Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Wench

The summer stretched into August, and work around the farm picked up as the season for cotton harvesting began. Drayle came to the storeroom less and less, and gave fewer gifts. Lizzie was relieved she had escaped unharmed. She believed she had been like a toy to Drayle, and he was now tired of playing with her. He gave no explanation as to why he stopped coming, but she saw how hard he was working. It was the first time she’d examined the great muscles in his back and the texture of his face. He was built like a slave, only white. She did not know how old he was, but his hair was a vibrant blond color and his skin reddened in the sun. She thought his face might have been perfect were it not for his slightly long nose. She was enchanted by the color of his eyes.

And then she discovered something she had never before seen in her life: a mirror. She had seen her reflection in the nearby pond many times, but this piece of glass was magical. It was in Fran’s bedroom, and each time she passed it she found herself pausing to get a good look at herself.

She stole a brush from Fran’s drawer, stripped the hairs from it, and boiled it. She tried to brush out her knots. It took her three days of brushing and cutting the tangles. But when she was finished, she discovered she had a mound of hair that hung in frazzled coils around her face. She made excuses to be in Fran’s room every chance she got.

There was only one other slave woman who lived in the house. Lizzie sensed the older woman’s demeanor begin to change toward her a few weeks after Drayle began visiting her at night. Not long after his visits subsided, Lizzie found Dessie in the store-room, holding the brush in her hand as if it were a giant vermin. Lizzie tried to figure out how she could have forgotten to put it away.

“Where you get this from, ’liza?”

“My name be Lizzie,” she said.

Dessie had lived in the house attic for years. Lizzie knew her from the shape of her back; it was a form she was used to seeing bent over a tub or the fire in the kitchen. Her face looked as if it had been pretty once.

“Give it,” Lizzie said, her lip twitching.

“Not unlessen you tell me where you got it. Is you a plum fool, girl?”

She started toward her but something in Dessie’s posture stopped her. Lizzie was certain that had she been within arm’s reach, the woman would have knocked her in the head with the brush.

“You don’t know what you done brung in this house,” Dessie said, setting the brush on the shelf with a loud clap.

Lizzie moved to the side as the older woman, stooped again, walked past her. “You don’t know what you done brung in here,” she repeated as she scooted through the kitchen.

Lizzie was too frightened to move. Dessie knew. She was sure of it. She wanted to tell her that she hadn’t asked Drayle to come in the first place. And he had stopped coming anyway. Not altogether, but mostly. She wanted to tell her that. She wanted to say more than “give it.” She wanted to ask her what she meant about bringing something into the house.

Two nights later, Lizzie knew. Two nights later, when Drayle finally took what he had been lusting after for so long, Lizzie understood the something that had been brought into the house was her.

They entered the woods behind the slave cabins, the one-eyed horse following a barely cleared trail. Fat spiders rested in opalescent traps. Drayle brushed at his face, cleared the webs for her. Lizzie reached out to pull at a strand of web lingering in his hair and stretched it out, stronger than she’d expected, tensile.

“This here is what they call a smooth-gaited horse.”

Lizzie wanted to laugh. Smooth-gaited? She was certain she would tumble off at any moment. If this was smooth, she didn’t want to ride the others. She held on.

After a few minutes of walking, she felt him squeeze his legs and they took off into the woods at a slow trot. She bounced in the saddle. She clenched Drayle’s waist, feeling for hardness beneath the fat of his stomach. When the trail split, Drayle merely looked the way he wanted to go and the horse followed.

She felt sore in her saddle area and asked Drayle to slow down. He responded after she had repeated her request twice.

When Drayle had told her that morning they would be taking a ride, she tried to hide her fear. As friendly as she knew the horse to be, it was massive, the haunches of the beast taller than her shoulders. She followed Drayle, praying the horse would recognize her as the girl who sometimes stopped and gave him a bit of sugar or a pat on the head. Until recently, she had been afraid to do even that, the mouth of the horse a giant hole threatening to swallow her up.

Philip had walked the one-eyed horse down to the woods from the barn. Drayle mounted first, and Philip gave her a hand while she stepped into the stirrup. After trying to gain her balance for a few moments, she felt comfortable enough to let Philip go. She tied a cloth around her hair.

“Hold on tight now,” Drayle said.

“Where we going?”

“Where are we going?”

“Where are we going,” she repeated.

“You’ll see,” he answered.

Now they were stopped in the middle of a trail and the horse had begun to empty its bladder. Lizzie felt the urge to empty hers.

“Drayle?”

He turned around to look at her.

“I got to do it, too.”

He eased himself off the horse before helping her down.

Lizzie looked behind her at the stretch of trees. She’d only left the place two or three times in recent memory. Drayle had bought her when she was seven years old. In the years since, his farm had become her most familiar place.

He pointed to an area behind a bush, and she went behind it grateful for the privacy. It occurred to her that some white men wouldn’t think enough to point to a bush. Modesty was for ladies. When she’d been brought to the auction block, she’d been chained to a line of slave women, ready to board the trader’s wagon. As the smallest, Lizzie had led, but she’d felt the jingle of metal when two of the women in the back kneeled down so the very last woman could squat right there in the middle of the road. Her skirt was the only privacy she had, and Lizzie had noticed the woman’s eyes close as if to shut out her audience.

When Lizzie was done, she came back to him. She listened to him breathing in the air, his nostrils flaring like the horse’s. His tall form cast a shadow over her, and she felt safe in the cool of it. They walked along for a bit. He did not hold her hand as she had seen some slaves in love do from time to time, but she felt his nearness. She looked over at the horse to see if it was watching her as it had so many times before, but its good eye was focused straight ahead. After a while, they climbed back onto the horse.

A barn peeked over the crest of the hill and she shaded her eyes with her hands. They reached a small house. Drayle whistled and a slave girl of about ten years old came out onto the porch. Lizzie took off her cloth to better show her face.

“You belong to Leo nesbitt?”

The girl nodded.

“I’m looking for his slave Polly.”

“Which one?” the girl said. “They’s two.”

Drayle shrugged. “How the hell should I know?” he pointed back at Lizzie. “Is there one that looks like this one?”

Lizzie was sweating beneath her dress. She did not like that he referred to her as “this one” although she was not sure why.

The girl came off the porch to get a closer look. “I’ll be right back, sir.” She ran off, leaving a cloud of dust behind her.

It took the girl a while. Drayle got off the horse and helped Lizzie down.

“What you up to?” Lizzie asked.

“Didn’t you tell me you heard you had a sister around these parts?”