sense you—” He cut off abruptly. “Dana, go do your work!”
I left wondering whether Rufus had shown lack of sense by letting me write the letter—instead of writing it himself—or by sending it. After all, if Kevin never came back for me, Weylin’s property was increased by one more slave. Even if I proved not to be very useful, he could always sell me.
I shuddered. I had to talk Rufus into letting me write another letter. The first one could have been lost or destroyed or sent to the wrong place. Things like that were still happening in 1976. How much worse might they be in this horse-and-buggy era? And surely Kevin would give up on me if I went home without him again—left him here for more long years. If he hadn’t already given up on me.
I tried to put that thought out of my mind. It came to me now and then even though everything people told me seemed to indicate that he was waiting. Still waiting.
I went out to the laundry yard to help Tess. I had come to almost wel- come the hard work. It kept me from thinking. White people thought I was industrious. Most blacks thought I was either stupid or too intent on pleasing the whites. I thought I was keeping my fears and doubts at bay as best I could, and managing to stay relatively sane.
I caught Rufus alone again the next day—in his room this time where we weren’t likely to be interrupted. But he wouldn’t listen when I brought up the letter. His mind was on Alice. She was stronger now, and his patience with her was gone. I had thought that eventually, he would just rape her again—and again. In fact, I was surprised that he hadn’t already done it. I didn’t realize that he was planning to involve me in that rape. He was, and he did.
“Talk to her, Dana,” he said once he’d brushed aside the matter of my letter. “You’re older than she is. She thinks you know a lot. Talk to her!” He was sitting on his bed staring into the cold fireplace. I sat at his desk looking at the clear plastic pen I had loaned him. He’d used half its
ink already. “What the hell have you been writing with this?” I asked. “Dana, listen to me!”
I turned to face him. “I heard you.” “Well?”
THE FIGHT 163
“I can’t stop you from raping the woman, Rufe, but I’m not going to help you do it either.”
“You want her to get hurt?”
“Of course not. But you’ve already decided to hurt her, haven’t you?” He didn’t answer.
“Let her go, Rufe. Hasn’t she suffered enough because of you?” He wouldn’t. I knew he wouldn’t.
His green eyes glittered. “She’ll never get away from me again. Never!” He drew a deep breath, let it out slowly. “You know, Daddy wants me to send her to the fields and take you.”
“Does he?”
“He thinks all I want is a woman. Any woman. So you, then. He says you’d be less likely to give me trouble.”
“Do you believe him?”
He hesitated, managed to smile a little. “No.” I nodded. “Good.”
“I know you, Dana. You want Kevin the way I want Alice. And you had more luck than I did because no matter what happens now, for a while he wanted you too. Maybe I can’t ever have that—both wanting, both loving. But I’m not going to give up what I can have.”
“What do you mean, ‘no matter what happens now?’ ”
“What in hell do you think I mean? It’s been five years! You want to write another letter. Did you ever think maybe he threw the first letter out? Maybe he got like Alice—wanted to be with one of his own kind.” I said nothing. I knew what he was doing—trying to share his pain, hurt me as he was hurting. And of course, he knew just where I was vul-
nerable. I tried to keep a neutral expression, but he went on.
“He told me once that you two had been married for four years. That means he’s been here away from you even longer than you’ve been together. I doubt if he’d have waited as long as he did if you weren’t the only one who could get him back to his home time. But now … who knows. The right woman could make this time mighty sweet to him.”
“Rufe, nothing you say to me is going to ease your way with Alice.” “No? How about this: You talk to her—talk some sense into her—or
you’re going to watch while Jake Edwards beats some sense into her!” I stared at him in revulsion. “Is that what you call love?”
He was on his feet and across the room to me before I could take another breath. I sat where I was, watching him, feeling frightened, and
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suddenly very much aware of my knife, of how quickly I could reach it. He wasn’t going to beat me. Not him, not ever.
“Get up!” he ordered. He didn’t order me around much, and he’d never done it in that tone. “Get up, I said!”
I didn’t move.
“I’ve been too easy on you,” he said. His voice was suddenly low and ugly. “I treated you like you were better than the ordinary niggers. I see I made a mistake!”
“That’s possible,” I said. “I’m waiting for you to show me I made a mistake.”
For several seconds, he stood frozen, towering over me, glaring down as though he meant to hit me. Finally, though, he relaxed, leaned against his desk. “You think you’re white!” he muttered. “You don’t know your place any better than a wild animal.”
I said nothing.
“You think you own me because you saved my life!”
And I relaxed, glad not to have to take the life I had saved—glad not to have to risk other lives, including my own.
“If I ever caught myself wanting you like I want her, I’d cut my throat,” he said.
I hoped that problem would never arise. If it did, one of us would do some cutting all right.
“Help me, Dana.” “I can’t.”
“You can! You and nobody else. Go to her. Send her to me. I’ll have her whether you help or not. All I want you to do is fix it so I don’t have to beat her. You’re no friend of hers if you won’t do that much!”
Of hers! He had all the low cunning of his class. No, I couldn’t refuse to help the girl—help her avoid at least some pain. But she wouldn’t think much of me for helping her this way. I didn’t think much of myself.
“Do it!” hissed Rufus.
I got up and went out to find her.
She was strange now, erratic, sometimes needing my friendship, trust- ing me with her dangerous longings for freedom, her wild plans to run away again; and sometimes hating me, blaming me for her trouble.
One night in the attic, she was crying softly and telling me something about Isaac. She stopped suddenly and asked, “Have you heard from your husband yet, Dana?”
“Not yet.”
THE FIGHT 165
“Write another letter. Even if you have to do it in secret.” “I’m working on it.”
“No sense in you losing your man too.”
Yet moments later for no reason that I could see, she attacked me, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, whining and crying after some poor white trash of a man, black as you are. You always try to act so white. White nigger, turning against your own people!”
I never really got used to her sudden switches, her attacks, but I put up with them. I had taken her through all the other stages of healing, and somehow, I couldn’t abandon her now. Most of the time, I couldn’t even get angry. She was like Rufus. When she hurt, she struck out to hurt oth- ers. But she had been hurting less as the days passed, and striking out less. She was healing emotionally as well as physically. I had helped her to heal. Now I had to help Rufus tear her wounds open again.
She was at Carrie’s cabin watching Jude and two other older babies someone had left with her. She had no regular duties yet, but like me, she had found her own work. She liked children, and she liked sewing. She would take the coarse blue cloth Weylin bought for the slaves and make neat sturdy clothing of it while small children played around her feet. Weylin complained that she was like old Mary with the children and the sewing, but he brought her his clothing to be mended. She worked better and faster than the slave woman who had taken over much of old Mary’s sewing—and if she had an enemy on the plantation, it was that woman, Liza, who was now in danger of being sent to more onerous work.
I went into the cabin and sat down with Alice before the cold fireplace. Jude slept beside her in the crib Nigel had made for him. The other two babies were awake lying naked on blankets on the floor quietly playing with their feet.
Alice looked up at me, then held up a long blue dress. “This is for you,” she said. “I’m sick of seeing you in them pants.”
I looked down at my jeans. “I’m so used to dressing like this, I forget sometimes. At least it keeps me from having to serve at the table.”
“Serving ain’t bad.” She’d done it a few times. “And if Mister Tom wasn’t so stingy, you’d have had a dress a long time ago. Man loves a dollar more than he loves Jesus.”
