Yellow Wife(20)

Aunt Hope and I kept looking up the hill, but the darkness made it hard to see past the thickness of the bushes and trees.

I heard a rustling of branches being crushed and pushed aside. Then Snitch appeared through the thicket. His dark eyes fell upon me. Before my mind could tell me to run, he had me in his arms so tight that I could not smell anything except the whiskey seeping through his pores. I kicked and screamed but he held me tighter.

“What’s the cause of you ’rupting the funeral like this?” Aunt Hope demanded. “Ain’t you no respect?”

“Mind your bizness, old lady. I am in charge here.”

“Not of Pheby. She works the big house. Missus know you down here causin’ trouble?”

“Shut up.”

“Poor child just buried her mama. Ain’t you got no manners?”

Snitch turned around and with one hand slapped Aunt Hope hard across her face. She stumbled but did not fall. Then he dragged me by the arm up toward Hightown. I was terrified of what I would find up there. Remembering Aunt Hope’s son, Jasper, and how swollen and bloody he looked when he got hauled back from running away, I tried to prepare myself to see Essex that way. Snitch pulled me past the loom house. I looked up at the window, recalling Mama’s sign of the lit candle. Wished it was there now, telling me to come on home.

When we reached the front of the big house, Missus Delphina stood in the light of the porch. There was a rickety wagon parked in the lane with three men in irons and two women, sparsely clothed and tied in ropes, but I did not see Essex. If he had not been caught, then what were the slave traders doing on the plantation? Before I could figure out the puzzle, Snitch heaved me by the waist and carried me toward the wagon. I kicked him, screamed, pounded my fist into his chest. When he put me down, I tried to run, but he grabbed me by the hair. Then I felt a knock in the back of my head. Static flooded my eyelids as I felt myself being scooped into the air. That was when I realized: the wagon had come for me.

I looked up at the big house. Missus was standing on the edge of the porch, hawk eyes blazing.

“You dare put your hands on me.” Her mouth turned into a snarl.

“Master Jacob would not approve of you selling me,” I shouted, staring her squarely in the face.

“You telling me what to do with my property, girl?”

“I am not property. Now let me go.”

She threw back her head and laughed. “You have a lot to learn, child. Take her to the Lapier jail, where she will be punished properly for helping my best nigger escape. Then have her sold as a fancy girl to live out the life she deserves, as a whore.”

Missus twirled her finger to the burly trader behind the carriage. On her command, he reached for me. I struggled to get free, but the trader’s hands were coarse and quick as he tied me to the other women in the wagon. One of the women had knotted hair, and she reeked like Mama had when she lay dying. Blood stained the front of her dress and her gaze was unfocused.

The field hands who just a few minutes before had been celebrating my mother’s life had gathered to watch the scene. Some reached their hands out toward me. I could hear Lovie calling my name, and then Aunt Hope dropped down on her knees, raised her hands up to the sky, and crooned:

In my sorrows, Lord walk with me

In my sorrows, Lord walk with me

When my heart is aching, Lord walk with me.

Folks followed Aunt Hope’s cry and sang too. I had never felt so powerless in my life. Even still, I refused to give Missus Delphina the satisfaction of seeing one tear leak from my eyes, or one plea of mercy fall from my lips. Instead I turned my terror into fury and glared at her.

“I curse you and all of your unborn children in the name of my grandmother, Queen Vinnie Brown. May all your worst fears come to pass, and all the evil you do come back on you tenfold. This plantation will be your living hell. Mark my words.” I spat on the ground, bracing myself for her to march down the stairs and slap me. But she stood as if stunned.

All eyes were on me as the wagon pulled away from the house, so I kept my back straight and my sight on the road ahead. Once Master recovered from his injury, he would come for me and send me to that school in Massachusetts where Essex and I would be reunited. He had been a good master, and when he found out that Missus had let Mama die and sold me to traders like I was a common slave, he would be outraged. With Miss Sally gone, I was the only blood family he had left.

“Neigh,” called the driver to the horses.

The old carriage picked up speed, rocking me against the bloodstained woman. I ducked my head under some low brush and then closed my eyes to the rising dust.





PART TWO



The Devil’s Half Acre





CHAPTER 10




Marched

Before Snitch drove the Bell plantation, the job belonged to a driver named Reade, a thickset man with meaty hands so large folks said he crushed men’s skulls for sport and boiled children in the middle of the night for his supper. One day, while I was out chasing a white-tailed rabbit, I accidentally ventured past the clearing on the Lowtown side of the river, and found myself behind the overseer’s white clapboard house. My stomach sank at my mistake. Before I could run, Reade walked out of his side door dragging a teenage girl behind him. The girl cried, clawed, and screamed, but Reade tossed her over his shoulders like she was a rag doll. I hid behind the nearest oak tree and tried not to breathe. When I braved another look, Reade had tossed the girl against the whipping post and tied her wrists and ankles until she could not move. Her voice begged and apologized but Reade reached into her mouth and pulled out her tongue.