Hunting Midnight (34 page)

Benjamin must have guessed that I would want to go to America after reading the letters, for he now took out of his cloak pocket the child’s rattle that Midnight had used to fight Hyena. Father had apparently saved it and given it to him.

“You give this to Midnight, along with a blessing from me. Tell him that I have continued our work all these years – and that I searched for him. He has never left my thoughts for a single day.”

A few minutes later, he threw on his cloak, hugged me, and started on his way. As I stood in my doorway, my heart was racing as though to impel me to beg him not to go. But I discounted my thoughts of death and eternal separation as a symptom of fear.

How does a good man do evil? Sometime after the tolling of two, I saw that I might ask the question not only with regard to Father but also in relation to Midnight and Mother – if they had been guilty of betrayal.

It seemed to me that the three of them had done me a great wrong. Their lies had pulled up my anchor and cast me out to sea; their secrecy had left me shipwrecked. They willingly sacrificed me so that they might continue their secret lives.

I resented them all, but it was at Father that I silently hurled all my curses. He was a blackguard and a poltroon. And I despised him.

I awoke to the dawn, choking, seized by panic: I had never dug up all the keepsakes I’d buried before the first of the French invasions – including Midnight’s feather. I had to make them mine again before leaving for London.

Dashing down the stairs, wearing only my blanket, I rushed out to the garden. Squatting among the prickly weeds, I started to dig frantically.

I dug three holes, each in error, then succeeded in finding the two shafts from so long ago. Soon, I had in my arms Daniel’s amulet and masks; the jay we had carved; Midnight’s quiver, arrows, and feather; and Gilberto’s tile of a triton. All were caked with dirt but not much the worse for having been buried these many years. Clutching them to my naked chest, I danced a jig in my stocking feet. Then I dropped everything to the ground and fell to my knees.

Later that morning, I felt curiously compelled to rebury Daniel’s frog mask, our jay, Midnight’s quiver, and all but one of his arrows, so as to leave something of myself and them in Porto during my trip. While doing so, I knew for certain that I would voyage to New York and hunt for Midnight – for as long as it took to find him. I was not frightened, for I had Mantis between my toes. And I had found what had been lost.

XXX

The
Power
of
Silence

I
’m not going to say who did it just yet. Because if I were to so much as whisper it, then my friends at River Bend might pay for my carelessness. I’ve seen one good man die because of me, and I’m not about to put anyone else in harm’s way. No, sir. It’s not too late for Mistress Anne to tell her new man to tie a rope around any old neck that might strike her fancy and hang yet one more borrowed body from the nearest oak. I say
borrowed
because our ears and fingers and toes don’t belong to us. I found that out for real sure when I was twelve, and I’m not likely to ever forget.

My papa once told me that the master even tries to own our dreams –
to
get
his
chains
round
our
wings
,
as he put it. I’m damned sure he owned mine for a time, because I sure as hell never dreamed of flying or fluttering.

I remember the moment I knew my dreams had gotten clean away – a few years back, in December. What came to me in the soft dawn of my room was what I’d last been dreaming – a girl, me, strolling down an avenue bigger than any in Charleston, in a city of red brick, like a fortress built to last forever. I was singing, because there was no weeds or rice anywhere. The snow I’d only ever read about in books was covering lampposts and carriages and rooftops, and it was so white that tears stung my eyes. Then a tingling wetness began falling onto my face from above and made me go quiet. I looked up, and what did I see but a million flakes of that blessed snow filling all the sky, as unstoppable and as alive as butterflies carried by the powerful breath of God that Moses writes about in the Bible. I was shivering, but it was good, because I knew then there was a place protected by a cold so
powerful that nothing from River Bend and South Carolina could ever survive there.

I thought about that girl and that city every day, and the possibility of them being real wore me down so much that I couldn’t say no any longer. “
You
might
lose
yourself
if
you
say
no
to
the
night
inside
you
too
often
”
was what my papa always told me. He knew about losing things, if anyone did.

The white folks think the overseer committed the murders. Or, at least, that’s what they said in their newspapers. Nobody knows what they truly think, least of all me. I’m not so clever as that. If I were, Weaver might still be alive.

So I’m not going to whisper a thing about
who
just yet. I hardly got any power to speak of, but I got my silence.

I’m not going to say why our masters were murdered either. You’re going to have to discover that for yourself. And it’ll make sense to you or it won’t. Just like Mantis is either out there on the plantation or he ain’t. No
perhaps
and no
maybes
about it.

So I can’t help you with the
why
just yet. Even so, you’re going to have to know a slip about Big Master Henry. Him first. Then the other masters who came along after him.

You’re going to have to know about him alive if you’re going to understand how important it was to have him dead and buried. Because it sure meant a good many things to us when we laid his casket in the ground on that glorious day of
September
sun. For one thing, it meant that Mantis might be out there in the wild grasses sprouting up along Christmas Creek. Inside us too, getting us ready. Waiting beyond our master’s reach for a chance to lead us toward that everlasting fortress in our minds where snow is always falling.

So there Big Master Henry is, standing on the piazza with his hands on his hips like he done own the sky over all of Carolina.
Big
,
because he’s over six feet tall and wide too, like a wagon filled with horse manure. Some folks think he’s handsome, but they haven’t seen him with an empty bottle of whiskey clutched in his
hand, his face all puffy and his eyes darting like spiders figuring out a way to get at you.
Ain’t
nobody
look
maw
o’nery
den
dat
man,
my mamma used to whisper. And if you ask me, she was right. Not that anybody’s waiting in line to ask me much. Though I’ve got plenty to say, because I got fifteen years of keeping my mouth shut sitting behind me.

So now you know why there’s a
Big
in Big Master Henry. We always call him
Master
because he may not own the sky, but he owns every weed, wattle, and Negro from Christmas Creek in the east, to the Cooper River in the north and west, on down to Marble Hill in the south.

Yes,
Massa,
I’s
do
jus’
what
ya
seh,
Massa
…. I talk like that sometimes in front of the white folks, since they don’t much appreciate me speaking like I’ve got any education. But my papa won me the chance to read and write when I was barely done crawling. Not that I’m any different from the others. The scars on my back that are never going to come off, no matter how hard I scrub, remind me of that every day. That’s why I sometimes reach around to feel them just before I go to sleep. Pain that makes you the same as people you love can be a good pain, I think.

Marble Hill used to be Marylebone Hill back when my mamma came over from Africa, but she and the others shortened the name because Marylebone didn’t fit in their mouths too good. Papa still called it that though, because he liked the sound. He used to say the strangest and most beautiful things, though he hardly ever wrote anything down. He left writing things down for me.

Most folks call me Morri, but that’s not my real name – it’s Memoria. I tried to keep it secret, because at first I wasn’t too happy with it. No, ma’am. But I don’t mind telling everyone now. It means
memory
in Portuguese. My papa knew a bit of that language, owing to his having lived in Portugal for a few years.

Grandma Alice was called Blue because she was so
Cabinda-black
that folks said she shined blue in the moonlight. She used to call Big Master Henry by the name he had as a boy – Hennie. She’d been his wet nurse and was allowed a few liberties beyond the reach of the rest of us. “Ya must nevah feget yasself, chile,” she used to tell me. “Ya feget yasself, Morri chile, ya like on die.” Once, when we were stooped in the fields, I called Big Master
Henry a fat old hyena for ruining the neat border of rice plants we’d just made. I spoke so loud that he nearly heard me. Mamma lifted me up and shook me like a rag doll. She shrieked that I had to keep my lips as still as sleep because she was never ever going to see me tied to the whipping barrel. I had to sit her down right in the mud and comfort
her
because she was so upset at losing her temper. Later, that made us both laugh till the tears were falling down our cheeks and I had to beg her to stop making faces. My mamma laughed better than anyone, even my papa. She was much taller than him – tall as most any man. With high cheekbones and eyes so black they reflected things nobody could normally see – even the future, some folks thought. Looking at my parents together made me smile because they looked so different, but it was like they fit together.

Mamma carried herself high, and when she aimed those black eyes at you in anger she made your spirit just shrink away in shame. Or if she was feeling goodly toward you, she made you think you were better because she was watching.

Mamma died of the fevers seven years ago, in June of 1817. Papa was the next to go. He left me all alone three and a half years later. After that, I was the only one from my family still around. That’s why I just had to write these things down. Otherwise, nobody’d know anything about us, and that would be like being swallowed up by the ground. Like we were never here.

It was the rough boots and the bunions. And the moonshine. That was why I thought Big Master Henry never had a kind word to say. He’d side-shuffle all ’round, always smirking – “Comin’ up at ya sideways like a rattlesnake with its rattle hidden,” Weaver used to say. Weaver used to be allowed to go hunting with Big Master Henry. He could spot a mole’s nose poking pink out of the grass from half a mile away, Papa used to tell me. And know just what the mole was thinking too!

Weaver was a good friend of my parents. As I grew older he became a friend of mine too. I always liked older folks. I never had much luck with the ones my age. They used to say I was too yellow-skinned and skinny and that my eyes were peculiar.
Likely some of them thought I used to act superior. Maybe I did think I was better than them because I could read and write. Till I got myself whipped. After that, we all knew that I was just the same as everybody else.

Weaver had two children and his wife, Martha, over in Comingtee Plantation, which is just across the Cooper River to the north of River Bend. He’d get a pass to go there on Sundays. It was mighty hard on him not being with his family most of the week, but he didn’t mind it all the time, if you want the truth. Because he liked teasing some of the young girls around here. He was a rogue, if you ask me, with them light-brown eyes always shining at the shapes of girls.

He’s dead now, and mostly because of me. That sits heavy on me when I lie down at night and think of my life and what’s gone right and what’s gone wrong. Likely it always will. But I wouldn’t want a man to die with a bullet in him and me not to think about how I helped put it there. It would be like claiming he was nothing and ain’t never been anything but nothing.

Big Master Henry liked hurting each person differently, I think, in the way that would do the most damage. It was a Friday evening in July of 1820 when my turn came. The night was moist, the air clinging so tight at your face that you didn’t really sleep, you just kind of fainted away. I was nearly twelve years old and was working in the Big House. I slept in a shed next to the kitchen, and one evening the Master sent his personal slave, Crow, to fetch me from bed, saying that he had some more silver for me to polish, which was one of my jobs.

Big Master Henry grabbed my arm as I stepped into his room. Maybe I hadn’t polished something right, I thought. My heart began thumping something fierce. But then he kissed me on my forehead, like he was an old friend. “You’re soft, Morri,” he said. Then he offered me a glass of wine he’d already poured. “You’ve never had any, have you?” he asked. His eyes were kind and he didn’t seem drunk.

When I shook my head, he lifted the glass to my lips. It tasted sweet and syrupy. He said my tongue was real pink. He
wondered 
why nigger girls always had such pink tongues. Then he gave a laugh and said not to mind him, that he was just being curious in his own way, and he hoped he hadn’t offended me.

He knelt on the ground, took my shoes off, and rubbed my feet.

“Morri, you just keep drinking and let me do the rest,” he whispered.

When I had finished my glass, he stood up and took it from me. He licked the rim with his tongue, winking, then put it down on his night table. Seeing him unbuttoning his trousers, I knew the real reason I’d been asked to be a house slave, and it didn’t have nothing to do with how well I did my polishing and ironing.

Maybe I only thought these things after he’d had his way with me. I can’t recall so well what I thought at the time, because I was so afraid of how ashamed Papa was going to be when he found out.

“Please don’t hurt me, Big Master Henry,” I pleaded. I was worried he’d make bruises on me that everyone could see.

“It won’t hurt unless you want it to,” he said. “You’ve got your woman’s blood by now. So you must have been expecting it sooner or later.”

“I ain’t ready,” I said.

“You’re plenty ready.” He laughed. “I’ve been feeling how ready you are, and my hands don’t lie.” He took my hand and brought it up to just where he wanted it. “You see what I got for you?” he said, grinning because of how quick I pulled away. “It might frighten you now, but you’re going to think it’s real nice once it’s all yours. Trust me, I know what you girls like.”

Pretty soon he was on top of me, pushing and grunting, and I could smell the perfume on him, like he’d bathed in it. “Please, Big Master Henry, don’t do this to me.”

“In a few minutes you’re gonna wonder why you fought me so hard. And you’re going to know why God put you on this good green earth, nigger girl.”

Him talking about God must have made me remember the leather-bound Old Testament I kept under my pillow. Papa said it had been printed all the way over in London, a hundred years before, so I figured it must be worth some money. I told the Master I’d give it to him.

He said, “Don’t you know the only scripture I want is right up between your legs.”

There comes a moment when you know that there’s no use fighting, and I knew it then. So I shut my eyes and tried to make myself go dead. But it didn’t work. It felt like he was pushing broken glass into me. No matter how much I begged, he just kept on going. I couldn’t risk shouting for help. If I was going to die, then I was, and there was nothing to be done about it. I’d have chosen death any day of the week over having anyone find out.