"It's your time, girl!" they cried. "Now you just like all the rest!" And they nodded to one another in righteous enjoyment at the fall of one who had put on such airs.
"Where's Miss Jeanie?" they mocked. "You want me to call her from Paris?"
And the children hopped and capered along behind, laughing and mimicking, even though they didn't understand. But they would, given a few years; especially the girls.
Yard by yard, Selena was hauled away from the neat line of shacks and out towards the big house. The crickets sang, the moon came out, the stars shone, and soon the children scampered back home with final jeers, for they were getting too near the big house, and knew better than to make trouble there.
The big house was ablaze with light and music. The master and mistress were entertaining. White-folk visitors were come from far away beyond the plantation, where no slave was allowed to go. There were carriages drawn up outside the big house, but that was at the front, which was forbidden to Selena and her mother. Instead, Selena was dragged the last few hundred yards to where Sam the overseer lived in his smart, plank-built house with the veranda and the whitewashed walls. Sam's house stood way out from the shacks where the common folk lived, and close enough to the big house to be ready for the master's call.
Sam was a greatly privileged creature. He wore shoes and a white man's hat, and was even trusted with a gun, and now he sat with this badge of office across his knees as he rocked on his own porch.
Selena's mother dragged her up the steps and brought her before Sam. He was a big, hard young man, chosen for his ability to knock down any other slave with his fists. But he smiled and shook his head in admiration of Selena.
"My oh my!" he said. "Ain't you just ripe and ready." He slid his hand into Selena's cotton dress and reached for one of the hard breasts that were bouncing so appealingly as she struggled.
"No!" barked Selena's mother, and caught Sam's arm a blow with her fist. "She not for boy like you!"
Sam snarled and raised his musket butt to smash the woman flat. He was top dog and didn't take no crap from nobody.
"Hold you hand, nigger-boy!" cried the woman. "My Selena, she be Master's girl — yes? Master do what she say — yes? Selena say, 'Flog Sam black ass' — Master flog Sam black ass!"
Sam froze. It was true. It could happen. So long as the master's fancy lasted, he'd give a girl most everything she wanted… especially if it was so little a thing as flogging an uppity slave. Sam had seen too many floggings to suffer one on his own sweet hide. He doused his anger and lowered his gun.
He said nothing, but got up and led the way to the "special house" down in the hollow by the river, among the trees and out of sight of the big house, where it had been placed by a thoughtful husband to spare the blushes of his wife. What the mistress did not have positively thrust before her eyes, she could contrive not to know. Indeed, as far as the mistress was concerned, what went on in the house in the hollow served the invaluable purpose of focusing her husband's attentions where they would do the most good and the least harm.
Sam had the keys to the special house. He unlocked the door and lit the candles inside. He looked sidelong at the two women to see their wonder at the fine things on display, things no field slave ever saw: the curtains, carpets and furniture, the silks, satins and linen, the wines and food, the big bed, the great mirrors and the gold-framed paintings of naked white women, luscious and plump. Tonight there was also a big bathtub, with water, soap and towels, and a selection of brightly coloured dresses.
"Now you get that girl ready, you hear?" said Sam, for the benefit of his dignity. "You get her clean and dressed up right pretty, or it gonna be your black ass gets flogged!" With that, he straightened his shoulders and marched off, master of the field.
Selena's mother sighed.
"Get you clothes off, girl."
"No!"
"Get you clothes off. How me clean you, if you not take off clothes?"
"Take me home. I wasn't bred for this!"
"No! You stay here. You stay!"
"Why?"
This simple question finally broke the dam of Selena's mother's emotions. The woman burst into loud slobbering tears and called Selena a wicked girl who'd see her ma and pa sold away and all her brothers and sisters too.
"Sold away!" cried Selena's mother, voicing the dread fear of the plantation slave. "Sold downriver. Me never see you. Me never see me man. Me never see me childrens. Never never never. That what you want? You creature!"
"No!" screamed Selena, and stamped her foot, "But why should it be me?"
"'Cos Master want you. That why he let you live in the big house! That why you get fancy clothes and fancy words. You got them 'cos he want you for fancy piece!"
"No! Miss Eugenie — Jeanie — she loved me!"
"Huh! She love you when you small. You was her nigger doll. And now she gone to Paris for schooling and left you behind when she could've taken you with!"
"No!"
"No? So why you back in fields? Why you sleep in Mumma's house and not Miss Jeanie's room?"
"It's all your fault! You told me to smile at the master in the first place!"
Selena's mother bit her lip and the strength drained out of her indignation.
"Well," she said, searching for words. She searched hard and came up with a powerful word: a white man's word. "I told you to smile 'cos it proper;" she said, and nodded in satisfaction.
"Huh!" sneered Selena. "'Proper', you say? I say you just want all the things I can get you while I'm the master's girl!"
If a woman with skin the colour of black velvet could have blushed, then Selena's mother would have done it. Since this was impossible, she took her daughter by the hair, stripped her naked, lifted her bodily into the bathtub, and doused and soaped and scrubbed the slippery body as if she'd have the skin off it. Then she laid on with the towels, bound up the girl's hair to look nice, and crammed, jammed and rammed her into the first dress that came to hand.
"Now hear me, Selena," she said, with a face as grim as a bulldog's. "Me don't want no more. You always stamping and cussing. You always having you way. Me always let you. Me let you, 'cos you fine and you pretty."
She stood back, hands on hips and leaned forward so her nose was an inch from Selena's.
"Now you pay me back, girl," she said. "You bump you ass for Master. You bump real good. You think on me. You think on you father. You think on you brothers and sisters." In a final burst of anger, her voice screeched in fury, hitting a pitch previously unsurpassed. "If you not do, then no place for you in me house. Not food, not fire, not water. Nothing! NOTHING! You hear me?"
There was silence as the two looked at one another, balked in anger. Then, seeing the faintest flicker of a downcast eye from Selena, and seeing that the girl made no move to run, the mother said, "Huh!" loudly. Then she cleaned up the bath things, made everything neat and tidy, hauled the bath outside and emptied it, and marched off back to her own place, and her husband, and the rest of her eight surviving children.
She was a good woman. She was doing her best, under iniquitous rules, for all those who depended upon her. She was the exact moral equal of a noble commander who wins glory by sacrificing a regiment to save an army. She wept all the way home, nonetheless.
Left alone, Selena first did some weeping of her own. Then she threw some things about and broke glass and china. Then she looked at herself in a mirror, admired the incredible gown, and then she sat down on the big bed to think. Ideas sped and tumbled through her head with the wild energy of a sharp and penetrating brain. But she saw no way out, other than the one her mother had specified.