Currents (4 page)

“O
ld Mistress wants all the silver polished so you can sees yourself in it,” Queenie instructed as she finished mixing up the paste. “I'm gonna be checkin' on you 'cause
she
gonna be checkin' on me!”

Bones wrinkled her nose. “It smells funny,” she said.

“That's why you not gonna be polishin' in my kitchen house,” Queenie said.

She led Bones outside to the picnic table next to the big house. Queenie often sat there on sweltering days and chopped green beans and carrots, or diced potatoes and onions.

Today she had spread old newspapers on top and had more than two dozen pieces of Old Mistress's silver laid out.

“Get to work, gal,” Queenie ordered. “And don't miss any little corners or edges!”

Bones sat down on the bench and began polishing a water pitcher in neat little circles with the creamy white paste. The smooth surfaces were easy. It was the decorative areas—the vines and twining roses—that took the longest. They reminded her of the little leaves and vines her pappy had carved into her peach pit. That made her smile. She dug her fingernail into the little crevices to work out the tarnish. When she finished the pitcher she held it up and looked at her reflection.
Pretty cute
, she thought. She stuck her tongue through the space between her two front teeth. Mama said that when Bones got older that space would close up. Mama said she had that same space when she was a child, and by the time she was grown it was gone. Bones would like it if her ears didn't stick out from her head quite so much, but she figured she was stuck with them for good.

She moved the water pitcher over slightly to one side, exposing the newspaper underneath. She looked around carefully before lowering her eyes to read the paper. There was an article about an upcoming Thanksgiving Ball in Richmond.
Well, well
, Bones thought. Another stated that Mrs. So & So had ladies over for a luncheon. Nothing all that interesting, but it still felt good to be able to read, and to know that the learning had stuck good in her head.

Bones looked down at her hands, white now from the polishing paste, and said out loud, “Well, I declare, I think they look prettier black!”

She was interrupted when the window above where she was working slid open, and she heard Liza say, “I need you to help me with my sewing, Jane. I can't get the hem on my doll's dress to hang straight.”

Bones scanned the yard to be sure there was no one around her, and then she tiptoed over and stood under the open window. She couldn't see the girls but she recognized the next voice as Liza's older sister, Jane.

“Give me your sewing basket and thread your needle. It's just a matter of practice. I'll show you,” Jane said. “And I understand you will have plenty of time indoors to practice. Mama says that she is horrified at the direction your character has taken, and you will be spending more time indoors practicing more ladylike pursuits.”

“So she says.” Liza groaned.

Bones leaned against the house where she could better hear the conversation.

“What could you have been thinking, Liza, teachin' that little Negra gal to read and write?” Jane said.

“I've decided that I am going to be a teacher when I'm grown. I was practicing on Bones. Mama didn't have to have her beaten,” Liza said. “It was my idea to teach her. I was watching from my bedroom window when Ben went down to Bones's cabin, and I heard her screams all the way up here. It was so terrible!”

“Regardless,” Jane said. “The little blackie needed to learn her place.”

“I miss playing with her. You have the Anderson twins,” Liza sputtered. “All I have is you!”

“Well!” Jane said, bristling. “I beg your pardon?”

“I mean that you like to just read and sew, and I want to go out and run in the fields and play with the dogs,” Liza explained.

“You'll never catch a man if you keep carrying on that way,” Jane said. “No one will want a wife who acts like a wild little boy!”

“I don't want to catch a man!” Liza insisted. “I want to be a teacher.”

“Oh, Lord, Liza Anne Brewster,” Jane said. “You go ahead and teach, then, but I'm going to be the lady of a plantation just like Stillwater someday. You'll be some raggedy poor old teacher—probably a spinster at the rate you're carrying on. But don't worry, you can come visit me, and I'll give you my hand-me-downs.”

At least she misses me, too
, Bones thought, crouched against the wall in her hiding spot.

M
ost Sundays the slaves were given the afternoon off. One Sunday in late September, Master Brewster pulled up on his black horse hauling a wooden cart. Bones sucked in her breath when she saw Miss Liza was with him, sitting high atop her own horse, her pale blonde hair tied up in pretty braids.

Master rang a big bell that was attached to the wagon, and his voice boomed across the slave yard. “Boots or shoes for everyone!”

Doors opened up and down the long row of cabins, and women came out with babies on their hips, even though there were no shoes for babies. Men who were fishing down at the river put down their poles and came up to stand in line. No one wanted to miss a chance for a pair of shoes.

Bones stood mesmerized in her doorway, Lovely swinging from her neck. She looked up at Miss Liza, her legs swung primly sidesaddle. She hadn't been allowed to play with or even talk to her since they had been caught by Old Mistress with the books. It was odd to see her here in the slave quarters, in the middle of Bones's world.

“Agnes May, are you coming, gal?” Master looked directly at Bones.

She stared blankly back. She turned her head and looked behind her, but there was no one there. Who was he talking to?

“I'm speaking to you. Bones?” he said.

She stepped out and got in line.

What did he call me?
she asked herself.

Miss Liza slid delicately off the horse and walked straight up to her. “Agnes May. That's the name you were born with, silly. Bones is your nickname.”

Just like that. Not a word to each other in weeks, since she'd had the beating of her life, and up Liza comes, as if nothing but time had come between them. And Bones had never before heard this name —Agnes May.

“You can come up to the house some day after the crops are in, and we'll play with my dolls,” Miss Liza said. “Mama says we can. You can bring Lovely, too.” She took Bones's hand and placed two little black buttons in her palm. “These are for Lovely. Now she can have some eyes. Just press them onto her face.”

Agnes May “Bones” Brewster smiled a little and said, “Thank you, Miss, I'm grateful.” Liza smiled a little, too, spun on her dainty slipper, and hopped back up on her horse.

That night, Bones sat next to Granny on the cabin door stoop while Granny puffed away on the new corncob pipe she had made to replace the one Ben had stolen. They liked to sit together in the quiet just before bed to relax and watch the stars flitter in the sky.

Granny had pulled off her shoes and dusted fresh herbs in them. Bones thought she always walked as though she had a stone in her shoe, but Granny said it was rheumatism that made her limp. Every week she placed fresh sprinkles of red pepper in her shoes, and on nights when her rheumatism really bothered her, she would drink a boiled tea made from the same dark flakes. This was just one of Granny's remedies. She said you could get most everything a body needed from the fields and the woods. But Bones noticed that as she got older, Granny's limp only got worse, especially when the weather was damp.

Crouched in front of the cabin next to theirs was a tall, lanky boy a couple of years older than Bones. He was singing and picking softly on a banjo he'd carved from a gourd. “
Rabbit in the briar patch, squirrel in the tree, wish I could go huntin', but I ain't free.
”

“Franklin, how you learned to play and sing so good?” Bones called over.

“My pappy teach me before he sold,” he said, smiling sweetly at her.

“You pappy teach you good, Franklin. I don't know if my pappy could play music, but he could sure make furniture that was as beautiful as a song. Mama said he carved birds and flowers and fruit into the wood—fit for a queen!”

“Um-hmm,” Granny agreed. “That man could turn an old pine knot into a rose with just a little old jackknife.”

Bones opened up her hand and showed Franklin her carved heart.

“What is that?” he asked.

“It's a peach pit! My pappy carved it special for me.” Bones smiled. “And it's my pappy's heart that he give to me when I was born.”

“Well, now,” Franklin said. “You are sure right 'bout that. It is beautiful.”

Bones loved this time of day, sitting with Granny. Sometimes the old woman would break her silence, telling stories about their ancestors and tales of Africa. She said her grandpappy had been a king in Africa where their people came from. When she got to puffing away on her pipe, she'd get all wound up and spout out wondrous tales of magical lions or tortoises and the awful tricks they would play on people.

“How old is you, Granny?” Bones sat close to her wiry, little grandmother and picked at some pecans. “You gots a name besides Granny?” She had more important things on her mind tonight than stories of ancestors and talking animals.

“I don't know exactly how old I is, but I knows my name,” Granny answered. “It's Lucy. Yes'sa. My mammy and pappy was borned in Africa, that's what they told me. I was born on the Carter Plantation up-river, and when they sold me here, Mistress Carter said to be sure to tell 'em you's borned Lucy Carter. Then they be sure to put you down in their slave book. But when they sell me to the Brewsters, they say they put my name in the book as Lucy Brewster. That because you take the last name of the folks who owns you.

“Lawd, ole Masta Carter, he own so many Negras he didn't know his own slaves when he seen them. He stops them on the road and say, ‘Whose Negras are you?' They'd say, ‘We's Masta Carter's Negras.'

“He'd say, ‘I am Masta Carter.' And he'd drive on.” She slapped her leg and laughed. “But Missis Carter was good to us Negras. And they didn't whip us like some owners did. But they done sold us if they don' need us. Your mama and me, we so happy when you become a house Negra—because house Negras get plenty to eat. Like ham and extra corn bread. That's why Queenie so fat! Lord. That woman think the sun come up just to hear her crow.”

Granny's nose wrinkled up like she smelled something funny, and she spit a long stream of dark tobacco out the corner of her mouth and off to the side of the cabin. Granny didn't take much liking to Queenie. She said she put on airs because she worked in the big house.

The old woman kept staring up at the sky. “Look like God just took a fistful a stars and throwed them up into heaven,” she said.

There was a long pause, and then Bones, her eyes big, whispered, “Did you see it, Granny? Did you see your name in that book?”

The old woman hooted with laughter. “Lawd no! I can't read. But they told me so. All plantations got slave books. That's how they keep track of all the Negras they own and all them that dies.”

“You scared of dying, Granny?” Bones asked.

“Oh, no, child. I figured out the secret to bein' happy here on earth, and I figure the Lawd will show me the way when I go home to him.”

“What's the secret?” Bones asked.

“Well, nothing would beat being free. That's the first thing. But whether or not you's free, I figure happiness is three things—someone to love, something to do, and something to look forward to.”

“What you got to look forward to, Granny?”

“Why heavens, child! Someday I's going to heaven and there ain't nothin' Old Mistress or anyone else can do to keep me from going.”

T
hat night, Granny, Mama, and Bones lay together tight as a fist against the early autumn's growing night chill. The field hands would be working seven days a week from now on to bring in the harvest. Bones would be sent to the fields for a while, too. Every man and woman that could be spared was set to splitting and stacking peach-tree wood for the next year. This winter they would use up all the stacks that had been drying since last year. The wood they cut now would dry and be used the following winter. Long, neatly stacked woodpiles were set outside the big house, and a separate one stood behind the slave quarters for their fireplaces. Master Brewster's father had made sure when each cabin was built it had a chimney made of sticks, mud, and stones. When the winter set in, the slaves could have a few pieces of peach wood every day so that even if their cabins were never quite warm, they weren't freezing. Bones knew that you had to plan seasons ahead when you lived off the land.