“What your name is?” she said.

“Lizzie. I mean, Eliza. But they call me Lizzie.”

She touched Lizzie’s face and ran her fingers along Lizzie’s jawbone. Then she took Lizzie’s hand and turned it over in her own, as if the lines would reveal the truth.

“You my sister?” Polly said, finally.

Lizzie blew out a yes.

Polly reached out and slowly folded Lizzie in her arms. Their embrace was awkward. Neither seemed to know what to do. The slave girl who had fetched Polly sat on the edge of the porch, legs dangling, watching them.

“That’s enough,” Drayle said after a few minutes. “You can come back to visit her, Lizzie.”

Lizzie held fast to the woman, not believing him. Polly kissed her on the eyelids. Her lips were wet. She smelled like peaches, and Lizzie sucked the scent through her mouth. For the first time in months, Drayle did not exist. This was her blood, her real blood kin. But Polly felt fragile, light, as if she would disappear. She was thinner than Lizzie, not as well fed. Lizzie had a strange thought. If she could crush this woman, crumble her into dust and take her back to Drayle’s plantation, she would.

“I promise,” he said. “I’ll write you a pass. Long as you don’t try to run off. I’ll write you all the passes you need.”

He walked over and pulled Lizzie by the hand. He helped her onto the horse. He turned the horse, but Lizzie did not take her eyes off the woman. She turned almost completely around in the saddle as they rode off. Polly waved and Lizzie tried to memorize her face. The barn disappeared behind the hill.

When they arrived back at the edge of Drayle’s place, he told her to get off the horse. Then he rode on up through the cabins without her. He did not have to tell her it would not look good if they returned together. He did not have to tell her to hang back and wait until she thought he’d had a chance to dismount and hand the horse over to Philip.

That night, she thanked him by giving him what he wanted.

When it was almost morning, she thought she heard something in the kitchen. Drayle never stayed all night, but they had both fallen asleep. When she saw the lantern light up in the kitchen, she shoved Drayle awake. He jumped up while she pulled the shirt over her head. He leaned to peek through the door, but whoever it was must have been headed straight for the storeroom because before he could open it, the door pushed toward him.

Fran. Matter-of-fact. Unsurprised. As if she had not just caught him in the room where the slave girl slept.

“Nathan? I thought I heard something. Did you hear something?”

Drayle shielded Lizzie with his body. “I didn’t hear anything,” he said. “Go back to bed, dear.”

Lizzie could not see Fran’s face, but she imagined it wore a quizzical expression. She wanted to shrink into the corner until she became another lump in the blanket Drayle had given her.

He closed the door behind his wife and returned to her. She didn’t realize she was shivering until he touched her.

After a while, she said: “She might sell me.”

“Oh hush, Lizzie. Besides, I reckon Fran doesn’t mind. She’s a Southern woman. She expects a man to do certain things.”

Lizzie didn’t believe him, but he kissed her and she convinced herself his words were enough. Nothing would come between them. Drayle was the man of the house.

He reached beneath the blanket and pinched her nipple until it hurt. She had told him that she did not like her nipples pinched, but he did it anyway. He trailed his fingertips down the front of her stomach, dipped into her navel, and circled it.

“I want you to have my child, Lizzie,” he said between his lips and her skin. “Can you do that for me?”

Lizzie went soft. “Your child?” she repeated.

“I gave you your sister. Now you give me a son. Can you do that for me?”

He pressed against her.

Lizzie tried to think straight. Tried to keep her mind and body separate. She had never been drunk before, but she imagined this was what it felt like.

Drayle didn’t stop. “A son, Lizzie. My first son.”

She had not thought of this. She did not feel ready to be a mother. She knew Fran hadn’t given him a child, and she tried to think of what it would mean for her to do this for him.

He entered her forcefully while she was still muddled in her thoughts. And then she could think no more except to understand that his desire for her was all she had. He moved on top of her, and it was as if a world moved on top of her, its weight at once delightful and burdensome.

When he was done, when they were done, she fell asleep.

FIFTEEN

Drayle did something that astounded his wife. Tired of sleeping on the storeroom floor with his new lover, he moved her into the guest bedroom across from his own. That was when Fran began to pinch Lizzie.

The pinches were hard enough to bruise. Fran did it secretly-in the kitchen, on the stairs, in the hallway, in the yard. She searched for new places, beginning with Lizzie’s cheek. Then an arm. Thigh. Side. Shoulder. She seemed to relish discovering each new point of hurt. Sometimes Lizzie even caught the woman examining her body, as if searching for a new place. Lizzie tried to stay out of her way. Tried to bypass her in the familiar layout of rooms.

At night, Drayle came to her, but Lizzie didn’t tell him about Fran’s game. Instead, she made excuses for the bruises. She told him that colored people bruise easier than whites. This explanation seemed to satisfy him and he took care not to touch her in those places.

After two weeks, Fran grew tired of her pinches and left Lizzie alone. Lizzie was grateful and went out of her way to make Fran pleased. She cleaned the woman’s room without being asked, ironed her clothes, and put extra sausage on the breakfast trays delivered to Fran in the mornings.

The house slaves had accepted Lizzie as Drayle’s woman, and they now looked to her to convince him of favors. If someone was sick down in the quarters, they asked Lizzie to whisper the news to him so the person would be granted a reprieve. Another time, Lizzie convinced Drayle to let the slaves have extra rations of meat. Each time Lizzie was able to redeem a request, the field slaves accepted her position a bit more.

Now that she could read, Drayle gave her the leftover weekly newspaper. She asked him questions about current events. She wanted to know about these fights over expanding United States territory. She had read about it aloud to the slaves in the quarters. She repeated Drayle’s words and told them any fight over new land was connected to their fate. The more slave states acquired, the greater the chance of slavery enduring. They wanted to believe in the whispers of abolitionism that came their way, stories of slaves freed up north, of rebellious uprisings, promises that there were white men out there who wanted to do away with this system of human bondage. But their everyday reality was bleak. Their work days were too predictable for them to imagine any other way of living. They did not know where this Texas was or what it had to do with them. A couple of the older slaves remembered the Missouri compromise, and they expected some other kind of compromise this time, too.

She was in the quarters reading to the slaves when she first learned Drayle planned to sell the one-eyed horse they’d taken to meet her sister the first time. She had learned the horse’s name was Mr. Goodfellow. Each time she walked past Mr. Goodfellow, it turned its human-like eye and studied her. She felt an affection for him that she did not feel for the other horses.

“But why are you selling him? Ain’t he a good horse?”

She stood up straight. She had been picking herbs out of the garden, folding them into the front of her shirt. The rosemary had finally rewarded her efforts, stretching long and elegant across the garden bed. It was an herb she had only recently discovered. Her sister Polly had given her a bit to chew on when she’d visited last. She’d planted it, hoping the seeds would take root. They had.