I give the paper over to Sukey, who waves it around to dry it out, then folds it and puts it inside the top of her dress by her big chests that hide the paper easy.
I want her to talk some more, so I ask her what’s going to happen to me if I get took for a slave, but she only shakes her head and goes back to her room. After a while, when she looks out and thinks everybody is sleeping, I see her take my letter out from her chests. Then with a long stick she hooks down one of the baskets hanging from the ceiling. It’s filled with weeds, but she takes them out. Then she turns the basket upside down and taps at the bottom until it lifts out. From what I can see, it looks like the basket got two bottoms. She slips my letter in, then closes up the bottom, and after she puts the weeds back in, she hooks the whole works up again onto a rafter. I count three baskets over from the corner and wonder if she’ll remember which basket she put it in.
It’s hard to see in her room because she’s got so many baskets of weeds hanging all over, but squeezed in there she has a chair and a small bed with a brown blanket, just like we all got. There’s nothing on the wood floor and no window, but she got a table with some quill pens and some ink with some paper sitting to the side.
Later I find out that she uses the paper to write down who is sick and how many babies get born, and every week she gives that over to the two white men who come to see her.
I wonder when she’s going to send my letter off. I don’t like this place and I want to go home.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
1830
Sukey
EVEN THOUGH I say that I don’t want nothin’ to do with this boy, I never seen nothin’ like him before. Almost every night now he rubs my hands down and I don’t remember somethin’ ever feeling so good. Trouble is, he got that sweet way about him, and while he’s rubbin’ my hands, he keeps asking me questions. I don’t give no answers ’cause there is none. One night he say, “What happens if I get took for a slave?” I keep my eyes closed like I don’t hear him, and I try not to think about it. He’s small in size, but he’s ’bout the same age as me the first time I got sold, and thinking back on it, I don’t know how I come through.
I FORGET HOW many days we was tied up and traveling, but on our last day, when they drive us through the town, I hang my head because people stop what they’re doing when they see us coming. Some laugh and poke fun but most only get quiet when they look at us. Some shake their head and look away. One of the slave men that’s tied can’t take no more and starts yelling at the town people watching us, “What you lookin’ at? What you lookin’ at?” The trader slaps the whip at him, but that don’t stop him, and he starts to laugh in a way that scares me. It’s like he can’t stop hisself.
I’s feeling so low that I don’t look up no more. I just want to get to the auction yard, and when we do get there I almost feel good. The place has a high wood fence around it and they got to unlock a big door to let us in. We don’t have no time to look around before they free us from the line. When they untie me from Ernest, I see his hands shaking, and that makes my stomach knot up. I never see him look scared like this before, and I’s wondering what he knows that I don’t know.
They hand me over to a old woman, and I think maybe she’s a slave herself because she’s rough in her talk when she takes me out to a small wood shed. There she brings two buckets of cold water, a rag, and a chunk of soap. She has me take off my clothes and shoes and tells me to wash myself, all the while shaking her head as she watches. But I don’t care. Let her look. When I start to wash, my sore skin burns like it’s on fire. I don’t stop, but I soap up and scrub the stink away. Real nice, I ask the woman to bring me two more buckets of water. When she does, I soap up again, then rinse myself over and over. The cold water bites at me, and I keep catching my breath with each dose, but at least I feel clean. The woman hands me a big rag to dry myself with, then gives me a old and mostly clean brown petticoat and dress. We don’t talk, but she keeps watching everything I do. Now that I’s clean, I start to feel more like my old self.
“Please,” I say, “I need to write a letter. Could you help me?”
She sighs and shakes her head. “I jus’ know that you was somebody’s pet! It was those clothes and those shoes. And now you talkin’ ’bout writin’. I see this over and over. Young ones like you startin’ to look too good to the masta, the wife sell you off. That what happen?”
She brings over a brown rag to tie around my head and talks low into my ear. “Don’t you go tellin’ nobody here that you can write.” She steps back with her hands on her hips to look me over. “You been with a man yet?”
I shake my head, pretty sure of what she’s saying.
“You start your bleedin’ yet?”
I nod, wishing she’d stop asking me these questions.
She makes a face. “Till you sold, you keep your eyes down, you keep your head down. Don’t go smilin’ at no mens. They ask, you say you trained for the big house.”
Then she hands me a gray blanket and takes me out to a stall.
INSIDE THE HIGH wall that hides the slave pen, a dirt yard runs down the whole side of what looks like a long barn. The big building has rooms that look like stalls in the horse barn, with doors that have bars across the windows. In time I find out that they need those windows so buyers can get a look at us before they put us on the block.
Inside the stall I get put in, there is a dirt floor with clean hay spread out. There, a woman and a small child sit on a bench against the wall across from the door. The woman looks up at me when I come in but doesn’t say nothing. Her girl is asleep with her head in her mama’s lap.
“What happens to us now?” I ask when we are alone.
“Now we gets sold,” she say real quiet.
“Who will buy us?”
“Some mens come. They look us over. I gon’ tell them I got to take my Jenny or I don’ go. I jus’ don’ go noplace without my Jenny. No, sir, I don’ go noplace without my Jenny. No, sir, I don’.”
I don’t like the way she keeps saying the same thing over and over, so I sit on the other bench, but when I sit on my sore parts, I get up again. I stand up until I can’t no more, and then I wrap the gray blanket around me and I lay down on the hay. The dirt floor underneath stinks like a privy, but I shut my eyes and right away I sleep.
EARLY THE NEXT morning I hear men talking outside the window. One of the voices is Jake’s. “She’s trained for the big house,” he says. “Worked there all her life, but she knows her place. She’s good with little ones and knows how to cook good, too. Only lived in one place, been treated right all her life, but with the crops last year, Mr. Pyke’s needing to sell some off. She’s one of his best, and he’s looking for a good price.”
“You say she’s good with children?” another voice asked.
“All by herself she took care of the three little ones at the big house,” Jake said.
“Let’s take a look,” the unknown voice said.
The door squeals open. I sit up, feel the soreness on my bottom, and quick get to my feet. The other woman gets up from the ground and moves fast to sit on a bench and pulls her daughter onto her lap.
“Sukey.” Jake comes strutting to me, full of hisself. “This here man is looking to buy you before I even have a chance to put you up on the block.” Jake talks like him and me is friends.
The man looks me over, turns me ’round two or three times, then asks me to show him my hands. My hands are clean, but my nails are all broke up. He turns them over to look at my palms. “It don’t look like you do much heavy work,” he say.
“Like I said, she was only used for the big house,” Jake say. “Mr. Pyke spoils his house nigras. She never lived down in the quarters.”
“Can you sew?” the new man asks. I look up to see that he’s older than his voice sounds. His clothes are cut good, but he isn’t dressed like a man from a big house. Later I find out that he’s a buyer for the farm he works on. His eyes are waiting on me.