Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [100]
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Then, girl, polish them again and bring it back to me.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Or when Abraham rudely shouted down the stairs for his boots, which were somewhere in the house after having been repaired.
“Ma?” he called out.
Black Jack went to the bottom of the stairs and called up to him, that, young massa, his mother had gone out. Abraham sent a curse down the steps suitable more for a grouchy old man than a young boy.
Black Jack demurred, and fetched his boots.
Nor did Black Jack raise his voice when my cousin Jonathan, who, by now I had come to recognize, seemed to vacillate between two temperaments when it came to slaves, burst into the house one afternoon—I was sitting on the veranda, reading reports of the last five years’ rice harvest supplied to me by my uncle—and shouted for the house man.
“You ignorant bastard, that horse has not been watered! I asked you to tell Isaac, did I not?” My cousin slammed something onto the floor—his riding whip or a hat, I couldn’t see, just heard the thwupping noise as it hit—and charged outside again.
“Damned stupid nigger,” he said, catching my eye. “How am I going to run this place one day with nothing but these damned stupid niggers…”
He stomped off toward the barns.
(All the while in this, Black Jack kept his calm. More than that, back inside the house I heard him humming to himself.)
But if the house slaves were treated with a mixture of disdain and the grudging respect born of necessity, the slaves who commanded the field niggers, as my cousin called them, held a place in trust about as high as the house slaves, while the field niggers—and there were eighty or ninety of them, by my uncle’s count—were regarded as something just above the animals.
Thus it was quite strange—though just how strange I did not know until later—when of a Saturday afternoon on the veranda Rebecca gathered her group together for Bible study. She had chosen Black Jack, Precious Sally, the girl Liza, Isaac (whom I took to be Liza’s paramour), and four or five young men who worked the fields.
Some of the house slaves possessed their own Bibles, having once belonged to Gentile families and thus instructed in the Christian way. For those who didn’t have a Bible, Rebecca had copied out the text for discussion, Exodus 3, verses one through five.
She handed these to those who needed them and then said to all of us gathered there:
“Today the subject of our discussion is the story of how the Hebrew people were rescued by God from their bondage in Egypt. Here were the Israelites having been sold into slavery, and their leader Moses is given a sign.” She turned to me and asked if I would like to read.
“Me?” I had rested my eyes on Liza’s sandy brow and so was distracted.
“You are the guest,” she said, handing me a Bible with the place marked.
“Thank you, you are being very kind, Rebecca.”
I glanced at the slaves, who were regarding us as though we were a Saturday afternoon entertainment. Holding the Book before me, I swallowed hard, cleared my throat.
“‘Now Moses was tending the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the far edge of the wilderness and he came to the mountain of God, to Horeb…’”
“Where’s ’at?” one of the field slaves asked another, who shrugged and pretended he was still listening intently.
Rebecca shot him a school-teacherly-like glance, and signaled me to continue my reading.
“‘And a messenger of God appeared to him in a blazing fire from out of a bush. And he looked and behold: A bush was burning but the bush was not consumed. Moses said, “I must turn aside to look at this incredible sight. Why does not the bush burn up?” And when God saw that he had turned aside to look God called to him from out of the bush, “Moses! Moses!” And he answered, “Here am I.” And He said, “Do not come closer. Remove your sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”’”
“Thank you, Cousin,” Rebecca said, taking the Bible from my hand. “Who would like to read next?”
Isaac, his jaw tilted up in a pose