with a glad eye. For come, it was not, ‘Marguerite! Marguerite!’ that was being called.
July had at first asked kindly to be allowed to attend Robert Goodwin upon his sickbed. She meekly appealed to the missus. Following that, she pleaded with her. Finally, she was obliged to drop to her knees to kiss the missus’s slippered toes and beg her. Seven times in all, did July make her requests (or every minute of the night and day for weeks and weeks, if you care to take Caroline Goodwin’s version of July’s remonstrations).
‘He must not see negroes,’ the missus had told her.
And July informed her, ‘But me is not a negro, me is a mulatto.’ Her missus—frowning with deep puzzlement—just replied, ‘Oh who upon this earth cares about that silliness? You are still a negro, and it is negroes who have brought him to this. You will come nowhere near him, Marguerite. He does not wish to see you. He wants you to stay away from him. Do you hear me?’
The missus had then tasked Joseph to guard the only unbolted door into the great house. His sole command was to shoo July—to get her gone, to shout and curse upon her that the massa no want to see her.
Only when resting quiet in that little room under the house could July be anywhere near Robert Goodwin. For she did hear him in his room above her. If her breath was held she did feel him turning fretful within his bed. If she stood upon her tip-toe she would catch his sigh as he stared, bored, through the window. His muffled voice did often drift down to her, but too indistinct to be worth straining for his meaning. But sometimes at night his resonant snore did rattle in to rest beside her.
When, one evening, she sat nursing Emily, softly singing, ‘Mama gon’ rock, mama gon’ hold, little girl-child mine,’ his laughter came tripping through her ceiling. ‘Papa,’ July said to Emily, who was suckling with her one hard tooth. The missus’s footsteps skipping heavy across the room above her were not unusual. Nor was her giggling. July thought nothing of the silence that followed.
She laid Emily into her box, sat upon her bed, and snuffed out her candle to preserve it. It was in that gloom that her ceiling began to creak. And soft moans and breathy sighs and panting began drizzling down upon July’s head. The bed began to bounce above her, rhythmic and strong. Thump, thump. Come, July had felt a tickle of dust gently falling. Then, slap! He enjoyed to spank bare flesh. Ouch! He loved to pinch. Oh! And to bite. Faster and faster, the bed had bumped upon her ceiling. And although July blocked up her ears with her fists, the missus did not think to stifle Robert Goodwin’s mouth when he at last discharged his final cry.
July spent many days gathering up those cockroaches for Robert Goodwin’s leaving dish. It was not, however, a thousand roaches that menaced Robert Goodwin, for they became quite hard to find. But more than one hundred, July managed to capture. Most were crushed, for they were the devil to keep in one place. And not all were cockroaches, but beetles and centipedes and tumble-bugs and strange black slithery things that squirmed within the shitty pit-holes. But all were diligently hoarded by July, for far too easily had she just been discarded.
July heard Robert Goodwin command not only Joseph, but Byron and Elias that, ‘Miss July must be allowed nowhere near the house, or the garden. Do not let her return to her room until we are quite departed. And she must stay far from the kitchen. Do not, under any circumstances, permit her to approach the missus or myself. She must be warned that if I glimpse her anywhere within my sight then, so help me God, I will have the policeman brought from town to incarcerate her in the lock-up. Anywhere! Savvy that? Anywhere! And neither your missus, nor myself, wishes to bid her any sort of goodbye.’
Their departing carriage disappeared that day, rippling and swaying in a heat haze. July watched it go until the last black dot of it appeared to simply vanish.
July turned her gaze to watch Emily, who sat at her feet. Her pickney was singing a song to herself—a nonsense song, for she knew no words. And as she sang she played with a piece of lace, turning it over and over in