”What?”
“I say when you gonna free me?” She withdrew from him and stood up. “I thought you was supposed to free me.” He could not be her husband without first being free, not a proper husband anyway with authority over everyone and everything. There were free colored women married to slaves, but they did not have land and slaves.
“Please, Moses…” Neither word of mouth nor the newspaper said how many times the Bristol white woman had been whipped for lying with her slave. Had the white woman been forced by the slave, forced over and over again? Would that have mitigated the punishment? He forced me down and had his way with me, your honorable honor of the court, shouldn’t that be worth five fewer lashings? And, too, your honorable court, am I not still white? “Please, Moses, I don’t want to talk about this.” Freeing him had been on her mind but she had never put a day and a time to it.
“I want some free papers,” he said, and then added, “Missus.” He got up and put himself together. She herself was already buttoned up. He thought there was more to ask about, but Loretta knocked at the door and came in after Caldonia said, “Yes.” Moses left in a quiet rage.
Celeste told Elias about six the next morning that she was not feeling all that well. She was some six months pregnant. “A little digestion trouble maybe,” she said. “You know how your babies get about this time: wantin to see the world fore we know it’s time.”
”I’ll tell Moses you can’t work.”
“Maybe I can make it,” Celeste said.
“Mama, you can’t make it?” Tessie asked.
“Ain’t a thing to worry about, baby.”
Everyone was in the lane and Moses opened the cabin door wanting to know why Elias and his family were lingering.
Celeste was nearest him and she said she was moving a little slow.
“I want you out in them fields long with evbody else,” Moses said. He took Celeste by the arm.
“Now wait here,” Elias shouted and hit Moses’s arm with his fist and the overseer released Celeste. “Don’t touch my wife. Moses, I done told you she ain’t got it in her today. I’ll do her share, maybe Sunday, maybe nighttime. I done told you she ain’t got it in her. Let her be.” He stood between his wife and Moses. This was part of why it would be so much easier to talk to Skiffington later.
“Ain’t nobody doin nobody share but they own.”
“Ask mistress if I can do her share. Ask her.”
“We done spoke on it last night,” Moses said, taking one step back. “We talk on this all the time. What you been thinkin, huh?” He took another step back and was at the door and people were looking in from the lane and he knew they were looking. “I ask her, she ask me, and we settle this here thing bout evbody workin before the sun even come up. What you been thinkin, huh?”
“Elias, I be fine,” Celeste said. “You see. I be fine.” She put her hand on his shoulder and he turned to her. She had combed her hair before the pain came on and he could see how her hair, on either side of the part, had fallen in line with the will of the comb. “What you think? You marry a weak somebody? I’m here. I’m here.” She went around him and said to Moses, “I’m comin. I’m on my way.” Elias had earlier taken Ellwood, his youngest, and the other children under five up to the house and now Tessie and Grant followed their mother. She left the two men standing in the room and went out and joined the others as they made their way to the fields. May and Gloria walked on either side of her and took her hands. It was a bright day, as much sun as anyone would want, the kind of day some people would pray for.
Celeste was fine until after dinner. She returned to her half-completed furrow and as soon as she bent over, the pain of the early morning came back and she sank to her knees. She screamed and clawed at the plants until she took hold of one, uprooted it and squeezed. “Dear, Jesus, take this away,” she said of the pain. Before Elias could reach her, the baby in her was coming. He was down to her, holding her, when the baby arrived and settled in a bloody puddle in the furrow, still connected to her mother. The women came to Celeste and told Elias to step away, step on away. Celeste’s children came to her as well but two men picked them up and took them away. Celeste fainted. “Step back, Elias,” Delphie told him. “Step back, I say.” “Leave her be,” he said to Delphie, crying and believing in some insane way that by holding his wife he could make all things right.
Delphie took hold of Elias’s neck with both hands and shook him and he released Celeste and Gloria held Celeste but not at all in the way Elias had been holding her. The ground had not had rain in a few days and so was quite ready for the bloody puddle.
In the end, Elias picked her up and carried her back to the cabin. She woke along the way and did not know where she was or, for a moment, remember what had happened. She did know that the sun was full in her face and that so much sun meant she might not have any rainwater to wash her hair.
He laid her on the pallet in the cabin and no sooner had Gloria and Delphie came in to see to her and change her clothes than Elias thought of Moses. “I’m gonna kill him,” he said, the words coming like a hiss.
“What you goin on about, husband?” Celeste said. “What all you goin on about?”
Elias stood up. “I’m gonna hurt him like no man’s been hurt before.” Delphie rushed to the door and closed it and put a hand up to Elias’s chest. “Ain’t no place out there you needs to be now,” she said. “Leave him there. Please, Elias, leave him.”
“You move, Delphie. I don’t wanna hurt you to get at him. You move now.” He was not shouting. He had heard Tessie at his door and he wanted his daughter to know from a calm voice that her father was coming. In his mind, he could see her standing beside Grant, and he could also see Grant looking up at his sister as she called first to her mother and then to her father. He had forgotten that little Ellwood was up at the house. A calm voice was what his daughter needed. “I been knowin you a long time,” he said to Delphie, “but you gonna make me go through you and I don’t wanna do that.”
“Husband, come over here,” Celeste said and tried to raise herself up on her elbow. Gloria gently pushed her down. “Stay,” Gloria said.
Delphie put her hand at Elias’s throat, the more to gain his attention, and said, “Leave this mess be right now.” “Husband, I want you to come over here. Ain’t you listenin to me, husband?”
Out in the field Moses was in just about the same spot as when Celeste fell. He was waiting for the right time to tell all to go back to work. Clement, the man who had stolen Gloria from Stamford, had gone up to the house not long after Elias carried Celeste away. Now, as Moses worked out the words in his head, Caldonia was moving to Celeste’s cabin, and Loretta was following her. Loretta had forgotten to bring the satchel of bandages and root medicines.
Caldonia tried to open the door but when it wouldn’t budge, she called Celeste by name, then she called Elias. “They inside,” Tessie said. Delphie opened the door with one hand and held the other arm out to keep Elias back. “Moses made her lose her baby,” she said to Caldonia. Delphie remained at the door and Elias lowered his shoulders and Delphie said to Tessie and Grant, “Your mama and daddy need yall to stay here for now.” Before the children could speak, Delphie closed the door.
“This ain’t over, Delphie,” Elias said as Caldonia and Loretta knelt to his wife. “This ain’t over by a little bit.” “I ain’t never said it was, Elias,” Delphie said.
Moses stayed away that evening and the next evening the house was quiet as he came up to the back. He knocked and waited until Zeddie came and let him in. “She be in the parlor,” Zeddie said and Moses took off his hat and went on through. He was wearing his good pants but had not bothered to wash as he sensed there was no use.
Loretta was standing at the window and Caldonia was in the middle of the settee. “Why would you put a woman in the family way in danger, Moses?” Caldonia said.