Why I start yelling for him after all this time, I don’t know. Maybe something in me knows that I never get to say his name again, ’cause after they tie me up, they take my tongue.
First I get lost in the pain, then I get lost in the fever. The master comes, takes a look, and Emma say he’s not happy about what’s been done, but it’s too late to fix it. For a couple of weeks my mind don’t know where it’s at. After the fever passes, Hester and Emma get me up walking, and slow but sure, those two bring me ’round. Emma gets me to drink a mix that softens the burn, but I choke on it because I don’t know how to drink with no tongue. After I start keeping the drinks down, in the next days Emma comes at me with mashed sweet potato. She steps back when I bring it up. That night she comes with more. This time the sweet potato got molasses.
It takes a long time to work it down ’cause every swallow makes me feel like it’s going to get stuck. One night I figure out that I can die if I don’t let no food stay down, but Emma works so hard to get it in me that I wait for her to go before I bring it up again.
And that’s what I do every time Emma leaves, until one night she catches on. I lay down and make like I’s going to sleep so Emma will leave, but instead she comes over to my pallet. “Scoot over,” she says, then lays down beside me. “I gon’ stay the night.”
What’s she doing? I wonder. We lay there looking at each other. “You got to cry, girl,” she says. I look at her real long. I don’t feel like crying. I don’t feel nothing but that my babies are gone and there’s a fire in my mouth. Besides, what’s Emma doing telling me to cry? If there’s one woman on this place who don’t cry, it’s Emma. Everybody knows that.
So Emma and me just lay there looking at each other. She takes a rag to wipe my mouth. I’m still so sore that I don’t know there’s spit and maybe some blood dripping out the side. I close my eyes, hoping she will go so I can throw up the potato.
“Suk,” she say real soft, but I keep my eyes closed like I’m sleeping. “Sukey,” she say again, “you got to live, girl. They never should a done this to you. What my baby boy gonna do if you gone?” When I hear a noise like she’s choking, I open my eyes. I never hear that sound coming out of her. Then I see her whole face is wet, and I know she’s crying the best she remembers how. My arms feel like logs, but I reach over and take the rag she got and I wipe down her face. More choking sounds come from Emma until her whole body is wet and shaking like she got a bad fever, so I put my arms ’round her like she one of my babies.
I hold her like that till we both fall asleep. In the morning I get up when she’s sleeping, her eyes swollen bad as one of the times she’s been drinking and fighting. I get myself up and go to old Tony and let him know that I need two cups of his healing tea. I take them back and give one to Emma. She don’t say nothing when we drink it together, but since that day we watch out for each other. And when she needs to, Emma does the talking for me.
I work in the garden, but more and more old Tony needs me to help out in his hospital. He starts teaching me about the herbs that help in the healing, which ones do what, and when I start to write down the mixes, he sees that I can read and write, and it’s not long before I find out that he can do the same.
On the day I find out where my boys is at, someplace down in Georgia, I set it in my mind to go find them. A few nights later I try running, but I don’t get far before they catch me. They give me a lashing that puts me down for a couple of weeks, and they tell me I go again, they kill me.
Maybe a year goes by before one of the field men, drunk, gets ahold of me and takes me back of the barns. First I fight, but when he gets rough, I just let him finish up. He catches me two more times before I write a note to old Tony. He goes to Emma, and that night the man who’s bothering me gets to know what Emma’s like when she’s not happy. When I start showing a baby, Emma shakes her head, then puts her arm around my shoulders and says not to worry, she’ll help me when the time comes.
“Don’t give him a name,” Emma says when the baby shows up, but in my head I call him Nate. After that I take care of him right along with Emma’s boy, before they move the boys down to the quarters and then sell them off. The day they go, Emma does the fighting for me. She goes too far, and the beating that she gets shoulda done her in, but Hester and me bring her through.
After that time the three of us watch out for each other until the day when Hester and her girl, Clora, and me gets sold up here to Southwood plantation. They don’t buy Emma.
AT SOUTHWOOD THEY need somebody to run their new hospital, so they put me in there, thinking I know more than I do. I don’t say otherwise; lucky for me I got all of old Tony’s medicines writ down. It don’t seem to bother nobody that I can read and write, and they like that I don’t talk.
There’s a man at Southwood who right from the start was good to me. When he got the fever, I treated him, and after he got back on his feet, we get together and he the daddy of this baby. It take some time before he lets me know that he helps colored folk that are running, and it don’t take long before I’m helping him out. He got a big job on this place, heads up some of the field workers. The two of us talk about running one day, but we know we can’t go together. They’d track us till we was dead.
Almost every time another runner comes through, my man says, “Sukey, girl, you wanna take this chance, you go.” But even though I want this baby free, I guess I’m just too scared. Where am I gonna go? I used to think I could try to find my way back to Virginia and Miss Lavinia at Tall Oaks, but then Masta Marshall would just sell me again.
Even if I never get away, I feel good helping others make it out. We never know for sure when the next bunch of runners is coming through. Sometimes it’s only one, sometimes four or five. One more scared than the next, but that don’t stop them. I keep hoping that one of these times Emma or maybe even one of my boys is going to come through.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
1830
James
IT WAS ALREADY June, the Monday morning we set out for Southwood. I used great care to dress, taking it upon myself to polish my tall brown boots and brush out my best dark brown jacket. Hester provided me with a clean and pressed white shirt and cravat, and before donning it, I gave myself a close shave. As I patted on my Bay Rum, I peered into my traveling case mirror and was relieved to see that wearing a hat had served its purpose, and the sun had not affected my complexion.
Surprisingly, Adelaide joined us at the morning table, dressed prettily in a pale green riding costume. When she announced her decision to accompany us, her father first objected, but she pouted in the way he could not resist, and with a shrug meant for me, he gave his assent. In fact, I was happy to have her along, thinking she might prove an added distraction if anyone looked me over too carefully.
The horse provided me was a gray thoroughbred. I was anxious to leave and did not use the mounting stone but made the leap up onto the horse’s back.
“You see, Father! That is how it is done.” Adelaide nodded at me approvingly.
“Well, maybe if I were ten years younger and a few pounds lighter,” Mr. Spencer said, patting his round stomach, but he did not smile at her as usual, and I realized then how tense he was. In fact, he appeared as anxious as I felt. All I desired was to get hold of Pan and to leave this place. I had my purse in the saddlebag, and with any luck, by tomorrow, Pan and I would be on our way up to Williamsburg. There I could only hope that Robert and my daughter safely awaited my arrival.