John Wray - Canaan's Tongue

“You’ve discovered it too,” I whisper. “You went up and looked through Asa’s little window. You saw how small we are. Didn’t you?”

“Yes,” he says. His voice goes tight. “I saw.”

I close my mouth. It’s done. I look up into his face and wait for him to have me. This time it will not destroy me, not make me into another, not split me into halves. The R—’s breath is full and warm inside of me and it will not subside. My body has no more substance than a cloud.

“We’re pieces of pig-iron, Virgil. That’s all we are. But each of us has a purpose and a shape.” I guide his hand downwards. “If you put us together properly, we make a revolver.”

“God, Clem!” he says and brings himself against me. His hand is still closed tightly around the bottle. His mouth opens and his lips push against my own with all the slowness I remember. I feel through his britches that he is ready and I open them at the buckle and bring out his prick and smell the readiness on it. I take it in my left hand at the root and slide my palm upwards. “Clem Clem Clem,” he gasps and sinks white-faced to the bed. The memory of it is crashing over me now like a breaker at sea but it finds no spot on my smooth and weightless body to catch hold of. Still I feel that I am ready too and Virgil pulls aside the bustle and feels it on me and pulls me down. The smell of the boy is still in me and run through my skirts and stockings but. In another breath I am astride of him and his hope is up my belly looking to turn me outsides-in, looking for its twin where I’ve long sheltered it but it finds nothing—! Nothing there at all.

That twin is withered away and vanished. There is nothing in my belly but the R—.

“Oh!” says my mouth.

“Clem!” Virgil says, bucking under me. But Clem is a word.

His eyes fly open, then snap shut. His hand turns and unclenches like a flower.

“We are building a revolver, Virgil,” I breathe into his ear.

“Yes,” he says. “Yes!”

My right hand closes on the bottle.

23 May 1863

Geburah Plantation

There are errors or (let us call them as the world calls them) sins of arroganceand pride that even I, wasting hourly as I am, will make no mention of in this accounting. Let that be the measure of how far into the well of hubris I have fallen: to give voice to the preening circus nigger I’ve become would plant me squarely in my grave. That will be my legacy to the world, and I won’t recount it here. Here I will testify, as best I can in this language that has come to own me as a yeoman owns a sow, how I came to trade my existence for a cinder.

I dreamt of grand estates, and made my lodging in an outhouse. I dreamt of virtue, of genteel acts, and indentured myself to treachery. I dreamt of love and poetry, and gave my body to a hussy. First she took it grudgingly, then she took it slyly. She took it from me and she bottled it — a commodity like any other.

The progress of the “grippe” that has claimed me is so ambitious that I’m unable to rise unassisted from my bed, and this less than six hours after I was stricken. A system of welts, in pattern not unlike a skirt of lace, has risen from my ankles to my ribs — where these welts arise, I am a paralytic. That my sex has thus far been spared strikes me as poetic. No better emblem to a history of my follies could have been contrived.

I was born in Vidalia, Louisiana to a woman known as Margaret—; my father was a well-heeled sugar-man from New Orleans. Margaret was too old to bear children and died soon after my début. This I know from the wifey, one Koko Hewitt, who had care of me for a time. Koko herself entertained her share of callers (Mr. Hewitt having died in the Mexican War, leaving her his debts) and as soon as I could button my pants I was hired out to all and sundry. I was a poor worker, heavy-limbed and listless, but folk approved of me—: I was pleasing to look at, and docile, and in time I discovered this was all it took. I became popular in town, particularly among charitably minded ladies. They took to me with what can only be described as a passion, and often fought amongst themselves for the privilege of putting their sympathies on show—; by the age of eight I was an accomplished gigolo.

It took Mrs. Anne Juvais Bradford, however — of Waterproof, Louisiana — to turn me into a full and able whore.

At twelve I was hired out to “Mother Anne,” as Mrs. Bradford chose to be called—; she and her husband, a porridge-faced consumptive who rarely left his bed, ran a profitable still a half-day’s passage up the river. Koko referred to this transaction as my “adoption,” by which I understood that I was never to return. She wept great oily tears at our separation, the fee for which was seventydollars in silver. Seventy bits was quite a sum at that time, easily twice my worth. I assumed that Mother Anne was buying herself a worker—; she herself had other notions. Koko couldn’t have cared less. We had little Christiansentiment for one another.

The first time Mother Anne saw me she’d caught hold of me by my britches. It was in Koko’s shabby parlor, late on a Sunday afternoon—; I’d just come in bare-foot from the street. “You’re good and pale, for a half-and-half,” Anne had said. “What are you made of, little captain? Quadroon? Octaroon?”

I’d answered matter-of-factly that my father was a Dumaine Street gentleman, white as a winter lily.

“Sure of that, are you?” she’d said, grinning down at me. Her grip, though temperate, was tenacious as a man’s.

I’d nodded sullenly. Her hand had remained curled round my belt-buckle. “My mama were black as par-boiled pitch,” I’d said. “That’s how I’m sure.”

Her grin had widened. “You don’t care much for your mama’s sort, I see.”

“I’d like to burn her clean of me with fire.”

Her eyes had opened wide at this. “What’s your name, little niggerhater?”

“Oliver D. Lamar,” I’d replied, with all the gentility I could muster.

She’d nodded at this with an earnestness that thrilled me to my bones. “Oliver Delamare,” she’d said. I’d seen no reason to correct her.

“Can you read, Oliver Delamare?”

My high spirits had vanished at once. I’d shaken my head forlornly.

“I’ll teach you,” she’d murmured, pursing her lips. “I was a teacher of boys, before Mr. Bradford’s time. Back in Ohio, that was.” Her face had gone blank for a moment. “Six years of my young life.”

“Oh, he’s a fine learner,” Koko had put in eagerly. “Quick as a cricket. Many’s the occasion—”

“Has he any sweethearts?” Mother Anne had said, turning me about. “Any little amours?”

Koko’s face had sti fened slightly. “The boy’s not yet twelve, Mrs. Bradford.”

“Ah! Mrs. Hewitt,” Mother Anne had said. “You can’t fool me about this one.” She’d released me then, and brought out a scuff-cornered purse. “Boys are but men in short pants, after all.”

For a year, perhaps longer, Mother Anne partook of my body without asking more than its readiness. I was her plaything, pure and plain—; but the position was not a thankless one. She was kind to me, and repaid my services with genuine affection—; she taught me to read and to dress, and gave me countless little presents. I suffered under her attentions, of course, but no more than I’d suffered under Koko’s long indifference. After a parcel of time had passed (enough for me to take leave of my former life, a thing I did without regret) I came to think of Mother Anne’s house as my own.