The night of Rabbit’s bliss, Aggie awoke suddenly. Instantly, she knew her granddaughter had become a woman, though she didn’t know Rabbit’s beloved was a white man, and a slaveholder at that. And that Sunday at dinner, she took Rabbit aside, telling her she needed to know how a woman took care of herself, to keep from having a baby. Rabbit’s eyes flew open—how did Aggie know?—and she tried to deny the accusation, but her grandmother put up a hand. Then she gave Rabbit a cloth-wrapped bundle of wild carrot seeds to drink for seven days, after she had lain with her beau. This was the safest way to keep a pregnancy from taking hold, for if that happened, then other solutions had to be sought to bring on her bleeding, and they were not as safe. And Aggie went further, embarrassing her granddaughter: Rabbit should learn to take her happiness before her man’s, and to make sure he interrupted himself before his final pleasure arrived. For when a man took that final pleasure inside a woman, that increased the likelihood that he would leave a baby behind.
Aggie spoke to Rabbit not exactly as an equal, but there was a conviviality to her tone. And the tiny young girl—no, woman—felt pride. She had crossed over into a territory she had not known existed. And the next times that Rabbit met with her lover at the creek, she began to learn what pleasure was, and to feel the power in that joy. Yet forbidden love between two people who must keep their secret is full of strain.
And there came the night when Rabbit and Matthew were lying together at the creek, when finally, she revealed to him her deepest wish: she wanted to run away from Wood Place with Leena and Eliza Two and go north to seek her father. She didn’t ask Matthew for help, as she’d assumed it was assured; thus, she was dismayed when he was silent. Her head was upon his pale chest, and she rose onto her elbow and looked at him. And Matthew told her such a thing was forbidden, for there was a law that had been passed eight years before to retrieve runaway slaves, who were called “fugitives.” Not only were owners allowed to chase their slaves into the clutches of the north, but any white man who helped a slave escape was subject to losing his property—if he didn’t possess one thousand dollars to pay the fines for assisting a runaway—and to suffer imprisonment besides.
He stumbled these words out quickly, for he’d had his own plan to reveal: he wanted to purchase Rabbit from Samuel and set her up in a small house in Milledgeville, and visit her several times a week. He’d started to save the money for her price as well as the house. And then he searched within the pocket of his jacket—discarded beside him in his lover’s haste—and pulled out the present that he’d brought her for Christmas. A cameo brooch surrounded by pearls. He told Rabbit, he knew the brooch was not a ring, but he wanted to give her something as a promise. But Rabbit did not take the brooch. Instead, she asked him, what about her sisters—for she now considered Leena as kin, as much as Eliza Two. What would they do, while she was living in Milledgeville? And Matthew stammered on, explaining that they would have to be left on Wood Place, but he was sure that Samuel would treat them well, as he was certainly a very kind man.
And Rabbit narrowed her eyes, looking down at the white man to whom she’d given herself. She knew that he kept slaves but had put that in the back of her mind. Every lover lies to herself, in small or large ways. Yet she had thrown away every teaching of her childhood, that as a Negro girl she should avoid or hide from white men as best she could. She’d closed her eyes and ignored the truth of Matthew’s heritage. And she was afraid again to tell him that Samuel, the man he thought was a benevolent gentleman, had caused her sister to be marked and shorn. The trust she had with Matthew flapped away, like a bird seeking shelter from the cold. Rabbit lay back on his chest and pulled him to her. She privately reasoned that she had a right to take her pleasure one last time.
The next day, when Matthew opened the door of the guesthouse, before him stood Pompey with the basket. He offered the obsequious words of a slave, but no excuse for Rabbit’s absence. The next day and the next, Rabbit was absent again. Matthew could not inquire about her, for by then, Samuel had suggested to him that his courtship with Gloria had gone on long enough, and wasn’t it time to start planning a wedding, and Matthew had agreed. He hadn’t known how to extricate himself and keep his friendship with Samuel. And though he continued to visit the plantation every month, he could never catch a glimpse of Rabbit.
Worse than Matthew’s romantic anguish was his ignorance: he’d thought that his offer of a soft life in a little house on a hidden street in Milledgeville had been a wonderful gift, like the brooch he had bought. Any other Negress would have been delighted. Where had he gone wrong?