In two days, Lancaster Polcott delivered Claudius and the mulatta child to Wood Place. The child was taken inside by his cook, Tut; fed, bathed, dressed again in fresh clothes down to the skin; and settled into the little cabin to await her owner’s visitation. Claudius would begin to trim the flowers and pluck the weeds. He would sleep in a lean-to on the side of the barn and eat his meals in the kitchen with Tut. Samuel didn’t want the man to develop any friendliness with his fellow slaves, in the same way that Tut had no allies, because she had allowed Mamie to be abused in the kitchen house by Samuel, and even lied to protect her master. Samuel wanted no loyalties forged between the ordinary slaves and the caretakers of the little girl he would call his “Young Friend.”
The Quarters-folks eventually discovered the terrible purpose of the little house Samuel had built to the side of his big house. They called it “the left-handed cabin,” or, more simply, “the left cabin,” as the Devil favored that direction. When Samuel overheard his slaves talking about the structure, he would not comprehend that they were calling it a place of evil: soon, he would call it the left cabin, too, and smile at the simple ways of Negroes.
VII
Consequently, though we ordinarily speak of the Negro problem as though it were one unchanged question, students must recognize the obvious facts that this problem, like others, has had a long historical development, has changed with the growth and evolution of the Nation; moreover, that it is not one problem, but rather a plexus of social problems, some new, some old, some simple, some complex . . .
—W. E. B. Du Bois, “The Study of the Negro Problems”
For You to Love
If Lydia Garfield’s life were a song, it would have been a blues, like her uncle Huck sang down at the family reunion every summer. Plucking his banjo, crooning in a baritone, while Mr. Luke, the man who was the love of Uncle Huck’s life, clapped his hands and patted his feet. And everybody in the yard urged Uncle Huck to sing, sing that song, but they didn’t pay attention to the words, that Uncle Huck sang the pain of his life. That he had to call Mr. Luke his “best friend,” though Mr. Luke and he were joined forever, as tightly as if they’d stood in front of a preacher and said vows.
The folks ignored the tender, bold touches between the two men. The pats on the shoulder, the forehead kisses. The folks called out praise instead. Boy, that Huck shole could sing. Got that voice smooth like butter.
Maybe that’s what Lydia had done when she’d picked up her habit. She was trying to sing her pain, knowing that for the rest of her life, she had a burden to tote. She couldn’t ever put it down. It didn’t matter how pretty people said Lydia was. Pretty wasn’t shit. Pretty didn’t mean a goddamn thing. When people called Lydia that, they might as well have spit in her face. Because the man who’d first called her pretty had been the one who’d handed her this load.
There were other names she was called at school. Redbone. High yellow. Light-skin-ded. Siddity heifer. The-one-who-think-she-cute. But Lydia was never called ugly. Her beauty was assumed, because of her paleness, her hair that reflected light. Her eyes that changed colors, depending on her outfit. Pretty, pretty girl. Her grandfather had called her that, when she was six years old. Back when he used to hurt her. She didn’t remember when it started, only that when she emerged into memory, the hurting already was a fact of her life.
She was in the station wagon with her mother and Coco. They were in the City. Lydia knew that much. Her mother was driving to Lydia’s grandparents’ house, because Mama and Daddy were taking a trip to New York. She’d finally convinced him to take her on a honeymoon, after all this time of being cooped up in the house with two children. A woman needed more than housework, she told Lydia. She talked to Lydia a lot, as if a child were a short, small-boned girlfriend in a pinafore with ankle socks and Mary Janes. As if a little girl could understand the trials of motherhood and being a wife.
Mama would turn to her daughter and ask, “Darling, do you understand what I’m saying?”
“Yes, Mama. Uh-huh.” She knew that she had said a pleasing thing. That her mother would be satisfied: she would receive a pat on the knee.
Mama didn’t trust a babysitter for her children. Where she came from, mothers relied on other women they knew to take care of their children. So she drove her daughters to Nana’s house, that big place in the neighborhood where the high-class, wealthy Black folk lived. She deposited her girls and a pleather suitcase with Miss Delores, a brown-skinned lady with skinny legs and a soft bosom that was smaller than her belly.