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  And so Ness did. She walked out to her audience of two, her shoulders bared, as well as the bottom halves of her calves, and when Susan Stockham saw her, she fainted outright. It was all Tom Allan could do to catch his wife while shouting at Margaret to go change Ness at once.

  Margaret rushed her into the back room, and left in search of field clothes, and Ness stood in the center of that room, running her hands along her body, reveling in her ugly nakedness. She knew it was the intricate scars on her bare shoulders that had alarmed them all, but the scars weren’t just there. No, her scarred skin was like another body in and of itself, shaped like a man hugging her from behind with his arms hanging around her neck. They went up from her breasts, rounded the hills of her shoulders, and traveled the full, proud length of her back. They licked the top of her buttocks before trailing away into nothing. Ness’s skin was no longer skin really, more like the ghost of her past made seeable, physical. She didn’t mind the reminder.

  Margaret came back in the room with a head scarf, a brown top that covered the shoulders, a red skirt that went all the way to the floor. She watched Ness put them on. “It a shame, really. For a second, I’s thought you mighta been prettier than me.” She clucked her tongue twice and left the room.

  —

  And so Ness worked in the field. It was not new to her. In Hell, she’d worked the land too. In Hell, the sun scorched cotton so hot it almost burned the palms of your hands to touch it. Holding those small white puffs almost felt like holding fire, but God forbid you let one drop. The Devil was always watching. Hell was where she had learned to be a good field hand, and the skill had carried her all the way to Tuscumbia.

  It was her second month at the Stockham plantation. She lived in one of the women’s cabins, but she had made no friends. Everyone knew her as the woman who had snubbed TimTam, and the ladies, angry when they thought that she was the object of his desire and even angrier when they realized she didn’t want to be that object, treated her as though she were little more than a strong wind, an annoyance that you could still push through.

  In the mornings, Ness prepared her pail to take out to the field with her. Cornmeal cakes, a bit of salt pork, and, if she was lucky, some greens. In Hell, she had learned to eat standing up. Picking cotton with her right hand, shoveling food in with her left. It wasn’t something she was required to do here at Tom Allan’s, work while eating, but she didn’t know any other way.

  “Look like she think she better den us,” one woman called, just loudly enough so Ness could hear.

  “Tom Allan sho gon’ think so,” another said.

  “Nuh-uh, Tom Allan ain’t paid her no mind since she got kicked out da big house,” the first one said.

  Ness had learned how to tune the voices out. She tried to remember the Twi that Esi used to speak to her. Tried to still her mind until all that was left was the thin, stern line of her mother’s lips, lips that used to usher out words of love in a tongue that Ness could no longer quite grasp. Phrases and words would come to her, mismatched or lopsided, wrong.

  She worked all day like this, listening to the sounds of the South. The insistent buzz of mosquitoes, that screech of cicadas, the hum of slave gossip. At night, she would return to her quarters, beat out her pallet until dust billowed from it, wrapping around her like a hug. She would set it back down again and wait for a sleep that rarely came, trying her best to still the harrowing images that danced behind her closed eyelids.

  It was on a night like this, just when she had snapped her pallet into the air, that the pounding started, fists beating against the door of the women’s cabin in a steady, urgent rhythm. “Please!” a voice called. “Please, help us.”

  A woman named Mavis opened the door. TimTam stood there cradling his daughter, Pinky, in his arms. He pushed into the room, his voice choked though there were no tears in his eyes. “I think she got what her mama had,” he said.

  The women cleared a spot for the girl and TimTam set her down before he started to pace. “Oh Lord, oh Lord, oh Lord,” he cried.

  “You bess go fetch Tom Allan so’s he can get the doctor,” Ruthie said.

  “Doctor ain’t helped last time,” TimTam said.

  Ness stood behind a row of women, their shoulders squared as if headed into battle. She pushed her way through to the center to catch a glimpse of the child. Pinky was small and sharp-edged, as though her body were built from sticks with no bend to them. Her hair was tied up in two big puffs. The whole time the women were watching her, she made no noise save for a quick intake of breath.

  “Ain’t nothing wrong wid her,” Ness said.

  Suddenly, TimTam stopped his pacing as everyone turned to stare at Ness. “You ain’t been round here long,” TimTam said. “Pinky ain’t spoke a word since her mama died and now she can’t stop with these hiccups.”

  “Ain’t nothing but hiccups,” Ness said. “Those ain’t killed anyone yet, far’s I know.” She looked around at all the women shaking their heads at her disapprovingly, but she couldn’t tell what she had done wrong.

  TimTam pulled her aside. “These women ain’t told you?” he whispered, and Ness shook her head. The women so rarely spoke to her, and she had finally gotten good at tuning out their gossip. TimTam cleared his throat and hung his head a little lower. “See, we know ain’t nothing wrong wid her but the hiccups, but we been tryin’ to get her to speak, so…”

  His voice trailed off as Ness began to understand that the whole thing had been nothing more than a plot to trick little Pinky into utterance. Ness pulled away from TimTam and looked at the small congregation of women carefully, from one to the next and then the next. She made her way to the center of the room, where Pinky lay on the pallet, her eyes staring up at the ceiling. The girl turned her eyes toward Ness and hiccuped once more.

  Ness addressed the room. “Lord, I don’t know what kinda foolishness I done walked into at this here plantation, but y’all need to leave this girl alone. Maybe she don’t want to speak cuz she know just how crazy it make you or maybe she ain’t got nothin’ to say yet, but I reckon she ain’t gon’ start tonight just because y’all makin’ like you actors in a travelin’ show.”

  The women wrung their hands and shifted their feet, and TimTam’s head sunk a little lower.

  Ness walked back to her pallet, finished beating the dust out, and lay down.

  TimTam walked over to Pinky. “Well, les go,” he said, reaching for the girl, but she pulled away. “I said, les go,” he repeated, shame coloring his voice gray, but the girl snatched herself away again. She went over to where Ness lay, her eyes shut tightly as she begged sleep to come quick. Pinky’s hand brushed Ness’s shoulder, and she opened her eyes to see the girl staring at her, round moon eyes imploring. And because Ness understood loss, and because she understood motherlessness and wanting and even silence, she reached for the girl’s hand and pulled her down onto the bed.

  “You go on ’head,” she said to TimTam, Pinky’s head already nestled between the soft cushions of her breasts. “I got her tonight.”

  —

  From that day forward, Pinky could not be separated from Ness. She had even moved from the other women’s cabin into Ness’s. She slept with Ness, ate with Ness, took walks with Ness, and cooked with Ness. Still, she didn’t speak, and Ness never asked her to, knowing full well that Pinky would speak when she had something to say, laugh when something was truly funny. For her part, Ness, who had not known how much she missed company, took comfort in the girl’s quiet presence.

  Pinky was the water girl. On any given day she would make as many as forty trips to the small creek on the edge of the Stockhams’ plantation. She carried a plank of wood across her back, arms folded over it from behind so that she looked like a man holding a cross, and on each end of the plank hung two silver pails. Once she had reached the creek, Pinky would fill those pails, bring them back to the main house, and then empty them into the large water buckets that lived on the Stockham porch. She would fill t
he basins in the house so that the Stockham children would have fresh water for their afternoon baths. She would water the flowers that sat on Susan Stockham’s dressing table. From there, she went to the kitchen to give two pailfuls to Margaret for the day’s cooking. She walked the same worn path every day, down to the creek, back up to the house. By the end of the day, her arms would throb so hard Ness could feel her heart beat in them when the girl crawled into bed with Ness at night and the woman hugged her close.

  The hiccups had not stopped, continuing since the day TimTam had brought her into Ness’s cabin hoping to scare the child into speaking. Everyone pitched in with a remedy.

  “Stand da girl upside down!”

  “Tell her hold her breath and swall-ah!”

  “Cross two straws on top her head!”

  The last remedy, put forth by a woman named Harriet, was the one that seemed to work. Pinky made thirty-four trips to the creek without a single hiccup. Ness was on the porch getting her fill of water on Pinky’s thirty-fifth trip back. The two redheaded Stockham children were out and about that day. The boy, named Tom Jr., and the girl, Mary. They were running up the stairs just as Pinky rounded the corner, and Tom Jr. knocked the plank so that one of the pails went flying into the air, water raining down on everyone on the porch. Mary started to cry.

  “My dress is all wet!” she said.

  Margaret, who had just finished ladling out water for one of the other slaves, set the ladle down. “Hush now, Miss Mary.”

  Tom Jr., who had never been much for gallantry, decided to try it just then for his sister’s sake. “Well, apologize to Mary!” he said to Pinky. The two were the same age, though Pinky was about a foot taller.

  Pinky opened her mouth, but no words came out.

  “She sorry,” Ness said quickly.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” Tom Jr. said.

  Mary had stopped crying and was staring at Pinky intently. “Tom, you know she don’t talk,” Mary said. “It’s all right, Pinky.”

  “She’ll talk if I tell her to talk,” Tom Jr. said, shoving his sister. “Apologize to Mary,” he repeated. The sun was high and hot that day. Indeed, Ness could see that the two wet drops on Mary’s dress had already dried.

  Pinky, eyes welling with tears, opened her mouth again and a wave of hiccups came out, frantic and loud.

  Tom Jr. shook his head. He went into the house while everyone watched and returned with the Stockham cane. It was twice his length, made of a dull birchwood. It wasn’t thick, but it was so heavy that Tom Jr. could hardly hold it with both of his hands, let alone the one it would take to snap it back.

  “Speak, nigger,” Tom Jr. said, and Margaret, who had long since stopped her ladling, ran into the house crying, “Ooh, Tom Junior, I’m gon’ find yo daddy!”

  Pinky was sobbing and hiccuping all at once, the hiccups blocking whatever speech she might have given. Tom Jr. lifted the cane in his right hand with great effort and tried to snap it over his shoulder, but Ness, who was standing behind him, caught the tip of it in her hand. It tore through her palms as she tugged so hard that Tom Jr. fell to the ground. She dragged him half an inch.

  Tom Allan appeared on the porch with Margaret, who was breathless and clutching her chest. “What’s this?” he asked.

  Tom Jr. started crying. “She was gonna hit me, Daddy!” he said.

  Margaret tried to speak up, “Massa Tom, you lie! You was—”

  Tom Allan raised his hand to stop Margaret’s speech and looked at Ness. Maybe he remembered the scars on her shoulders, remembered how they had kept his wife laid up in bed for the rest of that day and put him off his dinner for a week. Maybe he wondered what a nigger had to do to earn stripes like that, what trouble a nigger like that must be capable of. And there his son was on the ground with dirt on his shorts and the mute child Pinky crying. Ness was sure that he could see clear as day what had happened, but it was the memory of her scars that made him doubt. A nigger with scars like that, and his son on the ground. There wasn’t anything else he could do.

  “I’ll deal with you soon enough,” he said to Ness, and everyone wondered what would happen.

  —

  That evening, Ness returned to the women’s quarters. She crawled into her bed and closed her eyes, waiting for the images that played every night behind her lids to still to darkness. Beside her, Pinky began to hiccup.

  “Oh Lord, here she go! Ain’t we had enough trouble fo one day?” one of the women said. “Can’t get no kinda rest when dis girl start to hiccup.”

  Ashamed, Pinky slapped a hand to her mouth as though, with it, she could erect a wall to block the sound’s escape.

  “Don’t pay dem no mind,” Ness whispered. “Thinking ’bout it only make it worse.” She didn’t know if she was speaking to Pinky or to herself.

  Pinky squeezed her eyes tight as a series of hiccups exploded from her lips.

  “Leave her be,” Ness said to the chorus of groans, and they listened. The events of the day had planted a little dual seed of respect and pity for Ness that they watered with deference of their own. They didn’t know what Tom Allan would do.

  In the night, once they had all finally reached sleep, Pinky rolled over and snuggled into the soft skin of Ness’s gut. Ness allowed herself to hold the girl, and she allowed herself to drift off into memory.

  She is back in Hell. She is married to a man they call Sam, but who comes straight from the Continent and speaks no English. The master of Hell, the Devil himself, with red-leather skin and a shock of gray hair, prefers his slaves married “for reasons of insurance,” and because Ness is new to Hell and because no one has claimed her, she is given to calm the new slave Sam.

  At first they do not speak to each other. Ness doesn’t understand his strange tongue, and she is in awe of him, for he is the most beautiful man that she has ever seen, with skin so dark and creamy that looking at it could very well be the same thing as tasting it. His is the large, muscular body of the African beast, and he refuses to be caged, even with Ness as his welcoming gift. Ness knows that the Devil must have paid a great deal of money for him, and therefore expects hard work, but nothing anyone does seems to tame him. On his first day he fights with another slave, spits on the overseer, and is stood on a platform and whipped in front of everyone until the blood on the ground is high enough to bathe a baby.

  Sam refuses to learn English. Each night, in retribution for his still-black tongue, the Devil sends him back to their marriage bed with lashes that are reopened as soon as they heal. One night, enraged, Sam destroys the slave quarters. Their room is savaged from wall to wall, and when the Devil hears of the destruction he comes to serve punishment.

  “I did it,” Ness says. She has spent the night hidden in the left corner of the room, watching this man she’s been told is her husband become the animal he’s been told that he is.

  The Devil shows no mercy, even though he knows she is lying. Even though Sam tries time and again to accept the blame. She is beaten until the whip snaps off her back like pulled taffy, and then she is kicked to the ground.

  When he leaves, Sam is crying and Ness is barely conscious. Sam’s words come out in a thick and feverish prayer, and Ness can’t understand what he’s saying. He picks her up gingerly and places her on their pallet. He leaves the house in search of the herbal doctor, five miles away, who comes back with the roots and leaves and salves that are smeared into Ness’s back as she slips in and out of consciousness. It is the first night that Sam sleeps in the cot with her, and in the morning, when she wakes to fresh pain and festered sores, she finds him sitting at her feet, peering at her face with his big, tired eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he says. They are the first English words he ever speaks to her, to anyone.

  That week, they work side by side in the fields, and the Devil, though watchful, does not act against them. In the evenings, they return to their bed, but they sleep on opposite sides of it, never touching. Some nights, they fear that the Devil is
watching them as they lie, and those are the nights Sam hugs her body to his, waiting for the metronome of fear that keeps her heart’s drumbeat moving quickly to slow. His vocabulary has grown to include her name and his, “don’t worry” and “quiet.” In a month, he will learn “love.”

  In a month, once the wounds on both of their backs have hardened to scars, they finally consummate their marriage. He picks her up so easily, she thinks she must have turned into one of the rag dolls she makes for the children to play with. She has never been with a man before, but she imagines that Sam is not a man. For her, he has become something much larger than a man, the Tower of Babel itself, so close to God that it must be toppled. He runs his hands along her scabby back, and she does the same along his, and as they work together, clutching each other, some scars reopen. They are both bleeding now, both bride and bridegroom, in this unholy holy union. Breath leaves his mouth and enters hers, and they lie together until the roosters crow, until it’s time to return to the fields.

  Ness awoke to Pinky’s finger poking her shoulder. “Ness, Ness!” she spoke. Ness turned to face the girl, trying to hide her surprise. “Was you having a bad dream?” she asked.

  “No,” Ness said.

  “It looked like you was having a bad dream,” the girl said, disappointed because when she was lucky Ness told her stories.

  “It was bad,” Ness replied. “But it wasn’t no dream.”

  *

  Morning announced its presence through the roosters’ cries, and the women in the slave quarters readied themselves for the day, all the while whispering about Ness’s fate.

  No one had ever seen Tom Allan do a public whipping before, not like the ones they saw, or experienced, at other plantations. Their master had a river for a stomach, and he hated the sight of blood. No, when Tom Allan wished to punish one of his slaves, he did it in private, somewhere he could close his eyes during, lie down after. But this seemed different. Ness was one of the few slaves that he had ever publicly berated, and she knew that she had embarrassed him, what with his own child lying in the dirt while Pinky stood silent and unscathed.