Jubilee

Contents

Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Foreword

I

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

II

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

III

41

42

43

44

45

46

47

48

49

50

51

52

53

54

55

56

57

58

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Connect with HMH

Second Mariner Books edition 2016

Copyright © 1966 by Margaret Walker Alexander

Foreword copyright © 2016 by Nikki Giovanni

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to [email protected] or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN 978-0-544-81212-3 (pbk.)

Cover illustration © Jeffrey Fisher

eISBN 978-0-544-81219-2

v2.1220

This book is dedicated to all the members of my family with all my love. It is especially for my mother, my husband, my sisters, and brother because they helped to make it possible. It is for my four children that they may know something of their heritage. And it is to the memory of my grandmothers: my maternal great-grandmother, Margaret Duggans Ware Brown, whose story this is; my maternal grandmother, Elvira Ware Dozier, who told me this story; and my paternal grandmother, Margaret Walker.

Jubilee

We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,

We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,

We are climbing Jacob’s ladder,

    for the year of Jubilee!

Every round goes higher, higher,

Every round goes higher, higher,

Every round goes higher, higher,

    to the year of Jubilee.

Do you think I’ll make a soldier?

Do you think I’ll make a soldier?

Do you think I’ll make a soldier?

    in the year of Jubilee?

Traditional Negro Spiritual

FOREWORD

And So We Sing of Jubilee

COMMON SENSE SAYS a couple of Europeans with rifles didn’t one day sail off to the African coast and begin the Slave Trade. We know from what we can see that the trade in people, for whatever reason, and most especially the trade in women and children, goes on even today. We can call it prostitution or child labor or whatever we wish to make it sound all right or at least different but it is still slavery. We know various African peoples sold various African peoples for various reasons. Some of these folk were going to find themselves on auction blocks, being bid upon by Europeans, put down into Cape Coast Castle or over to Gorée Island until there was a cargo taken on the Middle Passage to what would become America. We know these people were packed head to toe, head to toe one on top of the other, so that whatever came out of the one on top fell on the one below. We understand that the, let’s call them purchasers, understood if they didn’t bring the people up, there would be no living cargo. We can see that on the third or fourth day these people were brought on deck. They were splashed with seawater then, as one might drive an automobile from the garage to the street and back to keep the tires in shape, made to hop from foot to foot to keep the muscles from deteriorating. On the first on deck the people could look out and see the land. It’s only natural that some jumped overboard to swim back home. It’s totally illogical that we think Africans could not or did not swim. We also know that the waters held sharks, which would soon learn if they followed the ships they would be fed across the Atlantic. (Even today when I hear of a shark attack I think, Had we not been carried from our homeland, the sharks maybe would not have made their way across the Atlantic. But that might be a different story.) We all know the result of those who were steadied on board. The people were corralled and put back down. We have to understand, on the fifth or sixth day when the people were brought up they could no longer see the land but they could see the clouds over the land. Clouds over water and clouds over land are different, so the people might still have an idea of where they were and could imagine where they might be going. Still, some jumped overboard, some attacked, some were killed, and some died. All ended in the water. But we definitely know from the ship captains’ logs that the tenth day was going to be the most dangerous day. On that day when the people came up they could see nothing familiar. Not land or clouds, not the bend of the Earth. The tenth day was the day every white man and woman on board, and there were women on these ships, had to be armed. They knew the people would furiously fight and they knew they had to fight back. We all know the result. The people who were put back down had decisions to make.

There was probably an old black woman who was purchased cheaply. Someone probably laughed at the purchase: She’s so old. What you gonna do with her? But he purchased her anyway. You never know. Now this purchase was going to pay off. Down in that darkness with defeat all around this woman knew she needed to do something to save her people. She did not speak the language of most of the folk tethered with her. They were after all from different communities. Much as if someone had herded parts of the German, French, Portuguese, and Spanish communities into a boat. They had a different language and different ways of looking at things. But they all knew they were defeated. She had to find a way to lift them together. The only thing she had was a moan. And she moaned. That moan would become a Spiritual; that Spiritual would become Jazz; which would become Blues then Rhythm and Blues then Rap. That moan would define not only a people but the nation to which they were sailing. That moan would make those people decide that they should, that they could, live.

When they arrived on these shores they were once again put on an auction block. It can never be a wonder that blacks go so easily onstage to sing or dance or make silly jokes. Or are so comfortably patient while waiting to be drafted by the NFL or NBA. We have been on auction blocks all of our existence. The people were sold to various communities where they worked to build the communities and the homes in which they would live. They worked to build churches in which they could worship and they learned to worship a man who was crucified on a hill with two thieves. He said, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. The people learned to forgive those who sold and bought them. The people learned to forgive those who came into a church and killed nine of them. The people learned to believe that to take pain is more honorable than the evil to inflict it. The people learned to love. They accepted and invented names and they heard those who had purchased them call for Liberty-Justice-Equality. They knew if this land was to be worth anything, they would have to be included. If this land were to be made whole, everyone would have to be included. The America that we know, the possibility, could only be with the faith of these people in the words they helped make come true. While we take pride in the persistence of Booker T. Washington and Mary McCleod Bethune, we also imagine that fourteen-year-old African boy, who realized his uncle was going to sell him, squeezing that peanut so tightly. It is easy to understand, as he stood on the auction block and was sold, put down and was afraid, survived to stand yet again, that he held on to that peanut. We can see him being marched to a community in Virginia and kissing the ground upon which he would labor for the remainder of his life. While kissing that ground he rested that peanut into it and Virginia became the Peanut Capital of the World, though it hardly gave a nod to George Washington Carver. We can see that young mother having her infant snatched from her being carried off to be sold. We can see her grandmother putting an okra seed in her hand as she is carried off. This young woman would be made to breed on the ship and give birth on this land. She held on to that okra seed until she could plant it. We watched these people learn to love despite it all.

While we marvel at the genius of W.E.B. Du Bois, while we all sing the great songs of Nat King Cole and Marvin Gaye and Shake Shake Shake with Little Richard, while we honor the words of Martin Luther King Jr. and hang our heads at the timidity of Barack Obama, we look deeply into our hearts to remember the folk in the dark days of travel and the sad days of segregation and recognize the faith those people had as they stepped off that ship and redefined themselves. They knew they could not return to the place from which they were sold; they understood the only way forward is a redefinition of this land to which they came. Whether by choice (not likely) or by force, the black woman gave birth to a new people. Those who would never have known each other came together to birth that which had not existed. When we think of Space, when we begin to understand the Martian, we know we must send a black woman on that ship. She is the one who will weather the journey; she will find a song. When she arrives on Mars she will be the one who will greet the life form there and should it be nice and friendly perhaps find a way to mate with it. From her body once again will come a new or at least an unidentified life form. She will nourish it and sing to it and tell it her history. She will give it the strength to go forward in love. She will teach it freedom. She will teach it patience. She will teach it stories of a God to worship.

She will say: We are Jubilations and we will be the future. She will sing For My People stories that keep hope in our hearts. She knows that the true Jubilee will be the day that Earth embraces this universe granting love and freedom to all. And so we celebrate: Jubilee.

Nikki Giovanni

Poet

I

Sis Hetta’s Child

THE ANTE-BELLUM YEARS

Swing low, sweet chariot,

Coming for to carry me home . . .

1

Death is a mystery that only the squinch owl knows

MAY LIZA, HOW COME you so restless and uneasy? You must be restless in your mind.

I is. I is. That old screech owl is making me nervous.

Wellum, ’tain’t no use in your gitting so upsot bout that bird hollering. It ain’t the sign of no woman nohow. It always means a man.

It’s the sign of death.

Grandpa Tom, the stable boy, and May Liza, Marster’s upstairs house girl, were sitting on the steps of their cabins in the slave Quarters. It was not yet dusk-dark. An early twilight hung over the valley, and along the creek bank fog rose. The hot Spring day was ending with the promise of a long and miserable night. A hushed quiet hung over the Quarters. There were no children playing ring games before the cabins. The hardened dirt-clay road, more like a narrow path before their doors, was full of people smoking corncob pipes and chewing tobacco in silence. Out on the horizon a full moon was rising. All eyes were on the cabin of Sis Hetta, where she lay on her deathbed sinking fast.

Inside Sis Hetta’s cabin the night was sticky hot. A cloying, sweetish, almost sickening smell of Cape jessamine, honeysuckle, and magnolias clung heavily to the humid night air. Caline, a middle-aged brown-skin woman with a head of crinkly brown hair tied in a knot on her neck, imposing eyes, and the unruffled air of importance and dignity that one associated with house servants, stood beside the sickbed and fanned Sis Hetta with a large palmetto fan. Caline knew Hetta was dying. As soon as supper was over in the Big House, Caline came to see what she could do. Aunt Sally, cook in the Big House, couldn’t get away with Caline but she sent word, Tell em I’ll be along terreckly. Fanning Sis Hetta in the hot night seemed all there was left to do for her, and so Caline kept fanning and thinking: Sis Hetta was a right young woman, younger than Caline, and she got with all those younguns fast as she could breed them. Caline had no children. She had never known why. Maybe it was something Old Marster made them do to her when she was a young girl and first started working in the Big House. Maybe it was the saltpeter. Anyway, Caline was glad. Slaves were better off, like herself, when they had no children to be sold away, to die, and to keep on having till they killed you, like Hetta was dying now.

Out on the Big Road, May Liza and Grandpa Tom could barely discern a man in the distance. As he drew nearer they could see he was riding a small child on his shoulders.

Brother Zeke, breathed May Liza.

Yeah, and Grandpa Tom took his pipe out of his mouth and spat.

That’s Sis Hetta’s last child she had for Marster, Zeke’s riding on his shoulder.

How you know?

I hear tell they done sent clean over to Marster’s other plantation cause Hetta wants to look at her youngun.

Be her last look, I reckon.

Yeah, I reckon so.

Now in the tricky light of the half-night they saw a figure wearing long trailing skirts of a woman. She was walking slowly at a short distance behind Brother Ezekiel.

Mammy Sukey’s coming too.

You know she ain’t leaving that gal out of her sight. That’s Marster’s youngun they give her to raise.

Marster don’t care nothing bout that youngun. Mammy Sukey’s got her cause Jake won’t leave her be in peace with him and Hetta. They say he pinch that gal when she wasn’t nothing but a suckling baby.

Wellum ’twarn’t no use in that. Jake knowed Hetta been having Marster’s younguns long as they can remember.

Reckon how he knowed?

Hetta was twenty-nine years old, although this was a fact she could not verify. After having given birth to fifteen children, all single births, she was waiting for death in childbed. Her thin bony fingers clutched nervously at the ragged quilt that covered her. Evidently her mind wandered back over happier and earlier days, for her quick beady eyes, glittering with fever, sometimes lighted up, and although she was nearly speechless, Caline fancied she heard the sick woman muttering words. Hetta was a woman who had never talked much.

Another black woman, small, and birdlike in her movements, moved in and out the cabin carrying china washbowls and pitchers of hot water; moving blood-soaked rags and clothing, watching the face of the sick woman to whom she had fed laudanum to ease the pain of these last three days. Granny Ticey was deeply dejected. She moved to keep her hands busy and occupy her mind. She had always been proud of her reputation of rarely losing her patients. Babies she lost, but mothers seldom. She had been uneasy all week about Hetta. It wasn’t the first time this heavy breeding woman, whose babies came too fast, tearing her flesh in shreds, had had a hard and complicated time. She did not like either the looks or the actions of Hetta and she told Jake and Marster, or at least tried to communicate her fears to them. Of course it was true there wasn’t anything too much she had to base her fear on. Hetta was sick every day this last time. Toward the end she rarely left her bed. She was bloated and swollen beyond recognition. But Jake said nothing, as usual, and Marster only laughed. Eight days ago when Granny Ticey saw the quarter moon dripping blood she knew it was an evil omen. When Jake came for her and said Hetta’s time had come she did not want to go, because she knew nothing was right. But she went and she stayed, and now grim and wordless she watched the night lengthen its shadows outside Sis Hetta’s door.

One thing Granny Ticey had done. When the baby was born dead, and Hetta started having terrible fits and hemorrhaging, she made Marster send for a doctor, but two days went by before the doctor came. Meanwhile Granny Ticey made tansy tea and bathed Hetta in hazel root, and used red shank. All these did no good. On the third day when the white doctor came, he barely stayed ten minutes, and he did not touch Hetta. Instead he spoke angrily to Granny Ticey.

What you want me to do, now that it’s plain she’s dying? You didn’t get all that afterbirth. How many times do I have to tell you to get it all? Don’t know why you had John to get me way out here for this unless it was just to make him waste money over your carelessness.

Granny Ticey said nothing. Her lips were tight and her eyes were hard and angry in an otherwise set face. But she was thinking all she dared not say: How was he expecting me to get all the rotten pieces after a dead baby? That’s exactly why I sent for him, so’s he could get what I couldn’t get. If he had come on when I sent for him, instead of waiting till now, Hetta might not be dead. No, I’ll take that back. She was going to die anyway. She had to die one of these times. The last two times were nothing but the goodness of God. I guess it’s just her time.

When the doctor went away he must have told Marster that Hetta was dying. Early in the afternoon when dinner in the Big House was over, Marster came down to Hetta’s cabin. Granny Ticey was there alone with Hetta. Jake was in the fields. Marster was a tall blond man barely thirty-five years old. John Morris Dutton scarcely looked like the Marster. He still looked like a boy to Granny Ticey, but a big husky boy, whose sandy hair fell in his face and whose gray-blue eyes always twinkled in fun. He liked to hunt and fish, and he was always slapping a friend on the back in good fellowship and fun. He never seemed to take anything too seriously, and his every other word was a swearing, cursing song. He was a rich man with two plantations and sixty slaves on this one. He was a young man with hot blood in his veins. He could eat and drink as much as he liked, sleep it off quickly, rise early ready to ride far and enjoy living. Now he came down the path whistling, and only when his rangy form stooped to enter Hetta’s cabin, and he saw the disapproving gravity in Granny Ticey’s solemn eyes, did he hush, and ask, unnecessarily, Where is she?

Granny Ticey pointed behind the heavy quilt hanging from top to bottom of the cabin and separating the cooking corner of the fireplace and iron pots from the place where Hetta slept. Marse John pushed the quilt aside and stood over Hetta. A fetid odor made him sick for a moment, but he saw her eyes looking at him, and he called her name . . .

Hetta?

Yassah. Her voice was so weak and soft he bent lower over her.

Hetta, do you know me?

Yassah, Marster, I knows you. But her voice was only a whisper.

How you feeling?

Poorly Marster, mighty poorly.

I’m sorry. Is there anything you want? Something I can do for you?

Nossah, Marster, nothing nobody can do now. Hetta ain’t long for this world.

Oh, shut up! You’re going to get well in a jiffy; be up and around in no time, as usual. You just feel bad cause you’ve had a bad time.

Nossah, that ain’t it. I’m dying, Marster, and I knows it. Just one thing I wants . . .

What’s that?

I wants to see my youngun Vyry, fore I dies.

I’ll send for her. Now you lay still and get well. I’ll be back to see you tomorrow. And he patted her hand and went outside. But when he went out he was not gay. He thought, By God, she might be dying at that!

And he began to think through the years when Hetta was a young girl and there was no thought of her dying, ever. His father gave him Hetta when he was still in his teens and she was barely more than a pickaninny. He remembered how she had looked growing up, long legged like a wild colt and just that temperamental. She looked like some African queen from the Congo. She had a long thin neck and she held her head high. She must have imagined herself, he thought, in an African jungle among palms and waterfalls with gold rings coiled around her neck. Her small young breasts tilted up, and even her slight hips and little buttocks were set high on her body. When she moved lightly and they switched lazily and delicately, they titillated him and his furious excitement grew while watching her walk. It was all his father’s fault. Anyway it was his father who taught him it was better for a young man of quality to learn life by breaking in a young nigger wench than it was for him to spoil a pure white virgin girl. And he had wanted Hetta, so his father gave her to him, and he had satisfied his lust with her. Because in the beginning that was all he had felt, a youthful lust. He still remembered her tears, and her frightened eyes, and how she had pleaded to be left alone, but he had persisted until she had given in to him. And things went along like that for a good while, until he began to think about getting married. At least his father thought about it first. His father kept pestering him to find a lovely young lady and make her his wife. It was time he assumed his responsibilities and settled down. So he went traveling and hunting for a wife. Between courting times he came back to Hetta. At home he took her as a matter of course, but when he went away he thought about her and he could see her and feel her and smell the musklike odor of her body in his mind. Clean enough to bathe twice a day and quiet enough never to annoy him with chatter, she provided him with all the physical release he needed. When she began having babies it was no problem. He gave her Jake for a husband and that was that.

But finally he found a wife, a beautiful young lady of quality from a fine old family in Savannah. And he married Salina. He was sure that she was madly in love with him, and when she kissed him demurely and let him hold her hand he felt sure there was enough fire in this pretty brunette girl to excite him forever. There was an elaborate wedding. He still remembered the drinking, and Salina’s mother crying because her daughter was leaving home for the first time and going into the backwoods of Georgia. He could still see Salina’s father grasping John Morris Dutton’s hand and getting all choked up, and begging him in a voice hoarse with drink as much as anything else, Boy, take care of my little Salina. Salina wasn’t little. She was a big-boned girl, tall, and inclined to get fat. And John Morris got all emotional himself. Incoherently he promised, no, vowed like a knight on a charger to protect her with his life and to be good to her all the days of his life. Then they rode away in a buggy amidst a shower of rice, Salina laughing and crying, and John Morris Dutton just a wee bit tight.

They had a long journey, and a new house waiting, and he could understand why his wedding night was not a night of love, why she begged off with fatigue. What he never understood was why Salina acted outraged and shocked when he finally made love to her. She was pious and romantic and she locked her door most nights against him. When she finally became pregnant and suffered morning sickness his hopes ended. He went back to Hetta.

Everything was the same for a long time after that. Salina made him understand that sex, to her mind, was only a necessary evil for the sake of procreation. When she had presented him with a son and a daughter, she further informed him that her duty as a wife had ended. She simply would not, no, she simply could not go through all that suffering again. She did not want any more children, and consequently there was no more need for sex. At first he was stunned. He got drunk and got up nerve enough to tell her a few pointed facts, but beyond a few curse words nothing prevailed over her tears. His next shock came when she found out about Hetta. She pitched a lovely tantrum then. She threw things at him, called him a beast, cried three days in a row, and even packed to go home to mother. But when he encouraged her to go, offered to pay all her expenses there and continue to provide for her after she got home, only leave his children with him, she relented. Although she never forgave him, she never left him. Miscegenation was no sin to Marse John. It was an accepted fact of his world. What he could not understand at first was where Salina had been given such romantic notions, and how her loving parents had kept the facts of life from her.

Now, Hetta was dying. He would miss her. Perhaps Salina will be pleased, he thought, except for the child. With a sudden jolt, he remembered Vyry.

Vyry was two years old. Mammy Sukey had been keeping her as she kept all Marster’s bastards till they were big enough to work. She and Brother Ezekiel had nearly a two-mile walk bringing Vyry to see her dying mother, Hetta.

Brother Ezekiel was a powerfully built, stovepipe-black man. He was neither young nor old. He was the plantation preacher, at least among the slaves. He could read and write, but the white folks did not know this. Now as he came along with Vyry on his shoulders, and Mammy Sukey walking behind, he was humming a song—

Soon one morning,

Death come knockin at my door . . .

When they got to Sis Hetta’s cabin door Aunt Sally met them. She was still in her voluminous apron, had her head rag on, and she went inside with them.

Jake was sitting inside with a little black girl on his knees. Her eyes looked big as saucers in her thin face, and she had her thumb and two fingers in her mouth sucking on all three hard as she could.

Granny Ticey, Aunt Sally, Brother Ezekiel with Vyry in his arms, and Mammy Sukey all stood around Hetta’s bed. Jake had not moved from his corner, but he sat where he could look behind the quilt. Granny Ticey spoke first.

Hetta! Hetta! Here’s Brother Zeke with Vyry. He done brung your youngun to you.

But the sick woman seemed in a stupor and hard to arouse. Brother Ezekiel moved forward while Aunt Sally and Caline stood on both sides of the bed, and while Granny Ticey propped Hetta’s head higher the other two women lifted her up just as Brother Ezekiel held the child down over her and spoke, afar, Sis Hetta, here is Vyry.

Mammy Sukey stood aside, a wizened old crone with a red rag on her head and her arms akimbo. Now the urgency in Brother Ezekiel’s voice seemed to rouse the dying woman. Her eyes flickered, and her lips moved. She put up her bony hands and fluttered them like a bird. A scarcely audible and muffled sound came from her lips. Then with great effort she spoke, raspy and indistinct, but clear enough for them to know she was saying, Vyry?

Brother Ezekiel held the child down close to her mother’s face and said, soothingly, It’s your mama, Vyry, say hello to your maw. The child spoke, Mama, and then she whimpered. Hetta fell back on her pillows and Ezekiel handed the child to Mammy Sukey, who quickly took her outside into the night air.

After a moment Brother Ezekiel spoke again to the dying and exhausted woman.

Sis Hetta, I’m here, Brother Zeke, it’s me. Can I do something for you?

Pray, she rasped, pray.

He fell on his knees beside the bed and took her hand in his. The night was growing darker. Despite the full moon outside, spilling light through the great oak and magnolia trees, inside Granny Ticey had lighted a large tallow candle. It flared up suddenly, and eerie shadows searched the corners and crowded the room. Brother Ezekiel began to pray:

Lord, God-a-mighty, you done told us in your Word to seek and we shall find; knock and the door be open; ask, and it shall be given when your love come twinklin down. And Lord, tonight we is a-seekin. Way down here in this here rain-washed world, kneelin here by this bed of affliction pain, your humble servant is a-knockin, and askin for your lovin mercy, and your tender love. This here sister is tired a-sufferin, Lord, and she wants to come on home. We ask you to roll down that sweet chariot right here by her bed, just like you done for Lishy, so she can step in kinda easy like and ride on home to glory. Gather her in your bosom like you done Father Abraham and give her rest. She weak, Lord, and she weary, but her eyes is a-fixin for to light on them golden streets of glory and them pearly gates of God. She beggin for to set at your welcome table and feast on milk and honey. She wants to put on them angel wings and wear that crown and them pretty little golden slippers. She done been broke like a straw in the wind and she ain’t got no strength, but she got the faith, Lord, and she got the promise of your Almighty Word. Lead her through this wilderness of sin and tribulation. Give her grace to stand by the river of Jordan and cross her over to hear Gabe blow that horn. Take her home, Lord God, take her home.

And the sobbing women listening to him pray breathed fervent amens. When Brother Ezekiel got up from his knees he put the hand of Sis Hetta on her cover. But she no longer seemed to hear what he was saying. Her eyes were fixed and staring above her, and her throat made raspy noises. Brother Ezekiel went outside and sat in the dampening night air. Caline got a dipper of well water and with a clean rag began to drop water in Hetta’s mouth and moisten her throat. But the water trickled out of the side of her mouth and ran down her chin, and the noises in her throat grew more raspy.

Jake got up to lay his black baby on a pallet, and then with a terrible groan he walked outside where the friends of Hetta sat waiting for her to die.

A few yards from the cabin Granny Ticey had built a fire under a big, black iron wash pot. Pine knots and hickory wood sputtered and burned with sudden spurts of bright flame, emitting an aromatic smoke and discouraging mosquitoes and even the lightning bugs. At odd intervals Granny Ticey threw something in the pot and something on the fire. Each time a hissing noise of water boiling over the flames, and fresh knots catching fire flared up, it startled the watchers. When the flames flared they lighted the faces of the slaves sitting watch, and when the pot boiled over they jumped in fear and suspense.

Jake did not feel sociable. He wanted to go off alone in the woods or work in the fields and not be here when Hetta died. Whenever her eyes closed in death, his fate would be sealed. Marster would have no further use for him and he would be sold. Maybe not right away, but sooner or later, it would happen after awhile. What would they do with his helpless black child then?

Hetta had been a good wife to him. He remembered how she kicked and screamed first time he knocked her up and he remembered the bitter dry taste in his mouth when he realized she was Marster’s woman. Marster had broke her in, and then give her to me. She kept the cabin clean and she cooked good greens and corn pone. She never went to the fields and she always smelled clean. She made him bathe every day when he came from the fields and she never showed him her nakedness, but she never refused him either. Often when he found her crying after Marster’s visits while he, Jake, was in the fields he would get mad, but she never would talk except to keep him from doing foolish things. When their children were sold away and some babies never cried she would cry and grieve over their helplessness. She was a sullen-looking woman with a pouting lip who rarely smiled and almost never talked and who kept her hair wrapped in endless clean little rags. Once, when she was young and shapely, she was proud and she walked like she owned the earth. He felt sometimes because she was Marster’s woman that maybe she thought herself too good for him, but she never said so, and no, she never acted that way either. But maybe it was just an evil thought in his mind anyway.

Jake’s path seldom crossed Marster’s. He stayed out of his way as much as possible, but if by chance they ever came face to face, Marster laughed and slapped Jake’s back and talked down to his slave, Jake, like he did to one of his good hound dogs. Jake hated Marster and despised himself and looked at Hetta and got mad and evil. But that was the end of it. He never dared say anything or do anything about it.

Now she was no longer young and slender and lovely. Her breasts were long and flabby; her belly always bloated, whether she was big in family way or not, and her legs and thighs were now covered with large broken blood vessels that made it painful when she stood long or walked far. Only her black face was still the same, serene, dignified, sullen, and quiet by turns. Even her neck was changed and looked shorter. Her hair was still the same, and her hands and feet were still small, and she still believed in everything being spotlessly clean.

Well, now she is dying, and they’ll send me away. I guess in a way I ought to be glad. Guess in a way I am glad to get away from here. Marster’s always said he’ll get a fair price for a good stud like me.

Midnight came and thirteen people waited for death. The black pot boiled, and the full moon rode the clouds high in the heavens and straight up over their heads. The child, Vyry, stirred in the arms of her nurse, the old black crone, Mammy Sukey. Aunt Sally, sitting near Tom and May Liza, had made a place for her son, Sam, the carriage boy, to sit beside her. It was not a night for people to sleep easy. Every now and then the squinch owl hollered and the crackling fire would flare and the black pot boil. Aunt Sally kept wondering what would happen to the little girl, Vyry, not only now, but when she got too big for Mammy Sukey to keep her. Would Marster bring her in his house as he had done all his other bastards? Even though they never lasted long in the Big House, what would Big Missy Salina say? Aunt Sally looked again at the child sleeping in Mammy Sukey’s arms and thought how much she and the little Missy Lillian in the Big House looked alike. In her mind she thought, "They could pass for twins—same sandy hair, same gray-blue eyes, same milk-white skin. One of them was Hetta’s child, and one of them was Big Missy Salina’s. But they were both Marse John’s and there was no mistake about that. What was even more interesting, they were nearly the same age. Granny Ticey had been granny for both and Hetta had wet-nursed Miss Lillian just like her own Vyry. Big Missy had been pleased as punch with her daughter’s resemblance to her father until she learned about Hetta’s child and a few weeks later had seen Vyry. Aunt Sally glanced up at the Big House, and, just as she had suspected, the light was still burning in Marse John’s room. All the rest of the house was dark.

Sometime between midnight and dawn the night subtly began to change. Those who had been wakeful were now drugged with sleep, and those who had slept too long and hard were now wakeful. Even before the first thread of light shot like a ribbon across the tenuous line where earth touched the sky, there was a stirring of sleeping people and animals in preparation for the coming of the morning. It was four o’clock, getting-up time for the field hands, and the cocks began to crow loudly for day. In that changing hour Sis Hetta breathed her last and slipped quietly away.

It was Granny Ticey who closed Hetta’s eyes. In annoyance and chagrin, and partly in genuine sadness, pity, and grief, tears rolled down her wrinkled black cheeks. With her lips tightly set, and her eyes brimming, she pulled the coarse sack sheet over Hetta’s face.

Outside the cabin the watchers were half asleep, half nodding, half dozing. Now the rasping noises had ceased, and in the long, thick silence that followed they realized that Hetta was gone.

The black pot was still and the white ashes were cold. In the growing daylight the moon’s wan light was lusterless on the far horizon. Soon it would be time to bathe the dead body and prepare it for an early burial, but suddenly Granny Ticey gave a bloodcurdling yell, startling all the watchers and making them all sit up wide awake. She ran out of the cabin into the dawning daylight. Gathering up all her ample skirts, coarse petticoats, and apron, she threw them over her head, showing her aged nakedness while covering her face, and thus she ran blindly and screaming down the road.

In less than a minute, the death wail went up out of every cabin in the Quarters, and Brother Ezekiel began the death chant:

Soon one morning,

Death come knocking at my door.

Soon one morning,

Death come knocking at my door.

Soon one morning,

Death come knocking at my door.

Oh, my Lord,

Oh, my Lord,

What shall I do?

When Israel was in Egypt’s land—

Let my people go.

Oppressed so hard they could not stand—

Let my people go.

2

Along the Big Road in Egypt’s land . . .

VYRY, WAKE UP CHILD, wake up so’s we can make haste and git along.

Mammy Sukey shook the sleeping child and she stirred in her sleep.

Wake up, wake up! Sun’s up, and us got a far ways to travel. Git up, now, git up and make haste, I says.

Vyry was seven, and the old crone, Mammy Sukey, was all the mother she had ever known or could remember. Today was special. When Vyry remembered, she jumped up from her pallet, rubbing her eyes with her fists and nudging her legs and feet together.

Today I’m going to the Big House to stay! she thought to herself.

What you gone say when you sees Big Missy? and Mammy Sukey’s words shook her out of her reverie. Vyry bowed herself and crossed her legs in an elaborate curtsey, and with a solemn face and soft voice said, I’m gone say, ‘Morning to yall, Missy.’

What you gone say to Marster?

Morning to yall, Marster.

And the young Missy Lillyum?

Morning, Missy!

And young Marster John?

Morning, Marster!

After the slow and serious rehearsal Mammy Sukey nodded approval.

That’s good. That’s good. That’s just like I showed you. Mind your manners good, and be real nice and polite. You a big gal now, but you ain’t gone be no field hand and no yard nigger. You is gone wait on Quality and you got to act like Quality. Go to now—eat your vittles.

While she talked she fixed their breakfast, pulling out of a flour sack two tin plates. She went outside her cabin and from the smoldering fire, dying away into ashes, she brought a hoecake of bread and scraps of fried salt meat. Together they ate, after Mammy Sukey muttered a blessing over the food. The child mixed the bread and the sweet thick syrup with her fingers as she had long watched the toothless old woman do, and together they washed down the food with a gourd dipper of cold water, Mammy Sukey drinking first, and then Vyry.

When they started down the Big Road toward Marse John’s Big House, nearly five miles away as the crow flies, dew was still on the grass, but the rising sun was already beaming down on Vyry’s bonnet and on Mammy Sukey’s head rag. At first the cool, damp grass and the moist earth felt squishy under Vyry’s bare feet, but soon they were on a hot dusty clay road. Occasionally she felt pebbles and roots roughen her way so that she stubbed her toes, and sometimes she stumbled.

Ever since she could remember Mammy Sukey had been bringing her along this dirt road, taking her to the Big House many times. Sometimes they picked a pail of blackberries early in the morning before the sun was high. Sometimes they went fishing and caught catfish for their supper. Most times they ambled along just enjoying the summer and the Georgia countryside—butterflies and will-o’-the-wisps, and pretty pink flowers with deep cups of gold pollen that grew along the wayside, or scarlet-colored cardinals and blue jays chattering and screeching and flying over their heads.

But today was different. Today they were in a big hurry, and Mammy Sukey held her hand so tightly it felt hot and sweaty, and her fingers felt cramped. The old woman muttered to herself, and sometimes she seemed to forget the little girl who was trudging along beside her.

Ain’t make a speck of difference nohow. Politeness and cleanness and sweet ways ain’t make no difference nohow. She gone stomp her and tromp her and beat her and mighty nigh kill her anyhow. And the child listening was puzzled and troubled, but she did not question Mammy Sukey.

She had been to the Big House many times and she knew what to expect. Marse John was always kind to her when he was around. He would tell the little Missy to share when he brought bananas and oranges and other goodies. Give Vyry some, too, he would tell her and Miss Lillian would do as her father said. The two little girls often played together making mud pies, or running over the hillside playing hide-and-go-seek and playhouse under the big live oaks and shouting and laughing in fun. On a hot summer’s day Vyry had sometimes seen inside the Big House and stood in awe at the dark coolness inside and the richness of the lavish furnishings. In Big Missy’s bedroom there was a great oaken bed whose headboard nearly touched the high ceiling and the high mountain of feather mattresses always was covered with a snow-white counterpane. In young Missy Lillian’s there was a tester bed with a canopy of sprigged pink and white cotton while the Marster and young Marster had rooms with massive dark furniture with silk furnishing in dark greens and reds and blues. Vyry would go from room to room, tiptoeing in awe and not daring to touch all the wonderful things she saw and the beauty of the rooms that seemed endless. Now, when she thought about it, she wondered why she did not feel happy about going to the Big House to stay.

She vaguely felt, however, that neither young Marster John nor his mother, Big Missy Salina, liked her very much. They were never kind and Mammy Sukey was always trying