A Different Sun: A Novel of Africa (3 page)

Emma thought her mother’s lips trembled. “Mr. Early was always odd,” she said, “from the first day I knew him. Girls, look you don’t dip your sleeve into the gravy boat.”

“He’s arranged passage from Norfolk,” Papa went on. “Even giving them a new set of clothes.” Her father dug into the rice as if it needed discipline. The platter of chicken hadn’t moved, and Mittie Ann, who should be moving it, was standing like a stone.

Mr. Early was wealthier than Emma’s father. He owned a new coach driven by a fine-looking Negro in a red vest. Suddenly she imagined the Negro gone, Mr. Early’s coach flailing downhill, the horse wild, the whole world coming apart.

“Let Early go with them; I hope they all drown,” Papa said, pounding his fist on the table.

No one looked at anyone.

“Let us keep our own dignity,” Mama said finally. “Pass the chicken, Mittie Ann. It’s getting cold.”

“You wouldn’t want to go to Africa, would you, girl?” Papa said, looking at the colored woman.

“No sir,” Mittie Ann said.

Emma wished the woman had said it stronger, to make her believe. When the chicken finally arrived, she took a wing and left the wishbone, though she could imagine that tender white meat between her teeth, the coat of flour fried to a sweet crisp. In her mind floated lines from the poem she and Catherine did not recite.

But peaceful was the night

When the Prince of light

His reign of peace upon the earth began.

* * *

T
HROUGH THE WINTER,
Uncle Eli kept a small charcoal fire on his back porch. Why he sat there and not in his house where he had a sturdy fireplace, Emma had stopped considering. He had all sorts of greetings when she visited:
good morning
,
good afternoon
,
I’m seeing you after a long time
,
have a nice sleep.
And odd sayings that Emma thought of as small animals because they seemed to stir and move. Like
close the light
instead of
snuff the candle
. The old man cooked sweet potatoes in the ash. She would sit on the ground with him, though he always spread a sack for her. “Don’t want missus vexing,” he would say.

They could spend long periods not speaking. The fire was like another person. Emma pulled herself close. She took her gloves off and held her hands to the warm glow.

Sometimes Uncle Eli hummed in an off-key way that seemed oddly to put things right. “Now you remember,” he would say, “four holes in your button, four eyes in the dogwood bloom.”

“Yes,” she would say, this the best prayer.

While it was yet winter, Carl went away and Mittie Ann made lots of noise as she worked in the house. Emma could hear her from the library in the mornings. “What
kind
of people?” she said over and again. Emma thought it had to do with
her
people, not Mittie Ann’s.

“Why did Carl have to leave if they’re married?” Emma said.

“Your father hired him out to Mr. Franklin,” Mama said. “But she can visit him one night a month.”

All Emma knew of Mr. Franklin was that her father said he did the land a disservice by owning it. Now Carl was off somewhere with that man. Emma felt sorry for Mittie Ann. One day she offered to help in the kitchen. She thought her offer would be welcome. Uncle Eli always enjoyed her help.

“You want to help me?” Mittie Ann said.

“Yes,” Emma said.

The woman laughed. “Pray your father sell us all to Mr. Early.”

The next morning Emma woke shivering, the fire not remade in her room. She put on her new Christmas boots and skipped in the upstairs hall. No one came to stop her. She found Catherine in the breakfast room, hunched over her grits. “I’m wearing my new boots,” Emma said.

“You ninny,” Catherine said.

“Where’s Mama?” Emma ran her hand across the tabletop. Now she could hear voices.

She found her mother on the back porch, only her hair was not put up in its becoming way. Mr. Franklin was in the yard. He had Mittie Ann by the arm. Emma didn’t like the man’s way and looked sideways at the ferns. They were limp from the frost, dark and matted.

The man was talking. “Like I said, she was over my place last night, keeping my man up when he need to be sleeping. Your husband, Mr. Davis, hired that nigger out to me. This girl’s slated to come the fourth Sunday of the month. But she keeps insistin’ he’s her husband and it’s no harm her comin’ late to bring his food.” He stopped to scratch his head. “Way I see it, he’s not her husband when he’s working my farm. You keep her on your place. She got no business on mine. I’d whip her. Otherwise, she’ll be back just like a dog.”

“You can stop right there, Mr. Franklin,” Mama said.

“What’s wrong, Mama?”

“Go inside, young lady.” Emma didn’t move. She looked at Mittie Ann, who was missing her scarf so her face looked naked. And Mr. Franklin who didn’t even own a proper horse, there with his old rifle.

“I hate you,” she said under her breath.

A wind came late morning and snow fell sideways.

Mittie Ann served the midday meal, her face still seeming naked even though she had her scarf back on. Papa sat at the table in hard silence; Mama excused herself early and Catherine after her. Mittie Ann came for the dishes.

“Mr. Davis,” she said, her eyes cast down, “my father at the back door, calling for you.”

Emma jumped up to answer, but Papa told her to sit down. He laid his napkin aside. Emma slipped out behind him.

“What is it?” he said out the door.

Emma watched Mittie Ann press her back against the cupboard.

“Whatever it is, I’ll take it.”

The old man’s voice seemed to come through a tunnel. Mittie Ann’s head fell forward.

“She shouldn’t have run off. She knew,” Papa said.

“She all I’ve got,” Uncle Eli said.

“You know what happens when a man has a reputation for weakness? I’ll have my niggers dancing up and down all over the county.” Emma wished her papa wouldn’t talk like Mr. Franklin.

“Won’t do no good to hurt her; she’ll still go. Do me, she won’t run again.”

“I’ll think on it. Haven’t you got some work this afternoon?”

“Yes sir. I’m finishing those table legs missus wants.”

“You work on them in the carriage house.”

“Yes sir.”

The door sounded terrible in its closing, like a heavy lock falling into place.

Papa looked at Mittie Ann pressed against the cupboard.
Just try to do good
, Emma wanted to say to him,
just try
. But she could not.

“Find Catherine and finish your lessons in the library,” Papa said. “I believe you were delayed this morning.”

Emma left the room but tarried in the hallway, her back against the wall like Mittie Ann’s had been against the cupboard. She splayed her arms and legs out in the posture of a star. Then she curved to enclose herself, turning full around until her forehead rested against the cool plaster. She heard her father’s voice.

“You tell Uncle Eli to report to the overseer in the morning. He wants to take it for you, I guess that’s his business. I hate to have it done. Ought to shame you”—Emma felt a wand of guilt wend through her—“that you’ve brought this on us. Don’t disappoint me again.”

“Yes, master.”

Emma fled to the library. Catherine sat near the window, facing out, no book, her hands in her lap. There was no fire in the library either. The snow had turned to rain.

Emma walked to the bookcase. She heard Catherine leave the room, and her tears fell and she wiped her face with the skirt of her dress. The spines of the books were all alike in the dim light, and she ran her hand across them. At the window she began to imagine a picture she would draw of Mittie Ann. She would start with her headdress, impossibly large. As the drawing progressed, Mittie Ann would come into possession of a broom that had a likeness to a rifle. As if she had drawn herself into the trance, Emma left the library for her bedroom. The first thing her eyes lit upon was her bureau. She opened the top drawer and removed handkerchiefs, gloves, and collars, leaving only the smell of wood. Then she closed the drawer.

* * *

U
NCLE
E
LI WAS
gone until summer, and when he came back his hair was almost white and he walked with a limp, no more throwing out his feet like clearing a path. Yet he held his head up. That at least was still true to him.

Her parents’ bedroom door was closed. “It’s terrible.” Her mother’s voice. Nothing from her father.

Emma sat on her back steps.

One afternoon Uncle Eli came out. He did not look in her direction. Another time she ventured to his garden and saw him sitting on his porch. He moved his whole face to look at her, but his eyes seemed to say,
Stop. Stop right there.
A new girl was in the house now and Mittie Ann worked outdoors, tending chickens, even washing out the carriage house. A circus was coming to town, and Emma kept her mind on it. The broadside in the storefronts showed an elephant standing on its back legs and a man in front of the great animal looking perfectly in control. Emma traced the images with her finger and went to bed at night thinking about the circus world, where men balanced upside down on poles and women rode standing on horses.

The day of the circus she found a place at the bottom of the hill where Main Street marked the boundary of her family’s property. Maybe the elephant was from Africa. Neighbors were lined up across the street. A friend waved at Emma.

“Come,” she said.

“No,” Emma said.

The girl shrugged.

Finally a band showed up with drums and brass horns, along with a clown and a funny monkey on a leash. At last Emma saw the elephant and when she did, she felt sure it would burst from the parade and charge her. If only there were a tree she could climb. She should run, but her terror was too great. The elephant’s ears flapped forward.
I am a white bird: fly
, she thought.

Someone laid a hand on her shoulder. She knew it was Uncle Eli and she leaned back into him, pulling his arm around her shoulder, closing her eyes in the curtain of his sleeve. His chest rose and fell and they waited together until the circus sounds had passed.

“I was afraid,” Emma said.

“You shaking,” he said.

They turned together and in the turning she looked down to be careful where she placed her boot and her gaze rested on his left foot. At first she mistrusted her sight.

“Let’s go on up to the house,” he said.

She was not mistaken. His three small toes were missing, clean off, like cut with scissors. Emma felt her mouth open, but she could not speak and she remembered that time—it seemed long ago—when she had fallen and studied his feet on the ground. The old man advanced several steps. She put her head down and pressed forward. When she caught up with him, she held his hand like she did her papa’s. They got as far as his bench before she began to sob.

“Does it hurt?” she said finally.

“I expect,” he said.

“Why?” she said.

“Overseer say whippin’ wasn’t enough.”

“Enough for what?”

“To make an impression.”

The word sounded like something that bears down and changes you forever.

“It’s good you cry,” Uncle Eli said.

As her sobs subsided, Emma thought she could hear her own heart beat. The taste of salt was on her lips. A red cardinal stretched its wings in a nearby dogwood. “What birds live in Africa?” she said, her eyes on the red bird.

“All kinds,” Uncle Eli said. “Owl, sparrow, bush fowl, firebird, hawk, pigeon, wading bird, white egret—all kinds.”

* * *

“I
NEED SOME
extras
,”
Emma said to her mother.

“What for?”

“I need some old boots, some of Papa’s. I need them for Uncle Eli.”

Her mother pinched her lips.

Emma spent the afternoon collecting everything she could find. Half-used bits of soap, stockings from the mending pile, tag ends of thread, hardened circlets of candle tallow, and finally a new jar of fig preserves. She went to her mother with her collection.

“These are extras,” she said, talking as if her mama were a person who might not remember her own mind. “I need the boots.” She was surprised that her mother had found a pair. She left her filled basket on the old man’s front porch, not going around back. Emma’s effort yielded her a sense of relief and even pride. She had done something loving. But in the heat of the day, the good feeling evaporated. Only insects sounded. It was as if the whole world had become the shadow, though the sun exposed every surface of the outside world. For the first time, Emma wondered if her parents were real enough. It seemed she knew more than they. More even than her mother, who had prayed so fervently. How far did her prayers go? Not far enough. Emma would have to pray for them. But what would she say?

That night she could not sleep for fear she would die and go to hell.

In the morning she thought if she could write a prayer, she might know what to say and save herself. In her searching for extras, she had found a discarded envelope.

In the library she took up her father’s pen for the second time. Beginning was hard and she gave up on a beginning.
Forgive my papa
, she wrote.
Forgive me. Watch out for Uncle Eli.
She hid the envelope in the Greek mythology and pressed the book even with the spines of all the other books on the library shelf.

Two days later Carl was back, but there was no happiness. It was as if someone had broken the necks of all the flowers in Georgia.

Sunday after dinner, while her parents were still in the parlor and Catherine had gone to visit friends, Emma followed the path down to the creek, still in her best dress. She took her slippers off and waded in up to her calves, careless of her skirts. Dragonflies hovered over the water. After some moments, it occurred to her she wished to scoop the mud at her feet. She did, and then she wiped her hands on her skirts. The feeling this brought was akin to freedom. She bent over again and brought up more of the silty creek bottom. This time she wiped her hands across her bodice. The wetness seeped through to her chest and refreshed her. She thought to press her sleeves back beyond her elbows. Again, she bent to retrieve the wet silt and now she smeared it up and down her arms. A kind of glory stirred in her center. In a single movement, she curved into herself, came down to sitting, and spread her whole body back into the water, her fingertips beneath her, her head half submerged. The sky above was a map without mark.