Shifted By The Winds (34 page)

Rose looked at her with surprise. She knew she was about to discover the most important part of what Felicia had wanted to wait to reveal.

“…Something very special happens every November. It’s called the Leonid Meteor Shower. When I go out at night to watch meteors—” Felicia stopped, realizing she had lost everyone again. She bit her lip and thought for a moment. “How many of you have ever seen what looked to be a shooting star streaking across the sky?” She was relieved when most of the hands in the room went up. “It’s not really a star,” she proclaimed. “Those are
meteors
. They are very big chunks of rock that break off of a comet. When they get close to Earth, gravity makes them start moving really fast until they catch fire. The heat melts them away so they don’t hit the Earth. That’s what makes them
look
like a shooting star.”

“How do you know all this?” Clay demanded, unable to remain silent. “I only seen a few of those in my entire life. I always thought they would come down and crash on me. ”

Other children nodded their heads in agreement, their eyes wide with wonder and curiosity.

“I only see a few of them on a good night of watching,” Felicia agreed, “but on November thirteenth and fourteenth—just next month—the Leonid Meteor Shower happens.” She paused and took a long breath, watching the other students carefully. Felicia knew she had everyone’s full attention. She was making them hungry to hear what she had to say.

Rose smiled with amazement as the little girl drew out the suspense.

“Those two nights we’ll be able to see hundreds, maybe even
thousands
of shooting stars in the sky,” Felicia announced.

“Really?” Rose couldn’t hold back the question. Her mind filled with the image Felicia was creating. She longed to see it for herself.

“Really,” Felicia said happily. “I thought it would be a wonderful thing if all the students in the school met on the plantation to watch them together.” She caught Rose’s eyes, looking tentative for the first time.

“That’s a wonderful idea,” Rose responded. She had a clear vision of parents and children lined up on blankets, their faces lifted to the sky. She said a quick prayer it would be a clear night with no clouds. “We’ll have a family picnic and then watch the meteor shower together,” she announced. Her mind began to work through the details.

Felicia’s face exploded with a grin. “And that’s all I have to say about Maria Mitchell,” she finished.

Rose stood as Felicia came to claim her seat. “That was wonderful, Felicia,” she said, her heart melting at the pride and satisfaction shining in Felicia’s eyes. Then she turned to the rest of the class. “I know I said all of you could ask Felicia questions, but I think it would be better if we just have Felicia teach us something new every day about astronomy. When the Leonid Meteor Shower happens, we’ll all know what we are seeing. What do all of you think?”

A chorus of agreement rose from every child in the room.  Felicia’s face bloomed with a smile brighter than the sunshine streaming in through the windows.

Rose beckoned to Felicia to remain behind when she released the rest of the children at the end of the day. She waited until the schoolyard emptied, and then she turned to Felicia. “How would you like to be my teaching assistant?”

Felicia stared at her with disbelief. “Could you say that again?”

Rose smiled, completely understanding the stunned joy in the little girl’s eyes. “I would like you to become my teaching assistant. You are a natural teacher, and you know so much about so many things. You can teach the students about astronomy, but you can also keep them up-to-date on things happening in the country. I don’t have time to stay as current as you do. It would help me as much as everyone else,” she admitted.

The idea that had hatched while she was listening to Felicia teach had blossomed into a complete plan by the end of the day. “You’ll have to stay current with all your studies, and you still have to take time to play every day,” she warned. “It may be too much for you, but I’d like to give it a try.”

Felicia was nodding her head so hard her braids were slapping against her back. “Yes!” she cried. “It will be just like Maria Mitchell being a teaching assistant for her father. Only I’ll be a teaching assistant for my mama!”

Rose caught her breath. This was the first time Felicia had ever referred to Rose as her mother.

Felicia realized it at the exact same moment. She caught her breath and stared deeply into Rose’s eyes. “I’ve been real afraid to call you Mama,” she murmured. There was a look of pain and loss that shadowed her eyes for a brief moment as she remembered the mama and daddy she had lost, but it was quickly swallowed by a look of intense longing. “Will it be okay if I call you Mama, Miss Rose?” she asked.

Rose’s answer was to hold out her arms and envelop the little girl in a close hug. “I can’t think of anything I would like better,” she whispered, tears burning her eyes as Felicia threw her arms around her waist and clung to her. “I love you, Felicia.”

“I love you, too, Mama,” Felicia whispered back.

Rose was exhausted when she finished class that night. The men were all still busy finishing up the harvest, but the women had returned to school two weeks earlier. They worked in the fields during the day but left in time to come to school. Her insistence about the importance of education was paying off. Her school was full, not only of the women from the plantation, but also the surrounding area. She had gone home with Felicia after school but returned after eating dinner with her family, as she did almost every night, to teach the adults.

“We’re done for the night,” Rose announced. “I’m proud of all of you,” she said. “Every single woman in this room is reading now. Congratulations!” She felt a surge of anxiety when the women nodded but remained seated, their bodies cramped into small desks built for children. She could tell by the looks on many of their faces that something was wrong. She had felt glimmers of it through the night, but she had pushed it aside to focus on teaching.

Now she perched on the edge of her desk as her eyes swept the room. There were thirty-five women looking back at her. They ranged in age from twenty-five to eighty years old. All of their eyes carried the weight of years of slavery, but they also carried the pride of education. “What is it?” she asked.

Morah, the youngest one in the group, stood. Her eyes were fearful, but determined. She had obviously been selected to be the spokesperson. “We need your help, Rose. Our men ain’t treating us right.”

Rose decided now was not the time to correct her speaking. She was disturbed by the pain and anger radiating from the eyes of the woman almost her age. “What do you mean?” she asked, though she was certain she already knew.

“When me and Abraham were slaves together before the war, and we was married, things felt pretty equal,” Morah replied. “We were both slaves. We were both treated badly, but we made it through because we had each other. I thought when slavery ended that it meant things would be better for me.” She scowled. “Some things are worse.”

Rose’s gut tightened as most of the other women nodded their heads.

“Abraham came home a while back and told me he was now the
head of the house
,” she said, disgust evident in her voice. “From that point forward he been treating me like he’s better than me.” Pain shadowed the anger in her eyes. “It used to just be a lot of yelling, but now he’s taken to hitting me and the children when he don’t like something.” She waved her hand across the room. “The same thing is happening with a bunch of us. We didn’t leave the beatings we done had in slavery just to be treated bad by our men!”

Rose sighed. She had suspected something like this may happen ever since Moses brought word that a brochure from the Freedmen’s Bureau designating males as the heads of their households had landed in his men’s hands.

June opened the door and stepped inside. “I’m sorry I missed class,” she said. “Little Simon is sick.” She interpreted the look on Rose’s face. “He’s going to be fine,” she assured her, “but I didn’t want to leave him alone. Polly came by and offered to stay with him so I could come to the meeting.”

The meeting?
Rose realized things must be serious if all the women had
planned
a meeting. She waited for Morah to continue, praying she would know what to say.

Morah took a deep breath. “We need your help, Rose. Things can’t keep going like they be going. You be Moses’ wife, and you be the teacher. Can you do something?”

Rose swallowed hard. She had read the brochure that seemed to have sparked all the trouble.

“Change is hard,” she began. “When all of us were slaves, the master was the one in charge, so most of us felt more equal. There was not one person earning money, because none of us did. We were all equally powerless.”

“But…” Morah began to protest.

Rose raised her hand. “Let me finish and then we’ll talk about what we’re going to do.” Morah nodded and sat back. “Now that we’re free, our men are starting to think more like white men,” she admitted. “Many of them have decided men and women are different.” She sighed heavily. “Actually, a lot of them have decided they are better than women.”

“Nonsense,” Morah snorted.

Some of the other women looked doubtful.  Rose understood. A lifetime of slavery had already made them feel less than. Most of them were used to being abused and controlled by their masters and their overseers. It would be frightfully easy for them to concede control of their lives to abusive husbands. Anger flared in her as she stared into eyes that had seen so much suffering. They were working so hard to learn and to make their lives better. “Morah is right,” she said. “It is pure nonsense.” Her declaration made most of the women sit up straighter.  It also loosened their tongues.

“My man told me he was going to run things now because he served as a soldier. He said that makes him better than me, and that I have to let him control things now.” The statement was offered up by a mousy-looking woman who had lived as a slave for most of her fifty years.

“My husband told me about a brochure that says men are the only ones who can sign contracts for their whole family. It ain’t happening here on Cromwell, but he said men were going to be paid more than women for the same work,” another chimed in. “He said that makes him better than me, and the one who should be in charge. I figure if I’m out sweating in the tobacco fields the same as him, that I ought to get paid the same!”

A murmur of agreement rose from the rest of the room.

“Ain’t gonna do nothing but get worse if black men get the vote like Congress is trying to make happen,” Hettie added. “I be eighty years old. I lived long enough to know men like to think they are in charge. The black man always been pushed down, but if they get that right to vote it’s gonna make things even harder for us.”

“You don’t think they should vote?” Rose asked, wanting to keep the conversation going. She hoped it would give her time to think of an adequate response.

“Oh, I reckon they should vote, but they ain’t got no more right to vote than I do,” Hettie snapped. “It ain’t right that white women can’t vote, and it ain’t right that black women can’t vote. I figure men done quite enough to mess up things in this country. It’s gonna take women to make things right again. I reckon I’ve lived long enough to figure that much out!”

Rose couldn’t have agreed more, but she recognized the more immediate need of dealing with the abuse in the community.