Columbia, South Carolina, September 1850.
A slave may expect her death any day. The trouble is, she never knows which day.
The old master, the one they called “Hobnail,” had long been dead when, one September morning, the young master sent for Tomyris. A child appeared at the washhouse where she was boiling the week’s linens. She was to come at once. She took the wash kettle off the fire and followed the child up to the main house. The child vanished.
Two white men sat on the veranda in a pair of rocking chairs. One was the young master—only he wasn’t so young anymore, he was well past thirty. The other was someone Tomyris had never seen before. He was plump and sweating heavily, even though the Carolina heat had abated some since August. He fanned himself with a straw hat. Tomyris stopped at the threshold of the veranda, waiting for permission to ascend.
“Yes, sir?” she said.
Robert Claridge, the young master, gestured for Tomyris to approach. She came noiselessly up the steps, looking quickly from Claridge to the second man before lowering her gaze.
“Turn around,” said Master Claridge. “We want to see the back of you.” Tomyris did as she was told, turning slowly in a full circle.
“Your mother,” said the master, “what was she called?”
“Sarah Jacobs, sir.”
“Jacobs, was it?” Tomyris kept her eyes fixed on the floorboards, but she could hear derision in his voice. “Was that the black bandit she mated with? I tell you, Doctor, what further proof is necessary? Do you think that our species, our women, would just rut with any buck they laid eyes on?”
Tomyris concentrated on the ant crawling at her feet. The young master had been very quick to introduce the subject of mating. That did not bode well.
“Please, Monsieur Claridge, if I may?” the second man interrupted. The girl allowed herself another quick look at his face, which was flushed but not, she thought, with lust. She allowed herself an even breath, out and in. A doctor, was he? His accent was strange.
“Please to be at your ease. What age have you, Tomyris?” the man continued.
“I couldn’t say, sir,” she murmured. “Some more than twenty, but not twenty-five. Sir.”
“Twenty-three, according to the register,” Claridge drawled.
“And your mother, born in America?”
“No, sir. On the ship.”
This answer seemed to please him. She did not look up, but she could hear his tone lighten as he said, “And your father?”
She hesitated. “Answer,” growled Claridge.
“Julius Coffin. So mama said. Sir.”
“Coffin! A good New England name,” jested the doctor. “And was he born in zis country?”
Zis? “No, sir. Not zis country. Fante country. Sir.”
Tomyris glanced at the fat doctor and then at Claridge. The flesh under the master’s thick sideburns was red with suppressed anger. She reckoned that, were it not for the doctor, she would already have been slapped. But something about the doctor’s presence seemed to keep Claridge in check.
“Fante country. What we call Upper Guinea?”
“I don’t know, sir.”
“Yes, very good.” The doctor had warmed. “She’ll do very well.”
With a flick of the hand, Claridge sent her back to the washhouse. For once, she was glad to go.
A few days later, early in the morning as she was letting the chickens out, Tomyris was summoned once again, this time by the overseer. The master wanted her in town. Should she take her things? No, no, she’d be back by nightfall. A cart and driver—an old field hand, reveling in the luxury of a day off—were waiting.
Into town she went, an hour’s drive.
She rarely got to town these days. She had grown up there in care of her grandmother and her sister Roxanne, but the master had moved her to the plantation nearly a decade ago. Since then she got to town but once or twice a year.
As the cart passed through the busy streets, jammed with loads of rice and cotton, she searched the dark faces. She hoped to catch a glimpse of her sister, who was always out on some errand for grandmother. But the people swept by unglancing, and Tomyris sank back against the buckboard.
“You have a beau,” said the old driver.
“A what?”
“A beau. A man friend. Look.” He pointed an elbow toward her feet. She looked down.
A little bouquet, tied with a blue ribbon, lay between her shoes.
Her head snapped around. “Where …? Did you see who it was?” No one was looking at her, though. The crowd seemed just as indifferent as before.
“Naw,” said the driver. “Just saw it pitch in. But deliberate. He wanted you to have it.”
She stared at the flowers without touching them. Marigolds. Flowers of grief and sorrow, Grandmother said. Tomyris shuddered. She wanted to kick the bunch into the street, but she didn’t dare. In case, he was watching—whoever he was.
Just then, the cart pulled up before a small wooden building. At the door, she recognized old Virgil, who was there to see her in. She stepped off the cart without a backward glance.
She was led up a stairway to a room that was strangely furnished. Heavy drapes shrouded three of the walls, and an odd collection of furniture—settees, armchairs, ottomans—lay piled to one side. Virgil went away.
Master Claridge and the white doctor were there, plus a third white man, a stranger with the marks of smallpox on his face. Tomyris trembled and backed away—three white men alone with one black girl—but Claridge spoke sharply to her. “We’re men of science, damn it, not schoolboys,” he said. “Sit down.” She found a wooden stool and sat.
The third man, whom she took to be the operator of the establishment, was manipulating a wooden box on a stand. It had a metal tube jutting out the front, almost like a gun. Long minutes passed. At last he finished his preparations and nodded to Claridge.
Then Claridge said to Tomyris, “Take off your clothing. Lay it on the chair over there.” He gestured to an ornate wooden chair with a red velvet seat.
Tomyris made a run for the door, but Claridge caught her arm and slapped her hard across the face. She anticipated another blow, but the violence had made the visitor—the fat, well-dressed doctor—very uncomfortable. He said something to Claridge that Tomyris didn’t understand. Whatever it was seemed to make her owner hold back. He repeated his command through clenched teeth. Tomyris could only obey.
The three white men had the grace to look elsewhere as her hands fumbled with buttons. Everything came off and went onto the chair.
When she stood naked, the third man waved her to a spot in front of the box on its stand. There stood a metal frame, like a lamp stand with no lamp but an extra arm, and something that looked like a pump handle. The man gripped her shoulder and backed her into this metal frame, like a cart horse being coaxed into its shafts. Two metal prongs were adjusted to fit the sides of her head, and another set dug into her waist.
The fat man whispered something to Claridge.
“The kerchief,” Claridge growled. “Off.” She hesitantly pulled at her headscarf, which briefly became tangled in the metal prongs. Claridge stepped forward impatiently and snatched the cloth from her hand, tossing it onto the pile of her clothing.
“All right, girl,” said the operator. “You must stay absolutely still from the time I say ‘hold’ until the time I say ‘stop.’ Is that perfectly clear? It will be less than a minute.”
She tried to nod, but the prongs kept her head from moving. “Yes, sir,” she managed.
He placed his hand on the end of the gun barrel or whatever it was.
“Hold,” he said.
No blast emerged from the device; indeed, nothing at all happened. She tried very hard to stay still as instructed. She focused her eyes on a chair in her line of sight, counting and recounting the rungs of its laddered back: six, seven, one, two, three … . Finally, the operator put his hand back on the apparatus and said “stop.” He stepped forward and pulled her head from the prongs. The fat gentleman handed her a woolen blanket, which she gratefully wrapped about her nakedness.
Claridge pointed to a bench. “Sit there and wait.”
Time crawled by. The operator vanished into a closet for many minutes, during which time a colored boy came up with a coffee tray. He goggled briefly at the panorama before him—a naked black woman imperfectly robed in a plaid blanket in company with two white men—but he managed to deposit the tray and escape without being caught looking. Claridge and the doctor helped themselves to teacake and coffee. The doctor murmured something to Claridge, pointing at Tomyris. Claridge looked over with annoyance.
“Do you need something to eat?” he demanded. “The professor seems to think so.”
She nodded. “Yes, sir, please, sir.” In fact she was starving, having been taken from home so early. Claridge backed away from the tray and signaled for her to come forward. She stood tentatively in her blanket wrap and picked up a piece of cake before returning to her bench.
It was a mistake. Fear had made her mouth so dry that she could barely force the buttery crumbs down her throat. Still, having done so, coughing as quietly as she was able, she felt a little better, a little less bare.
The operator emerged from his closet with the box in hand. Back it went onto the stand.
“Girl, come here,” he said. Tomyris stood and moved reluctantly back to the spot in front of the box. The operator said, “Blanket.” Without a word, she shed the blanket. Once more, Claridge and the fat man watched as the operator positioned her, fixing the metal prongs this time to her forehead and the back of her head. Lower down, the second pair of metal arms pinched her ribs front and back. This time the operator took the opportunity to run his hand over her breast. The other two men, chatting with one another to the side, either did not notice or did not care.
The business with the box and the stillness was repeated. Once again the operator disappeared for a time and she was left to wait on the bench. Then she was once more arranged in space, this time facing the wall. As she held still, tears ran down her face and dropped onto her bare collarbones.
Then, apparently, they were done. The operator went back into his closet.
The doctor appeared pleased; he was smiling. “Zese daguerreotypes, zey will be a great advance of ze science of man, no?” he remarked cheerfully. He shook Claridge’s hand, collected his hat, and made his way to the stairs. In a moment he was gone. Tomyris hastened over to her clothes, but just as she was about to retrieve her skirt, a hand seized her arm.
“We’re not done,” said Claridge. Maintaining a fast grip, he called out. “Ready, Mr. Zealy?”
“Just one minute, Mr. Claridge,” came the operator’s voice from behind the closet door. “Are you, ah, ready?”
“Yes, damn it. Hurry up.”
Tomyris heard a clank of metal and bit her lip as her arms were pulled behind her. Manacles were swiftly locked around her wrists, digging into her flesh. Then a metal collar snapped around her neck. A cry died in her throat as the collar was pulled to the choking point. Something cracked inside her neck.
Claridge drew the red velvet chair over and forced Tomyris’s chest down over its seat, holding fast to the metal bonds. With his free hand, he pulled her left breast out so that the third white man had a good view of it. Then Tomyris, struggling for every breath, could hear Claridge opening his pants.
The operator chuckled. “Heh, you’re ready all right. I’ve got six plates. Let’s make ’em good. One, two, three and … hold.”