Freeman (19 page)

All her life, Bonnie had felt that way, felt as if she were getting away with something. In the last week, that feeling had vanished like ice under the summer sun. In the last week, she had gotten away with nothing. She had spent those days in the first hard physical labor of her entire life.

Now, sweat trickling down her brow, her hair fuzzy beneath an old flowered scarf, Bonnie leaned on her broom between the big doors of the old warehouse, open to admit a breeze, and gazed back at what she, Prudence, and Paul had accomplished. The cots were gone, given away to colored families. The bucket of limbs had been buried in a field, the rats had been routed by an aggressive tabby they called Prissy, the detritus on the floor had been discarded, the chairs and long tables had been uncrated and assembled, the walls had been whitewashed, and she had just finished sweeping the floors.

Bonnie felt an unfamiliar pride swell her chest, a sensation wholly different from that she had felt when she mastered a difficult piano part or moved with seamless elegance through some Boston tea. This was a sense of…
accomplishment
, a sense that she had
done
something. The warehouse, which had become first a soldier’s hospital and then a derelict husk, home only to rats, cobwebs, and ghosts, had been transformed by their hands into a classroom. A hand-painted sign on the front of the building made it official: “Cafferty School For Freedmen.” Bonnie could not help smiling.

Prudence, seeing her there, seemed to read her mind. She stopped shelving books and came to join her. “Well, Sister,” she said, “look what we have done.”

“Indeed,” said Bonnie.

“You did not think it possible, did you?”

Bonnie shook her head. “I had my doubts.”

“And now?”

“We have accomplished a miracle.”

“That we have,” said Prudence. “And just in time.”

She called out to Paul Cousins, who was in the back of the room, testing one of the last chairs to make certain it was sturdy. “Paul,” she said, “come here a moment.”

He looked confused. “Yes’m, Miss Prudence?”

“Join us,” she said. “We were just admiring our own handiwork.”

“Miss Prudence, I ain’t got time. Still got one more of them chairs to put together.”

“Shush,” she said. “It will hold. Come look.”

So he came and stood next to Bonnie. After a moment he said, “We done a lot here, that’s for certain. More’n I thought we could, tell you the truth.”

“We are ready,” said Prudence, and her voice held a touch of wonder. She turned to Bonnie and repeated it. “We are ready.”

Bonnie felt herself smile. “Yes, sister, I’d say we are.”

“Y’all always call each other that,” said Paul. “Y’all ain’t really sisters, are you?”

Bonnie laughed. “No, not really,” she said.

Prudence spoke solemnly. “Yes, really,” she said. She looked at Bonnie. “We
are
sisters. We simply had different parents.”

Bonnie squeezed Prudence’s hand. “Well yes,” she told Paul, who looked confused, “when you put it that way, I suppose we are sisters at that.”

There was a moment. Then Prudence said, “Come. That’s enough work for today. Miss Ginny has promised us a sumptuous meal to celebrate the completion of our labors. I told her I would bring some rice from the general store. Why don’t the two of you walk with me and we can make an excursion of it? It is a lovely afternoon.”

She gave them a sweet smile, but Bonnie knew Paul would not see the mischief shining at the edges, would not know Prudence was only scheming to throw the two of them together. She had whispered just the night before, as they lay abed in the darkness of their room, that she thought Paul was smitten. Bonnie had laughed and called it the silliest thing she had ever heard.

Now, as he nodded too eagerly, a broad grin splitting his dark features, she was not so certain. “Why sure,” he said, with rather too much casualness, “that be right fine.”

He was, Bonnie had to admit, not bad looking in a rough-hewn sort of way. But she could not imagine herself with someone just days removed from slavery, someone who said “Marse,” and who lowered his eyes when he addressed white people—even Prudence. Someone who could not read.

For some reason, she thought again of that maid, looking at her as though they shared a secret. But they did not, she decided. Though they were both colored, they shared nothing else.

“Prudence,” she said, “we have so much work yet to do. Besides, I am in no fit condition to be seen in town. I am dusty and my hair is unkempt.”

“As am I,” said Prudence. “What of it? We are not going for a promenade in the Common, sister.”

“I think you look right fine, Miss Bonnie,” said Paul. And the eyes that had seemed lit by fire a week ago now ducked bashfully when Bonnie looked at him.

“You see?” said Prudence. “Mr. Cousins thinks you look right fine. That settles it.” Her eyebrows lifted playfully, daring disagreement. It was an expression of triumph Bonnie knew well from their years together. Prudence usually got what she wanted.

“Very well,” said Bonnie.

Her expression must have promised dire retribution, because Prudence reflected back eyes so rounded by blameless innocence it was all Bonnie could manage not to laugh. Paul, oblivious to the entire exchange, rolled his neck and made a show of stretching the knots out of his back. It was a warm afternoon, the breeze carrying just the barest warning of the chill to come when the sun left the sky. “Nice day,” he said.

And, thought Bonnie, it was. It really was.

They closed and locked the big doors, closed and locked the smaller door on the side of the building, and set off up Main Street walking three abreast, with Prudence on the inside and Bonnie in the middle. Miss Ginny was sitting on her tiny porch in a rocking chair, smoking a corncob pipe. She waved as they passed.

“Y’all gettin’ along all right with Ginny?” Paul asked.

“Oh yes,” said Prudence. “She was very kind to take us in. Do you not agree, Bonnie?”

Bonnie smiled an inward smile at the obvious attempt to draw her into conversation. “Yes,” she said, “she was most kind.”

They passed two little colored children, a boy and a girl, going the other way. “We see you in school Monday,” the little boy sang out. The anticipation suffusing his voice warmed her.

“So tell us about yourself, Mr. Cousins,” Prudence said, looking across at him.

“Well, first thing to tell you is, ain’t no ‘mister.’ I’se just plain Paul.” He had been trying to talk Prudence—and Bonnie—out of the formality for days.

“Tell us about yourself,” Prudence insisted, and Bonnie knew this was for her benefit. “Were you born here? Are you married? What do you intend to do, now that you are free?”

“Aw, miss, ain’t much to tell ’bout ol’ Paul. Done chopped cotton most of my life for Marse Angus Dunbar. He got a big place couple mile or so from here. When the freedom come, I mostly thought I just make the contract and stay on his place. I ain’t come to town for nothin’ but to look around, see what town look like, ’cause I ain’t never been before. But I always planned to go back, you see? Go back and chop cotton like I always done. ’Course, that’s before I seen you and Miss Bonnie come to town. Y’all done changed all my plans.” He was looking at Bonnie as he said it.

“Oh?” said Prudence. “How did we do that?” Her voice was honeyed like a beehive. Bonnie bit her lip, fighting an urge to jab Prudence with her elbow.

“How y’all change my plans?” repeated Paul. “Ever’ which a way, I suppose. Tell you this much: ain’t plannin’ to go chop cotton for Marse Dunbar no time soon. Figure to stay ’round here long as y’all have me.” Still looking at Bonnie.

Prudence said, “As long as you are going to be around the school anyway, why not allow us to teach you? We shall have an adult class in the evenings and you are welcome to attend.”

Bonnie had asked him the same question the day they hired him, as she stood there taking down names and he stood a few feet away, watching her warily. In response, he had smiled abashedly. “No, ma’am,” he had said. “I don’t think so.”

He did the same now. “Well, it’s like I told Bonnie,” he said, shoulders hunched, grinning like a bashful child, “ain’t no use y’all tryin’ to get no learnin’ into my ol’ head. Y’all best to concentrate on them young ’uns. They the ones you need to help.”

Bonnie surprised herself. “Paul, you are not that old,” she said. “There are people much older than you who have signed up. Look at Miss Ginny. If she is not too old, you certainly are not.”

“Yes, ma’am. But still ain’t no use. They’s some you can teach and some you can’t.”

Bonnie pressed it. “How do you know if you have never tried?”

The grin closed over, disappeared as if it had never been. “Ma’am,” he said, “I know.” It was the sound of a closing door.

They fell silent. Around them, Main Street changed. Street lamps appeared and the shotgun houses of the Negro district became the tree-shaded front yards and two-story homes of the white district. After another couple of blocks, the street changed yet again, giving way to stores and the town’s few other remaining commercial interests as they drew closer to the river.

It was a Saturday afternoon and the street was busy. Women walking together, boys racing about, a small group of Union soldiers watering their horses, a pair of white men sitting on a bench, spitting juicy brown streams into the dirt. Bonnie felt people’s eyes on them, marking their passage. She knew what they were thinking:
Here came those two Yankees, the outsiders from up North who were set to open that school for the freedmen
. Bonnie glanced up at Paul. His face had gone rigid. He sensed it, too.

“We seem to have attracted quite a bit of attention,” said Prudence, and now it was unanimous.

“I had no idea we were of such interest,” said Bonnie. They had spent the entire week getting the school ready. This was their first venture to the west end of Main Street.

A towheaded little white boy with bare feet and patches on the knees of his jeans ran up alongside them. “Y’all the ones openin’ that school for the niggers?” he demanded.

“We have opened a school for freedmen,” Prudence told him. “And I must say, young man, that I do not approve of that sort of language.”

The scampering boy stopped short, puzzlement creasing his eyes. “What you mean?” he demanded. “What language?”

They left him there. Bonnie was glad he didn’t follow.

“’Pears we got more trouble,” said Paul, nodding.

Ahead of them, a group of four young men—little more than boys, really—had assembled abreast the walk. The one in the middle—dirty blonde hair straggling from beneath his cap, something that would someday be a moustache dusting his upper lip—lifted his chin in challenge. “I expect you all are the Yankees everybody’s talkin’ about,” he said through a pleasant smile. “Out for a stroll this fine afternoon?”

“Let us pass,” said Prudence.

He looked around, playing for the crowd that had materialized out of nowhere. Women with crimped, judgmental mouths, men with mean, poor eyes. “Why, ma’am,” said the boy, loudly, so everyone could hear, “that’s right unfriendly of you. I just asked you a simple question. Y’all are the Yankees, ain’t you? The ones opening up that school down yonder for the niggers?”

Prudence stepped forward until she was staring down into his eyes. “Who we are and what we are doing is hardly any of your concern,” she said, and her voice was wintry and formal. “Now please, step aside and allow us to go on our way.”

For the first time, the boy looked uncertain. His Adam’s apple bobbed. He smiled again but it had a rather sickly cast. “Why of course,” he said. “Just tryin’ to pass the time of day is all.”

He nodded at one of the other boys and they stepped to the side, the barrier of them opening like a gate. Prudence, Bonnie, and Paul walked through single file, Prudence leading the way, her chin characteristically high. Paul brought up the rear, glancing nervously about.

The store stood a block from the river. Its green awning announced that the proprietor was one A.J. Socrates and that in addition to selling groceries, he maintained a telegraph office and postal services. Inside, the shelves were lined neatly with food in boxes and cans. It was the new way of selling groceries, but Bonnie didn’t fully trust it. She had never understood how people could be expected to buy food they could not see and inspect.

The store was empty but for the shopkeeper himself, who stood behind his counter, leaning on his fists as if to brace himself for the group’s arrival. A.J. Socrates was a tall, thin man, his face sallow and shrunken. “What do y’all want?” he demanded, his voice hard like drought soil.