The Call to the Bathhouse
One sweltering afternoon, Eleanor finally noticed Isaiah. She ordered him to stop his work and subjected him to a deeply degrading, clinical inspection, treating his strong, scarred body like a piece of livestock on an auction block. Finding him suitable, she coldly informed the house staff that Isaiah would be pulled from the yard. He was to belong to her, explicitly for the mornings.
The chilling reality of this new assignment was delivered to Isaiah by a hardened enslaved woman named Callie. In hushed, terrified tones, Callie explained that Isaiah would have to draw water from the well before dawn, carry it to the gray building hidden in the trees, and wait on the mistress in the bath. “You keep your face still in there,” Callie warned him, her voice barely above a whisper. “You don’t look at nothing… you don’t speak unless she speaks first. You understand me?”
The next morning before sunrise, Isaiah found himself standing inside the heavy wooden door of the bathhouse. The air inside was an oppressive, wet heat, thick with the sharp scent of lye soap and old pipes. In the center of the windowless room sat a large wooden tub.
Eleanor stood waiting. The commanding mistress of the grand house looked slightly smaller within these four walls, yet entirely more dangerous. With terrifying calm, she ordered Isaiah to undress. When he hesitated, frozen by shock and the sheer wrongness of the command, her eyes flashed with a lethal impatience. Slowly, shaking, Isaiah removed his clothes, exposing his back—covered in the faded, white lash marks from previous owners—to the hot, suffocating air.
He was ordered to climb into the scalding water. Eleanor then stepped into the tub behind him. The horrifying rules of engagement were laid out like a military decree: he was to scrub where she could not reach, he was to never touch where he was not told, and he was to never speak unless directly questioned. If he dared to look at her inappropriately, or if he trembled out of fear, she promised a regret worse than any physical pain he had ever known.
