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By Root 1423 0

beside her, one of his hands choking back her screams—“Please, Massa, please!”—the other stuffing dirty burlap sacking into her mouth until she gagged. As she flailed her arms in agony and arched her back to shake him off, he banged her head against the floor, again, again, again, then began slapping her—more and more excitedly—until Kizzy felt her dress being snatched upward, her undergarments being ripped. Frantically thrashing, the sack in her mouth muffling her cries, she felt his hands fumbling upward between her thighs, finding, fingering her private parts, squeezing and spreading them. Striking her another numbing blow, the man jerked down his suspenders, made motions at his trousers’ front. Then came the searing pain as he forced his way into her, and Kizzy’s senses seemed to explode. On and on it went, until finally she lost consciousness.

In the early dawn, Kizzy blinked her eyes open. She was engulfed in shame to find a young black woman bending over her and sponging her private parts gently with a rag and warm, soapy water. When Kizzy’s nose told her that she had also soiled herself, she shut her eyes in embarrassment, soon feeling the woman cleaning her there as well. When Kizzy slitted her eyes open again, she saw that the woman’s face seemed as expressionless as if she were washing clothes, as if this were but another of the many tasks she had been called upon to perform in her life. Finally laying a clean towel over Kizzy’s loins, she glanced up at Kizzy’s face. “Reckon you ain’t feel like talkin’ none now,” the woman said quietly, gathering up the dirty rags and her waterpail, preparing to leave. Clutching these things in the crook of one arm, she bent again and used her free hand to draw up a burlap sack to cover most of Kizzy’s body. “’Fore long, I bring you sump’n to eat—” she said, and went on out of the cabin door.

Kizzy lay there feeling as if she were suspended in midair. She tried to deny to herself that the unspeakable, unthinkable thing had really happened, but the lancing pains of her torn privates reminded her that it had. She felt a deep uncleanness, a disgrace that could never be erased. She tried shifting her position, but the pains seemed to spread. Holding her body still, she clutched the sack tightly about her, as if somehow to cocoon herself against any more outrage, but the pains grew worse.

Kizzy’s mind raced back across the past four days and nights. She could still see her parents’ terrified faces, still hear their helpless cries as she was rushed away. She could still feel herself struggling to escape from the white trader whom the Spotsylvania County sheriff had turned her over to; she had nearly slipped free after pleading that she had to relieve herself. Finally they had reached some small town where—after long, bitterly angry haggling—the trader at last had sold her to this new massa, who had awaited the nightfall to violate her. Mammy! Pappy! If only screaming for them could reach them—but they didn’t even know where she was. And who knows what might have happened to them? She knew that Massa Waller would never sell anyone he owned “less’n dey breaks his rules.” But in trying to stop the massa from selling her, they must have broken a dozen of those rules.

And Noah, what of Noah? Somewhere beaten to death? Again, it came back to Kizzy vividly, Noah demanding angrily that to prove her love, she must use her writing ability to forge a traveling pass for him to show if he should be seen, stopped, and questioned by patrollers or any other suspicious whites. She remembered the grim determination etched on his face as he pledged to her that once he got up North, with just a little money saved from a job he would quickly find, “Gwine steal back here an’ slip you Nawth, too, fo’ de res’ our days togedder.” She sobbed anew. She knew she would never see him again. Or her parents. Unless ...

Her thoughts leaped with a sudden hope! Missy Anne had sworn since girlhood that when she married some handsome, rich young massa, Kizzy alone must be her personal maid, later to care for the houseful