was something to look at. He knew it from the comments of slave owners and slave traders. He stole a peek at the new woman.
Lizzie sensed something between them. He cast his eyes back at the ground, but Lizzie thought there might be a secret meeting later. She had known Philip since she was a girl.
George stood, too, as Sweet gave him a final pat.
“I don’t know why you don’t want us to plait your hair,” Reenie said to Mawu. Any of the other women would have heard and obeyed the command in Reenie’s voice, but Mawu just shook her head.
“Come on, Miss Lizzie.” Sweet beckoned her over. “Let me do your head.” Lizzie planted herself on the ground and leaned forward so Sweet could start in the back.
Reenie pushed henry out from her legs so he could follow the other two men who were already walking off. There was nothing left for her to do, so Reenie sat there glaring at Mawu as if her sudden uselessness were all her fault.
“You even know how to plait,” Reenie said in what didn’t even try to pass as an asking tone.
“Course I do. What kind of woman you think I is?” Mawu folded her arms across her chest.
“That’s what we’re trying to figure out,” Lizzie said, rising to the defense of Reenie. That woman had been too good to her to allow this red-headed, slow-talking woman to insult her.
“Well, I can sho see what kind of womens y’all is.”
Sweet let out a high-pitched belch. “What?”
“You heard me. Y’all ain’t talking about nothing, ain’t doing nothing. You probably run behind your mens all day sweeping up they dirt.”
Reenie calmed Lizzie with a touch of her toe on her friend’s calf.
Instead of words, instead of a tongue lashing she would remember until she left the camp, they gave Mawu silence. They rewarded the arrival of this seventh slave with a cold, thick wall of disregard. Treated her as if she weren’t there. Treated her as if she were an unfamiliar white woman sitting among them to whom they had no obligation. Sweet braided, Lizzie closed her eyes, and Reenie picked through the seeds the men had left.
Mawu sat there for a moment, waiting. Then she picked up her basket, perched it on her head, and walked stiff backed toward the resort.
TWO
Mawu waved her hands when she talked. She fluttered them about as if rearranging the air around her. There was a fluidity about the woman that made Lizzie take notice. At that very moment, she was stroking her bare chest right above her left breast, and Lizzie couldn’t stop following the movement.
Lizzie compared her own dark brownness to Mawu’s lighter hue. In her mind, she lined the two of them up side-by-side: legs, arms, waists, shoulders. Drayle had told Lizzie countless times she was pretty, but she’d never really believed it about herself. The shape of Lizzie’s face was squarish and strong. Someone had once commented that her thick eyebrows were becoming, but she’d always thought of herself as too hairy—it covered her legs and arms in a soft down, and instead of freckles like Mawu, she had been cursed with moles—fleshy ones, large and small across her chest and back. A particularly juicy one lay tucked in the corner above her left nostril, a final unfair flourish to her mannish face.
Mawu was freckled red, specks dotting her face like rain. She was petite with a short torso and long, thin legs. Her neck stretched long and seemed to be the only part of her body left unmarked. She had one pointed pinky nail that made Lizzie wonder how she worked with such a thing.
Lizzie had finally caught sight of Tip, Mawu’s master, and she couldn’t help but think he didn’t deserve to feel the tender scratch of that fingernail along his back.
“You listening?”
Lizzie nodded her head yes and looked back into the skillet.
“My mammy taught me how to make this. She said—”
“Your birth mammy?” interrupted Lizzie.
“Course my birth mammy. Ain’t you got a mammy?”
Lizzie shook her head. “She died before I remember. But I’ve got other ones. Aunt Lu raised me before I came to the Drayle place. Then after I was sold, Big Mama became my mammy. But when I moved into the big house…”
The unfinished sentence did not hover. They both knew what moving into “the big house” meant. They both knew the way it affected relationships in the slave quarters. This understanding was the main reason Lizzie liked coming