Chapter 7 #2
I exhaled, relieved that it was only nature’s call. All was well. “Come on then, little bit.”
She grasped my hand only to pause. “I gotta get some moss.”
“I already have it. Come quietly.” I nudged Hattie’s basket closer to Abigail before anchoring Annabelle by the elbow and helping her from the cart.
“Mama, it’s real dark.”
“The darkest hour is before the dawn. Hold my hand. You’ll be okay.”
“Do we got a candle?”
“No, child.” Our lantern had extinguished itself during the night.
I had no spills—twisted strips of paper used to light the wicks of our tallow candles.
Or flint and steel to create sparks and flames.
Even the dying coals in fire pits sporadically spread throughout the caravan failed to light our way.
“Sing that song Aunt Lovie taught you about stars twinkling like diamonds. That’ll help you see.
But do it softly so we don’t wake nobody. ”
Annabelle quietly hummed as I counted our steps across the muddy terrain to mark the distance we’d gone while tapping the ground with my walking stick to warn away critters and creatures. I’d just traversed the passage with Lovie and Ella, but doing so with my child heightened my caution.
Peering through the dark morning, I failed to locate either woman and trusted they’d safely returned to our encampment.
“I suppose right here is as good a place as any to do our business.”
We stopped a few counts beyond the dark ring of oxcarts circling the wagons nestled within.
Those wagons provided lodging in this wet weather to plantation people and in turn encircled the livestock corralled each night at the center of the caravan.
Our oxcarts being at the outskirts was strategic.
For the safety of plantation folks. And their animals.
If harm—man or beast—approached from outside we enslaved folks would encounter it first. Come what will, come what may, God would determine the outcome and fate of the enslaved.
I handled my business then stood guard in the dark as my child finished relieving herself, determined to keep her from any unseen dangers that came with living out in the open.
“I’m finished, Mama.”
“Use that moss and wipe yourself good. Then clean your hands with the bay leaves.”
“Yes, ma’am. I did.”
“Let’s get on back then.”
“Can I carry your stick? I wanna look like Moses.”
I handed Annabelle my staff with a quiet laugh. “Whatchu know ‘bout Moses?”
“Miss Norene showed us a picture in her Bible one Sunday after prayer. She told us Moses went on a long walk to a place called Egypt and did magic tricks with his big stick.”
“Well, ain’t that splendid.”
Miss Norene showing pictures of Moses instead of reading ‘cause she and her husband barely literate.
I held Annabelle’s free hand thinking maybe some plantation people objected to our book learning because they weren’t keen on us doing something they couldn’t.
Starting our return count, I cited numbers aloud to get us back to our cart, thankful for the temporary cushion the distance on the trail offered from Norene Tolliver’s incessant wants.
We’d only gone a few steps when Annabelle posed a question that poked at the ironies and indignities of this constrictive beast called slavery. “Mama, how come we can count but can’t read? Ain’t counting the same as writing or book learning?”
“Counting’s useful. Plantation people say that other learning ain’t essential to our duties.”
“Plantation people don’t find nothing wrong with us counting?”
“No, ‘cause it’s to their benefit.” And ain’t a threat, I thought but left unsaid. “What if Miss Norene wants you to bring her six balls of blue yarn and four red? Or what if the cake I’m baking needs five eggs? Don’t I need to know how many five is?”
Least she ain’t bothering me much as anticipated.
For a woman with a weak constitution Norene Tolliver was holding up better than expected on this journey west. She’d sent a scout summoning me from the trail to meet her needs only four times since leaving Mississippi.
I considered that a break from her usual pestering for a glass of water here.
A cool cloth for her neck there. Fan her.
Comb her hair. Thread her needle. Brew an elixir.
Find a lost button she suddenly, desperately needed. Undress and dress her again.
“Yes, ma’am. But what would happen if we could read and write?”
I shuddered at Annabelle’s insistence, remembering Solomon, a boy from my days on the Carter plantation.
One of his chores was keeping Mister Carter’s office clean.
Being found in that office holding a book and staring at the cover resulted in him ending the day with four digits on his left hand where five had been.
I hated frightening my children; still, I quickly and quietly conveyed Solomon’s fate.
Didn’t matter none that the book was upside down. They knew he wasn’t reading! That child was punished for “wanting what belonged to white folks, being uppity, and acting above his station.”
I kept that to myself, leaving my daughter with the seriousness of such an offense, and loathing the ways slavery ate away at innocence.
But some things couldn’t be avoided. My girls had to know the proper ways to be Negro in this world and not upset plantation folks.
There were never guarantees with them and how they’d act day to day.
I knew them to be fickle, often changing with the wind—upsetting our lives based on their appetites, wants, or whims. But my girls understanding and complying with the flux and rigamaroles of this system might spare them excessive heartache and grief. Prayerfully.
It was up to me to teach them responsive flexibility, to be invisible and fade to nothing around white folks until needed.
And when needed, how to stomach even distasteful roles and demands while masking feelings white folks would object to witnessing.
Offending the sensibilities of plantation people could have dire consequences and even prove lethal.
“Did… Solomon… die?” Annabelle’s tone wobbled with shock, horror, and a shadow of curiosity as the silhouette of our oxcart summoned us.
“No, God blessed me to help him.” Long as I lived, I would never forget that child screaming until he passed out as I cauterized his wound. Or the smell of his burning flesh. Or the haunting trauma that changed him from smiling to blank-faced and ancient.
“Will God help me?”
“Whatchu mean?”
My child released my hand and quickly covered the few feet separating us from our home on wheels and quietly climbed aboard.
She disappeared beneath the cowhide covering, causing the cart to wobble the slightest bit.
Hattie mewled but quickly resettled into sleep.
Abigail coughed a cough that gave me pause.
Other than growing mighty quiet when crossing creeks or streams she seemed to bear no permanent scarring from her ordeal.
Such was a child’s resilience. But this cough that developed after plunging into icy water and traveling in inclement weather hadn’t cleared up enough for me.
I didn’t care for its sound—wet and rattling.
I glanced at her sleeping form, reminding myself to brew horehound and asafetida and dose her aplenty as Annabelle reappeared.
Scampering down to the ground, Annabelle moved towards me with the slow, stiff steps of an old woman. “I’m sorry, Mama. I just wanted to see Moses when it fell off the wagon.”
My soul constricted as my child extended a rectangular object. Despite the dark of dawn, I recognized it as something dangerous. Forbidden. I stepped back, refused to touch it.
“Annabelle, what did you do? Why do you have that?”
“Zinnie, we gonna try to get a quick fire going and start the coffee.”
I was too frozen to acknowledge Ella as she and Lovie neared, as the dark of dawn seemed to shift and light ate away at the horizon as if wanting to see the book Annabelle held.
“I only wanted to see Moses.” Her voice shook with fear, bubbled with tears.
“I saw the Bible fall off Miss Norene and Master Ryland’s wagon yesterday when I was scouting.
” The children who served as scouts didn’t merely deliver information or messages up and down the caravan.
They followed behind the carts retrieving objects that may have dislodged and fallen.
Annabelle, tired of riding in cramped confines, had assigned herself the role of scout, wanting to move about and stretch her legs.
I’d agreed. Now, I loathed my decision. “I was gonna give it back, but it fell and got dirty and I didn’t want Miss Norene to be mad. ”
Her words were disjointed, separated by her terror of the woman who owned us.
Norene Tolliver tolerated me because she needed my services, but she didn’t extend grace to my little ones.
Sometimes she ignored them completely. At others my daughters incurred more disdain and wrath than a little bit on account of that dimple in their chins bearing proof of her husband’s wicked unfaithfulness.
Consequently, she lashed out at them. Pinching.
Hitting. Hating innocent ones who didn’t control their origins.
“I was gonna clean it and give it back, but I wanted to see Moses’s magic stick ‘cause it’s like yours. I thought maybe I could figure out how to do magic, too, and do something good for us. Mama, am I gonna get my fingers chopped off like Solomon?”
I pulled my daughter to me, quieting her sobs and holding her fiercely. Sounds of nearby stirring left me praying she hadn’t been overheard, hadn’t drawn anyone’s attention.
“What should we do, Zinnie?”