Once again, Drayle and his two slaves took the steamship up the Mississippi to the mouth of the Ohio River. All slaves traveling on the Madison slept on deck, chained to iron posts, surrounded by cargo that included bales of cotton, bundles of sugar, hemp, and tobacco. Although they had always worked in the sun, the slaves’ skin turned even darker on the river and they eagerly awaited the cool of sunset when the shadows would stretch long again. Most slaves were headed downriver, so by the time Lizzie and Philip reached Cairo, Illinois, and veered northeast on the Ohio, most of the other people sleeping on deck were roustabouts and deckhands. By her third summer of travel, Lizzie had become accustomed to the strange accents, mostly German and Irish, of the poor whites. Yet she was still confused by the sight of these whites working alongside the free blacks on the ship.
The first time she saw a steamboat she could not believe her eyes. She stared at the wide hurricane deck, small pilothouse, two chimneys shooting black smoke. How on earth did the ship move against the powerful downstream river current, which any slave knew could sweep you to your death in seconds? She feared the floating house would sink. Or explode. On the first day, there was a storm and the boat swayed dangerously. She became so sick she thought she might be pregnant. But she learned quickly that this feeling in her stomach was not uncommon on the water. One of the chambermaids gave her a brew to drink and it helped. Lizzie wanted to ask the woman about life aboard the ship, but the woman’s hardened face did not invite idle chatter.
The ship made stops along the way. Even before it reached the riverbank, the passengers could hear a cacophony of noises-bells ringing, people shouting, horses clattering. Lizzie watched as men loaded even more cargo onto the decks, sometimes piling it so high the passengers could not see out of their stateroom windows. It took several men to roll a single bale of cotton up the gangway. Then they tied a rope around it and pulled it up using a capstan until they had secured its place among the stacks.
Lizzie tried hard to forget the voyage that first summer. Instead, she concentrated on Drayle’s desire to protect her. She tried not to remember the man’s body on top of hers, pinning her down on the rough sack of cotton seed she’d made her bed. When the memory threatened to surface, she focused on the image of the black sky she’d watched as the man moved on top of her. She’d flexed her arms so tightly that the chains had gouged her wrists and left her bleeding, but she tried not to remember that as well. In her rearrangement of this memory, the ordeal had not lasted long.
Philip had been nearby, seen the entire incident, helpless in the chains that prevented him from moving close enough to help. Her shouts had been lost in the sound of the river current and steam engine. In the end, she’d had no choice but to acquiesce to the violence and pray it would end quickly.
Philip told Drayle what happened the next day, and he immediately moved Lizzie to his stateroom. The room was small, about six feet square, with a bed, small table, and chair. Despite its size, it was as fine a room as Lizzie had ever seen, but she chose to sleep on a narrow slip of floor. When he saw that he could not convince her to share the bed with him, he made a sleeping pallet for her out of his own clothes and Lizzie lay there at night. In the daytime, she was taken back to the upper deck and chained near Philip where he kept a close eye on her. The head deckman ordered his hands to leave this particular favored slave alone. Then, at night, Lizzie retreated again to the protection of Drayle’s room where he let her sleep undisturbed.
This third summer, in the year 1853, Lizzie stepped down the gangway behind Philip, her ankles chained to his. Drayle had already disappeared in the coach of a carriage headed up the hill to the train depot. Lizzie and Philip were assigned to a man, a handler of sorts, who saw to it that they made it without incident from the levee to the depot. Two trains left daily headed north on morning and afternoon runs. The three arrived at the station around noon and had to wait for the train’s next departure. The sun was hot and there was not a roof under which the two slaves could stand. The handler placed iron clasps around their necks that were so tight, they left marks. They were seated backs to one another in the middle of the platform, joined together tightly enough that they could only move to scratch an itch, one body against the other. Sweat ran down them and soaked the wooden platform around them.
When the train arrived, the handler took his time loading them, waiting until all the whites boarded first. Once the slaves were settled into the hindmost train car, the man released the iron clamps from their necks and chained them by the ankles to iron bars bolted to the floor.
Lizzie preferred the train to the ship by far even if the train did reek with the odor of livestock. The loud din of it, the clucking of the chickens in the cages above her, the roar of the engine, the steady lurch as they tumbled along the iron T-rails did not bother her as much as the ship.
She slept most of the way to Xenia. Sometimes, she stayed awake long enough to hear Philip tell stories of rabbits and foxes and men with conjuring powers. Each summer, Philip had murmured these stories to her during the voyage. She would listen while she looked out the window at the Little Miami River, a tributary of the Ohio that surged along beside the rail. Other times, she retreated into her head, thinking of the women she was soon to see again. During those moments when she was jolted awake, she held on to his hand and listened for his clucking sound beneath the roar of the engine.
The rail stretched sixty-eight miles from cincinnati to Springfield, but they would disembark at Xenia, hours before the train reached the end of its line. She wondered what Drayle was doing in the forward car. She’d caught a glimpse of its interior-green fabric stretched taut and tufted over spaciously placed seats. She closed her eyes and tried to raise the voices of her children in her head over the train’s loud chuffing.
At Loveland, the train slowed to a stop and an elderly colored man boarded. He tipped his hat when he saw Lizzie and struck up a conversation with Philip. His hair was sketched with gray, and in the places where the hair had thinned, the skin shone through. He was a narrow-skulled man and reminded Lizzie vaguely of a rat. When he looked her way, Lizzie recognized the glow of his eyes as the beginnings of blindness.
“Where y’all headed?”
Philip finished sizing the man up before he spoke. “Tawawa house, suh.”
“Tawawa who? I is headed to columbus myself. I been down to Kentucky looking for my family, but the old house is run over with weeds. She ain’t there no more. Ain’t nobody there no more.” he looked down at his hands.
“You got folks in columbus?” Philip asked after a few moments.
The man shook his head. “I reckon I gots to start over.” he smiled. His teeth were crooked and brown. “But I is a young man yet. I reckon I can find me a new family. A job.”
His voice sounded unconvinced. He took a paper out of his coat pocket and waved it at them. “These here is my papers. Reeeeeal United States government papers. The man say can’t nobody take ’em away from me.”
Lizzie leaned forward to catch a glimpse of the writing on the paper. She could barely make out the curves of someone’s handwriting.
The train slowed and Lizzie braced against the seat in front of her. A chicken squawked overhead and stirred the others. Soon the car was filled with the racket of chicken clatter. As the birds struggled against one another, the car filled with a dust laced by the occasional feather.
The door to the train rattled open and a white man in a gray uniform pointed at the senior.
“You there! Off my train.”
He reached for his cane. “Why, sir? I paid my fare. I is going to columbus.”
“I don’t care what you did. I don’t want you on my train.” he pointed at Lizzie and Philip. “These two are traveling with someone. You aren’t.”
The elderly man pulled himself up and looked back at the two. Lizzie moved a foot and her chain rattled against the floor. The man looked down with a start, as if he had not realized they were slaves. Then he turned from them without another word and used the handrail to step down from the train car.
Lizzie turned her thoughts again to Drayle and the white cottage. She thought of the parlor and the stove that burned coal. She thought of her friends-the warmth of Reenie’s laughter, the squeak of Sweet’s voice, the determination of Mawu’s shoulders-and took comfort in the world that awaited her.
Lizzie wasn’t sure if Mawu forgave her for what she’d done the summer before. Everything seemed to be fine, but she knew that memory was a funny thing. It reared its head at the least expected of times. She felt as if she were holding her breath, waiting for the punishment Mawu would enact to avenge herself. They had never even said goodbye, and here they found themselves back in each other’s company at the resort again.
For Mawu’s part, she acted as if nothing had ever happened between the two women. Her tongue was its usual sharp self, but it wasn’t particularly aimed at Lizzie. Not so far.
When she saw Lizzie for the first time, Mawu offered her an even-toned “how you been” and Lizzie replied with a low-voiced “mighty fine.” The other times the two women had seen each other had been in the presence of Sweet and Reenie, so things had seemed like they were back to normal. This day was no different.
The four women were visiting the Bath of Gold, named by the Shawnee because of the shining metallic rocks that lay beneath its surface. They had seen it from the top of the ravine a few times but had never descended into it to check it out. Usually, the white guests chose this spring over the four smaller ones, both for the refreshing cool of its clear, soft water and its two spring houses divided by sex. Swimming in the pool had been Mawu’s idea, and Reenie had checked on how long the families would be gone. They weren’t expected until well after dark, so the slaves had an unusual stretch of free time.
Sweet’s belly rolled in deep waves, the skin still stretched from her last pregnancy, and the fat on her legs jiggled as she walked. She walked into the water, squealing as she went.
“Ohhhh!” she yelled out.
Mawu and Lizzie were already in the water. Mawu’s head bobbed once and then dipped beneath the surface. Lizzie could still see her. The water was so clear she could see all the way to the bottom.
“Reenie, come on and dip your feet in!” Lizzie shouted.
Reenie pulled her knees to her chest and scooted farther back from the water’s edge. “Don’t you worry none about me.” even several feet back from the edge of the water, she looked nervous.
The evening sky was a warm color. It made the stones glow more red than gold. Mawu swam over to a rock and climbed up. She stretched out like a nymph and leaned back on her hands. Water rolled down her thighs.
“Ooh, girl don’t you have no shame? What if somebody see you?” Sweet said.
“Let ’ em see.” Mawu shook her hair out.
Lizzie swam over, inspired by Mawu’s brazenness. She climbed up on the rock and blew water from her nose. She looked down at her own body and then studied Mawu’s. She couldn’t help but notice Mawu’s taut skin showed none of the sag of her own. Mawu looked unreal in the deepening shadows, like a ghost that would disappear at any moment.
“It sure is nice out here,” Lizzie said. “This water makes me feel real good.”
“Why you think the white folks come here?” Mawu swirled a finger in the rivulets of water on her stomach.
Sweet swam over and watched the two women quietly for a moment. “You think this summer gone be any different?”
“What you mean?” Mawu said.
“You know. You think the menfolks will be more decent? I just want to have some peace and quiet,” Sweet said.
Lizzie understood what Sweet was trying to say. As much as she could, Sweet wanted to enjoy the summer the same as the white visitors. She wanted to have her own kind of vacation, free from the pressures of the plantation.
“Peace and quiet. What that is?” Mawu said.
Lizzie wondered if the memory of Tip’s humiliation had risen in Mawu’s mind. She tried to change the subject. “Don’t y’all think Reenie looks different this summer?” Lizzie couldn’t figure out what it was that looked different about the eldest of the group.
Sweet held on to the side of the rock. “Seem more sad, don’t she?”
Mawu whispered: “A lifetime can pass between these summers. No telling what done happened since us been gone.”
“You sure the mens ain’t gone be back for a while?” Sweet glanced back in the direction of the resort.
“Reenie told the woman at the hotel to ring a bell if she sees them coming,” Lizzie said. “How are your children doing?” she asked Sweet.
“They doing just fine,” Sweet said, her face lighting up. “I been teaching my youngest how to read. I swear that boy a natural born storyteller. I think he gone be a preacher.”
Lizzie thought of her Nate, too angry at the world to ever preach. It seemed like the older he got, the more sullen he became. He had his bright moments, but for the most part he wore a frown these days. Drayle said children had natural born tempers that couldn’t be messed with. Lizzie wasn’t sure that was true.
“How is that boy of yours?” Lizzie asked Mawu, still trying to gauge the woman’s feelings toward her.
Mawu gave her an empty look and said, “What boy.”
“Reenie?” Sweet said. They looked over at the other side again. Reenie had lifted her skirt and was standing in the shallow part of the water.
“I thought she wouldn’t set foot near the water,” Lizzie said. Reenie had told them that she was so afraid of water she wouldn’t even allow the preacher to baptize her in a knee-deep pond.
“Guess she done changed her mind,” Mawu said.
Lizzie waved at Reenie. The woman closed her eyes and turned up to the sun. Lizzie caught a glimpse of Reenie’s younger self. It reminded her of the first time she had met her. They had been almost certain they might be kin. They’d later learned they weren’t related by blood at all. But they were still close and each seemed to know exactly what the other was thinking. Sometimes. Right then, Lizzie thought she knew what Reenie was feeling. The water felt like relief. Being in it made it easy to forget the words, licks, disappointments that had sliced at every little part of them over the years.
Reenie stepped deeper into the water. The pool rose to her thighs, hips, stomach. The three women watched, perhaps believing Reenie would paddle over to the other side and join them. So when Reenie took one more step and disappeared beneath the surface, none of them reacted right off.
The drops of water on Lizzie’s skin turned cold. “Reenie!” She sprang into the water, followed closely by Mawu. The mineral pool dropped off swiftly from the wide shallow ridge to the deeper center, and when Lizzie saw Reenie bob up out of the water, coughing, then down again, her arms flailing, she knew the woman had already taken in a mouthful of water. It seemed Lizzie could not reach her fast enough. She wiggled her body, moving through the water like a fish.
She could see Reenie’s dark mass in the clear water ahead of her. When she reached her, Lizzie locked an arm around Reenie’s neck and tried to pull. The older woman punched the water with her fists. Lizzie could see her opening her eyes and mouth. Bubbles raced to the surface. She caught Lizzie in the face with an elbow and Lizzie sank, momentarily stunned. Lizzie had a piece of dress in her hand, but she wasn’t sure which part.
Mawu clutched Reenie from the other side, and pulled at one of Reenie’s arms. Mawu hadn’t sucked in enough air, and was clearly struggling to get to the surface herself. Reenie kicked Mawu in the stomach, and Mawu choked. The three of them burst through the surface of the water, sputtering and Lizzie finally felt the ground beneath her toes.
“What was you doing?” Mawu demanded when she had caught her breath and was standing on the shallow ridge, the rocks beneath her bare feet. Sweet was sitting on the grassy bank, her stroke not good enough for her to help the other women. She was crying softly, hugging her knees.
“Leave me be, leave me be,” Reenie said.
“What do you mean, leave you be,” Lizzie said as she and Mawu pulled Reenie up onto the bank.
The three women sprawled out on the grass. Lizzie tried not to think about what all of them were trying not to think about. Reenie coughed up water, loud hoarse coughs from deep within her chest. Lizzie looked down at Reenie’s hand and saw it before the others. The tip of Reenie’s finger was missing. It looked as if it had been sliced cleanly off. The skin had grown over the wound and it looked blunt and hard.
“Get up.” Mawu motioned to Reenie.
When Reenie didn’t respond, Mawu said it again with more force. “I said get up.”
Reenie sat up, her bottom lip quaking. She muttered something the rest of them did not understand. Lizzie helped Reenie to her feet and pulled the wet dress over her head. She wrung it out over the grass. Reenie’s naked body stood wrinkled and thin in the afternoon light.
“Shut up with all that mumbling,” Mawu said, still talking in her mean voice. Again, Reenie listened. The talking stopped.
They waited for Lizzie to get as much water out of the dress as she could. Lizzie put her own dry dress on Reenie and put the wet one on herself. The coarse cloth would dry quickly in the sun.
After they had all dressed, they walked toward the cottages, quietly, as if to fend off the admission that Reenie had almost crossed a line they dare not mention. Mawu had been the only one of them with enough courage to stand up and say Reenie was not going to take them to that dark place.
Sweet walked beside Reenie and held on to the woman’s elbow. Behind them, Mawu and Lizzie watched Reenie’s back, poised to catch her should she fall. The cold of the wet dress numbed Lizzie’s skin. Mawu moved toward her and put an arm around her waist. Lizzie leaned into her, hoping it meant she was forgiven but suspecting the gesture had nothing to do with her.
They walked back to the resort, four shadowed figures holding in yet another secret on only their third day back in Ohio that summer.
For the next three days, Drayle traveled with the men to hunt and fish. Lizzie kept herself busy by going to the hotel each morning. The colored servants readily doled out chores, and Lizzie was glad for the work. She tried dutifully to get everything done, all the while observing the white women as they preened over their hair, chatted about the latest fashion, fussed over their children. They were mostly cincinnati women, up for a short vacation with their husbands, wives of elected officials, lawyers, businessmen. The hotel offered suites of rooms for families choosing not to rent cottages.
While working in the main hotel, Lizzie learned that while the men went off together, the women stayed behind and relinquished secrets to one another.
One woman whispered of a lover half her age who liked to kiss the soles of her feet.
Another spoke of her ill mother and how she would be relieved when the elder woman finally “met her Maker.”
A petite woman who looked very young to be married, even to Lizzie, spoke of how she sometimes spanked her servant on the bottom, giggling as she described how she forced the woman to pull down her underpants and bend over.
Between snatches of gossip, Lizzie admired their dresses-floating affairs that were fuller than any dresses she had ever seen. She was so curious about these that she sneaked into one of the rooms so she could rummage through the armoire. She found a hoop with wires of metal. Did they put this over their petticoats? Lizzie knew she would never recover from the thrill of these skirts. Even Miss Fran didn’t own one. Before the white women headed into town, they put on the finishing touches: bonnet, gloves, a small cape, and sometimes a parasol. And the shoes! Delicate little things held tight by ribbons.
When they wanted to bathe in the outdoor spring, the women changed into dark, woolen dresses with weighted hems. They met in the hotel lobby, tugging at their puffy hair bonnets as they chatted excitedly.
But Lizzie was especially impressed by the marvelous expense of the children’s outfits. She had never seen children so adorned. From the cover of her broomstick or dusting rag, she observed the young ones-the smart hats, expertly gathered knickers, ruffles, lace, ribbons, and bows. She had never known a child to wear silk before. It was too expensive. But some of the older girls wore dresses in the style of their mothers-in cotton and silk.
On the day before Drayle was to return, Lizzie took Mawu with her to the house. They chose to clean the front parlor where a group of white women sat around a table with bowls in front of them. A woman dressed in white spoke as she circled the table. The women stirred their concoctions. Lizzie and Mawu tried to get close enough to peer inside the bowls. The substance was yellowish brown and smelled like lemon. After much stirring, they spread the thick substance onto their faces. Then the leader of the group told them to wait for a few moments while it hardened. One woman claimed that her face burned. But the others said they felt they could feel their complexions clearing up.
“Quick!” the leader called to Lizzie, clapping her hands. “Refill these buckets with fresh water,” she said.
“Yes, ma’am,” Lizzie answered under her breath.
“She’s a slave,” Lizzie heard someone say behind her as she and Mawu left the room, a bucket in each hand.
They returned with the water and watched as the women splashed their faces over the bowls.
Later, Lizzie and Mawu tried to reproduce something of the same. They sat on the steps of Lizzie’s cottage and mixed aloe with lemon juice and egg. Mawu was certain that she had heard mention of tree sap. Lizzie disagreed, arguing that the tree sap would be too hard to rinse off.
Reenie and Sweet arrived just as the two arguing women had agreed to let Lizzie win.
“What in Sam hill are y’all doing?” Reenie asked. Sweet put down a rag stuffed with dirty clothes.
Lizze paused. “We’re…” she thought of a word she’d read once, “…beautifying.”
“Well, I’ll be. Do it to me, too,” Sweet said. She sat beside them on the steps, and Lizzie spread it on her face. Surprisingly, Reenie sat too and turned her face up to be lathered with the thick mixture. When Lizzie was finished with everyone else’s faces, Mawu did the same for her.
They sat patiently waiting for it to dry.
“Y’all seen them white women doing this?” Reenie asked.
“Mmm hmmm,” Mawu said. “Some citified woman was showing them how.”
Lizzie tracked a ground beetle as it made its way toward her foot. The sun in the sky was almost reaching dusk, and even though they had passed the hottest part of the day, she still felt the moisture dampening the back of her dress. The four women were quiet for a few moments, not wanting to mess up their faces.
Lizzie finally spoke, “Y’all think this gone make our faces white?”
“Maybe,” Sweet murmured.
The women left their things and walked down to the pond. They crouched close to one another beside the bank and splashed water onto their faces. Afterward, they studied their reflections in the pool. Lizzie picked at the mole on her nose. She wished she could pull it off.
Reenie dried her face on her dress. “I reckon this ain’t gone change the years on this old face.”
“Can y’all imagine,” Mawu began, “what the slaves back home would say? They would think us done gone plum crazy!”
“Is I white yet?” Lizzie asked.
Reenie put a finger on Lizzie’s chin, lifting her face to the light. “No’m. You is still the color of maple.”
They made their way back up the bank to the steps of Lizzie’s cottage. Even after Sweet had tied her laundry to her back and Reenie had tucked the reading primer back into her skirt and Mawu had pinned her hair, the women did not leave.
“Y’all wait here,” Lizzie said. She disappeared into her cottage and returned with a small bundle. She untied the knot. Inside were four small candies wrapped in red paper and two pamphlets.
“Miss Lizzie, you didn’t!” Sweet exclaimed.
Lizzie folded the top of the cloth back over her prizes. “If you don’t want it, just say the word. I’ll eat this candy myself.”
Mawu reached out to grab the bundle, and Lizzie jerked it back. “I’ll beat you first!”
“Hush, now!” Lizzie shouted above their laughter. She pressed a candy into each woman’s palm. They carefully unwrapped their treasures and placed them into their mouths.
Lizzie closed her eyes. She sucked it, scared that if she chewed, it would not last as long. When Lizzie had swallowed the last bit of it, she relished the lingering taste of caramel on her tongue. She put the wrapper to her nose and smelled it. It made a soft crinkling sound.
Only Reenie ate hers quickly. “You got to enjoy thangs before they is taken away,” she murmured when she was done.
Lizzie opened the cloth again. The two pamphlets remained.
“What them is?” Sweet whispered.
Mawu snatched one up.
“Abolition,” Lizzie whispered.
Sweet took a step back. “Marse will kill me for sho if he catch me with that.”
“I can’t read yet nohow,” Reenie said. “You keep it.”
Lizzie sighed. “Y’all meet me here tomorrow night. I’ll read it to you.”
“I can read it my own self,” Mawu snapped even though they all knew she was not literate.
“We can read it together,” Lizzie said, fingering the wrinkled pages of the stolen pamphlet.
Lizzie’s hands were black with coal dust. Even though the coal chips were in bags, its edges were covered with soot. She took two bags from Philip and put them behind the stove in her cabin. She did not use coal often during the summer. The cottage was hot enough as it was. She tried to do most of her cooking outside, only using the stove every now and again to reheat. So she knew instantly that his gift of coal was only a pretense.
He offered to carry the bags for her, but she refused. When she turned around, he was standing in the middle of the parlor, his bulk dwarfing the room. He looked different somehow, as if he had combed his hair and greased his face. Lizzie hesitated before offering him a seat.
Not surprisingly, he refused. He was not supposed to spend any time inside the cottages except to enter and exit on the occasional chore. Both of them knew how dangerous it was for him to accept a seat inside.
“You look like you’ve got something to say,” Lizzie said.
He wiped his hands on his pants, streaking black marks down each leg. That gave Lizzie something to do. She brought over a washbasin and dipped a rag into it before passing the rag to him. He used it to wipe his pants, unintentionally spreading the smudges. Then he mopped his hands for longer than it took to clean them. The cloth grew dark. Before he gave the dirty rag back to her, he folded it neatly. He dried his hands on his shirt while he waited for her to clean her own hands in the water.
“It’s that woman, huh?” she said when she was done.
Philip looked surprised. “How you know?”
“Cause you’re making a mess. It’s got to be that woman.” They had only been in Ohio a little over a week.
“She’s probably forgot all about you by now, Philip.”
He shook his head and shifted to the other foot. “Naw she ain’t. I seen her last night.”
“Last night?” Lizzie had not seen the girl around the hotel this summer. And she did not think the barber had visited since their arrival. But Philip did look as if he had been grooming himself. She did not doubt his words.
He nodded.
“Where?”
He hesitated and Lizzie knew why. The memory of her betrayal of Mawu was still fresh. He was wondering if she would do the same to him.
“Philip, you’re like my brother. Ain’t no woman on earth closer to you than me.”
“Not no more.”
She felt her throat burn.
He started toward the door. She followed him and grabbed his forearm as he descended the back steps.
“Don’t you do that. Don’t you make me feel like I’m a stranger,” she said.
When he turned back to look at her, his eyes were red. She wanted to tell him that she had learned her lesson. She would not tell again. Even if it meant trouble for somebody she cared about.
She looked around to see if anyone saw them. They sat down on the step beside one another.
“Her name Virginia. She born free, but her daddy used to be a slave. He crossed the river with her mama when she was still in her stomach. He got his own barbering shop in Dayton.”
Lizzie gave Philip her most thoughtful expression. She tried not to let him see that she felt his love was even more impossible than hers. “He doesn’t mind his daughter loving a slave?”
She felt Philip tense beside her and she knew she had touched a sore spot. Surely he had thought about that. Surely he’d considered that the woman’s father might feel Philip was beneath his daughter.
“That woman love me!”
Lizzie nodded, determined to remain quiet this time.
“He want to free me. But if something don’t happen soon, I reckon he’ll tell his daughter to move on. He got three daughters, and the other two is already married. I don’t know nothing about no barbering business, but she say if I get freed, her daddy gone help me learn a trade. Only thing I know is horses. I reckon I got to learn about city living.”
He looked off toward the main hotel. Not far from them, a tall, slender colored servant fed a group of oversized ducks that had been preening their feathers on the edges of the pond. They squawked in anticipation of the bread and flapped their wings, sending bristly feathers into the air.
“If she don’t love me, I don’t know what I’m gone do.” he cupped his forehead in his palm.
Lizzie really wanted to know how and when he was sneaking off. At night? Through the woods? But she knew better than to ask. Philip was only asking for her ear, nothing more.
He turned and took Lizzie’s hands in his. “I got to ask something of you.”
So he wanted more than an ear. “What?”
“You close to Marsuh. I reckon you can talk to him about selling me. If anybody can change his mind, you can.”
Lizzie shook her head. “He already said no when the barber asked him outright. And Philip, if I can’t get him to free my children, what makes you think I can get him to free you?”
Philip dropped her hands and slapped his thigh. “Hell, Lizzie, those ain’t just your childrens. Those his childrens, too. He won’t free them cause he don’t want to lose them. They his blood. But I ain’t. He can always buy another slave with the money he get for me.”
Lizzie felt dizzy. Philip had spoken of Drayle freeing her children as if he had given it some thought. She had never heard Philip talk that way. He had an opinion. Drayle would never free the children.
“Lizzie. Lizzie.”
“You’re like blood to him, too, Philip. When he bought you, you were just a boy. He doesn’t say he thinks of you as a son, but when he talks about you it sounds like he’s talking about Nate.”
“You and me different, Lizzie.”
“He won’t sell you neither,” she said. He stood, and she saw the wound she had carved into his shoulders. “He’ll beat you before he sells you,” she added, unable to stop herself.
Philip didn’t turn around to see the slash of malice on her face. He just walked away without saying another word.
They were on their way to see the white woman. Lizzie couldn’t remember whose idea it had been in the first place, but Mawu was leading. And she was rushing. Lizzie wanted to walk slowly and enjoy the cool shade of the trees. Their steps competed with one another. Lizzie also wanted to forget her conversation with Philip earlier that day. But she couldn’t. “Hey girl, slow down!”
Mawu stopped and looked back at her.
“I’ve got something to ask you.”
“All right.” Mawu slowed until they were walking side-by-side.
“Philip wants me to ask Drayle about freeing him.”
Mawu tilted her chin and turned to look at her. “That woman?”
Lizzie nodded.
“So what you asking?”
“Should I?”
“Why not?” Mawu stopped walking.
Lizzie grabbed the long, arching stem of a butterfly bush. She pulled it to her nose and inhaled the flower. “Because it might be him or my children that get freed and not both.”
Mawu waved a hand. “Oh, Lizzie. Is that why you feeling that way? Pssh.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Mawu didn’t say anything.
Lizzie frowned. It was as if Mawu agreed with Philip that Drayle would never free the children.
Mawu stopped and placed the side of her hand against her forehead. “That way, right?” She pointed. They had not seen the woman yet that summer, and they were expecting her to still live on the same plot of land.
“I hope she ain’t dead.”
“Why do you care?” Lizzie asked.
Mawu shrugged. “I don’t suppose I care much about no white woman.”
“This one is different, huh?”
“Maybe.”
Lizzie stopped and scooped a grasshopper off a nearby leaf. She closed her hand around it and it scrambled in her palm, trapped.
“I’m glad you ain’t still mad at me. I never meant for you to get hurt.”
Mawu stopped and turned to look at her. “Your man. He God to you?”
“Yeah, he’s good to me,” Lizzie replied.
“No. I say is he God to you?”
“What do you mean?”
Mawu paused for a moment. “Tip done got another slave-woman pregnant. He ain’t bring her cause she pregnant. He don’t like to mess with no pregnant womens. So he brung me. Say he got a thing for me even if I does hate him.”
Lizzie let the grasshopper go and it jumped out of her palm onto the ground beside them. For a moment she thought it had hurt itself. The jump from her palm to the ground had been a long one. But then she saw the blur of it as it leaped into the bushes beside the path.
A majestic cedar rose before them like a spirit. Lizzie couldn’t tell if it was welcoming or warning them. Two of the arms looked as if they had been sawed off. Or perhaps fallen off during an ice storm. She had heard about the harsh Ohio winters. She knew all about ice storms, but she couldn’t imagine the amount of snow they said Ohio got. She had only ever known Tennessee winters. Sometimes a bit of snow and sometimes not.
They approached the cabin from the back and threw pebbles at the back door from their cover in the woods. The weeds had grown up tall around the yard, but it did not look as if the cabin was abandoned. Lizzie thought she recognized the husband’s hat hanging beside the door, but she couldn’t be sure.
Just as Mawu gave a look to signal they should turn back, they heard someone moving. Then they saw her. She looked the same from a distance. Hair covered. Long plain dress. Wide hips and shoulders ambling along and then as she neared them, slowing down. She squatted down before a patch of yellow flowers and rifled through them. She searched carefully, as if for the perfect one, finally selecting four. She stretched and stood, rubbed the back of her hand across her forehead.
“Hey!” Mawu called out.
Glory turned around. Even though Mawu had called out to her, neither she nor Lizzie revealed themselves. Glory pulled the bonnet back a bit so she could see around her. The sun peeked from behind a cloud.
“Who’s that?”
Lizzie stepped out from behind the tree. “Us.”
Glory shocked them with the speed with which she dropped her bag of flowers and rushed toward them. Lizzie thought the woman would hug them both. But just as she got close to the two slave women, she stopped, as if she had checked herself.
“You’re back. I knew you’d be back,” Glory said, breathless.
“How come us ain’t seen you around the place?” Mawu asked.
“Some other farmer is providing for the hotel this summer.”
“Why?” Lizzie asked.
Glory rubbed at her cheek. “My husband took sick this winter. He really never got better. A bad cough. He still works as much as he can, but he can’t do too much. It’s just enough to keep us fed and to sell some in town.”
Glory was still stout and healthy looking, but her eyes had taken on more of a sunken quality. “Everybody come back?”
Lizzie nodded.
“What brings y’all out here?”
There was no hiding the fact they were too close to Glory’s cabin to just happen to be nearby. There was nothing else nearby but the cabin. So the question was really, what do y’all want with me?
Lizzie looked at Mawu and waited to see what her friend would say.
“Where your husband at?” Mawu asked.
“Gone,” Glory replied, falling easily into the clipped cues the women knew they had to speak in order for their friendship to remain secret. What she meant was that he is gone for a spell and yes we have time.
“I got something to ask,” Mawu said.
Lizzie scratched a bug bite. She had no idea what Mawu was about to say.
“Shoot,” Glory said.
“I need you to help fix me.” Mawu looked down at her waist. Then she put her hand over her private area. “I need you to help fix me permanent.”
Glory shook her head.
“I don’t aim to give him no more childrens,” Mawu said, eyeing Glory steadily.
Lizzie coughed and then coughed again, as if there were a hair in her throat that she couldn’t get to.
Mawu hit her on the back. “You all right, girl?”
Lizzie nodded.
“What you got to cook in that cabin?” Mawu asked.
“Some potatoes. A fresh rabbit,” Glory answered.
“Well, that’s all us need. My mammy taught me how to make the best rabbit stew you ever sank your teeth into.”
Mawu showed a mouth of crooked teeth as if to prove it. Glory removed her capelet. In a few moments, the three women were walking toward the cabin, Mawu stopping here and there to pick an herb.
Lizzie couldn’t help but wonder what the sight of them must have looked like: a brown woman, a red woman, and a white woman. Thin, short, and fat. Tennessee, Louisiana, and Ohio.
The three women were just as different on the inside, too. One of them was hoping to give up what the other cherished and the third longed for.
The hastily dispatched telegraph from Georgia said it might be cholera. Diarrhea that spread as rapidly as a brushfire in the woods. The women never got a copy of the telegraphed note themselves. But they knew from the cook who heard it from the maid who heard it from the horse groom that the place back where Sweet lived was in trouble.
For days, Sweet waited to hear word of her children. That week was a difficult time, not only for Sweet but for all of the women. Each of them remembered Sweet’s dead baby from the summer before. And they knew she could not handle any more dead babies. There were four children left: three girls, one boy. Each one with the light skin born of the nightly couplings with her master. And as she walked around the place, stiff as stone, it was hard for those who watched her petite frame to believe she had birthed so many.
The women knew better than to ask. They could tell from the look on her face she knew no more than they did. So they all prayed silently at night, into sheets, pillows, blankets. Lizzie asked Drayle after the third night of no news if Sweet’s master would send her back to check on her young ones. Surely her master needed to go back to check on his plantation himself. Surely he was worried about his own family, if not the coloreds then the whites. Even though his wife was long dead, he had five white children of his own. But according to Drayle, he had made no such plans, perhaps afraid if he did go back, he would fall victim to the illness as well.
Then they learned that his white children had been evacuated from the place. And those who were sick had been separated from those who were well. And the sick ones had been taken off the land and put away somewhere safe. Temporarily, those still there believed that this had stopped the rage of the infection.
Sweet didn’t know if her children were with the healthy ones or the sick ones. So the women waited, wondering what kinds of midnight supplications Sweet made to her master to find out about her children. Wondering if he cared that these were his children, too. Not just his property, but his own flesh and blood.
But they also knew that for white men there was no such thing as separating the two. They were his children, yes. But they were also his property. And like most property they could be replaced.
This was the women’s deepest fear. That a white man would feel his slave children could easily be replaced with new ones, as if it were an exchange at a dry goods store.
Mawu, Lizzie, and Reenie sat on the low bank of the pond, each keeping her hands occupied with different tasks while their minds focused on one thing. They spoke of things light, like what they would cook for dinner and how quickly dust seemed to gather in the corners of their cottages. They watched as white hotel guests walked by. Mawu spun a story about a man back on her place who could catch flies in his mouth, snapping them up like a frog.
Chew them and eat them? Reenie asked.
Well, if he ain’t eating them, he holding them in there mighty long, Mawu answered.
Tomfoolery, Lizzie said.
The three women allowed themselves a welcome chuckle. Until they saw Sweet approaching them, carrying something spread across her arms. It looked like a garment of some kind. The three women waited. Lizzie scooted over to make a space for Sweet in the middle, so that she would be flanked by the rest of them.
When Sweet made it over to them, they could see she was carrying a dress. She passed through Lizzie and Mawu and stretched the dress out on the ground between them. She arranged the folds of it. The dress was black, but varying shades of black. Sweet must have run out of fabric; it was clear that she had stitched together all the black fabric she could find. Only the neckline and the sleeves were edged in white lace. Lizzie recognized the lace as the same fabric the hotel used for the cottage tablecloths. This made Lizzie study the rest of the dress and wonder where Sweet had gotten the other pieces of mismatched cloth.
“This for my baby. My Sarah.”
“Dead?” Reenie put down the potato she was peeling. “Your child dead?”
Only Sweet’s mouth moved. “My oldest. The one that took care of the others. She had a face from the heavens.”
“I’m so sorry, Sweet,” Lizzie whispered. “I’m so sorry.”
Sweet shook her head. “No. This a good thing, in a way. I was worried about her. She was too pretty. Some old man was bound to start trying to mess with her. I didn’t want her to end up like me. So now she gone to the Lord where she can be a true angel.”
Lizzie reached out and touched the dress. “You made this for her?”
“Ain’t it pretty?”
“When you leaving?” Mawu asked.
Sweet smiled. “We ain’t going.”
“What you mean, you ain’t going?” Mawu’s eyes flashed.
“It’s all right, Mawu. I just need y’all to do this.”
“Just say it,” Lizzie said.
“Go and bury this here dress in the woods. Next to my other baby. The one without a name. I can’t stand to be there myself. But I know y’all will do right by her.”
“I is gone say a prayer,” Reenie said.
Sweet closed her eyes and then opened them. She nodded her gratitude and headed back to her cottage.
All three women stood, and Reenie looked off at the sun to see how much time they had.
“Supposing we ask one of the men to come help us?” Lizzie asked.
“No,” Reenie said. “Us can do this our ownselves.”
Lizzie and Mawu picked up the dress and carried it between them as if there were really a body in it. Lizzie carried the top portion and Mawu carried the bottom. Reenie led. On the way, they stopped and got a shovel.
They found the spot where Sweet’s infant girl was buried, near the intersection of two forest paths that crossed one another. It was marked by a small tree. Lizzie took the shovel and dug while Mawu and Reenie folded the dress into a bulky square. The hole wasn’t man-sized. It was just large enough for the folded dress. Reenie placed the dress in the hole while Mawu hunted for rocks. They covered the hole with a hill of smooth rocks.
The three of them held hands and formed a circle around the two graves. Mawu said a prayer in a language neither Lizzie nor Reenie understood, but they all felt the spirit of it. When Mawu got quiet, Reenie withdrew a wooden cross from beneath her dress and kissed it.
Three nights later, there was a knock at Lizzie’s back door. Drayle was sleeping on the sofa, so she opened the door quietly. Sweet stood there with a shirt and pants, already folded.
“This here for my boy. My only boy.”
And then she disappeared into the darkness.
The next day, the women repeated their ritual.
Two days later, Lizzie woke and found a dress folded so tightly on her back porch step that she did not know what it was at first. She looked around, but no one seemed to notice the bundle. She took it to Reenie who immediately put down her washing and nodded. Mawu couldn’t join them that morning because her master was home. Reenie said a few words so powerful and angry they made Lizzie cry a bit.
It had been two weeks since the first word of the sickness. And Sweet had one child left. They were afraid to ask, dreading more news of the dead. And knowing that if three of her children were gone, and they all lived in the same cabin, then it was likely the other was sick as well. They didn’t want to believe that God would be so cruel to take her last child.
But they imagined feverish nights, nights of stomachaches and loose bowels and cold rags on foreheads, one sick caring for another.
Sweet stayed in her cottage, and when the women knocked on the door after witnessing her master leaving with the other men, there was no answer. They peeked through the window and saw her sleeping on the bed. They watched for the rise and fall of her chest. They knew grief like this could kill you. They left her alone after they saw signs of life.
Three days later, Lizzie could no longer wait and decided to enter Sweet’s cottage. She had heard of other plantations being in trouble like this, but she had never known any slaves on them well enough to feel the effects of it.
As she walked, she was conscious of the burden of her steps and tried to think of what she would say. She stood outside the back door of Sweet’s cottage for several minutes. And when the proper healing words did not enter her mind, she decided her presence would have to do.
She found Sweet in the middle of the room, sitting amidst a mountain of shredded fabric. Her hair was disheveled, lips covered with the white crust of dehydration.
“What are you making, Sweet?”
“Making.”
“We ain’t seen you around in a few days.”
“I told you. Making.”
Lizzie took up some of the fabric in her hands. Some of it was coarse cloth. But some of it was good-muslin, cotton, wool. Parts of it looked like undergarments, lace, sackcloth.
Lizzie recognized the top portion of a girl’s dress. The lower half of it was a neverending patchwork of textures. Lizzie went into the bedroom and saw that the bed was barren of sheets, the closets empty of clothes. Everything had been used. Maybe Sweet’s man was grieving, too. Surely he knew Sweet had sewn up everything in the cottage.
The stitches weren’t even either. Some were loose, others bunched the fabric into uneven folds.
“You got some more?” Sweet licked her lips.
Lizzie quietly observed the odd look in Sweet’s eyes. Then she left and went back to her own cottage and got a pair of pants she had discovered behind the stove, left by some previous guest. She went to the kitchen at the back of the hotel and asked the women if they had any fabric to spare. They wouldn’t give it to her until she told them Sweet was making a dress for one of her children. The cook who ran the kitchen must have understood because she commanded the younger women to gather every scrap of cloth they could find in the house that wouldn’t be missed. They came back with heaps in their arms.
Lizzie took it all back to Sweet’s cottage and dumped it in a pile on the floor in front of her. The grin on Sweet’s face motivated Lizzie to go and search again. This time, she visited Reenie and Mawu to ask for fabric. Both of them gave her what they could spare.
“She all right?” Reenie asked as she handed over a pair of worn bloomers.
“She all right,” Lizzie repeated in a low voice.
“She making it?” Mawu called through her cottage window.
“She making it,” Lizzie said.
When Lizzie returned to Sweet’s cottage, she saw the woman had hungrily grabbed up the nearest piece of cloth to her and ripped it apart. She was sewing it onto the neverending dress and as she worked, drool made its way down her chin. Lizzie decided to leave her alone.
Two days later, they were sorting eggs when Sweet came to them. Mawu had just accidentally broken an egg and found a tiny leg inside. She had thrown the egg into the grass, frightened by the omen. Sweet lay the dress out in front of them on the ground.
“They all dead now. They all gone to meet the Lord. They in a better place. They crossed over.” She spoke in a loud, clear voice as if she had rehearsed the lines. She touched the dress lovingly. Then she stretched out on it, rolled over on it.
She stood and faced the women. “Now bury her. Bury my last baby girl.”
She walked off. The women wrapped the delicate eggs and tied their bundles around their waists. They folded the dress to lessen the weight of it, and Mawu took it and balanced it on her head, holding it with one hand as she walked.
They dug the hole beside the other four mounds. Mawu wanted to stick flowers between the rocks. Reenie said the flowers would die, just like everything else. Lizzie thought it was a good idea. Mawu found yellow daisies and stuck them among the rocks. She promised to come back later and freshen the flowers. They looked down at the rock-covered mounds. They didn’t quite look like human graves because of their small size. But they did look like something human hands had touched.
The three women knew there was no telling what had actually happened to the bodies of Sweet’s children. They knew that when sicknesses like this happened bodies were burned. Even if they hadn’t been, it was likely Sweet would never see her children’s graves. They would not be marked. Her children would now be among the missing. But it wasn’t as bad as if they were sold off. Nothing was worse than that.
The three women held hands again. But this time, none of them said a prayer out loud. Instead, they prayed in their hearts and sent their pleadings through palm kissing palm. And although they didn’t admit it to one another, both Lizzie and Mawu thanked God that their own children were safe and sound back on their plantations.
When the women did not see Sweet the next day, they decided to go to her cottage. The door was open and the women passed through the front room. They found Sweet lying naked on the bed, no sign of her master ever having been there in the night. The cottage was bare, as if someone had swept up the bits of thread and fabric that had been strewn throughout the rooms, erasing the evidence of her grief.
Sweet had developed a rash. It covered her face and neck and part of her shoulders. Mawu went out and filled a tin cup with water. Reenie pulled Sweet up and put the cup to her lip. Later the women would have to cut Sweet’s hair, it was so tangled and matted with dirt.
Reenie said, “Drink this. Drink up.”
Sweet drank without protest. There was nothing to wipe the wetness from Sweet’s chin, so Lizzie used her dress.
“You still got a life, don’t you?” Mawu said. “You still got a life?”
Lizzie didn’t know what to say. Four children gone. Five in the last year. She just didn’t know what one mother could say to another when her own children were safe and sound, bellies full, cheeks fat, backs smooth, soft hands, soft feet, minds that could read, lips that could pronounce words grown slaves had never heard of. She was trying not to feel her own fortune. Trying not to feel that this could have been her laying in this puddle of stink, sewing big chunks of cloth into a dress for a child she would never see again.
“You ate anything yet?” Lizzie asked.
Sweet looked up, her eyes glassy.
“You hungry?”
Sweet’s eyes rolled back in her head before she looked in Lizzie’s direction. Lizzie gently lay Sweet’s head back. She went out to the hotel.
At the back of the hotel, all she had to do was mention Sweet’s name and they pressed a loaf of bread under her arm and a bowl of creamed corn into her hands. The cook said, “God bless her. God bless her.”
Mawu fed Sweet as if she were a baby. She broke off a piece of the bread, dipped it in the water, and put it into Sweet’s mouth. Sweet chewed slowly. Between bites, Reenie put the cup of water to Sweet’s lips to make sure she didn’t choke.
When they were reasonably certain Sweet had had enough, Lizzie took the bowl and washed it at the well and set it outside the cottage door.
When she went back in, she heard Reenie talking, “You cry, now. You hear me? You let it out. You got to get it out your body. This thing you making, it ain’t gone do you no good.”
When Lizzie looked down, Sweet’s hands were moving. At first, she didn’t know what Sweet was doing. Then she understood. As if the fabric were still in her hands, Sweet was sewing away, her thumb pressed against an invisible thread, as if holding her place.
Lizzie found a small square of slate framed by wood. The cook managed to get her a piece of chalk. It was a precious find and Lizzie planned to take it back to her children. In the meantime, however, she would use it to teach Reenie a few of her letters. Reenie had been practicing with her primer since the summer before, but this was their first formal lesson.
Lizzie had thought to begin with A since that was the first letter of the alphabet. But then she changed her mind and began with teaching Reenie how to read and write her own name.
“How you keep track of them big letters and little letters? how you know which is which?”
Lizzie smiled. Reenie smelled of lavender. The older woman gripped the sides of the slate until the bones flexed over her knuckles.
“R-E-E-”
“How many e’s in my name?”
“Three,” Lizzie answered. “Can you count, Miss Reenie?”
“Not much.” The chalk slipped out of her hand.
“Like this.” Lizzie showed her how to hold it.
“I can add little numbers like two plus two and four plus four. But something climb over ten and I gets myself in trouble.”
Lizzie wiped the slate. “Let’s try again.”
Reenie concentrated and the chalk slipped out of her hand again. She threw the slate into the dust.
“I is too old, Miss Lizzie!”
Lizzie picked it up. “No you ain’t. Let’s try it again.”
“Miss Lizzie, I want to tell you something. About my finger. How I lost part of my finger.”
Lizzie put the slate down.
Mawu was running toward them from the main hotel. Reenie straightened her back and her face hardened. News was coming their way and whatever she’d had to confide in Lizzie would have to wait.
They wore the same dresses they’d worn the summer before during the dinner in the hotel, dresses carefully tucked away in trunks stored in the hotel attic over the last year. Dresses they’d instinctively protected when Sweet was sewing up everything in sight. Dresses they’d often thought about over the winter months when they were back home on their plantations, trying to make it through each day.
They’d tried to forget what happened to Reenie the night of the dinner when they’d first worn them, only speaking of it once. Reenie had described the night in a hushed tone early one morning. She’d told of how she’d carefully taken the dress off before she let the manager touch her. So that it, unlike her body, would remain inviolate. Every time he came for her, she made certain she never looked as enticing as that first night, so that each coming was a bigger disappointment than the last.
They should have been surprised the white men allowed them to go to Dayton. But they had come to learn that in this place with the magical water, things were different. Later, they would learn the trip was a gift for Sweet. It was her master’s way of giving her a piece of joy. Henry had not returned that summer, but his more vocal brother George had. George had been ordered to stay behind at the hotel. His owner had work for him to do.
One of the colored hotel porters was entrusted with money to buy Sweet something nice, but he would steal half of it and spend the rest on their meals and a cheap trinket for her. The slaves did not trust the porter because it was rumored he had turned in more than one runaway slave for the reward money. The word on him was that he believed slaves needed to earn their freedom by saving up for it. His own grandfather had done this very thing, buying his own freedom and his wife’s before settling in Ohio. Born into freedom, the porter believed in the legal rights of white men.
The slaves could not help but envy him. They observed the neat coat he wore with the shiny buttons, the polished black-soled shoes, and how he, every now and then, extracted a watch from his inner pocket and flicked open its lid at just an angle where they could not see its face.
Without the whites, the five slaves and one free colored weren’t allowed to ride the omnibus that shuttled Tawawa house visitors between the railroad depot and the resort. So they took a wagon. When they got to the depot, they piled into the back car of the train.
“I heard something,” Mawu whispered to Lizzie after the two had squeezed into the narrow seat.
“What’s that?” Lizzie asked.
“Ain’t you noticed it’s not that many folks here this year?”
“I guess.”
“They closing it. They selling it.”
“What?” Lizzie asked.
“Hush. Don’t want that porter to hear us talking.”
Lizzie lowered her voice. “What’s this you’re saying?”
“You ain’t gone see none of us again. They closing the hotel,” Mawu said.
Lizzie had heard nothing about this, and she intended to ask Drayle about it. She did not believe it was true.
She leaned back over and spoke closer to Mawu’s ear. “What about fixing yourself? You know. So you won’t have children again. Are you still going to do it?”
Mawu looked at her lap. “I reckon not, Miss Lizzie. I can’t do it round Sweet. It ain’t right.”
Philip opened a window to let some air into the stuffy car, and Mawu’s hair, having grown even longer over the winter, flew out around her face, the hair so thick as if a scalp did not exist. She held it back with one hand and placed the other in her lap.
The six brown-faced men and women were mostly silent the rest of the trip. The train rocked them into intermittent naps. It was as dark as nighttime when they left the resort, and by the time they arrived in Dayton, the sun had risen high over the buildings on the outskirts of the city.
The four women were unable to control their excitement as the city came into view. Even Sweet, who had been so quiet in the days following the death of her last child, spoke up. A servant from the hotel had given Sweet a steel needle as a gift, and she used it to make sure their dresses still fit, mending holes, tightening bodices, and letting out seams. And she had done it all in what appeared to be a healed spirit.
The women did their best to dry their faces and air out the spaces beneath their arms. They did not want to look like slaves. Lizzie patted Sweet’s wet forehead with a small square of cloth.
The hotel porter whistled and a tall, thin boy ran to the back of the station and came back driving a wagon. The wheels on the wagon were slightly bent and looked as if they would wobble right off.
“I want some sweets,” Mawu said.
“I want to go into a store and buy something,” Lizzie said.
“Your man give you money?” Sweet asked.
“A little,” Lizzie said, feeling selfish. She didn’t want to share.
“You think they gone let us go into a store and buy something without no note from our master?” Mawu asked.
“This ain’t the South,” said the porter. “Colored folks go in stores all the time here.”
When they got to the center of downtown, the women eased themselves off the wagon, taking care to hide their ragged shoes beneath their dresses.
The streets of the city were just starting to fill with people, mostly looking as if they were going to work. One group of leisurely white women passed by, the women turning and raking their eyes over the colored women’s dresses. The four slave women sped up. Only Lizzie glanced back. She noted that none of the women wore the wide hoops of the white women vacationers back at the hotel.
The porter suggested they get breakfast. He led them to an alley where they found an open door to a colored diner. Some of the diners turned to look; others ignored them and continued slurping down their breakfasts. The tables turned over quickly as men pushed back wooden chairs, scraping the floor, then put on their hats and headed off to their daily lives.
The six of them found a large enough table in the back, and a woman approached them. None of the slaves had ever been waited on before in a public establishment. Lizzie sat high and straight, and when her breakfast came, she tried not to eat too quickly. Reenie studied the other diners to see how they did it. Mawu stared at the menu written on the wall above the counter. The diner was quiet except for the noise of forks against plates. There was only one other woman in the entire place.
After breakfast, they walked through the streets. The porter explained that they were in the colored section of town known as Little Africa. Lizzie delighted at this. She waved at a woman who mistook her for someone else. She was surprised that so many of the buildings were made of brick. Large windows covered the fronts of businesses. Lizzie and Sweet read the names of signs for Reenie and Mawu. Blacksmith. Shoemaker. Dry goods. The porter explained that they were walking down Franklin Street.
Lizzie knew clearly in her mind that the men had not known how dangerous it was to allow their slaves to go into Dayton. Then again, perhaps whites did not understand how it felt not to be able to go where one wanted to go, dress how one wanted to dress. They took simple things like movement for granted.
She turned around and saw Philip hanging back, talking to a large woman wearing a dress even nicer than hers. Philip touched the woman inside of her elbow and Lizzie recognized her. The barber’s daughter. They were standing in front of a shop with a red, white, and blue pole with gold finials hanging outside. Inside, three colored men wearing white coats stood behind chairs raised high off the floor. Lizzie recognized the tall, straight profile of the girl’s father.
Philip and the woman walked over to Lizzie.
“This here be Lizzie,” Philip said. “She from back home.”
Even though Lizzie had seen the woman working in the hotel during the previous two summers, they had never had an opportunity to speak. She took Lizzie’s hand in a proper way, the way Lizzie had seen white women take other white women’s hands. She brought the slave’s hand to her mouth and kissed it, smiling at Lizzie from a wide, pleasant face. “Pleased to meet you.”
And Lizzie knew then that she would not let another night pass without talking to Drayle. She made up her mind while standing on the street in Dayton. Even before she confirmed the truth of the rumor that they were, indeed, selling the place, she knew that she would use her favored status to pay Philip back for his kindnesses. If her children could not be free and filled with new possibilities, then maybe Philip could.
That evening, Drayle heated a kettle of water on the stove. Lizzie took off her dress. It was something they weren’t able to do back at their place, one of the rules Fran had established with her husband and his mistress. In minutes, Lizzie was soaking in the tub. He ladled the water over each of her shoulders.
After the water had grown chilly and Drayle had emptied a fresh kettle of hot water into the tub for the final time, she stood and he dried her, reaching beneath her armpits, ordering her to squat so he could dry between her legs.
“Drayle. I’ve got to ask something.”
He shook his head and tensed, as if he expected the usual question. It angered her that he always became so upset at the prospect of her asking to free their children. She closed her eyes and tried to press down on the sick feeling in her stomach.
“I want to talk to you about Philip.”
Drayle turned and faced her. Lizzie read the relief clearly written across his features. “What is it?”
“Drayle,” she began. “You know that Philip is a man, don’t you?”
“A man?”
“He’s always done everything you asked of him. He’s been faithful to you. In fact, he’s one of the best slaves you own.”
“True,” Drayle said.
“And now it’s time,” she said, “to give back to him. To thank him for all those years he gave you. To thank him for being faithful.”
“What are you talking about, Lizzie?”
“Drayle, you’ve got to free him. You know it. You’ve got to free that man!”
“Free him? What on God’s earth-?” he paused and looked at her suspiciously as if trying to ascertain whether another escape plot was being hatched.
“The time has come. You can’t keep a man like him in chains forever.”
“But he’s one of the most valuable slaves I own. You’re telling me to just give up my valuable property. Free him. Just like that. That’s what you’re saying.”
“No, Drayle, let the old man buy him. The man offered to buy him. Sell him and get your money. If you got your money, would that make you happy?”
She felt chilled. She was still naked and Drayle held her gown in his hands, suspended. Then he pulled the gown over her body. She picked her fingers through a knot of tangles in the back of her head that had clenched up in the steam of the water.
“Drayle, you’ll do it, won’t you? You’ll do what’s right?”
“Come on, woman.” he grabbed her arm and pulled her into the bedroom.
She yanked back. “No, not this time. This time you give me an answer. You won’t give me an answer about my children. You won’t give me an answer about anything. But…” She lowered her voice. “Give me an answer about Philip.”
She understood the risk she was taking. White folks had a way of having a limited number of acts of generosity. If he listened to her about Philip, the chances of freeing her children would decrease. She tried not to dwell on this.
“Why are you pleading his case all of a sudden?” he looked around the cottage, as if searching for clues of betrayal.
“You know that man is like a brother to me. He ain’t never been more than that, and he never will be. Now what are you going to do? Are you going to be a man and free him?”
“Shut up, woman. Don’t you call me out of my name.”
“I didn’t call you out of your name. Tell me something, Drayle. Are you the kind of master everybody back home makes you out to be? Or are you something else?”
He looked down at the brown nipples peeking through the thin fabric of her shirt. “I’ll think about it. Is that good enough for you? I won’t say no and I won’t say yes. I’ll say-”
“What?”
“Let me think about it. How about that?” he reached for her hand.
But for the first time since she could remember, she refused him. And that was the way it was that night. And that was the way it would be for a few nights more.
The last words out of his mouth before he fell off to sleep were: “We never should’ve allowed y’all to go off to Dayton.”
Early the next morning Lizzie rose and lit the outside fire in preparation for breakfast. On her way back from the hotel, laden with the day’s provisions, she spotted Mawu running toward her. “Lizzie, Lizzie, Lizzie,” Mawu was saying over and over. Not loudly, but enough where Lizzie could hear the z’s carrying through the air.
When Mawu reached her, she circled her arms around Lizzie.
“What is it?” Lizzie asked. She peeked over Mawu’s shoulder at the sun and could see it was perched at breakfast time.
“What is it, Maw?”
Mawu pulled back and put both hands on Lizzie’s shoulders. “Sweet.”
Even before the words that followed, the words that would deliver Mawu’s message, Lizzie knew something was wrong.
She clenched her teeth and dropped her bundle, leaving it on the ground where it fell. Mawu led her away from the cottages into the woods. Lizzie knew where they were headed. The five little graves. For a moment, hope flickered inside of her. Maybe it wasn’t bad. But as Lizzie and Mawu approached the bodiless mounds of dirt covering the dresses and pants and shirt, she saw her friend laid out on her back, on the ground, hands folded across her chest, as if she had already been carefully laid to rest. Her eyes were closed, one side of her face covered with a cloth, the other side smooth as if recently wiped clean. She was still wearing the dress she had worn to Dayton the day before.
Reenie was already there, standing off to one side. Mawu pulled Lizzie right up to Sweet, and they both dropped to their knees.
Lizzie’s eyes roamed over Sweet’s body. “What happened?”
Reenie shook her head and told the women that Sweet had been discovered in the ravine by early morning hunters.
Lizzie shook her head. “I don’t understand. She fell?”
“Must be,” Reenie said. “I guess she lost her way in the dark.”
Lizzie started to cry.
“But she do look happy, don’t she?” Reenie said.
“How could she be happy?” Lizzie spoke to Reenie in a tone she had never used with the elder one before.
“Because there’s a afterworld,” Reenie said. “And in that afterworld, all our sadness go away. The Bible say that the Lord will wipe your tears away.”
Mawu spat on the ground. “The Bible! The Bible! That’s all you niggers talk about!”
“She freer than you is. That’s for sho!” Reenie’s spittle flew in Mawu’s face.
They were silent.
Finally, Lizzie whispered, “Sweet.”
They held the ceremony for Sweet at night, after the day’s chores were done. All of the slaves were in attendance and a few of the house servants. None of the white men came, although Sweet’s man had been there earlier, knelt over the body for some time. At least that’s what Philip told Lizzie. While Philip and George dug the grave, the white man sat beside her. And although they did not see tears, the men witnessed the hump of his back, the shake of his shoulders.
It was late when it all began. The men brought tall candles set into stakes. They planted them into the ground around Sweet’s body. It was a dark night, the crescent moon barely lighting the clearing. There was no box to put her in. The men had not had time to build one because the white men had insisted her body be buried quickly. There was also no cooling board on which to lay the body. So they just dug the hole as deeply as they could, nearly six feet under, so that the smell of her decaying body would not reach the surface.
There was no preacher to stand over her and make sure her soul made it to the right place. They all stood silently, waiting for someone to step forward and give Sweet’s body the honor it deserved.
It began with a song.
Mary had a baby.
Yes Lord.
Mary had a baby.
Yes my Lord.
Mary had a baby.
Yes Lord.
People keep a coming
But the train done gone.
They listened to the song as if they had never heard it sung before. And it did not matter that they usually sang it at Christmas. Reenie’s voice lifted over the other night sounds and floated into the darkness. She had a rich, deep voice. And although she rarely sang and wouldn’t ever call herself a singer, she barely missed a note that night. She sang the song slowly, befitting a funeral, not rapidly like they sang it when they were working.
Only Mawu stood a bit apart from the group, her face a mask, a chicken dangling from her hand. After Reenie had finished her song, Mawu opened her mouth: “They say he fed the hungry with a few loaves of bread. They say he turned water into wine. They say he walked on water. They say he calmed storms. They say he healed the blind and the deaf. That’s what they say.”
The chicken clucked, a string connecting its tiny neck to her wrist. She stopped speaking and picked the chicken up, spun it around until its neck broke. The wings started to flap. She turned it upside down and stuck a small knife in its mouth, making a slicing motion. Blood spilled onto the front of her dress. She lifted the chicken in the air and closed her eyes, mumbling something inaudible over the wind and rustling trees.
“Enough!” Philip shouted. He looked upset.
The two men rolled Sweet’s body into the grave. George shoved dirt into the hole, mumbling “God bless you” as he worked.
Reenie took Lizzie’s hand and walked away. Behind them, Mawu walked, holding the chicken out in front of her. Philip and George moved pile after pile of dirt into the hole, the blood of the dead fowl splattered on the ground around them.
It was only after Sweet’s death that they decided to read the pamphlet, as if the loss of her had stirred in them a more urgent reason to know about these freedom-loving whites. On the first morning that she read, only Mawu and Reenie sat beside her. Later, Philip and George would join them. But that first time, it was just the three women sitting in the parlor of Lizzie’s cottage. Lizzie pulled the couch over to sit just in front of the two women. Reenie put out a plate of bread, and Mawu sipped from a cup of tea.
“The Philosophy of the Abolition Movement” by Wendell Phillips. This is a speech delivered in Boston on January 27, 1853.
Lizzie cleared her throat, and decided to start at the beginning. She had looked the pamphlet over several times and there were words she could not accurately pronounce because she had never heard them said aloud before. But she was pretty certain of the general meaning of what she was about to read. Even so, her hands shook. She wondered what the women would think if they knew that it had been Glory who had stolen the pamphlet and given it to her. Glory, the faithful Quaker, had stolen it out of the bag of a man at the post office.
Mr. Chairman,-I have to present, from the Business Committee, the following resolution:-
Resolved, That the object of this Society is now, as it has always been, to convince our countrymen, by arguments addressed to their hearts and consciences, that slaveholding is a heinous crime, and that the duty, safety and interest of all concerned, demand its immediate abolition, without expatriation.
Lizzie wanted to stop and read those words again. She had never heard a white man talk in such a way. For a moment, she faltered, wondering if she’d mispronounced the word “heinous.” But she continued:
I wish, Mr. Chairman, to notice some objections that have been made to our course, ever since Mr. Garrison began his career, and which have been lately urged again, with considerable force and emphasis, in the columns of the London Leader, the able organ of a very respectable and influential class in England. I hope, Sir, you will not think it a waste of time to bring such a subject before you. I know these objections have been made a thousand times; that they have been often answered; though we have generally submitted to them in silence, willing to let results speak for us. But there are times when justice to the slave will not allow us to be silent. There are many in this country, many in England, who have had their attention turned, recently, to the AntiSlavery cause. They are asking, “Which is the best and most efficient method of helping it?” Engaged ourselves in an effort for the slave, which time has tested and success hitherto approved, we are, very properly, desirous that they should join us in our labors, and pour into this channel the full tide of their new zeal and great resources. Thoroughly convinced ourselves that our course is wise, we can honestly urge others to adopt it. Long experience gives us a right to advise. The fact that our course, more than all other efforts, has caused that agitation which has awakened these new converts, gives us a right to counsel them. They are our spiritual children: for their sakes, we would free the cause we love and trust from every seeming defect and plausible objection. For the slave’s sake, we reiterate our explanations, that he may lose no little of help by the mistakes or misconceptions of his friends.
Lizzie read slowly, and when she noticed Reenie picking at the hem of her dress, she decided to skip ahead a bit.
The charges to which I refer are these: That in dealing with slaveholders and their apologists, we indulge in fierce denunciations, instead of appealing to their reason and common sense by plain statements and fair argument;-that we might have won the sympathies and support of the nation, if we would have submitted to argue this question with a manly patience; but instead of this, we have outraged the feelings of the community by attacks, unjust and unnecessarily severe, on its most valued institutions, and gratified our spleen by indiscriminate abuse of leading men, who were often honest in their intentions, however mistaken in their views;-that we have utterly neglected the ample means that lay around us to convert the nation, submitted to no discipline, formed no plan, been guided by no foresight, but hurried on in a childish, reckless, blind and hot-headed zeal-bigots in the narrowness of our views, and fanatics in our blind fury of invective and malignant judgment of other men’s motives.
Mawu whistled. “Ooh, I didn’t know you could read so nice, Miss Lizzie. I can’t hardly understand for listening to the sound of them words. What that man saying there?”
“He’s saying that the abolitionists have been accused of being too…too vicious, too mean, and he doesn’t believe this to be true. He believes these folks that accuse them of this don’t know what they’re talking about. He believes that the cause of freedom is just and right and they must do all they can to get rid of slavery.”
Reenie’s eyes were wide. “Oh my sweet Jesus. Go on,” she urged. “Go on.”
Two days after Sweet was laid to rest, the white men discovered Philip sneaking off the resort to meet his woman. No one knew how they found out. But the word got back to the slaves that Philip had been meeting her halfway between the colored resort and the white one. Lizzie thought of how often slaves did this back in Tennessee, meeting halfway between plantations and making their love felt on the forest floor. In contrast, she thought of how direct Drayle was back on their place, exercising his rights wherever and whenever the mood hit him.
They all waited around wondering what would happen next. No one had seen Philip, and Lizzie searched frantically for Drayle, but he, too, was nowhere to be seen. From her porch, Lizzie could make out Reenie hanging laundry behind her cottage and Mawu walking on the other side of the lake carrying something on her head.
Lizzie swept the dust out the front door of her cottage. Back at the plantation, Drayle might have gotten away with giving Philip a light scolding and perhaps having the slave trader visit the place to scare the slaves into thinking that Philip might be sold off. But here, in this northern climate, where he was under the scrutiny of the other Southern slaveholders, Drayle would probably decide to take a sterner approach.
Lizzie had to get to Drayle first, remind him that Philip was still his favorite slave. It was no longer a rumor but a well-known fact that this would be their last summer at the resort. Most likely, Drayle figured that if he could get Philip back to Tennessee without this woman, he would be able to get his slave’s mind off her.
Once, Drayle had bought a beautiful woman for one of his slaves after the man’s wife died in childbirth. The young woman had been intended to salve the older man’s grief. They had taken up residence together in one of the slave cabins, and it was not long before the young girl had genuinely fallen for the kind old man. It had been an unexpected but welcome outcome to the forced coupling. Lizzie thought this was probably what Drayle was hoping for now, that he could purchase a woman for Philip that would solve everything.
Lizzie tried to block out any image in her mind of Drayle having Philip beat. Besides, who would beat him? There was no overseer here to perform Drayle’s dirty work, and Drayle had never been one to perform such an unpleasant task himself. There was that one hotel porter who would do anything the white men told him for a price, the one with the watch who had accompanied them to Dayton. George would do it if so ordered, but she doubted that he would complete the task with any zest. And the slaveholders knew this.
As the different scenarios passed through her mind, she saw a figure that looked to be about Philip’s size approaching from the distance. He was flanked by two men holding him by the arms. Lizzie shaded her eyes with her hand. From where she stood, it looked as if Philip’s legs were chained. As the three men got closer, she heard the telltale clink of metal against metal. She clutched the arm of her broom.
The men led Philip to a tree just off the edge of the pond. It was a scrawny young pawpaw tree that even in the height of summer had never bore any fruit. Nor was it full enough to offer very much shade. They chained him to the tree and walked away. Philip scooted along the ground until he was beside the tree and rested his back against its narrow trunk.
Lizzie leaned the broom against the wall of the cottage. She wiped her palms across the front of her dress. Even though she could not make out Philip’s face, she knew he had already been beaten. He did not have the walk of a beaten man, but she knew how such things worked. He had been beaten and left out in the hot sun.
She heard someone moving inside the cottage, and it startled her. She pulled open the door and saw Drayle moving about the room, packing a bag. “Drayle? What did you do to Philip?”
He ignored her and continued to move around the room. She watched as he put the tin cup and plate he used for camping into the bag.
“Where are those socks you mended for me?”
She went into the bedroom and took a thin pair of socks out of the drawer with a patch across the toe. She returned and gave them to him.
“Talk to me, Drayle. What’s happening?”
“Hand me my fishing rod.”
She took the rod out of the closet. Considering the time of day, she knew he would probably camp overnight. But surely he didn’t plan to just leave Philip there.
He hoisted the pack of supplies over his shoulder and finally turned to her. “Don’t you even think about going near him, Lizzie.”
“What?” She tried to shame him with a certain look she used now and again. “You’re going to just leave him there?”
“You hear me? This is between me and him. Don’t you even think about going near him. You or nobody else, but especially you.”
Surely he didn’t plan on leaving Philip out there all day and night. There wasn’t much shade out there, and the Ohio sun was as hot as the one in Tennessee.
She remembered when she was a child and still lived on the plantation in Weakley county where she was born there had been a dog that hung around the slave cabins. It hadn’t belonged to anyone in particular and no one had ever given it a name. They just called it “Dog.” The dog lived on scraps thrown to it here and there when the slaves had finished eating. As it got old, its back legs started to give out. So it took to sitting around more and more until finally it stopped walking altogether. No one had the heart to kill it. One morning, as the slaves went off to the fields, someone placed the dog in a shady spot near a tree.
When the children gathered around the tree that evening to hunt for the sticks they used for toys, they discovered the dog lying in the same spot where it had been left. One of the children called his father who came and picked up the dog’s lifeless body. He told the children to run along, and he went off somewhere to bury it. Lizzie could remember the dog’s skin: it had been raw and peeling beneath the dog’s thin brown and white pelt. She had dreamed that night of what it must have felt like to be that dog, becoming so hot until her vision blurred and she could barely suck in enough air to cool herself. She had heard of adults complaining of such symptoms while working the field all day, but even they wore hats to cool themselves. The dog had been unable to do anything to lessen the punishment of the sun once it moved its position in the sky.
“Who’s going to feed him and give him water?” she demanded.
“You stay away from him, now. You hear me?”
Lizzie must have looked as if she intended to follow no such order because his voice turned cold.
His words were slow. “I’m going to leave instructions for the hotel servants to keep an eye on that tree.” he spoke of the tree as if it existed and Philip didn’t. “If I so much as hear that you or anyone else has gone near it, I will have Nate whipped until he’s black and blue.”
Lizzie froze. He had never threatened to do such a thing. Nate had never been whipped in his life.
“Nate? Whipped? have you lost your mind?”
She felt it and saw his hand swing back at what seemed like the same time. It happened so quickly she didn’t have time to dodge out of the way.
“I have told you time and time again to watch your mouth when you are talking to me. You are just a woman and, on top of that, nothing but a slave woman.”
The blood on Lizzie’s lip didn’t taste like anything. It wasn’t salty like sweat or sweet like mucus. She lapped it up with her tongue and squeezed her lips together.
His eyes were red, the look of a parent who has just slapped his child. She had seen that look in Big Mama’s face before.
“I’ll be back in a day or two,” he said. He turned away from her and left her standing there wearing a new feeling.
At first, no one dared go near Philip because they did not know who had been set up to watch him. The slaves watched the hotel servants and the hotel servants watched the slaves. Lizzie, Reenie, and Mawu tried to devise ways they could sneak out in the middle of the night and get him water. Philip was tied to a tree right at the edge of the water, a tree easily visible from any of the nine cottages surrounding the pond and also from the hotel’s main lounge. The white women set up a picnic nearby on the first day and watched him while they ate. Two children threw rocks at him, narrowly missing for the most part.
George spent the first couple of days watering the flowers along the water’s edge. When he got close enough for the water to reach him, he doused Philip down. Philip tried sticking his tongue out and drinking water that way. On the second day the two men got smarter, Philip digging a hole in the ground and George managing to fill the hole with water. Philip used his tongue to lap up the water before it soaked into the surrounding dirt.
Another day went by and Lizzie walked by the tree, close enough to Philip to see that his lips were white and cracked. He tried to say something to her, but his words got muffled by his swollen tongue. Lizzie went to Reenie’s cottage and sat in a chair while Reenie folded clothes.
“We can’t just leave him out there,” Lizzie said. “It’s too hot.”
“He can survive,” Reenie said. “Philip a strong man. Strong as an ox.”
“That’s what everybody thinks about him.” Lizzie shook her head. “But he ain’t strong as people think. He’s got a soft spot. I’ve seen it. And it’s probably worse now that he’s got that woman on his mind.”
Reenie picked up Sir’s overalls and folded them down the front of her dress.
“And Drayle ain’t never been too hard on none of his slaves, let alone Philip.”
Reenie stopped folding and eyed her. “Every slave got the survivor in him. You don’t got to get beat every now and then to remember how to make it through something.”
Lizzie tried to believe what Reenie was saying.
The next morning was the fourth day since Drayle had left and no one had been allowed to feed or water Philip. It was only because he moved a bit here and there that they knew he was still alive.
The three women sat on the steps of Mawu’s porch. George came and sat down on the grass in front of Mawu’s cottage.
“Somebody done fed and watered him,” George said.
“Who?” Lizzie asked.
“I don’t know. One of the coloreds at the hotel, I reckon.”
Mawu sucked her teeth. “Them people ain’t never helped nobody but theyselves. I doubt it.”
“Why do you think somebody fed him?” Lizzie asked.
“Cause look at him. He look a little better today than he did yesterday,” George said.
“I haven’t gotten close enough to see,” Lizzie responded.
“I did. And as far as I know, he ain’t had water in two days. Can’t nobody survive that long in this sun without at least a dip or two of some cool water.”
“Maybe it was that Quaker woman,” Mawu said.
“I ain’t seen her in a spell,” Reenie said.
“She could be sneaking on the property at night,” Mawu said. “Maybe.”
“Maybe it was one of those abolitionists,” Lizzie offered, thinking of the pamphlet.
“Look,” George said. They all looked east and saw the group of white men returning, long fishing poles hanging from their shoulders.
The women stood, their respite over. Lizzie hastened back to her cabin, eager to convince Drayle to end his punishment of Philip. Over the past couple of days, she had decided to try the tactics she’d used on him in the service of her children. She would not refuse him this time.
When she heard Drayle’s footsteps swishing through the grass, she met him out on the porch and pushed him into the wooden rocker.
“Let me help you with your boots,” she said.
She pulled each boot off and lined them up beside the door. Then she pulled off his socks and massaged his feet. They stank like the outdoors, but she rubbed them anyway, paying particular attention to the large bunion on his right foot.
He enjoyed her attention for a few minutes before smiling down at her.
“Lizzie?”
“Hmm?”
“If I tell you that I’ve already decided to sell Philip, will you still take care of me?”
She dropped his foot and it fell with a thud onto the wooden porch.
“For real?”
He nodded.
She studied him for a moment, then leaned down and kissed the stinking, sweating toe.
This time, Philip and George joined them. The four slaves sat mute before Lizzie as she read.
What is the denunciation with which we are charged? It is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to declare the enormity of the sin of making merchandise of men,-of separating husband and wife,-taking the infant from its mother, and selling the daughter to prostitution,-of a professedly Christian nation denying, by statute, the Bible to every sixth man and woman of its population, and making it illegal for ‘two or three’ to meet together, except a white man be present! What is this harsh criticism of motives with which we are charged?
“Slow down, Miss Lizzie. I don’t want to miss a thang,” George interrupted.
Lizzie’s next words were slow and deliberate:
The South is one great brothel, where half a million of women are flogged to prostitution, or, worse still, are degraded to believe it honorable. The public squares of half our great cities echo to the wail of families torn asunder at the auction-block; no one of our fair rivers that has not closed over the negro seeking in death a refuge from a life too wretched to bear; thousands of fugitives skulk along our highways, afraid to tell their names, and trembling at the sight of a human being; free men are kidnapped in our streets, to be plunged into that hell of slavery; and now and then one, as if by miracle, after long years, returns to make men aghast with his tale.
Lizzie stopped reading. She paused for a minute although no one asked her to explain.
Drayle told Lizzie that while camping he had decided to let Philip go. But first, the barber would have to agree to a price Drayle would set himself. A price that would allow him to buy another slave with a reputation as good as Philip’s. He had come to this decision because Reenie’s man had convinced him the slave would be no good anymore. He would either try to flee or spend the rest of his days resenting Drayle for it. Philip had a permanent pass that allowed him to run Drayle’s errands or exercise the horses throughout the woods. Sir insisted that those days were over. And even though Drayle objected, Sir ominously reminded him that some slaves had even killed their masters over such disappointments.
Drayle convinced Lizzie he was doing this for her as well. Because she’d asked and he respected her wishes. She’d known it all along, she said to herself. This would be the good deed to answer all other favors. A man, he would most likely argue later, could only give up so much of his property.
When the barber arrived to bring the money, the small group of slaves watched from afar, Philip among them. The daughter was not present to help, so the assistant laid out the tools and rinsed the brass bowl. It appeared to Lizzie that the barber’s arms moved with especially exaggerated flourishes as he whisked the cloth off Drayle’s face and brushed the white man’s shoulders clear of fallen clips of hair.
The assistant removed the rocks from the back legs of the rocking chairs so the men could sit upright. The other three white men paid the barbers and took their leave. The assistant cleaned up the tools and left Drayle and the head barber on the porch alone. The slaves could see the gray-haired man resting against the rail, his white coat blending with the white of the wood.
“You reckon you gone be able to leave with him today?” George asked.
It sank in for Lizzie that Philip would not be returning to Tennessee this time. And if this were really their last summer at the resort, she would never see him again. She tried to etch his features into her memory as she had done to her friends when she was nine years old and being sent to the auction block. She hoped this time the memory would stick.
“I don’t know,” Philip said, unable to hide his joy.
“Well, it ain’t like you got nothing to pack,” Mawu said. “You probably just gone climb in that there wagon and be on your way.”
“Maybe you’ll get a whole new suit of clothes,” George said. “You gone enter the barbering trade?”
“I don’t know. I gots to pay the man back his money. But the onliest thing I know is horses. I ain’t like these cityfied folks.” Philip brushed at a fly crawling on his forehead.
“You gone learn quick,” Reenie said. “Tell me, Philip. How do freedom taste?”
Philip looked at her and smiled. “Miss Reenie, I got to say I honestly don’t know just yet. I reckon I won’t know till I get my free papers.”
Lizzie studied Drayle and the barber and saw that neither had changed position. She knew that Drayle had Philip’s papers in his pocket. She had looked at them just that morning and run her fingers over them. The papers looked real, sure enough. Written up by someone in a flowing and official-looking script, even better than those of the old man on the train up from cincinnati.
“You be sure to send me a letter, Philip. Even if you’ve got to get somebody to write it for you.” Philip could not read and write, and Lizzie wondered if he would learn now that he was free.
Philip reached out for her, and she hugged him for a long time. His chest felt warm against hers. She remembered the nights she had spent in his cabin, how he had kept a respectful distance. She’d always appreciated that. But now she wished she would have let him take her just one time. To remember him by. It wouldn’t have been much for her to give herself to him. At the time, though, she’d felt differently. She’d seen being with Philip as a way of disrespecting her children’s father. But now she knew she could have done it. She could have shared something with him a little more than friendship and a little less than love.
The good news was that now he would get real happiness. She felt protective of him. Tender. And jealous all at the same time.
“He got them!” George exclaimed. “He got the papers!”
Philip released her and they both strained their eyes to see if it was, indeed, a paper in the barber’s hand.
“Hallelujah!” Reenie shouted.
Mawu turned to Lizzie and spoke quietly. “That was a good thing you done.”
Just as they’d thought, Philip left with the barber that very afternoon. Each of the slaves gave him a token to take with him. Reenie gave him a wooden cross her brother had carved for her years before. George gave him a nectarine he had stolen from a nearby orchard. Mawu gave him a sack containing some herbs she said would protect him from evil spirits. Lizzie gave him a note she had carefully written the night before containing the address of the plantation in Tennessee.
That night, Reenie told Lizzie as they drew water at the well she would no longer have sex with the hotel manager. Lizzie replied she had not known that it was still going on. Reenie looked at her with a half-surprised expression and continued to pump water. Lizzie remembered the summer before when Reenie’s own brother and master had promised her to the hotel manager. All of them had seen Reenie making the evening walk to the hotel for the remaining days of the summer. But since none of them had seen Reenie making that walk this summer, they’d figured that the relationship had ended.
But it obviously hadn’t. If he was bold enough to continue the relationship across summers, then he would not take no for an answer. Reenie’s master had made a trade of some kind, and most likely he would have to give up whatever the manager was giving him in order to free Reenie of her obligation.
In the days that followed, Lizzie saw less and less of Reenie. A week after their conversation, she went to Reenie’s cabin to see if the woman had really been able to end it. The men were gone for the night on an overnight camping trip, and since she figured Reenie would be obligated to the hotel manager on a night they were gone, she wanted to see if her friend was in the cottage.
She saw a light in the window and went around to the back door. She tapped.
“Miss Reenie?”
She saw the lace curtain in the kitchen window inch back. A moment later, she heard the floorboards creak. The door cracked open.
“What you want?” Reenie answered. Her eyes moved past Lizzie.
“I just came to talk.”
“You by yourself?”
“Course I’m by myself.” Lizzie looked behind her just in case. Reenie was making her nervous.
Reenie opened the door just enough for Lizzie to slide through.
Lizzie looked around once she had entered. “Are you alone?”
Reenie grabbed her arm. “What you mean?”
“What’s wrong with you? I’m just asking. And I thought I heard something besides.”
Reenie scooted a chair into the middle of the floor. “Sit,” she commanded.
Lizzie obeyed.
Reenie went to the closet and stood before it. “If you tell anybody, she dead. If you tell anybody, you gone have blood on your hands.”
“Tell what?”
Reenie opened the closet door. A girl peeked out.
Lizzie’s hand flew to her mouth. “Who is this?”
“Shh!”
The girl began to cry.
“Hush, baby,” Reenie said. “Miss Reenie gone take care of you.” She took a piece of bread out of the basket and handed it to the girl. The child broke through its hard crust with her teeth. Then she scooped out its soft whiteness with her finger and stuck it in her mouth.
Lizzie looked the girl up and down. She was dressed like a slave. Or, at least, she was dressed like a slave trying not to dress like a slave, wearing pants like a boy and a large shirt tucked into them. The shirt wore a patch across the arm as if the sleeve had been ripped off and then put back on. Her hair was cut short like a boy, too, but there was no mistaking the soft feminine features.
Reenie wiped the girl’s runny nose with her own sleeve. Then she tucked her sleeve in to hide the wet spot.
“Whose child is this?” Lizzie wondered if the older woman was going crazy. They had all been grieving since Sweet’s death. And Reenie had been through a lot over the past year.
Reenie pulled the girl in close. “She mine and she yourn, too. She belong to all of us.”
“What are you saying?”
The child relaxed and leaned against Reenie. “She come up from Kentucky. Them free women in the hotel done asked me to look after her for one night. She be on her way tomorrow.”
Lizzie finally understood. She rose to her feet and glanced nervously toward the open window. The air in the cottage had cooled noticeably since she’d arrived.
Reenie was watching her closely. “What you thinking?”
Lizzie felt it. A test. Even after all this time, a grain of mistrust remained. “But how?”
“I can’t…” Reenie stopped as if trying to think of the word. “I can’t explain. A lot of people help this here child. I ain’t the only one.”
“Oh.” That was all Lizzie could think to say.
The child took another nibble of bread. Lizzie looked around the cottage, trying to determine if this was the first runaway slave Reenie had helped. Nothing looked out of place. Only the child.
“When?” Lizzie asked.
“After Sweet died. Didn’t something change for you after that?”
Lizzie searched inside herself. Something had, but she couldn’t really give expression to it. And she certainly hadn’t gone as far as Reenie to act upon it.
“Why you come over here tonight anyway?”
Lizzie looked at her friend. She couldn’t say she had come over to see if Reenie was still seeing the hotel manager. She couldn’t say she had come over to ask how Reenie had gotten away from him and taken back her body. And ask how she could take hers back from Drayle and still maintain favor. The child watched as if awaiting her answer as well.
“Well,” Lizzie began. “I really just came over cause I’m lonely, what with Sweet gone and all.” There. That was enough of the truth to be counted as honest.
“You want a piece of bread?” Reenie asked.
Lizzie nodded.
Later, Lizzie would try to put the pieces together and would wonder if the first fire provided the idea for the second. She would recount every little moment of the summer in her mind-from Sweet’s death to Philip’s freedom-and wonder how she’d missed the little signs that had, no doubt, been there all along. She would experience a store of emotions, and it would be months before she would boil it all down to grief.
The crowd at the picnic was the lightest it had been all summer. There were more Southerners in the crowd than northerners, the thick drawls and parasols a telltale sign that the Southern visitors outnumbered the others. Reenie reported that she’d overheard the hotel manager speaking about the situation. Apparently, the northerners no longer wanted to come to the resort as it was being overrun by Southerners. Most of them had shortened their visits. Some were said to be offended by the presence of negro wenches.
Lizzie and Reenie were standing together when a colored child unwrapped a muslin cloth, exposing a small fish inside. She pulled a few sprigs of some kind of herb from her pocket and tucked them one by one into the folds of the fish. Then she wrapped the fish again and placed it on the outer edges of the fire.
Neither of the women knew where the child had come from. They assumed that she belonged to one of the hotel servants and had been assigned to perform some chores for the day. Lizzie and Reenie each held the end of a long stick skewering partridges. They had spent the entire morning plucking the feathers from the birds and cleaning out the organs. Now they held the stick just high enough where it would not catch fire, and rotated it slowly so the birds would cook on the inside before they charred on the outside. Once the birds were done, they slid them off and piled them onto a long board. Then Reenie carried the board over to another table where Mawu and two other colored women from the hotel ladled sauce onto them.
Each time she was given a pail of fresh raw partridges, Lizzie slid the birds onto the sticks, careful to pierce each at its thickest point. As she held the birds over the fire, she searched for Drayle’s face in the crowd. She had not often seen him in the company of the other resort guests, and she wondered what he would be like.
He was standing about thirty feet away from her in a group of men who were smoking. He only smoked when they came to Tawawa because Fran didn’t allow it at home. The men laughed, the scent of their cigars mingling in the air with the scent of the meat.
Lizzie looked with wonder at the colored child kneeling beside her. She was fascinated by free colored children. She wanted to reach out and touch the girl’s head, but she could not take either hand off the heavy stick of partridges. She was so busy looking between the birds and the girl that she didn’t see the white woman approach her.
“What’s your name?”
Lizzie looked around for someone else. But when she glanced into the white woman’s eyes, they were fixed on her. She looked down. She could tell from the accent that the woman was a northerner.
“Lizzie, ma’am.”
“Lizzie. Is that short for something? Elizabeth?”
“Eliza, ma’am.”
“Who do you belong to, Eliza?”
Lizzie tried to figure out where the question was coming from and where it was going. “I belong to Master Drayle, ma’am.”
Lizzie peeked over at the woman and saw her eyes searching the crowd of men.
“Which one is he?”
Lizzie tilted her head. “The one in the tall boots, ma’am.”
Despite the heat, Drayle had not taken off his riding boots and still held his crop in one hand.
“Is he good to you, Eliza?”
Lizzie nodded and said what she knew was expected of her. She remembered Mawu’s question, He God to you?
“Yes, ma’am,” she said.
Lizzie took a chance and looked up into the woman’s eyes. The woman looked visibly relieved. “Good. ’cause I can’t stand men who are brutes. A lot of slave owners are brutes, aren’t they? At least, that’s what I hear. That’s why I detest slavery.”
She wanted to ask the woman about the pamphlet, about this Wendell Phillips. Did she know him?
The woman moved on. When she joined the next group of women, she must have said something about Lizzie because they all looked over at her and gave her little half smiles. Lizzie looked at them for a moment and then turned her attention back to the partridges. Her arm was tired. She needed to relieve herself, but her partridges were still too raw to eat.
The child’s fish had cooked more quickly. She unwrapped the cloth to check on it, and Lizzie guessed from its aroma that it was probably just about done.
A white child approached the colored girl and sank to her knees. “Is that fish ready yet?”
The colored child nodded reluctantly. Lizzie could feel the child’s disappointment as she realized that her treasure was about to be taken from her. The servant child put the wrapped fish on the ground. She knew she had to give the fish to the other girl, but her anger would not allow her to hand it over just yet. If the girl wanted it, she would have to pick it up and take it herself.
The white girl smiled triumphantly, and as she leaned over to take the fish, the end of her dress grazed the hot ember. Lizzie saw it when it happened, but she did not know it had caught fire until the child had already felt the heat of the burn on her leg. The white girl screamed and the fish flew out of her hands. She jumped up and ran. Reenie put down the partridges and ran to the well. The colored girl picked up the fish and stuffed its slippery flesh into her mouth with her fingers, sliding the bones out between her teeth.
A white woman threw the quilt she had been sitting on over the child. It, too, caught fire. There were shouts all around as people realized what was happening. One of the men ran after the child and caught up with her before throwing himself on her. They rolled on the ground. The child was still screaming loudly, and the smell of burnt flesh filled the air as the doctor yelled, “Let me through! Let me through!”
Lizzie looked around for Drayle and saw him standing alone, a bit off from the crowd. The ground around him was littered with forgotten cigar ends, still glowing. Only he remained, his fingers grasping the butt of his cigar and his mouth frozen in the round shape of a deep exhale.
She turned back to the birds on the ground beside her, and felt her eyes sting from the heat of the fire. Then she looked again at Drayle, and as the burning child’s screams simmered, she saw him take another puff of his cigar and wipe his forehead.
Lizzie was so busy watching Drayle that she had no memory of Mawu at that moment. She wished she had looked her way. Later, she wondered if she would have seen the reflection of the fire in her eyes.
The second fire happened that very night. The men poured out of the cottages in their dressing gowns, faces lined with the tension of sleep. The fire rose like a vengeful ancestor over the lot of them.
Mawu and Tip. It was their cottage. Lizzie searched the faces for her friend and found her, standing on the fringe, indecent in her gown, arms hanging slack at her sides, crying and choking through something that resembled tears.
Lizzie saw Reenie hurrying along with a pail of water in each hand. Out of the darkness, Drayle pushed two pails stuck inside of each other into Lizzie’s fist and commanded her to the pond. She joined the long line of frantic men and women, sooty-faced colored and white, slave and free, who moved back and forth between the pond and the cottage. One of the men yelled something unintelligible, and Mawu reached out into the darkness as if trying to clutch someone. Swollen white sores ran the length of her arm.
“She hurt. Mawu hurt,” Lizzie said to the closest passing negro.
In a moment, Reenie was there. Both of Mawu’s arms had been burned from the shoulder down to the hand. The skin had started to pucker, a fret of scales and blisters. Mawu looked down at her arms as if they belonged to someone else. Her face appeared untouched, smooth as a speckled stone, brown and iridescent in the light of the moon and the fire.
“I tried, I tried.”
“Hush. We gone take care of you.” Reenie had to yell over the shouts of the men.
Lizzie wanted to ask. What had she tried to do? had she tried to save Tip and failed? Lizzie looked off toward the cottage. It was a lick of flames, dark smoke blasting into the air and sending down a sprinkle of ashes.
“But you don’t understand, Miss Reenie. You don’t understand. I tried, I tried.”
“Sweet Jesus,” Lizzie heard Reenie say. “Anybody ask, you tell them she burnt and I is taking her back to my cottage, you hear?”
Lizzie nodded, the empty pails swaying in her hands.
“Is she all right?”
Reenie shook her head. It surprised Lizzie. Like asking the doctor if someone was going to be all right and hearing the truth for a change.
“She got more than burns to deal with.”
“Lizzie! Fill them buckets, girl!” Drayle shouted at her as Reenie and Mawu hurried off.
Lizzie ran back to the pond. One of the slaves standing knee deep in the water helped her get them full. When she turned around, she saw Tip waiting behind her, an outstretched pail in his hand and a pasty look on his white face that made him appear ghostlike.
But he was not a ghost. He was just as real as the fire still panting hungrily behind him. She glanced off in the direction that Reenie and Mawu had gone. Now she understood. She understood what Mawu had tried to do.
And while she had a strange feeling in her belly she might never see Mawu again, it never crossed her mind she might never see Reenie again, either.
When she heard that both Reenie and Mawu were missing, Lizzie felt as if her insides had been broken into a thousand pieces. She wanted to crawl inside herself like a turtle. Later, she would describe it to Glory as time moving at an indescribable speed, carrying buckets of water one minute and carrying her heart in her hands the next.
After the news spread through the resort, Drayle changed toward her. Everything became a barked order and she was locked in a room at night.
Lizzie ran the day over and over through her mind. From the girl with the burned legs-the way the skin merely looked sunburned-to the oozing sores on Mawu’s arms. From the dark smoke rising from the cottage to the empty feeling in her stomach that came with the knowledge that she was the only one of the four left. She could not understand what she had missed, why they had not included her in their plans. She wasn’t sure how she would have responded if they had, but she mourned the lack of invitation.
The only thing she could come up with was that they had not forgiven her for the summer she told on Mawu. They still thought of her as a traitor.
After the cottage fire was put out, Drayle had told her to make her way back. She had considered sneaking off to Reenie’s cottage, but she had thought better of it. Drayle’s eyes had made two holes in her back, and she’d figured it wasn’t smart to anger him at that point.
She couldn’t keep her face out of the window that night. Drayle followed her home soon after and made her come to bed. But after he was asleep, she got up and sat in the window again. The smell of ash was still in the air and the moon was bright enough for her to just make out Tip’s cottage where two men were still dousing the smallest flames. It wasn’t really a cottage anymore, just a black shell standing.
How long had they known they were making a run for it?
Two days later, Drayle shouted orders to George to get their trunks up to the hotel where the omnibus would pick them up. There was still no news of Reenie and Mawu’s whereabouts, but every day she could hear the dogs. The same dogs they’d used to hunt wild birds and pheasants and possum were now being used to hunt her friends. She had heard that the reward money was so big, every slave catcher in the county was out looking for the women.
She hoped Mawu had covered her hair. In her mind, she warned the woman like a mother would a child. She advised the two to split up. She wrapped hot biscuits in a cloth and tucked it into their aprons.
Tip walked around the resort with a righteous anger on his face, as if someone had kidnapped his mother. She wondered if he was angrier that Mawu had escaped or that she had tried to kill him first.
You ain’t the only one wondering about a betrayal, she wanted to say to him. But she didn’t say anything because whatever rights she’d had before Reenie and Mawu had escaped had ended. Now it seemed everyone was watching her. Reenie’s Sir even tore a piece of her dress one day and gave it to one of the dogs. The dog smelled and licked it while she watched. Then Sir grinned at her, as if to let her know that he could find her, that he would find her if she had a mind to take off after the others.
Each hour that passed by that she didn’t hear they had been caught was like a jubilation. She hoped they made it all the way to Canada. She had heard that in Canada coloreds and whites could marry. She wondered if there was a country north of Canada, and what possibilities existed there.
She also wished for two more things: that she could be with them and that she could return to her children. It felt like her right arm was being pulled one way and her left arm being pulled the other. She knew it wasn’t a right way to feel.
While she was packing her trunk, she tried to pack her fancy dress, but Drayle told her to leave it behind. Leaving the dress, saying goodbye to it, was like leaving a part of her new self. She wished she had given the dress to Sweet to tear up and sew. Maybe it would be of better use in the ground where they’d buried the clothes in honor of her children.
On the day they woke up to leave, it was still dark outside. As she walked to the hotel, she found no joy in the early morning bird chirps.
She moved slowly because she wanted to remember every moment of the free soil. She remembered Reenie asking Philip to tell her what freedom tasted like, and she felt a thrill at the knowledge that Reenie would be getting her own taste now.
Drayle watched her. He appeared to be half asleep, his eyes drooping low, but when she glanced his way, she sensed the alertness. What did he think she was going to do? Try to make a run for it? There were dogs and slavecatchers throughout the woods. She supposed that Drayle was already regretting his decision to sell Philip. His eyes were saying he had no intention of letting her go.
The walk from the cottage to the hotel seemed longer than it had ever been. Even though the air still carried an early morning chill, she felt sticky beneath her breasts. Drayle walked behind her, and it felt like he would walk behind her for the rest of her days.
Once the omnibus was loaded, she climbed onto it. Drayle sat beside her the way he always did, as if she were his real woman. She pulled the cloth tight around her hair and the sides of her face.
As the omnibus rolled forward, she thought to herself that this would be the final time she would feel this human. She thought about her children and how overjoyed they would be to see her again. Both of them. The slate board was wrapped carefully in a cloth and tucked into her things. Drayle had taken the dress, but he hadn’t known about the slate. She had also managed to bring along two pieces of chalk. She thought of the free child at the picnic and wondered if she could read. The girl had been about Rabbit’s age.
And there was one more thing she had managed to escape with: the pamphlet. She needed to find a safe place for it, somewhere it could sit for a few years. She planned to give it to Nate once he was a man, so that he too could feel the heat of the words and channel his young anger into the righteous fury of this Wendell Phillips.
She tried not to look back at the cottages or the hotel because she did not want to feel any worse. She just wanted to think of her children and not think about Reenie or Mawu or anybody else. She took solace in knowing that there would be no more goodbyes.
But just as they rounded the bend in the road, she couldn’t stop herself. She looked back anyway. It was too late. The hotel and cottages were too far back behind the trees.
But there was a figure. Lizzie closed her eyes and opened them again. The woman was still there.
In the middle of the road, smaller after she opened her eyes the second time, was Glory. She didn’t have on her bonnet, so Lizzie could just make out her face, the square of her chin. Glory lifted her arm up and did something like a wave.
Lizzie waved back. There had been someone to say goodbye to after all.