The Freedom Maze (24 page)

Africa studied Sophie’s face intently. “Yes,” she said. “It’s right that you know. Yemaya is the mother of waters, whose children are as many as the fish in the sea.”

“And the old man in the hat?”

“Papa Legba stand at the crossroads. He the master of doorways and choices and time. My mawmaw told me once, ‘Papa Legba throw the rock tomorrow that kill the chicken yesterday.’”

A memory niggled at Sophie’s mind: something about time and railway stations and a strange creature that looked like a possum. Africa moved to the fire, and the memory slipped away.

“This house under Yemaya’s protection,” Africa said, nodding at the pattern on the wall. “And that vévé the sign of her blessing.”

“So why do you have
her
?” Sophie pointed to the colored print of the Virgin Mary that was nailed up over the mantel.

“Think about it like this,” Africa said. “White folks call my daughter Canada, you call her Canny. Yemaya whispered me a name for her when she was born. You tell me. Which one is her right name?”

This made sense to Sophie, as much sense as the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost did, anyway. “What about the doll, the one you made for Canny? Is that Yemaya, too?”

“A little bit of her,” Africa said. “Enough to bring her eye on Canny, give her strength to heal.”

Sophie thought for a moment. “Back home in New Orleans, they have dolls like her. They’re supposed to bring your enemies bad luck. Is there a doll you can make for Mr. Akins so he’ll break his leg or something and can’t go hunting for Antigua?”

Africa whirled on her with a look of fury. “Shame on you,” she said sternly. “I don’t have no truck with that kind of left-handed curse working, and I ain’t studying to begin now. My hands are clean.”

“I’m sorry,” Sophie said humbly. “I just thought —”

“Well, you stop thinking, you hear?” Africa shook her head and went back to her cooking. “Hoodoo don’t hardly work on white folks anyhow. The old gods are far from home, with lots of folks calling on them for help. My great-great-granny Omi Saide, she was a priestess in Yorubaland. She had the power to know the future, to kill with a thought, to heal, to bring the rains. Even so, the slavers chained her and brought her in a ship to New Orleans, where Old Massa’s granpa buy her and change her own name to Africa. My mawmaw, she say Yemaya told Omi Saide it was so she could take care of her people who went before her.”

When the peas were soft and the okra and onions dissolved, Africa and Sophie took their bowls into the back room to keep Canny company. Then Africa put Saxony to bed and tended Canny while Sophie washed up. By the time she was finished, the first bell was ringing for the night shift.

Africa came out of the back room with a bundle of stained bandages. “Time to sleep now, sugar. I’m going to set up for a spell, see if there’s something the Orishas can do to get my menfolk out of that smokehouse.”

As Sophie lay in the back room, she heard Africa chanting softly. And then she slept and her dreams were laced with the smell of tobacco and herbs and rum and the rush and beat of the sea.

Next morning, it was raining hard. It drenched her on her walk to the sugarhouse and again going home, a chilly, soaking rain that washed great ruts in the dirt roads and half blinded the hands cutting cane. Between the explosion and the weather, Dr. Charles decided this was no time to lose the work of three strong hands. So Mr. Akins had to let Ned and his sons out of the smokehouse, and the dogs couldn’t pick up Antigua’s scent, even if anybody could be spared to look for her.

The news wasn’t all good. Ned, Poland, and Flanders had to sleep in the sugarhouse, under guard. Africa was disappointed, but all she said was, “Better than the smokehouse.”

After they’d eaten, Africa wrapped up a pile of hard-baked corn cakes, a slab of fat bacon, and a can of fresh water in a blanket and stuffed them, along with a shuttered lantern, a tinderbox, and three candles, into a burlap sack.

“Better take a little sleep now,” she told Sophie. “I’ll wake you at midnight.”

The rain had let up a little when Sophie crept out of the cabin. Her skirt tucked into her apron and her head and shoulders wrapped in a blanket, she slipped through the dark like a shadow. She was afraid, but no more than she’d been all day. At least now she was doing something really useful.

In the maze garden, Sophie knelt in the sticky mud by the hole in the summerhouse foundation. “Antigua? It’s me, Sophie. Are you there?”

“I ain’t up North.”

Sophie let out her breath gratefully. “Well, you will be. In the meantime, I’ve got food, and a lantern and some candles. And fresh water.”

Sophie crawled under the summerhouse, pushing the bundle in front of her. “Here’s another blanket, though I’m afraid it got wet. We can light the lantern and talk a little, if you want.”

Antigua made a sound between a laugh and a sob. “I don’t mind.”

Soon the two girls were sitting side by side on the rotted pallet with both blankets over their shoulders and the shuttered lantern making a small pool of light at their feet. Despite the rain, the floor was more or less dry, but the air was cold and clammy and smelled strongly of mold and the contents of the covered bucket in the corner. Antigua was crying while Sophie tried to think of something to say that didn’t sound stupid.

Finally, Antigua blew her nose on her apron and wiped her eyes. She smoothed her skirt into a tent over her drawn-up knees and rested her chin on them. “We better save that candle,” she said thickly. “You only brung three.”

Sophie lifted the shutter and blew out the candle. Darkness rushed in like water.

“I ’spect you leaving directly,” said Antigua.

“I’ll stay a bit,” Sophie said. “Just until I get warmer.”

“You got to stay more than a bit for that. It mighty cold down here.”

“It’s warmer with two.”

For reply, Antigua shivered; Sophie worked an arm around her shoulders under the blanket. Antigua stiffened, then put her legs across Sophie’s lap. They were about the same size (when, Sophie wondered, had that happened?), and it was a little awkward, but Sophie felt a thin warmth begin to creep up her legs and into her chest.

“How Popi going to get me away?” Antigua asked.

“Mr. Akins is keeping your pa and Poland and Flanders in the sugarhouse. We haven’t seen them since yesterday morning.”

“Did he whup them?”

“Old Missy wouldn’t let him. I heard they’re advertising for you in
The Planter.
”

Antigua moved irritably. “Ain’t you the fount of knowledge?”

Sophie shrugged. “Plenty of gossip in the sugarhouse.”

“Bad news travel fast.”

She sounded like she might cry again. Sophie said hurriedly, “Where are you planning to go when you get up North?”

“Jane in the kitchen always talking ’bout a place called New York.”

The name stirred something in Sophie’s mind, faint as the memory of a dream. “I’ve heard of it. Biggest city in the world, they say.”

“Well, that’s where I going,” Antigua said. “And I going get me a job that pay good money, and find me a free man to marry, with his own house and his own mule and maybe a little shop so he don’t have to answer to anybody and can hold his head up like a white man.”

Sophie had a vague idea of New York as a big city where people lived in apartments, not houses, and all the black folk lived in a place called Harlem, where it wasn’t safe to go after dark. But she didn’t know how she knew it, or even if she’d made it up. So she said nothing.

“I know what you thinking,” Antigua said. “You thinking I ain’t going to make it up North. You thinking I’m a scarlet woman no decent free man with a shop would want for a wife.” She drew away, dragging the blanket with her. “Well, I tell you this,” she went on, her voice rising, “I every bit as good as you. You think you something special, Mr. Robert Fairchild’s daughter? Well, my daddy was Old Massa, Mr. Patrick Fairchild, who was Mr. Robert’s Daddy. And that make me you auntie.”

She stopped short, took a long breath and said more quietly, “So you have some respect, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Sophie, startled. If Mr. Patrick Fairchild was Antigua’s daddy, that meant that Africa had been meddled with, as Aunt Winney put it, by Old Missy’s husband. “Did Old Missy know?”

There was a little pause while Antigua seemed to be regretting having said anything, then settled against Sophie again.

“Yes. She know. She and Mammy, they bring me into the world, and when the cord cut, Old Missy she tell Momi she ain’t angry, but it better if she go away for a spell. Soon’s she on her feet again, Old Missy send her to New Orleans to learn fancy cooking. ‘Don’t you fret ’bout you baby girl, neither,’ she say to Momi. ‘We take extra-good care of her until you come back.’ When Momi come back, she marry Popi and have Flandy.”

Sophie found Antigua’s hand and held it while they sat and listened to the rain drumming on the summerhouse roof.

“Does Mrs. Charles know Old Massa was your father?”

“I don’t know.” Antigua sounded sleepy. “I ’spect not.”

“Do you think —” began Sophie, then stopped.

“What?”

“That you’ll like it up North,” finished Sophie lamely. She couldn’t ask Antigua if she was going to have a baby. A baby who would be the property of Dr. Charles, no matter how pale its skin was or how sandy its hair. Just as Dr. Charles had assumed that Sophie was the property of Mr. Robert Fairchild, who’d fathered Sophie on his slave wench Louisette.

Antigua was still talking. “. . . but at least I be free. Soph? You awake?”

Sophie started guiltily. “I’m sorry, Anti. What were you saying?”

Antigua gave Sophie a squeeze. “Don’t matter. I just running my mouth ’cause I don’t want you going off and leaving me by my lonesome in the dark. You run along home. I be fine.”

Sophie collected herself. “You sure, now? Why don’t you light the candle, at least, so you won’t be in the dark?”

“Maybe I needs it more some other time and don’t have it because I burn it now. You scoot. You want Mr. Akins to send the dogs after you?”

Sophie scrambled to her feet, found the ladder, and climbed out of the pit. “I’ll be back when I can,” she whispered, “but maybe not for a day or two.”

“I’ll be fine.” Antigua’s voice was firm. “I’m beholden to you, Soph.”

“It’s no more than any girl would do for her auntie,” said Sophie and crawled away as fast as she could, leaving Antigua sputtering softly behind her.

It wasn’t yet dawn when Sophie got back to Africa’s cabin, but the air
was beginning to stir and Rhodes’s old rooster was crowing. As she slipped in the door, Africa swatted her hard across the seat.

“I was near out of my mind fretting over you. What are you thinking of, staying out so late? You want Mr. Akins looking for you, too? Use your
head,
girl!”

Sophie blinked. “Nobody saw me.” She gave a jaw-cracking yawn. “We got to talking, and I didn’t know how late it was getting.”

“Huh. How’s my baby keeping?”

“She’s fine, except for being cold and lonely.”

“She’ll be a lot more cold and lonely before she gets North,” said Africa wearily. “Take off that muddy dress, sugar, and wash your face and arms. It’s bad enough for you to be asleep on your feet without looking like you’ve been chasing ’gators through the swamp all night.”

The morning seemed endless. Betty kicked Sophie awake twice as she dozed, propped on her paddle. “Look lively, girl,” she hissed the second time. “You want Mr. Akins wondering why you so wore out?”

After the midday break, it was all Sophie could do to stand up and go back to work. Back aching, eyes scratchy, arms weighted as much by fatigue as by the paddle, she almost envied Antigua, curled up in her earthy den with nothing to do but sleep the day away. Almost.

Just before the end of the shift, Sophie heard a commotion of horses and shouting and dogs barking. It was all she could do to keep skimming the blanket like she wasn’t scared to death they’d found Antigua and hauled her to the sugarhouse for Mr. Akins to deal with. She saw Young Guam trot by, watched with a beating heart as he climbed the platform where Mr. Akins hovered over the evaporator like a hen with one chick. Young Guam spoke, Mr. Akins threw a response over his shoulder, and Young Guam ran outside again, looking grim.

Phronsie squinted out to the yard. “They ain’t got her. I sees dogs and horses and big bucks with sticks. But I don’t see Antigua.”

Which might have been a relief if Betty’s man George hadn’t come by to say McCormick the slave hunter had arrived.

Phronsie clicked her tongue. “They say McCormick the best hunter there is. They say he feed them dogs on black meat to give ’em the taste.”

“And if’n the dogs don’t get you,” George said gloomily, “there the ’gators and the injuns and the poor white trash. North’s a long ways away, with winter coming and all. That Antigua got grit. Lord bless her, I say.”

“Amen,” murmured Sophie and “Amen,” echoed Betty, and they were all quiet, thinking of the dangers on the road to freedom.

Walking back home, Sophie could hear McCormick’s dogs yammering out in the swamp, distant and dismal.

That evening, China came around to see how Canny was coming on and ask when Africa was returning to the kitchen. “Nobody can make velouté smooth as you. And Young Missy, she say my etouffée give her bellyache.”