Except her children, everything Lady looked upon was tinged with filth. Even her only friendship was ruined, for though Lady had loved Aggie, she felt diminished to her level. And when Lady next met Aggie in the moon house and confided what she had discovered about Micco, Aggie’s blank expression revealed her lack of surprise. So Aggie had known! That though Lady slept in the big house, wore beautiful clothes, and was served by dark beings, all along she had been the same as these slaves. Lady was no longer superior to Negroes. She suspected that Aggie had been laughing at her over the years. Another month passed, and when she and Aggie met in the moon house, she was cold to her friend. And Lady left her children in the care of Tut, instead of bringing them along. Lady did not want any more contact between her children and Aggie, and when Aggie brought up her years-long disquietude about the Young Friends in the left cabin, Lady replied, they weren’t her concern. They were only pickaninnies, and her husband’s property to do with as he wished. She saw Aggie’s shocked expression and felt pleasure. She hoped Aggie was hurt.
The next month, Aggie did not appear at the moon house, and Lady did not send for her, either. Lady told herself her life was only about her children. They were her charge, and her only focus. If they succeeded, then her loneliness would not have been in vain.
Lady had been frightened when she’d given birth to a little girl. She was terrified Samuel would pounce on Gloria. She would not let the child from her sight, for Gloria had no marks that would make her imperfect. Lady placed Victor in his cradle, but she slept with Gloria at her breast. Once, Samuel had tried to lift the baby girl from her body, and Lady let out a powerful, sustained scream until he let go. It was Lady’s idea to find Gloria a maid, a Quarters-girl named Susan who had been sent from the fields to serve as chaperone until Gloria started to bleed. Lady was equally concerned about Victor, though for other reasons, for while she had seen Samuel’s eyes rest lovingly on Nick, he had no such affection for his white son, whose face was identical to Samuel’s father’s. And Victor did not turn to Lady, though she adored him: he was a boy and white and would one day be master of Wood Place. He would be her salvation and her protection in her old age.
It had been confusing to Victor when his grandparents disappeared. After they left, he felt all alone. His mother was kind, but he’d watched Samuel treating her as if something was very wrong with her, and so Victor began to draw away from her.
As a young child Victor had played with Quarters-children. But when the front teeth of those in his age cohort were shed, he had to play by himself. He pined for playmates, but the other two planters ignored Samuel’s invitations. At the general store, he warned his son, the children of the yeomen were not of his class. Victor finally found a companion in the season of chopping, when the weeds are stubborn around the cotton plants. The Quarters-boy was chopping with his hoe when Victor appeared, carrying a basket of cheese, biscuits, and sweet potato pone, which he had ordered Tut to prepare. The meal was nothing fancy, but to a field worker, a feast.
Victor pulled back the cloth in his basket. “I like you,” he said.
The other boy had been reared to return kindness from a white person; if he received violence, he was merely to beg for mercy. He nodded his head and smiled. Carson Franklin watched the exchange. He called to the Quarters-boy to get back to work, and, after some confusion—which white male would he obey?—the Quarters-boy followed after Victor. At the creek, he ate quickly, and then he saw no reason to refuse Victor’s handholding or cheek kisses. In five years, Victor would wield more power with this same boy. That would be the year he turned fourteen, and when Samuel would discover his son’s appetites.
Samuel was walking through the peach orchard. Since the day, years before, when Micco had given him that first delicious peach, Samuel had not lost his craving for the fruit. During the summers, he liked to pass among the trees. He cradled the fruit gently, whispering words of encouragement, and on this day, at a distance, he saw Victor. His trousers were unbuttoned, and he held himself, pushing closer to the face of the kneeling Quarters-boy.
“Kiss it for me,” Samuel heard his son say.
The boy shook his head, and Victor slapped him several times, shouting, do it, do it, until the Quarters-boy opened his mouth, and Victor pushed himself inside. After the act was complete, Victor plucked a peach from a tree and took a bite. He walked away from the other boy, who was spitting furiously on the ground.
Thereafter, Samuel planned to kill the Quarters-boy. He drew up notes for the act, but he was saved the exertion by a rock wielded by another. Emboldened—or anguished—by his relationship with his master’s son, the boy in the peach orchard had taken to bullying other Negro children until he’d picked on the wrong one. This bullied child picked up a rock and bashed in the skull of his oppressor. The mother of the rock-wielder was terrified, but nothing came of the event. Samuel only told Carson, choose some men from the field to dig a grave in the Negro side of the cemetery. Bury the Quarters-boy, and then quickly get back to work.