“Dana,” said Sarah over her shoulder, “one of the white folks wants you. Go with Carrie.”
I went. Carrie led me up to Rufus’s room, knocked, and left me there. I went in and found Rufus in bed with his leg sandwiched between the two boards of a wooden splint and held straight by a device of rope and cast iron. The iron weight looked like something borrowed from Sarah’s kitchen—a heavy little hooked thing I’d once seen her hang meat on to roast. But it apparently served just as well to keep Rufus’s leg in traction.
“How are you feeling?” I asked as I sat down in the chair beside his bed.
“It doesn’t hurt as much as it did,” he said. “I guess it’s getting well. Kevin said … Do you care if I call him Kevin?”
“No, I think he wants you to.”
“I have to call him Mr. Franklin when Mama is here. Anyway, he said you’re working with Aunt Sarah.”
Aunt Sarah? Well, that was better than Mammy Sarah, I supposed. “I’m learning her way of cooking.”
“She’s a good cook, but … does she hit you?”
“Of course not.” I laughed.
“She had a girl in there a while back, and she used to hit her. The girl finally asked Daddy to let her go back to the fields. That was right after Daddy sold Aunt Sarah’s boys, though. Aunt Sarah was mad at everybody then.”
“I don’t blame her,” I said.
Rufus glanced at the door, then said low-voiced, “Neither do I. Her boy Jim was my friend. He taught me how to ride when I was little. But Daddy sold him anyway.” He glanced at the door again and changed the subject. “Dana, can you read?”
“Yes.”
“Kevin said you could. I told Mama, and she said you couldn’t.”
I shrugged. “What do you think?”
He took a leather-bound book from under his pillow. “Kevin brought me this from downstairs. Would you read it to me?”
I fell in love with Kevin all over again. Here was the perfect excuse for me to spend a lot of time with the boy. The book was Robinson Crusoe. I had read it when I was little, and I could remember not really liking it, but not quite being able to put it down. Crusoe had, after all, been on a slave-trading voyage when he was shipwrecked.
I opened the book with some apprehension, wondering what archaic spelling and punctuation I would face. I found the expected f’s for s’s and a few other things that didn’t turn up as often, but I got used to them very quickly. And I began to get into Robinson Crusoe. As a kind of castaway myself, I was happy to escape into the fictional world of someone else’s trouble.
I read and read and drank some of the water Rufus’s mother had left for him, and read some more. Rufus seemed to enjoy it. I didn’t stop until I thought he was falling asleep. But even then, as I put the book down, he opened his eyes and smiled.
“Nigel said your mother was a school teacher.”
“She was.”
“I like the way you read. It’s almost like being there watching everything happen.”
“Thank you.”
“There’s a lot more books downstairs.”
“I’ve seen them.” I had also wondered about them. The Weylins didn’t seem to be the kind of people who would have a library.
“They belonged to Miss Hannah,” explained Rufus obligingly. “Daddy was married to her before he married Mama, but she died. This place used to be hers. He said she read so much that before he married Mama, he made sure she didn’t like to read.”
“What about you?”
He moved uncomfortably. “Reading’s too much trouble. Mr. Jennings said I was too stupid to learn anyway.”
“Who’s Mr. Jennings?”
“He’s the schoolmaster.”
“Is he?” I shook my head in disgust. “He shouldn’t be. Listen, do you think you’re stupid?”
“No.” A small hesitant no. “But I read as good as Daddy does already. Why should I have to do more than that?”
“You don’t have to. You can stay just the way you are. Of course, that would give Mr. Jennings the satisfaction of thinking he was right about you. Do you like him?”
“Nobody likes him.”
“Don’t be so eager to satisfy him then. And what about the boys you go to school with? It is just boys, isn’t it—no girls?”
“Yeah.”
“Well look at the advantage they’re going to have over you when you grow up. They’ll know more than you. They’ll be able to cheat you if they want to. Besides,” I held up Robinson Crusoe, “look at the pleasure you’ll miss.”
He grinned. “Not with you here. Read some more.”
“I don’t think I’d better. It’s getting late. Your mother will be home soon.”
“No she won’t. Read.”
I sighed. “Rufe, your mother doesn’t like me. I think you know that.”
He looked away. “We have a little more time,” he said. “Maybe you’d better not read though. I forget to listen for her when you read.”
I handed him the book. “You read me a few lines.”
He accepted the book, looked at it as though it were his enemy. After a moment, he began to read haltingly. Some words stopped him entirely and I had to help. After two painful paragraphs, he stopped and shut the book in disgust. “You can’t even tell it’s the same book when I read it,” he said.
“Let Kevin teach you,” I said. “He doesn’t believe you’re stupid, and neither do I. You’ll learn all right.” Unless he really did have some kind of problem—poor vision or some learning disability that people in this time would see as stubbornness or stupidity. Unless. What did I know about teaching children? All I could do was hope the boy had as much potential as I thought he did.
I got up to go—then sat down again, remembering another unanswered question. “Rufe, what ever happened to Alice?”
“Nothing.” He looked surprised.
“I mean … the last time I saw her, her father had just been beaten because he went to see her and her mother.”
“Oh. Well, Daddy was afraid he’d run off, so he sold him to a trader.”
“Sold him … does he still live around here?”
“No, the trader was headed south. To Georgia, I think.”
“Oh God.” I sighed. “Are Alice and her mother still here?”
“Sure. I still see them—when I can walk.”
“Did they have any trouble because I was with them that night?” That was as near as I dared to come to asking what had happened to my would-be enslaver.
“I don’t think so. Alice said you came and went away quick.”
“I went home. I can’t tell when I’m going to do that. It just happens.”
“Back to California?”
“Yes.”
“Alice didn’t see you go. She said you just went into the woods and didn’t come back.”
“That’s good. Seeing me vanish would have frightened her.” Alice was keeping her mouth closed too then—or her mother was. Alice might not know what happened. Clearly there were things that even a friendly young white could not be told. On the other hand, if the patroller himself hadn’t spread the word about me or taken revenge on Alice and her mother, maybe he was dead. My blow could have killed him, or someone could have finished him after I went home. If they had, I didn’t want to know about it.
I got up again. “I have to go, Rufe. I’ll see you again whenever I can.”
“Dana?”
I looked down at him.
“I told Mama who you were. I mean that you were the one who saved me from the river. She said it wasn’t true, but I think she really believed me. I told her because I thought it might make her like you better.”
“It hasn’t that I’ve noticed.”
“I know.” He frowned. “Why doesn’t she like you? Did you do something to her?”
“Not likely! After all, what would happen to me if I did something to her?”
“Yeah. But why doesn’t she like you?”
“You’ll have to
ask her.”
“She won’t tell me.” He looked up solemnly. “I keep thinking you’re going to go home—that somebody will come and tell me you and Kevin are gone. I don’t want you to go. But I don’t want you to get hurt here either.”
I said nothing.
“You be careful,” he said softly.
I nodded and left the room. Just as I reached the stairs, Tom Weylin came out of his bedroom.
“What are you doing up here?” he demanded.
“Visiting Mister Rufus,” I said. “He asked to see me.”
“You were reading to him!”
Now I knew how he happened to come out just in time to catch me. He had been eavesdropping, for Godsake. What had he expected to hear? Or rather, what had he heard that he shouldn’t have? About Alice, perhaps. What would he make of that? For a moment my mind raced, searching for excuses, explanations. Then I realized I wouldn’t need them. I would have met him outside Rufus’s door if he had stayed long enough to hear about Alice. He had probably heard me addressing Rufus a little too familiarly. Nothing worse. I had deliberately not said anything damaging about Margaret because I thought her own attitude would damage her more in her son’s eyes than anything I could say. I made myself face Weylin calmly.
“Yes, I was reading to him,” I admitted. “He asked me to do that too. I think he was bored lying in there with nothing to do.”
“I didn’t ask you what you thought,” he said.
I said nothing.
He walked me farther from Rufus’s door, then stopped and turned to look hard at me. His eyes went over me like a man sizing up a woman for sex, but I got no message of lust from him. His eyes, I noticed, not for the first time, were almost as pale as Kevin’s. Rufus and his mother had bright green eyes. I liked the green better, somehow.
“How old are you?” he asked.
“Twenty-six, sir.”
“You say that like you’re sure.”
“Yes, sir. I am.”
“What year were you born?”
“Seventeen ninety-three.” I had figured that out days ago thinking that it wasn’t a part of my personal history I should hesitate over if someone asked. At home, a person who hesitated over his birthdate was probably about to lie. As I spoke though, I realized that here, a person might hesitate over his birthdate simply because he didn’t know it. Sarah didn’t know hers.
“Twenty-six then,” said Weylin. “How many children have you had?”
“None.” I kept my face impassive, but I couldn’t keep myself from wondering where these questions were leading.
“No children by now?” He frowned. “You must be barren then.”
I said nothing. I wasn’t about to explain anything to him. My fertility was none of his business, anyway.
He stared at me a little longer, making me angry and uncomfortable, but I concealed my feelings as well as I could.
“You like children though, don’t you?” he asked. “You like my boy.”
“Yes, sir, I do.”
“Can you cipher too—along with your reading and writing?”
“Yes, sir.”
“How’d you like to be the one to do the teaching?”
“Me?” I managed to frown … managed not to laugh aloud with relief. Tom Weylin wanted to buy me. In spite of all his warnings to Kevin of the dangers of owning educated, Northern-born slaves, he wanted to buy me. I pretended not to understand. “But that’s Mr. Franklin’s job.”
“Could be your job.”
“Could it?”
“I could buy you. Then you’d live here instead of traveling around the country without enough to eat or a place to sleep.”
I lowered my eyes. “That’s for Mr. Franklin to say.”
“I know it is, but how do you feel about it?”
“Well … no offense, Mr. Weylin, I’m glad we stopped here, and as I said, I like your son. But I’d rather stay with Mr. Franklin.”
He gave me an unmistakable look of pity. “If you do, girl, you’ll live to regret it.” He turned and walked away.
I stared after him believing in spite of myself that he really felt sorry for me.
That night I told Kevin what had happened, and he wondered too.
“Be careful, Dana,” he said, unwittingly echoing Rufus. “Be as careful as you can.”
6
I was careful. As the days passed, I got into the habit of being careful. I played the slave, minded my manners probably more than I had to because I wasn’t sure what I could get away with. Not much, as it turned out.
Once I was called over to the slave cabins—the quarter—to watch Weylin punish a field hand for the crime of answering back. Weylin ordered the man stripped naked and tied to the trunk of a dead tree. As this was being done—by other slaves—Weylin stood whirling his whip and biting his thin lips. Suddenly, he brought the whip down across the slave’s back. The slave’s body jerked and strained against its ropes. I watched the whip for a moment wondering whether it was like the one Weylin had used on Rufus years before. If it was, I understood completely why Margaret Weylin had taken the boy and fled. The whip was heavy and at least six feet long, and I wouldn’t have used it on anything living. It drew blood and screams at every blow. I watched and listened and longed to be away. But Weylin was making an example of the man. He had ordered all of us to watch the beating—all the slaves. Kevin was in the main house somewhere, probably not even aware of what was happening.
The whipping served its purpose as far as I was concerned. It scared me, made me wonder how long it would be before I made a mistake that would give someone reason to whip me. Or had I already made that mistake?
I had moved into Kevin’s room, after all. And though that would be perceived as Kevin’s doing, I could be made to suffer for it. The fact that the Weylins didn’t seem to notice my move gave me no real comfort. Their lives and mine were so separate that it might take them several days to realize that I had abandoned my place in the attic. I always got up before they did to get water and live coals from the cookhouse to start Kevin’s fire. Matches had apparently not been invented yet. Neither Sarah nor Rufus had ever heard of them.
By now, the manservant Weylin had assigned to Kevin ignored him completely, and Kevin and his room were left to me. It took us twice as long to get a fire started, and it took me longer to carry water up and down the stairs, but I didn’t care. The jobs I had assigned myself gave me legitimate reason for going in and out of Kevin’s room at all hours, and they kept me from being assigned more disagreeable work. Most important to me, though, they gave me a chance to preserve a little of 1976 amid the slaves and slaveholders.
After washing and watching Kevin bloody his face with the straight razor he had borrowed from Weylin, I would go down to help Sarah with breakfast. Whole mornings went by without my seeing either of the Weylins. At night, I helped clean up after supper and prepare for the next day. So, like Sarah and Carrie, I rose before the Weylins and went to bed after them. That gave me several days of peace before Margaret Weylin discovered that she had another reason to dislike me.
She cornered me one day as I swept the library. If she had walked in two minutes earlier, she would have caught me reading a book. “Where did you sleep last night?” she demanded in the strident, accusing voice she reserved for slaves.
I straightened to face her, rested my hands on the broom. How lovely it would have been to say, None of your business, bitch! Instead, I spoke softly, respectfully. “In Mr. Franklin’s room, ma’am.” I didn’t bother to lie because all the house servants knew. It might even have been one of them who alerted Margaret. So now what would happen?
Margaret slapped me across the face.
I stood very still, gazed down at her with frozen calm. She was three or four inches shorter than I was and proportionately smaller. Her slap hadn’t hurt me much. It had simply made me want to hurt her. Only my memory of the whip kept me still.
“You filthy black whore!” she shouted. “This is a
Christian house!”
I said nothing.
“I’ll see you sent to the quarter where you belong!”
Still I said nothing. I looked at her.
“I won’t have you in my house!” She took a step back from me. “You stop looking at me that way!” She took another step back.
It occurred to me that she was a little afraid of me. I was an unknown, after all—an unpredictable new slave. And maybe I was a little too silent. Slowly, deliberately, I turned my back and went on sweeping.
I kept an eye on her, though, without seeming to. After all, she was as unpredictable as I was. She could pick up a candlestick or a vase and hit me with it. And whip or no whip, I wasn’t going to stand passively and let her really hurt me.
But she made no move toward me. Instead, she turned and rushed away. It was a hot day, muggy and uncomfortable. No one else was moving very fast except to wave away flies. But Margaret Weylin still rushed everywhere. She had little or nothing to do. Slaves kept her house clean, did much of her sewing, all her cooking and washing. Carrie even helped her put her clothes on and take them off. So Margaret supervised—ordered people to do work they were already doing, criticized their slowness and laziness even when they were quick and industrious, and in general, made trouble. Weylin had married a poor, uneducated, nervous, startlingly pretty young woman who was determined to be the kind of person she thought of as a lady. That meant she didn’t do “menial” work, or any work at all, apparently. I had no one to compare her to except her guests who seemed, at least, to be calmer. But I suspected that most women of her time found enough to do to keep themselves comfortably busy whether they thought of themselves as “ladies” or not. Margaret, in her boredom, simply rushed around and made a nuisance of herself.
I finished my work in the library, wondering all the while whether Margaret had gone to her husband about me. Her husband, I feared. I remembered the expression on his face when he had beaten the field hand. It hadn’t been gleeful or angry or even particularly interested. He could have been chopping wood. He wasn’t sadistic, but he didn’t shrink from his “duties” as master of the plantation. He would beat me bloody if he thought I had given him reason, and Kevin might not even find out until too late.