Page 42 of Good Dirt

Betsey

T hey had called her slave all her life, but Betsey knew better. She was a reading woman, even though it was against the law to show it. And there were people who wrote things. She had met up with some of the other laborers in secret to read the papers that were printed and carried inside people’s clothing along the waterways, along the wagon roads, across the fields. She knew that other people lived differently, outside this territory. She knew that things were changing. She knew that just because the law gave a man the power to tell you that you were not a person in your own right, it did not make it so.

When the missus on the plantation where Betsey had grown up ordered that Betsey be sold away, she did not know what to expect. Then she ended up at Oldham’s brickworks, and it was different from anything she’d encountered while doing housework at the old place. Betsey spent most of her time fetching water and wood, washing down equipment, and shoveling dirt. She was always covered in mud or a powdery dust.

Betsey learned how to wash out the clay and refine it for the turners, watching as the men created objects out of earth. She liked the smell and sight of the clay as it grew into new shapes. She liked the glow of the long fire tunnel. She liked kicking the wheel for Moses theturner when he worked with the larger objects. And, in fact, she liked Moses, the man, himself. Very much.

Surely Moses was almost old enough to be her father, only he didn’t seem like a father at all. And he understood that Betsey had an interest in building pots. He showed her respect. Told her about throwing the clay, timing the wheel, mixing the slip. In time, Betsey found that she wanted to walk with Moses to the market. She wished for him to dance with her when the folks gathered on Sunday at Uncle’s after dinner. But mostly, she was shy around him, and so was he, around her.

Betsey began to wonder whether Moses was too old to take her for a wife. Would the master let her stay with him? Would he be able to give her children? She had no time to find out. Master Oldham’s nephew Jacob began to spend more time at the pottery. Began to get ideas in his head. Began to stop by her cabin. And what could she do? If Betsey did not do as he said, he hit her. One time, when she refused, he did something so unspeakable as to cast her mind down into a deep, dark well where words could not be summoned.

But time passes, and when time passes, a person can start to think that things will change. The heart of a person, even in troubled times, is a hopeful place. One day, the master’s nephew came to get her while she was working in the yard. She refused to go, thinking he wouldn’t persist with the other workers close by. But she was wrong. He knocked her down, dragged her into a storage shed, and tied her hands and feet. Then he put another rope around her neck to keep her still.

She could make out the forms of the other workers approaching the open door. Beyond them, the towering form of Moses, crossing the yard. Betsey prayed that Moses would not expose them. Would not show his interest in her welfare to be greater than that of the others. To do so would only make things worse for them both.

“You all stay away from there,” Betsey heard Jacob Oldham roar as he stalked out of the shed. “Get back to your work.” Oldham yanked the door shut.

It occurred to Betsey, then, that she had been restrained, precisely, in the manner of livestock awaiting slaughter. It was this thought, more than any other, that filled her with an oddly quiet understanding of her destiny. If she was to die, she would die as a woman. As a person.

They had called her slave all her life, but Betsey knew better.