All Things New (27 page)

“I’m not sure what I believe. Why are you asking me these things?”

“Because it’s time we thought about these issues here in the South. The old aristocratic system has been destroyed, and now we have a chance to rebuild it. Are we going to make it the same as it was? Or, as Christians, are we going to start seeing people the way God does?”

“Are you trying to shock me, David? Make me angry?”

“I’m trying to change you. For selfish reasons, I confess. Perhaps I’m wrong to try to do that tonight.”

Eugenia had long suspected that David Hunter cared for her. If this was his clumsy attempt to see if he stood a chance of courting her, she would pretend not to understand. “I know all about change,” she said. “I’ve had to accept more than my share of it already. But I still believe that some things shouldn’t change. Some traditions need to remain in place for our children’s sakes.”

“I think you’ll find our children’s values will be different from ours. They’ll see that slavery was wrong and that it had to end. They’ve seen the futility of war. They’re learning to live without wealth and privilege. I would hope our sons and daughters would also learn to look for other qualities in each other besides money and social position.”

She thought immediately of Josephine and the odd habits and opinions she had developed. This conversation was making Eugenia extremely uncomfortable, and she fidgeted in David’s arms, wishing the waltz would end.

“Your daughters, for instance,” David continued. “Suppose one of them decided to marry for love, as my mother did?”

That would be the last straw
, Eugenia thought. She would never allow it. “I was fortunate to have both love and respectability with Philip,” she replied. “I pray my daughters will, as well. Women who marry outside their station in life find that it leads to heartache and disappointment.”

“My mother was very happy.”

“I doubt that was possible. After the love fades, what’s left? There must have been times when your mother missed her privileged life—I confess that I miss mine. There are days when I ache to have it all back the way it was. But I didn’t choose the changes I’ve been forced to live with. Your mother did.”

Eugenia realized her words had come out sharper than she’d intended when David said, “I didn’t mean to make you annoyed with me. I’m sorry. Thank you for the dance, Eugenia.”

“My pleasure.”

He gave a courtly bow and strolled away from her, through the open doors to the terrace.

Eugenia busied herself with her guests again, and with making sure Lizzie and Clara kept the wineglasses washed and the sideboard refreshed. A few other gentlemen asked Eugenia to dance, including Daniel and her brother-in-law, Charles. She saw Mary waltzing with Joseph Gray. Couples were also enjoying the warm evening outside on the moonlit terrace, but when she went out there herself to cool off for a moment she was appalled to see Daniel talking to the little chambermaid Roselle. He was laughing with her, of all things. Eugenia strode over to him and linked her arm through his.

“Daniel, do remember our guests, please. I see several young ladies who haven’t been invited to dance yet.” She gave Roselle a stern look before steering Daniel back inside. She would reprimand the servant later.

As the evening wore on, Eugenia realized she had lost track of David Hunter. Their conversation had left a sour taste in her mouth, and she wanted to be certain she hadn’t insulted him. She made a circuit of the room but couldn’t find him. “Have you seen Dr. Hunter?” she finally asked Josephine.

“He left. He saw that you were busy, and he asked me to thank you for inviting him. He said he was sorry, but he had to leave early.”

“Oh. That’s too bad.” Eugenia felt a deep disappointment that she couldn’t explain. She needed to get away from the merriment for a moment and went out into the front hallway, hoping she
might find David there, that she wasn’t too late to convince him to stay or to bid him good-night. But the foyer was deserted. She was fighting tears again and didn’t know why. She paused in the doorway of Philip’s darkened study, longing to see her husband seated in front of the window, smoke curling from his cigar as he played a game of chess with Dr. Hunter. But Philip was never coming back, she told herself for the hundredth time. Eugenia wiped her tears and put on a brave smile, then returned to the drawing room and her guests.

When the last candle died, when the last note of music had been played, when the last guest had thanked her and bid her good-night, Eugenia sank down on a chair in the deserted drawing room, tired but happy. It had been a wonderful evening, the first step toward reclaiming her life. The only sad note had been David’s conversation about social divisions. Had he been flirting with her? Was he asking about her attitudes because he wanted to court her? Eugenia had grown accustomed to receiving men’s attentions in the past, but was he really daring to hope that she would fall in love with him, marry him? No, it was impossible to expect her to marry down, even for love. He had asked if she would allow her daughters to do that, and the answer was firmly no.

Perhaps she should stop spending so much time with him, even as his patient. After all, she hadn’t felt the pain in her chest in weeks. She had to admit she enjoyed his company, his admiration. But maybe it wasn’t fair to David to encourage his hope that something more might develop from their relationship. Yet was she prepared to spend the rest of her life alone, never held or loved by a man again? She was only fifty. Would she have to attend a dance in order to feel a man’s arms around her? She wiped a tear. She was working so hard to get her old life back, but in the end she would be alone and she couldn’t bear the thought.

She gazed around the room, feeling sad that her long anticipated dance was over. The room was in disarray, but at least she now had servants to clean it up. She should go to bed. She rose from the chair and was about to close the doors to the terrace when she
saw Olivia and her husband, standing in the moonlight with an arm around each other, sipping the last drops of elderberry wine. They would go upstairs together, hold each other close.

Olivia turned and saw her. “We were just saying how glad we were to see you getting on so well, Eugenia. Your cotton fields are growing, you have servants again. . . . But I knew you would be all right. You’ve always been strong.”

“Thank you. I haven’t had a chance to ask how things are for you in Richmond?”

Charles sighed. “I confess that I find it difficult to begin all over again at my age. The Yankees are making it as hard as they possibly can for us to govern ourselves again, requiring loyalty oaths and a new constitution for the commonwealth, and all that other nonsense. They seem determined to rub defeat in our faces.”

“Let’s not talk about that tonight,” Olivia said. “This has been such a wonderful evening, Eugenia. Thank you so much for giving us and our daughters this gift.”

Eugenia climbed the stairs to her bedroom feeling weary but content. She heard whispering and giggling as she passed the girls’ room and opened the door a crack to peek inside. The girls were dressed in their nightclothes, talking about the young men they’d waltzed with and brushing each other’s hair. Even Josephine was laughing. When one of the girls admired Mary’s dress, which she’d hung on her wardrobe door, Eugenia held her breath, praying Josephine wouldn’t tell her cousins that she’d sewn it. It would be so humiliating. But Mary saw Eugenia in the doorway and ran to give her a hug.

“Thank you, Mother! Thank you so much for a wonderful evening.”

“You’re welcome, dear. I only wish it could have been as lavish as in the old days. Good night, girls.”

Eugenia thought about David Hunter again as she took off her jewelry and hung up her dress. What had he been trying to say? He’d said that he wanted to change her for selfish reasons, but Eugenia knew if she tried to bend any more, she would break in two
like a brittle stick. She liked his attention and enjoyed being with him, but should she continue seeing him? She looked at herself in the mirror as she unpinned her hair, and the thought of not seeing David Hunter brought tears to her eyes.

Her bed felt very cold and empty. Cold pillows, cold sheets, even on a warm July night. Eugenia had been so happy during the party, but now she began to weep.

Why did you do this to me, Philip? Why did you ever involve us in that terrible war?

26

Lizzie walked around the deserted drawing room, gathering empty glasses on a tray to take out to the kitchen. The candles had all burned out, but there was still enough moonlight streaming through the terrace doors to see what she was doing. She felt tired clear down to her bones after all the hard work of preparing for the dance, but she needed to clean up a little or Miz Eugenia would complain about it in the morning. Tomorrow was Sunday, Lizzie’s only half-day off from work. She and Otis were planning to walk into town in the afternoon for the first prayer meeting at the Freedmen’s Bureau.

Lizzie’s tray was full, and she didn’t see any more glasses. She was about to leave when Roselle came in from the dining room. “Got the table all set for breakfast?” Lizzie asked her. “Extra places set for their company?”

“Yes, Mama.”

“You go on to bed, then. I’ll be down shortly.”

Instead, Roselle stood in the doorway to the courtyard and leaned against the frame. She had a dreamy look on her face, and she seemed reluctant to leave, as if she could still hear the music playing. “Wasn’t it beautiful tonight?” she asked. “I have never heard music like that before. I would love to wear a beautiful gown like the one Missy Jo made for Missy Mary and dance with
a handsome man.” She spread her arms and made a little twirl in front of the doors as if she was dancing with somebody.

Lizzie shook her head. “Don’t even think about it, Roselle. And don’t bother wishing for it. Put it all out of your head.”

“Why? I could go to a dance someday. People tell me I’m pretty, you know.”

Lizzie’s stomach made a slow, sickening turn. “Who does? Who tells you that?”

“My friends, Lula and Corabelle.”

“Don’t you go getting all proud now. Nothing worse than a pretty girl who acts like she’s better than everyone else just because the good Lord made her pretty.”

Even in the dark, Lizzie saw Roselle give a shy, blushing smile. “And Massa Daniel told me I was pretty, too.”

Lizzie went cold all over as if someone had stepped on her grave. “When did he say that?”

“Tonight. At the dance.”

Lizzie nearly dropped the tray of glasses.
Oh, Lord, no . . . please . . .
She had to sit down. She made her way to the nearest chair, but Roselle didn’t seem to notice as she kept on chattering.

“He said I was as pretty as any white girl, and he wanted to dance with me. I told him I didn’t know how to dance and he said that’s all right, he would teach me how. So he took me right outside there on the paving stones so we could practice.”

No . . . Lord, no . . .

“Then Miz Eugenia came along and took him away and ruined it all.”

It was the first time in Lizzie’s life that she’d ever been grateful for Miz Eugenia. Lizzie couldn’t breathe, couldn’t speak. It felt as if someone was sitting on her chest, squeezing all the air out of her.

“And remember that night when I went up to see my ducks,” Roselle continued, “and I ran into Massa Daniel up by the kitchen? He asked me my name and said, ‘My, don’t you look pretty?’ He remembered my name tonight, Mama. He said Roselle was a very pretty name for a very pretty girl.”

Lizzie set the rattling tray of glasses on an end table and leaped up from the chair as anger surged through her. For the second time in her life she understood how someone could be angry enough to kill another person. She grabbed Roselle by the shoulders and began to shake her, desperate to shake some sense into her. “No! No! No! You stay away from him, you hear? Stay away!”

“Mama . . . don’t!” Confusion and fear filled Roselle’s eyes.

Lizzie stopped. What was she doing, shaking her this way? Roselle had been so happy only a moment ago. Lizzie pulled her daughter into her arms, hugging her fiercely. “I’m sorry, honey. I’m sorry. Don’t cry . . . But you got to stay away from Massa Daniel. Don’t you ever go near him again.”

Roselle wiggled out of Lizzie’s arms, glaring at her like she didn’t believe a word of Lizzie’s warning. “We’re free now, aren’t we? We’re not slaves who never dare to talk to our massa—or dance with him if he invites me.”

“Listen to me! You can’t dance with him. You can’t do anything but bring him his food or wash his clothes. And don’t you ever believe a word he says to you.”

Tears filled Roselle’s lovely dark eyes and rolled down her cheeks. “I just wanted to see what it was like to dance like Missy Mary and all the other girls were doing. Just once, Mama.”

“You’re not like them other girls. If you want to dance, then you find someone like yourself, not a white man. And especially not Massa Daniel. He was one of the men who beat up your papa, don’t you remember?”

“That’s not true! You’re just saying that because you don’t like him.”

“Ask your papa, then. He’ll tell you. And you know Otis don’t tell lies. He saw Massa Daniel there that night with the other men, beating on poor old Willy and shooting their rifles.”

“Otis isn’t my papa. My real papa was white, wasn’t he? Is that why you hate white men? Because my father was white?”

“Don’t you dare talk to me like that!”

“That’s why you won’t tell me who he is, isn’t it? You don’t
want me to know that I’m white, too.” She turned away, but Lizzie grabbed her arm and yanked her back.

As mad as she was, Lizzie still couldn’t tell Roselle the truth. She didn’t want to remember her own foolishness. Or her shame. But she had to tell Roselle something. “I’ll tell you this one thing about your father, and that’s all. He started wooing me with sweet talk, just like Massa Daniel’s doing. Carrying on and telling me I was pretty. But do you see your real father anywhere around here? Did he stay and love you and me or be a papa to you like Otis is?”

Roselle looked down at her ragged shoes as her tears continued to fall.

“No sir! Otis has been a papa to you in all the ways that count. And he’s a good husband to me, too. You find yourself a good God-fearing man like Otis. Someone who’s gonna stay with you and help you raise his babies after he puts them in your belly. You think Massa Daniel’s ever going to marry the Negro girl who empties his slop pail every morning?”

A sob shuddered through Roselle. “I just wanted to dance,” she said softly.

“I know, honey. I know. But there are bad men in this world who would take advantage of you for that.” Lizzie pulled her into her arms again. She understood how Roselle felt. She had been innocent and trusting, too, all those years ago, but it had ended so badly. Would it take a tragedy before Roselle would stop trusting? Lizzie released her daughter and picked up the tray again to take to the kitchen. “Let’s go to bed. The rest of this mess can wait until morning.”

As tired as Lizzie was, she couldn’t fall asleep. Her mind whirled around like the people on the dance floor as she tried to figure out what to do about Roselle. She didn’t trust Massa Daniel. If he ever hurt her daughter, she would kill him. She would. Same as she should have killed Roselle’s father.

Before she knew it, the rooster started to crow and Lizzie had to get up and make breakfast for everybody, had to try and make the food stretch to feed Miz Eugenia’s company from Richmond.
Thank heavens she had Clara to help her now, and she could let Roselle sleep. Lizzie didn’t want to face her. And for sure she didn’t want Roselle waiting on the white folks in the dining room.

On Sunday afternoon, when the work was done, everybody got ready to walk into Fairmont for their first prayer meeting at the Freedmen’s Bureau. Lizzie was so tired from her sleepless night that she would have liked to stay home and take a nap, but she couldn’t hurt Otis’s feelings that way. He and Saul and a few others had talked to Mr. Chandler, and he’d agreed to let them meet on the grassy slope alongside the tracks. He even said he would read the Bible out loud to them. Lizzie and Clara packed a simple picnic lunch for their families to eat afterward, and everyone set off for the walk to town, following the road, even though the path through the fields and along the railroad tracks was shorter. Old Willy wanted to come and he couldn’t walk that far, so Robert had offered to push him in the wheelbarrow.

“Look at that sight!” Otis said as they passed the cotton fields. “The good Lord’s been blessing us with sunshine and rain and making our cotton grow.” In fact, the plants were so thick and green they could hardly see the pathways between the rows.

But Lizzie’s eye was on Roselle, walking ahead of them. The smaller children crowded around her like a mama hen with her chicks as she played schoolteacher with them and made them say their ABCs. One minute Roselle was a child, skipping down the road just like the other little ones, and the next minute she was wanting to wear a fancy gown and dance with Massa Daniel. Lizzie thought of what might have happened last night if Miz Eugenia hadn’t interrupted, and she felt the fear return. She reached for Otis and tugged on his arm.

“Otis? I think Roselle should work with you from now on instead of me.”

“You mean out in the fields? Lizzie, why would you want such a thing?”

“Because Miz Eugenia’s trying to make her into a fancy lady’s maid for Missy Mary, and Roselle is too good for that. I want a
better life for her than combing some spoiled gal’s hair and lacing her corset.”

“You ain’t making sense. How is working in the fields any better than working in the house?”

Lizzie decided to tell him the truth. “We need to keep her away from Massa Daniel. He was sweet-talking her last night at the dance, saying she was pretty and asking her to dance with him.”

Otis stopped walking. He stared at Lizzie. “Why would he want to dance with a colored girl when he hates us so much?”

“You know exactly what he wants. Roselle doesn’t understand what can happen, Otis. She’s too trusting. I don’t want her in the Big House anymore. That place is so big, it’d be easy for Massa Daniel to get her off someplace by herself. She won’t like working in the fields, that’s for sure. But it’s for her own good.”

Otis sighed and started walking again. “If only the school would start up again. I thought maybe we could all help Mr. Chandler rebuild it, maybe work on it at night or whenever we have an afternoon off. But nobody has time when there’s corn and vegetables to plant and so much other work to do. And you know we don’t dare go out at night.”

“What are we going to do about Roselle?”

“Bring it to the Lord, Lizzie. That’s why we’re having this prayer meeting. We’ll bring all our troubles to the Lord.”

Mr. Chandler stood in the doorway of the little brick building that housed the Freedmen’s Bureau, greeting everybody. It looked just fine from the front, but when Lizzie walked around to the back, the room where the school had been looked like the inside of a fireplace, all black and charred and filled with burnt wood. That’s how much the white folks hated them, and Lord help her, Lizzie hated them in return for making her feel so helpless. She had to turn her back on the sight to keep the anger from twisting around inside her like a nasty vine.

Dozens of other families had already arrived, and Lizzie tucked her feelings away as she greeted Dolly and Ida May and the others who used to work at White Oak. The children chased each other
and took turns balancing on the tracks and jumping the railroad ties until the prayer meeting began. There were too many people to count, even if Lizzie knew how.

Otis came up alongside her, interrupting her thoughts. “I need to talk to Mr. Chandler about the part of the Bible I want him to read. I’ll be right back and then we’ll get started.”

“Wait. I’ll go with you.” The size of the crowd had given Lizzie courage, and as soon as Otis finished speaking to him, Lizzie made up her mind to speak to Mr. Chandler herself. He was as slender as a bean pole, and she had to look up to see his eyes, which were as pale as a faded blue shirt. “Massa Chandler, sir? We need to get the school going again right away. Our kids don’t care if it’s finished or not. They don’t mind sitting outside on the grass. But they need to learn how to read and write.”

“I’m sorry, but the new books haven’t arrived yet. And there’s no teacher.”

“Can’t you ask Miss Hunt to come back? Please? It’s the only way my kids will ever have a better life. Every day that the school stays closed they’re forced to work on the plantation, and they’re learning how to be slaves again instead of learning how to be free. ”

“I understand, but—”

“I heard Miz Eugenia say she’s making my Roselle into a lady’s maid for her spoiled daughter. It’s bad enough I have to empty her slops, but I don’t want my daughter to have to do it all her life, too. If Roselle and my boys don’t go to school, they’ll always be slaves, no matter what the law says, no matter who won the war. Please open it again. Please!”

He nodded and pressed his fist to his mouth as if he was thinking. She saw pity in his eyes and that gave her hope. “Give me a little time to think of something, Lizzie. Right now, I know Otis wants to get this meeting started.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

Otis had walked to the top of a little rise and stood in front of the group, holding up his hands for silence. A shiver of fear ran through Lizzie. He didn’t need to be coming forward as the leader
of everybody. He’d only get himself in a mess a trouble. She hurried over to him and whispered, “I thought you said you weren’t preaching.”