Yellow Wife(18)

“You did this. You helped him escape.” She kicked me as I lay frozen, covered in her urine. “Do not play dumb with me. Jacob is always bragging about how smart you are. How Sally taught you this and Sally taught you that. You think you are special because Sally used you as a little pet?”

I could not speak, so I shook my head no.

“I am so tired of living in everyone’s shadow.” She dropped the pot, and the meager contents that were left dripped onto the wooden floor.

I battled with her smelly piss streaming down my face while she ranted and raved. I tried not to breathe. Don’t open your mouth else her piss will make its way inside of you.

I forced myself up and off the floor of my closet room. Missus berated me for so long that I began sinking under the heaviness of it all.

“You are a poor excuse for a slave. You are a wretched whore, just like your mother was,” Missus Delphina shouted, and then moved to slap me, but I caught her hand in the air and tried to crush her fingers. She looked aghast, and that gave me courage.

“Do not speak on my mother. She would be alive if you had only sent for the doctor. Her blood is on your hands,” I declared, sounding so steady, it frightened even me. “You will not put your hands on me ever again.”

Lovie appeared. “Come, Missus. Let me get you in the bed.”

“Did you see that wench touch me? I will have you whipped until you are begging me for mercy. I do not care what Jacob says. You will be sorry.”

Lovie took her by the elbow and escorted her across the hall to her bedroom, closing the door behind them. I marched outside and over to the kitchen house.

“What happened?” Aunt Hope lit a candle and then dragged over a bucket of water.

I explained, while washing away Missus Delphina’s waste.

“Why does she hate me so much? I have never done anything to her.”

“You are Massa’s child. She knowin’ that why he favor you.”

“My lineage is not my fault.”

“White women too wrapped up in they own head to figure out we ain’t ask for this life. We take what’s given and makes the best out it. That what your mama did. What you has to do.”

Aunt Hope gave me a clean dress that hung big. I slipped it on and took a seat next to the fire. She cut me a piece of leftover pie and the sugar helped.

“Shame what she done to that innocent baby.” Aunt Hope raked the coals hard. “Big sin she gon’ have to deal wit’ when she meet her maker.”

We watched the flames crackle in the fire.

“I cannot go back up there tonight. All right if I sleep here?”

“Course, chile.”

I made a bed for myself in the corner out of rags, and Aunt Hope blew out the candle.





CHAPTER 9




The Funeral

Aunt Hope woke me at first light and sent me back up to the house to do my morning chores. Lovie assigned me tasks away from Missus Delphina’s eyesight, which included washing sheets in the scullery, beating the rugs behind the house, and polishing the silver in the service nook. Halfway through the polishing, the sky let loose and seemed to cry heavy tears for Mama. Fat raindrops beat against the outside shutters, and the roof shingles clapped with the gusty wind. Whenever it rained during the middle of the day, Missus Delphina favored a nap. The moment she took to her bed, I slipped out the side door and over to the loom house to retrieve some of our treasured items before the loom house was assigned to someone else, now that Mama was gone.

Since my birthday was on Christmas Day, Miss Sally had taken to giving me a birthday gift in the morning when I arrived, and a Christmas gift in the evening before I retired with Mama. On my twelfth birthday, Miss Sally had given me a leather-bound diary. The book was a little bigger than my palm. Brown leather, with a thin strap to tie around the middle to keep it closed. The rag pages were a faint beige, with scalloped edges. Miss Sally had said the book was imported from England and showed me where that was on her world map. On the inside flap of the diary she’d inscribed:

Dearest Pheby,

Hold fast to your dreams, whilst they come true.

With affection,

Miss Sally

That evening she gave me a bottle of ink and a metal pen point. Mama fretted the moment I brought my gifts into the loom house and constantly cautioned me. “Slave got they fingers chop’t off and eyes burn’t wit’ lye for readin’ and writin’.”

Now, a film of dust had collected over Mama’s jars. My fingers grazed the bottles, and in that moment Mama’s recipes and lessons came alive in my head. I had to get them down. From the underside of our mattress, I retrieved my diary. With it in my hand, I could almost conjure up the feel of Miss Sally’s bony fingers. Then I walked the shelves in the back of the room until I located the yellow jar that contained my ink bottle, deep below the hempseeds, and the pen I had hidden in my pillow, wrapped in tin and stuffed between the straw.

At the kitchen table that Mama and I had shared, I opened my diary and began to write. Mama’s husky voice steadied my thoughts as my hand glided across the page. Healing herbs, powerful teas, where things grew, the right time to pick them, what leaves need to be crushed, steeped, and left whole. The amount of mint to mix with cow manure to make tea “fur consumption.” Where to find the jimsonweed for muscle pain and the chestnut leaf for better breathing. Which herbs to place in the bath to help with dropsy, and how much sassafras root to use for searching the blood, and healing all that ailed.