Black Onions

All her sisters hid from me, the Mandingo, and they veiled themselves in their green bivouacs, yet I knew the forbidden fruit of white flesh. She revealed herself to me, unclasped her flakey brown chemise, teased me with smooth pearly shoulders and I know I must push her away. What would Master do if he caught me in the garden with her naked, crying because I will never know who she really is? There are too many faces she has shown me and her pungent fakeness stings my eyes.

Raymond pocketed a few more bulbs still crunching on the one he first unearthed. His overalls bulged as he hunched behind broad squash leaves chewing, chewing and swallowing. Mrs. Lucille and Texanna were taking tea on the front porch but it was best not to linger with evidence on you. Yellow onion sits high on the breath just like white, but there is no denying having four or five in your trousers. He had heard Mrs. Lucille joke about the fact with her guest but never really got the thrust of it, some saying about ‘Nate Turner and niggers cutting on white onions.’ Whatever truth hung to the wisecrack, prevented the slaves from having them in their gardens and provoked Raymond to steal. He was about to dash from behind the barn and out of view of the large black-shuttered windows, when he heard the voices of Bobby Dean and Andrew. Raymond pressed his back against the barn’s wall and waited.

“Dinah should be ready to calve any day now.”

“I sure hope it’s uh girl. Ain’t nobody gonna want the son of that mean ol’ bastard Jacob.” Andrew pressed a finger to his nose, cleared his sinus, and spat.

“Well we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. I hear there’s gonna be ice cream at the fair this year.”

“Ice cream?”

The men moved off and Raymond snuck closer to the field hand’s quarters, still low to avoid any eyes, black or otherwise. He reached the tall grass that stood in depressions that were duck ponds before the summer’s heat. Caleb passed the reeds without noticing him. When he pushed a wheel barrel between the shacks, Raymond darted from concealment and blew a hole through the clutch of hens pecking around his mother’s place. He slammed the lopsided door behind him and stuffed the chicken’s ruckus outside.

“Jesus boy! Whatcha’ don’ did now?”

“Shhh! Nuthin’ Mama, nuthin.” Big sweat drops fell out his mustache and flew away from his face with his panting. He bent over and put his hands on his thighs, blowing hard enough to disturb the dirt floor.

“Why you come beatin’ up in here like you done went plum crazy? – Eyes all bucked like yo’ pappy’s.”

Raymond’s eyes were bucked. The mid-day light seared her sight and the first thing that emerged from the sepia that surrounded the room was his eyeballs. His midnight-black skin slowly came into focus.

“I brought somethin’ fo the stew.” He reached into his pockets and produced five orbs from the garden. His dark fingers curled around them, cradled them as he held them out to his mother trembling with excitement.

“Is those –”

“You cut’em up fine won’t nobody know.”

“Oh Lord Ray! You gon’ get yo’self beat over some onions.”

“Didn’t nobody see nuthing.”

“You don’ know that. Somebody coulda had.” Annie Mae took the onions from Raymond’s hands and began to peel them next to the hearth. Brown husk flung into the fire shriveled, darkened under its powers. He heard the plop, plop, plop in the large black pot that spewed steam every time the lid closed over it. Annie Mae tucked the last two onions into the foot of her bedding. “I’ll fry us these ones later when everyone’s asleep.”

Raymond licked his lips and kneaded his hands. He had long digits inlaid with mother-of-pearl fingernails. She sighed and pressed her fists into her waist.

“You gotta stop this Raymond. Massa Bobby Dean, he good to us.”

“He may be, but Andrew –

“Massa Andrew.”

“Massa Andrew ain’t. I can see it in his eyes, got the whiplust in’em.”

“You don be doin’ nuthin like this, ain’t got no reason to beatcha.”

“Even if he ain’t, he still changin’ thangs ‘round here. It was him who put that in Mrs. Lucille’s head ‘bout slaves not havin’ white onions.”

“Why you need white ones, we still has got yellow ones, huh boy?”

“Cause they’s ours Mama and they’s took ‘em from us.”

Annie Mae sighed again and began kicking the remaining onion peels into the fire. Her scarf was drawn taut, and her patchwork dress tighten around her knees when she sat gapped-legged on a stool.

“Why’s you up ‘round the big house anyways?”

“Just lookin’.”

“Lustin’ mo’ like it.”

“Mama -”

“Hush boy, ‘fo you tell me ‘nother lie. I was young once. I still remember the first time I laid eyes on yo’ pappy. He was blacker then hellfire and bailin’ hay, sweatin’ like no tomorrow. Everybody wanted to bed him, but he chose me.”

“Mama –”

“Hush now boy, listen to me. That Lindsay Rae is gonna get you in a heap of trouble. She may be slave ‘cause she darker than Massa Bobby Dean and work in his house, but we all knows who daughter she is. Leave her ‘lone son, leave her lone.”

***

The morning was blistering and the sun flared into a tip of an angry orange poker that punched and turned the muggy blue sky over the Baton Rouge outskirts. By noon the asses had foamed up without doing a quarter of their work. Black women gathered around the well doing laundry, burning from the lye in the soap as well as the heat. Others made their slow processions through the cotton fields, their fluttering wrists, further distorted by the heat’s mirage, made them appear as scarved brown butterflies treading through unmelting snow. When Jack needed water, the temperature had turned to killing. A baby jay laid on its back covered in flies at the foot of a magnolia tree near the water well. Despite the heat Lindsay Rae found moisture, enough to cry as Raymond approached with mule in tow.

“Why’s you crying?”

“It’s bad, real bad.” She pounced on him and threw her arms around his neck. She was slightly musty and her torso pleasantly dense in his arms. Raymond shocked from having her high-yellow skin pressed close to his own, rocked back on his heels and bumped into Jack. The mule jerked his head and nipped his arm, but Raymond ignored the bite, intent on not disturbing the moment he had waited weeks for.

“Now you’s got to stop. Somebody can see us out here.”

“I know. It’s just, I heard -” Lindsay swallowed.

“What now? Whatchu’ hear?”

“Mrs. Lucille’s gonna sell me to a couple in Kentucky.”

“Kentucky! Sell!”

“Yeah.”

“Are you sure you hear right?”

“Yeah.” Raymond knocked his hat off when he slapped his forehead. His eyes searched the ground around her feet. It was strewn with improbabilities.

“What we gon’ do gurl?”

“What you mean?”

“We gots to do somethin’.”

“There ain’t nothing we can do.” The prospect was a cold shot of news and she stood there rubbing her arms as if it was physically so. “I’m gonna be sold away and I ain’t never gonna see you no mo.”

“Don’t you talk like that. There ain’t no use in speakin’ up the bad.”

“But it’s true Ray. She been hatin’ me forever and now she found a way to sell me off.”

“I ain’t gon’ let that happen.”

“Ray use’s a slave just like me. What can you do?”

“I don’ know but I’ll think of somethin’, you’ll see.”

Jack stomped and brayed, impatient from seeing his troth. Lindsay Rae kissed Raymond on the cheek and ran towards the big house with her bucket half-full.

***

That evening Raymond loomed around Mrs. Lucille’s garden. He could see Lindsay Rae serving dinner with Ethel, a large dark woman who did most of the house tending. Lindsay’s face had sunken in about the mouth as she moved around the table like a solemn wight, doling out dead chicken, dead greens, and dead yams. Raymond brushed away the red earth and snatched up an onion. He peeled away the hull and bit it, rolled it around his mouth, chewed it a few more times, then spat it out. It was bitter and it wasn’t enough. It was never enough. All his life he’d felt the void of never enough. His mother, a wet-nurse, even her milk had never been enough. Too many children, too many mouths to feed, too many diapers to wash, too many tiny hands taking away his mother – never enough. Then the onions, something so simple, harmless, something he found pleasure in, taken from him – never enough. And Lindsay Rae, she had enough love for him definitely, but it wasn’t enough to keep her from being sold. It became clear to him, hiding among the squash that he’d had enough. A breeze moved through, rustling the garden’s leaves near the big house. There in the amber-burnt twilight, they bent, encumbered by fleshy wombs of seed. Raymond also bent mirroring his prey, and slunk along the ground, still warm from the day’s baking. The ground, however, was cool in the tomato plants presence. They sat in the shade of a large weeping tree. They were Mrs. Lucille’s blue ribbon-winning tomato plants. Each globule, cocks-comb red, beating their heaving bosoms, big as Cornish hens and juicier. Raymond held one, felt the soft flesh, the heft of the fruit, lowered himself onto the plant and took bite after indignant bite.

Raymond made his way to the slave’s quarters on the low lying land at the northern edge of the plantation. He emerged once again from the throngs of grass and wild flowers and walked toward Caleb who was sitting on his shack’s stoop. Raymond sat on a rock next to the salt-and-peppered haired man without saying a word, and with that same respect, Caleb lifted a brown jug to his lips, took a gurgling swig and passed the bottle to Raymond.

“Face is longer than ah mule’s.”

“Got problems.”

“Lay all yo’ troubles down at the cross.” Caleb chuckled.

“That’s the problem, I ain’t never seen no cross. Not even at church ‘cept the little ones on the bible and them’s too small to lay this problem anywhere near it.”

“Humph, then tell ol’ Caleb ‘bout it.” He leaned back on the chair, suspending two of its legs.

“You can’t carry this neither.”

“Sound like woman problems to me.”

“You been talking to my Mama?” Raymond had a shallow sip from the jug. The thick liquid arched his back as it snaked to his belly. He wanted to cough badly, but pride refuse to let him. He handed the jug back to Caleb. The old man let the chair rest on all four legs and got another swig of the thick concoction.

“Nope jus’ know that there’s only two thangs that worry a black man, a woman and a whip.” Caleb passed the jug back to Raymond and reach into his pockets quickly as if he forgot something important and retrieved a pocket knife and a piece of sugarcane. “Everything else is justa little scrape in life.”

“They’s gonna sell her, to Kentucky at that.” Raymond looked at Caleb, who was outlined in purple sky with the shiest of stars beginning to raise their heads. He worked his mouth around a chunk of cane he’d whittled off, and swallowed again making more gurgling throat sounds.

“You could always run.”

Raymond took a swallow, which did not burn as much this time.

“It’d never work. Everytime I say something ‘bout being free, she look at me like I’m crazy. Says since you taught me to read, you been puttin’ funny thangs in my head.”

Caleb spat out the cane stalk and sat up.

“You needs to be careful ‘bout who you tell ‘dcated you boy!”

“She won’t tell, got too much to lose to. We talk ‘bout me making her a woman, says our children would be light enough to work ‘round the big house. When I tells her my sons won’t be no slave she ask me ‘what else would they’s be?’ I tells her I don’t know, but not no slave.”

“Humph.” Caleb took another slice of sugarcane and dropped it in his mouth. “Maybe she go witcha now? Thangs change, desperate times make people do desperate thangs.”

“That’s true. I know now I gots to go, if she wit me or not.” Raymond downed an extended drink from the jug at the thought of running. “Only thing is, I don’ know the first thing ‘bout runnin’.”

“May not have to, fairs comin’ to town.”

Raymond stepped inside his mother’s shack and stood before the door trying to remember what he had come for. She sat at the table sewing two pieces of black cloth together and a plate of food sat in front of an empty chair next to her.

“Come on in here Caleb’s drinkin’ buddy.”

“I’m hungry.”

“This here’s yo’ plate.”

He slid into the chair and began shoving beans, pig feet, and cornbread into his mouth. She watched him eat. Her needle kept fixing cloth. Finally she leaned in close to him over the table.

“What’s that dark stuff on yo’ pants boy?”

“Nuthin Mama.”

“It’s somethin’.” She sat back in her chair. “Looks like it’s gonna stain.”

“Raymond stood from the chair and began scraping the bones off the plate into the fire. His eyes were heavy as were his feet and when he laid down she helped him out of his boots. She dropped one boot at the end of his bedding then worked at the strings of the other as he lazily gazed at her honey-brown complexion. The fire brought out the red hue of her skin and he could see, for the first time in his life, why his father would have chose her.

“Mrs. Annie Mae -”

“Now don’tcha start that.”

“Mrs. Annie Mae, was cookin’ one day, cuttin’ some apples and mashin’ them up, then she baked’em into ah crust, put them on the window sill to chill, when Mrs. Lucille come down from the big house. ‘Why, Annie Mae what is that?’”

Annie Mae couldn’t contain her smile any longer and chimed in, dramatically placing her hand over her chest.

“Just some apples I’s mashed up, then I’s baked’em into uh crust.”

“Then the winch snatched it up and called it American.”

The two Laughed as they sat on the pig feet smelling bedding. Raymond watch his mother shrink in plain sight as sleep guided him further away from consciousness. Before she was just a speck tickling his mind he manage to speak.

“I’ll always love you Mama.”

“I know you will boy and I’ll always love you too.”

The woman sat, small, almost crumpled in her chair in front of the tent, fanning herself with a thin wooden fan, just like Caleb said she would. Her white blouse and dress cast an aura around her in the noon day sun and the only thing that let you know that this wrinkled black angel was in fact human, was the sweat darkening and slipping from underneath the white scarf tied to her head.

“I needs pig feet, okra, and seven bushels of collards.” The woman kept fanning herself and never looked at him.

“That train don’t come in till next sundown. Pack thick that’un has a chill that come wit’ it and be ready to pay in full.”

Raymond tipped his hat, turned and walked away from the fairgrounds, heart pounding in his temples. He had the information he needed and the motivation. It would be enough. Finally succumbing to fear, he stepped off the main road and continued his trek back to the slaves quarters insinuating himself between trees and wooden thickets. He wondered how long would it take for them to discover his doings. How long would they chase him, hunt him down, dogs gnashing at his black-white heels – how long? He gave a final look back at the fairgrounds, but all he could see was the parapets of the grand stand hovering above the low tree branches, where awards would be given. Yellow streamers wafted in the breeze and he wondered if Lindsay Rae had packed her things.

***

If the sun could have rose twice in one day, it would have from the caterwauling Mrs. Lucille did finding her tomato plants ransacked. Raymond was dressed, still seed stained, packed, and out the door.

“All of them! All of mah tomatoes, ruined!”

“Tell’em Lucille. Now’s a time as good as any.” Bobby Dean and Andrew stood around the back porch with Mrs. Lucille, believing she would pass out at any moment. Her neck was splotchy red from garden work and sun. Both men’s sleeves were rolled to the shoulder and their pants legs covered in thistle. “Well if you won’t I will.”

“Texanna –” Miss Lucille bit her lip.

“She said she believed one of the niggers been stealing her onions.”

“What!”

“I – I thought it was rabbits at first. Then I saw prints in the garden a week ago.” Bobby Dean coughed and kicked a half-eaten tomato along the ground. “But I thought they’d know better than to touch my prize tomatoes.”

“Damn it Lucille, that’s just ‘bout the quickest way to ruin a nigger!”

“Calm down Andrew. Go round up the men field hands. We’ll get to the bottom of this honey.”

Lindsay Rae watched from the dining room window the beginnings of a manhunt while Ethel cleared away the breakfast dishes. Her over-large proportions made her hem line sway wide as she walked out of the kitchen.

“Plenty to concern yo’self with in here now gurl.” She smacked like peanut butter was stuck to the roof of her mouth when she spoke. She began lifting her thyroidally-defunct body up the stairwell, gulping air as she went. Ethel’s purpose in life, Lindsay thought, was to crush her. When her ankles disappeared into the ceiling she no longer felt her oppressiveness. She no longer felt her siphoning life from her through her thick lips like a lamprey. Mrs. Lucille’s flare-ups and occasional brisk slaps were tainted with sweetness, but Ethel’s maltreatment of Lindsay was sharp, callus, stemming from the fact that she was something she could never be. It is not easy to live under the same roof with the Leviathan.

“Yes Ma’am.” Lindsay Rae pulled herself away from the window, straighten her dress, and hoped that Raymond would remain unfound. She reached her hand into her dress pocket and rubbed the ticket between her fingers.

***

Raymond circled around the yellow striped fair tent and found the mule team just as Caleb said it would be. The wagon was being loaded by ox-muscled black men who dwarfed Raymond by comparison. Twilight had settled over the ground and he sifted through the lavender for the sage angel’s face. He found it next to the lanky wagoner asleep at the reins.

“Tell Sampson to load yo thangs in back.”

After his bag was loaded he sat in the back of the covered wagon and almost drifted off, exhausted from hiding in the woods all day. He thought they would have had a harder time of catching Jacob, whom he led out of his pen an into the adjacent cotton field. However he was hungry and was easily lured out with the promise of feed. In the commotion he was able to tell Lindsay Rae an abbreviated version of his plan and pressed a fair grounds ticket in her palm. Now all he could do was wait. He stared out the back of the wagon into the woods under the light of a waning sun.

***

It was dark and he was nudged in the arm by the sage angel who presented him with a piece of ham shank and cornbread.

“Lindsay?” Raymond came to and almost knocked the food from her hands.

“Ain’t no Lindsay here. Wake up an’ eat this, you’s snoorin’ loud enough to wake the dead.”

Raymond took the food and his eyes adjusted to the lantern that hung from the top of the wagon covering. Just then a man appeared in the back curtain.

“We’s leaving now.”

Raymond tried to step over the boxes on the floor to get off the wagon, bread and ham shank still in hand. The angel seized his wrist and he stopped astride a green crate. There was a surprising strength in her hand and a burning resolve in her eyes.

“Where you’s going fool?”

“To see if Lindsay Rae‘s out there.”

“No you ain’t.”

“I told her to meet me here an – ” The glint of her gun caught the wagoneer’s eye who was stirred from his sleep by their conversation. She cocked it and pointed it at Raymond. His knees gave out, already weakened from hunger and Lindsay Rae’s absence, so he sat on the box.

“I said’s be ready to pay in full.”

Raymond folded the bread around the ham and began to eat as the wagon’s brake squeaked and unglued the wheels. He continued to look down the moonlit road slowly chewing on his dinner and feeling sicker by the moment. The bread was hard and crunched behind his ears, so he couldn’t separate the dirt road ground under the wagon wheels from his eating, nor the sound of human panting and footfalls. It was when he swallowed that he knew she was there, a creamy smudge against the darkness choking the road.

“Sit down boy I said!”

“She here! She here! Right there in the road runnin’!”

She leaned and peered down the road into the steel blue moonlight.

“Bishop, slow up.” The mules eased into a walk and minutes later there were three in the back of the wagon who could be instantly pegged for runaway slaves and one who could pass for white. After the couple stopped kissing long enough to breathlessly hold each other, Lindsay Rae reach into her dress pockets and pulled out three large white onions.

“We can grow more from these, though I hope I brought enough.”

“Gurl you don’ brought more then you’ll ever know.” Raymond took the bulbs from her hand and kissed her on the shoulder.

THE END

Copyrighted 2014