In her first years of life, no one would have called Rabbit an attractive child, taken beside Eliza Two.
At the age of sixteen, however, her woman’s blood arrived—on the same day as her twin’s—and Rabbit’s beauty emerged. She remained tiny, but the curves of her body began to form. Her dark-dark skin stretched over sculpted cheekbones, with a reddish cast beneath. Her full lips turned upward, even when she wasn’t amused. Her hair, so sparse when she was a little girl, had deepened in color, and grew into a tall, thick mass of kinks. Young Quarters-men smiled to see her on Sunday, walking to visit her family’s cabin. There go that purty Rabbit girl, they’d say.
Yet Rabbit hadn’t cared for her looks as a child, and she did not care for her looks at sixteen. There were no mirrors around her, and the adults she’d lived with hadn’t made a fuss over such things. Rabbit only cared for her family and their suffering touched her.
Her mother had gone deep within herself. Always a strange woman, Tess now mumbled about messages imparted to her by her favorite pecan tree. She claimed to have a dream vision where Nick had landed safely in a place with many buildings, with white folks and Negroes walking on hard-packed streets. There were carriages crowded onto a road and such noise as no one on a plantation ever had heard. Tess claimed in another dream she saw Nick reading a book with two white children painted on the cover. When Tess woke up from that particular dream, she waited until the plantation had awoken, then sent her mother to the kitchen house to tell Rabbit what she’d seen. She hadn’t wanted to wait for her child’s Sunday visit. And solemnly, Aggie had communicated Tess’s wish, her frown deep, and Rabbit knew the older woman was withholding her own sorrow.
Rabbit did not worry about Aggie or Pop George, however, for with her sensitivity, she knew that her father’s departure had not broken these two. Still, she felt their pain. She saw how they ministered to the Quarters-folks and their children on the plantation. How they felt it was their responsibility to keep everyone safe, and that “everyone” now included the Young Friend in the left cabin. How, when Jeremiah Franklin had taken over for his father as overseer, he had freely used the whip, in addition to abusing the field workers with mean, careless words. And on her Sunday visits, Rabbit heard her grandmother and Pop George whisper their concerns for victims who had been striped in the fields.
Yet Eliza Two was another matter. To Rabbit, her twin was still the most beautiful girl she’d ever seen. Eliza Two’s hair had grown and fell down her back again. Her eyes were large and expressive. Even her scars made her striking, but when she told her twin this, Eliza Two looked at Rabbit, wounded. She believed her twin was ridiculing her. Thus, Rabbit, the kindest girl with the most sensitive spirit of anyone who lived on Wood Place, could do nothing for the person she loved more than anyone else.
And so the only thing that she craved was the comfort of Nick. That was the year that Rabbit decided that she would run away from Wood Place and find her father. He would make Eliza Two all better. Rabbit didn’t know what freedom was, but she knew love. It was a gift that she craved to bestow on others. This ability to love was her resistance to the cruelty of the plantation.
The Cook’s Helper and the Young Friend
When Samuel purchased Leena as his Young Friend, he was unaware that Venie began giving him food and drink designed to cut his vigor using substances that had been provided by Aggie.
In the morning and midday, Venie prepared Samuel large, steaming cups of sugared spearmint water. These tisanes were lovely for older women going through their change, but they would reduce desire in men. The homemade licorice root candy that Venie made and that Samuel absolutely loved did the same. Then, too, there was the richness of the food that she prepared. The breakfasts of new bread slathered in butter, along with thick slices of ham, grits sitting in cream, the eggs, and peach preserves. The midday meals of meat and root vegetables. For supper, more meat with greens and corn bread topped with bacon grease. And desserts of cakes and pies. When summer came, Venie would bake a cobbler of sugared peaches and spices and topped with a latticed French crust. Samuel began to put on weight, which diminished his vigor even further, so that when he went to visit the left cabin, he had no interest in abusing Leena. He only would sit and hold her hand for a few minutes, then return to his big house.
When Samuel purchased Leena, he’d assumed she was a child, when in fact, she was already reaching puberty. So shortly she journeyed into womanhood: oddly enough, her blood had shown in the same year as Nick’s twins’。 When she revealed this to Venie, the cook told her to keep that information to herself. She gave Leena rags. When Venie reported the event of the Young Friend’s blood, Aggie gave instructions, and Venie began saving and adding this blood to the portions of food served to Samuel. This weakened him further. And though time passed, he did not contact the slave trader to buy back the girl at a discount, as he had with Young Friends in the past. His lack of desire made him undriven to do so. Thus, Leena stayed among the children’s furniture and toys in the left cabin. Though she matured, she wore the clothes of a little girl.