Lusts and Gaines
- Lusts and Gaines
Convicted in the murder of Wakefield Gaines, also black, Mary Hanna Tabbs’s crime, extraordinarily brutal, unveiled the extremities of rage, but her well-timed confession and courtroom maneuvering also bear witness to her incisive grasp of the interplay of race, gender, sexuality, and justice.
Kali N. Gross, Colored Amazons
Her right hand raised toward Heaven, he asks if she is Mary Hanna Tabbs and makes her promise to tell the whole truth as a court’s witness. Her eyes plead mercy from her lap “I can tell you I loved Yella Gaines, Our love bright as a star guiding our lives. I his wife. He husband. How I fell victim to lust for Yella Gaines and his fancies for Annie. I can tell you about the fall of a woman, a rainstorm of regret, a phony letter
written by a ghost and my weary heart.” She sighs, “The letter.” She rocks between her memories. The jury sifts. Mrs. Tabbs speaks. “The letter was written by Yella Gaines. He signed Annie’s name. Left me a grieving woman. We betrayed by Wilson. He’s no witness.” Wilson calls Mary a hell bound harlot, screaming that John Tabbs is her husband. “John abandoned me. My righteousness and reason gulfed one kiss from Gaines.
God’s wrath rests in the lusts of this wretch. I will forever thirst for Yella Gaines. A passion that scorches your heart and tortures your soul. His forged letter belched that he loved Annie more than he desired to be my husband. He would prey on her. Sweet Jesus. Abandoned again. just like John Tabbs. His fingers wicked vines of deception. Dowson’s Cynara*, a witness, a tale of love and mortals. I was betrayed by Yella Gaines and my niece, Annie. [End Page 147] My sorrow is not a southerner. It trailed me to Philadelphia. Me, nor Annie escape. My niece was raised in sorrow’s shadows, tempted by the glow of Gaines. I am guilty of lucid heart, one whose fury spills from this witness stand in tears. Why did Yella Gaines have to write that letter? As a reminder that he could never love me, an old maid, Mary Tabbs? That master’s mulatto bastard was, no man, and no better than my black husband.
His words like cinnamon candy I walk too wide to have an old husband My hips round enough to make a meek man out of Lucifer. Annie was still a girl when Yella Gaines whispered that I should forget John Tabbs. Then he lie between my niece and I, our bloodline his canal. Damn Yella Gaines and his love for Annie. He could write, signed her name to that letter. He was going to leave me less than a woman. God, not Wilson, is my witness.”
Wilson cries out and declares Mary crazy. He, the prosecution’s only witness. Mary sobs, “John Tabbs was a wicked man and my dreaded husband. He left me a desperate woman. He ran off. Left no word or letter. Left me sullen and down. Slumbering in shame and stuck with Annie. I was a respectable woman tempted by the firefly ambers of Yella Gaines’s golden kiss.” Did she kill Wakefield Gaines? The judge stares into Tabbs.
“Did he make me a mockery, victimize my civility?” says Mary Hanna Tabbs. “I am guilty of the furies of a fallen woman slain by Satan and golden Gaines. Wilson killed him. I thanked God for freeing me and my niece Annie.”
* Cynara - Ernest Dowson (1867–1900) [End Page 148]
Damaris B. Hill earned a PhD in English-Creative Writing and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from the University of Kansas. The majority of her poetry is spiritually based and addresses issues of gender, race and identity. Eager to express the accomplishments of underrepresented women, she is writing a novel about juvenile delinquents.
Her selection of poems in this issue is based on the book Colored Amazons: Crime, Violence, and Black Women in the City of Brotherly Love, 1880-1910 by Kali Nicole Gross, PhD., Associate Professor at University of Texas Austin. She was so genuinely...
