Douglass’ Women Read Online Free PDF Page B

things out. I shivered. Devils tiptoed across his soul.
    “Master sent me to a slave-breaker. Not a week went by when I didn’t suffer some new cruelty. I was worked so hard until there was nothing left of me but animal. One minute, I’d think ‘Oh, God save me.’ The next, I’d be praying ‘Let me die.’ I tried to die. I fought with the slave-breaker, Covey. He wanted to lash me. I said, ‘No more.’ We wrestled all day. Tired and sore, I thought a feather would push me over.
    “Covey was in worse shape. Struck dumb by exertion, heat. I fought and won. I told Covey, ‘You’ll have to kill me before you ever beat me again.’
    “He didn’t kill me. But part of me was dead anyway. I worked for him for four more hard years. Covey never tried to beat me again. My service with him ended Christmas Day, 1835. Master hired me out again. But, blessedly, a year gone, my Master sent me here to Baltimore to live with his sister and learn a trade.”
    I heard his words, but they were about the past. I wanted to live my life forward. Live it entwined with his.
    “Until today, shipbuilding was fine. But, today, those carpenters became afraid that slaves, coloreds, were going to undercut their profit and steal their jobs. There had alwaysways been mumblings, stirrings of resentment that I was there.”
    He stopped talking, exhausted. I felt strange. This man had so much learning. I’d none. I wanted to ask how he learned to speak like a gentleman. Did he miss his Mam? His people? Were they left on the plantation? I wanted to know everything about him.
    Instead, I blurted, “I have money. Enough maybe to set you free.”
    He looked at me. Strange, like I was something he didn’t expect to see. Like my words were something he didn’t expect to hear.
    Even tore up, all I could think was he was beautiful. God forgive me, I wanted to lay down beside him and have him hold me. Just hold me.
    “My Master won’t sell me.”
    “Even after this beating?”
    “It’s his point of pride—to keep me.”
    “What you mean?”
    “I’m the trained, educated monkey. If I can’t be a carpenter, then, perhaps a blacksmith or a cobbler. I’m teachable. Miss Sophia once started to teach me reading and writing. Her husband forbade her. But the damage was done. I played with white schoolboys and tricked them into teaching me their lessons. That learning has caused me the most pain.”
    He closed his eyes and already I saw him dead. Not battered on the outside but battered inside.
    “Then I’ll help you escape.”
    “Run away?”
    “You thought it?”
    “Yes. I ran once but was betrayed. Me and—” He satup, stopping short. “Now I’m not sure it’s best. City slavery is far gentler than the plantation. I pay my room and board. Give Master the rest of my wages. In return, I have some freedom to come and go. A fair compromise.”
    “That’s not good enough for you.”
    “Who are you to say?”
    I jerked back. I could see the same fury he’d had at the docks. Wild, his hands balled. Seemed like he wanted to destroy something.
    “Have you ever been in the fields? Been whipped? Seen your aunt whipped naked—seen clothes, flesh, sliced from her body—all because she didn’t love the Overseer who’d raped her?”
    “No. I—”
    “Have you seen your grandmother sent off with nothing? Left to die, starving, after Master had no more use for her? Have you known what it was like to have your mother die and not weep because slavery had made her a stranger? Or known that any day someone else could decide your fate—where you live, work, even when you die?”
    Great weariness settled upon him. He fell back onto the cot. This wasn’t the man I saw standing proudly on the unbuilt ship. This man was low. Of course, he’d every right. Him beaten bad. Him living things I’d never know about. Maybe education made his feeling finer? But seeing him on my cot reminded me of my own tossing and turning, my own desire not to give up on