Dolen Perkins-Valdez: Wench

“Get back, get back behind the trees so they don’t see us.” Glory waved her arm, a flap of bare skin swinging like a signpost. The slaves obeyed and stepped back into the cover of the woods. Lizzie and Reenie shared the refuge of an oak tree.

“Would he turn us over to the slave catchers?” George asked.

Glory shrugged. “You never know.”

They peeked through the trees and caught the tail end of Mawu’s dress as she disappeared inside the big door of the house. Philip was nowhere to be seen.

“They went inside the house,” henry said, his voice high and scared.

Lizzie turned on Reenie. “Why did you hold me back?”

“That girl done turned you crazy. Have you forgot about Sweet? Us gots to get back. I say us head on back, with or without them.”

“I ain’t going back without Philip,” Lizzie said, knowing that what she really meant was she wasn’t going back without Mawu. The throbbing sore on the bottom of her foot reminded her that she didn’t have much choice in the matter. She had to get back to tend to it.

“We’ll give them a few minutes,” Glory said. “If they don’t come out before we leave, they’ll just have to follow those rags back.”

They sat in the prickly grass, shooing bugs. Several times, people came in and out of the house, but none of them was Philip or Mawu. To these slaves, these free colored people were different from the free servants working at Tawawa house. Those were working people. These were free coloreds on free territory having vacation. Lizzie tried to wrap her mind around what it would feel like not to have to work. Even though they were having a free day, there was really no such thing. Work was always just around the corner. These free coloreds probably didn’t think of themselves as a free slave at all, she thought. They probably thought of themselves as a free free. It tickled her to think of it, and once or twice a little laugh escaped her, attracting concerned looks from Reenie and Glory.

When they caught the first sign of the sun dipping in the sky overhead, Glory rose and leaned on a walking stick she had scavenged halfway there. “We better get back,” she said.

Reenie stood and looked down at Lizzie who had not moved or taken her eyes off the sight of the two young children playing tag while their mother looked on from the porch. From time to time, the woman looked right into the trees where the four slaves and one white woman were hiding.

“Sweet,” was all Reenie had to say to prod Lizzie.

Lizzie gave Lewis house one last look before turning around and following Glory and the others back through the brush. Each time they passed a rag, Lizzie looked at it and thought of Mawu, picturing the world of treasures she was surely seeing inside that house.

The slaves had been back at Tawawa house for only a short time before Mawu was spotted sweeping her cottage porch as if she’d never left. As they passed one another, they gave the silent signal to meet at the stables that night: eye contact, a glance in the direction of the stables, and brushed fingertips down the forearm to signal dusk.

At the appointed hour, while the white men were having their dinner in the hotel, the slaves gathered at the edge of the resort grounds. The light was orange and cast a glow over everything around them. One thin cloud sat high and alone above them like a raised eyebrow. Horses whinnied softly from within the building.

Mawu and Philip shared a tree stump, back to back, his legs out long and her skirt spread like a fan. The twins lay sprawling on the grass. Reenie shook out a blanket for the three women. Sweet rearranged herself over and over again so she could get comfortable enough to listen without interruption.

“Tell us,” Sweet said when she had finally settled. “Tell us.”

Mawu hunched her shoulders, licked her lips, and leaned in.

“The dining room table must’ve been built out the largest tree you ever did see,” she said. “I imagine it was big and long enough to seat at least thirty white folks. All shiny and dark. So shiny, you could eat right off it with nary a splinter. The womens was sitting around sewing, but they put it away soon as us come in the house.”

Philip nodded as if to confirm the truth of her words.

“One of the childrens was playing the piano when us come in and another boy was reading a book.”

“A piano.” Lizzie had dreamed of such a thing for Rabbit.

“That’s what I said, Miss Lizzie. He played that thang like he was an angel and the other one carried that book around as if it was a bag of money. I couldn’t have grabbed it from him if I’d tried.”

Philip looked as if he were about to say something, but Mawu only paused long enough to catch her breath.

“There was a big old bowl of fresh peaches, and I saw one of the menfolks walk by and pick one right up and take a bite out of it. And they was walking on this fancy rug that felt like a bed of cotton right beneath your feet.”

Philip’s words tripped over Mawu’s. “And two men smoking.”

“The womenfolks was just sitting about,” Mawu continued. “They had servants serving them just like rich white ladies. And a big wide staircase. You could hear people moving about. It was families all up in that house just minding they own business.”

Lizzie stopped listening. Families. The word aroused her.

“…they sho acted like they was scared when us walked up to that door, snatched us right in, they did. Said it’s slavecatchers all over here and us had every bit the mark of a slave,” Mawu was saying.

“They feed you?” George asked.

“You bet they did!” Philip slid off the stump and wiped his hands on the backs of his pants. He gesticulated wildly, as if the table of food were right there before him. “They fed us till we couldn’t move. Seem like they think slaves ain’t used to getting a bellyful, so they all sit around watching us while we eat. Even the childrens.”

Lizzie pictured them sitting at a long table with platters of food before them: wild duck, stuffed potatoes, loaves of bread, bowls of greens, mash, cornmeal cakes. She could taste mounds of cranberries on her tongue, as if she’d just smeared it across her mouth with the back of a spoon.

“But what were the people like?” Lizzie asked.

“They was fine, Miss Lizzie,” Mawu said. “They minded they manners better than the whitefolks. And I didn’t even mind the stares. The children wanted to play in my hair, and the mens asked Philip a lot of questions about his place back in Tennessee.”

Philip sat back down on the stump.

Mawu scratched her foot in the dirt. “They wanted to know if I could read, and they seem real sad when I say I can’t.”

Lizzie sucked her lip. She had not known that Mawu couldn’t read.

Philip shook his head and chuckled. “I knew it was time to go, but I tell you after my belly got full, I just wanted to stay there forever. I wanted to go to sleep and never wake up.”

“You think if y’all was escaped slaves they would of took you in?” George asked.

The ensuing silence held their feelings in check, and none dared speak.

“Well…” Mawu began. “Let me put it this way-they sho know where to send us if’n they don’t.”

“Yessir,” Philip said. “Whitefolks burn that house down to the ground if they even ’spected they was hiding runaway slaves. But I is pretty sho it’s some slaves hiding hereabouts in these woods.”

Quiet again.

“I just don’t understand y’all,” Mawu said. “Us is here in free territory and ain’t nobody thinking about making a run for it?”

“Shhh!” Reenie put a finger to her lips.

Mawu’s eyes narrowed into fissures of shiny black rock. “I is tired, Miss Reenie. I is real, real tired.”