I was born in Vidalia, Louisiana to a woman known as Margaret—; my father was a well-heeled sugar-man from New Orleans. Margaret was too old to bear children and died soon after my début. This I know from the wifey, one Koko Hewitt, who had care of me for a time. Koko herself entertained her share of callers (Mr. Hewitt having died in the Mexican War, leaving her his debts) and as soon as I could button my pants I was hired out to all and sundry. I was a poor worker, heavy-limbed and listless, but folk approved of me—: I was pleasing to look at, and docile, and in time I discovered this was all it took. I became popular in town, particularly among charitably minded ladies. They took to me with what can only be described as a passion, and often fought amongst themselves for the privilege of putting their sympathies on show—; by the age of eight I was an accomplished gigolo.
It took Mrs. Anne Juvais Bradford, however — of Waterproof, Louisiana — to turn me into a full and able whore.
At twelve I was hired out to “Mother Anne,” as Mrs. Bradford chose to be called—; she and her husband, a porridge-faced consumptive who rarely left his bed, ran a profitable still a half-day’s passage up the river. Koko referred to this transaction as my “adoption,” by which I understood that I was never to return. She wept great oily tears at our separation, the fee for which was seventydollars in silver. Seventy bits was quite a sum at that time, easily twice my worth. I assumed that Mother Anne was buying herself a worker—; she herself had other notions. Koko couldn’t have cared less. We had little Christiansentiment for one another.
The first time Mother Anne saw me she’d caught hold of me by my britches. It was in Koko’s shabby parlor, late on a Sunday afternoon—; I’d just come in bare-foot from the street. “You’re good and pale, for a half-and-half,” Anne had said. “What are you made of, little captain? Quadroon? Octaroon?”
I’d answered matter-of-factly that my father was a Dumaine Street gentleman, white as a winter lily.
“Sure of that, are you?” she’d said, grinning down at me. Her grip, though temperate, was tenacious as a man’s.
I’d nodded sullenly. Her hand had remained curled round my belt-buckle. “My mama were black as par-boiled pitch,” I’d said. “That’s how I’m sure.”
Her grin had widened. “You don’t care much for your mama’s sort, I see.”
“I’d like to burn her clean of me with fire.”
Her eyes had opened wide at this. “What’s your name, little niggerhater?”
“Oliver D. Lamar,” I’d replied, with all the gentility I could muster.
She’d nodded at this with an earnestness that thrilled me to my bones. “Oliver Delamare,” she’d said. I’d seen no reason to correct her.
“Can you read, Oliver Delamare?”
My high spirits had vanished at once. I’d shaken my head forlornly.
“I’ll teach you,” she’d murmured, pursing her lips. “I was a teacher of boys, before Mr. Bradford’s time. Back in Ohio, that was.” Her face had gone blank for a moment. “Six years of my young life.”
“Oh, he’s a fine learner,” Koko had put in eagerly. “Quick as a cricket. Many’s the occasion—”
“Has he any sweethearts?” Mother Anne had said, turning me about. “Any little amours?”
Koko’s face had sti fened slightly. “The boy’s not yet twelve, Mrs. Bradford.”
“Ah! Mrs. Hewitt,” Mother Anne had said. “You can’t fool me about this one.” She’d released me then, and brought out a scuff-cornered purse. “Boys are but men in short pants, after all.”
For a year, perhaps longer, Mother Anne partook of my body without asking more than its readiness. I was her plaything, pure and plain—; but the position was not a thankless one. She was kind to me, and repaid my services with genuine affection—; she taught me to read and to dress, and gave me countless little presents. I suffered under her attentions, of course, but no more than I’d suffered under Koko’s long indifference. After a parcel of time had passed (enough for me to take leave of my former life, a thing I did without regret) I came to think of Mother Anne’s house as my own.
Once her appetite had calmed, however, Anne’s face took on a dull-eyed look whenever I was near. The gifts and indulgences continued unabated, but there was an equivalence now between each trinket and the night that followed—: if I’d benefited from her largesse I could be sure that some particular demand would be made of me. I began to fear her, and to escape the house whenever I was able. The purpose of our evenings became less and less the satisfaction of Mother Anne’s body than the degradation, the reduction to mud and river-water, of my own.
Once a week, usually on a Sunday, she’d take me down to the cellar, where the whiskey-still was housed, and pull aside an ancient, sodden curtain. Behind it was a narrow alcove—: the walls had a sweet, rancid smell, as though tallow had been rendered there. Anne would undo the silk bandanna she’d taken to tying around my neck, bind my wrists together with it, then attach them to a hook set high into the wall, so that the balls of my feet barely touched the packed-earth floor. Then — cautiously at first, with great affectation of shyness — she’d commence to undo my britches. Once I was stripped and arranged to her satisfaction, she’d take a step backwards and mutter to herself awhile. As she stood there (her lips and jaw working soundlessly, as though she were a toothless beggar chewing on her tongue) she’d work her right hand up under her skirts, then bring it out again, glistening with her sex, and run it back and forth across my face. Within the space of a few breaths, no matter how furiously I pleaded with my blood and bowels, my body would stir in answer. All I could do then was to let my eyes fall closed. At such moments the world contracted into a coal-black pellet, the merest flake of cinder, and I’d watch dispassionately as my body fell away from Mother Anne, away from the house, into an infinite, ghost-like Mississippi. I prayed to Heaven that I would drown in it.
Whenever I could escape from the house (when Anne was tending to her husband, for example, or in the early morning, before she rose from bed) I’d walk the half-mile out to the Mississippi and ease myself into the thick, brown water, at times not even troubling to remove my clothes. My sole wish was to blend in with the river whose color so precisely matched my own—: to vanish into it irreversibly. I’d gulp down great mouthfuls as I swam, picturing the silt passing into my muscles and my blood until my entire body was converted into sediment. I would become as inhuman as the river was, as indifferent, as life-giving, as adored. The river itself was a mulatto, after all—: a hybrid born of the flowing together of three rivers to the north. It would consume my body, given time, as it did the muddy banks that held it. I would carry the filth of millennia inside me and remain pure.
Occasionally, as I lay on the sun-warmed pier, my river-dream would give way before the image of a spectral, gray-faced stranger (sometimes a man, but more commonly a woman) who would appear without warning, like a bolt of stray lightning, and rescue me with one emphatic act of violence. This vision grew more dear to me each time it arrived—: more comforting, more life-like, more extreme. I began to wonder whether I might not carry this faceless, sexless liberator inside of me, and began, painstakingly and cautiously, to conceive a plan of emancipation and escape. Providence, however, had already decreed that my wish be granted to the letter. My liberator was a man of flesh and blood, and he was bearing down on Mother Anne’s house with all practicable force and speed.