"I heard a loud noise in the heavens, and the Spirit instantly appeared to me and said the Serpent was loosened, and Christ had laid down the yoke he had borne for the sins of men, and that I should take it on and fight against the Serpent, for the time was fast approaching when the first should be last and the last should be first.”

-- Nat Turner

Aunt Mom’s Stabbin’
By Jeff Jewett

 

I am almost one hundred years old and still living in Canada.  I remember it all, nephew.  As I write, I realize that I need closure.  What I fear most is leaving it open, for something ugly may come in.  I loved her, nephew, as though she were my own, even though she had owned me.

* * *

I watched her sleep, gawking at her throat with wide watery eyes.  I stood over her bed with a knife in my hand, my heart calm as a cotton field hours after the last horn.

We killed white babies, and the babies’ mamas, and men.  Yes, many innocent people suffered.  From Southampton, Virginia, where Nat Turner had been born and raised, to South Carolina, where mobs of white men hung the slaves who had nothing to do with the revolt, hung them beside the slaves whose hands were in it.  For nobody could tell who was who, you see.  Echoes of our slaves’ songs that held secret messages that recruited members to the secret meeting places where parties had been formed were heard from one plantation to the other.

Gnats down by the creek buzzin’ like a bee
Befo’e slap that bug
Let them free
Let them free
Down by the creek
Down by the creek

Even before the bodies swung and twirled from branches, or lay stabbed, chopped or bludgeoned, all victims received God’s judgment. 

Let them free

* * *

We called Nat Turner the Prophet, see, though some referred to him as the Preacher Man.  Of course, he never preached to any white man, especially the one at the Jerusalem jail where he stayed his last hours.  No, baby, he hadn’t sat in the tiny cell and talked about all that mystic stuff as he had with us slaves down near the creek.  Lord heavens!  A white man would never have been interested in what a slave perceived as spiritual matters. 

“A gray story is mine.”

The first time I heard the Prophet preach he had made this prophecy down near the creek.  It was his last sermon.  Truths tell, a prophet was what he surely was.

In the confession of Nat Turner, Thomas Gray had written the word ‘spirit’ every time the Prophet spoke the word ‘angel’.  Changed it.  Reasoning was that angels would never guide slaves to kill decent white folk, see.  Angels do good, not evil.  They’re warriors with majestic beauty and powerful swords who swoop down and destroy demons.  That was Grays’ reasoning.  Truths tell, ours too. 

Furthermore, Gray knew the word ‘spirit’ sounded like something out of a bottle, which sadly enough, some of us who revolted had looted money and drink from the homes we raided.  The Prophet never drank a drop in his life.  He never foul talked and the free time he earned from either plowing or picking was spent reading the Bible and other good books.  No, sugar, what the preacher-prophet  had done in that county jail was testify as Gray wrote in his own hand the word-for-word confession to all of those nasty killings.  

Then, after the revolt of 1831, any slave who dared refer to Nat Turner as the Prophet, Preacher, or to utter his birth name in any manner, that slave would surely be the turner on their own death-lathe.

* * *

I had been part of the congregation on the final night he preached down near the creek near his home at the old Travis plantation.  The secret meeting had taken place more than nine miles from my home at the Legree’s small plot where I worked as a house servant in the same Southampton County.  Every slave knew about the secret meetings.  Even some white folks knew, but before the revolt, nobody cared, you see.  If needs be, let them be out at night, as long as they keep their bales up during the day. 

Being a house servant, I thought tramping out late at night was foolhardy.  I imagine plenty of field hands did too.  There were thieves who fished for slaves, and Lord knows we feared the throw of a net.  What I didn’t know were our numbers of attendees nor how far the revolt went, even though we didn’t get very far.  However, in retrospect—I mailed you a seventy-year-old news clipping and I noted the massacre in a history book or two—I’d say we went far enough.  

For almost a year, I tried to mind my own.  Toiling in the big house where the aroma of peach cobbler was thick, holding the lid to a pot in one hand I poked at simmering turnip greens with a wooden spoon.   A pitcher of cider, a plate of hen, and utensils, along with a freshly folded tablecloth lay on the kitchen table, waiting to be set for my Missy. She liked to eat at her daddy’s table in the dining room, and not at my place in the kitchen. 

Like a whisper from outside my tiny kitchen window, I heard the songs from the hands out in the field on a plantation quarter mile south.

“Gnats down by the creek buzzin’ like a bee..”

I caught myself humming along, “…Down by the creek, down by the creek…”

That final night he preached was the first I mustered the courage to get out of the house.  I went to discover what all the nonsense in those slave songs was really all about.

* * *

The Prophet held a Bible, squatting as he held onto a little boy like a pole, his arms wrapped around the child’s waist.  Some of us sat up in a tree or atop rocks.  Even today, I don’t know how many were present that night, listening, learning.   Huddled about cold and scared, the only light was from a dim moon set to the North.  Seasons on and work bells ringing any hour.  The creek’s tinkle chimed like music as the Prophet spoke.  A croak from a bullfrog, a yip from a coyote, a distant moo from some old Betsy sounded in all the correct spots as though the woods were listening too.  The Prophet preached while the woods responded with a “yes-suh” and “preach-on.”  

“Tonight is my last night with you.” 

The whisper of his raspy voice sounded like trampled on cornhusks, the congregation grumbled with protest.   

“You runnin’?’” someone asked, though I could not see who’d spoken.  The voice coming from the direction of the old tree sounded dull and strange, as if spoken into a mason jar, like how folks sound when everything’s still and everybody’s scared.

“I wanna go wit’ you,” said the boy, now crouched and shivering between the Preacher Man’s legs.  The boy was scared, too, his voice choppy and delicate like the tinkle from the creek.  The way the Prophet hugged that child could be no more urgent than if a cotton gin snatched the baby up, he squeezed that child until my own eyes welled. 

“What’s your name, son?”

“Jumps,” the boy answered.

“What is your grand-people’s name?”

“Jordan.”

“Do you know how to read?”

“No suh.”

“Pronounce your words correctly, son.  Say: ‘I want to go with you,’ not wit’.”

“With.”

He stood and lifted the boy towards the tree where dark arms reached out and tenderly pulled the boy up into shadows.

“I taught you all how to read and write, and I taught you how to teach each other.  Where I’m running to, son, and my people, I am going to bring back freedom.  Be prepared, for one day you will go north. Or not. You and yours will grow up free.  And you, Jumps, you shall be the ancestor of a super hero.”

Mouthing  the words, ‘super hero,’ I stood as though I were part of the woods, sort of behind the tree, if you would, and not understanding, though my heart pounded preach-on’, brother, preach-on.  I believe he tapped into our thoughts, somehow.  He paced before us as he preached.  Then, what he said next made my heart stop and be still as he had stopped and was still.

“So much is misunderstood.  I believe an angel has guided me, it’d show itself if it could.  I know not its intent in this gray story of mine, although I have been shown a very peculiar sign.  Months before last February, I had prophesized an eclipse.  I saw one sign in the mud.  In this month of August comes a final sign, when the door to freedom will slowly creak open, its hinges oiled with blueblood.”  

Before the meeting ended, he smiled a smile that especially in the dark made us feel a tad uncomfortable.

* * *

Once a month, twelve-year-old Missy Legree took up piano lessons at the Travis plantation where the Prophet resided, a year prior he’d been sold away from the Turners where he’d been born.  I was the sole house servant on a small plot of land nine miles south from the Travis’s.  Tending the reigns of the ole’ mule I listened to Missy ramble on.

An agreement between the houses had been made to accompany the piano lessons, and so my house issued a chore that benefited the Prophet’s skill—he was as famous throughout the white community for his crafts as a carpenter as he was to the slaves for his secret sermons and being book educated. 

That month of August after my first and last visit to the creek, I had first looked upon the Prophet in a new light.  In our regular visits, I’d seen him out in the Travis field.  He’d stop in his toil to walk over to the wagon and help Missy down, grab whatever task from back of the wagon which was assigned to him, and take it into the barn to complete. I had never heard him preach before then, but I knew of him, you see.  What I thought had been foolishness down near the creek had actually been nourishment.  Lord, I tell you, ever since that meeting I attended I felt uplifted.  I started to read more and I took better care in the pronunciation of my words, as he had taught them others, though I had to teach myself, you see.  Glad I finally found the courage to go and hear him preach and I felt sad he would be leaving, running as he said he would.  That day, I assisted the Prophet rather than sit and wait in the wagon.  In retrospect, I was a girl in awe of a wise and beautiful man. 

The Prophet and I sanded down Missy’s bedroom door that lay horizontally on a pair of horse legs in Travis’ barn.  Last month he’d carved a beautiful design on the outside of the door; I sort of polished these finished spots, odd as they were.  Now he brushed the surface of the door with coarse-grained sandpaper that he himself had concocted by gluing grains of granite and swarf from cutting tools onto old rags. 

“Earlier this month I heard you preach,” I said, “you were just wonder—”

“Quiet.  I think it’s listening.” 

The fear in his voice swept over to me and stirred my nerves.   I hunched over in my task to look busy, glancing out the corner of my eye to see who was near while the Prophet held rags of sandpaper in each hand and pumped both arms back and forth against the surface of the bedroom door.

Hush, shhh.  Hush, shhh…

“Moms,” he continued, “these angels, I don’t know what’s going on.  Just stay quiet.”

How’d he know my name?

Hush, shhh.  Hush, shhh…

“It told me to catch the air from my lungs then blow it out just before the noose snaps, so my body doesn’t make any struggling sounds.  I don’t know if angels are supposed to talk like that.”

He sort of looked at me with one eye squinted, in the opened eye, I saw madness.  

They’d clip a few toes or lop off a foot for running, or a flogging, maybe.  But nooses?  No, he wasn’t just running.  Something else was brewing.  The kettle had been down near the creek.  My hands were in it too.  If one slave did anything to deserve a noose, the rope could be loosened to fit more than one neck.  Moms, he had said.  He knew my name and knew I’d been out there.  Who else knew?  The Prophet went on with his toil as if he never said anything at all. 

Hush, shhh.  Hush, shhh….

“Crazy talk!”  My voice was soft as the rustling sandpaper.  “What are you planning to get yourself and others into, Nat Turner?”

Hush, shhh.  Hush, shhh….

Suddenly, though shafts of sunlight beamed in through the barns’ open double doors, the day no longer seemed as bright.  I began to fret as though outside were an oncoming storm.  Blue jays were cawing, the Travis’s hands were somewhere deep in stock on that sixteen acres, piano scales from inside the big house raised up and down, and yet, the Prophets’ crazy talk brought on the feeling of impending doom.

“Its name is Razzo.”

“The angel?” I asked, “Has he shown himself?”

“No.  Thank God.  The hieroglyphics in the dirt I discovered at my feet in the field, Razzo simply said they were directions.  I wrote them down.”  He dreamily regarded the design etched into the door.

I’d been angry because I felt threatened by all of his crazy talk, but the man had such wisdom.  Now he rambled on until he scared me so.  At the time, I had been just twenty-four or five years old.  I feared for him, and myself.  And anyone who ever had anything to with this Nat Turner. 

“Is that what you found in the mud, then?  Directions?  Lord knows.” 

“Lord knows,” he said, “humph.  I wonder about that, too.”

“Now that’s blasphemy!  You need to stop this crazy talk.  What’s gotten into you?”

“Oh Moms, I don’t want to hurt anybody.”

“Hurt somebody?  That’s it, Nat Turner.  That is it!  Mister Legree is out on business, but I am going to march right over to Mister Travis—”

“Moms, don’t be scared, I think it’s standing right beside you.”

“Scared?”  I asked with a shaken voice, spinning around to see what spooked him so.  “Scared of an angel?”

An abrupt gust of wind stirred like a small whirlwind.  We eyed one another as we stood at each side of the sanded door.  Bits of cotton and stalk and dirt and hay whipped our faces and clothes.  We stood absolutely still, staring at one another with caution like gunslingers I’d read about in a western one rainy evening.  And although I didn’t see the Prophet draw, I heard something drop onto the door that lay on the pair of horse legs. 

The beautiful way he had talked in his sermon inspired me to read the dictionary, when every night I sort of picked at words, tasting them.  I don’t know what it’d been that landed on the bedroom door, but it sounded like the slap of a giant dictionary hitting Mister Legrees’ big teakwood desk. 

The wind stopped as abruptly as it began, bits of hay settled back down around the object, an object wrapped like a cob of corn, except instead of cornhusks, it looked as though it had been wrapped with pigskin.

“Auntie!”  A chirpy voice issued from just outside the barn.  Startled as I was, I turned and damned near fell atop the door, but caught myself with joy to see my little Miss Missy.  I hugged her, taking a big breath of the soapy smell from her hair.  Lord knows thoughts of all that crazy talk seemed to melt away.  I realized then that the feeling of doom had not melted.  Rather, as if a block of ice with something ugly inside, something else had been revealed.  Her hair didn’t smell like soap, even though I had washed it the previous night.  Her hair smelled like…smelled like something issuing from a pen of hogs.

“Now I the one’s who got the angel.”  I heard the sound of my voice, the way I had spoken.  I set the little girl back down on her feet.   

“Auntie, there goes Nat slithering out with that door, are we ready to go home?” she asked.

I snapped her a startled look, my mouth open.  Quizzically my eyes searched her eyes as she regarded me.  Then after a moment, I let it pass.  “Why yes, we be read’ to go.”  I grabbed her under her arms, again lifted her high.  Just my little Missy.  Somehow, as I held her up, I felt by the way that she was ‘looking down’, that—to this day, I cannot quite express—I felt as though she had always regarded me in that manner. 

“We done wit’ the doe an’ bout to place it in the wagon, den’ we be on our way.”

My voice, what happened to my voice?  I have never talked like this, as though I were just another field hand.  And my little Missy is only twelve years old.  What had she said regarding the Prophet?  

Slithering

* * *

I rushed home with Missy riding beside me in the wagon.  The bedroom door the Prophet and I toiled on lay inside the wagon’s bed atop an old canvas.  I felt cold.  I felt as though the door were something left half-open and something…

“Yaw!”

I continued whipping the reins of the old mule when my forearm bumped against a blunt object in the apron of my petticoat.  I retrieved this object. 

Moms, don’t be scared, but it’s standing right beside you.

Now I held in my screams and let out the reins to the old mule, tossing the object overboard, not watching where it landed.  Stocks of white cotton passed.  I saw groups of field hands deep in stock, huddled and hunched.  I was tired, was all, and needed to get us both home for supper and bed.  I had almost calmed my nerves, for that’s all it was I thought, until she spoke.  Not Missy, but the old mule.

Clip-lop.  Clip-lop…

I cocked my head to the side, listening to the sounds the old mule made as its hooves treaded dirt road.  I tugged at the reins making the mule trot slower, listening and praying what I heard was only my imagination.  Then I heard words, as though a chanting voice were in harmony with the mules steps.

Clip-lop.  Clip-lop…

Stop that, I prayed.  I’ve gone mad, I’m afraid.  Clip and lop was what they did when they amputated a limb or a piece of toe or finger from an unruly.

I needed to get my Missy home.  Hunched over the reins I’m sure I looked like a fleeing old witch from one of Missy’s favorite bedtime stories.  All the time a terrible fear stirred within me, fear of the little one who sat beside me.  She went on about her lessons—“la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la”—as she stretched her fingers as if playing musical scales, hands held like claws, fingers wiggling like plump white maggots.  From the corner of my eye I noted the way she sat on the bench of the wagon, a little too erect, in my view.  Sort of high-and-mighty, and I marveled how, at twelve years old, the little pig wore her whiteness as though she were queen of the world. 

I wiped your ass, girly, if you think your shit doesn’t stink.  I wiped your ass just like the field hands before you.  It was just as sticky and smelled just as foul.

Clip-lop.  Clip-lop…

All the time feeling I’m loosing my mind, covering my mouth in shame and shock, tears streaming down my face.

Oh Moms, I don’t want to hurt anybody.

All the time listening to the hoof steps of the old mule…

Clip-lop.  Clip-lop…

When I drove the wagon past the largest cotton plantation in the county, I noticed hands out in the stock had stopped picking.  I saw groups of them standing erect, idle, as they looked to the heavens and pondered.  As far as the eye could spot, group of slaves had ceased in their mid-evening toil.  Idle hands in the fields, almost the strangest sight I’ve ever seen. 

“Whoa,” I said, halting the mule.  Missy’s ‘la-la’ song sounded distant as the slaves’ songs I’d listened to from my kitchen window at a time before my madness began.  I looked out at the hands all wide-eyed; the old mule was settling and then, finally, still.  I sat and anticipated Lord knows what.  Then, the color of the cotton bolls on the largest plantation in the county began to change to a strange bluish color, like blue dye dabbed on a bath towel and slowly absorbing across its surface.  I looked up just as the sun had changed from bluish back to its natural color, and looked back down at the field just as a blue shade receded, like a baby’s color after it’d been choked.

I saw one sign in the mud.  In this month of August comes a final sign, when the door to freedom will slowly creak open, its hinges oiled with blueblood.

 “Auntie Moms, you’re crying.”

“No honey, tha’ jis hay fever.  Sumthang came over Aunt Mom’s, is all.”  I grabbed hold of the reigns; I had a house to run.  “Yaw!” I screamed at the old mule.

Clip-lop Clip-lop Clip-lop Clip-lop…

* * *

I was the sole house servant to little Missy and Mr. Legree.  Late July every year, Mister Legree had left behind our Missy.  He traveled to different parts, tending the tobacco trade.  He was a humble businessman.  We owned not a plantation like the Travis’s; our big house was not as big.  We were not planters, although my two gardens, one behind the Legree house and the small garden front of my cabin, did just fine.  Yams, melons and other vegetables kept a coin in my pocket.  I took pride in my feet, tending to my gardens, sewing, cooking and washing.  I took pride in my big house.  I took pride in my Missy.  I took pride with mines.  The poor thing carried on and fretted after her father packed for his travels, she broke my heart as I stood front of the Legree house, listening to her sobs. 

“Come and get her, Moms,” Mister Legree had said before his trip late last July.  “She’ll hang onto the wagon as far as the Canadian border if we let her.”

Him gone she’d mope the entire month.  Only thing ever cheered her up were our monthly visits to the Travis’s for her music lessons.

At our return to the Legree house, Sam, our only field hand, lifted little Missy from the wagon, then removed the bedroom door from back, leaning it against a pillar.  He’d place it back on its hinges to Missy’s bedroom after tending to the old mule. 

Once home, I felt better.

“Come Missy,” I said, snapping my fingers as I ushered her into the house.  “Let’s git you sumphtin’ to eat an’ into bed.”

“But Moms, it’s hardly dark.”

“Back talk an’ your daddy be upset wen he git home nex’ month.”

“Moms…“

“Back talk.”

I gave a little slap on her bottom shooing her into the house. 

“Sam,” I said, after making sure Missy had begun to tidy up and prepare for supper.

“Yep Moms.”

“How do I sound to you?  Do I sound funny?”

He stood and waited for me to elaborate.

“Do I sound like my usual self, like I usually talk, or do I sound like some field hand?”

“Field hand.  You no bet den that.  You in the big house.”

“Go on now, Sam, tend to that ole mule.  After you put the door back into Missy’s room, I’ll get you a plate.”

I was tired, was all.  Home for supper and bed, then pick up in the morning.

* * *

Tucking her into bed, I pondered what had happened earlier in the evening that made my voice sound different every time I talked with Missy, when my voice sounded like Sam’s or some ignorant.  And the way I perceived my Missy as we rode back from the Travis’s.  I saw her in a strange light and it scared me so.  It had something to do with the object I discarded on the side of the road.  Though I had not watched where the object fell, somehow I felt as though it had landed in the mud.

I watched her sleep.  I bent and smelled her hair.  I felt relieved she was just the little girl who I tended to for the past twelve years.  Just a little girl, is all.  Justice my little Missy.

I sat in the comfortable chair at her bedside, feeling less worried about the strange fever that came over me earlier in the day, and I felt a little foolish too.  I closed my eyes.

I heard a slap.  I awoke and saw an object lying on Missy’s oak wood dresser.  Among her properties atop the dresser—everything in the room was hers—was an object wrapped in pigskin.  Then I listened to a whisper as though someone were standing at my side.

“I am Razzo.  I am your guide.”

I watched her sleep, gawking at her throat with wide watery eyes.  I stood over her bed with a knife in my hand, my heart calm as a cotton field hours after the last horn.

Let them free
Let them free

 

END