Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Wench

“It’s that woman, huh?” she said when she was done.

Philip looked surprised. “How you know?”

“Cause you’re making a mess. It’s got to be that woman.” They had only been in Ohio a little over a week.

“She’s probably forgot all about you by now, Philip.”

He shook his head and shifted to the other foot. “Naw she ain’t. I seen her last night.”

“Last night?” Lizzie had not seen the girl around the hotel this summer. And she did not think the barber had visited since their arrival. But Philip did look as if he had been grooming himself. She did not doubt his words.

He nodded.

“Where?”

He hesitated and Lizzie knew why. The memory of her betrayal of Mawu was still fresh. He was wondering if she would do the same to him.

“Philip, you’re like my brother. Ain’t no woman on earth closer to you than me.”

“Not no more.”

She felt her throat burn.

He started toward the door. She followed him and grabbed his forearm as he descended the back steps.

“Don’t you do that. Don’t you make me feel like I’m a stranger,” she said.

When he turned back to look at her, his eyes were red. She wanted to tell him that she had learned her lesson. She would not tell again. Even if it meant trouble for somebody she cared about.

She looked around to see if anyone saw them. They sat down on the step beside one another.

“Her name Virginia. She born free, but her daddy used to be a slave. He crossed the river with her mama when she was still in her stomach. He got his own barbering shop in Dayton.”

Lizzie gave Philip her most thoughtful expression. She tried not to let him see that she felt his love was even more impossible than hers. “He doesn’t mind his daughter loving a slave?”

She felt Philip tense beside her and she knew she had touched a sore spot. Surely he had thought about that. Surely he’d considered that the woman’s father might feel Philip was beneath his daughter.

“That woman love me!”

Lizzie nodded, determined to remain quiet this time.

“He want to free me. But if something don’t happen soon, I reckon he’ll tell his daughter to move on. He got three daughters, and the other two is already married. I don’t know nothing about no barbering business, but she say if I get freed, her daddy gone help me learn a trade. Only thing I know is horses. I reckon I got to learn about city living.”

He looked off toward the main hotel. Not far from them, a tall, slender colored servant fed a group of oversized ducks that had been preening their feathers on the edges of the pond. They squawked in anticipation of the bread and flapped their wings, sending bristly feathers into the air.

“If she don’t love me, I don’t know what I’m gone do.” he cupped his forehead in his palm.

Lizzie really wanted to know how and when he was sneaking off. At night? Through the woods? But she knew better than to ask. Philip was only asking for her ear, nothing more.

He turned and took Lizzie’s hands in his. “I got to ask something of you.”

So he wanted more than an ear. “What?”

“You close to Marsuh. I reckon you can talk to him about selling me. If anybody can change his mind, you can.”

Lizzie shook her head. “He already said no when the barber asked him outright. And Philip, if I can’t get him to free my children, what makes you think I can get him to free you?”

Philip dropped her hands and slapped his thigh. “Hell, Lizzie, those ain’t just your childrens. Those his childrens, too. He won’t free them cause he don’t want to lose them. They his blood. But I ain’t. He can always buy another slave with the money he get for me.”

Lizzie felt dizzy. Philip had spoken of Drayle freeing her children as if he had given it some thought. She had never heard Philip talk that way. He had an opinion. Drayle would never free the children.

“Lizzie. Lizzie.”

“You’re like blood to him, too, Philip. When he bought you, you were just a boy. He doesn’t say he thinks of you as a son, but when he talks about you it sounds like he’s talking about Nate.”

“You and me different, Lizzie.”

“He won’t sell you neither,” she said. He stood, and she saw the wound she had carved into his shoulders. “He’ll beat you before he sells you,” she added, unable to stop herself.

Philip didn’t turn around to see the slash of malice on her face. He just walked away without saying another word.

They were on their way to see the white woman. Lizzie couldn’t remember whose idea it had been in the first place, but Mawu was leading. And she was rushing. Lizzie wanted to walk slowly and enjoy the cool shade of the trees. Their steps competed with one another. Lizzie also wanted to forget her conversation with Philip earlier that day. But she couldn’t. “Hey girl, slow down!”

Mawu stopped and looked back at her.

“I’ve got something to ask you.”

“All right.” Mawu slowed until they were walking side-by-side.

“Philip wants me to ask Drayle about freeing him.”

Mawu tilted her chin and turned to look at her. “That woman?”

Lizzie nodded.

“So what you asking?”

“Should I?”

“Why not?” Mawu stopped walking.

Lizzie grabbed the long, arching stem of a butterfly bush. She pulled it to her nose and inhaled the flower. “Because it might be him or my children that get freed and not both.”

Mawu waved a hand. “Oh, Lizzie. Is that why you feeling that way? Pssh.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Mawu didn’t say anything.

Lizzie frowned. It was as if Mawu agreed with Philip that Drayle would never free the children.

Mawu stopped and placed the side of her hand against her forehead. “That way, right?” She pointed. They had not seen the woman yet that summer, and they were expecting her to still live on the same plot of land.

“I hope she ain’t dead.”

“Why do you care?” Lizzie asked.

Mawu shrugged. “I don’t suppose I care much about no white woman.”

“This one is different, huh?”

“Maybe.”

Lizzie stopped and scooped a grasshopper off a nearby leaf. She closed her hand around it and it scrambled in her palm, trapped.

“I’m glad you ain’t still mad at me. I never meant for you to get hurt.”

Mawu stopped and turned to look at her. “Your man. He God to you?”

“Yeah, he’s good to me,” Lizzie replied.

“No. I say is he God to you?”

“What do you mean?”

Mawu paused for a moment. “Tip done got another slave-woman pregnant. He ain’t bring her cause she pregnant. He don’t like to mess with no pregnant womens. So he brung me. Say he got a thing for me even if I does hate him.”

Lizzie let the grasshopper go and it jumped out of her palm onto the ground beside them. For a moment she thought it had hurt itself. The jump from her palm to the ground had been a long one. But then she saw the blur of it as it leaped into the bushes beside the path.

A majestic cedar rose before them like a spirit. Lizzie couldn’t tell if it was welcoming or warning them. Two of the arms looked as if they had been sawed off. Or perhaps fallen off during an ice storm. She had heard about the harsh Ohio winters. She knew all about ice storms, but she couldn’t imagine the amount of snow they said Ohio got. She had only ever known Tennessee winters. Sometimes a bit of snow and sometimes not.

They approached the cabin from the back and threw pebbles at the back door from their cover in the woods. The weeds had grown up tall around the yard, but it did not look as if the cabin was abandoned. Lizzie thought she recognized the husband’s hat hanging beside the door, but she couldn’t be sure.