“Kenyatta, I-I was almost raped!”
That seemed to make him even angrier. I didn’t understand. What was going on? Why was he treating me this way? I looked at him, mouth open, unasked questions hovering on my tongue. Delia walked into the room and I looked over at her, my eyes pleaded with her for help, but she would not look at me. As if out of thin air, Kenyatta produced the book, 400 Years of Oppression. My heart sank, knowing what was about to happen.
“In Africa,” he began, “a woman’s primary role had been to raise children. Mothers held an honored place in most African societies. On American plantations, this role was perverted with African women being forced into sexual relationships with other slaves, and even with the slavemaster himself, for the purpose of increasing the valuable labor force and satisfying their white master’s lascivious desires. The children born of matings with the plantation owners and their female slaves were automatically enslaved. The average female slave gave birth to her first child at nineteen and bore at least one child every two and a half years for as long as she remained fertile. Many of these children were born of rape. Slaves were prohibited by law from defending themselves against physical and sexual abuse and would be subjected to vicious beating by their masters or mistresses for doing so. Rape by their slavemasters and other white men was therefore a constant reality for female slaves, a reality that was ignored by white Christian society.”
Delia turned away, looking down at the floor as Kenyatta slammed the book shut, the last word on an argument that had not truly started.
“This is part of my ancestors’ reality. All of it! You can’t take it? You know what to say if you want out. Say it!”
His eyes were angry. It frightened me, confused me even more.
“Do you want out?”
I dropped my head. My bottom lip trembled and tears flooded from my eyes in an endless deluge of woe.
“No. I’m still in.”
Delia handed me my outfit. Stuffing the sundress I’d worn during my ride to the hospital into a plastic bag, she pulled out the latex and leather corset, garters, leggings, and the studded dog collar that had become my uniform on the farm. I wept as I put them back on.
“It’s time to go,” Kenyatta said and together we left the hospital.
I held onto Kenyatta as he walked down the hall. I buried my head in the space between his chest and his shoulder, squeezing him as if I could hold him there by force and prevent him from leaving me again.
XVI
I returned to my plow and the days and weeks crawled by slowly. Mistress Delia cut me no slack after my ordeal and any laziness on my part was followed by a whipping. On some days, I hoed the fields and planted grape seeds. On others, I picked grapes until the sun set and brought them to the winery by the basketload. Inevitably, I was returned to the plow.
My body grew stronger, leaner. A diet of carrots, squash, onions, peppers, okra, yams, tomatoes, leafy greens, corn, black-eyed peas, rice, potatoes, watermelon, grapefruit, apples, and grapes, lots and lots of grapes. Meat of any kind was a rare luxury and usually consisted of very small amounts of pork, chicken and beef from parts of the pig, cow, and chicken I’d never before considered edible. Brains, tongues, intestines, eyes, jawbones, and feet were not uncommon sights in the meager stews I was provided. I didn’t know if this nearly vegan diet and the repulsive scraps of meat I was given were yet another chapter in my education on the lives of African slaves or Kenyatta’s plan to reshape my thick curvaceous body into one more in line with the modern American female aesthetic. That is to say, skinny. I asked Mistress Delia about it and was surprised when she produced her own copy of the book that had become my bible. It was the first time I’d ever seen her with it. She left the room and returned with it under her arm. The entire time she was speaking, I stared at the book, wondering where she’d gotten it from, if Kenyatta was in the house somewhere, watching me, and had given her the book to read to me. I was so deep in thought that my eyes must have glazed over. Mistress Delia brought me back to attention with a hard slap with the back of her hand that reddened my cheek and made my eyes water.
“Pay attention!”
“Y-yes, Mistress,” I stammered, abruptly jarred from my fugue.
“Rice and vegetables were the primary staple of a slave’s diet in the South. Meat was a relative luxury and only provided in small portions consisting mainly of the scraps left over from the master’s table. These table scraps were the parts of the animal that were considered unfit to be eaten by the slave owners and their families. The legs, feet, jaw, eyes, brain, ribs, tongue, organs, skull, and intestines of butchered animals were given to slaves as a cheap form of nourishment. Better cuts were reserved for the master’s table. These undesirable portions were cooked with whatever herbs, spices, and vegetables were common to the area and could be easily scrounged up. Ingenious slaves transformed these animal scraps into palatable meals. Some of the dishes prepared by early slaves, such as pigs intestines (chitterlings) and chicken livers (gizzards) are now considered Southern delicacies.”
I nodded and never again complained about my meals. I was a slave and this crap was what slaves ate. I needed to be as ingenious as those early slaves and try to make something tasty out of these horrible scraps of meat, bone, and organs. I began preparing my own meals, experimenting with different herbs and spices until I was able to create recipes for almost every odd piece of animal flesh that was plopped in front of me. That helped make my servitude more bearable.
The police came to the farm once to inquire about the two men who’d assaulted me. Two officers showed up on our doorstep and Mistress Delia called me in from the field to talk with them. I had to take a moment to change my clothes. I was still wearing next to nothing. I joined the two detectives in the family room. There was a tall Asian man in a short-sleeved button down shirt and necktie and a short black guy who reminded me of Danny Glover minus five or six inches in height. They stood as I entered and introduced themselves. I forgot their names seconds after they’d left their lips.
“It seems both men who attacked you were brutally sexually assaulted by an unknown assailant. They have both decided to plead guilty to your attack in exchange for plea bargains. But you don’t know anything about that?”
“About what? Who attacked them? No, detective. I don’t know who did it. I was in the hospital recovering from the ass-kicking those two bastards gave me.”
“And you didn’t call a boyfriend, a family member, anyone?” the tall Asian detective said.
“No. You can check my phone records. I didn’t call anyone.”
“Oh, we will. And if we find anything, we’ll be back.”
“Detective? Did you ask them who did it? Did they give you a description?”
“We asked them, but they aren’t talking. Whoever the guy was who did this, he scared the shit out of them. They won’t say a thing.”
“What did he...what did their attacker do to them?” I said.
The Danny Glover look-alike spoke up.
“One won’t say anything except that he was partially circumcised and beaten half to death. The other was sodomized, first with a bottle that was shattered inside his rectum and then with the business end of a baseball bat. Fucked him up pretty bad. I don’t think his bowels will ever function right again. He’ll be in adult diapers for the rest of his life.”
They left, and I never saw either of them again. The two guys who assaulted me got five years each along with fines and probation. The consensus was they would be out in two with good behavior. I didn’t care. I had already gotten my justice. Kenyatta had seen to that.
I was picking grapes the day Mistress Delia walked up to me and announced my emancipation. I wouldn’t have believed her if I had not seen Kenyatta behind her in the distance, standing on the porch of the main house. He looked like a mirage to me. I had seen him so many times in my dreams and fantasies, it was hard to convince myself that he was real.