A Plantation Tale

Maum Maussa had been sleeping alone in the one-room cabin since her sister, Cleopa, died last year. She missed her through lonely nights and through busy days in the kitchen of the Big House, where they had worked for over forty years as cooks for the Haynsworths -- Moses "Maas' Monie," and Belvidera, "Miss Belva" -- on Idlewyld Plantation. When she would leave the door open on hot summer nights, she fancied she could see Cleopa floating in the moonlight like she was coming home after having served a late supper to unexpected guests.

To Maum Maussa, this was not a terrifying apparition of a soul refusing to rest in peace because of a cheap, slipshod funeral, but of a loving sister who had been laid to rest with the best. Through the years, they had each saved seventy dollars in the Hepzibah Burial Society. This provided for a heart longleaf pine coffin guaranteed not to rot for a hundred years, fully time to last to the Resurrection; a white satin pillow and four solid brass handles; seven-fifty for the hearse, ten dollars for the cemetery lot, two-fifty for the gravedigger, and five dollars for the preacher.

When it took three days for the trustees of the Hepzibah Society to raise the money for Cleopa's funeral, Maum Maussa became suspicious of the solvency of the fund. The Sunday after the funeral, as the finance committee seated itself as usual at the table in the doorway of the church to collect the weekly dues as the congregation dispersed, she demanded to be allowed to withdraw her seventy dollars.

Deacon Booker T. Travis said that they would have to take this unusual and unprecedented request under advisement at the plenary session of "the bo'd," but, off the cuff, she had been putting in money for so long that "the interes' might done et mos' of it up." Maum Maussa had heard that one before, but kept her peace. When "the bo'd" failed to do anything by the next Sunday, she threatened to take her grievance to Maas' Monie, who adjudicated most of the civil complaints on the plantation. As a result, the Society agreed to pay her five dollars a week for fourteen weeks.

Now that all this money was in the hands of a simple octogenarian, Maum Maussa was plagued by a rash of visitors, some seeking to know where she kept it hidden, some to sell her on a resale basis male-order gewgaws and patent medicines, some to interest her in matrimony. The one item she did buy was a simple granite headstone for Cleopa's grave to replace the cross made of slabs from the local sawmill. she left the brown, iridescent vase which she had won at the county fair on the middle of the grave mound, keeping it filled with wildflowers of different sorts as the season changed.

A particularly persistent suitor was Willie B. DeGraphenried, a tall, gangly sort of self-styled herb doctor, thirty years her junior, who had just recently come on the place. Willie B. had gotten into the habit of visiting her during the evening when she was off from work, and would frequently have supper with her. He would sometimes bring one of his nostrums for her to try on her "arthur-ritus," or as a repellent for chinches -- bedbugs.

One night, he brought her a honey-colored syrup, and recommended that she take a teaspoonful before retiring to relieve her dizzy spells. The next morning, for the first time in many years, Maum Maussa felt worn out before the day started. When Willie B. came by, she told him, "The Hag been ridin' me all night."

Being Hag-ridden was a commonly recognized complaint among blacks of the Carolina low country. They described it as some sort of landing on their chest and sucking away their breath during the night. The Hag idea might have originated from African witchdoctors, or in the witchcraft of medieval Europe; though its source is not known, the malady is accepted throughout the world as a reality.

From a scientific standpoint, the symptoms would be diagnosed as sleep apnea, characterized by a gradual slowing of respiration, during which breathing became deeper and deeper, then suddenly ceased. Cessation can last from one to several minutes. then the nerve impulse to reactivate breathing causes a sudden explosive expiration, awakening the sleeper. Infrequently, the breath-trigger fails to act, and the person dies. the cause of sleep apnea is not known, but high blood pressure is associated with it in many cases. Certain cardiovascular drugs also produce this effect.

Willie B. told Maum Maussa he had a sure way of "gettin' shet" of a Hag, but it would take a pinch-waist Coca-Cola bottle with a five-dollar bill wrapped around the middle, and a corncob stopper. A crook-necked walking stick would complete the Hag-catching apparatus. She should place the bottle next to the foot of her bed, beside the window, with the clapboard shutter open. The walking stick should be placed by her right side with the crook end at her feet. Her right hand should grasp the straight part of the stick, and the corncob stopper should be beside her. When the Hag started riding her in the night, she should shoo it off toward the foot of the bed with her left hand, and with her right draw it toward the bottle with the crook. The Hag, attracted by the five-dollar bill, would go to the bottle, but, threatened by the walking stick, would jump inside to hide. Maum Maussa need only pop the corncob into the neck of the bottle to fix Mr. or Mrs. Hag, whichever the case might be. After bottling the Hag, Maum Maussa need do nothing else until morning, when she would find what would appear to be a hunk of red meat in the bottle. On her way to work, she should throw the bottle into the deepest part of the fishpond. Nothing was said about the presence or absence of the five-dollar bill. Willie B. would handle that when he reached through the unshuttered window and took the money off the bottle, and returned the bottle with a strip of hog liver inside.

Maum Maussa considered this proposal for awhile, then said that she would leave things be for this night to see whether the Hag might have gone somewhere else, but she would use Willie B.'s remedy the next night if it didn't. Willie B. told her to be sure to take the syrup he had given her before she went to bed, because she still looked a little peaked.

When he had gone, she went over to the mantle to get the bottle. It tipped over, the cork came out, and about half spilled down to the hearth where her old dog, Achilles, was sleeping. He awakened, smelled it, let out a yelp, and took off as though he had been scalded.

Maum Maussa took the bottle over to her cousin, Celestine Martin, Sissy she was called, because she featured herself as Sister Celestine, spiritual reader, natural phenomenalist, and herbalist. Maum Maussa told her the situation, and Sissy said that she would have to have her palm crossed with some white money to get a proper opinion. Maum Maussa complied with a silver twenty-five cent piece. Sissy then called her feisty little rat terrier in from the yard, and stooped down to offer him a tablespoonful of the syrup. He took one whiff, yipped, and took off, but collided with the door, it being shut, so he ran and hid under the bed. No amount of coaxing or threatening could get him to come out.

Sissy told Maum Maussa, "That be dogbane. Don't you take no more o' that stuff." Dogbane, spocynum androsaemifolium, is an extremely poisonous cardiovascular drug. One of its symptoms is sleep apnea.

During the night, Maum Maussa had no Hag-riding, but she stayed awake a long time planning her own Hag-exorcising exercise. the next day, she went by the mule barn to see her nephew, Antny Sanders, who, in addition to his job of feeding and watering thirty mules, also handled their medical requirements, such as salves for harness sores, and drenches. From Antny she got two ounces of croton oil for a mess of chittlings when she got home. She also put on a pair of heavy work gloves and went out back of her house to the edge of the woods and reaped a big bundle of stinging nettles, which she tied up in a piece of burlap cotton sheet, putting it in the corner at the foot of her bed.

Willie B. came at his usual time. While they were eating a supper of grits, collards, and chittlings (Maum Maussa left all the chittlings to Willie B.), he inquired how she had slept last night. She said, "Terrible, terrible. That Hag worked on me all night." Willie B. said, "You got a dan'gerous one after you. You better go ahead an' use that Hag-trappin' doodad I tol' you 'bout."

"I'm ready, I'm ready!" Maum Maussa said.

"Since that's such a bad one,you better tie two five-dollar bills 'round that Coca-Cola bottle."

Maum Maussa sat at the table wrestling with this decision. Then she got out a Coca-Cola bottle, a walking stick with a crook at the handle, and a corncob, and sat down again at the table. After some musing, she said, "I goin' to have to trus' you with somethin' I never tol' nobody -- that's where my money is hid. It's dark an' I can't see to get ten dollars of it, but with yo' young eyes, you can." Willie B. appeared the soul of helpfulness. Maum Maussa continued, "It's under this very house in that center brick column. You'll find a loose brick coverin' a hole at the bottom, an' it's in there. There's a crawl space jus' under the window that leads to the column. You'll have to feel yo' way 'cause I don't want no flame lights took under my house. You'll fin' the money in a roll of five-dollar bills. Jus' peel off two, an' return the roll to its hidin' place."

Willie B. started his crawl, and as soon as he did, Maum Maussa hurried to the window with the sheetful of nettles. She strewed them all over the area where the crawl space started. Then she sat down in her rocking chair and waited and listened. Suddenly, from beneath the house at the center pier came a shuddering yowl. The mother skunk that had her den and four kits behind the loose brick had attacked back-first and drenched Willie B. down his front. Papa skunk, just home from a hunt with a fat field mouse in his mouth, dropped it to deliver a dose to Willie B.'s backside. Willie B., trying to escape, plunged blindly about as he groped for the way out. Maum Maussa heard him butting into pillar after pillar like a ball in a pinball machine. Finally he found the entrance, and plunged through it on all fours, leaping into the nettle bed that Maum Maussa had prepared for him. Just about this time, the croton oil doubled him over with griping pain and he began a series of diarrhea episodes that started him running up the street.

When old Achilles, awakened by all of the hullabaloo under the house, took off after him in full cry, other dogs along the street joined in the chase and followed Willie B. all the way to the Seaboard Railroad, where he jumped a northbound freight to escape them. He was never seen around Idlewyld again. Maum Maussa sat and rocked and thought. if she ever had the Hag ride her again, she would surely try that bottle-trap remedy. In the meantime, she planned to leave her burying money in Maas' Monie's safe, where it had been all the time.

This is a genuine plantation tale from the Monie Plantation of South Carolina, chronicled in a recent collection of stories by Mr Monie, an octogenarian, covering the years 1860 to 1930. Courtesy of the University of Baltimore literary magazine, Passager. Mr Monie's stories were edited by Sally Darnowsky.

These characters worked for over forty years as cooks for the Haynsworths, their real names were Moses "Maas' Monie," and Belvidera, "Miss Belva".