Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Wench

“Who?” Lizzie asked.

“I don’t know. One of the coloreds at the hotel, I reckon.”

Mawu sucked her teeth. “Them people ain’t never helped nobody but theyselves. I doubt it.”

“Why do you think somebody fed him?” Lizzie asked.

“Cause look at him. He look a little better today than he did yesterday,” George said.

“I haven’t gotten close enough to see,” Lizzie responded.

“I did. And as far as I know, he ain’t had water in two days. Can’t nobody survive that long in this sun without at least a dip or two of some cool water.”

“Maybe it was that Quaker woman,” Mawu said.

“I ain’t seen her in a spell,” Reenie said.

“She could be sneaking on the property at night,” Mawu said. “Maybe.”

“Maybe it was one of those abolitionists,” Lizzie offered, thinking of the pamphlet.

“Look,” George said. They all looked east and saw the group of white men returning, long fishing poles hanging from their shoulders.

The women stood, their respite over. Lizzie hastened back to her cabin, eager to convince Drayle to end his punishment of Philip. Over the past couple of days, she had decided to try the tactics she’d used on him in the service of her children. She would not refuse him this time.

When she heard Drayle’s footsteps swishing through the grass, she met him out on the porch and pushed him into the wooden rocker.

“Let me help you with your boots,” she said.

She pulled each boot off and lined them up beside the door. Then she pulled off his socks and massaged his feet. They stank like the outdoors, but she rubbed them anyway, paying particular attention to the large bunion on his right foot.

He enjoyed her attention for a few minutes before smiling down at her.

“Lizzie?”

“Hmm?”

“If I tell you that I’ve already decided to sell Philip, will you still take care of me?”

She dropped his foot and it fell with a thud onto the wooden porch.

“For real?”

He nodded.

She studied him for a moment, then leaned down and kissed the stinking, sweating toe.

This time, Philip and George joined them. The four slaves sat mute before Lizzie as she read.

What is the denunciation with which we are charged? It is endeavoring, in our faltering human speech, to declare the enormity of the sin of making merchandise of men,-of separating husband and wife,-taking the infant from its mother, and selling the daughter to prostitution,-of a professedly Christian nation denying, by statute, the Bible to every sixth man and woman of its population, and making it illegal for ‘two or three’ to meet together, except a white man be present! What is this harsh criticism of motives with which we are charged?

“Slow down, Miss Lizzie. I don’t want to miss a thang,” George interrupted.

Lizzie’s next words were slow and deliberate:

The South is one great brothel, where half a million of women are flogged to prostitution, or, worse still, are degraded to believe it honorable. The public squares of half our great cities echo to the wail of families torn asunder at the auction-block; no one of our fair rivers that has not closed over the negro seeking in death a refuge from a life too wretched to bear; thousands of fugitives skulk along our highways, afraid to tell their names, and trembling at the sight of a human being; free men are kidnapped in our streets, to be plunged into that hell of slavery; and now and then one, as if by miracle, after long years, returns to make men aghast with his tale.

Lizzie stopped reading. She paused for a minute although no one asked her to explain.

Drayle told Lizzie that while camping he had decided to let Philip go. But first, the barber would have to agree to a price Drayle would set himself. A price that would allow him to buy another slave with a reputation as good as Philip’s. He had come to this decision because Reenie’s man had convinced him the slave would be no good anymore. He would either try to flee or spend the rest of his days resenting Drayle for it. Philip had a permanent pass that allowed him to run Drayle’s errands or exercise the horses throughout the woods. Sir insisted that those days were over. And even though Drayle objected, Sir ominously reminded him that some slaves had even killed their masters over such disappointments.

Drayle convinced Lizzie he was doing this for her as well. Because she’d asked and he respected her wishes. She’d known it all along, she said to herself. This would be the good deed to answer all other favors. A man, he would most likely argue later, could only give up so much of his property.

When the barber arrived to bring the money, the small group of slaves watched from afar, Philip among them. The daughter was not present to help, so the assistant laid out the tools and rinsed the brass bowl. It appeared to Lizzie that the barber’s arms moved with especially exaggerated flourishes as he whisked the cloth off Drayle’s face and brushed the white man’s shoulders clear of fallen clips of hair.

The assistant removed the rocks from the back legs of the rocking chairs so the men could sit upright. The other three white men paid the barbers and took their leave. The assistant cleaned up the tools and left Drayle and the head barber on the porch alone. The slaves could see the gray-haired man resting against the rail, his white coat blending with the white of the wood.

“You reckon you gone be able to leave with him today?” George asked.

It sank in for Lizzie that Philip would not be returning to Tennessee this time. And if this were really their last summer at the resort, she would never see him again. She tried to etch his features into her memory as she had done to her friends when she was nine years old and being sent to the auction block. She hoped this time the memory would stick.

“I don’t know,” Philip said, unable to hide his joy.

“Well, it ain’t like you got nothing to pack,” Mawu said. “You probably just gone climb in that there wagon and be on your way.”

“Maybe you’ll get a whole new suit of clothes,” George said. “You gone enter the barbering trade?”

“I don’t know. I gots to pay the man back his money. But the onliest thing I know is horses. I ain’t like these cityfied folks.” Philip brushed at a fly crawling on his forehead.

“You gone learn quick,” Reenie said. “Tell me, Philip. How do freedom taste?”

Philip looked at her and smiled. “Miss Reenie, I got to say I honestly don’t know just yet. I reckon I won’t know till I get my free papers.”

Lizzie studied Drayle and the barber and saw that neither had changed position. She knew that Drayle had Philip’s papers in his pocket. She had looked at them just that morning and run her fingers over them. The papers looked real, sure enough. Written up by someone in a flowing and official-looking script, even better than those of the old man on the train up from cincinnati.

“You be sure to send me a letter, Philip. Even if you’ve got to get somebody to write it for you.” Philip could not read and write, and Lizzie wondered if he would learn now that he was free.

Philip reached out for her, and she hugged him for a long time. His chest felt warm against hers. She remembered the nights she had spent in his cabin, how he had kept a respectful distance. She’d always appreciated that. But now she wished she would have let him take her just one time. To remember him by. It wouldn’t have been much for her to give herself to him. At the time, though, she’d felt differently. She’d seen being with Philip as a way of disrespecting her children’s father. But now she knew she could have done it. She could have shared something with him a little more than friendship and a little less than love.