A Mulatto's Revenge

A Fiction short story about slavery, murder and revenge

“She is so dark!” declared Etta to Aunt Gloria, beholding Beatrice’s night shaded tone. “Why can’t I be dark too, Aunt Gloria?” she asked while rubbing her hand gently over her copper brown skin. With her hazel green-pigmented eyes, and the curly brown hair that gracefully fell down to the waistline of her cotton dress, indeed she appeared distinctively different to the rest of the slaves down in the fields.
“No you don’t Ella, be glad yur skin yello, cus you’ll be workin’ in the house real soon,” she answered enthusiastically, looking back at Beatrice folding old cloths with a belittling glare. 
“But aunt Nellie, why can’t I be as dark as the rest of ya’ll?”
“No no Ella, it’s you all"not ya’ll. Old bill didn’t get whipped to death stealin’ all those English books for nothin’, you best pick up your vocabulary,” she sharply remarked.  “Vocabulary,” Gram Nellie declared as she sewed the old tarnished blue dresses, “you best not be using all those fancy words ‘round Massa, or you’ll be as dead as old Bill if he found out you been readin’ too.”
 
“You mind your business Nellie,” Aunt Gloria dismissed, “now Etta, don’t you worry a damn bit about Beatrice alrite.”
“You light skin cus your daddy a white man!” Beatrice loudly erupted and attacked Etta.
“Beatrice, you best keep that big ol’ mouth shut and get to churning!” Nellie shouted furiously.
Those words spoken to her would forever bellow in Etta Wilson’s mind, not until she gained the knowledge that her father wasn’t uncle Dee, but the master Lester Wilson himself. Her mother Patricia Wilson, no longer living, was raped by Master Wilson in December of 1782 and died of childbirth in August. Her mother was one of many female slaves who have suffered such a menacing fate, for Mr Wilson had an uncontrollable fetish for the penetration of his girl slaves. Often when his biracial daughters grew old enough to labour, he would make them house servants, and later on rape them too just as he did their mothers, one of the vicious cycles of many house negros.
Master Wilson, his wife, four sons and three daughters; were a wealthy Georgian family. They were one of the many slave families in the growing aristocracy of the south, and they owned an impressive three hundred and fifty eight slaves picking cotton on their fertile land. However due to an increasing number of mulatto house slaves, Wilson was at the centre of a growing scandal. Indeed it was nothing new for masters to fornicate with their slaves, however only to strict limit, and Master Wilson’s increasing appetite for his negros slowly sprouted odious opinions of the family in a social construct so dependent on reputation.
 
Etta turned 12 when she was finally summoned to the Master’s house. She walked through the gardens in her new ivory attire, glanced to the left of her where some field negros picking cotton glanced back at her in bitterness, and others with sympathy for they knew all too well the fate of many new house negro girls. As she approached the grand estate, she grew mesmerised at the towering ivory Doric columns guarding the interior.  She entered inside and was further taken by the grandeur of the manor, its classical ceiling, rising ever so high above felt to her as if it reached the heavens, the Palladian architecture lavishly bragged of the family’s old money, a furthermore spat in the faces of meagre slaves like Etta who never beheld such opulence.
 
In the spacious kitchen, seven other girls dressed all in the same ivory attire, were lined facing blankly at Mr Wilson and his wife Evelyn Wilson, trying their best to mask their incomprehensible fear. Ella was the last of the girls gathered and was slightly taken by surprise, because many of the other girls were of an even lighter skin tone then she was, they were of a pale complexion resembling closer to those of their white masters. To the field negros, it meant privilege, however to Mrs Wilson, she saw nothing in their light shaded skin but the semen stains of another n****r her husband raped.
“Is this all of them?” Mrs Wilson asked impatiently, “no Ma’am, we got one left” the rugged slave watcher Benjie replied, then he dragged in Beatrice through the back door, her skin as dark as coal and nappy dry hair covered by white cloths wrapped around her head.
“Isn’t this n****r more suited for the fields?” she asked.
“No Ma’am, she is the best cook on the plantation, her talent for cooking even got the governor wanting to purchase her, and she’s valuable.”
Beatrice possessed in her a fiery heart, but still her confidence crippled in sight of her masters. She could also read and knew a range of lexis from the old stolen English books; she hides it well though, for a knowledgeable n****r is a dead n****r.
“Fine, she’ll make a good house negro then, but she will not be serving, she shall be hidden in the kitchen preparing, I do not want my guests to be interrupted by her,” she finally added and made her way out of the kitchen leaving Mr Wilson alone with the nine girls.
“Magnificent,” he said walking down the line touching their faces one by one, “just magnificent”.
Maddie, the palest out of them all, tall and slender with frizzy short hair had the most prolonged touch to her face, her ghastly tone was bestowed upon her by her mulatto mother who Mr Wilson also had his pleasure of penetrating, he consequently had a peculiar liking to her. “Do not be alarmed or frightened, you will all be comfortable here as long as you all meet our expectations of excellence in your service” he said as she trembled at his touch, he slithered sinisterly down the line to Ella who quickly tilted her face away from his open hand giving a robust frown, “well, we have a fighter here"I ought to fix that immediately”. Suddenly he swung a forceful slap to her face and she fell to the ground with cries, “never again will you oppose me,” he remarked with a villainous expression. Lastly, he got to Beatrice at the end of the line but did not touch her; he simply looked at her glancing to the floor. “A field n****r in the house,” he chuckled under his breath, he was a vile gentleman, at only forty six years of age he appeared old and weary with silvery hair and devilish blue eyes that with single glance could make one’s happiness shrivel with fear.
 
The years went on, Ella and Beatrice grew to have a strong and playful friendship, all of them were now in the middle of adolescence, and they developed a sense of sisterhood with one another as they laboured aside each other.  Most remained the same, but in a Georgian plantation, they have witnessed the coming and going of many slaves, Maddie unfortunately was one of them. After Master Wilson’s wicked ways of abuse, her attempts of running away eventually led to her menacing public death sentence by a hundred lashes and the rubbing of hot pepper on her open wounds.
 Beatrice and Ella committed themselves on upholding the knowledge that they have been so privileged to learn in their youth. They always played around with the two negro butlers Quingee and Wafer by purposely uttering words they did not understand when the white folk were gone for a weekly trip to Tennessee.
“Oh Wafer, I am utterly distressed by your woeful view of my character,” Beatrice mocked and she twirled to a curtsey, “stop speaking like that Bea, before massa comes and overhears you,” Wafer said laughing. 
“Oh but our despicable master has flown by with the wind and"and",” Beatrice stuttered, “And left us to enjoy the felicity of latitude!” Etta replied and both girls wailed in laughter, dancing and mocking their master’s country square dance they witness when serving at house balls. Sometimes, Ella thought she was lucky to be a house negro and away from the stinging humidity, picking cotton from sun up till sun down, put a slave is still a slave.
 
 March had eventually turned to April, and like every April, Mrs Wilson and the children were gone to their uncle’s, and Mr Wilson always stayed back to his plantation alone. The entire house negros knew what April meant, this was the time of the year where Wilson would be on heat for his next victim. Consequently the house girls tried vigorously to stay out of his way as much as possible.
“Beatrice!” exclaimed Master Wilson, “yes massa” she submissively replied with her head bowed down.
“I want you to leave all your duties for tonight to Etta,” he said, she beheld the glistening faded look in his eyes, filled with lust"well enough, she could heed what was to happen that dark night. “But Massa, I needs to cook and, clean, wash the dirty dishes. Etta already weeping floors, I needs to be downstairs in the kitchin,” Beatrice nervously argued to his growing impatience.
“You need to be exactly where I order you to be,” he snapped at her, stood to his feet and approached, “you are my slaves, you are my property and I do whatever I want to you, understand that?”
Oh no, just as I feared, I’m going to be the next victim, she thought to herself in incomprehensible dread, “but massa"massa please,” she pleaded as tears flooded her eyes. He gripped her arm firmly and she tried to fight off, knocking down a crystal flower vase on the fiddle-back mahogany table and causing a loud ruckus.
Downstairs Ella began to wonder where Beatrice could be, never had she been late for her duties, she thought. Searching for her, she overheard the glass break and a struggle happening upstairs, No lord please don’t tell me it’s happening, she quickly panicked.
“No!!” shrieked Beatrice, and with an open hand struck Master Wilson in the face and ran to the corner of his chamber curling defencelessly into a ball. Perplexed, Wilson touched his red cheek marked with her left hand and looked at her, his shock quickly turned to rage as he scurried and forced her down, violently tearing apart her clothes as she still tried to struggled free. In a flick of a thought, Etta ran to the kitchen hurriedly and then back to the stairs fleeing to the violent scene. As she passed Wafer and Quingee she grew astonished that their faces remained emotionless, the screams of a helpless girl was a familiar sound they heard while serving all their years.
Opening the chamber door, she witnessed Beatrice wailing woeful cries of help as Wilson forcefully opened her legs with his brute strength to penetrate her. Etta glimpsed at her left hand where she held a sharp silver kitchen knife, then slowly tilted it to reflect the fire of the 3 candles standing on the golden candelabra aside his bed, I’ll be dead for this, and imma kill him " kill him! Her thoughts bellowed in her now distraught head. Quickly she ran to Wilson and with all might stabbed him in the back, he cried out excruciatingly and rolled of Beatrice where again, Etta stabbed him in the stomach repeatedly. Beatrice drew stunned, frozen as a pillar as she beheld this astonishing scene; with each stab she remained still and nude. Soon the butlers ran to the chamber to witness the knife cutting their master’s flesh as a pool of blood surrounded his corpse.  Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, Etta counted, stopping at number twenty and glancing up at Wafer and Quingee who glanced back at her as if she was Lucifer himself.
“Etta"what have you done,” Beatrice stuttered in trauma, “you killed massa, you a dead girl, they gon kill you for this!!” shouted Wafer.
Etta smirked, and then admired the silver knife now covered with Master Wilson’s life and gently replied, “They’ll kill us all for this"so since we’re dead men walking"who else wants to have a turn to stab my daddy?”

 

Author's Note

Please give me the honest truth. But also don't be mean, constructive is best.

Reviews

[Mashairi]

I loved it. You made me hate the master and fall in love with Beatrice and Ella. I'm black and have a very dark sense of humor, so when the slave kills the master, it's always a good day ^^ I also liked how you built it up enough for the reader to cheer at the end. You did a fantastic job, indeed.

[Juste Muremanyundo]

Thank you so much! ^.^ I really do appreciate it! Any critics you found in it?

[Mashairi]

The speaking parts. I was probably just me, but I couldn't tell who was speaking. Other than that, no. It was an amazing story ^^

[Mashairi]

What particularly interested me was the fact that you're from England. I'm not saying the English can't write about slavery well, but I found it very cool how you did

[Juste Muremanyundo]

Thanks! I'm African, from Rwanda, but I grew up in Europe most of my life. I have a peculiar fascination with African American history, I can't tell you many books and narratives, movies, and documentaries about slavery or the African American experience i've seen, it really interests me. I used to study the history...I hope I havn't offended or falsely represented your history, if I have, please tell me ^.^

[Mashairi]

No, no, no, no, no, you did very well ^^