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
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
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.
I remember he whispered in my ear, “You’re mine now, down to your little nigger soul.”
Strange, but that’s mostly what I remember about that first time — whispering crazy things, anything I could remember, as if the sound of my voice could save me.
Afterward, he said, “You’re just about the worst I ever had, Morri. You ain’t got no crackle, no spark. You’re dead inside, nigger girl.”
He patted me on my behind and sent me back to my room, but I ran out of the house all the way to Porter’s Woods. I wanted to slip out of my soiled skin so bad I couldn’t stop trembling. I knew I had to put what had happened way behind me or I’d have to tell my papa. I had no control over time, but of distance I had a little, and it was the only thing I had to help me keep quiet. When I was far enough from the cabins and the Big House, I started hollering for Mamma, because I didn’t want to give anyone alive the burden of my truth. I fell on my hands and knees like the ruined animal he’d made me into, and I pleaded with her for help. It was as if he’d cut out the best
