Song of Slaves in the Desert - Alan Cheuse [164]
If I could have seen myself in a glass, what would I have viewed? Shirt open, coat torn at the sleeves, hair askew, face smudged with leaves and mud, so that with darker skin I might have been mistaken for a runaway slave myself. We had been moving so quickly since we left The Oaks that it was only now that we found ourselves at rest that I began to question what I had done.
The shooting.
Running away.
Betraying my family.
Was that not what I had done?
I leaned over and reached for her hand.
She sat up, nearly fully awake.
“What? Are they here?”
“Liza,” I said, “I wish to speak with you.”
“They are not here?”
“We are alone,” I said. “Except for the boy.”
“Why wake me then? I am worn down, Nate.”
“We’ll have all day,” I said. “I understand, we must not move by day.”
“You’re learning.”
“I am learning,” I said. “But I have not learned everything I want to know.”
She shook her head, rubbed her eyes with her knuckles, and leaned back against the tree.
“What do you mean?”
“Tell me,” I said.
“Do you know what you are asking?”
“No, no, I do not. I have only my suspicions.”
“And what do you suspect?”
And just as I was saying what I said next I understood that until I began to say it I had not understood it all!
“You came to my bed so that I would help you run away.”
Chapter Seventy-eight
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Dark Tales by Light of Day
Coming to your bed,” Liza said, “was not my idea at first.”
Her words hit me in the chest like a fist.
“Whose idea was it?”
I reached over and took her hand, and took some deep breaths. The atmosphere of the swamp oozed damp and stink, a difficult place in which to breathe.
“Jonathan sent me to you.”
“What precisely do you mean by that?”
“He ordered me to visit you.”
“He did this? And you obeyed? Why on earth—?”
“Nathaniel, I belonged to him. He could do anything he wanted to do with me.”
“And he sent you to me?”
“Yes,” she broke in, “and if I could feel shame ever again I might feel it about this.”
“My head is a-whirl,” I said. “Is there more? Tell me everything.”
“Oh, it is quite sordid. Too sordid for a New York gentleman to contemplate, I’m afraid.”
“I want to know,” I said, already feeling as though someone had just torn away a swathe of skin from a blistering wound on my heart. “I love you, Liza. I offered to buy you. Is that not proof of how I felt?”
Liza laughed sardonically.
“If that is proof of love, folks all over the South would be feeling it every day. I buy you, I love you. I sell you, I hate you. As a matter of fact, Nate, slaves don’t find much affection in being either bought or sold.”
“No, I suppose not.” I spoke formally, but my heart, with its wound, now felt like a large rock in my chest, weighing me down, pulling me toward the ground.
Liza could see this on my face.
“Let’s try to sleep,” she said.
“You told me you would explain everything,” I said.
She kept her silence for a moment.
I glanced over at the sleeping boy.
“Tell me everything.”
Without taking much of a breath, she said, “I decided to seduce you so that you would help me run away.”
“Please,” I said. “And so you would not prostitute yourself on your father’s orders. But you would do it on your own?”
“Please don’t speak about it like that.”
“You did not have to give yourself to me,” I said. “I was, I am, in love with you. I would have done without the…the bait.”
“It is not as if I didn’t, and don’t still, feel strongly for you,” she said. “What I did—was come up to the edge, and then cross over.”
“Ah, yes, the edge,” I said. “But had you never thought of running away with Isaac?”
“I thought of it, but he would never run.”
“Why not?”
“Not until he took his revenge. Do you forget that your uncle raped his mother and destroyed his father’s life?”
I took a few long breaths, but did not, could not, respond.
“So…it was me or no one?”
“Yes.”
“If you had made your predicament known I would have helped you without…”
“Seduction?”
“Yes, without