Chapter Fifty-seven
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The night of that same day Liza burst into my bedroom.
“How dare you!” she said, throwing her fists at me as I stood up to meet her.
I caught her by the wrists and we spun around, almost as if in a kind of dance.
“How dare I? I did not know a slave could say such things!”
“You didn’t? You didn’t? Well, despite my life of slavery I am free—I am free to hate you!”
She tore one of her hands free and banged me in the nose. The pain pulled me back and I clasped both hands to my face.
“Nate, Nate,” she said in a sudden worried cry, “Are you all right? Are you?”
Hands still covering my aching face, I stumbled back against the bedroom wall.
“No,” I said, “no, I’m not.”
My voice sounded thick. Glancing down behind my hands I could see the blood dripping onto my shoes.
“Oh, I’m so sorry, so sorry,” Liza said, and guided me in her arms to the bed.
“I…I’ll fetch some water. Wait!”
“Wait? Wait? My blood cannot wait.”
“Here,” she said, and snatched a pillow from the bed and shoved it at me. I caught it in one hand and pressed the billowy thing to my face. She left the room while I sat on the edge of the bed, breathing hoarsely but steadily, feeling the blood run out of my battered nose and down my shirt front.
In a moment she was back. Her eyes were wild, her duster spattered with my blood.
Clutching the cloths she had just fetched and dipping them into the water from my drinking jug she dabbed at my nose, and then bid me press the wet cloths against it.
“Lie back,” she said.
I obeyed, but gagged on the blood that ran down the back of my throat.
I sat up again.
“Back,” she said.
“Are you the massa?” I said. “It is choking me.”
She approached me again, dabbed, pressed. After awhile, in which we both remained silent except for our breathing, the blood stopped flowing.
“Why did you say that?” Liza asked.
I pulled the cloths away from my face.
“What did I say?”
“You know what you said.”
I shook my head, this motion somehow stirring up the pain, if not the blood, almost in an instant.
“You told Isaac you loved me.”
I sighed, and swallowed, and tasted the bitter iron of my own blood.
“I said that, yes.”
“So stupid.”
“Me? Stupid?”
She shook her head, frightened all of a sudden by her own aggressiveness toward me.
“I said it,” I said, “because it is true.”
“It is not.” Her voice was hoarse and raspy.
“Oh, but it is, sad to say. And wonderful, too.”
I tossed the bloody cloths onto the bed and reached for her hand.
She pulled it away.
I reached again.
“You’re still bleeding,” she said. I felt the hot stinging in my nostrils, still wet with the flow.
She picked up the cloths, refolded them so that the clean side showed, and pressed that against my face, at the same time pushing me back so that my head lay against the bloody discarded pillow.
“I hate you,” she said.
“You don’t,” I said.
“I do, I do. You have ruined everything.”
“And how have I done that? What did you have before…?” I stopped myself, amazed at the stupidity and cruelty of such a remark.
“Yes, you’re right, massa. Dis nigger woman, what she have befo’ de man from New Yawk, he come along?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, feeling my shame as more intense pain in the center of my face.
“What did I have? Oh, what did I have?”
It was her turn to hold her face and moan.
“Liza,” I said, “I did not mean to—”
“Leave me be!”
“Sorry.”
“Yes, you’re sorry. You’re sorry.”
With a huge sigh, she heaved herself to her feet and stood unsteadily before me.
“I can’t come here anymore. I have been wanting to tell you this, and now I must tell you this.”
“Is it so awful for you? I hadn’t understood that it was, Liza. I thought…I thought that you felt something the same as I did.”
I reached for her hand, but she pulled back.
“Please,” I said, “don’t turn me into a beggar.” I patted the bed alongside me. “Come sit, please.”
“Oh, massa,” she said. “De massa call.”
“Stop it.”
She burned a look at me that gave me more pain than her fist that crushed my nose.
“What massa want?”
“Stop it, please.”
“No,” she said, her voice returning to normal. “Tell me what you want?”
“I want you,” I said. “I want you to sit here beside me.”
“You want me?” She burned me again with that gaze. “You want me?” She shook herself as though a cold wind had just passed over her body. “You can have me. Oh, yes, you got me. Massa, anything you want.”
And with an angry jerking motion, she tore at her frock, ripping buttons as she pulled.
Now she stood before me, naked to the waist, her chest heaving.
“Here,” she said, bowing toward me, then descending to her knees and pulling at my boots. “Now.” Off she pulled a boot, throwing it against the wall, then another.
“Stop it,” I said, pushing at her as next she tried to interfere with my buttons.
“Massa want me to stop?”
“Yes, stop.”
She ceased her frenzied tearing and fell back onto the floor, hugging her knees to her chest.
“Yes, massa,” she said, and began to sob most terribly.
“Liza,” I said, not knowing what to say beyond her name. I eased myself down onto the floor beside her and took her in my arms.
“You say you love me,” she said. “Don’t you know that is the cruelest most awful thing to tell a woman like me?”
“But I do love you.”
She ignored what I said.
“And do you know why it is so cruel?”
“No,” I said in a whisper near her ear. “Tell me.”
“Because I am not free to refuse you. And I am not free to accept you, either. I am just a lonely piece of chattel, do you understand? A Jew-slave, as they call us in town. I am like Promise, the horse you ride here. A Jew-horse he is, too.”
Turning in my arms, she breathed close to my face. The pain of my bleeding nose was nothing compared to the ache I felt in my chest.
“Perhaps it is time to go,” I said, pushing myself against the bed and standing up.
“So it’s a lie?”
“What is?”
“You say you love me, and you’ll send me away?”
“It is too painful,” I said.
“Yes, isn’t it? Oh, I hate her, that bitch-cousin of yours! I hate her profoundly!”
As hot as it was in the room, Liza then gave a shiver and crossed her arms across her breasts.
“You hate Rebecca? Why?” I said. “She has been so good to all of you.”
“That is the reason I hate her! And I hate the doctor, too!”
I had to shake my head.
“You hate these good people? Why?”
“It was terrible of them to be good to us. Before I learned to read, before I read all these things I read, I didn’t know how much I was hurting.”
“Liza,” I said, and once again took her in my arms.
“Be careful,” she said. “Don’t be good to me.”
“Why not?”
“Because I’ll hate you, too!”
She pressed herself against me, trembling wildly. In an instant we threw ourselves on the bed, God’s Jew-slaves, both of us, doing the bidding of our bodies that He had created out of dust and clay.