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

can always make another one.”
    Fear had eaten at her insides; even if she saved their baby fromLefonia, she would never be able to save it if Master wanted it. She cut her eyes at the white man. He was bent over the pad on his knee, his hand propelling the pen across its surface in intricate movements. What would this make him know about her, she wondered, about her life with Kaine? The white man looked up at her even as the pen continued across the pad and she recoiled, thinking in that first instance of seeing that his eyes were covered by some film, milky and blank. His eyes were “blue,” she saw in the next moment, like Emmalina said Mistress’s were, like sho enough white folks’ were, like the sky. Hastily, she dropped her own. That’s why we not supposed to look in white folks’ eyes, she thought, with a shiver. There was only emptiness in them; the unwary would fall into the well of their eyes and drown.
    â€œHe, Kaine,” she said, stumbling, taking up her tale again, “he tell me then how he been sold way from some masas, runned away from others. He run, he say, trying to find north and he little then and not even know north a direction and more places than he ever be able to count. He just think he be free of whippings, free to belong to somebody what belongs to him just so long as he be north. Last time he runned way, he most get there and he think now he know what way free land is, what is free town, next time he get there. But never is no next time cause the same time patterrollers takes him back, they takes back a man what been north, lived there and what know what free north is. ‘Now,’ Kaine say, ‘now this man free, born free, but still, any white man what say he a slave be believed cause a nigga can’t talk before the laws, not against no white man, not even for his own self. So this man gots to get another white man for to say he free and he couldn’t find one quick enough so then the Georgia mens—that be what the north man call patterrollers—they takes him for to be slave. That’s right. But even before the patterrollers catched him, white man hit him, he not allowed to hit back. He carpenter, but if white mens on the job say they don’t want work with him, he don’t work, and such things as that. He say it hard being a free man of color, he don’t say nigga, say free man of color, but it better’n being a slave and if he get the chance, he going runned way.’”
    Dessa had been almost overwhelmed by the story; wasn’t there no place where a nigga could just be? And, “He—Kaine—say, he ask hisself, ‘That free? How that going be free? It still be two lists, one say, “White Man Can,” other say, “Nigga Can’t,” and white man still be the onliest one can write on em.’ So he don’t run no more. ‘Run for what?’ he say. ‘Get caught just be that much worser off. Maybe is a place without no whites, nigga can be free.’ But he don’t know where that is. He find it, he say we have us babies then.”
    Dessa looked out at the sunshine and her lower lip trembled a little. “I know Kaine be knowing more’n me. I know that. He—he telled me lot a things I ain’t even think about before I’m with him.” Yet, everything that Kaine said that was supposed to make her see the foolishness of having a baby only convinced her that they must run. “No matter though,” she said with her eyes closed. “Masa kill Kaine before it get time for us to go.”
    They were both quiet for some time.
    â€œYou think,” she asked looking up at the white man, “you think what I say now going help peoples be happy in the life they sent? If that be true,” she said as he opened his mouth to speak, “why I not be happy when I live it?”
    June 29, 1847
    As today is Sunday I held no formal sessions with Odessa. But,