From time to time I take out Uncle Joe's age-stick. One side shows a notch for the passing of each year; the other shows the passing of experience, symbols of how he growed. We maybe mark time by birthdays, but we don't grow by them. We grow by the befores and afters, them times when big change rolls over you, when the earth jiggles and shakes. On Joe's stick, carved early on his life, is a flying heart, with a tail like a kite. Not much later is a flat heart, broke in two on the ground.
I was fourteen when my heart first flew from my breast. For a year it soared on the fitful winds of a gal named Lucy, for another year after that it faltered. And soon after I married that gal, made her a part of me, Master Peter smashed us all to pieces.
Master wasn't long home from the 18'n12 war 'fore Missus started pushing for him to get a maid servant for Mary Anne. "Mary Anne's twelve now, she should have her own maid. Little Jane Howley, who isn't half as pretty, got her own maid when she was ten." Comparisons with the Howleys, the Missus well knowed, was guaranteed to spur her husband in the direction she intended. Sure 'nough, the following Saturday night, he come home long after dark when the cooling embers gived off their smoky perfume. He crept in by the back servants' door, woke Gran, whispering, "I apologize for the lateness of the hour, Gran, but this gal needs a place to sleep. Her name is Lucy, I think, and she is to be trained to help you in the kitchen and to be Miss Mary Anne's maid."
He was carrying a young gal of about fourteen, slung over his shoulder like a sack of flour. He set her down, and even from where I was peeking on, I could see she was far from asleep—just seemed stunned, like a piglet carried in a sack what don't squirm or squeal. Master, on the other hand, be acting somewhat over-large. In his cups.
Frowning, Gran slipped off her shawl and tied it round the gal's shoulders. Something about the young'n made Gran say, "She an island gal?"
"I believe so," said the Master.
Gran wagged her head. "There'll be trouble to bubble now, you mark my words."
"Gran! I hardly expected such silly superstition and bias from you."
"Ain't superstition to know this gal don't speak English. Ain't I right?"
"I suppose. She hasn't spoken a word since I won her."
"Won her?"
I seed him set his backbone straight. He said, "Her native tongue is probably French. She is experienced in picking cotton and will likely be delighted to have housework. Her name is Lucy. I don't think it matters how she comes to be here."
Gran lifted the candle and brought it closer to the gal's face. I could see thoughts shooting behind them eyes, but she didn't look at nobody, didn't even blink.
"She knows nothing about the work you expects her to do," said Gran. "She won't be understanding a thing I tell her to do. And no matter who calls her 'Lucy,' she gonna have to answer to me and to the Missus and to Miss Mary Anne. Was this a bet you won or a bet you lost?"
Master's eyes darted away from the candle and from Gran. "Just do the best you can, Gran. I understand there will be a breaking-in period, during which we will all have to make concessions."
Later, when Gran was snoring and I seed Lucy asleep, too, I crawled over to Lucy's mat and watched her eyes move behind her lids. Her eyes was shaped like young birch leaves, sprouting off the stem of her nose, set wide in her face. She smelled of indigo. I peered close, not blinking, kinda under a spell like when you watch firelight. And though I knowed it to be a trespass, I couldn't help but touch her wild, foreign hair. It fell loose and long, felt just like the long spring grasses down by the creek where I liked to go with the horses and stretch out under the clouds. Oh, I was a goner, right from the start, and I couldn't tell you whether it were her hair or her eyes or her mouth that was most beautiful. She was small, like me, but shiny and smooth and perfect, like a doll. Her skin glowed like burnished copper, with nary a hair from her fingertips to her shoulder, smooth and tight and perfect.
I wondered about the island she come from. Iffen she ever seed snow before, iffen she left a family back there. She turned then in her sleep, and my heart about stopped when her night shirt—a big one Gran gived her—didn't turn all the way with her. Then I learned her skin weren't so perfect. I recognized the gnarl of scars from past beatings. My eyes traced a gristly line over her shoulder, and I next learned the pucker of burnt flesh. That poor gal done got branded.
My heart shifted in my chest. I stroked her wild hair. I whispered, "Lucy," and as I done so she opened her eyes right on me. Her eyes traveled from my hand on her hair, up my arm, and locked on my eyes.
"Lucinde," she corrected.
"Lucinde," I murmured. She reached for my wrist. I thought she was annoyed but her touch were light and curious. She put my hand to my own breast, and I understood and said, "Dred."
Gran spent a lot of time showing Lucy how to wash lace and linen, how to powder hair and lace up corsets. Gran was patient with Lucy. Mary Anne was not. That girl started complaining 'fore she even had her eyes open in the morning. By the third day of Lucy's "training," everybody in the big house was a misery. Mary Anne complained to her mama, the Missus complained to the Master, and the Master complained to Gran.
Gran told him outright: "It's like giving a kitten to a two-year-old: somebody's gotta learn the both of them how to treat each other or they's both gonna get mangled."
"The Missus can teach Mary Anne if you can teach Lucy," he said.
"I can learn that gal how to wait hand and foot on Mary Anne and I can keep this kitchen running from dawn till midnight, but I can't do both, not proper."
Took only one more week of everybody squawking 'fore Master decide to call Aunt Hannah in from the fields to help do the cooking. But since nobody liked Aunt Hannah's cooking much as they liked Gran's, the whole plantation still rolled along like a wheel without no axle.
Lucy, though, she played it like a child trundling a hoop with a stick. That gal just wouldn't do more iffen she thought she could get away with less. She bucked routines like a wild colt in its first bridle. Like a horse, too, she showed a equal mixture of startle and startling. Got so's I wouldn't come nigh without whistling, 'cause Lucy lashed out when took by surprise. Yet just as often she brung trouble down on her own head by making other folk jump. She'd jerk out on a impulse, grabbing the cloth on one of the children's dresses to feel its nap, or she'd go poking a finger on someone's arm to see how fat or bony they was. Her ways was strange. She'd talk that French patois that nobody could understand. She'd start laughing for no cause, leaving folk thinking she be laughing at them. She kept everybody off-balance, including Gran, including Master.
One time Master was called away just as Lucy be serving the dessert. Later when he return to eat his apple crumble, he told Lucy, "Heat this up." She taken the plate to the kitchen and just disappeared. Master waited and waited. Out of patience, he bust into the kitchen, demanding, "Where's my apple crumble!"
Lucy gived her saucy little knee-bend and said, "Master, I do as you say: I eat it up!"
He opened and shut his mouth like a fish gulping air. Only later did he find the words, and it was Gran what took the scolding.
"This gal understand not hardly a word yet," said Gran. "Show her what to do the best I can manage." Which is what she done, but that too become a bed of trouble, 'cause Lucy begun aping Gran's way of doing things. She surely didn't let Gran catch her, but she tried it out on other slaves, standing just like Gran: back straight, arms crossed on her chest, eyes almost closed. Everybody knowed she was being disrespectful and didn't laugh, so she soon gived it up. Not so with her pert little imitation of Mary Anne; that tickled many a funny bone. Lucy mocked that look of Mary Anne's when she was put-out: her jutting chin and the loud sniff of the nose, the little twist of the shoulders. Lucy mimed that pose whenever she and Mary Anne didn't see eye to eye, which were a dozen times a day.
And me? I was having the time of my young life, sure 'nough, 'cause I become Lucy's teacher, too. I understood her best, and she understood me best—or at least let on to, and I didn't care if she be shamming, playing dumb just so's I'd do the chore for her. I loved showing her things, any old thing, like lighting a fire with a flint and piece of cotton. I loved teaching her words and making up games to make the learning more fun. Lucy cottoned to English right quick, and by'n by I was giving her riddles to challenge her. It were a good game, made her think hard, made the work go along faster. First I gived her easy ones, like:
Eat 'em hot, eat 'em cold
Eat 'em young, eat 'em old
Eat 'em tender, eat 'em tough
Yet we never get enough
Hogs, of course. That were a easy one. Then I gived her harder and harder ones, like: "What's slick as a mole, black as coal, got a great long tail like a gopher hole?" She'd work on it through the day, and if evening come and she still couldn't get it, I gived her a clue: "It's something you use every day in the kitchen." And she'd think and show her pretty teeth and think some more. Finally her face lit up bright as the sun, and she flashed them pink gums and shouted: "A skillet!"
She even made up a riddle for me that kept me stumped for the better part of a day:
Teeth like a crocodeel
Hide like a eel
Stand solid as a tree
Sing like me
I finally figured it out—piano—but it were a good one and I was mighty impressed. Oh, our story them days was having fun and falling in love, when everybody else be complaining about the extra work. Extra, 'cause Master done sold off some slaves so's to buy hisself a race horse. At the same time, he cut back on hiring temporary hands. So all the slaves got extra work. That didn't tighten my reins, though. The more work put on me and Lucy, the more reason to help her and be with her.
Within her first month we done learned her hundreds of words. Words come easy to her, though Missus and Mary Anne never let a day go by without fussing over how stupid she be. "Stupid like a mule," Gran said to me in private, meaning she be just willful, not stupid, and didn't care what name people put to it.
Gran protected and corrected Lucy for a while. After a year done passed and Lucy still be headstrong as ever, Gran tried to warn her about what could happen. One night Gran trucked Lucy on down to Neesy's cabin, to show Lucy the sorry state Neesy be in.
Neesy was a cross-eyed, slow and sullen gal what tended the chickens; kinda gal could rile wilted lettuce. She done gived Master the dopey act once too often, and he turned ugly one day and said, "Neesy, if you act like a heifer, you can be treated like a heifer."
He bred her. That's the awful truth. The first time happened 'fore Lucy arrived at Zephyr, when the farm first started to fail and Master begun drowning his worries in drink. Before he never would've done her that way. After gambling and drink done twisted him, though, you never could be too sure what all he might do. He forced Neesy to sleep in one of the field hand's cabins and warned she better be with child by the end of three months, and she was. Then when that baby been weaned, he sold it.
Gran was scandalized. "This how your papa would've done, and I thought you was better'n that. You call youself a master, you ain't even master of your own weakness. This ain't right, and it sitting over your head like the ax of judgment." He didn't pay her no mind, not like he used to. These days he was tipsy or hung-over most the time, so you couldn't talk to him. Showed no care nor respect for how the farm be run nor for how he treat folks. Even his own family. Little Peter was born and growing, finally Master had another son after his first two died, but he just neglected that child. Like maybe he didn't want to care too much. All he cared about was cards, horses, and whisky.
"If a snake will eat its own eggs, what won't it do to a frog?" That's what Gran told Lucy, but that gal was deaf to them African sayings. Anyways, the night Gran marched Lucy down to see Neesy, Neesy done delivered her second IOU baby, so-called 'cause it turns out these babies was traded off as reckoning against Master's gambling debts. But that second baby done come still-born, and that sorry gal was not much alive herself. Just didn't care. Neither Neesy nor the Master seemed to care: Neesy didn't care what the Master heaped on her, and he didn't care what she took. Lucy didn't care about none of it, neither. Gran couldn't make Lucy see how the same thing might happen to her. She didn't drink it in.
Truth be told, I didn't neither, and I spoken English and done lived on that plantation my whole life. Even seeing Uncle Joe beat to death didn't mean in my head that the same thing could happen to me. Gran herself couldn't convince me that something like a cat-o-nine-tails would ever fall across my own back. Didn't I live my whole life growing up with the Blow children? Didn't I play with them and eat with them? Didn't I sit on Master's knee and give him a riddle or sing him a song? Didn't Missus never miss my birthday without giving me some gift or treat?
I guess that's how young people do. It's what being young means: you look at the world and see the bad and the ugly, but you make up in your head that, for you, things'll be different. That's how I felt. Because I was young. Because I was in love.
Gran warned me, "You gived your heart too soon." But I told her I gived nothing. My heart gived me no more choice than the ox gives the plowman when it determines to quench its thirst at the creek. My heart went for that long drink of water, dragging me on behind.
Black Ivory, 2003 21 x 27 inches, limited edition archival print Andrew Neighbour©, artist