All Things New (25 page)

“I’ve started a school of sorts on our plantation. We have three new children at White Oak besides Lizzie’s three, and I promised to give them lessons in return for their help with some yard work. We started yesterday and it was fun. They are so eager to learn. And very bright, too.”

“Hey! Why not come into town and teach all the children?”

“You said the school wasn’t finished.”

“Not yet. But once the new books arrive, you could hold classes outside the bureau office.”

“My mother would never allow it. She doesn’t know I’m teaching White Oak’s children as it is. But Roselle told me that she would like to become a teacher someday. Do you think that’s possible? Would I be wrong to encourage her?”

“Not at all. I’ve heard of Negro teachers in other bureau schools down here.”

“Good. I’ll encourage her, then.” She looked up at Alexander, and the way he was gazing at her made her forget everything she had planned to say.

“I’m glad you came today, Josephine. I was afraid you might not because of the rain.”

She looked away, suddenly self-conscious. “I only agreed to meet with you because you raised so many questions the last few times we spoke, and you still haven’t answered them all.”

“I don’t know all the answers myself,” he said with a laugh. “But go ahead and ask. I’ll give it a try.”

She dared another glance at him and saw that he was smiling. Josephine thought he was a nice-looking man, not as handsome as her father had been, but then few men were. But what made Alexander attractive to her weren’t his looks, but the quiet inner strength he seemed to possess, and a maturity beyond his years.

“Well,” she began, “I have been thinking about your comments on why God never answered my prayers. You said we could talk about it after I had time to think, remember?”

“Of course. Aren’t you tired of standing, Josephine? Shall we sit down?”

“No, thank you. The ground is much too wet.” And it made her heart beat in a funny way to think of squeezing close to him in the cramped space beneath the tree house. “Anyway, you said that God couldn’t answer my prayers because He wanted to set the slaves free—”

“Not only the slaves. What if God wanted to set you free, as well?”

“What do you mean? I am free. I always have been.”

He shook his head, impatient with her. “What do you suppose your life would have been like if the South had won the war? If your father hadn’t died?”

“My mother was just talking about this the other day when she was discussing her dance. She and my father would have made sure I was courted by suitors from proper, respectable families. I would have married one of them and become a wife and mother. I might have moved to my husband’s plantation, perhaps lived with my in-laws for a time. Eventually I would have become the mistress of my own plantation.”

“How do you feel about that? Are you sorry it didn’t happen that way?”

“To be honest, I feel relieved. I told Mother the old way of courting and arranging marriages seems so artificial now. But I wouldn’t have questioned it if we hadn’t lost the war and everything else.”

“The war stripped away all those expectations. The old demands are gone and you—and the former slaves—are free to do what God created you to do, not what everyone tells you to do.”

“But God created women to be wives and mothers.”

“True, but women can fill additional roles, too. The Quakers believe in education for men
and
women. My two married sisters did some public speaking for the abolition movement. What if the war was about your emancipation as well as the slaves’?”

That was the other question he had raised, the one that haunted her. What did she want for her life, for her future? Jo realized she didn’t know the answer because she had never been free to ask it. All the important decisions had been made for her, and she’d
been expected to trust her parents’ choices. She had never sampled another way of life.

“I don’t know how to answer that,” she finally said. “I would have been content to marry my father’s choice and now I’m content not to marry. I realize I’m too different from other girls, too plain—”

“You aren’t plain!”

She laid her hand on his damp jacket sleeve to silence him. “Please don’t. I wasn’t fishing for a compliment. I-I need to go. Mother will wonder where I’ve been and why my hair and clothes are wet. Thank you again for the shoes.”

“But . . . we didn’t finish talking. When will I see you again?”

She wanted to say
never
, knowing she shouldn’t have come in the first place and shouldn’t be talking to him at all. “A week from today,” she said.

“The same time?”

“Yes, the same time and place.” She hurried away into the cold morning rain.

24

Every time Josephine talked to Alexander Chandler she would spend the rest of the day thinking about his words. He always challenged the things she had been taught, challenged her to think differently. It was the same this time, his words shadowing her as if Alexander himself was following her through the house.

It rained all day, frustrating her. She and the children couldn’t work on the terrace, nor could Jo find an excuse to sneak away to the kitchen to teach them another lesson. She had nothing to do all day but think about Alexander.

She waited until the following day to show the shoes to Mary, trying to dream up an explanation for them—and failing. “Come upstairs to the bedroom with me,” she said after breakfast. “You need to try on your dress so I can pin the hem.” Josephine waited until Mary had buttoned on the unfinished dress, then handed her the shoes. “Here, I thought you could use a pair of shoes to wear to the dance with your new dress.”

“Josephine! Where did these come from?”

“Try them on. See if they fit.”

Mary sat down on the bed and slipped the shoes onto her feet. “Where did you get them?”

“They’re a gift from someone who saw that we needed them. I
have a new pair, too. See?” She lifted the hem of her dress to show Mary her shoes.

“You shouldn’t have accepted them. Mother won’t like us taking charity.” Her soft voice was little more than a whisper.

“But we need them, don’t we? Do they fit you?”

“Yes. Very well, in fact.”

“Good. Mine do, too. Let’s just wear the shoes and enjoy them for now. We can deal with Mother once she notices them.”

Mary looked doubtful, as if afraid to go against their mother’s rigid code of rules. She had been a mere child, eleven years old, when the war began to dismantle their comfortable life, and Josephine could see the lasting effects it had left on Mary. “Do you remember the old days, Mary, when we took things like shoes and new dresses for granted instead of considering them luxuries?”

“Yes . . . I never had to worry about outgrowing my shoes or my dresses or wonder what I would do if I did. But things just keep getting worse and worse until it seems like every day we lose something else.” She started to take off the shoes, but Josephine stopped her.

“No, leave them on and climb up on that chair so I can measure the hem. How does the dress feel? Does it fit you?”

“Yes. Perfectly. How did you ever learn to sew like this?”

“It isn’t difficult. You—” She started to say,
You could do it, too
, but changed her mind. “You would be surprised how easy it is.”

She helped Mary climb up, then sat cross-legged on the floor below her with a cushion of dress pins as she started to work. She remembered her sister’s terror as she’d huddled at Aunt Olivia’s house in Richmond. Mary was a beautiful girl with porcelain skin like their mother’s, her delicate cheeks still rosy and childlike. But she was so fearful, talking softly, walking softly, as if afraid she might do something to trigger the next disaster. What would her future be? Josephine stopped pinning for a moment and looked up at her.

“Someone asked me, not long ago, what I wanted for myself, my future. How would you answer that question, Mary?”

“I want the same things every woman does: marriage, a home of my own, children. What else is there?”

Josephine didn’t know the answer herself. “Would you ever marry a man for love?”

“What do you mean?”

“Suppose you fell in love with a man who Mother thought unsuitable? Someone who couldn’t afford to hire servants, and you had to do all the cleaning and cooking and everything that Lizzie does. Would you marry him anyway?”

“I don’t even want to imagine such a thing! It won’t happen. I know that people around here don’t have much right now because the Yankees stole it all, but Mother says that by the time I’m old enough to marry, we’ll have everything back again. We already have some of our slaves back, don’t we?”

“They aren’t slaves, Mary.”

“You know what I mean. Mother says she’s going to train Roselle to be my lady’s maid and teach her how to fix my hair and get dressed in the morning. She said Roselle could even move with me and be my maid after I marry.”

Roselle, who dreamed of being a schoolteacher.
Josephine sighed, realizing the hopelessness of trying to change her sister’s way of thinking—the way Alexander Chandler was changing hers. “Stand still so I can pin the hem.”

“Will my dress be done after you finish the hem?”

“I’m afraid not. The side seams are just basted. I wanted to be sure it fit you first. I’ll need to re-sew them with a backstitch before you can wear it, or you’ll rip them all out the first time a gentleman whirls you around the dance floor.”

Josephine was nearly finished when Mother walked into the room. “That dress looks lovely on you, Mary. Josephine, must you sit on the floor? I’m sure there’s a footstool you can use. Anyway, I’ve come to tell you girls that we’re going to visit the Blakes today. I’ve asked Willy to bring the carriage around.”

That meant visiting Harrison. Josephine hadn’t thought of him in days and certainly hadn’t missed seeing him—although she did
miss talking to Mrs. Blake. Mary stepped down from the chair to change her dress. “She didn’t notice our shoes,” she whispered to Jo after their mother left.

When they arrived at the Blakes’ plantation, Josephine was surprised to see Harrison sitting on the front porch in his new wheelchair. “Hasn’t he made wonderful progress?” Priscilla whispered to Jo after she greeted her. “He can wheel himself all around now, in and out of the house.”

“I’m so glad,” Josephine said.

While Mother and Mary went inside to visit with Priscilla, Josephine stayed on the porch to talk with Harrison for a moment, leaning against the railing. It had begun to rain again, drumming on the porch roof, dripping from the eaves, reminding her of her visit with Alexander beneath the tree house.

“I’m glad we’re getting rain, aren’t you, Harrison? It will be so good for your crops.”

“It won’t matter if it rains or not. Those Negroes will never make a profit from cotton.”

“Well, I see you’re still your same old cheerful self. I also see you’ve had a haircut and trimmed your beard. You look much better.”

“And you look like Eugenia Weatherly’s daughter today and not like the scrub maid.”

Her face went hot with embarrassment. “That was unkind.”

“I meant it to be unkind.”

“Why? Why do you enjoy insulting me and hurting my feelings? Does it make you feel better to speak to me that way? More like a man?”

“Shut up, Josephine. Just . . . shut up.”

“Don’t tell me what to do. You have no right.” It made her tremble from head to toe to talk to him this way, but it also felt good to speak her mind. Hadn’t Dr. Hunter encouraged her to argue with Harrison? And if her friendship with Alexander had taught her anything, it was to ask questions, to say what she thought, to speak up for herself.

Alexander. She would see him again next Tuesday. It seemed like a long time to wait. “Do you believe in God, Harrison,” she asked suddenly, “and that He answers prayer?”

“What?”

She stopped leaning against the railing and took a step toward him. “I asked if you still believed in God after everything that happened.”

“Of course I do. I’m not a heathen.”

“Do you believe He answers prayer?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Josephine decided to tell him the truth. “Because I no longer believe He does, and I wondered if we had something in common. Heaven knows, we don’t agree on anything else.”

Harrison laughed out loud. He actually laughed! In all the weeks she had lived with him, all the hours she’d spent with him, Jo had never once heard him laugh. She expected his mother to come running out to the porch to see what that unfamiliar sound was or who the jolly visitor could be. Surely it couldn’t be Harrison who was laughing. But it was.

“You are something else!” he said, shaking his head.

“Are you going to answer my question?”

“Sure. I’ll answer it. Unfortunately I still believe in God. I believe He allowed the Yankees to blow my leg off as payment for my sins. He turned me into a mangled, grotesque cripple to torment and punish me.”

She couldn’t reply. Alexander said that suffering wasn’t God’s punishment. Wasn’t that the lesson from the book of Job?

“I tried to end it all and take the shortcut to hell,” Harrison continued, “but God sent you and that ridiculous Yankee to stop me. The two of you make a fine pair of hell’s messengers, sent for the sole purpose of torturing me and punishing me here on earth for a little while longer. I guess the price of my sins hasn’t been paid in full yet.”

Josephine had no idea what to say.

“Have I shocked you? Aren’t you going to ask me what my unforgiveable sins are?”

“That is none of my business.”

“Ah! But you’ve made the rest of my miserable life your business. Why is that, you little hypocrite?”

“I’m not a hypocrite. A hypocrite is someone who claims to have faith but lives an entirely different life. You weren’t listening to me, Harrison. I said I no longer believed in the sort of God they taught us about in church, who’s always there listening to our prayers and—” She stopped. If what Alexander said was true, if God had better reasons for not answering her prayers, wanting to set the slaves free, to set her free, then could she begin to trust Him again?

“Go on . . .” He was waiting for her to finish.

“Never mind. I’ll give you your wish now. I’ll go inside and leave you alone.” And she did.

But Harrison’s words haunted her. Would God really turn him into a cripple to punish him?

Josephine asked Alexander about it the moment she met him beneath the tree house the following Tuesday. “You said the book of Job proved that suffering isn’t a punishment. But does that mean God never punishes people for their sins?”

“No, what the book of Job shows is that even good people sometimes suffer for reasons only God can see. . . . Shall we sit down, Josephine? We don’t need to visit standing up today. It isn’t raining.”

Her heart sped up at the thought of sitting beside him. “No, thank you. My skirt would get all dirty.”

“I’ll bring a blanket or something to sit on next time. I should have thought of it, I’m sorry.” His smile disarmed her. It seemed to come from a source deep inside him that filled his entire body, instead of a smile that was a mere social pleasantry. They remained standing beneath the floor of the tree house, as close together as they had the last time even though it wasn’t raining.

“Please, go on,” Josephine said. “I want to understand about Job and suffering.”

“If we believe God is good, then we can trust that if He brings suffering into our lives or if He doesn’t answer our prayers, it’s for our ultimate good.”

“Harrison thinks he lost his leg because God was punishing him. Could that be true?”

Alexander moved his shoulders in a halfhearted shrug, as if to say there was no simple answer. “Sometimes our suffering is a consequence of our own choices, going our own way, fighting against God. Losing his leg could be the result of Harrison’s decision to fight, not a punishment. God takes no joy in our suffering.”

“Why does He allow it, then?”

“Sometimes it’s His way of coaxing us to come back to Him. God used the war to draw me back to Him. People do more praying on the battlefield than they ever do in churches.”

“But if that’s true, I would have to believe it was good that Daddy died, good that my family and I suffered during the war and lost nearly everything we had.”

“You can never know for certain what your life would have been like if the war hadn’t happened. Suffering is part of living in a broken world. Your father might have died another way. Your family might have lost their fortune in some other kind of disaster. We’re wrong to expect our lives to be perfect on this side of heaven. And it’s wrong for parents to shelter their children and make them believe that the most important thing is to be happy.”

“If life isn’t supposed to be happy, then why live it? Why not end it like Harrison tried to do?”

“Because there’s a big difference between happiness and joy. Happiness is external and can change when your circumstances change. If you believe that money will make you happy, for instance, and then you lose all your money, you’ll be very unhappy. But joy is deep inside us and isn’t dependent on circumstances. Even poor people can have joy. Didn’t you tell me that doing simple chores like working in the garden brought satisfaction?”

“Yes . . . and it gives my mother fits. She claims the work will ruin my hands, among other reasons.”

Alexander reached for her hand and held it, looking at it before looking up at her. “When we walk away from God, we walk away from any chance of joy. Joy doesn’t come from circumstances but from God.”

His touch warmed her entire body as if she stood beside a flaming hearth. So did the way he was looking at her. Her heart began to gallop, and she had a sudden memory of how her brothers used to race each other down the lane on Daddy’s horses, hooves thudding on the dirt, pounding faster and faster. That’s what her heart felt like right now. She wanted Alexander to continue holding her hand, which was why she pulled it free. She forced herself to look away from his intense gaze, looking down the path toward home.