I get like this when I’m anxious. Sleep. Wake up. Sleep. Wake up. Since I’m up, I start my preshoot ritual early. It usually does the trick—lets me relax, feel face-worthy. Empowered.
Some of the other freshmen, like my roommate, have college funds. My great-granny Mae gave me a white enamel basin. She said it was older than her mama, so you know that’s old. It’s not exactly a college fund, but I make good use of it. Once I get the water steaming, I sit the basin in the sink, drop in a few blades of fresh rosemary, and let the water fill it. I’m about to hood myself over the basin with a towel and let the steam and herbs do their thing, but when I look down into the steamy water, past the blades of green, a face stares up at me. It’s not mine.
“WHOA!” I jump back. Turn around. I couldn’t have seen what I thought.
I’m just anxious. My nerves have nerves. Got me seeing things. I take a breath, step up to the sink, and peer down into the basin. Okay. Nothing but hot water, some rosemary. Steam.
I’m back to breathing normal, thinking about the shoot. I want them to like my face, maybe see this face as their face. Not just for this shoot, but for an entire fall fashion campaign. I don’t intend to make print-ad modeling my life. I have designer dreams of having my own label before I’m twenty-five. My own fall line. Right now, I fill the call for the Pretty Boy Next Door look. But check back in a few years, and I mean just a few. Once these family features kick in, the eyes, nose, lips? Goodbye, Pretty Boy Next Door. I’m out before I do urban. The money’s in iconic brands, upscale catalogs, and I plan to work this look while it’s selling. At least through undergrad.
I laugh at myself to myself. Imagine telling anyone about being scared by your own face. Roommate wouldn’t let me forget it. Great-Granny Mae prays enough as it is.
Again. I lower my face and raise the towel to create that sauna, but then, I see it. And then, I don’t see it! Where’s my reflection? Where the fuck is my reflection?
As if to answer, a dark mass appears beneath the steam, in the water, slowly, revealing itself. Thick, ungroomed hair. A forehead, frightened eyes, a nose—both broad and sharp—and well-defined full lips. Nothing but fright looking back at me.
What kind of shit is this?
We’re having the same thought, or close to it. The face in the basin shouts, “I rebuke thee, demon! I rebuke thee from the master’s well, in the name of the Lord!”
Oh, shit! It talks! I look up to see if there’s some kind of projector. This would make the ultimate prank, but no one I know, including my roommate, has that kind of energy. I feel around the basin. No buttons or things. Just a blue-rimmed white enamel washbasin.
I ask, “Who you?”
“Get back, demon! Get back!” His nostrils flare. He’s a combination of fright and ferociousness.
“Who you calling demon? You’re the banshee-looking thing, trapped in my great-granny’s basin.”
“I know a demon! Yes, suh! Shaved ’round the head like Beelzebub—a multitude of demon’s horns sproutin’ out the top of yo’ head like a wicked crop.”
“I’m no demon,” I say to my imaginary water friend. “And these aren’t horns. It’s hair. My hair is locked.”
“Who shackles hair but a demon?”
“Shackle? Are you for real? Not that kind of locks. Dreadlocks. You never seen locked hair? Everybody else got ’em. The trick is maintaining them.” I know the concept of hair maintenance is lost on him. We check out each other’s hair. His: no-style thick matted bush. Mine: a crown of product-rich short locks that stand up like black daggers, with sides shaved low from temple to temple. It’s a signature look that gets me modeling jobs. It says different things depending upon how I smile. If I smile.
“Demon. Get out of the master’s well. I can’t bring back water with a demon.”
“Who’s this master?” I ask him. “There’s no masters.”
He laughs. Maybe it was water distortion, but I never seen teeth that big.
“You’s the demon, all right! Telling me there’s no master when I know Master Jacob’ll tan my hide to the bare bone if I come back with demon water.”
He’s making no sense. Still, I study him. By the looks of him, he’s studying me. I don’t know what he’s thinking about me, but I slowly put him together. The look. The speech. The fear. The master.
To be sure, I ask, “Where you at? I mean, I know you’re at the master’s well, but where are you?”
He answers readily, like it’s obvious. “Where I been since birth. The Cosgrove Plantation.”
“Quick: What year is it?”
“Year?”
“Yes. Year. What year is it at the Cosgrove Plantation?”
“Only years I worry about are my years. So far, I’m eighteen years old,” he says to my complete disbelief. Through the steam his skin is sun-beaten tough. His large nose and lips belong on someone much older, like my dead father. How can eighteen look like that?
“My wife’s sixteen. I worry about her years, too.”
Wife? Don’t get me started. I put all that aside and ask, “Who’s the president. In Washington?”
“Master Jacob cast his vote for President Ban B’yoon. He says to me, ‘John, as long as you votes Democrat, you won’t have to fear where you sleep, what you eat, or what you do with all your days. The Democrat is the farmer’s party!’”
“Ban B’yoon.” I say it over. I got it. “Martin Van Buren.”
“Can’t you hear, demon? I said Ban B’yoon.”
“Don’t get so agitated. I’m only clarifying things.” All I know about Van Buren is that he was a president, they named a high school after him, and back in high school the boys on Van Buren’s track team looked fine leaping over hurdles in blue short shorts. I say, “Martin Van Buren” into my phone. Glance. 1840 something? I look in the water. Can’t be. Can it? “No.”
“Don’t you ‘naw’ me. I’m wise to you, demon.”
“Will you stop calling me demon. I’m Danté.”
“That’s a demon name if I heard one!”
I ask what I already know. “So . . . you’re a slave. That Master Jacob person owns you.”
He gives me the “obviously” face. “You free?” he asks. “You got papers?”
I know I’m dreaming. I feel awake, but this must be a dream. I should know. I’ve had a few dreams like this before. Dreams so real I couldn’t believe they were dreams when I’d finally woken up. And then I’d release my breath, put things back in order, and get on with my waking life.
Still, this dream is different. I feel the hot steam from the water. I wipe my forehead and brow. Moist. Yes. Real. Or, feels real.
Why panic? I’ll awaken the second I touch the water. All it takes is for one thing to break through the dream barrier and my eyes will pop open. To prove it, or end this dream, because, let’s face it, talking to a slave is depressing—I go to stick my hand in the water but only get as far as the fingertips.
“OW!!!” How did I forget it’s scalding? And, if this is a dream, would I feel heat like this? I suck my fingers to soothe them, and I look down into the basin. He’s still there.
“What you do to yo’self? You all right?” Before I can answer he’s laughing again, all toothy. “Lord! I ask the demon if he’s all right!”
“The water’s hot. I burned my fingers. And I’m no demon. I’m Danté. I’m just waiting to wake up from this dream. I have things to do, starting with getting ready for my photo shoot.”
So, this is weird. I’m the one with burned fingers, but his eyes buck. His jaws clench, and although I only see his face, it’s clear he crouches like he’s been hit.
“Yo, yo! You all right?” I ask him.
It takes him a while to recover. He’s not fully upright and seems confused. “Demon, you fit to be shot?”
It’s my turn to laugh, and come to think of it, my teeth are kind of big, so he must think I look like a jackass.
“Sorry, Slave John. A photo shoot.” This shouldn’t be so hard to convey. They had photographs back in the 1800s. I study period clothing for my History of American Fashion class. There were a lot of drawings, but there were actual photographs too. Daguerreotypes and whatnot.
I don’t blame him for not knowing that. It’s not like slaves were lining up to get their photos taken.
He shrinks a bit. “FO-toe . . . shoot?”
The way he puts an accent on “photo,” it’s clear we’re talking about two different things.
“I know you’re a demon, but you ain’t harm me, so I don’t wish no harm on you. Listen, demon. Don’t let them shoot yo’ FO-toe. Steal away long before they take aim.”
“Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. I don’t know what ‘FO-toe’ is to you, but I need to do this photo shoot. Tuition’s due.”
A look of anguish comes over his face. He’s shaking his head. “I know why yo’ master shoots you. It’s to tame yo’ pride—with that strange talk and hair in shackles. Demon, just repent! Say you repent from your pride and maybe yo’ master sell you, but he won’t shoot you. You settle in yo’ ways. Take a wife, like John, here. Have some young’uns.”
I say, “I don’t have no master, Slave John. And trust me. I won’t be taking a wife.” I laugh. I just don’t have time. “And a photo over here is when they take your picture.”
“Yo’ pitcher? Why they take yo’ pitcher, demon? I s’pose even the devil get thirsty.”
I say it to myself the way he says it. This 1840s talk is work! Pitcher. Pitcher. Then it clicks. Only because my great-granny Mae believes summer is for pitchers of lemonade and great-grandsons are made for squeezing lemons. I try again.
“Pick-shure. Pick-shure! Like when they draw or paint a picture of your face and hang it on the wall.”
He slaps his thigh—I can only see his face, but his arm makes the motion of thigh-slapping. “Pick-chah! Pick-chah!”
We’re both relieved. But now I have a question. “What does ‘FO-toe’ mean on the Cosgrove Plantation?”
He grins. Looks around. “FO-toe don’t come from Cosgrove. The word come from my grandmama, along with a few other words she kept when they caught her.”
“Whoa. Whoa. Africa. You’re talking the motherland!”
“Mama’s land is here on the plantation. Got a small plot for her vegetable garden.”
I remind myself, if I don’t want to be explaining and translating, I better keep it simple. I ask, “And what is FO-toe?”
He shows all his teeth and whispers. “It’s the wife’s property.”
What?
He sees my confusion and whispers, “That’s Grandmama’s proper talk for where us mens make water.”
“I got it. I got it.” We share a laugh.
Usually by this time in the dream, he would morph into someone I knew, a mythical being, or food I’ve been craving. But nothing has changed. Slave John is still looking up at me from the mist. Like he wants something from me.
“Someone think you so big to draw you up? Only one I know with a picture is Master Jacob’s pappy. Hangs over the fireplace. I know it because I’m the one hang it.”
It isn’t worth the trouble of telling Slave John I had a fall spread in a magazine and I’m looking to be part of the brand. I can hear it now: Demon, they brand you like cattle? Instead, I try to speak his language, or close to it. After all, I’m acing History of American Fashion.
“I wear these new gentlemen’s clothes. Waistcoats, mourning coats, britches. Top hats. And they make pictures of me for mag—uh, for everyone to see. Then the masters like how I look and they buy the clothes for themselves.” That wasn’t exactly right, but it was as close as I could get it. “That’s my job. That’s the work I do.”
He laughs loud. “That’s what you call work? Letting folks make pictures of you in fancy britches and top coats?” He can’t stop laughing.
“Are you laughing at me? You laughing at me, Slave John?”
“Tell you what, demon: you quit your crazy talking and I’ll quit my laughing.”
“They make pictures of me because I look fly—good. I look handsome. And I get paid. Good money. You pick cotton and get paid nothing.”
“I see I gone and hurt your pride, demon. Maybe that’s good for you. It’s true: I don’t get more than a pig and some whiskey come Christmas, but I make my money as a carver. That’s my freedom money.”
“Freedom money?”
“Don’t you know nothing to be so fancy? Freedom money. Money I work for to buy my freedom. Master rent me out, I earn a good sum carving furniture, fancy walking sticks. I make enough to one day buy my freedom. Keep carving bedposts and such and I’ll earn enough for my wife, Mama, Pappy. My sisters, my brother. Grandmama too!”
“Whoa.”
“Why you keep sayin ‘whoa’? I’m no horse.”
“It’s because I need you to slow down, Slave John. The things you say are like a fast-running horse. So fast I have to say, ‘Whoa.’”
He says, “If I say ‘whoa’ when you speak, I’d say nothing but ‘whoa.’ Like wearing fancy clothes is a day’s work.”
“Don’t sneeze at my work, Slave John. You make a pig and some whiskey. I get two grand—uh, two thousand dollars to wear fancy clothes.”
He takes his time laughing at me. “No need telling tall tales, demon or not.”
“That’s for real, Slave John.”
“Just John.”
“If you call me Danté.”
“Danté, Danté. Tall tales as sure as you born.”
“What are you? Some kind of slave rapper?”
“I don’t know slave wrap. Missus wears a wrap. Cook wraps ham sandwiches in paper. I don’t see no sense in wrapping a slave. How a slave wrap a slave?”
“We not communicating. We’re just talking.”
“I’m plain-talking, demon. Danté. You the one telling tales. Two thousand dollars to have someone draw yo’ picture in fancy britches. Why, I could buy my wife, Mama, and one of my sisters for that money. I might can’t read but I can figure on some money.”
What do I say to that? What?
“I don’t get it all,” I tell him. “It’s less after I pay the booking agent and taxes. The rest is for room and board.”
“You stay in a boarding house?”
“A dorm. For college.”
“College? College? You? Whoa!”
It’s his turn to see my big teeth. We’re kind of rubbing off on each other.
“Slow yo horse, Danté. Master sent young master up north to college. Granny said to yelling college, though I don’t see a need to learn yelling.”
“Yelling college? To yell?” I start to coach myself as I dream, because that’s what I do. And then I get it. “You mean Yale.”
“Open your ears, demon. Danté. That’s what I said. Yell. Is that the one you go to? Your yelling is fine to me. You learning good.”
Yell. Yale. I’m not going to try. “I don’t study yelling. I study making fancy suits and ball gowns for rich people.” More like sportswear and dresses. But this way is easier. “My great-granny Mae is my inspiration. She recognized my talent and encourages me.”
He does his best to keep up with me, but now his eyes glint. “Mae’s my mama’s name! That’s your great-granny’s name?”
“Mae on my father’s side. Aletha on my mother’s side.”
We study each other through the mist, which is now cooling. “Naw!” he says. “We don’t favor.”
I don’t know how long the steam will hold up. Even as I look at him and he looks up at me, I can feel him fading. Something in his eyes tells me to do something, but I don’t know what that is. In every time-travel movie I’ve seen, the rule is to learn from the past but don’t disturb it. But the steam is clearing and he’s really leaving me now. I want to give him something. Tell him something about what life will be like. Besides, it’s just a dream. I can tell a dream about things that might to him sound like a crazy dream.
“Look, John. I’m gonna tell you something. You’ll be the only one to know, but you got to promise not to tell anyone what I’m about to say.”
He shakes his head. “No, demon. I don’t bond myself to no demon.”
“I’m no demon. I’m just a man. Eighteen. Like you. Got different hair. That’s all. And I’m free.”
“I figure you free—proud and fancy as you is.”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. But what I want to tell you won’t happen if you tell anyone else.”
John is quiet. I take that as my cue.
“You ready?” I ask.
“Go on, d—”
“Danté. My great-granny Mae named me Danté.”
He nods. Looks around.
I say, “The Democrats, like your master, are for slavery. The Republicans want to end slavery. The Republican president will. Hang on—you’ll live to be free. Not just you. But all of us.”
“Publikan president?”
“That’s right.” Why bother to correct it. I keep telling him, since the water seems to be cooling. “Man’s going to fly to the moon and back.”
He almost shouts.
“We will have a Black president of the United States.”
All I can see are big horse teeth.
“And if I get married, I’ll have a legal husband. Not a wife.”
“Say what?”
“John, John. Just don’t tell.”
He can’t stop laughing and slapping his thigh. Maybe I told him too much, but once I started, the horses kept running.
Then I swear I hear the snap of a whip. Another snap. And another.
I spring up. Look around. Blanket. Desk. Wastebasket, dresser, chair. Textbooks. Sketchbook. My makeup case. Roommate.
“I knew it,” I say to my roommate, entering my waking life. “Dream.”
“Again?”
“It was surreal. But real. Except for the fact that I was talking to a slave in my great-granny Mae’s basin.”
“I don’t know what that means. Don’t want to know. But seriously, Danté. This is like the fifth crazy dream. You should talk to someone.”
He means the counseling center.
Maybe I do need to talk to someone, but what do I say? How do I explain that I can actually feel the weight of him—of John? How do I even start?
I don’t close my eyes to get those last winks of sleep. I’m up and have to get my head right for the shoot. I shower, steam—this time without John staring up at me—dress, grab my makeup kit, and catch the train.
Usually my dreams fade to nothing when I wake up. Or, when I wake up I remember only one thing. And barely. But I can’t stop thinking about John, seeing his teeth, hearing his laugh, or the snap of that whip.
The photographer tries to get me to smile. “More, Danté. More. More teeth, Danté.” And then I lose it. And lose the gig.
On the train ride back to the dorms, my phone buzzes nonstop. I glance each time, but never answer. I’m in no mood to talk to the booking agent. I mean, what do I say? What? I can’t talk about the shoot without talking about John. And that’s not a talk I can have with the agent. Or my roommate. Or just about anyone.
That night I try to conjure John again. Tell him how he cost me my tuition. Hear what he had to say about that. John never shows. And I just sleep. Wake. Shower. Dress. Grab my sketchbook. Go to class. Draw sketches of John instead of the cuffs, collars, and sleeves I’m supposed to draw for my History of American Fashion class.
Besides John, Great-Granny Mae is on my mind, so we FaceTime.
It’s clear that I get my fashion sense from Great-Granny Mae. She wears a silver wig, huge square glasses, and a pearl necklace, and is dressed in a light-green suit, stockings, and orthopedic pumps, even though she’s not going anywhere but inside her apartment.
Her aide, a hunched-over woman who could probably use an aide herself, wraps a shawl around my great-granny Mae’s shoulders and sits away from us to give us some privacy. Well. It’s never quite private. She’s always there.
I start with the bad news first. That I got fired from the modeling shoot and won’t have my tuition money together. Then I tell her all about my dream and John. Great-Granny Mae laughs so long and so hard, I see where I get my teeth from. Her aide takes her time getting out of her chair but makes it over to her, to pat her back. Great-Granny shoos her away.
The first thing she tells me is not to worry. Seeing her laugh like that makes me feel a little better. From there, it’s easier to tell her the rest, which makes her laugh even harder.
“Never saw him,” she says. “He was long gone before I was thought of, but they called him Laughing John Carver. Story goes he went to the well to draw water for the master. He looked down the well and couldn’t stop laughing. Master came to see about the water since John was taking too long. Master whipped John, but John kept laughing and saying, ‘Whoa!’
“John wasn’t ever the same since. He picked cotton, plowed, laughed. The Civil War came, he laughed. And every other time he’d look down the well, or up at the moon, and he’d just say, ‘Whoa.’”