A Place Called Freedom (1995)

Also in the canvas bag were his copy of Robinson Crusoe and the iron collar he had brought from Scotland. He picked up the collar, remembering how he had broken it in the smithy the night he had escaped from Heugh. He recalled how he had danced a jig of freedom in the moonlight. More than a year later he still was not free. But he had not given up.

Peg’s return had removed the last obstacle preventing him running away from Mockjack Hall. She had moved into the slave quarters and slept in a hut of single girls. They would all keep her secret. They would always protect one of their own. It was not the first time a fugitive had been hidden in the quarters: any runaway could get a bowl of hominy and a hard bed for the night at every plantation in Virginia.

During the day she roamed the woods, keeping out of sight until darkness fell. Then she returned to the quarters to eat with the hands. Mack knew this could not go on for long. Soon boredom would make her careless and she would be caught. But she would not have to live that way for many days.

Mack’s skin tingled with anticipation. Cora was married, Peg was saved, and the map had shown him where he had to go. Freedom was his heart’s desire. As soon as they chose, he and Peg could simply walk away from the plantation at the end of the day’s work. By dawn they could be thirty miles away. They would hide during the hours of daylight then go on at night. Like all runaways, they would beg food at the slave quarters of the nearest plantation every morning and evening.

Unlike most runaways, Mack would not try to get a job as soon as he had gone a hundred miles. That was how they were always caught. He was going farther away. His destination was the wilderness beyond the mountains. There he would be free.

But Peg had been back a week, and he was still at Mockjack Hall.

He stared at his map and his fishhooks and his tinder box. He was a step away from freedom, but he could not take that step.

He had fallen in love with Lizzie, and he could not bear to leave her.

Lizzie stood naked in front of the cheval glass in her bedroom, looking at her body.

She had told Jay she was back to normal after the pregnancy, but the truth was that she would never be quite the same. Her breasts had gone back to their previous size, but they were not as firm, and they seemed to hang a little lower on her chest. Her tummy would never return to normal, she now realized: the slight bulge and the slackness of the skin were with her forever. She had faint silvery lines where her skin had stretched. They had faded, but not completely, and she had a feeling they would always be there. Down below, the place where the baby came out was also different. It had once been so tight that she could hardly get her finger in. That, too, had stretched.

She wondered if this was why Jay no longer wanted her. He had not seen her naked body since the birth but perhaps he knew what it was like, or guessed, and found it disgusting. Felia, his slave girl, had obviously never had a baby. Her body was still perfect. Jay would make her pregnant, sooner or later. But then he might drop her the way he had dropped Lizzie, and take up with yet another woman. Was that how he wanted to live his life? Were all men like that? Lizzie wished she could ask her mother.

She was being treated as something used up, no good anymore, like a worn pair of shoes or a cracked plate. That made her angry. The baby who had grown inside her and made her belly bulge and stretched her vagina was Jay’s child. He had no right to reject her afterward. She sighed. It was pointless to get angry with him. She had chosen him and she had been a fool.

She wondered if anyone would ever find this body attractive again. She missed the feeling of a man’s hands running over her flesh as if he could never get enough. She wanted someone to kiss her tenderly and squeeze her breasts and press his fingers into her. She could not bear the thought that it would never happen again.

She took a deep breath, pulling in her stomach and sticking out her chest. There—that was almost how she had looked before the pregnancy. She weighed her breasts, then touched the hair between her legs, and toyed with the button of desire.

The door opened.

Mack had to repair a broken tile in the fireplace in Lizzie’s room. He had said to Mildred: “Is Mrs. Jamisson up yet?”

Mildred had replied: “Just gone over to the stables.” She must have thought he said Mister Jamisson.

All of that went through his mind in a split second. Then he thought of nothing but Lizzie.

She was achingly beautiful. As she stood in front of the mirror he could see her body from both sides. Her back was to him, and his hands itched to stroke the curve of her hips. In the mirror he could see the swell of her round breasts and the soft pink nipples. The hair at her groin matched the wild dark curls of her head.