Martha Jean gave birth to another girl, Valerie.Three weeks later, I was promoted to the twelfth grade. I wasn’t particularly thrilled by either event. Mama had the power to snatch me out of school whenever she got ready, and as my old friend, Mattie, had once said, “Girls are useless, so why get an education?” Mama reiterated Mattie’s sentiment by saying, “My girls ain’t nothing. If it wadn’t for my boys bringing us money, we’d be in bad shape. Not one of my girls ever bring one dime to this house.” It would have been foolish for me to protest. Bored with staying home, Mama began to drive around Pakersfield stirring up devilment, and I ceased to be her best friend. I became someone who needed to get off my lazy behind and get a job.
Mama connected with an unlikely ally—Brenda Mackey. Together, they harassed Mushy and Richard, and brought confusion to the little house on Echo Road where the adulterous couple had moved in together. People understood Brenda’s motives, but they could not understand Mama’s.They reproached her for her behavior toward Mushy, yet the same people listened to her malicious accusations as she branded Tarabelle a degenerate who lusted after women and children. Not once, that I’m aware of, did Tarabelle try to defend herself. She went to work at the Munfords’, came home to Miss Shirley’s house, and allowed the gossip to run its course.
Mama had a friend, people were paying attention to her, and apparently she was once again looking young to Chadlow. Sometimes she would drive her car to the farmhouse to meet him, sometimes he would pick her up in his car, sometimes she would send me with him.
One night late in August when I had been designated to go with Chadlow, he drove me out to the farmhouse and barely glanced at Miss Frances when we entered her kitchen. He was sullen and distant—characteristics I had never witnessed in him before. In an upstairs room, with the door closed, he pressed my head against his chest, and must have felt my recoil because he stepped back and spun me around so that I was facing the bed.To hasten the inevitable, I disrobed and took my place between dingy, white sheets where I transformed timidity and humiliation into emotional numbness—my fortification.
Chadlow momentarily stood in the spot where I had left him. His eyes scanned the room and came to settle on the nightstand where a lamp stood on a lacy, oblong doily. But when he moved, it was not toward the nightstand or the bed, but to the chair where I had placed my clothes. He rummaged through my possessions and lifted a single white sock from the pile, then came to stand over the bed. Fully dressed, Chadlow straddled my chest and pinned my arms to the mattress with his knees, stuffed my sock in my mouth, snatched up the doily from the nightstand, and tied it over my lips.
Panic gripped me. I was used to doing whatever the men commanded of me, but this was different.The faraway look in Chadlow’s eyes was terrifying. It was as though he no longer recognized me. I struggled against him, but his weight on my chest restricted my movements and rapidly exhausted me. I gagged as I tried to breathe around the sock in my mouth, then my nostrils took over.
Chadlow eased off of my chest, then I felt rough hands on my body as he flipped me over.With my nose pressed against the mattress and my mouth stuffed, suffocation seemed imminent. I desperately tried to shift my body, slowly realizing that my arms, caught in the grip of a human vise, were extended awkwardly behind my back. My feet, the only mobile part of my body, kicked out against the mattress, then cold metal clicked in place around my wrists.
“Rozelle’s been telling me all about you, ”Chadlow said.He was winded from his struggle with me, and that gave me a smidgen of satisfaction.“Rozelle says you’ve been giving her a rough time, and that you’re lazy, you won’t help her out at the house.You’ve been disrespectful, backtalking your own mother. Now, she tells me you think you’re better than everybody else, think you’re better than me.Are you?”
With the sock shoved halfway down my throat, I couldn’t answer him, but I managed to shake my head.
“You ought to be thrilled that I pay you any attention at all,” he went on, “but Rozelle tells me that you don’t want me to touch you. Is that right?” He paused, as though waiting for me to answer, then said, “I told your mother I would help her straighten you out. And I will, by God, I will.”
It was pure rawhide that cut into my backside, and Chadlow brandished the weapon with expertise. Someone downstairs must have heard the whirr, hiss, crack of the strap as it struck my defenseless body, but if they heard, no one came to investigate. I closed my eyes, twitched and moaned with each excruciating blow, dug my toes into the mattress, and tried to fade away.An inferno roared through my arms, legs, buttocks and back.
After what seemed an eternity, Chadlow ended the beating. He had straightened me out, for sure, to the point where—if I survived this—I would say one last thing to my mother concerning Chadlow, then I would never mention his name to her again.
“I’m gonna let you up now, ”Chadlow said, “but I don’t want to hear one sound from you.You understand?”
I bobbed my head and Chadlow removed the handcuffs.When I tried to move my arms, a soft moan came through my gag. I realized I was crying, and this was clogging my nostrils. Getting the sock out of my mouth was imperative. All the times when, in my naïveté, I had thought death a solution, now fell by the wayside. I wanted the pain to end, but I did not want to die.
“Not one sound from you,” Chadlow warned, then ripped the sock from my mouth.
I was so grateful—so grateful for breath—that I would have kissed his pale, rough hands. Instead, I sucked in a mouthful of air and plunged into darkness.
Miss Frances was sitting in a chair at the bedside when I opened my eyes. She was washing my back with water from a basin that stood on the nightstand. She spoke to Chadlow as she worked.“It’s a shame you beat this child like this. For what?” she asked.“What she do? These sheets ain’t never gon’ be no more good. Blood don’t wash out that easy. I’m gon’ have to throw ’em away.”
“I’ll pay for the sheets,” Chadlow said.
“And this shirt you want me to put on her?”
“I’ll pay for that, too.”
“You paying for a awful lot tonight. I hope it was worth it, ”Miss Frances said. “You know Bo don’t like this kinda carrying on out here, Mr. Chadlow.”
“You watch your mouth when you talk to me, Frances,” Chadlow said. “What’s done is done. There’s nothing you, Bo, or anybody else can do about it now.”
Miss Frances fell silent and continued to sponge my back.When she realized I was awake, she asked, in a voice filled with sympathy, “You awright, child? Can you sit up?”
I ignored my pain and pulled myself into a sitting position. Miss Frances wiped my face and bandaged my back with scraps from an old, discolored sheet, then she helped me to get my clothes on. Lastly, she maneuvered my arms into the sleeves of a man’s well-worn, brown shirt before leaving me alone in the room with Chadlow.
“I need to see you walk,” Chadlow said.
Gritting my teeth, I walked the length of the room without limping or grimacing, because I knew that this was my passport out.
Miss Frances had reclaimed her post at the kitchen table by the time we descended the stairs. I could not remember having ever been to the farmhouse when she was not at the table. It seemed to be the only place she was comfortable. Her husband, Bo, stayed in the parlor where drinking and gambling took place, and I seldom saw him.
Chadlow stopped at the table behind Miss Frances. He lifted a glass from her hand, sniffed the contents, then returned the glass to her. “Room needs cleaning,” he told her, as he prodded me along toward the back door.
Footsteps and a woman’s giggle could be heard on the back porch. Chadlow shoved me aside as the door opened inward and Leona Wright stepped over the threshold. She was a heavyset woman with a nasty scar that ran along the left side of her face. It was rumored that she had been cut by another woman right here at the farmhouse. Mama had told me about it, and so had Miss Frances.According to them, Leona had won the fight, but after my beating tonight, I wondered if Chadlow’s rawhide had actually caused the scar. It was possible.
Leona stepped into the kitchen, glanced at Chadlow, then briefly focused her attention on me. “Damn!” she said. “Y’all getting younger and younger every day. Ain’t gon’ be no business for me in a minute. Hon, ’ you ain’t nothing but a baby.”
“Mind your own business, Leona,” Chadlow said, as he guided me by my shoulders toward the opened door.
We had to pause again as Leona’s companion entered the room. It was Crow. He stepped past us with a fleeting glance, then took Leona by her hand and started for the parlor.
“It’s just a scan’lous,” Leona grumbled.“Somebody need to put a foot up Rozelle’s ass.”
My feet touched the back porch; Chadlow followed behind me and closed the door.