Jubilee

Mammy Sukey shakes Vyry awake. Today is when Vyry will move into the Big House to become Miss Lillian’s maid. Mammy Sukey rehearses Vyry on how to behave when she arrives—that is, how to curtsey at her masters and how to greet them. Mammy Sukey makes breakfast for Vyry, then takes her down the dirt path toward the mansion. Vyry had already visited the Big House many times. Marse John was kind to her and always instructed Lillian to share her treats with Vyry. Vyry used her visits as opportunities to admire the house’s beautiful, well-furnished rooms. While Marse John is genial and Lillian is her playmate, Vyry knows that young Marster John and Big Missy Salina don’t like her, though she has no idea why. Once, though, Vyry overheard one of Salina’s friends remark on the physical resemblance between her and Lillian. Salina was quick to correct her old friend from Savannah in a “cold angry voice” (34), embarrassing the woman for her social faux pas. Lillian, however, admitted to anyone within earshot that Vyry was her sister, and that she loved her very much.

By the time Vyry moves into the Big House, Marse John is 40. Lillian runs to him and announces, to his surprise, that Vyry will be moving in with them. When he questions Salina about this, his wife casually announces that, due to John’s frequent absences, she’s taken to running the plantation however she pleases. Besides, she reminds him, she knew that John would eventually move Vyry in himself. She tells him that he’s just upset that she “beat [him] to it” (36). John leaves to go over to the Smith and Crenshaw plantations to look at some horses and dogs that are up for sale.

On his way out of the house, John’s mind is aflutter with thoughts of Salina, Vyry and Lillian, his political aims, and Hetta. As he rides away from his house, Vyry and Mammy Sukey are on their way toward it. Grimes, the slave driver, is returning to the plantation with six new slaves that he purchased two days before in Louisville on Marse John’s behalf. He drove the six men, including a boy “who was supposedly seventeen but who acted and looked more like fourteen” (38) and kept slowing the chain of slaves by collapsing and tugging at the rope that strung him to the others. The boy didn’t sweat like the others during the long march. Instead, he looked “dry and parched” (39). Grimes noticed, too, how bony he was. He also had a long scar across his face, which looked as though he had been cut, and “a huge welt” that “stood out prominently” along the length of his back and shoulders (39).

Grimes, unlike his boss, knew how to manage slaves and also believed that he would make a much better planter. He prodded the sickly enslaved boy with his horse whip, believing that he was probably just playing sick. By the time Vyry and Mammy Sukey reach the Big House’s backyard, Grimes is unchaining the men. Mammy Sukey instructs Vyry to go to Aunt Sally for a wash pan so that she can clean her feet before entering the house. Mammy Sukey then tells the other slaves to step away from the sickly black boy who “fell sprawling face down in the dust” (43). She instructs them to send for Granny Ticey and to tell Missy Salina to call a doctor.

Vyry pushes open the back door to the kitchen and quickly tells Aunt Sally both about the pot that she needs for her feet and about the sickly boy who seems to have “the plague” (44). Aunt Sally tells Vyry to get a water bucket hanging on the back porch while she goes out to see about the commotion. Vyry takes the bucket from the porch and goes to get water out of the barrel that collects rainwater. She sees Big Ben and Rizzer take the sickly boy to an empty slave cabin where Missy Salina keeps her medicine bottles. It’s also where sick slaves go to recover, though they must always prove that they’re sick enough to be near death. The next day, Big Ben and Rizzer dig a grave. They stripped the dead boy naked, put him “into a feed sack, and then into a pine box in which he was hastily buried” (44). They then spread plenty of lime “inside the grave, over, and around it” (45).

On her first night out of Mammy Sukey’s care, Vyry sleeps on a “pallet at the foot of Miss Lillian’s bed” (45). She’s frightened and can’t sleep, despite being tired. All day, she went “back and forth from the kitchen to the springhouse, back to pull the dinner bell, then to gather eggs” (45). She also fed the chickens and got Miss Lillian glasses of water. Despite due diligence with all her chores, Missy Salina made her feel that everything she did was wrong. Salina slapped the child and once tried to kick her. She then warned Vyry that she would “break [her] face” (45) if the child made the stupid mistake of breaking one of her china dishes. Vyry senses, too, that her relationship with Lillian will change. Lillian is too busy taking her lessons after breakfast to make mud pies with Vyry. One day, she watches Caline curling Miss Lillian’s hair with a brush and asks if Caline will do the same for her. Lillian laughs, telling Caline that “[n]iggers don’t wear curls” (45). Caline notices the hurt look on Vyry’s face.

Twice, Vyry leaves the Big House to visit Mammy Sukey. Both times, Vyry is sent back. One day, when she tries to speak to Mammy Sukey, Vyry hears that the old woman’s voice sounds tired and weak. On the same day, Vyry forgets to empty Lillian’s chamber pot. As punishment for her neglect, Miss Salina throws “the acrid contents of the pot in Vyry’s face” (46). Seeking comfort, Vyry goes back to Mammy Sukey’s cabin the next morning and sees other slaves carrying her dead body. There are five consecutive days of death. Vyry loses track of time but figures that she’s been living at the Big House for two weeks. Sometime within them, she makes the mistake of breaking one of Missy Salina’s china dishes. Salina stands before Vyry with a leather strap in her hands. Vyry prepares for a whipping but Salina assures her that she would never hurt herself just to whip Vyry. Instead, she uses the whip to string the girl up by her hands. She lifts Vyry up, crosses her hands, then ties them to the strap, which she’s already hooked to a nail in the closet door. Salina then slams the door shut, leaving Vyry in the dark. Vyry doesn’t cry, despite being scared. After a while, she loses consciousness.

Marse John returns home. He sees the freshly dug graves and the sprinkled lime. Lillian greets him and tells him that Vyry is “hanging by her thumbs in the closet” (53). John rushes up the stairs and sees Salina sitting in her room, knitting. She jumps up at the sight of her husband. John admonishes his wife for nearly killing Vyry. Salina expresses no remorse, saying that killing would be too good for Vyry. Though she thinks that she ought to kill Vyry “and all other yellow bastards like her,” Salina admits that she doesn’t have “the strength to kill a tough nigra bastard like her” (53).

Vyry is now 10 and stands on Baptist Hill, watching the sun rise. She loves coming here, where she can contemplate freedom. Just then, she hears Aunt Sally calling her and runs back toward the plantation. Vyry runs into the kitchen with a “dominicker” under her arm, which Sally tells her to put outside (56). Vyry does as she’s told.

In the kitchen, Missy Salina keeps a locked pantry full of preserves, as well as various “canned fruits and vegetables” (57). She carefully watches to ensure that none of the house slaves take these goods. She also watches Caline to ensure that she properly washes the china and the glasses without either breaking or taking one of the dishes. There’s also a smokehouse full of “cured and smoked hams, shoulders, and middlings” (57). There’s more food on the plantation than the Duttons needed, but Salina makes sure that the slaves eat none of it. If anyone does, it’s because they steal it. Sally, however, insists on enjoying some of the wonderful foods that she prepares, particularly the baked goods. Salina is aware of her thefts and has threatened several times to have Sally whipped. Sally and Vyry are unfazed by this when they sit in the cabin at night, eating heartily and giggling over how Missy Salina would react if she knew that Sally had outwitted her. After they eat, Sally unwraps the ragged scarf around Vyry’s head and “[combs] her sandy hair into curls” (59).

Vyry’s kitchen chores include bringing in buckets and pans of well water and churning butter. She also learns how to cook from watching Aunt Sally. However, Vyry also sees what a demanding job Sally has, particularly when Marse John invites company and demands ample servings of food. Sally often “[complains] of being too tired at night to sleep” (58). Still, she goes to Brother Ezekiel’s Big Meeting Nights, held “deep in the swamps and a long way from the Big House,” to hear him preach at the Rising Glory Baptist Church (61).

It excites Vyry to listen to Brother Zeke’s sermons and to join in singing with the congregation. Zeke particularly likes to tell the story of Moses leading his people out of Egypt, where they’ve been enslaved, and toward the Promised Land. He tells the congregation about how the “king’s daughter [went] to bathe” and found the infant Moses in a basket, floating “in the swampy water” (63). She rescued the baby and took him home with her. Later, when Moses grew up, God used him to carry out justice. The point of the story is to encourage the congregation to have faith that a Moses will come and deliver them from unjust bondage.

One evening, after supper, Marse John goes to the kitchen and praises Sally for preparing one of the best meals he’s ever eaten. He asks about her sons, Sam and Big Boy and notes that he’s heard that Sam has trouble with the overseer, Grimes. He tells her to advise Sam to obey Grimes “and stay in line” (65), believing that to be the solution to the young man’s troubles. Sally then asks for a pass for her and Vyry to leave the plantation on Sunday. Marse John agrees, as long as she returns “home before nine o’clock” (65).

That Sunday, Sally and Vyry leave the plantation. Vyry thinks that they’re returning to the Rising Glory Baptist Church to hear Brother Zeke preach. They go to the church, but they’re not present to hear a sermon. Sam, Big Boy, and some slaves from Marse John’s other nearby plantation are there, along with a strange white man and a free black man from town. Everyone listens out for any sound from guards or their hounds while they listen to the reading of new laws that tighten a master’s control over his slaves. Vyry wonders why the white man is so interested in the freedom of the slaves, given the danger that such sentiments pose to him. She listens to him tell Sam, Big Boy, Caline, and May Liza that their lives are just as valuable as that of their master, and that they deserve to be free.

Uncle Joe, one of the oldest slaves on the Dutton plantation, along with Esau, Plato, and Tom, then comes along and calls the abolitionist’s talk “foolish” (69). Uncle Joe says that black people have been slaves for hundreds of years and that they are condemned due to the Curse of Ham. He admits that he’d like to be free and have his own farm, but he isn’t willing to take the risks involved in becoming free. Aunt Sally mutters under her breath in response to Uncle Joe’s speech, which Vyry doesn’t understand.

It is late summer. The days are longer, allowing Vyry to play with the other slave children before bedtime. Vyry spends less time with Lillian, which displeases both girls. Sometimes, Lillian sneaks out of the Big House to go play with the children in the slave quarters. This goes on until Missy Salina finds out, marches to the quarters in a rage, and grabs Lillian, telling her that she’s “getting too big to play with niggers” (71). Lillian cries while her mother drags her away. Shortly thereafter, Vyry starts her period, which frightens her, until Aunt Sally tells her that this is merely the start of her womanhood. She warns Vyry that she must now stay away from “no-good [men]” who are all “breath and britches and trouble” (71). For Vyry, all that her burgeoning womanhood means is that Brother Zeke will baptize her in the spring, which makes her glad.

One morning, a slave patroller thinks that he sees Brother Zeke running through a field, while his partner assures him that it’s just a scarecrow. However, Zeke is, indeed, on the move. He hides in a haystack until the men leave, takes his coat off the scarecrow, and goes on one of his secret journeys out off of the plantation.