Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Wench

Each time she was given a pail of fresh raw partridges, Lizzie slid the birds onto the sticks, careful to pierce each at its thickest point. As she held the birds over the fire, she searched for Drayle’s face in the crowd. She had not often seen him in the company of the other resort guests, and she wondered what he would be like.

He was standing about thirty feet away from her in a group of men who were smoking. He only smoked when they came to Tawawa because Fran didn’t allow it at home. The men laughed, the scent of their cigars mingling in the air with the scent of the meat.

Lizzie looked with wonder at the colored child kneeling beside her. She was fascinated by free colored children. She wanted to reach out and touch the girl’s head, but she could not take either hand off the heavy stick of partridges. She was so busy looking between the birds and the girl that she didn’t see the white woman approach her.

“What’s your name?”

Lizzie looked around for someone else. But when she glanced into the white woman’s eyes, they were fixed on her. She looked down. She could tell from the accent that the woman was a northerner.

“Lizzie, ma’am.”

“Lizzie. Is that short for something? Elizabeth?”

“Eliza, ma’am.”

“Who do you belong to, Eliza?”

Lizzie tried to figure out where the question was coming from and where it was going. “I belong to Master Drayle, ma’am.”

Lizzie peeked over at the woman and saw her eyes searching the crowd of men.

“Which one is he?”

Lizzie tilted her head. “The one in the tall boots, ma’am.”

Despite the heat, Drayle had not taken off his riding boots and still held his crop in one hand.

“Is he good to you, Eliza?”

Lizzie nodded and said what she knew was expected of her. She remembered Mawu’s question, He God to you?

“Yes, ma’am,” she said.

Lizzie took a chance and looked up into the woman’s eyes. The woman looked visibly relieved. “Good. ’cause I can’t stand men who are brutes. A lot of slave owners are brutes, aren’t they? At least, that’s what I hear. That’s why I detest slavery.”

She wanted to ask the woman about the pamphlet, about this Wendell Phillips. Did she know him?

The woman moved on. When she joined the next group of women, she must have said something about Lizzie because they all looked over at her and gave her little half smiles. Lizzie looked at them for a moment and then turned her attention back to the partridges. Her arm was tired. She needed to relieve herself, but her partridges were still too raw to eat.

The child’s fish had cooked more quickly. She unwrapped the cloth to check on it, and Lizzie guessed from its aroma that it was probably just about done.

A white child approached the colored girl and sank to her knees. “Is that fish ready yet?”

The colored child nodded reluctantly. Lizzie could feel the child’s disappointment as she realized that her treasure was about to be taken from her. The servant child put the wrapped fish on the ground. She knew she had to give the fish to the other girl, but her anger would not allow her to hand it over just yet. If the girl wanted it, she would have to pick it up and take it herself.

The white girl smiled triumphantly, and as she leaned over to take the fish, the end of her dress grazed the hot ember. Lizzie saw it when it happened, but she did not know it had caught fire until the child had already felt the heat of the burn on her leg. The white girl screamed and the fish flew out of her hands. She jumped up and ran. Reenie put down the partridges and ran to the well. The colored girl picked up the fish and stuffed its slippery flesh into her mouth with her fingers, sliding the bones out between her teeth.

A white woman threw the quilt she had been sitting on over the child. It, too, caught fire. There were shouts all around as people realized what was happening. One of the men ran after the child and caught up with her before throwing himself on her. They rolled on the ground. The child was still screaming loudly, and the smell of burnt flesh filled the air as the doctor yelled, “Let me through! Let me through!”

Lizzie looked around for Drayle and saw him standing alone, a bit off from the crowd. The ground around him was littered with forgotten cigar ends, still glowing. Only he remained, his fingers grasping the butt of his cigar and his mouth frozen in the round shape of a deep exhale.

She turned back to the birds on the ground beside her, and felt her eyes sting from the heat of the fire. Then she looked again at Drayle, and as the burning child’s screams simmered, she saw him take another puff of his cigar and wipe his forehead.

Lizzie was so busy watching Drayle that she had no memory of Mawu at that moment. She wished she had looked her way. Later, she wondered if she would have seen the reflection of the fire in her eyes.

The second fire happened that very night. The men poured out of the cottages in their dressing gowns, faces lined with the tension of sleep. The fire rose like a vengeful ancestor over the lot of them.

Mawu and Tip. It was their cottage. Lizzie searched the faces for her friend and found her, standing on the fringe, indecent in her gown, arms hanging slack at her sides, crying and choking through something that resembled tears.

Lizzie saw Reenie hurrying along with a pail of water in each hand. Out of the darkness, Drayle pushed two pails stuck inside of each other into Lizzie’s fist and commanded her to the pond. She joined the long line of frantic men and women, sooty-faced colored and white, slave and free, who moved back and forth between the pond and the cottage. One of the men yelled something unintelligible, and Mawu reached out into the darkness as if trying to clutch someone. Swollen white sores ran the length of her arm.

“She hurt. Mawu hurt,” Lizzie said to the closest passing negro.

In a moment, Reenie was there. Both of Mawu’s arms had been burned from the shoulder down to the hand. The skin had started to pucker, a fret of scales and blisters. Mawu looked down at her arms as if they belonged to someone else. Her face appeared untouched, smooth as a speckled stone, brown and iridescent in the light of the moon and the fire.

“I tried, I tried.”

“Hush. We gone take care of you.” Reenie had to yell over the shouts of the men.

Lizzie wanted to ask. What had she tried to do? had she tried to save Tip and failed? Lizzie looked off toward the cottage. It was a lick of flames, dark smoke blasting into the air and sending down a sprinkle of ashes.

“But you don’t understand, Miss Reenie. You don’t understand. I tried, I tried.”

“Sweet Jesus,” Lizzie heard Reenie say. “Anybody ask, you tell them she burnt and I is taking her back to my cottage, you hear?”

Lizzie nodded, the empty pails swaying in her hands.

“Is she all right?”

Reenie shook her head. It surprised Lizzie. Like asking the doctor if someone was going to be all right and hearing the truth for a change.

“She got more than burns to deal with.”

“Lizzie! Fill them buckets, girl!” Drayle shouted at her as Reenie and Mawu hurried off.

Lizzie ran back to the pond. One of the slaves standing knee deep in the water helped her get them full. When she turned around, she saw Tip waiting behind her, an outstretched pail in his hand and a pasty look on his white face that made him appear ghostlike.

But he was not a ghost. He was just as real as the fire still panting hungrily behind him. She glanced off in the direction that Reenie and Mawu had gone. Now she understood. She understood what Mawu had tried to do.

And while she had a strange feeling in her belly she might never see Mawu again, it never crossed her mind she might never see Reenie again, either.