#10–Water
Dropping the cell phone into its charger, I stabbed the prongs into the electrical outlet as if driving a stake through the heart of Chief Detective Hector Emmanuel Carlos Veracruz, otherwise known as ‘Heck’. I hadn’t expected the sound of his voice to ignite such a firestorm of emotion. The small reading lamp beamed a tight circle of white light on the crisp sheets. I stood in the half-shadows, fighting to regulate my breathing and calm my mind.
Jerk! …Except the real problem was me. Heck was a causal flirt, ready to make goo-goo eyes and light banter with any woman under eighty who crossed his path. The cases we were working on had coincided. I’d been naïve enough to think he was really interested and stupid enough to form a bit of a crush on him. However, at the mutual end of our cases, Heck had become engaged to a fake psychic who was my chief competitor in the haunted house business.
The sound of running water reminded me and I raced into the bathroom to check. Water thundered into the antique bathtub, but only a couple of inches had accumulated. It was like one of those horrid word problems in math class: volume of the bathtub versus rate of flow of the water. I gues-stimated another hour until I could obtain a decent amount of immersion.
Okay, change of plan. I would meditate first and cleanse my mind, then bathe and cleanse my body. After a few yoga stretches, I settled myself on the bed in the lotus position, seeking stillness of body. Like petals falling from a flower, my mind shed the stresses and strains of the day. I heard the wood hiss in the stove, smelled warm cinnamon in the potpourri and felt the old building that sheltered me creak and settle closer to the earth in the winter wind.
The sense that I had been here before returned. I neither resisted the sensation nor sought to explain it. In stillness, in balance, I opened to it, knowing that the self is an illusion of the impermanent world. Who was this self who had been here before?
I am Susan, daughter of Gideon Freedman, a free man of color in the city of Philadelphia. The bag over my head was stifling and my body hurt from being struck. Never in my fourteen years of life had my mother or my father ever found it necessary to chastise me so severely. But my world had been upended. I saw my father struck down as he tried to defend his family against the gang of armed white men. I can still hear my mother’s screams. She fought like a catamount, biting and scratching until a cudgel smashed into her skull, changing its shape.
Beneath my cheek the floor of the carriage rattled and bounced on the rough road. I could smell the horseshit on the shoes of my captor. How I hated that vile white man with his thick whiskers. When I told him I was born free and he had no right to do this, he laughed.
“I’ve got papers signed by a judge that you’re a runaway slave, Jenny. And your mistress won’t have you in the house no more, so she sold you to me.”
I told him my name was Susan. Then he whipped me. Every time I said my name was Susan, he whipped me. He stripped me naked, ripping off my Sunday best with no regard for the value of the fabric or the work my mother and I spent cutting, shaping and sewing so that I might hold my head up on the way to church. He locked me into chains dangling from the wall of his barn and left me overnight without food or water. My skin froze and my muscles burned. In the morning, he opened the door. Sunlight spilled in.
“What’s your name?” he demanded.
“Jenny.” I hated the taste of the slave name in my mouth and I hated this man. Someday I would make him pay but in order to do that, I must survive. I ate the nasty gruel he gave me, thin and sour. My skin shrank from the dirty homespun rag he tossed at me to cover my nakedness. It had holes in it. I clutched anger like a cloak around me. I stood dumb and mute as the bag was jammed over my head, as I was trussed like a chicken prepared for the spit.
That is an apt metaphor for what was soon to happen to me.
The carriage stopped. The slaver got out. I heard him greet another man.
“I have just the thing for your special order, Mr. Winslow. Still young and fresh and wants only a bit of training to be perfect for your household requirements.”
As the slaver dragged me out of the carriage, he loosened the ropes tying my ankles so I could walk. Screaming that my legs were cramping, I thrashed my feet. I heard a smack as my bare foot slammed against his whiskered cheek. I howled again, crying that my foot was broken.
The slaver yanked me out of the carriage, tumbling me in the dust, but he dare not beat me in front of his client lest he damage his chances of making a sale.
“Stand up, Jenny, and quit making a fuss.” His voice growled on the slave name.
I heard the warning in his tone. He jerked on the rope that bound my hands and I staggered to my feet.
The other man had not said a word. I smelled tobacco smoke and knew he was close. Without warning, heavy hands seized my breasts, squeezing them painfully. Keeping a grip on one, he hiked up the shift I was wearing. Thick, dirty fingers thrust between my legs and probed my woman parts.
“Virgin, like I told you,” said the slaver, “But if you don’t lock her up carefully, all these young bucks you have hanging around will take care of that for you.”
The other man said nothing, but let go and stepped back. He must have made some motion. The bag was yanked off my head and for the first time I could see the man who was thinking of buying me. His shirt was white; his waistcoat yellow and his black coat neat as a preacher’s. No expression showed on his face. He took the big cigar out of his mouth and waved it around. The slaver ripped the shift at my shoulders and neck and it slid down my body, exposing me naked to the sky right in the middle of that pretty courtyard.
Despite my anger, I trembled. I was no longer a person but a commodity.
The man puffed on his cigar. “Give you a hundred for her.”
“You must be kidding!” exclaimed the slaver “Fresh young wenches like this are going for four, five hundred in Baltimore. She sews, does both plain and fancy work, and she could earn you a pretty penny.”
“Except you and I both know you aren’t going to be selling her in Baltimore, Uriah. This isn’t Mrs. Gordon’s Jenny. One hundred and fifty, fair price, final offer.”
The slaver looked like he had been drinking vinegar. He counted the money twice, stuck it in his wallet and spat out of the carriage window as he drove off.
“Sir,” I said, “Thank you for getting me out of the hands of that horrible man. I’m not a runaway slave. He stole me from my parents and the Quaker brethren of Philadelphia will reimburse you and bless you.”
His expression didn’t change as he ground out the cigar beneath his heel. “Come on, Jenny. Let’s get you decently dressed.”
I jerked out of my meditative trance. The water in the bathroom had changed its note. The tub was three quarters full of water but the bubbles from the bath salts made it look full. Suli hadn’t added bubbling bath salts. I must have done so without remembering that I had. I undressed and dove in. The bathtub was longer than I was tall and wide enough to water cattle in. I sank to my neck in hot water, then took a deep breath and submerged. Pure ecstasy. Tight muscles unraveled and fraught nerves hummed in delight. I decided that the Victorians were a fine bunch of people and bathtubs with lion’s feet were the epitome of civilization. Darryl had told me stories about the wonderful hot springs baths in Japan, but this was better—I didn’t have to share this hot water with anyone. Building castles from the suds and populating foam icebergs with polar bears, I luxuriated until my fingertips started to shrivel. Time to quit playing and get a grip.
I pulled the plug on my fantasy polar bears. Was the vision I had just experienced a true past life or a fantasy generated by overwrought nerves? I longed to be able to consult my spiritual mentor, but he was two-thirds of a continent away. Toweling off, I put on sweats to make sure I didn’t get cold while my hair was drying.
As I emerged from the bathroom, I stopped short. The bedroom had changed in my absence. The lamp had been turned. The book in the outside pocket of my carryon now rested open on the table, spotlighted in the glow of the lamp. As I watched, a single page twitched and rose as if being turned by an invisible hand.
