Yellow Wife(62)

“That really you?” He looked into my eyes in a way that rearranged my soul. My skin sweltered under my clothing as I pulled him to my breasts. I had forgotten how good it felt to be seen by him.

“It is me.”

He tried to roll from the plank floor, but his chains and wounds made it near impossible. I cupped his shoulders to help steady him. His skin sweated hot. The fever would claim him if I did not act fast. He grasped my hands in his and brought them to his lips. A tingling sensation passed through the center of my chest.

“Not much time.”

I helped him to his feet and over to the bench. After the flogging, one of the drivers had covered him with a burlap shirt, which was now embedded in his wounds. I tipped a canteen of water laced with medicine from the brown jar to his lips. He drank with thirst, and I had to pull the jar back so that he did not drink it all. Once I could see that the medicine had made him numb, I started cutting away the material with my shears, trying hard not to tear at his skin. With every pull, Essex cringed, and I whispered how sorry I was for everything.

When I started contemplating my list of sorries, the trail led me all the way back to the Bell plantation. Sorry that I ever came up with the plan for him to run. Maybe we should have waited it out. If he had never run, then perhaps she would never have sold me, and I would be living in Massachusetts with my free papers. Essex could have stuck to his original plan of buying himself from Master Jacob, and I could have persuaded Missus to give the black baby to a woman in the fields without Master knowing anything. Now look at us. Essex had become the most wanted fugitive in Virginia, and I was bound to the Devil for the sake of my four daughters. I had made this mess. All my mistake.

“Ain’t your fault,” he babbled, as if he heard my thoughts.

I put my concentration on the work ahead. Never had I seen wounds as deeply lacerating, and I had to labor cut by cut to clean them. I rinsed his bruises with water and then let them air dry before smoothing on salve. Essex remained stoic throughout. Once I finished dressing the wounds, I pulled the food from another pocket and watched him eat.

“He treating you okay?”

My eyes looked away. The air between us became stifling but silent as he finished the last bit and then licked his fingers.

“If you are happy—”

“I have not depended on being happy since I left the plantation.” My voice boomed. “This here is surviving.” I thumped my fist into my chest.

“Did not mean—”

“And you have no idea what surviving has cost me. My bruises might not look like yours but they are there.”

Determined not to let my emotions fall, I focused on the small window.

“There wasn’t a girls’ school in Massachusetts I didn’t search, some of them more than once. Looked for you on every corner in Boston.”

“Missus sold me. Then a few months later Master passed away.”

“What about Ruth?”

I told him about Mama dying, and how Missus had traders snatch me on the day of the funeral.

“Would give anything to go back to that place and protect you Pheby.”

His comment hung in the air. We both knew that there was no protection for us when white folks made up their minds on how to handle us.

“I have thought about you every single day since we have been apart, Pheby.”

My fingers moved like I was knitting. It calmed all that roared inside of me.

“You have a son,” I blurted.

When he turned to look at me, his chains rattled. “Am I hearin’ you right?”

“His name is Monroe Henry Brown. Six years old and reminds me so much of you.”

“Our son?”

I looked him in the eye and ran my fingers over his face.

“Only takes one time.”

Essex reached for my hand through his shackles. “I need you to get a letter off to my friend. He will get the three of us up North. I promise you that.”

“Rest and get back your strength. You will need it here.” I pulled out the hymnal that the preacher had given me and tucked it between his fingers. “Keep this hidden. I will come again as soon as it is safe.”



* * *



The next evening, I mixed sleeping powder into the Jailer’s drink again. When he fell asleep, I took the same route to see Essex. This time I smuggled in green beans, chicken, biscuits, water, salve, and more of Mama’s pain medicine. As I crept through the courtyard, I reasoned that I would only dress his wounds and feed him. But when he begged me to stay, I could not resist. Every second with him felt like it could be our last.

With a handkerchief I produced from my pocket, I wiped his mouth.

“Thank you kindly. That was ten times better than the chicken feed they gave me in Naw’fok.” He grimaced.

We sat side by side on the narrow bench. Every time he moved his chains clattered, and I could see fresh pain flash across his face as he searched for comfort. It angered me. No purpose in having him tied up like an animal in this small space. The Jailer was just being a dictatorial arse. But after all I had sacrificed, I did not even have the authority to unloose his shackles. To take our minds off his circumstances, I asked him to tell me about his journey.

“What you want to know?”

“Your story?”

He rubbed his swollen ankles together. They were tied so closely that his walk was more of a waddle.