The Freedom Maze (18 page)

“Men,” said Tibet with deep disgust.

“Can we go fishing now?” Canny asked.

Sophie caught two bluegill, which she gave to Africa before she went back to the Big House.

Sophie worked in the kitchen for just about a week. Every night, after the last pot was scrubbed clean, she washed her face and hands and changed out of homespun into yellow calico and ran up to the Big House to read Old Missy to sleep. In this way, she managed to avoid seeing any Fairchilds at all, except, of course, Old Missy.

“I declare, Sophie,” Old Missy said one night, “you’re getting dark as a yard child. And look at your hands! What on earth have you been doing?”

“I’ve been working in the kitchen, ma’am. Just like you said.”

“I didn’t —” Old Missy stopped. “Clearly, there’s been some misunderstanding. Go fetch Mammy.”

Sophie obeyed, then stood at Old Missy’s shoulder as she lit into Mammy.

“I don’t know what you were thinking, Mammy, sending her to the kitchen. You know I promised Mr. Robert that we’d train her up as a lady’s maid. It shouldn’t need saying that I wanted her sent to the sewing house. I’m surprised at you, Mammy. I purely am.”

It was peculiar to see Mammy standing in front of Old Missy with her hands folded and her head bent, taking her scolding just like she wasn’t any more account than Sophie herself. It was obvious that she hated it.

Sophie just hoped that Mammy wouldn’t think of any better ways of getting even.

After the kitchen, the sewing house seemed mighty cool and quiet. Like Old Missy, Asia and Hepzibah clucked over the state of Sophie’s hands and made her rub them with goose grease so they wouldn’t catch on the fabric. Asia taught her how to darn linen and knitted stockings. Much to her surprise, Sophie liked darning, which was like weaving a tiny piece of new cloth with a needle. She was getting pretty good at it by the time the Beckers left at the end of August. Shortly after, the Kennedys followed, and the Prestons and all their servants, and Old Missy called Sophie back to the Big House.

It was hard settling down to being Old Missy’s shadow again. Sophie found herself thinking things that would earn her a scolding and maybe worse if she’d said them out loud. Sometimes she felt like she’d bit her tongue so often, she was like to bite it clear in two.

It didn’t make it easier that early September was close and hot as a felt blanket. One day Sophie woke with an aching head and what felt like a belly full of rats. First chance she got, she went up to use the pot and saw her drawers were streaked with blood.

Mama, ever practical, had warned her that this would happen sooner or later. Sophie could almost hear her cool voice saying how messy it was, and that refined folks didn’t mention it under any circumstances. But Sophie if didn’t mention it, her clothes would be ruined.

Sophie went down to the dressing room and stood in front of Aunt Winney, chewing her lip nervously.

Aunt Winney laid her mending in her lap. “Let me guess. You done ripped Missy Caro’s nightdress and you scared to ’fess up. Well, you just bring it here, we see how bad it look.”

“It’s not that. I haven’t done anything. It’s just —”

The old woman eyed her sharply. “It gots to be something. You white as a grub.”

“I . . . I’ve got . . . I’m bleeding, Aunt Winney. You know. Down there. I don’t know what to do.”

“Bleeding?” Aunt Winney chuckled. “Bless you, child, that ain’t nothing but your woman’s nature coming on you.” She held out her hand. “You help me up out this chair, and I ask Missy Caro if she can spare us for a minute or two.”

To Sophie’s surprise, Mrs. Fairchild laughed and told them to take their time. Then Aunt Winney took Sophie down to the sewing house. What came next was one of the most embarrassing hours of Sophie’s life so far. Between jokes about dying her petticoats red, Asia and Hepzibah showed her how to make pads of moss and rags and tie them between her legs. They told her to change the rags at least twice a day and wash herself so she wouldn’t smell.

And then everybody went back to work.

As the youngest engaged woman in the parish, Miss Liza had been
looking forward to queening it over every unattached girl within a day’s ride of Oak River for the rest of the summer. So when her mother and grandmother informed her she’d be spending every waking hour from now until she married learning how to manage a household, she was very much less than pleased.

“Why can’t I go to the Pettigrew’s dance?” she pouted. “And why do I have to make mint jelly in this horrible heat? That’s why we have slaves, isn’t it?”

Sophie had been wondering the same thing ever since she’d gone down to the kitchen with Old Missy right after breakfast. Mrs. Charles was there, enveloped in a bibbed apron, and Miss Liza, looking put-upon and insisting that Antigua fan her while she picked over mint leaves. Antigua’s cheek, Sophie noticed, was shadowed with an old bruise. She turned away when she caught Sophie staring.

Mrs. Charles glanced up from the pot of bubbling green liquid she was stirring over the fire. “How many times must I tell you? Servants are only as good as their mistress. If you know how it should be done, then you can be sure it’s being done right.”

Miss Liza pushed a drooping curl from her forehead. “Why can’t I learn it some other time? It’s two long years before I get married.”

“I’d be happier,” Old Missy said dryly, “if it were three. You have never attended as diligently as you should to your domestic accomplishments.”

“When I was your age,” Mrs. Charles put in, “I helped my dear mother make clothes, not only for the family, but for the slaves as well. And I helped nurse them when they were injured or fell ill. Which reminds me,” she said, returning to the pot. “You will accompany your father to the slave hospital, beginning tomorrow morning.”

Sophie and Antigua exchanged looks behind Old Missy’s back. It wasn’t hard to imagine how Miss Liza would take to nursing slaves. Antigua rolled her eyes, and Sophie had to bite her tongue (again) to keep from laughing.

After a moment of mute amazement, Miss Liza started in to carry on, but Old Missy thumped her gold-headed cane on the floor. “Be still, Liza! You wanted to marry a young man with his way to make in the world. Such a marriage means economy, self-discipline, and good, old-fashioned hard work. You can count yourself fortunate in having a notable housekeeper like your mother to teach you how to go on.”

Mrs. Charles looked pleased. “Why, thank you, Mother Fairchild.” She pulled the spoon, dripping green glop, from the pot. “Test this, Liza, and tell me if it’s ready to set.”

Sophie was not surprised when the lesson ended with the jelly spoiled and Miss Liza in tears. Most of the housekeeping lessons did.

September brought hot, wet days, cooler nights, and the first preparations for the long, hard seasons of harvest and winter. Sophie spent hours with Old Missy, Mrs. Charles, and Mammy, counting candles and bolts of cloth, bandages and ointments, lamp oil and tanned hide for shoes. At meals, Dr. Charles was absent as often as not, and when he was present, could talk of nothing but how long the warm weather would last and whether the new vacuum apparatus would be set up in time.

Antigua kept the kitchen oak gossips entertained with stories of Miss Liza’s temper tantrums. There was the time she stamped her foot and knocked over the chamber pot and the time she was ugly to her mama and got locked into her room without supper and the time she cracked her ivory comb over Antigua’s head. Antigua’s account of that was so funny, everybody like to died laughing.

Sally wiped her eyes. “Miss Liza’s a caution, sure enough. She best take care, though. Mens don’t like womens to be creating and carrying on all the time.”

“Oh, she don’t carry on where Mr. Beau can see her,” Antigua said. “She all sugar-sweet when he come around.”

“I hear he ain’t coming round so much,” said Sally. “I bet you near rich as Solomon, carrying all them letters to Doucette.”

Antigua shrugged. “Rich enough, I guess. Price gone down some now they’s promised.”

Hepzibah said, “You be careful, girl. That man a big old hungry fox, and you a mighty plump pullet.”

Antigua’s expression hardened. “I ain’t no pullet. I keeps my eyes down and my back round so’s he hardly know I got a face.”

The women exchanged glances and might have said more, but the plantation bell sent them back to work.

The second week in October, Old Missy announced that Dr. Charles had decided to fire up the sugarhouse and start the harvest.

“Mr. Akins swears the new apparatus is ready, and the weather’s turning cold. So it’s grinding hours from now on, Winney. Sophie, I won’t be wanting
Ivanhoe
tonight. Go get a volume of sermons from the library. Mr. Scott is just too exciting for this time of year.”

Oak River Plantation at harvest time was an altogether different place from Oak River Plantation in high summer. There were no dances and holidays on Saturday or Sunday, not even an hour for church. The plantation bell rang not only at dawn, noon, and dusk, but after sunrise and in mid-afternoon too, calling up the afternoon and night shifts to cut cane to feed the hungry grinders and boil down the clear juice into sweet, white sugar.

From early morning to dark, Sophie followed Old Missy as she stumped from attic to cellar to yard on her gold-topped cane, supervising, encouraging, scolding, organizing. During meals, she stood behind Old Missy’s chair, listening while she and Dr. Charles discussed the weather and sugar prices, whether renting in a dozen more field hands would be worth the extra expense and how much building a light railroad from the sugarhouse to the landing dock would cost. One afternoon, Old Missy took a dizzy spell and Sophie had to run for Dr. Charles, who let blood from his mother’s arm and gave her a tonic and told her she had to rest more.

Old Missy took the tonic, but not the advice. There were slaves to be clothed and stores to be put up and decisions to be made about almost everything, and nobody Old Missy trusted to do it as it should be done. Because she couldn’t seem to keep track of anything smaller than a hundredweight of candles, Sophie was kept hopping after whatever little thing she’d forgotten — scissors, reticule, pins, handkerchief.

One day, it was her favorite parasol.

“I expect I left it down at Oak Cottage. Run down, Sophie, and fetch it here so we can pack it away for the winter.”

It was a beautiful fall day, crisp and dry and fragrant with late-blooming maypop. In the yard, two dogs squabbled in the dust and America the blacksmith honed cane knives on a stone wheel. Sophie sang as she walked, something about
high apple pie in the sky hopes.
She wondered where she’d learned it.

The back gallery at Oak Cottage was deserted. Before she went bothering Mrs. Charles about the parasol, Sophie decided to check the storeroom where all the extra boots and riding crops and suchlike were kept. She had her hand on the latch when she heard Antigua saying, “Now, Mr. Beau, you don’t want to do nothing Miss Liza wouldn’t like.”

Sophie froze.

“Miss Liza ain’t going to know.” Mr. Beau’s voice was thick and unpleasant, like he was talking through a lump of lard. “If you breathe a word, I’ll say you made it all up. You’ll be whupped for lying, or even sold in New Orleans. It’d be easier all round if you was nice to me.”

There was a clatter of things falling, then a strangled sob. Sophie pushed the door open. Mr. Beau was pressing Antigua up against the shelves, holding her by the wrists as she struggled. Her tignon had come off, the front of her dress was ripped open, and the floor was littered with boots and hats and candles.

“Mr. Beau?” Sophie croaked, then cleared her throat. “Mr. Beau, you stop that.”

Antigua went still. Ignoring Sophie entirely, Mr. Beau bent his sandy head and planted a kiss on her throat. Sophie snatched up a riding crop and whacked him with it as hard as she could.

That got his attention. He spun around, his face all red and mottled behind his mustache.

“Damn little spoilsport nigger!” he spat. “Give me that crop! Now!”

Sophie brandished the little whip recklessly. “No,” she said. “And if you try and take it away, I’ll shout.”

“Nobody will hear you,” Mr. Beau said, but the color faded from his cheeks, and Sophie knew he was afraid.

“I knows they will,” she said in her best yard-child voice. “Maybe Antigua catch a whupping, but you likely lose Miss Liza. Dr. Charles, he mighty straightlaced.”

Mr. Beau chewed on his mustache. “He won’t believe you. You’re likely to catch a whupping your own self, you go telling Dr. Fairchild lies on me. Besides, I ain’t done nothing.” He released Antigua, who stumbled to Sophie’s side, clutching the front of her dress closed.

Sophie frowned. “Look to me like it be plenty enough to make Dr. Charles think twice ’bout letting you marry his little girl.”

Mr. Beau’s hands clenched, and his jaw jutted dangerously. Then he took a deep breath, straightened his waistcoat, and slicked back his rumpled hair. He bowed to Antigua. “Some other time, my dear,” he said, then turned to Sophie. “And you, yellow wench, you’ll be sorry you interfered.”

When he’d left, Antigua collapsed on the floor, weeping quietly. Sophie, knees shaking, sank down beside her.