The Lost Quilter (23 page)

The colonel laughed. “My dear, you saw my mother last week, and your aunt left us only this morning! You can’t say you’ve lacked female companionship.”

“But now I shall, and with you away, I know I’ll be lonesome.”

“You have your books and knitting to occupy you when the duties of the household don’t demand your attention. You might
also consider befriending some of the officers’ wives. I know several who desire to better their acquaintance.”

Miss Evangeline agreed to follow his advice, but her voice was oddly subdued.

The next day after her husband kissed her and departed, she watched from the window as he mounted his favorite gray stallion and trotted off through the wrought iron gates, Asa trailing behind on a slower mare with the colonel’s satchel. When they were gone, Miss Evangeline wandered through the house as if seeing it for the first time, running her fingertips over the chair rail in the dining room, peering up at the curved windows as if studying how the glass panes had been pieced together. Watchful, Joanna finished the day’s mending and began darning the colonel’s socks, waiting for an explosion of temper. But the young mistress surprised her. “Get my wrap,” she ordered after Joanna cleared away the lunch dishes. “I want to see more of the city. If it is to be my home, I must know it.”

Joanna fetched Miss Evangeline’s wrap as well as her own shawl while the mistress waited in the foyer. When George offered to tell Abner to prepare the carriage, Miss Evangeline waved him to silence, declaring that she intended to go on foot, for she had grown sluggish with so little exercise. “Don’t forget your basket,” she told Joanna as she tied on her bonnet and left the house. Quickly Joanna snatched it up and followed after.

Miss Evangeline strolled briskly down the cobblestone streets, avoiding puddles, wrinkling her nose at the stench rising from an open sewer. Joanna stayed close, afraid of becoming lost in the throng. They found the market, where Miss Evangeline purchased flowers, which she placed in Joanna’s basket, and a bag of roasted chestnuts, which she munched as they walked. The smell made Joanna’s mouth water.

They strolled along streets lined by row houses awash in pastel hues, and by the harbor where Miss Evangeline looked out at the ships waiting for high tide so they could approach, her gaze lingering on the horizon beyond the white sails and tall masts. She gazed across the water to Fort Sumter, where the colonel had served before he was posted to the South Carolina Military Academy. The sight seemed to remind Miss Evangeline of her absent husband, for she sighed and turned her back to it, declaring that she had seen enough of Charleston for one day.

The mistress was silent for the entire long walk home. Joanna suspected she was brooding over her husband’s absence, until just as they reached Harper Hall, she said, “Those iron barricades will do us little good against an invading army.”

Joanna made no reply, because usually Miss Evangeline did not expect one, but the mistress was too lost in thought to notice her maid’s surprise. For all her bold words about the courage and strength of her husband and his men, Miss Evangeline was not eager for war.

The front door burst open as they climbed the front steps. “Missus,” the housekeeper exclaimed. “The stovepipe cracked and a big cloud of ash puff out all over.”

Miss Evangeline stared at her for a moment, uncomprehending. “Well, sweep the floor, then,” she ordered, continuing across the threshold.

“I did, missus, but now what do Sally do for cooking?”

Frowning, Miss Evangeline shrugged off her wrap and passed it to Joanna. “Fix the stovepipe, of course, you goose.” She beckoned for Joanna to follow her to the sitting room.

“It ain’t something I can fix,” said Minnie, bewildered, trailing after them. “Won’t you come see, missus?”

Barely concealing her impatience, Miss Evangeline went with
Minnie to the kitchen, where one half of the stovepipe dangled from the wall and the other lay on the floor beside the stove, split down one long side. Joanna saw that Minnie had indeed swept away every trace of soot.

Miss Evangeline gnawed the inside of her lower lip. “Who fixes such things?” she asked no one in particular. “Could George manage it? The blacksmith? The scoundrel who sold my husband this wretched contraption?”

“I don’t know, missus,” said Minnie. “It work fine for twenty years. Never needed to fix it before.”

From Miss Evangeline’s expression, Joanna knew she was thinking that this never would have happened if her husband had been at home, and if it had, he would have known how to fix it. “Joanna, run next door and ask Mrs. Ames what to do,” she said.

Joanna threw her shawl back over her shoulders, hurried next door, and quickly returned with Mrs. Ames’s reply. The kindly neighbor had sent word to a trusted handyman who took care of such things for nearly every family on the block. The stove could be repaired, but not until the following morning. Lacking pots and implements for cooking over an open fire, Sally made do with a cold supper, which Miss Evangeline ate alone in the dining room. “At least my husband is enjoying a hot meal at his mother’s table,” she said with forced contentment as Joanna set her plate before her. She retired early, unknowingly giving Joanna the treat of an extra hour alone to work on her Birds in the Air quilt.

All the slaves went to bed early, tiptoeing out the back door and across the cobblestone walkway so that the mistress would not wake up and decide they were shirking their duties. George, who always tried to catch Joanna’s eye at bedtime, must have
been emboldened by the novelty, for as Joanna undressed down to her muslin shift, George brushed by her and spoke for her ears alone: “We both alone,” he said. “You a pretty girl. Why don’t you come with me?”

“I’m married,” she replied shortly, in an undertone. “Why don’t you ask Sally?”

“I don’t care for Sally. I like you.”

“I got a husband.”

He regarded her, not with the anger of rejection but with sympathy. “How long it gonna be before you see him again? He probably got himself another wife by now.”

“Not Titus,” Joanna shot back, not caring who overheard. “Not my Titus.”

George shrugged as if to say that he knew better but considered it unkind to say so. “You change your mind, you let me know. I’m here, and I ain’t going nowhere.”

Without another word Joanna pushed past him and climbed into bed, drawing the unfinished Birds in the Air quilt over her. How long would it be before Titus abandoned hope of reuniting their family? How long before another girl caught his eye, a girl without a scarred face?

He’ll be true, she told herself. Titus is a good man. He’ll find a way to bring us back together.

But new worries nagged her now, doubts where before there had been only certainty.

When the handyman came the next morning to fix the stove, Miss Evangeline could not resist letting him know how greatly the wait had inconvenienced and upset her. “And look what the explosion did to my girl,” she exclaimed, indicating Joanna’s
burned cheek. “If she had been standing any closer when the pipe exploded, it might have killed her!”

The man eyed Joanna’s scar. “Your girl heals mighty quickly.”

“Indeed she does. It’s a peculiarity of her tribe. Nevertheless, you shouldn’t be surprised if my husband presents you with a bill for the damage to our slave.”

The man nodded—only to avoid arguing with a lady, or so Joanna thought—and presented the mistress with a bill of his own. Paying him proved to be no easy matter, since Miss Evangeline and Joanna had to search the marse colonel’s study for the pocketbook he said he had left in a desk drawer but which turned up hidden behind a dictionary in a bookcase on the other side of the room.

The following morning, the two young stable boys became ill from eating spoiled fish, and after paging frantically through her recipe books in a fruitless search for a remedy, Miss Evangeline hastily wrote out a pass and sent Joanna running to Aunt Lucretia’s house for a purgative. Every day brought another crisis, another household calamity to set before a mistress entirely unprepared to solve it.

On the morning before the colonel was due to return, Miss Evangeline collapsed into her chair in stunned astonishment upon discovering she would have no milk for her tea, nor butter for her bread, nor even bread for that matter, since she had neglected to give Sally orders to go to the market.

“Why didn’t you tell me we were running low on supplies?” Miss Evangeline cried.

“I did,” protested Sally. “You told me to go on back to the kitchen and not to bother you.”

Miss Evangeline drew in a breath sharply as if preparing to scold her, but then she went suddenly still. If she didn’t remem
ber the exchanges, Joanna could have reminded her, for twice she had witnessed Sally coming to her for instructions and being sent away. But the mistress seemed to need no reminders. Her shoulders slumped and some of the life seemed to go out of her.

“Joanna, fetch my husband’s pocketbook,” she said. After Joanna returned with the small leather pouch, Miss Evangeline withdrew a handful of coins and counted them out into Sally’s palm. “Go to the market and buy whatever you need to sustain us until my husband returns—and also get everything you need for his favorite meal. I want you to serve it on his first night home. He mustn’t suspect that anything was amiss.”

“Yes, missus. What meal his favorite, missus?”

“I couldn’t possibly say. Don’t you know? You’ve been his cook far longer than I’ve known him.”

“Yes, missus.” Sally hurried away as if worried that if given too much time to think it over, the mistress would amend her instructions and force them to go hungry. Joanna didn’t blame her. Whom would the colonel punish if he came home and found nothing to eat? Certainly not his darling bride. Colored folks took the blame even when everyone knew the buckra were at fault; sometimes, even if the colored folk had nothing to do with it, they were punished just for being unlucky enough to witness the buckra making a mistake.

Miss Evangeline inhaled deeply, rested her elbows on the table, closed her eyes, and pressed her fingertips to forehead, nose, beneath the eyes, as if smoothing out lines of worry that she dared not allow to form. “I’m beginning to see why my father married her,” she said, mostly to herself but perhaps also to Joanna. “She has neither beauty nor charm nor grace nor wit, but she does know how to manage a household. ‘Practice embroidery!’ she told me. ‘Translate Greek!’ What use are those to me now? I need
to know how to manage servants, how to keep a larder stocked. What sort of teacher fails to teach me the things I most need to know?”

Suddenly she let her hands fall to the table, and she regarded Joanna plainly as if expecting an answer. “I don’t know, missus,” said Joanna. “Maybe Mrs. Chester thought you could figure it out on your own.”

“Or maybe she wanted me to fail.”

Joanna knew better than to criticize one white lady in front of another. “What about your friends? They mothers teach them how to do all these things?”

Miss Evangeline thought for a moment. “No, I suppose not. Their educations were much like my own. Surely if they were learning how to make tallow candles and bake bread, they would have mentioned it.” She let out a small laugh of astonishment. “I don’t know how to cook. Do you know I’ve never cooked a meal in my entire life?”

The image of Miss Evangeline red-faced and perspiring in the kitchen, up to her elbows in bread dough or testing the heat of an oven, was so absurd Joanna almost laughed. “You don’t need to cook,” said Joanna. “You
have
a cook.”

Miss Evangeline smiled, suddenly lighthearted. “Yes, you’re right. And Sally did try to warn me that I was neglecting my responsibilities, but I didn’t listen. My father is not above taking advice from slaves. He listens to Aaron regarding the field hands and the cotton, and he seeks Titus’s opinion regarding horses. I shall follow his example.” She slapped her palms flat on the tabletop and pushed herself to her feet, her confidence restored. “And you, Joanna, you must help me. If you hear servants fretting about this or that not being done the proper way, you must tell me promptly.”

“Yes, missus,” said Joanna, concealing her dismay. She had never carried tales to the big house at Oak Grove, though some in the quarter believed all house slaves spied for the master. She didn’t want any of the Harper Hall slaves to think ill of her, nor did she think Miss Evangeline was likely to heed her warnings when she ignored Sally’s.

She would have to be careful, but with any luck, helping Miss Evangeline learn to manage the household would send her off on many other errands around Charleston. In two days she had been sent out twice, the first times she had been truly on her own since her recapture at Elm Creek Farm. It was a heady feeling, almost as if a wind might sweep in off the ocean and carry her far away. She saw the ships in the harbor, dodged wagons rumbling over cobblestones, heard trains chugging in the distance, and knew that some of them carried cotton and rice and oranges to northern shores. If they could carry bales and sacks and crates, they could carry far more precious cargo, if she could just find a way, if she could just get her family together and make a plan and go.

She would learn the city and the ways out of it, so that when she and Titus and Ruthie were finally all together again, she would be ready. Her Birds in the Air quilt was nearly complete. She had saved the pass Miss Evangeline had written for the errand to Aunt Lucretia’s. All she needed was her family and a plan.

Miss Evangeline must have realized that she couldn’t rely upon her busy husband for amusement, for she befriended several young wives who lived nearby and eagerly accepted her aunt’s invitations to gatherings at her house on East Bay Street near the Battery. Joanna usually accompanied the mistress when she
went visiting, and she came to know the back rooms and kitchens of most of the houses on Meeting Street from hours spent sewing and talking with the hostesses’ slaves while listening for her mistress’s summons. Afterward, Miss Evangeline would query and probe and question Joanna until every scrap of slaves’ gossip about their masters’ families had been wrung from her. Joanna always felt exhausted afterward, as if Miss Evangeline had put her through the mangle. Although the other families’ slaves never demanded that she keep their secrets, they surely assumed she would. Eventually word would get out that Joanna told her mistress everything, and no one would talk to her anymore.