Eventually she forced herself to dress and go out. Mourning was walking toward
her, coming up from the river. His pace slowed when he saw her standing by the
water barrel. Dear Lord, what will he say? They managed to exchange greetings
without actually looking at one another.
“Thirsty?” Olivia held out a dipper of water.
He took the dipper and drank.
“I’m feeling much better now,” Olivia said. “I’ll be going back to work.”
“Good.”
“I’ll make breakfast,” she said, wondering how late it was. The sun had
already climbed halfway up the sky.
He nodded and strode to the barn, where she could hear him clanking things
around. She lit a fire outside and fried up eggs with strips of venison. While it
was sizzling she fretted about her morals – or lack of them. But that worry succumbed to anxiety about what Mourning was thinking. He wouldn’t have
done those things if he didn’t have some kind of good feeling for her, would he?
She didn’t expect declarations of undying love. She knew, as he surely did,
that they could never do that again. It had been a terrible mistake that could bring nothing but disaster upon them. But why did he seem unable to tolerate the
sight of her in daylight? Couldn’t he at least smile? Say something nice? Let her
know he didn’t think she was a filthy slut? She felt like a discarded old boot.
I am a slut. Only a slut does things like that with someone she isn’t married
to, and not even married women are supposed to like it. What is wrong with me?
Now I have lost my only friend.
Another part of her despaired that Mourning wouldn’t ever touch her like that
again. Kiss her again. Look at her that way. Would anyone? She tried to imagine
doing that with Jeremy and couldn’t.
Maybe Mourning wasn’t disgusted by her. Perhaps this was simply the way
men behaved. She remembered being in Mrs. Place’s bakery once when she was
a little girl, short enough to be invisible to anyone on the other side of the counter. Olivia had overheard Mrs. Place in the back, laughing with some
woman who was visiting her. “Don’t you go believing that,” Mrs. Place had said.
“You think Seborn keeps coming around because the lovemaking is so great?
Believe me, it ain’t. But that don’t matter none. You know what’s so attractive about women like you and me? They don’t got to talk to us much in between times.”
Olivia’s stomach churned as another sorry fact occurred to her. No white man
would have her now. If no one had wanted her before, who would now that she
was a fallen woman? Most folks would say a white woman couldn’t fall any
lower than lying down with a colored. Olivia imagined everyone she’d ever
known whispering behind her back. “Olivia Killion? Don’t you know? She’s that
nigger’s whore.”
She knew those folks were despicable. None of those gossiping, bigoted,
hateful people were anywhere near as honest and good and smart as Mourning
Free. But she also knew it didn’t matter. That was the world she lived in – one in
which Mourning was a nigger and she had just become the worst kind of white
