La Diablesse

The teacup rattled in the saucer as I brought Massa’s tea to him. I was used to being a washerwoman, but Massa had sold off the parlor maid last week, so he promoted me to her place, and my younger sister Hera took up my old position. Hera was twelve and I was fifteen.

Massa glared at me as I set down the tea. He certainly would remember what had happened last time, when he had slid his hand up my leg and I had dropped the hot tea all over has brand new britches, scalding him.

"You good fer nothing clumsy hulking gyascutus!" he had yelled. "Don’t you know you’re my property, girl? You want to say you have morals?"

I fled to the kitchen where my mother was baking a ham and humming a hymn.

"Mamma, Massa jest tried to rape me," I gasped, bending over to catch my breath. Mamma avoided my eyes and went on humming. Was I missing something? Why wasn’t she racing out to whack Massa or at least give him some sharp words as she did to the slave lads who tried to pester me?

"Mamma, did you hear me?"

"Of course, Anna, and I’m wondering if you know who you is."

"I know who I is, Mamma; I’m your chile," I said, bewildered.

"Wrong, honey, you is a slave, and you belongs to Massa." Mamma tried looking at me, and then looked away. "I been saving you fer him. You already high yeller, so your babies will be nearly white. He gon’ make sure they larn trades and maybe even send them to school."

"What?" I could not believe Mamma. I figured she must have gone mad, but the shrewd look in her eyes told me she had my future well mapped out.

A few days later, after my spirit struggled out of my limp, broken body, I met Jesse for the first time. He too was a spirit, and he told me he was in hiding from the angel guides, beings that took spirits to the Other World to await judgment. He said his mother had been a witch doctor, and he had inherited some of her magical powers, so he was terribly afraid of meeting God. Whenever the guides came to lead a spirit, he changed himself into a spider and hid in the broom cupboard.

"Don’t they see us?" I asked, looking at my sister sobbing quietly in a corner.

"No, not unless they special," he said. At my puzzled look he explained. "Some people, like my mammy for instance, is gifted to see spirits. That crew out there," he gestured at the slaves in the backyard, "they don’t see a thing."

"How come I don’t have an angel guide?" I asked Jesse

"Well, your spirit must have left your body before its time," Jesse said. "Was you murdered?"

"I don’t want to talk about that now," I said, turning away hastily. I could still feel the bite of the whip as it tore open my flesh to teach me that I was a slave, and Massa had full control of my body. Mamma rubbed ointments and salves and this and that into my wounds, and when I could walk again Massa summoned me to him. Just the thought of seeing him made me pee myself, so I had to change, and the delay annoyed him.

"Where the hell you been, girl?" he roared, his broken yellow teeth looking more crooked then ever. "Don’t you know you s’posed to come when I calls you?"

"Yassuh, Massa," I mumbled.

"What you say?" Massa yelled.

"I says yassuh, Massa.