Armed with a bill of sale that Thomas had crafted, he and I set off to Mount Qua Qua. This was the way to get to Belvedere Estates. If I’d studied those plantations instead of averting my eyes, would I have seen my grandmother?
“This Runyan, he owned Sally and sold off my mother?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Thomas rolled his hips and sat in a new position on the cushion I brought him. Wasn’t anything like those padded carriages in England, but it should help.
His fever did linger and he spent time at my town house until Mamaí’s teas finally broke it. The man still looked to be in pain.
“You didn’t need to come, Thomas. I could handle this.”
“This is not exactly for my comfort. I’m not letting you out of my sight, traveling my Grenada. This is my island, and we’re headed to people who won’t recognize an enterprising woman, ’specially one like you.”
He was being Thomas, not saying the obvious. That my grandmother’s owners were the worst type of planters—rapists, thieves, murderers—all under the legal system of enslavement.
We weren’t even there and my stomach knotted.
“Doll, you’re looking a little green. You feeling well? Edward didn’t look good this morning, either.”
“You keep driving. My grandma is enslaved, and I have the means to free her. No dawdling ’cause I’m feeling poorly.”
He waved his hat at his face. “You’re a strong stubborn woman.”
“And that’s wrong?”
“No. It’s one of the things I love about you.”
From the side of my eye, I saw his chuckles. His smile was full and lovely, but I looked away to the thick growth of ferns hugging the muddy trail. Tall scraggly pines and thick bamboo made canopies of shade. It was cooler here, not humid like it was near the shore. I was glad for the warmth of my shawl and kept praying that the rain would keep.
Thomas shifted. “This could’ve waited another week so I could do it alone.”
I hated I had to let men, white men, British men, do my bidding, but it offered me better pricing and kept the cheating low.
This made me realize how much more I had to do to make sure Edward and my girls had their chances to shine.
The air smelled like horrid mint. A delicate mist shrouded the top of the mountain. “At least it will only get cooler.”
Thomas tightened the reins and made my horse go faster. We moved with a bit of speed. “We could sit a spell at the crater lake if you need to rest. Heard it’s romantic.”
“Sir, if you say one more thing about stopping, I don’t know what I’ll do.”
He slowed the carriage to a crawl.
“What? Woman, what exactly are you going to do? I have the reins. I’m driving this beast, Doll.”
“I’m going to stare at you and wish you fall off the dray.”
“Not happening. And if I did fall. I’d still catch up and make you slow down.”
He started to laugh. “Maybe you are feeling better. You’ve threatened to kick me out of your life again. That’s particularly cruel when I have plans to give you a few more of my children.”
“What, Thomas? We’re not together. How can you even think such a thing?”
“’Cause you’ve been kissing on me when you check on me.”
“No.”
“But you’ve been thinking on it. I think about you constantly. And it’s time we do something about it. Something legally binding. You will know I’m with you, and I’ll know where to come home to. You will too.”
My heart raced, for I had kissed him a little and checked on him a lot. “Fevers are bad.”
“I love you, Dorothy. Marry me.”
He took my hand and slowed the dray more.
The smoky crater lake, Grand Etang Lake, sat calmly to my right.
“Don’t say no, not without hearing me or thinking about it, or letting me have my way with you once.”
“Can we talk about this foolishness later? I need to save my strength for the negotiations. My grandma Sally’s freedom is more important than your jokes.”
“Fine.” He made the dray move a little faster.
At least Thomas was listening. But a week of us getting along, of him visiting and playing with Eliza and Frances and promising to fish with Edward, didn’t make us one big family.
After passing the lake, we drew closer to a plantation.
Silk cottonwood trees rimmed the land. That white bark was unmistakable. Sugarcane fields, high emerald stalks, grew everywhere with brown dots holding up the rows.
A little closer, the distant dots became men, black and brown. Sable women followed behind picking up the cutting.
Half dressed or poorly dressed in these woods of chiggers was cruel. An overseer on horseback shouted and whipped at them.
The angry shouts.
A low mournful song hummed from the enslaved. The moaning kept them in rhythm. The tune meshed with ones stuck in my head from the slave boats, yo-yo-yo, and my memories from Pa’s plantation, the left side, the bad side.
The mint.
The peppermint.
The familiar feeling of death swept over me, ripping at my skin.
That moaning was stronger. There was no escaping it. No not-seeing it, not today.
In my mind’s eye, I was little again with more osnaburg than others because my pa, a white planter, claimed me. From those first days of helping Mamaí at the sick house, I learned not to see the bad. I always looked to the right, never the left.
Whipping was on the left. Stocks and the sick house were on the left. Mamaí would make me help her aid the sick, the ones raped so bad they bled for days. I wiped up the blood, cleaning with peppermint water.
On the left . . .
Pick and sing.
Bleed and sing.
Die and sing.
. . . on the left.
If I saw the evil and accepted this as my future, it would eat away my dreams like acid, burn them to nothingness.
The dray stopped. “Doll, can you hear me?”
“My pa was massa, Thomas. All the pain was done in his name. He never stopped the doings on the left side. Never once did he acknowledge the pain. Overseers weren’t dismissed for cruelty or killings. Thomas, I’m as bad as Pa. I looked away to the right. I always look away.”
“Doll. You’re not him.”
“The jumbies and death masks say I am.”
Thomas gripped my hand. “I don’t see anything.”
“I didn’t want to see it either. If I saw it, then I couldn’t dream anymore. I’d have to take my place in the fields with the people born to hurt then die.”
“Doll, you’re here with me. You’re safe.”
“I can’t die in those fields, Thomas.”
“I’m not letting you go. Never. You’re scaring me, woman. We just need to complete the deal. Let me do this. You sit here.”
How could I when my blood ran in these fields?