Whiplash (5 page)

Chapter Four

              For the next few months, life at the Devereaux Plantation was predictable and mundane.  The girls and I had settled into a routine, but were growing increasingly restless as winter and the opening of the manor drew near. We spent all day in the barn, except for the times we were let out to bathe and eat.  The nights had turned cold and difficult to sleep through.  Our bodies thinned as a result of our restrictive diets and inactivity.  It was such a miserable existence, but I wouldn’t have taken anything in trade to have to be in the position of the other slaves.

Compared to the other slaves on the plantation, we girls out in the barn had it good.  Yes, we were treated badly and forced to sit and strip stalks of sugarcane until our fingers were raw and bleeding.  Our daily quota was ever-increasing, and it was not uncommon for us to miss our mark, resulting in punishments that ranged from food deprivation to more workload.  Julian was scarcely seen, and Vivian had begun to spend more time with his older, twin brothers – Eli and Lucas.

The first time I ever saw them was as I was peeking through a hole in the wall of the barn.  It was cold and still very early in the morning – the sun had barely broken the horizon.  All was still and quiet outside except for the commotion going on out in the courtyard.  Lucas was dragging a dark-skinned field slave, by her hair, over toward a wooden bench situated in front of a set of stocks. Her knees skipped in the dirt as she struggled to stay on her feet, and he was having quite a time trying to keep her upright. 

They trudged along for several yards before reaching the weathered bench and once there, her arms were forced into the groove of the stocks, and then the top was slammed down over them, securing her in place.  Her ankles were then tethered together under the bench with a set of leg irons, leaving her completely immobilized and helpless.  Almost too quickly to see, Lucas pulled a hunting knife from a sheath belted to boot, and the woman’s dress was cut from her body. 

Right about that time, Eli was making his way across the courtyard.  He was staggering about with his pants partially unfastened and his shirt unbuttoned – he was drunk.  The brothers met up, and they spoke a few inaudible words for a moment before both retrieving bullwhips from their hip belts.  The twin evils exchanged looks and nods and let their whips snake out over their heads before snapping them simultaneously over the bound woman’s back.

Her first wailing cry sent a wave of sickness over me, and I barely made it over to my privy hole before my stomach was emptied of its contents.  I stayed bent over that hole for the duration of her lashing, and even when there was nothing left in my stomach to come out, bouts of dry heaving continued to rack my body.  Crack, after crack, after crack of their whips sliced through the morning air for minutes on end.  Then there was silence. 

I mustered the strength I needed to crawl back over to my peep hole and look out.  I saw Eli and Lucas, both breathing heavily with their whips resting at their feet.  The woman wasn’t screaming anymore - she was hardly breathing, in fact. 

“Please just leave her,” I whispered. But that didn’t happen at all – not by any stretch of the imagination. 

Eli got sick on the side of the woman’s face and then urinated on her to wash it off.  Meanwhile, Lucas was making his way over to where a fire was burning in a pit. From a wire rack next to it, he grabbed a long, textile
glove and slid it over his hand.  He reached his covered hand down into the mouth of the pit and pulled out a branding iron, still glowing red-hot from the fire.  Hastily, he made his way over to where the woman was restrained, and without pause he applied the heated metal to her flesh repeatedly until the iron went cold and black.

The half-conscious woman was using all her remaining strength to scream and beg for mercy, her hands and feet thrashing about but unable to break their binds.  She got sick on herself, and when Eli urinated on her again, Lucas set the branding iron down in the dirt and peed on her, too.  I cried for her, then.  I didn’t know what she had done to earn that punishment, but I was sure her trespass couldn’t have warranted such brutality.  Once the brothers were done peeing on her, they just walked away and left her there naked, bleeding, and barely conscious.

I moved over to another hole in the wall to get a better vantage point so I could see her back. It looked awful, and I knew I’d never see anything so terrible ever again.  She’d been whipped until her skin was laid open, exposing deep rivets of pink flesh from beneath the dark brown exterior.  Some places had been split wide open, right down to the bone.  Countless ‘D’s had seared her flesh, sealing up some of the wounds, and the smell of her burnt flesh stunk up the courtyard and lingered heavy in the air long after the twins had walked away. 

It took her about 2 hours to die in the stocks where she’d been left, but her body stayed out for us all to see for most of that day.  It was right before supper when three field hands were sent to pull her out and dispose of her body out behind the barn.

That happened every single day for a solid week.  A total of seven women were stripped, whipped, branded, peed on, and left to die.  I wondered if Julian knew about any of it.  I thought maybe he did, and was just distancing himself with a blind eye turned.  I hoped that wasn’t the case, but either way, by the time that week was over I’d have done anything anyone told me to do, and the rest of the girls felt the same. 

I was sure that it was no coincidence that on the eighth morning, Vivian came into the barn to wake us with Eli, Lucas, and ten of the biggest, strongest field slaves in tow.   They all came in, and the slaves lined up in the middle of the barn while Vivian, Eli, and Lucas took their places at the front.

Vivian went around to each stall, ordering each girl to remove the dress she wore and give it to her.  She started with Number 1 and made her way around to each girl in sequence. Lucas was busy doing the same with the men, and Eli was standing with a bottle of whiskey in one hand and a rifle in the other.  I pulled off my dress while Vivian was still with Number 2; I wanted to use the time to have a good look at the twins. I figured if I were naked, they may not mind my staring so much.  Eli took the bait and leered at me from over the top of his upturned bottle. Lucas paid me no mind at all, but rather kept working his way down the line collecting the field hands’ clothes. 

The twins looked exactly alike, and not at all like Julian.  Whereas Julian was a big, green-eyed, red-haired beast of a man to behold, Eli and Lucas were only a few inches taller than me, both with brown eyes and fair hair.  I could tell them apart only by a scar that ran from Eli’s left ear to the side of his mouth.  Their extreme cruelty must have been an effort to compensate for being such small, unattractive, cowardly men.  I couldn’t imagine that either of them were a prize to anyone.

Vivian had just finished collecting Number 9’s dress and was stepping over to stand in front of my stall.  I held it out for her, already neatly folded.  She pretended to take it from my hand, and when I released the dress she did the same, dropping it onto a pile of moldy hay.

“My apologies, Number 10,” she said with a smirk on her face as she picked it up and balled it up with the other dresses.  I let her have her moment of triumph, too smart to let her goad me into a fight with her when only Eli and Lucas were around to step in for me.  Lucas had just finished with the men as well, and he and Vivian wasted no time ushering a slave into each stall. 

At one point, Lucas tried to usher the biggest of the men into Number 5’s stall, but Vivian caught his hand before he could and sent a different man in instead.  The biggest one was sent to my stall, and Vivian’s satisfaction with herself showed all over her face.

“What be your name?” asked the black-skinned giant of a man who’d been locked in with me.  I didn’t answer him, and I just stood there with my hands at my sides. 

“They call me Caesar.”  I didn’t reply to that either.  I knew what he was there for, and there was no cause for pleasantries at that time.

Caesar was the biggest Negro on the entire plantation.  He was about seven feet tall, with inky black skin and bloodshot eyes.  He’d been known to cause trouble for overseers on occasion, but because he was the most productive slave the Devereauxs owned, his punishments were never severe enough to interfere with his work in any way. As much as the Devereauxs hated Negroes, their love of money knew no bounds. Caesar was a slaver’s dream - young, strong, and efficient; and no one – slave or otherwise – ever gave him any trouble. 

I so wanted to try and fight him off.  I didn’t want to just hand my dignity over to him, but that wasn’t my choice to make.  I let him grope and probe all of me.  He spun me around slowly, obviously pleased with the appearance of my goosebumped, naked body.  His breath – it was so awful.  It was hot, and raw, and it made me nauseous.  His lips slid down my cheek to the side of my neck, and he groaned with delight at the taste of my flesh.  When my tears rained down my face, he licked those up with his coated tongue and then kissed me in the mouth.  I closed my eyes to block out what was happening to me and was then overcome with the strangest feeling. 

At first, I felt a wave of sick coming on. Then, just as suddenly, I felt weightless.  It was like my spirit came right out of my flesh; only, my spirit had eyes and could see what was happening to me.

He lowered himself down and on top of me, fitting his wide frame between my legs.  He threw my legs over his shoulders and positioned himself at the opening to my anus. My face twisted up in pain when he made to penetrate me, but he kept pushing forward until he broke through.  I saw myself, my eyes closed up as tight as they would go while he pumped in and out of me like a piston.  The sweat beaded up on him and dripped off his face and ran down my legs.  He licked that up too, and that was what broke me. 

I cried out loudly, not saying anything in particular – I was just wailing out.  My screams excited him, and he began to manhandle my breasts so roughly I thought they’d be torn from me. Every squeeze made me holler out, and every holler made him punch into me deeper and harder.  I couldn’t lie still anymore – I clawed at his hands to pry them off of me.  He removed them from my breasts, but only so he could wrap his tree-like arms around my legs for leverage.

My eyes widened in terror as I struggled to take in air.  I was powerless against Caesar as he pounded me harder and harder.  From above, I watched my body begin to grow slack. Right before I passed out, he
quickened his stroke to thrust into me a few more times before he tensed up, gritted his teeth together, and then fell to the side in a satiated heap.

Nearly-freezing water splashed over me, shocking and jolting me out of my slumber.  Vivian stood over me with an empty bucket and a scowl on her face.

“Get up, Number 10,” Vivian barked at me.  It took me a moment to even realize where I was or what’d happened.  It all came flooding back, and I scooted back to the corner of my stall and cowered in a ball, looking around frantically with my chin resting on my bent knees.

“Go on down to the pond and clean yourself up.  You’ve already lost an hour, and your quota for today is the same as it was yesterday.”  Vivian tossed a small, white cloth and a dress into the stall before she turned her back and walked away.

I saw several hay needles caked together with blood near the gate of the stall.  A red trail led from the pile straight to where I was sitting, and another puddle was forming under me. I gingerly touched my anus and pulled back a sticky, blood-coated hand.  The blood smeared on my cheek as I wiped away a tear. 

“Go on, Number 10,” someone whispered.  I looked up and saw that Number 9 was peeking over the divider between our two stalls.  She looked down at me with sorrowful eyes and reached her arm over, offering her assistance in helping me stand.  I grabbed her hand and she pulled as hard as she could until I was in a kneeling position.  I released my grip on her, planted my hands on the ground, and carefully stood up.  On shaky legs, I walked over to where she was and held her hand again for a few seconds.  She understood my unspoken thanks and mouthed ‘you’re welcome.’

It took me a long time to get to the water’s edge. The water was cold, and I dipped my cloth in it and gently patted my torn opening.  It took nearly an hour before the towel came back free of blood.  I pulled my dress on and turned to leave.  I had just made it to the top of the slope when I heard a familiar rustling sound coming from the cane field.  I knew it had to be him, and in a moment of both insanity and clarity I went to him. 

By the time I made it close enough to reach out and touch the stalks, his arm was jutting out with his hand opened and waiting.  I didn’t hesitate to place my hand in his, and his fingers wrapped around mine and pulled me into the field.  I let him pull me through the towering crops with my eyes cast down to the ground. We walked slowly, one step at a time, for a few dozen yards before we stepped out into a clearing. 

Upon looking at the ground, I saw that the stalks had been pulled up from the spot completely.  Three or four blankets were stacked up neatly to one side, and he spread out all but one of them to make a pallet.  The last one, he folded up to fashion into a cushion for me before pulling me down to the ground with him.  I wasn’t at all afraid or uneasy, so when he covered me with the other blanket and wrapped his arms around me, I just melted into him and cried.  I made such a terrible mess of his shirt and coat, but he let me cry until I couldn’t anymore, all the while stroking my braided hair and shushing me softly.