Aggie took this baby in without asking Midas or Pop George, but they did not reject the child’s arms, either. Before he was old enough to walk alone, Aggie carried the baby on her back, wrapped around her in a cloth. In his third summer, Nick let go of Aggie’s hand and joined the other Quarters children in their play. The child listened to Pop George’s stories and, despite his pale skin, blond kinks, and cat’s-eyes, he was accepted by the other little ones, for the very young do not take on prejudice the same as adults.
Nick was enough for his now-mother. Aggie did not want another baby. It was one thing to take care of a little boy who had no one else in the world, but to bring another child into it was too much for Aggie—for after the death of Mamie, Samuel’s ugly appetite had increased. The first time, he’d knocked on the door of one of the cabins, asking for a darling dark-skinned little girl by name. She had an infectious laugh and dimples; in the fields, the grown folks could not help but return her smile. The little girl’s father had refused to send his child out, and that next morning, the father had been found dead in the fields, his broken body a brazen image, and Carson Franklin had ordered two Quarters-men to drag the corpse to the small cemetery allotted for Negroes. The next night, Samuel knocked on the same cabin door. The little girl’s mother tried to refuse—her face was lined with tears—but Samuel pushed past the mother and sought the child. The mother screamed, and holding on to the child, Samuel kicked at her legs. As he headed out of the cabin, the mother called after her child, Mama shole was sorry.
Thus, Aggie listened to her body; remembering the lessons of her grandmother Helen, she resisted Midas’s quiet embraces in the front chamber of the two-room cabin during the times when her womb wanted to conceive. If she gave in to her own desire, she made sure to drink a tisane from wild carrot seeds steeped in boiling water, which would make her body inhospitable to pregnancy. Yet, when two years passed and Samuel had not snatched any more little girls from the Quarters, Aggie relented. With a monster like her master, she couldn’t be sure that all would be well, but she let Midas court her womb the same as he had done her heart. During her sad times, he took Nick upon his knee, to the boy’s delight and his wife’s reluctant smiles. And Pop George did his part as well. He told Aggie he wanted as many grandchildren as she could give him. They could sleep in his room. And when her womb filled, Aggie relented to gladness. She was fat and hungry through her ten moons of pregnancy.
At Aggie’s labor, when the Quarters-woman who’d urged her to strain and push told her she had given birth to a girl, Aggie was touched with fear. The woman placed the baby to the mother’s breast. Apologetic, she pointed to the red-tinged birthmark on the baby’s forehead, but Aggie laughed in pleasure. Though her daughter was perfect in her mother’s eyes, the baby would be flawed to her master.
Samuel ordered Pop George to bring the child to the kitchen house, in order for him to inspect the baby Aggie had borne, whom he called his “new property.” He didn’t want to see Aggie for those few minutes, for he couldn’t abide her presence. Pop George reported that when Samuel saw the angry red mark across half of the baby’s forehead and left eyelid, he shrank back with disgust. And Pop George whispered that this child was a blessing, and Midas whispered that God shole was good. And Aggie agreed and held out her arms for her baby, and said she wanted to name her Tess.
Nick clapped his hands at the adults’ joy. He went to the bed where Aggie lay with the baby in her arms and kissed his sister on the cheek.
The Place Where the Young Friends Live
During the time that Aggie had been pregnant with Tess, Samuel had begun the building of the structure on the left side of his house. And only weeks before Tess was born, Lancaster Polcott’s wagon had pulled up to the yard. A bright-colored little girl had been lifted from the back of the wagon by Polcott’s Negro helper. The girl had been adorned in an exquisite child’s dress with many ribbons—the skirt only a bit below her knees and ruffled pantaloons down her legs—but she’d worn a grown woman’s severe coiffure. Aggie’s unborn baby had listed within her, a sad prophecy, as she’d watched the left cabin from afar. She’d seen the new Negro, Claudius, grooming the flowers from afar, but she did not see Samuel.
Aggie suspected what was happening in the left cabin, but she was determined not to let it spoil her own happiness. She cultivated indifference: she was a woman and a slave, and she could not control everything. The little occupant in the left cabin had not been born on Wood Place. She was a stranger. When Aggie stopped nursing and began to have women’s cycles again, she returned to the moon house. Yet she did not reveal Samuel’s actions to Lady, the same way she had been silent about Lady’s Negro heritage. Lady already knew about Mamie, but not the other little girls. It wasn’t Aggie’s responsibility to cause trouble in order to keep others informed.