Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [132]
And then I said the next thing, the final thing, that could only have caused him great consternation. And me, also. Because I was as much delivering the news to myself as to him.
“Isaac,” I said, wiping sweat from my forehead with my sleeve, “I…I am in love with her.”
Chapter Fifty-seven
________________________
…And Nights
The night of that same day Liza burst into my bedroom.
“How dare you!” she said, throwing her fists at me as I stood up to meet her.
I caught her by the wrists and we spun around, almost as if in a kind of dance.
“How dare I? I did not know a slave could say such things!”
“You didn’t? You didn’t? Well, despite my life of slavery I am free—I am free to hate you!”
She tore one of her hands free and banged me in the nose. The pain pulled me back and I clasped both hands to my face.
“Nate, Nate,” she said in a sudden worried cry, “Are you all right? Are you?”
Hands still covering my aching face, I stumbled back against the bedroom wall.
“No,” I said, “no, I’m not.”
My voice sounded thick. Glancing down behind my hands I could see the blood dripping onto my shoes.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, so sorry,” Liza said, and guided me in her arms to the bed.
“I…I’ll fetch some water. Wait!”
“Wait? Wait? My blood cannot wait.”
“Here,” she said, and snatched a pillow from the bed and shoved it at me. I caught it in one hand and pressed the billowy thing to my face. She left the room while I sat on the edge of the bed, breathing hoarsely but steadily, feeling the blood run out of my battered nose and down my shirt front.
In a moment she was back. Her eyes were wild, her duster spattered with my blood.
Clutching the cloths she had just fetched and dipping them into the water from my drinking jug she dabbed at my nose, and then bid me press the wet cloths against it.
“Lie back,” she said.
I obeyed, but gagged on the blood that ran down the back of my throat.
I sat up again.
“Back,” she said.
“Are you the massa?” I said. “It is choking me.”
She approached me again, dabbed, pressed. After awhile, in which we both remained silent except for our breathing, the blood stopped flowing.
“Why did you say that?” Liza asked.
I pulled the cloths away from my face.
“What did I say?”
“You know what you said.”
I shook my head, this motion somehow stirring up the pain, if not the blood, almost in an instant.
“You told Isaac you loved me.”
I sighed, and swallowed, and tasted the bitter iron of my own blood.
“I said that, yes.”
“So stupid.”
“Me? Stupid?”
She shook her head, frightened all of a sudden by her own aggressiveness toward me.
“I said it,” I said, “because it is true.”
“It is not.” Her voice was hoarse and raspy.
“Oh, but it is, sad to say. And wonderful, too.”
I tossed the bloody cloths onto the bed and reached for her hand.
She pulled it away.
I reached again.
“You’re still bleeding,” she said. I felt the hot stinging in my nostrils, still wet with the flow.
She picked up the cloths, refolded them so that the clean side showed, and pressed that against my face, at the same time pushing me back so that my head lay against the bloody discarded pillow.
“I hate you,” she said.
“You don’t,” I said.
“I do, I do. You have ruined everything.”
“And how have I done that? What did you have before…?” I stopped myself, amazed at the stupidity and cruelty of such a remark.
“Yes, you’re right, massa. Dis nigger woman, what she have befo’ de man from New Yawk, he come along?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling my shame as more intense pain in the center of my face.
“What did I have? Oh, what did I have?”
It was her turn to hold her face and moan.
“Liza,” I said, “I did not mean to—”
“Leave me be!”
“Sorry.”
“Yes, you’re sorry. You’re sorry.”
With a huge sigh, she heaved herself to her feet and stood unsteadily before me.
“I can’t come here anymore. I have been wanting to tell you this, and now I must tell you this.”
“Is it so awful for you? I hadn’t understood that it was, Liza. I thought…I thought that you felt something the same as I