The first sentence of this story was again given as a project in the writing group I've joined. Hope you like it.
One Day Soon.
Emma threw the knife down onto the table and went out of the kitchen. Whenever she became angry her usual limp became more pronounced, almost a grotesque hobble. Now her fury was so intense as she lurched out into the darkness that she almost fell down the wooden steps that led onto the terrace around Rialto’s big house.
Away to the west the slopes of the Allegheny mountains lay like a dark grey undulating blanket beneath a sky already flooded by the setting sun with red, gold, yellow and, above her head, purple blue. Beneath her feet the stones released upwards the days burning heat the way her stove in the kitchen would slowly cool during the night.
She stood still waiting for the boiling heat within her to subside as well. She knew it would. It always did.
From beyond the terrace wall where Rialto’s land dropped away into the darkening shadows of the Shenandoah Valley, where the field hands huts lay, came the sound of singing. Spirituals that seemed to her as old as time. Soft and soothing their sound drifted into her, borne on the cooling breeze that blew each evening from the river itself.
Those fields and huts, those people with their suffering dignity expressed in their music, even the river itself that never rushed anywhere headlong, but always flowed steadily from wherever it began towards wherever it would end; all those things had been hers through the first six summers of her life.
She barely remembered how the man her mother taught her to call ‘father’ had actually looked. All she remembered was his enormous size, and massive strength as he held her in his arms, gently rocked her from side to side, and hummed into her ear those same negro songs.
Though her skin was much lighter than either his or her mothers, not even once in those first six years could she remember being called a nigger, or even worse ‘a mullato slave.’
When the man she had been taught to call her father died he was buried among the other slaves near where the river sometimes overran its banks and rendered the land unusable. It was then that the master moved both her mother and herself into the big house. When she asked her mother why they could no longer live with their own people, her mother made no mention of her skin colour but replied simply.
“Why child… for our protection. We must live apart for our own safety!”
So her mother had become the masters house slave, cooking his meals, serving his table, and, when the need or desire arose, serving him as a woman serves her man.
Even when the master put on his light grey uniform, mounted his horse, and led his motley ill equipped army of volunteers away from Rialto to fight with men in dark blue uniforms from the north, his influence continued to protect them…. And when, after the surrender, he had returned still wounded from a place called the Appomattox she had cared for him and continued to serve him as a woman might serve her invalid man.
The master had done as the men in blue had ordered him to do. He had brought all the slaves from the fields and their ramshackle huts below the terrace up to the big house itself, and told them they were all now free men and could leave Rialto if they wished. He assured them he would not have them hunted down, or punished as runaways. Some did leave, but most remained. Emma asked her mother why they remained?
“Where else will we go child,” her mother replied. “ Rialto is all we have ever known!”
Then she too had died four summers ago and been buried not down by the river with the man Emma had been taught to always call her father, but up here beside the house in the apple orchard in the plot reserved for the family. And now Emma cooked for the master and served his meals at the table.
She continued to listen to the sounds of singing. They sang, her people, like this every evening when their work was done, but now the soothing sound was broken. From behind her, through the open veranda window came the sounds of loud chatter and raucous laughter. Well at least the master and his guests, the fine gentlemen and ladies from Winchester had apparently recovered their good humour, though she wondered whether they were still talking about her, still laughing at her discomfort.
The accident had not been Emma’s fault. Much of Rialto’s former splendour had been stripped and taken away by the men in blue who came from the north so that now even the carpets were worn, threadbare and, in places, torn and rucked.
Turning from the table she had stumbled and spilled a little wine onto the dress of the finest lady.
“Lawd bless me Ethan,” the lady had exclaimed in her anger “ Why you keep this mulatto nigger at your table I cannot understand.”
Then she had struck Emma across the face causing her to spin sideways and fall to the floor. Emma had remained there for a moment, her cheek hot and stinging, but fully expecting that the master would in some way at least protect her. But all he said with a laugh was,
“ Why Miss Arabella I keep her here because it amuses me to do so, and in my condition there is very little in this broken world that provides me with any amusement at all.”
Sometimes, when the master ate alone and she served his table, he would ask Emma to stay with him while he ate. Emma was old enough now to know that if she remained still she had both the looks and body to capture and hold the attention of any man… whether he was black or white. So she would stand motionless beside his chair and wait for the moment when his groping hand, gnarled and twisted with years would reach out, take hold of and caress her own.
She had not, so far, served him as a woman serves her man, but she would look down into his pale grey eyes and see there the terrible longing and frustrated yearning that old age can bring. Then she would know, and even feel exulted with the knowledge that she was now the mistress and he had become the slave.
**********************************************
Feeling calmer now Emma turned and limped slowly back into the kitchen. The knife was still where she had thrown it onto the kitchen table, it’s blade shining and inviting in the candlelight. She lifted it into her hand and rested its cold blade against her still throbbing cheek, but taking care not to press its edge too close.
The master liked his knives sharp, their blades honed so fine they could slice even the toughest meat like over ripe apples. From somewhere an old spiritual tune of her mothers came to her and, as she used the knife to carve her own portion from the dinner joint - cooked exactly as the master liked it, hard black crust on the outside, blood red and running on the inside,- she began to sing.
But the words--- oh the words were entirely her own.
Whether she hummed it softly beneath her breath, or whether she sang it out loud,- later she would be unable to recall.
One day soon O lord, one day soon.
Gonna cut these chains O Lord, one day soon.
One day soon O Lord, one day soon
I’ll cut these chains O Lord, one day soon.
The End.
