Читать книгу The Life of a Female Slave - Martha Griffith Browne - Страница 9

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AMY'S NARRATIVE, AND HER PHILOSOPHY OF A FUTURE STATE.

When the golden sun had begun to tinge with light the distant tree-tops, and the young birds to chant their matin hymn, I awoke from my profound sleep. Wearily I moved upon my pillow, for though my slumber had been deep and sweet, yet now, upon awaking, I experienced no refreshment.

Rising up in the bed, and supporting myself upon my elbow, I looked round in quest of Aunt Polly; but then I remembered that she had to be about the breakfast. Amy was sitting on the floor, endeavoring to arrange the clothes on a little toddler, her orphan brother, over whom she exercised a sort of maternal care. She, her two sisters, and infant brother, were the orphans of a woman who had once belonged to a brother of Mr. Peterkin. Their orphanage had not fallen upon them from the ghastly fingers of death, but from the far more cruel and cold mandate of human cupidity. A fair, even liberal price had been offered their owner for their mother, Dilsy, and such a speculation was not to be resigned upon the score of philanthropy. No, the man who would refuse nine hundred dollars for a negro woman, upon the plea that she had three young children and a helpless infant, from whom she must not be separated, would, in Kentucky, be pronounced insane; and I can assure you that, on this subject, the brave Kentuckians had good right to decide, according to their code, that Elijah Peterkin was compos mentis.

"Amy," said I, as I rubbed my eyes, to dissipate the film and mists of sleep, "is it very late? have you heard the horn blow for the hands to come in from work?"

"No, me hab not hearn it yet, but laws, Ann, me did tink you would neber talk no more."

"But you see I am talking now," and I could not resist a smile; "have you been nursing me?"

"No, indeed, Aunt Polly wouldn't let me come nigh yer bed, and she keep all de time washing your body and den rubbin' it wid a feader an' goose-greese. Oh, you did lay here so still, jist like somebody dead. Aunt Polly, she wouldn't let one ob us speak one word, sed it would 'sturb you; but I knowed you wasn't gwine to kere, so ebery time she went out, I jist laughed and talked as much as I want."

"But did you not want me to get well, Amy?"

"Why, sartin I did; but my laughin' want gwine to kill you, was it?" She looked up with a queer, roguish smile.

"No, but it might have increased my fever."

"Well, if you had died, I would hab got yer close, now you knows you promised 'em to me. So when I hearn Jake say you was dead, I run and got yer new calico dress, and dat ribbon what Miss Jane gib you, an' put dem in my box; den arter while Aunt Polly say you done kum back to life; so I neber say notin' more, I jist tuck de close and put dem back in yer box, and tink to myself, well, maybe I will git 'em some oder time."

It amused me not a little to find that upon mere suspicion of my demise, this little negro had levied upon my wardrobe, which was scanty indeed; but so it is, be we ever so humble or poor, there is always some one to regard us with a covetous eye. My little paraphernalia was, to this half-savage child, a rich and wondrous possession.

"Here, hold up yer foot, Ben, or you shan't hab any meat fur breakus." This threat was addressed to her young brother, whom she nursed like a baby, and whose tiny foot seemed to resist the restraint of a shoe.

I looked long at them, and mused with a strange sorrow upon their probable destiny. Bitter I knew it must be. For, where is there, beneath the broad sweep of the majestic heavens, a single one of the dusky tribe of Ethiopia who has not felt that existence was to him far more a curse than a blessing? You, oh, my tawny brothers, who read these tear-stained pages, ask your own hearts, which, perhaps, now ache almost to bursting, ask, I say, your own vulture-torn hearts, if life is not a hard, hard burden? Have you not oftentimes prayed to the All-Merciful to sever the mystic tie that bound you here, to loosen your chains and set you, soul and body, free? Have you not, from the broken chinks of your lonely cabins at night, looked forth upon the free heavens, and murmured at your fate? Is there, oh! slave, in your heart a single pleasant memory? Do you not, captive-husband, recollect with choking pride how the wife of your bosom has been cruelly lashed while you dared not say one word in her defence? Have you not seen your children, precious pledges of undying love, ruthlessly torn from you, bound hand and foot and sold like dogs in the slave market, while you dared not offer a single remonstrance? Has not every social and moral feeling been outraged? Is it not the white man's policy to degrade your race, thereby finding an argument to favor the perpetuation of Slavery? Is there for us one thing to sweeten bondage? Free African! in the brave old States of the North, where the shackles of slavery exist not, to you I call. Noble defenders of Abolition, you whose earnest eyes may scan these pages, I call to you with a tearful voice; I pray you to go on in your glorious cause; flag not, faint not, prosecute it before heaven and against man. Fling out your banners and march on to the defence of the suffering ones at the South. And you, oh my heart-broken sisters, toiling beneath a tropic sun, wearing out your lives in the service of tyrants, to you I say, hope and pray still! Trust in God! He is mighty and willing to save, and, in an hour that you know not of, he will roll the stone away from the portal of your hearts. My prayers are with you and for you. I have come up from the same tribulation, and I vow, by the sears and wounds upon my flesh, never to forget your cause. Would that my tears, which freely flow for you, had power to dissolve the fetters of your wasting bondage.

Thoughts like these, though with more vagueness and less form, passed through my brain as I looked upon those poor little outcast children, and I must be excused for thus making, regardless of the usual etiquette of authors, an appeal to the hearts of my free friends. Never once do I wish them to lose sight of the noble cause to which they have lent the influence of their names. I am but a poor, unlearned woman, whose heart is in her cause, and I should be untrue to the motive which induced me to chronicle the dark passages in my woe-worn life if I did not urge and importune the Apostles of Abolition to move forward and onward in their march of reform.

"Come, Amy, near to my bed, and talk a little with me."

"I wants to git some bread fust."

"You are always hungry," I pettishly replied.

"No, I isn't, but den, Ann, I neber does git enuf to eat here. Now, we use to hab more at Mas' Lijah's."

"Was he a good master?" I asked.

"No, he wasn't; but den mammy used to gib us nice tings to eat. She buyed it from de store, and she let us hab plenty ob it."

"Where is your mammy?"

"She bin sold down de ribber to a trader," and there was a quiver in the child's voice.

"Did she want to go?" I inquired.

"No, she cried a heap, and tell Masser she wouldn't mind it if he would let her take us chilen; but Masser say no, he wouldn't. Den she axed him please to let her hab little Ben, any how. Masser cussed, and said, Well, she might hab Ben, as he was too little to be ob any sarvice; den she 'peared so glad and got him all ready to take; but when de trader kum to take her away, he say he wouldn't 'low her to take Ben, kase he couldn't sell her fur as much, if she hab a baby wid her; den, oh den, how poor mammy did cry and beg; but de trader tuck his cowhide and whipped her so hard she hab to stop cryin' or beggin'. Den she kum to me and make me promise to take good care ob Ben, to nurse him and tend on him as long as I staid whar he was. Den she knelt down in de corner of her cabin and prayed to God to take care ob us, all de days of our life; den she kissed us all and squeezed us tight, and when she tuck little Ben in her arms it 'peared like her heart would break. De water from her eyes wet Ben's apron right ringing wet, jist like it had come out ob a washing tub. Den de trader called to her to come along, and den she gib dis to me, and told me dat ebery time I looked at it, I must tink of my poor mammy dat was sold down de ribber, and 'member my promise to her 'bout my little brudder."

Here the child exhibited a bored five-cent piece, which she wore suspended by a black string around her neck.

"De chilen has tried many times to git it away frum me; but I's allers beat 'em off; and whenever Miss Tildy wants me fur to mind her, she says, 'Now, Amy, I'll jist take yer mammy's present from yer if yer doesn't do what I bids yer;' den de way dis here chile does work isn't slow, I ken tell yer," and with her characteristic gesture she run her tongue out at the corner of her mouth in an oblique manner, and suddenly withdrew it, as though it had passed over a scathing iron.

"Could anything induce you to part with it?" I asked.

She rolled her eyes up with a look of wonderment, and replied, half ferociously, "Gracious! no—why, hasn't I bin whipped, 'bused and treed; still I'd hold fast to this. No mortal ken take it frum me. You may kill me in welcome," and the child shook her head with a philosophical air, as she said, "and I don't kere much, so mammy's chilen dies along wid me, fur I didn't see no use in our livin' eny how. I's done got my full shere ob beatin' an' we haint no use on dis here airth—so I jist wants fur to die."

I looked upon her, so uncared for, so forlorn in her condition, and I could not find it in my heart to blame her for the wish, erring and rebellious as it must appear to the Christian. What had she to live for? To those little children, the sacred bequests of her mother, she was no protection; for, even had she been capable of extending to them all the guidance and watchfulness, both of soul and body, which their delicate and immature natures required, there was every probability, nay, there was a certainty, that this duty would be denied her. She could not hope, at best, to live with them more than a few years. They were but cattle, chattels, property, subject to the will and pleasure of their owners. There would speedily come a time when a division must take place in the estate, and that division would necessarily cause a separation and rupture of family ties. What wonder then, that this poor ignorant child sighed for the calm, unfearing, unbroken rest of the grave? She dreamed not of a "more beyond;" she thought her soul mortal, even as her body; and had she been told that there was for her a world, even a blessed one, to succeed death, she would have shuddered and feared to cross the threshold of the grave. She thought annihilation the greatest, the only blessing awaiting her. The idea of another life would have brought with it visions of a new master and protracted slavery. Freedom and equality of souls, irrespective of color, was too transcendental and chimerical an idea to take root in her practical brain. Many times had she heard her master declare that "niggers were jist like dogs, laid down and died, and nothin' come of them afterwards." His philosophy could have proposed nothing more delightful to her ease-coveting mind.

Some weeks afterwards, when I was trying to teach her the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, she broke forth in an idiotic laugh, as she said, "oh, no, dat gold city what dey sings 'bout in hymns, will do fur de white folks; but nothin' eber comes of niggers; dey jist dies and rots."

"Who do you think made negroes?" I inquired.

Looking up with a meaning grin, she said, "White folks made 'em fur der own use, I 'spect."

"Why do you think that?"

"Kase white folks ken kill 'em when dey pleases; so I 'spose dey make 'em."

This was a species of reasoning which, for a moment, confounded my logic. Seeing that I lacked a ready reply, she went on:

"Yes, you see, Ann, we hab no use wid a soul. De white folks won't hab any work to hab done up dere, and so dey won't hab no use fur niggers."

"Doesn't this make you miserable?"

"What?" she asked, with amazement.

"This thought of dying, and rotting like the vilest worm."

"No, indeed, it makes me glad; fur den I'll not hab anybody to beat me; knock, kick, and cuff me 'bout, like dey does now."

"Poor child, happier far," I thought, "in your ignorance, than I, with all the weight of fearful responsibility that my little knowledge entails upon me. On you, God will look with a more pitying eye than upon me, to whom he has delegated the stewardship of two talents."