Dolen Perkins-Valdez - Wench

“Ain’t from God,” Mawu snapped. “From the devil, if anything.”

“You don’t know about God. You left your boy behind,” Glory said.

“He’ll be all right.”

“What kind of mother.” Glory left the statement unfinished.

Lizzie had never heard Glory speak so angrily before. She, too, wanted to know how Mawu could have left her son behind. Had she sent him word of her whereabouts? Did she plan to try to buy his freedom? Did she even care?

Glory was still staring at Lizzie as if to say don’t you do that. Lizzie knew she ought to feel bad about it, pitiful as Glory’s face was, but she didn’t. She really couldn’t say that she felt anything at all. It seemed like lately, her feelings had been drying up.

“Ain’t no other choice now, Lizzie. You got to escape. You got to get out now,” Mawu said.

Lizzie looked down into her glass. She’d heard somewhere that there were folks who could look at the bits of tea in their cup and tell the future. She counted the flakes of tea swimming in the bottom of her jar, but she didn’t see a sign. The leaves didn’t form into anything that resembled a hatchet or a rifle.

“Course if it was me, I’d kill it. If you sick, it’s gone make it hard for you to escape.”

Lizzie thought about her children like she always did when escape crossed her mind. How could she get word to them? Tennessee seemed so far away. Like a different world.

“I reckon that man fancy he love you. You don’t still talk that nonsense about loving him, do you?” Mawu watched Lizzie.

That’s what she’d told Mawu before. She’d told of Mawu’s plan to escape because she loved her, but also because she loved Drayle. But something was shriveling up inside of her. The love she did have left felt old and useless.

“Where’s Reenie?” Lizzie asked.

“I don’t know. Us was together for only that first night. Us didn’t have no plan. Us was just running for our lives. Then us split up cause all the slave catchers was looking for two women together. I do hope she made it. I had a vision the other night that us gone meet up again some day.”

So Mawu still believed in her heathen religion. Most folks would have said they would meet up again in heaven. Mawu probably meant she would meet Reenie in Canada or Africa. Lizzie had begun to believe that slaves had a right to venture off course once in a while when it came to religion.

Lizzie looked down at Mawu’s hands and saw the burn scars. They were raised and welt-like and lighter-colored than the skin around them, and she could tell that the scarring went up her sleeves. When Mawu caught Lizzie staring, she did nothing to hide her hands.

“This is what you got to do. Everybody expect you to leave at night. That be when there is the most men out looking for runaways so they can get that there reward money. But you got to fool them. You got to leave in the middle of the day. You got to walk just like you free. I got a man can make you up some free papers look just like the real thing. Course it’s gone cost money. You got money?” Mawu asked.

Glory took Lizzie’s empty glass and went to refill it. When she came back, she grabbed Lizzie’s other hand. Glory’s hand was cool and wet from where she had been holding the glass. She let go of Lizzie and sat back down on the stump.

“If you ain’t got no money, us can get some.” Mawu kept on without waiting for an answer. “You know Philip married that woman and now he a barber. Did you ever think he would go from being an outdoors man to cutting hair? They say he picked it up right quick. I bet he rich.”

“Philip?” Lizzie said absently.

“Yeah, Philip,” Mawu continued. “He’ll help if us ask him.” Mawu fixed Lizzie with a stare. “But my question is, is you ready? cause I ain’t gone help you if you is gone act the way you acted in the past.”

Lizzie tried to focus in on Mawu’s features. The woman’s face had not changed. It was still steady and cold. “Why did y’all leave without telling me, Mawu?”

Mawu stole a look over at Glory. Glory understood and announced she was going to check on the horses. When the door closed behind her, Mawu said: “Wasn’t no time.”

“What do you mean? You knew what you were doing long before you did it.”

“No. I mean, I knew what I tried to do. I tried to get rid of Tip once and for all.”

“You burned down that cottage to kill him.”

“He never said nothing bout it or they would have had the law after me. I would be a dead woman. But he knowed what happen. I believe the only reason he wants me back is so he can punish me hisself. Lord knows what would happen if he caught up with me now.”

“Why are you still around here then? You ought to be in Canada by now.”

Mawu put her glass down. She lifted out of her chair.

At that moment, Lizzie understood why her friend had remained. She had waited for her, the last of them.

“You got to leave, Lizzie. This your only chance. Promise me.”

Lizzie couldn’t say anything. She was too dizzy from Mawu’s love.

Mawu held on to Lizzie’s shoulders. “Promise me. Promise me, Lizzie.”

Lizzie shook her head. She couldn’t promise. She couldn’t say anything. She couldn’t even look Mawu in the eye.

As Lizzie and Glory rode back to the resort from Mawu’s cabin, the rain began. For the next three days, it rained without ceasing. The water came down in gusts, along with a tropical-force wind that sent wetness through open doorways and windows, created troughs of water between the hills, and swelled the streams. When the rain finally let up, mottled gray slugs emerged from the ground, leaving trails of mucus on steps and paths. Dozens of them appeared around the property, and the children who were visiting with their parents that summer collected a few and placed them in jars.

Drayle had gone on a camping trip with the men, and did not return as promised. While he was gone, Fran instructed Lizzie to tend to the cottage. Lizzie washed and ironed the clothes, scrubbed the floors, dusted the wood, beat the rugs. While she cleaned, Fran sat in the highback armchair with a cloudy look in her eyes.

In the afternoons, Lizzie spent time with the women in the hotel kitchen, helping them to prepare the evening’s supper. She liked sitting and talking with the free colored women while they peeled turnips, mashed squash, shelled nuts, sliced tomatoes, sifted flour. Lizzie had never spent so much time with them, and she was delighted by their tales. She begged them to tell her more about the men they courted or the monthly neighborhood dances.

The rain had a calming effect and lifted their moods. But it did not help to dissipate the overall gloom at the resort, the knowledge that the servants would have to find work elsewhere.

The first morning she woke and did not hear the pelt of raindrops, Lizzie dressed quickly and rushed outside to see the sky. She was hoping for sun, but was greeted with the same dark clouds scudding across the tops of the trees. She could smell another rain shower as she made her way to the Drayle cottage. As she walked, she saw the manager of the hotel and it looked as if he was walking toward her. She wondered what he thought about Reenie’s disappearance, and if Reenie’s master had blamed him at all for the unexpected disobedience of his favored slave.

Lizzie tried to walk in a different direction so she would not pass him. But he had already spotted her.

“Hey! You there!” he shouted.

She tucked her chin down as she neared him. Several pains sprang up at once: an ache in her knee, a shot in the elbow. She could feel herself becoming physically ill the nearer she came to him.

He pointed to a batch of firewood. “Gather up that wood and stack it outside the kitchen door.”