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A fresh blanket in an empty bed had always been Cato's damnation.
Work in the fields was ungodly, but Sundays after Phillis had done the laundry were a bliss. Maybe that's why he slept so deeply that morning. Resting his aching bones always lulled Cato into forgetfulness. His feet touched the ground even before his mind took notice and his shoulder snapped in place after days of being forced into an uncomfortable position. The dry snap and the numb pain cleared his mind.
Sunday, and the voices of the women by the river repeating a hymn.
Sunday, and rest.
Sunday... Cato wished for a week where every day were Sunday.
Yawning, stretching and tumbling, he abandoned their hut in search for the bucket. Everything around him reminded him of his lack of freedom. Not even his own piss was his to spray against any tree. It belonged to the master and to the washing room where it would be used so the master could have blinding white tablecloths to eat. The idea made him uncomfortable, but he brushed it aside as the relief of his bladder emptying washed over his aching body.
There were days, like every Sunday, when Cato tried to fight the urge to shatter his bonds. Sundays reminded him that Phillis and Dinah where there, and they should be punished in his stead. So Sundays were devoted to finding a dark shadow and rest, if his woman wasn't there to nag him into doing something for the hut. Phillis wasn't there today, so rest it was.
The problem with rest is that in idle time, his brain runs free. Yes, his hands were touching the grass and the wind was crossing over his cool forehead, but his mind was restless.
This kind of day was dangerous for a reason.
This kind of day reminded him he was a man. Worse yet, the look of the master lazing his Sunday away in a cool veranda seemed like an insult.
But his salvation was three feet tall, and soon she came to enjoy the shadow herself, by the side of her father.
"Ain't you going to the river?" Dinah asked, resting her head on his shoulder. The dull pain returned, but he was welcomed by the comfort its familiarity provided.
The ends of her tresses caressed his neck and Cato smiled. Dinah was just like her mother. There was never a moment of rest for that woman.
"No, I don't, chile. Today, I'm going to work on my tan."
Dinah always laughed at that. She was darker than her daddy, but every girl would envy her eyes when she was a woman. Dinah looked like her mother, with her wonderful white teeth and her cat eyes, and that brought a new set of worries to Catos' mind.
Dinah was not meant to be a house girl, she was not pretty enough for the Mistress. The mistress was an old blind bat, in Cato's opinion, but her word was law for the "service."
Service... If there ever was a word to be reviled, it was that. The house girls were not the same to her as the old Irish lady that worked the house girls to the bone, until they were too tired by the age of twenty. The house girls were not "service."
Cato didn't want Phillis destiny for Dinah either. Working the trapiche all day long, turning the milling stone to get the sugarcane juice the same way a donkey turn around the well.
There was no job he wanted for his daughter, but what choice did he have?
He had none, and that was the true.
"Dad?" Dinah asked, her hand resting on Cato's brow as if she wanted to smooth out the deep furrow in his forehead.
"Are you polishing my head?" Cato took her hand and kissed her little fingers.
"You have been doing that face again."
"Well, excuse me, chile." Cato beamed widely. "I have a short list of faces!"
"You can make more faces."
"Like what?"
Dinah squinted her eyes and Cato found her even more adorable. "What face is that?"
"The face Grandma Judy makes when she sews the shirts!"
"Is that so?"
"Yes! And this one too?"
Her little lips pursed in a gesture of contempt and her right eyebrow raised. She was the exact portrait of her mother, and Cato smiled again.
"What was that? Agatha? Irene?"
"That was mom!"
"That's not your mom's face!"
"Yes it is."
"Nuh-huh."
"Come, come and I'll show you!"
Dinah pulled Cato's arm, without any success, but it was better if he played along. That child was his pride and joy.
Groaning and complaining, Cato got to his feet and started walking toward the hut. Dinah, seeing that she was getting her way, ran to the inside and returned with her ratty bonnet. There was no way she was to take a Sunday stroll without her bonnet.
"Please?" she pleaded, raising her face for him to make a knot with the ends.
The laces were too small for him to make a bow, but she wouldn't be seen without her bonnet, so a simple tie would do. Cato enjoyed her young face, round and joyful. Before the ever-present question— how much time did they have before the master would force her to work— started to creep into his brain, his daughter let go a happy cry.
"Butterfly!" she pointed over his head with elation. "The butterflies are coming again!"
Cato turned around and looked at the bugs dancing in the sky, all color and freedom. Inside his brain, he cursed their arrival since it was only meant more work for him. Summer was coming.
But his child and her joy were far too precious to let them go. So he let the summer and the butterflies be, because his child was entitled to some happiness in this world.
Cato knelt in the dirt, arms around his daughter, and watched the butterflies on that Sunday morning, while the women sang by the river.