to Memphis to be sold away. It was her daddy had the land first. She was older ’n Papa. He married her back when she was still a little pretty. But she got crooked and sick—and evil inside. Lay up in her white bed all day dabbing her throat with cologne and whining for the nigger girls to fan her and shoo the flies. Story was she lost a baby. Wouldn’t let Papa come to her bed after that. So … he came … to my mother.”
“Why didn’t your father … protect you?”
“He tried.” Hattie sighed, with a mixture of fatigue and sadness that made Lloyd lighten his touch. “But men are weak. They’re all … slaves.”
This last assertion made Lloyd wince, but he kept rubbing the foot, subconsciously easing it against his erection. This girl was like no one he had ever imagined. Shining machines and flying over rivers and cities did not seem so wondrous as before.
“Papa’s heart was broken when Mama died,” the girl continued, as if she were reconsidering the events as she recounted them.
“He sounds … like a sad man,” Lloyd offered, feeling stupid. He kept imagining her eyes in the dark.
“He was a brave man and a wise man, and a good man,” Hattie insisted. “Let all the niggers read the Bible—and more. Got ’em learning arithmetic—and the stars. The neighbor white folks hated him for that.”
“He must miss you now.”
“He’s dead,” Hattie said, and must have reached in the sack for a hunk of mutton, because Lloyd could hear her jaws click. “Hung hisself.”
“He did?” the boy wheezed, thinking back to his own actions on the deck.
“Died in shame,” the girl continued. “Man named Barlow—plantation owner nearby—challenged him to a duel. Said he was a nigger lover and a traitor to the South! Papa strung himself up the night before. His old wife had her way after that. Her and the overseer.”
Lloyd did not know what to say. It reminded him of the story Mother Tongue had told him. Perhaps the man had not hanged himself. But it was not his place to speak now.
“Give me your hands.”
“What?” Lloyd whispered, feeling his stomach turn.
“Give me your damn hands,” Hattie hissed.
He loosened his grasp of her feet and stretched out his hands. There was a rustle of fabric and then he touched warm skin. Girlish breasts beginning to form. A fragile hint of womanly fullness. And ripeness. His own skin tingled. But her flesh was ridged and welted. The body before him leaned into his grope, filling his fingers with a different kind of darkness. Lloyd could feel the girl’s breath, mutton-scented, on his face, while his intrigued, frightened hands were allowed to roam over her bare skin.
Where there should have been nipples there were lumpy crosses of scars. His fingertips explored small slices and pocks and bumps that reminded him of the Ambassadors’ secret hierograms. The girl’s entire chest and belly rippled with markings that seemed to radiate an angry heat.
“They … did … this … to you?”
“Not all at once, mind,” Hattie whispered. “They took their sweet time. Her and Riddick.”
Lloyd recollected the tone of St. Ives’s voice when he told of his maiming at the hands of the diabolical Rutherford. The odor of the mutton was starting to make him nauseated. Or maybe it was the scarring.
“And that’s not all they did,” Hattie hissed—and Lloyd caught the faintest hint of a sob in her voice. He pulled his hands back.
“I’ll never have chillum—children. And … I’ll never have pleasure. With a man. Understand? I reckon you old enough to know what I mean. That’s what the old hag wanted. Then she sold me off. Up Memphis way. That’s when I run off. First chance I had. Only chance I thought I’d get. ”
Lloyd could think of nothing to say. His hands had retracted from the girl’s wounded skin, and yet had been drawn to the feel of her, as if through some perverse attraction. His stomach growled—still his erection stiffened. The space they were in seemed to contract around them, as if somewhere deep within he retained the memory of what it had been like to be so close to his twin sister, Lodema, back in the mother darkness.
“So. Lloyd?” Hattie inquired after a long moment’s silence. “Why you wanna end your life? ’Cause you a mongrel colored boy in disguise?”
“What?”
“I see through you. Niggers will. Smart ones, anywise. I knew it the first time I saw you sneakin’ around with