Then Rose pleaded that at least Kitty should eat some mouthfuls of breadfruit that had been left for her. When Kitty refused, Rose ate it herself while repeating, in tones that ranged from commanding to begging, that Kitty should squat upon the mattress to find relief from the pain of this birthing. For over an hour did Rose implore her, until Kitty, screeching louder than a cockerel before the dawn, cried, ‘Hush, Miss Rose—me caan suffer yer jabber no more.’
But Kitty did at that moment fall upon her knees and, with her heavy belly brushing the dirt floor, crawl upon the mat. Soon the trash, which was the substance of her mattress, was soaked through with Kitty’s sweat—it squelched underneath her as she writhed, tormented, for some position that might ease her pain. But at last Rose could reach all the parts of Kitty that she required in order to commence her fabled physic. Rose, calling from the door of the hut, commanded some children to fill a pail with water from the river. She then cursed at the tiny drip of water that the useless pickney handed her back, before shooing them from the dwelling. But Rose dipped in a rag and pressed the cool water against Kitty’s dry and cracked lips.
It was after a further two hours that Kitty began to howl. Kneeling upon the mattress, her hands upon the wall, she screamed that this pain was like no other that she had endured. Oh come, driver, lash her, brand and scorch her, for Kitty was sure no trifling pain of humankind could ever injure her again. This pain was jumbie-made; its claws were digging deep inside her so this child might be born.
‘Me must dead, Miss Rose,’ Kitty roared. ‘Me must dead!’
‘Pickney soon come, soon come now,’ Rose tenderly whispered.
‘Pickney no come. Me must dead here,’ Kitty wailed.
It was then the overseer, Tam Dewar, entered in upon the dwelling shouting, ‘Why is there so much noise? Shut up, damn you. My head aches from it!’
Aroused from his supper table by the unholy row that had reached his ears, he was breathing heavy as a man sorely vexed. Until, that is, the stench from within Kitty’s dwelling began to assail him. His face, that had been wrinkled with fury, began to contort into a sickened grimace—like he was chewing upon rancid meat. He placed his lamp upon the ground so he might better rummage for his handkerchief to muffle his nose and mouth, before exclaiming through the cloth, ‘What is happening in here?’
Rose, curtsying to the overseer, said, ‘She birthing, massa—soon come,’ while Kitty quickly laid herself down flat upon the mattress, covering up as best she could with the wet cloth of her shirt. She set herself to be still and raised her eyes to look upon Tam Dewar’s crooked face. In the cast of the lamplight his mouth looked all the more twisted, his hairless head all the more like it was crowned with the shell of an egg. But Kitty could not be quiet for long, for a pickney the size of the moon was pushing out from within her. She let forth a yell so fierce that it buckled Tam Dewar at his knees and caused him to wince as if it were he that had the greater affliction.
‘Be quiet, be quiet, I tell you!’ he squealed before commanding Rose, ‘Stop up her mouth!’
Rose gazed upon this man in puzzlement. ‘Stuff up her mouth with rags, come on, come on,’ he insisted once more. Rose took a rag, dipping it in the water from the pail and brushed it against Kitty’s lips. But Tam Dewar, exhaling with annoyance, commanded, ‘Not like that!’ He snatched at the rag that Rose held, then forced the damp cloth down into Kitty’s mouth. ‘Like this, you fool, like this.’
Rose protested, ‘Massa, she birthin’, she birthin’!’ as Kitty choked to accommodate the bulk of cloth in her mouth. Soon Kitty bit down hard to catch the overseer’s finger within her teeth, for this white man’s fist was blocking her throat.
‘Damn you,’ he wailed. He wrenched his finger from her bite, then whipped back his hand to slap Kitty around the head.
Rose hastened to stand between Kitty and this white man saying, ‘She birthin’, massa, she birthin’, massa . . .’ for she could see this man was preparing to strike Kitty again. ‘Pity, massa, pity, no lash her, she birthin’, massa,’ Rose pleaded.
Tam Dewar threw the tiny figure of Rose aside and was ready to strike Kitty once more, for the impertinence that still throbbed at his fingertips. While Kitty, cowering from the coming blow, wrapped one arm around her massive belly and thrust out a splayed hand at this man to keep him far from her. And in that moment, Tam Dewar was stilled. He stared at her then dropped his raised hand. He knelt down next to Kitty, palms raised, saying, ‘Shhhh, shhhh,’ to calm her as he spoke softly to her. ‘My sister has sent me some strawberry conserve from Scotland. It’s very fine. Delicious. I was just eating it, but then the noise you were making . . . I cannot stand the noise. I have a pain in my head, you see, that I cannot remove. So you must be quiet.’ He lifted up the lamp so Kitty might behold his earnest face. She saw a dollop of strawberry jam upon his cheek and smelled the sweet confection upon his breath. He turned, as if to leave, but then, leaning over again said, ‘Hush, Kitty or I’ll take a whip to you, so help me, God, I will, because I cannot stand the noise.’
Kitty made no reply to this man, but bit down hard upon the cloth that was still within her mouth so she would make no sound that could cause his mood to change. For Kitty had managed to live without feeling the lash from his whip for four years. But this white man had fathered the child she was birthing and if he was not gone soon, she thought to rise from the mattress, grab this ugly bakkra by the leg, swing him above her head and hurl him like a piece of cane so far-far that he would land head first in a heap of trash upon some other talked of island. But she just bit harder upon the rags, as he, pressing his handkerchief once more to his nose, stood up as if to take his leave. He made two steps before remembering a thought. Heedful to point at both his slaves in turn he said, ‘And be careful with that wee baby—it will be worth a great deal of money.’
When the pickney was finally released from within Kitty she yelled with so mighty an exhalation that the trees bent as if a hurricane had just passed. Tam Dewar, startled by that immense cry, banged his fist hard upon his supper table and his precious strawberry conserve did topple down to spill upon the floor.
CHAPTER 3
SO, READER, KITTY’S ONLY child is born in upon the world at last. Kitty called her daughter July, for when she was still a callow girl, Miss Martha, who did oversee the infant workers of the third gang, had once ventured to teach Kitty to write in words the months that make up the year. Although the month of her pickney’s birth was December, it was only the graceful wave of Miss Martha’s arm as she scratched the flowing curls of the word July in the dirt that the older Kitty could call to mind. Kitty softly whispered the word July into her pickney’s ear and July her daughter became.
And what a squealing, tempestuous, fuss-making child she was. The quivering pink tongue and toothless gums in July’s shrieking mouth were more familiar to her mama than her baby’s arms and feet. With such agitation coming hourly from this newly born creature, Kitty did believe that this pickney must have been ripped from some more charmed existence. That she howled for the injustice that found her now a slave in an airless hut, in a crib too small, and being mothered by an ugly-skinned black woman who did not have the faintest notion as to why her pickney did yell so.