This here is love, p.4
This Here Is Love, page 4
Comb in hand, Cassie stood behind Bless. She parted, greased, and braided Bless’s hair the way she tended the table when the mistress had special guests. Grim, silent, efficient. Cassie was as meticulous and stoic as when she served a meal on the plates sent from London. No questions about what it was like to live in the big house, if they were treating her kindly. Not a word of missing or apology.
Bless sat upright in the ladder-backed chair. She sat still and straight. She was not a bit sleepy.
* * *
Cassie was shocked by her own coldness toward Bless. Since her child had walked out of the kitchen hand in hand with Miss Olivia, Cassie had felt almost nothing but a stiffening fury. She knew no fault lay with Bless. The child had been afraid. She had fallen back on the one ploy that was supposed to turn away white wrath: obedience. And even if Bless had done the unthinkable and honored her mother’s command over the mistress’s, Cassie’s pride in victory would have been short-lived. Punishment would have been immediate and irreparable. It would have fallen on mother and daughter. The price one slave paid to protect another was often collected in blood.
To lay blame where blame belonged was to invite the whip or worse for both her and Bless. White folks hurt slaves then brutalized them for showing their suffering.
So, Cassie heaped misdirected anger over seeds of bitterness against her own child. There was no other safe ground in which it could root. It was better to pretend that Bless went willingly with the mistress than it was to command, “Come to me if you walk through fire,” for then they would have burned together. And the child knew it. The girl knew her mother had no power to protect either of them.
Until the moment Bless walked away and joined her hand with the mistress’s, Cassie had thought she’d been some good at hiding—with treats, with tenderness, with corn-husk dolls—what she was, what they were. Turns out, her baby knew all along. That knowing was what Cassie had not yet been able to forgive.
Only nine, and the girl had more sense than her mama. For Cassie had believed. When he sold away her only son, two older daughters and each of their fathers, Master Benjamin Hampton held out one promise: “I’ll let you keep the last one.”
No, Cassie had not been fool enough to believe he did this out of some small sense of compassion. It was good business. A woman continued to work, continued to rise in the morning, if she believed there was something to live for. Master Benjamin called it “incentive.” Each woman on the place was guaranteed one child to raise as her own. How much cotton would a woman pick, how many sheets would she scrub, how many pots would she stir to secure her one last child? Cassie had given everything and fought for nothing because she had taken the devil at his word. And nothing was exactly what these white folks would leave her with if she did not find a way to win back her daughter.
So, Cassie stood outside of the children’s room as young Rebecca read to Dalton and Bless from Pilgrim’s Progress. The tray she held trembled in her grasp. On it sat a little pitcher of small beer and two porcelain cups. Cassie had also brought a cup made of clay. She would treat Bless, too, and sit with her in a corner or out here on the steps while Rebecca and her brother had their “tea” party. Bless would know her mama was sorry, that she had meant no lasting harm, and though they lived apart, they still belonged to each other.
“So he had them into the slaughter-house, where was a butcher killing a sheep; and, behold, the sheep was quiet, and took her death patiently. Then said the Interpreter, ‘You must learn of this sheep to suffer, and to put up with wrongs without murmurings and complaints. Behold how quietly she takes her death.’”
Cassie rolled her shoulders. She prepared to push open the door but paused when a mewling sound interrupted Miss Rebecca’s reading.
“You must wait,” Rebecca scolded. But the urging continued. Cassie feared she knew what it was. Those children had dragged some mangy animal in the house. Fleas would overrun the place, and the mistress would have a fit.
“Very well,” Rebecca said. “Up. Beg. Beg,” and there came the sound again, higher pitched, more urgent.
Cassie shouldered open the door. “You chil’ren know better—” But there was no one-eyed barn cat or scabby dog.
On the floor between the children’s chairs, bouncing on her knees, with her hands bent like paws, was Bless. She ate shortbread from Rebecca’s hand. She lolled out her tongue while Rebecca stroked her plaits as if they were fur.
The porcelain cups rattled. It took all the control Cassie possessed to cross the room and set the tray down instead of dashing it on the floor. Rebecca recognized fury in Cassie’s face before the other two children. She pushed Bless away. With her gaze on Cassie, she slid from the chair and ran from the room. Dalton soon followed. Wails, first Rebecca’s then Dalton’s sailed backward.
“Come here,” Cassie said to her daughter.
Bless remained on her knees, shuffling toward Cassie.
“We playing puppy,” she whispered.
“Get up and come here,” Cassie said.
Bless stumbled twice before gaining her feet.
Cassie snatched Bless up as soon as the child was within reach. She shook her, snapping and bobbing the child’s head. “You ain’t no dog, you hear? You ain’t no dog!”
The mistress barreled through the door. Master Benjamin arrived on her heels, a belt looped around his hand, the thick leather tongue dangling.
“Did she put her hands on the children? Did she put her damned black hands on my children?” he shouted as he pushed in front of his wife.
Cassie did not let loose of Bless. She shoved the girl behind her.
“I did not touch Miss ’Becca and Mister Dalton, sir.”
“Then why are they crying? What is all of this fuss?”
All three of the children were crying, but now for different reasons. Bless had been afraid; she was now ashamed. Dalton cried because his sister did, but Rebecca’s fright had turned to a kind of excitement.
“We were playing puppy,” she cried.
“Makin’ my child out to be a dog,” Cassie said.
“And what of it?” the mistress said. “They were playing a game.”
“My child ain’t no dog.”
The mistress turned on her husband. “I told you. She does not know her place. You refused to whip her the last time, now look what has come of it. Our children chastised by a Negro! You’ve been too lax with this one. Making her promises—”
“Hush!” Master Benjamin said. He cut the air with a whistling slash of the belt.
This dragging him into the nonsensical inner workings of domestic life would stop today. He was far from pleased to find himself in the middle of a nursery room dispute. Truth be told, he did not approve of the way his wife had commandeered Bless. He had promised Cassie that she could keep the child, and it was a promise he’d intended to keep. He saw Olivia’s interference as a breach of the trust he’d cultivated with his Negroes and a challenge to his authority. Further, he did not think Rebecca needed any more pampering than she already got; the child was damn near ruined.
When he learned of the confrontation in the kitchen, he’d declined to have Cassie whipped. He did, however, warn the cook that another show of temper and impudence would be severely punished. Secretly, he had given Cassie a small bag of coins and enough calico to make herself a nice dress. He had considered the matter closed. Now this.
The gazes of the women and children were riveted on the belt. He raised it, pointed it first at Bless, then at each of them in turn.
“That child is whatever I say she is,” he said. “As are you, Rebecca, Dalton. As are you, Cassie. As are you, wife.”
He changed the angle of his stance as he called each name, making eye contact, pinching the belt in his fist until the thick leather doubled over.
“You are all dogs if I say you are dogs. Now, Cassie, tell me. Ain’t you a dog?”
“Naw, sir.”
He let out the length of the belt. Cassie flinched. Bless gripped her mother’s skirt. Master Benjamin’s children moved closer to their mother. But instead of striking, their father and master began to feed the belt into the loops of his pants. They watched with relief as he fastened the metal prong into a notch and pulled it tight. While his hands worked, Master Benjamin nodded, a careful up and down of his head.
“Know why I put that away, Cassie?”
“Naw, sir.”
“’Cause it won’t do no good with you. You ain’t scared of a beating. I know what do scare you, though. Rebecca, Dalton, come here.”
The children moved farther into the folds of their mother’s skirt. She held them by the shoulders and said, “Benjamin, just make her apologize.”
Without taking his eyes off of Cassie, Benjamin said to his wife, “Olivia, hand me those children. Cassie, you a dog,” he said. “Say it.”
But even Miss Olivia, who had summoned her husband, now had reservations about the punishment he had in mind. “Benjamin, I want her to apologize. That is all.”
Benjamin turned to his wife. “You want her to know who is master. Well, I am master, and I want all of you to know so you will cease to trouble me with your household squabbles. Come here!” he demanded of his children.
The mistress pushed them, once again crying earnest tears, toward their father. “He won’t hurt you,” she said, and hoped it was true.
Dalton and Rebecca stepped, sniffling, to their father. He pushed the children between himself and Cassie.
“Now, Cassie, you are going to kneel before these children, and you are going to say, ‘I am a dog.’”
“Whip me, sir.”
“Or I will sell Bless come morning.”
Rebecca twisted around to look up at her father. “No, Papa! She is mine!”
“No!” he said. “She is mine. Every goddamn one of you is mine, and I will have you know it and cease pestering me! Cassie?”
Cassie reached behind her to tug Bless. “Go to the kitchen.”
Eager to obey, to be away, Bless stepped from behind her mother. Master Benjamin’s face turned a red that radiated heat. As Bless set to run, he snatched her into the line beside his own children.
“You have no command of this child,” he said to Cassie. “She is yours only because I have said so,” he told Rebecca. “This is a lesson all of you must learn. Cassie, I won’t wait for a trader. At first light of day, I’ll carry her to market myself.”
“I beg your pardon, Miss Rebecca, Master Dal—”
“Is that what I told you to say?” He set his hand on Bless’s shoulder. He gripped the small bones with less restraint than he fisted the reins of his quarter horse.
“Whip me, sir. Please don’t make a animal outa me in front of her.”
“Come tomorrow dawn, she won’t be here to see what I make ‘outa’ you.”
“I’ll go to market, Mama,” Bless whispered. She would do anything to spare her mama’s dignity.
“Shush!” Cassie ordered.
Cassie looked around at this room for children. Miniature tea things, children’s cots sturdier than the bed she, a grown working woman, slept in, doll baby clothes that cost more than the dress she wore, and the reddened white faces that believed, or were learning, that they had a right to every part of her, not just her hands but all the wonder that made them work. They wanted that at their disposal, to dispose of as they pleased. The parents were convinced. The children ceased to cry. In a very few years, they would pass her from hand to hand, from generation to generation, and they would handle her the same. “Well,” she said. “Well, Lord.”
“Behold how quietly.” Cassie’s skirt muffled the cracking sound of her knees, of something ineffable breaking beneath the weight of sacrifice.
Cassie knelt before six-year-old Dalton and ten-year-old Rebecca. Her own child, slightly off to the side, bore witness. “I am a dog,” Cassie said.
When the sound of leather-clad steps receded, only Bless remained. Her mother did not rise. “Mama?” Bless pleaded. She reached out. She touched her mother’s neck.
Cassie jerked. She struck her daughter’s hand away.
Bless drew back, first her hand, then, like a leaf in autumn, the withering edges of her heart. For the hatred she saw in her mother’s eyes was fleeting, but it was real.
Jack Dane
Aboard The Venture Fourteen days on the Atlantic Ocean
“I’m William,” the young boy from the day they boarded said. He wore suede breeches, polished shoes, and a linen shirt finer and whiter than any Jack had ever seen before. “What is your name?”
“Jack Dane,” he said, his voice gravelly, adjusting to speech like his eyes adjusting to light when he crept up from the hold. This William had sought him out. Jack had not wandered. Except for specific times, many areas of the ship were off limits to steerage passengers. But as long they stayed near the hatch, as long as there were not too many of them congregating and they didn’t create a ruckus, the sailors let them stay on deck beyond the designated times.
“You’re quite ragged, aren’t you, Jack?” the boy said, perusing Jack from his greasy cap and limp ringlets to his tight and patched britches.
Jack looked down at his feet. The rags his mother had stuffed into his shoes were bulging from the edges. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his breeches and pinched the skin of his naked thighs. Lately, his mother had been too sick for mending.
“Well, come along, then,” William said.
Jack looked up, startled. “Where?”
“Best place on the ship,” he promised.
Jack glanced around. His parents were down below, Rowan tending Lydia. This last month, the baby made it impossible for her to lie down and sleep. She had to sit up to find any comfort, and there was little enough of that to be had in the press and noise of the hold. When she was awake, she moaned with seasickness. His father sat with his arm around her. He left her only to push to the front of the galley line in hopes they might have something she could keep on her stomach. Jack’s parents had no time for him just now. The other travelers loitering miserably about the hatch were strangers. They didn’t care what he did.
“All right then,” Jack said.
William would not tell Jack where they were going, only when to hide and where. Ducking low and freezing when a sailor approached, the boys dodged behind barrels, crouched beneath a staircase, and hid in the folds of a jib sail that awaited mending. Stealthily they made their way around the edges of the main deck, portside, toward the stern. When Jack realized where William meant to lead, he stopped.
“We can’t go there,” he whispered.
“Of course, we can,” William said. “I’ve already been. The captain took my father and me there to watch the sunset. I thought you might like it too. You can see the whole world from there. But if you are afraid—”
Jack already felt ashamed before this boy. “I ain’t afraid,” he declared, and fell into step behind William.
The poop deck perched upon the roof of the captain’s cabin in the stern of the ship. The highest deck on the ship, only the captain, high-ranking officers, or invited guests were allowed there. The small space was almost holy, at least Jack thought so. The intricately carved railing reminded him of the pews and beautifully carved altars he had glimpsed the few times he’d been able to poke his head within a church. The awe that entered him now felt more powerful than on those occasions. The whole world was visible, and it seemed like he stood at its center point of terror and reverence.
Jack turned about. He clutched the rail. But that was not enough. He whirled about. He squared his shoulders and threw back his head and screeched, and only then did the press of huts and hovels, burdens and holds leave him. On the other side of that deck railing lay a new world. Jack could see the whole horizon curve and bow beneath the weight of water. Multiplied and magnified by the waves, the sun scattered in every direction. Creatures—dolphins, William said—leapt and glided alongside the ship, traversed beneath, appeared and disappeared like fantastic figures within a mirror. Jack grinned at William, and William grinned back.
“What are you doing here? You don’t belong up here.” A man in a velvet waistcoat and fine breeches snatched Jack at the shoulder and whirled him about. With only recent mastery of sea legs, Jack fell to the deck. “And, William, what have you to say for yourself?”
The boy barely hesitated. “He brought me here, Father.”
Both the lie and the fall stunned Jack. On his rump, Jack could see no higher than the fine ribbon hem that gathered the man’s breeches. Jack thought William’s father would kick him. He began to crab backward, on the heels of his feet and hands. The horizon disappeared as he tumbled down the short flight of steps to the quarter deck. He landed with a bruising thump on the boards.
William’s father stood at the top of the stairs looking down at Jack. “The captain will know about you wandering the ship,” he said, then turned back to his son. He grabbed William by the ear with enough force to lift the boy onto his tiptoes. “You should know better than to go about with vermin.”
“I didn’t want to come, Father!”
Jack raised himself as quickly as his trembling hands and feet would allow. He ran over the slippery deck and through the curses of sailors. He threw himself down the hatch. Sliding on the filthy floor, he did not stop until he reached a familiar bank of planks in the hold. His parents huddled together, Rowan murmuring and bathing Lydia’s face with a frayed rag.
“Are we vermin?” Jack demanded.
“Who said that?” his mother asked as she panted to ease the pain of labor. Lydia squeezed her eyes shut. She extended her hand toward Jack, but the boy shrank from her. Jack looked to the left, then to the right.
On each side there was suffering. Sick people, retching or moaning. A man held a woman by the shoulders and shook her. Though her head struck the timber, no one moved to intervene. Curses filled the air like ash. Jack’s knowing gaze fell on his mother. His parents had brought him here, but worse somehow, they had destined him for such a life long before they ever boarded The Venture.
