The Freedom Maze (13 page)

Besides, there was always the possibility that the Creature would make things worse.

Sophie began her third week in the past in a fog of misery. Everything
that had been difficult when she’d thought she’d be going home soon got ten times harder as she lost hope. The only good thing was that she was too tired to think too much about how she missed hamburgers and TV and all the modern conveniences of 1960. She tried not to think at all about how much she missed Aunt Enid and Lily and Mama and Papa. Sometimes she’d wake up in the dark with her face wet, grasping after a fading dream of Papa and the house in Metairie or giggling with Diana or sitting in the Oak Cottage kitchen with Aunt Enid, eating fried chicken.

She was beginning to wonder whether she was ever going to see any of them again.

Aunt Winney, who knew homesickness when she saw it, prescribed prayer and hard work.

“This a world of sorrow and woe, a vale of tears without number. Just you keep in mind you got a brother in Jesus and a hope of joy in Heaven. Now, here a bundle of Missy Caro’s linen for the wash. Tell Asia to take care with them corset covers. Lawn tear if you look at it crossways.”

If Mrs. Fairchild noticed Sophie’s state, she chose to ignore it.

Over time, Sophie got used to Mammy and Mrs. Charles, though she was always careful to be extra-humble around them. The other house servants were friendly enough, even Uncle Germany, who reminded Sophie of an English butler out of an old movie, except for being tea-colored. She was still shy of the houseboys — particularly Samson, the tawny young man who had winked at her on her first day in the past. He was twenty and very handsome, and sometimes he told jokes that Sophie didn’t understand but made Sally the housemaid screech with laughter.

At first, Sophie was shy of Sally, too, in case she might still be mad that Sophie wouldn’t answer her questions her first night at Oak River. But she soon realized that Sally had forgotten the whole thing. She was just sixteen, with honey blonde curls that escaped around the edges of her flowered tignon and a friendly nature. It was Sally who told Sophie about the Saturday night dances.

“Everybody go, picanninies and all, and there’s fiddling and dancing and everybody have a fine old time. You ask Old Missy can you come, too.”

A night away from Aunt Winney and the mending basket sounded good; a dance, less so. Mama had sent her to dancing school, where Sophie had learned to box step and a vague idea of a foxtrot, but she doubted that either would be useful at a slave dance.

“I don’t know, Sally. Maybe Mrs. Fairchild won’t like it.”

“How you know ’less you ask? You scared?”

“No.” Sophie thought for a moment. “Yes. It’s just — what if nobody dances with me? What if somebody does? I don’t know much about boys.”

Sally laughed. “Ain’t going to learn no more hiding in Old Missy’s skirts, Soph. She say yes, you put on you Sunday dress and meet me at the back door at sundown.”

So Sophie asked for permission to go to the dance, half hoping to be refused. Still, she was more happy than not when Mrs. Fairchild said yes. “You’ve earned a treat. But you must be back before midnight. I suspect we’re about to find out what Mr. Pancks has discovered about Mr. Dorrit.”

Feeling like Cinderella, Sophie put on the rose calico and went to meet Sally at the back door.

Sally looked her over critically. “That dress suit you fine. But that old white tignon dull as dishwater.” She pulled something from her sash — a red tignon with black stitching along the hem. “Here,” she said. “This’ll make the boys sit up and take notice.”

Sophie blushed almost as red as the tignon.

On the long walk through the woods to the barn, Sally filled Sophie in on all the comings and goings between Oak River and its next-door neighbor Doucette. There’d be Doucette folks at the dance tonight, just as there were Doucette folks who came to hear Old Guam preach. Ned had been a Doucette slave until he’d married Africa and Mrs. Fairchild had bought him from Mr. Robinson.

“Old Missy think a heap of Africa,” Sally said. “Korea done marry a Doucette man, and they never sees each other but Saturday nights.”

Sophie slapped at mosquitoes and midges and tried not to jump every time something rustled in the alligator grass. Finally, she saw yellow light twinkling through the trees and the rumor of distant shouts and laughter.

“Come on!” Sally grabbed Sophie’s hand and ran down toward the barn, which was even more crowded than it had been on Sunday.

As they reached the door, Samson popped up beside them, all got up in a fancy vest. He winked at Sophie, grabbed Sally by the waist, and swung her up in the air as if she weighed no more than a piglet, while she squealed happily to be put down, this
minute,
you hear? Then they both disappeared, leaving Sophie hugging the door frame and wishing she hadn’t come.

The barn was a sea of dark faces bobbing and turning as they danced past, laughing or solemn with concentration, eyes flashing in the smoky light of a handful of lanterns hung from the rafters. At the far end of the room, two men frailed away on fiddle and banjo, their shadows bending and swaying crazily in the lamplight. Sophie had never heard music like it before, lively and sad and full of odd rhythms. She wasn’t sure whether she liked it or not.

A lanky shadow separated itself from the crowd and offered her its hand. If it had been anybody but Canny’s brother, Poland, Sophie would have bolted. As it was, she smiled shyly and allowed him to pull her into the dance.

The packed earth juddered and shook beneath Sophie’s feet; dust flew up in clouds. Poland put both hands on her waist and spun her around until she was hot and dizzy and breathless. It wasn’t in the least like Miss Leblanc’s Dancing School. For a little while, she forgot about everything but the beating of the music in her blood and bones and the hot wind in her ears and faces whizzing by in a kaleidoscope blur of brown, red, blue, pink, green, and white. Everybody was whooping and yelling — even Sophie, until the rising dust caught in her throat and sent her coughing.

Poland guided her out of the dance and to the rain barrel. He scooped up a tin dipperful of water and watched her drink it.

“You want to go ’round again?”

Sophie handed the dipper back. “Maybe later. You go on, though.”

Poland shrugged and plunged back into the dance. Sophie splashed water on her hot face and wished she’d gone with him. A woman sitting on a hay bale called out, “Ain’t you Mist’ Robert’s girl from New Orleans-way? I hear tell you got conjure spectacles can see clear through walls and know Ma’amzelle Marie LaVeau like she was you own ma.”

Sophie had given up trying to explain her glasses. She just shook her head mysteriously when someone pressed her for details as the stranger woman was doing now, gathering a little group of Doucette women.

“I can’t tell you,” Sophie said. “It’s a secret. But I can tell you this — they’re no great shakes in New Orleans. Any of you ever been there?”

A woman named Alice allowed as how she’d seen the docks and the slave market when she was sold, and another had heard about the quadroon balls, where mixed-blood mothers took their light-skinned daughters to dance with rich white men.

“Sophie know all ’bout them.” It was Antigua, her voice edged with malice. “I think you mama planning to take you there in a year or two, sell you to the highest bidder.”

Sophie looked around. Antigua was lounging in the barn door, looking like butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “You got a tongue like a water-snake, Antigua,” Alice said. “The child ain’t to blame for her mama’s skin or her daddy’s sins, only for her own.”

“Is that so?” Antigua said. “Well then, lying’s a sin, and she’s told a passel of lies. My sister Canny told me some of her stories ’bout New Orleans — carts that run by themselves and black men playing horns and suchlike nonsense. She got no call to go lying like that. She just laughing up her sleeve at all the poor dumb plantation niggers, don’t know no better than to believe her.”

The women turned their eyes to Sophie. She opened her mouth to protest that everything she’d said was true. Except it wasn’t — at least, not in 1860.

She stood up. “I didn’t mean —” She stopped. “It’s not like that. I’m sorry.”

Antigua hooted with laughter, and Sophie fled, careening into someone — Poland again. “Don’t you mind my sister,” he said, his hands warm on her arms. “That girl’d kick over an ant hill just to see them run around. Come back inside and dance with me.” He grinned. “You a fine dancer, Sophie.”

Sophie shook her head. “I can’t. I — have to get back to the Big House. Old Missy likes me to read to her at night, and —”

“You best scoot, then. You wants me to walk you back?”

If his voice was warm or his smile extra-friendly, Sophie was too upset to notice. “No,” she said. “You stay and dance. I’ll be fine.”

The moon was just bright enough for Sophie to pick out a path she thought she recognized. As the noise of the dance faded behind her, clouds crept over the moon. A tree frog piped nearby and a hunting owl hooted dismally.

“Where you think you going, girl?”

Sophie stopped dead. She could have been at the bottom of a well for all she could see, but she recognized that voice. “Creature! Where have you been?”

“I don’t know as I likes that name,” it said thoughtfully. “Don’t seem like a
real
name to me. Kutnahin, that a
real
name. Or Br’er Rabbit.”

Sophie recalled she had a bone to pick with the Creature. “Howabout I call you dirty, cheating
liar
?”

“What you talking, girl?” The Creature sounded surprised. “Ain’t I give you the wish of your heart, just like you asked? As I recall, you wish you was somebody different.”

“I didn’t mean I wanted to be a
slave!
”

“You didn’t say what you meant.”

“Yes, I did. I said I wanted to have magic adventures. You just threw me into the past, and then you
disappeared.
”

“Moving folks through time be hard work,” the Creature said. “I was wore out for days and days — couldn’t hardly raise a corn on Mammy’s little toe. Not that I’d waste my time on suchlike nonsense, no, ma’am.”

Sophie felt they were getting off the subject. “But why did you make me a slave?”

“Me? I ain’t got that kind of power. You done sold your own self down the river, missy. Ain’t even made a decent profit on it, either,” it added thoughtfully.

“I did not! I didn’t have a choice. Everybody thought I was a slave from the very beginning. They’d never have believed me if I told them the truth.”

“You might could invent a better lie,” the Creature pointed out. “Don’t make no never mind now, howsomever. Yes, ma’am, no ma’am, tell me where to set and spit, ma’am, like you ain’t got no more gumption than a tadpole.”

“I do too have gumption! Didn’t I go to the maze and call you? Why didn’t you come?”

“Didn’t want to. ’Sides, I got my own problems,” the Creature said. “Papa Legba, he none too pleased with me.”

Sophie smiled. “He said you plot but never plan.”

“He a big one to talk,” the Creature snapped. “Why, I could tell you stories ’bout Papa Legba —”

“Stop trying to change the subject! I’m making a wish, and I really, really, really mean it, so you have to grant it. I wish I was home. Please, Creature, take me home!”

“I can’t,” the Creature said. “Maybe in books adventures is laid out nice and neat like a length of cloth, just cut it out and sew it up into a dress or a pair of britches. Real adventures ain’t like that.”

“So you won’t send me home?” Panic squeezed Sophie’s voice to a squeak.

“Not won’t. Can’t,” the Creature said apologetically. “The story ain’t near over yet.”

“What story? You didn’t say anything about a story!”

“The story of how you done what it is you supposed to do, of course — the thing I brung you here to do.”

Tears of anger and frustration prickled Sophie’s eyes. “Can’t you just tell me what it is, so I can do it and go home?”

“Nuh-uh. That not how stories works. Aww, now, don’t you go be crying. I can’t bear a crying woman.”

“I’m not a woman. I’m only thirteen, and I want to go home!”

The Creature sighed noisily. “I tells you what. You stops crying, and I give you some wisdom, straight out. You listening? There a time to speak and a time to shut you mouth, a time to stand still and a time to run, a time to keep to the truth and a time to make a little detour around it. You already knows more than you think, but it don’t do you no good less’n you pay attention. Keep you candle beside you, but remember: sometimes you just gots to take a jump in the dark.”

Sophie waited a minute for it to go on, then realized it had gone and left her, just like it always did. She took a step forward, felt the ground squelch wetly under her bare toes, stepped back hastily. Maybe she should just wait. If this was the right path, somebody was bound to come along soon, on their way home from the dance. She groped around until she found a tree to sit against, then tucked her bare feet under her skirts and peered anxiously into the dark until at last she fell asleep.

Next morning, Ned found Sophie by the bayou, curled up among the roots of a willow with her feet almost in the water. When he woke her, she sat up, stared at the bayou, at Ned, at the hot, horrible reality she was stuck in, and started to cry.