces that made such shadows The people talked and laughed but someone was missing

  “Nigga in the woodpile can’t count seven…”

  The twang of the straws beaten against the fiddle strings rose above the sound of shuffling feet. Little Simpson could really handle the straws. Little Simpson wasn’t nothing but a child

  “I was grown when I met you.” She’d said that once in response to some comment of Kaine’s about her bull head and what she would never learn. And he had laughed. “You still ain’t nothing but a child—” Oh, Kaine’s fingers like the notes off that banjo on her skin—and here they’d thought that there wasn’t anything half so fine as Gustus on that fiddle with Little Simpson to beat the straws.

  “Whee-ee-yooo, whee-ee-yoo…”

  “Gentlemens to the right.” Brud strutted away from her on the call; she whirled to the left, double-timing on the flight of half notes Kaine played just for her while his heel and toe stomped the syncopated rhythm to which the rest of them danced

  “Whee-eee-yoo, whee-ee-yoooooo,” he sang above the music and the dancing feet.

  She rocked back on her hips, clapped her hands, and glided into the turn. Brud’s fingers were light as a feather at her waist and on her fingertips as he guided her through the figure.

  Whee-ee-yooo, whee-ee-yoo, her heart answered.

  She snuggled

  The raftered ceiling had been whitewashed and recently, the walls, too
, and where the sunlight struck them, they gave off a sharp light that hurt her eyes. She closed them, but even behind her lowered lids, she could still see the light striking the white walls and it filled her with terror. Where was this place? And the white face white? eyes as gray as glass under arching red brows and lashes. “Harker?” The name she screamed was dredged up from a place she didn’t know existed but she felt safety in the name and she screamed it again and again, her eyes screwed tight against the white walls, against the white face. “Harker. Harker! Harkerrrrr…”

  The hands were thin and strong; she could feel the fingers biting into her shoulders as the hands shook her. Harker? whispered through her mind but…Harker’s hands were…She didn’t know. Harker? She peeked through partly opened eyes. The white wom—She could feel a scream, hear it rising and rising as she fought to untangle her arms and legs from covers. The white woman would kill her kill her and…the baby. Baby. Her ba—She freed an arm and smashed it into the white woman’s face just as hands grabbed her from behind. She twisted. Black. “Harker?” But the face did not respond. She raised a leg to kick and the side of her face seemed to explode. She fell back on the bed. “Harker.” It was only a whimper, the last sound she heard before her mind went blank.

  Dessa watched the white woman. She knew she had lain like this before, body rigid, heart hammering against her ribs, watching the white woman through half-closed lids. The white woman stood at the door. This, too, had happened before…maybe. A white woman moving quietly around her bed—bed? (Feel like it feather, too! Dessa barely stifled a laugh. Lightheaded in a feather bed.) She was in a bed, a white woman white stared at her from the shadows of some room—She would be still. The white woman moved. Her heart thudded in her chest. The white woman passed beyond her line of vision. She heard a soft swish off to her right, someone moving about, a voice talking. She couldn’t understand a word. This a dream. Her heart slowed, muscles relaxed; she snuggled…