A Day to Pick Your Own Cotton - Michael R. Phillips [74]
A few hours later it opened again. This time I knew it was no little girl coming down the stairs ’cause I heard heavy footsteps and his voice. I glanced up and shuddered to see that he held a whip in his hand.
“On your feet!” said William McSimmons. He grabbed me and dragged me up out of the icehouse. I cried out because he’d twisted my arm and it felt like he’d almost broken it.
He pulled what remained of my torn dress off my shoulders again.
“I’ll give you one more chance to tell me where she is,” he said.
“Please, master,” I said, “I’m telling you God’s truth—I left here that day those men on horses killed everyone at the slave village. I had gone for water and they didn’t see me. I ran and ran. I didn’t know what direction I was going. I didn’t see anybody else. I thought everyone was dead. I thought you and the master were dead. That’s why I didn’t come back. That’s the honest truth—I saw no one.”
“You’re lying!” he shouted. “Maybe you ran away like you say. But you’ve got to know where she is now! So tell me!”
“I’m sorry, sir … please, I don’t know.”
He erupted with even more fury than the day before, and a minute later I fell senseless in a faint on the dirt, blood covering my back. The last thing I remember was the sound of his boots kicking me back down the steps and then tramping back up. Then my brain went black.
How long I was out, I don’t know. It might have been midafternoon when I gradually began to come to myself in an agony of throbbing and burning torment. I don’t know what hell is going to be like, but if it’s anything like what I felt that day, I pity the folks who wind up there. I heard voices above me outside again. Men’s voices mixed with evil laughter.
“He said I could have her first.”
“… make it fast, then … I’m next and … got to get back to work …”
There was more low laughter, then the door opened and again light flooded the icehouse. As I came more fully back to myself I saw that a man was coming down. I struggled to pull the top of my dress and underclothes back up around my shoulders and breasts.
“Don’t mind all that, missy,” said the man with a lecherous grin, “you won’t be needing it.”
He knelt down beside me and began pulling my clothes off, fondling me and moving his hands all over me as he forced me onto my back. I winced in pain when my whipped back scraped against the hard dirt floor.
Then he started to take his trousers off, and I knew he was about to rape me.
Suddenly I heard an angry voice from above us.
“Get up and come out of there!” cried a woman’s voice. The man turned around. Beyond him I saw the silhouette of a tall form in the light from the opening of the door. It was the mistress.
“Get out!” she repeated. “I don’t care if she’s trash, I’ll have none of your evil, disgusting games at my home. Get out, and the rest of you,” she said to some others who must have been standing nearby, “leave her alone. If she’s going to meet her end, let it be in the way we deal with coloreds. If I see any more of this, I’ll kill you myself.”
Somehow the men seemed to know that she meant it. The man stood, pulled up his trousers, and left the icehouse. Again the door closed. I pulled my clothes back over myself and started to cry.
This time I couldn’t stop.
I didn’t see or hear from anyone else the whole rest of the day or night.
RESOLVE
39
ALETA WAS YOUNG AND WASN’T REALLY AWARE of the implications of what was happening, but as the day wore on Katie grew more and more worried about me. She knew that the more time that passed, the worse the outcome was likely to be.
Emma sensed it too. Katie said she was quieter and more thoughtful all that day. She knew they were looking for her and that whatever was happening to me was on account of her.
Slowly the day passed, then the evening, and finally they went to bed again, more worried than ever about me.
The next morning after they’d eaten breakfast, Emma said she was going to go outside and take a bath.
“Can I