Dessa Rose by Sherley A. Williams Read Free Book Online Page A

body could bear no more. But, and she had understood this even as she breathed the word, if there was rest for the body, there must be peace for the heart. And it was her heart, his heart , that Kaine asked her to kill. “North.”
    â€œNorth? And how we going get there?”
    â€œYou know, Kaine.” He knew. She knew he knew. He knew if he wanted to know.
    â€œAnd what we going do when we gets there?”
    She looked at him. He had to know.
    â€œâ€˜Dessa.’” Say my name again. “‘You know what is north? Huh? What is north? More whites. Just like here. You don’t see Aunt Lefonia, I see her for you.’”
    Oh, he had talked to her, the irreverent, half-uppity banter that could convulse her with laughter. “You think white folks piss champagne, huh? They bowels move the same way ours do; they shit stank just as bad.” She remembered her own startled laugh, even though she didn’t know what champagne was, even though she was shocked and a little frightened to hear him talk under white folks’ clothes like that. He wanted, she knew, to shock her, to make her see that white people, except for their skin color, were no different from her, from him—from any of the people. Foolish, futile—But soon she was asking herself, what good was that white skin, anyway? They had been setting out rice in the one field Master now kept for it and that question had come to her as she watched Boss Smith talking with Tarver, one of the negro drivers. Even though the overseer’s face was shaded by a wide-brimmed hat, she could see the winter paleness of his skin. As the spring progressed his nose would blister and peel and blister again until it achieved a semblance of the brown she was born with. But, whitepeople had houses and farms and horses—“And you think Masa’d have one pig or one chicken wasn’t for us working for him, wasn’t for you and the rest of the people out there working from ‘can see to can’t’?”
    â€œBoss Smith don’t work us—” she had begun.
    â€œNaw,” Kaine had cut her off, “Masa don’t let him work yo’all from can to can’t—no more; he just work you twice as hard from sunup to sundown.” That was true. Tarver was always there, whether they were working rice, cotton, or corn, with his “Step it up there; speed it up now.”
    They had seldom loved at night; the realization was like a fist in her stomach. Nighttime was for holding, for simple caresses that eased tired limbs, for sleep. Winter Saturdays they had loved in the evenings after dark had shortened the gray afternoons into chilly blackness, lighted by the flame on the fire-half, warmed by the heat their bodies made. They had had only the one winter of love; and the mornings. Memory of that fierce loving, muffled by the dense blackness before dawn, flooded her, bringing quick heat to her face. Sometimes, she had awakened him, suckling at his lightly haired chest, hand searching the wiry thicket that began just below his waist. Or she awakened, nipples tiny and hard, squeezed in his fingers, and he already between her thighs. Molten now, she would rear beneath him, open, drawing him deep; he would plunge. Mostly hurried, always soon done. Sated, they would lie nested together in the silence between cockcrows, dreading the mournful bellow of the conch calling the day, summoning her to ceaseless toil. And at night—The nights of which she dreamed were only that, dreams and ghosts of dreams. I sat between mammy’s knees, she thought wildly, laughed with Carrie, argued with Jeeter, ran with Martha. Loved Kaine—
    She opened her eyes wide against a rush of tears, conscious now of the white man, willing them not to fall, yet unable to halt the memory of Kaine’s voice bitter, beloved, and right: “And Masa’d sell off any youngun on the place as soon as look at em cause he know we