MEANWHILE, WHEN I WOKE UP IN THE MC-SIMMONSS’ icehouse, cold and cramped and hungry and thirsty, it was like waking up in the middle of a nightmare and discovering that the nightmare was still going on. My back was in such pain I could hardly move.
I thought about Katie and Emma and Aleta and whether they were safe, wondering what they were doing. It’s funny how you worry more about other people than yourself when you’re in danger. It seems you can be stronger for yourself, but you don’t want others to have to endure the same suffering.
I was suffering all right. My back hurt so bad I could hardly stand it. I couldn’t move a muscle in my whole body without wincing in pain. But I had been whipped before and I knew the pain would eventually go away. But I was so worried that somehow they’d know where to find Emma, that maybe they’d followed Katie home and were doing awful things to the rest of them too. My mind made up all kinds of terrible things I was afraid might be happening. And the worst of it was I couldn’t do anything to help. I had no idea they were all back at Rosewood waiting and worrying about me, and hoping every minute that I’d come riding in.
Sometime in the morning I heard voices above me, followed by the sound of someone fumbling with the lock. Then bright sunlight exploded around me as the icehouse door opened. A little white girl about ten or eleven climbed down the stairs and brought me a pitcher of water and a hunk of bread. She looked at me crumpled in a heap in the corner with that same expression I’d seen on white faces lately but had never noticed before—hatred.
Why would a little girl who had never seen me before hate me? I suppose I might have hated her back, but I couldn’t. The look she gave me hurt, but I couldn’t help feeling sorry for her, ’cause I knew what that hatred was going to do to her inside—it was going to spoil all the good things that might have grown in her heart instead.
“Thank you,” I tried to say, but my throat was so dry my voice sounded like the croaking of a frog.
She just looked at me without replying, then turned and walked back up the stairs, then the door closed behind her.
A few hours later it opened again. This time I knew it was no little girl coming down the stairs ’cause I heard heavy footsteps and his voice. I glanced up and shuddered to see that he held a whip in his hand.
“On your feet!” said William McSimmons. He grabbed me and dragged me up out of the icehouse. I cried out because he’d twisted my arm and it felt like he’d almost broken it.
He pulled what remained of my torn dress off my shoulders again.
“I’ll give you one more chance to tell me where she is,” he said.
“Please, master,” I said, “I’m telling you God’s truth—I left here that day those men on horses killed everyone at the slave village. I had gone for water and they didn’t see me. I ran and ran. I didn’t know what direction I was going. I didn’t see anybody else. I thought everyone was dead. I thought you and the master were dead. That’s why I didn’t come back. That’s the honest truth—I saw no one.”
“You’re lying!” he shouted. “Maybe you ran away like you say. But you’ve got to know where she is now! So tell me!”
“I’m sorry, sir … please, I don’t know.”
He erupted with even more fury than the day before, and a minute later I fell senseless in a faint on the dirt, blood covering my back. The last thing I remember was the sound of his boots kicking me back down the steps and then tramping back up. Then my brain went black.
How long I was out, I don’t know. It might have been midafternoon when I gradually began to come to myself in an agony of throbbing and burning torment. I don’t know what hell is going to be like, but if it’s anything like what I felt that day, I pity the folks who wind up there. I heard voices above me outside again. Men’s voices mixed with evil laughter.
“He said I could have her first.”
“… make it fast, then … I’m next and … got to get back to work …”
There was more low laughter, then the door opened and again light flooded the icehouse. As I came more fully back to myself I saw that a man was coming down. I struggled to pull the top of my dress and underclothes back up around my shoulders and breasts.
“Don’t mind all that, missy,” said the man with a lecherous grin, “you won’t be needing it.”
He knelt down beside me and began pulling my clothes off, fondling me and moving his hands all over me as he forced me onto my back. I winced in pain when my whipped back scraped against the hard dirt floor.
Then he started to take his trousers off, and I knew he was about to rape me.
Suddenly I heard an angry voice from above us.
“Get up and come out of there!” cried a woman’s voice. The man turned around. Beyond him I saw the silhouette of a tall form in the light from the opening of the door. It was the mistress.
“Get out!” she repeated. “I don’t care if she’s trash, I’ll have none of your evil, disgusting games at my home. Get out, and the rest of you,” she said to some others who must have been standing nearby, “leave her alone. If she’s going to meet her end, let it be in the way we deal with coloreds. If I see any more of this, I’ll kill you myself.”
Somehow the men seemed to know that she meant it. The man stood, pulled up his trousers, and left the icehouse. Again the door closed. I pulled my clothes back over myself and started to cry.
This time I couldn’t stop.
I didn’t see or hear from anyone else the whole rest of the day or night.