When it came to Nick’s labor, Samuel decided that the child he loved would not be a field hand. He wanted to keep Nick close in the big house. The little boy didn’t yet know that Samuel had sired him. He was not yet of an age to consider logic, that Midas’s skin had been dark-dark, and Aggie’s only a few shades lighter. The brown eyes of both, while Nick’s were like a light-eyed cat’s. That both had black hair, while their son’s was blond, though tightly kinked like any Negro’s. When Quarters-children had tried their hand at teasing Nick, Pop George had scolded them. They was a family at Wood Place, and that made Nick they brother. And they was supposed to take a brother to they bosoms, not make him shame over how he looked. ’Cause didn’t nobody make theyselves. Only the Good Lord did all that.
When Nick was assigned as Tut’s kitchen helper, he displaced another little girl, who was sent back to the fields. That evening, when Nick tried to settle with the other Quarters-children in his own years, to listen to Pop George’s stories, they moved away from him. He didn’t like the feeling, and he asked his mother, why couldn’t he work the fields like the other children? And Aggie said, she didn’t know, because their master did all that. That next morning, when Nick approached the cook, saying, please put him back in the fields, she told him the same.
In the ways of children, Nick began a protest. When sent on an errand, he went the other way and stayed absent for a long stretch. When he returned, Tut said nothing, for she’d been instructed by Samuel not to whip Nick. Even if he hadn’t spoken to her, any fool could see the boy was this man’s son. Except for the wool on Nick’s head, he was Samuel’s spit. Yet when Samuel came to the kitchen with smiles and candy for the child, Nick did not act as another slave child would. He was sullen and looked at his new shoes, which had been given him when he started working in the kitchen. The shoes hurt his feet. When Tut pushed him forward, saying, didn’t he hear Massa talking to him? Nick was quiet. And when Tut was questioned by Samuel, who asked, had she done something to this child to make him so unhappy? she hasted to tell Samuel, oh, nawsuh! She loved this child just like her own. She fed him well, and spoke soft-like to him, but it seem like the boy didn’t know his blessing. He kept crying to go to the fields with them other pickaninnies.
The next morning, Carson Franklin came to the kitchen, bringing Tut’s previous helper. He told her he’d come to take Nick to the fields.
Though the labor was difficult and the days long, Nick was happiest with the Quarters-children, whom he’d won over again, when he exchanged his privileged place to be near them. He won their respect further when he shielded them from Carson Franklin’s whip by taking credit for what Carson perceived as misbehavior. Nick didn’t know that the overseer was forbidden to whip him, only that whenever he took the blame, nothing happened.
In four years, when Tess was assigned to the field—for her birthmark still covered half her face, and Samuel did not like to look upon imperfection—Nick worked even harder to fill her cotton sack as well as his own.
Lady’s Desire for Children
Lady desperately wanted to feel the smooth, fat hands of a child on her cheeks. That would be her only consolation in life, since she despised her husband, but Samuel did not visit her bedroom, no matter how she arranged her hair or how elaborately she dressed. Lady consulted her own mother about how to draw her husband closer, but Mahala never took her daughter’s side. Mahala told her she knew nothing about superstitions, and if Lady would learn only to submit to her husband’s every wish, he would seek her out. Mahala had become old and petulant before her time. Her trust and adoration of white people had gained her nothing, and she was jealous of her daughter. She refused to see her daughter’s unhappiness.
So Lady sought out Aggie about the means to conceive. The two continued meeting in the moon house, for they were still linked in their bleeding, and through the years, they had become friends.
Aggie’s grandmother had not taught her how to urge seed into a womb, only how to keep it from taking hold and how to expel it. One night in the moon house, however, she considered that Samuel depended upon women for his food. And she remembered her grandmother’s story of the Creek warrior who had been felled by a maiden. The next morning, Aggie headed to the kitchen house, though she was still bleeding. She smiled at Tut, telling her, she must be so tired. Aggie would watch her pots and pans while Tut sneaked to the keeping room of the kitchen house for a nap. The cook sighed in gratitude and disappeared, and Aggie shooed away the child who was the kitchen helper. Go outside and play, Aggie told the girl. Go on, now. Then Aggie began to stir the bubbling pots on the stove, and spit in the pots. She pulled a small jar from her skirt pocket and poured blood into each pot. She did this every day, until the blood was gone.