In Search of Satisfaction (2 page)

the past comes forward

y
oville was a small, legal township founded by the very rich for their own personal use. It had one lawyer, a two-room bank that belonged to the rich Befoe family, a doctor for immediate needs until they could go to larger, more efficient places. A mill, a gin, a blacksmith, a small hotel for uninvited guests or business associates unwanted in their homes, a small shop carrying all sorts of things. There was a dressmaking shop, often closed because the seamstress was nearly starving; everyone really shopped in New York or other places.

The gentlemen of the area had built and kept a house of quiet, ill reputation in which at all times there was at least one woman so the local gentry could go there to drink and talk and relieve themselves if they wished. But many were in Yoville only seasonally, and, as the original founders of this little house grew older and their young left Yoville for college and cities offering more to their greedy young lives, the old gentlemen stopped bringing in a new refined whore to replace the last one who had become inevitably bored and tired of Yoville. There were, finally, few customers. In the old times, however, it was a bright, gay place to spend a few hours with other friends who had nothing to do.

Yoville was close enough to the Northeast to call itself northern
upon occasion, and it was south enough to have had some of the advantages of slavery. A river ran through Yoville, hastening away to some happier place and people. A railroad spur was built in Mythville, a larger town some ten miles away. A clean barge could be engaged to carry a person down the river if one did not feel like driving their carriage or riding a horse. Over the years since slavery ended, some of the rich had moved further east, still holding to their land in Yoville, returning seasonally. It seemed, now, to be a dying little town. But it was not dying. It just never grew.

Following slavery, there was a man named Josephus Josephus. He chose to take the name he hoped his mother had given him, twice, rather than take the name of the cruel owners he had lived under. He had never known his mother or father, a sister or brother. He did not think his father had been white because his own skin was of a deep brown-black color. Emancipation came when he was between fourteen and nineteen years of age. He had known no other home than the one he had in Yoville with the Krupts, who owned him.

After freedom came, all the other slaves at the Krupts fairly flew away, for all they could remember of their masters was the sadistic treatment of the slaves they had owned. Both the master and mistress had had very sexual proclivities, much indulged. Master Krupt had married his wife, Virginia Krupt, because of her love of pleasure and her youth. Her family having name but no money, she married him for his money. They’d been married about 25 years. During their later years together, their lives and land deteriorated. They had even grown to hate each other; they hated everything else already. In old age and sicknesses, their tired, abused bodies had dwindled away, his more than hers. They had no children to care for them now in their old age. She had never been pregnant for him, ever. At Emancipation time, no slave but one able to walk had remained behind to care for them. Those unable to walk were carried away by able-bodied ex-slaves to people who had heart and land enough to let them live out their short lives and die in peace. God bless them.

Josephus Josephus intended to go away someday. But he had absolutely nowhere to go. He had looked around the farm and its owners and knew he could work almost as he pleased, be his own overseer. He could have gone to work for the Befoes, the very rich family on the next plantation down the road, but he figured all white folks were alike anyway.
And there, he would have an overseer. He stayed where he was. Years. Why change?

Among other things once produced on their huge farm, Master and Mistress Krupt had made their own wine and whiskey. This was one thing they continued, except now, they gave none away. They drank it all. They were not in any condition, most of the time, to watch anybody. Josephus could choose which cabin he would live in and worked just enough to keep food on the table, his and theirs, and to feed the livestock. He kept the place in a generally clean and livable condition. The Krupts depended heavily on him. Josephus thought of marrying one or two of the neighboring, courtable ladies, poor, without everything. But poor as they were, the ladies did not want to move and live with him at the Krupt plantation, such as it was. One, Bessel, liked him enough to let him make love to her once, even while she courted another and tried to decide between the two. But she did not want to live at the Krupts. She became pregnant, then promptly married the other whom she thought would be able to support her and the child decently. She bore a girl-child named Ruth Mae, around 1879. Josephus did not know whose child it really was, so he made no fuss. What could he do anyway? He just watched the child as she grew for signs that she might be his. He saw them and knew she was his child. But there was Bessel’s husband now, so Josephus did nothing but watch the child, Ruth, and love her from a distance.

Ma Lal, with her little daughter, Mae, was the midwife. She knew all kinds of things about everybody. She knew the child belonged to Josephus even before she delivered it. The married father was so light, and the baby was brown like her father, even with tiny features like Josephus. Josephus watched the child, yearning for a family of his own. Anyway, time passed.

During the last years Josephus was at the Krupts’, a fierce storm had blown the roof and parts of the poorly built slave cabins away, so he moved into the servants’ quarters in the main house. There he saw money and valuables all over the house that it was his job to clean. That is when he finally began a real plan to move away. Then, his mistress really saw him one day when she was sober.

Mistress Krupt, in her late thirties, was not so old but was married to someone old she did not love, and her life of quiet debauchery had ruined whatever looks she once had. She was puffy and pasty looking,
bruises smeared over her body where she had stumbled against something or fallen. Both she and her husband kept mostly to their rooms, coming down to the kitchen for meals when they could walk. Sometimes they ate what she threw together, sometimes what Josephus cooked. He cooked more often because he now had access to and ate the food they had delivered. Then, too, he was always sober enough to cook.

Josephus did not know why they did not hire someone to cook and care for them, they certainly had the golden money. But the once lovely mistress was ashamed to be seen lest the tale be carried along the roads to people who had known her when she first arrived in Yoville. Oh! So many years ago! Before she became—ugh!—a lovely young bride to old Mr. Krupt. When even the wealthy Mr. Befoe, Carlene’s father, had loved her and given her gifts. She had been a lovely young guest at the wedding of Carlene Befoe when she met Mr. Krupt, a very rich old man. Her family had lost everything during the wars. She was in need. When she thought of Carlene Befoe, her friend then who hated her now, she would laugh to herself. And take another drink.

One morning as Josephus was bringing her food to her rooms again, she saw him through the fog in her brain and beckoned him, pulled him into her. Ever and even, the body does not want to be alone. In his fear of death, he resisted her. She laughed and said drunkenly, “Nigger, you are still my slave!” The slave did her bidding. “Fill me up!” she laughed. Her body was too sotten to have orgasms, she just wanted something done to her body, in memory. An emotional need.

Somehow, enough of these times and one of those times, she became pregnant. She had never been pregnant in her life. Never having had a child, she wanted this child. Not
his
child, but
this
child. Sometimes, the fact that it might be black faded from her mind. For her own reasons, she wanted the child, black or not. She had no one on earth except that ole bastard lost somewhere in his rooms, in his liquor. Mistress Krupt even took to taking better care of herself during her pregnancy, with Josephus’ help.

When her time came, Mistress Krupt sent Josephus to the very rich Carlene Befoe to fetch a doctor or a midwife. Carlene did not even come down to speak with Josephus but told her maid to recommend someone. She looked at her husband, Mr. Befoe, whom she knew had admired Mistress Krupt briefly at the same time her father had “made a fool of himself!” about Virginia Krupt. Laughing maliciously, Carlene said, “At
her age! Mother drunk, child probably drunk, too! How that ole sot Krupt made a baby at his age …” She laughed. But Richard Befoe’s thoughts were, “She is, obviously, still a passionate woman. Living! While you are a dried up, beautifully attended prig who has hardly allowed me to touch you for years now.” She had “given” Richard one child and then forbade him her body. She had hated him even then, when he had loved her. Now, you see, they hated each other. Sometimes he thought of how wonderful it could be, they had everything else, and he would love her for awhile. But she never cared and made it obvious, so he would begin to hate her again.

Ahhh, Satan was happy with these people. Hate is so helpful in things he likes to do.

With the white midwife finally come, bringing Ma Lal to aid her, Mistress Krupt gave birth to a girl-child with hazel eyes and curly, brown hair. “Ahhhh, now …” Mistress Krupt thought, “I have someone. The Negra Josephus and now, the child. Perhaps someone will be around to wait on me as I grow old.” She laughed as she named the child, Yinyang. Then she called for a drink and slept. The child, Yinyang, was handed to Josephus by Ma Lal as she finished cleaning up and reached for her money. She smiled up at Josephus saying, “You sho works hard roun heah!” She laughed—wicked, gleeful laughter—and was gone. It was around 1885.

Some few people came to see the mother and child, but, espying the tinge of color in the skin of Yinyang, they left, some never to return. Carlene Befoe, the rich and haughty leader of Yoville society, came, lifting her immaculate and costly skirts far above her ankles, careful lest anything touch her. She left laughing. She would tell everybody, her father and husband especially, “This old love-bitch liked black meat! My, my.”

Fortunately, Josephus took over the care of Yinyang. Unfortunately, Mistress went back to her bottle. She never sought Josephus’ body again.

Josephus remained there another long thirteen years to see what would happen to the child. His child. Yinyang was his family. He cooked for her, bathed her, made toys for her, played with her, took her out to the fields to work with him. Everything he could do, he did for her. She grew up loving him. Somehow she believed he was her father. He told her, she believed him. She called him Pajo because she knew the
white man upstairs was supposed to be her father. Children are like that sometimes. Josephus yearned to leave, get away, live somewhere clean, fresh, small and his own, where he could be with his daughter, away from the shit of this life. He saw no way. He had nothing. Lately, he had begun to pick up coins and bills lying around the house, even selling things “for the Master” and putting the coins by for “someday.” Sometimes he even gave Bessel money for his first daughter, Ruth. She took it with a smile, holding his hand a little longer than necessary. Bessel liked money, but she did like Josephus, too.

Young as Yinyang was, her world was difficult. Yin knew who her mother was. She wanted to love her, but her mother was always asleep. She knew who her father was, because the old man Krupt, her white father, hated her, struck out at her often, called her “black bastard!” Sometimes Yin (as her black father called her) would crawl into bed with her mother, hold her as she slept. But there was often vomit and, lately, feces on her mother, which Yin would try to clean. She tried to comb her mother’s hair, change her clothes. The old, old, once grand clothes were dusty, molding. They fell apart when Yin tried to put them on her mother or play grown-up lady in them. Yin cried, often, as she moved around her mother’s rooms; the windows closed, the shades drawn, the rooms stank, so gray, so sad, so gloomy. So dead.

Once when the nightclothes were a bit ragged, Yin proposed to her mother to get some new ones made. Her mother smiled, said, “Yessssss, I think I will.” After a bit of thinking, Mistress Krupt continued smiling and said, “Look in that drawer, look in all my drawers. And look in that closet, the small box, I think, way in the corner in back. Get the money there. And go order some clothing for me. And some sheets. Get me everything I need, my little light slave daughter.” She laughed. “Get Madame Carlene Befoe, the rich bitch, to tell you who sews for her.” Yin was about ten years old.

Yin took the money to Josephus. “We got to go to that lady, Miz Befoe, to find out who sews for her. Then we got to ride ole Sal and the buggy into town and get some material to make mama some new clothes. Why, Pajo, we got a heap of gold money here to get us some clothes, too! C’mon, let’s go now!”

Josephus looked down at the box of gold coins in the hands of his daughter and he saw his dreams more clearly.

“Wher you git that, baby?”

“From mama. C’mon, let’s go!”

“She tole you where to git that gold?”

“Yes, Pajo. Ain’t it a lot?”

“Where she tole you to git it from?”

“Her drawers, her closet.”

“Was … was it any mo? Thar?”

“I didn’t look everywher, Pajo, cause this was enough, I’m sure on it.”

“Giv it to me, so it don’t spill everwhere. Let’s wrap it up good and safe.”

“Sho, Pajo. We goin now?”

“Let me go hitch Sal, you go get washed up, then we go.” Yin ran off excited to be going somewhere.

Josephus took the box, took half the gold out and hid it. He hitched the wagon up and, when Yin came running back out, they drove away. Before they returned, he had bought shoes for Yin and even hired a teacher by “errand of the Mistress” for Yin to go to each morning to learn to read and write. He bought nothing for himself. His dreams were his satisfaction.