The Freedom Maze (17 page)

“Yessir,” Sophie muttered.

“Scoot then,” said Mr. Beau, “and we’ll say no more about it. Will we, Miss May?” He smiled down at the little girl’s tear-splotched face. She sniffed and slipped her hand into his.

“Whatever you say, Mr. Waters.”

“Good.” He turned to Sophie. “One good turn deserves another. You understand me, wench?”

Sophie shot him a glance, standing free and easy beside Miss May, his long brown cheroot poised for a puff. “Well,” she said doubtfully. “I ain’t too acute, being a nigger and all. But I tries.” And before she could get herself into any more trouble, she turned around and ran out of the maze to the yard, where she belonged.

When Sophie showed up in the kitchen, Africa laughed.

“No need to tell me what you doing here — I can guess. Korea told me ’bout dinner last night. ‘Just like Miss Liza!’ I like to die laughing.” The sauce she was stirring blurped thickly, and she swung the pot off the fire. “Nobody here got time to tell you what to do, Sophie. You just help Canny with her chores until after dinner, and then we see what needs doing.”

Sophie had never thought about what Canny did all day. She remembered, from her time in the hospital, that Canny was responsible for feeding and watering the pigeons that lived in the round wooden dovecote at the edge of the yard. But Canny had never told her about her other chores. Along with Tibet and a boy named H.C., Sophie traipsed back and forth across the yard, carrying bucket after heavy, sloshing bucket from the big cistern to the kitchen water barrel and trundling a two-wheeled cart full of kindling from the woodshed by the stable to the kitchen wood box. The bucket’s rope handles blistered her hands and the wood gave her splinters, but the fear of Tibet’s teasing kept her from complaining.

Canny always left the dovecote for last, as a treat. The doves were pretty birds, white and plump and as vain of their ruffled feathers as the proudest Southern belle. But all Sophie could think of, hungry as she always was, was how delicious they’d be when cooked up into the golden pies Africa sent up to the Big House.

That night, Old Missy asked Sophie how she was getting on down in the yard. “It should be a rest for you, really,” she said comfortably. “Not running up and down those big old stairs all the livelong day.”

Sophie clenched her blistered hands and bowed her head to hide her face. “Yes ma’am. You want to go on with
Little Dorrit
?”

Old Missy leaned back against her soft white cotton pillows. “Dickens seems too much like real life just now. I think I’ve a mind to try something more romantic. Run down to the library and fetch up
Ivanhoe.
”

And the subject was closed.

Working in the plantation kitchen was much harder than running errands. Between the scrubbing and the toting, her arms and back ached and her hands were red and rough as sandpaper. The kitchen was like a bake oven, and she always felt a little dizzy and stupid with the heat. But there were compensations. No Aunt Winney to scold and harry her. No Mammy to look at her like a palmetto bug on a tablecloth. No Mrs. Charles to threaten her with the strap. No Fairchild daughters and granddaughters to turn up their Fairchild noses at her.

Once they saw Sophie did her share of work, the kitchen women got downright friendly. Jane taught her how to shuck beans. Bali, who’d been doing all the pot-scrubbing before Sophie showed up, was glad to show her the finer points of getting scorched food off an iron pot with wet ashes. And round about three o’clock, when the white folks were at dinner and the pots soaking in the trough, Sophie could take her mush and potliquor under the kitchen oak and listen to the servants of four plantations trying to top each other’s gossip.

The day before Miss Liza’s ball, Sophie sat with her shoulder companionably against Hepzibah’s knee while a Bywater woman bragged on her aunt’s husband.

“Old Henry, he just light out to the swamp, build hisself a little camp, and fish. When he sick of he own company, he come back and take the fifty lashes Mist’ Kennedy got waiting for him and go back to work, cheerful as a jaybird. He done it before, and he fixing to do it again, right ’bout the middle of harvest-time. He a right caution, that Henry.”

Uncle Angus, Mr. Preston’s bodyservant, took the corncob pipe from his mouth. “We got a wench up to Rich Meadow run twenty mile to Kelderly every month God send. She hang ’round and hang ’round till the overseer catch her and haul her back to Rich Meadow. Last time, Mr. Preston put a big old iron collar on her, with bells on it. But she run anyways, jingling and jangling like an old cow. Miz Charlotte, she say she going sell her.”

“What’s at Kelderly?” Sally asked curiously. “Her man?”

“Her baby boy,” said Uncle Angus. “Sold for a houseboy when he weren’t much more than six year old.”

Everybody murmured and a Rich Meadow woman said, “They the life and the death of us both. You own flesh and blood — it break you heart right in two when they’s sold away.”

There was a chorus of amens, just like at church, and then Asia said, “I don’t know what things like in Georgia, but we got a law in Louisiana, you can’t never sell a child away from his ma till he grown. There’s some do it anyway, but not Old Missy.”

Uncle Angus said, “World be a better place for niggers if they was more white folks in it like Mrs. Fairchild.”

“World a better place for niggers there don’t be no white folks in it at all,” said the Bywater woman sourly.

“You hush youself, Evaline,” said a woman sitting at her feet. “You fixing to talk yourself straight into a whipping.”

“Ain’t no whupping at Oak River. Ain’t you heard? That sorry crick out yonder, that the River Jordan. We done come out of Georgia into the land of Canaan.
Praise
the Lord.”

There was an uncomfortable silence. Sophie expected Antigua to set her straight, but it was Hepzibah who said, “You’re a fool, girl. Oak River folks working for Pharaoh, same as y’all. Old Missy just the Pharaoh that love Joseph.”

“The Pharaoh that love Mammy, more like,” Antigua added, and everybody laughed.

“Hush up, Antigua,” said Uncle Germany. “Old Missy a kind, Christian woman. She do her best by us.”

Siberia, the Oak Cottage housemaid, shrugged. “Ain’t all roses. Young Missy sooner whup a nigger than eat her dinner.”

“Oh, you safe enough, Siberia,” Antigua said, “as long as Dr. Charles recollect who wear the britches in the family.”

Evaline wasn’t done arguing. “India, she say there more rawhide at Oak River than cornmeal.”

“India is a fool.” Mammy stepped out from behind the oak and glared at the suddenly silent group. “She brought that rawhide on herself, taking up with that no-good old conjure man.”

“Ole One-Eye,” Zeb the carpenter said. “I remember. She try and warn him when the patrollers was looking for him. Old Massa, he give her the licking of her life.”

“There,” said Evaline.

Mammy eyed Zeb over her steel spectacles. “There’s no denying Mr. Patrick was a hard man. But Mrs. Fairchild’s been a good mistress to me, and I won’t hear a word against her.”

Uncle Angus cleared his throat uncomfortably. “Don’t take no mind of Evaline, Mammy. She ain’t had no sense from the day she was borned.”

Africa spoke up from the kitchen door. “You both wrong. Evaline got plenty sense. There ain’t no such thing as a good mistress, on account of a mistress ain’t a good thing to be. Think on it, Mammy. Old Missy maybe taught you to read and write and speak as white as her own children. But she ain’t set you free.”

Sophie waited with the rest of the slaves for Mammy’s reaction. She was famous for her tongue-lashings, and it was plain to see that she was plenty put-out enough to deliver one. But she didn’t even say a word, just turned around and marched off across the yard, scattering chickens every which way with her stiff, black skirts.

The day of Miss Liza’s engagement ball came and went. Sophie helped Aunt Winney bathe and dress Mrs. Fairchild in purple silk and lace, then spent the rest of the day down in the kitchen, far from the festivities, turning spits and scrubbing pots. She didn’t get back up to the Big House until well after midnight.

Old Missy was already in bed. “No reading tonight, child. I’m too tired to listen. I do believe I’ll spend tomorrow in bed, after all that fuss. And please tell Winney I don’t want to see a living soul before suppertime.”

This suited Sophie just fine. Because she wasn’t exactly a house servant just now, and nobody had told her not to, she decided to give herself the afternoon off.

The weather was soft and gray and hot — perfect for fishing. After Old Guam’s sermon, Sophie and Canny headed to the Quarters to pick up some hooks and lines and whoever didn’t have anything better to do, and head out to the bayou to try for some bluegill. Everybody was busy, hoeing their gardens, washing clothes and bedding, mending fences, talking, tending to their lives. Sophie and Canny found their friends gathered in Old Guam’s hen yard, with his chickens scratching and clucking around them.

Mindful of her Sunday finery, Sophie hung back while Canny squirmed through to where Young Guam sat cross-legged in the dust, dolefully cradling a large speckled hen in his lap.

She squatted down and gave the hen a poke. “She passed, all right. You going to eat her?”

Young Guam clutched the limp, feathery corpse close. “This here ain’t no ordinary hen. This here’s Old Betsy, been laying a dozen eggs a week since I was a picaninny. I ain’t letting no body make no gumbo out of Old Betsy.”

A grubby hand sticking out of an even grubbier white sleeve reached out and smoothed Old Betsy’s black and white wing. “We should bury her, then.”

The voice wasn’t a yard child’s. Sophie looked again. Under the grubbiness, she recognized one of the Becker twins, looking perfectly at home squatting in the dirt. Sophie wondered if his mama knew where he was, and what she’d say when she saw the state of his Sunday suit.

Young Guam looked at him eagerly. “You mean in a real grave, like she was folks?”

“Of course in a real grave,” the twin assured him. “With a bier and a hearse and horses and all.”

“Horses?” the second twin asked doubtfully. “You’re crazy, Marcus. How we going to get horses to pull a cart with a dead chicken on it?”

Marcus gave his brother (Augustus, Sophie remembered) a friendly thump. “Pretend horses, stupid. Paris and Rome are about the same size — same color, too, like match bays.”

Two reddish-brown boys, brothers by the look of them, exchanged glances. Sophie couldn’t tell whether or not they were offended by Marcus’s suggestion. She certainly was. She thought Marcus and Augustus had taken charge of something that wasn’t any of their business and turned it into a game for their amusement, and she wasn’t having any part of it. If Canny and the rest wanted to be ordered around by a pair of filthy-faced white brats, fine. She was going to change out of her Sunday dress and just go fishing by herself.

Marcus stood and brushed the dust off the seat of his britches. “What you all waiting for? Time’s a-wasting.”

Gently, Augustus took Old Betsy from Young Guam and everybody scattered, looking for the things they’d need to give the chicken a proper funeral: a wood cart, some rope, a shovel.

Tibet ran up to Sophie, her arms full of leafy branches. “Is you is or is you ain’t going help me lay out Old Betsy right and proper?”

“Come fishing with me instead,” Sophie said. “Master Marcus Becker doesn’t own you, or me either. We don’t have to do what he says.”

Tibet gave her an exasperated look. “Not even if he got a good idea? What kind of foolishness is that?”

“Any more foolish than having a funeral for a hen?”

“Young Guam, he set a heap of store by that there hen,” Tibet said. “Mast’ Marcus, he recognizing that. Why ain’t you?”

She seemed serious. “You really think this funeral will make Young Guam feel better?”

“Sure as I’m standing here,” Tibet said. “’Sides, might be some fun.”

“All right,” Sophie said. “I’ll do it. Because I like Young Guam, not because Marcus Becker says to.”

Tibet dumped the branches in her arms. “Good. Now, make Old Betsy one of them things Mast’ Marcus was talking about.”

By the time Sophie had made a kind of nest out of the branches and tied it to the wood cart so it wouldn’t slide off, the grave diggers had done their work, and the procession set out to carry Old Betsy to her final resting place.

Eager though she was to find fault, Sophie found the ceremony oddly impressive. Augustus took the lead with his mama’s prayer book, then Paris and Rome pulling Old Betsy’s hearse, with Marcus driving them by ropes tied to their waists. Canny had tied a black bow around Old Betsy’s scraggly neck, and everybody agreed she looked fine. Young Guam, as chief mourner, came next, followed by every Oak River child old enough to walk, singing “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” at the tops of their lungs.

When the procession reached the bayou, everybody gathered round the grave and laid Old Betsy to rest with psalms and prayers and a white handkerchief between her and the black bayou soil. Marcus donated the handkerchief. Augustus, who was bookish, preached a sermon on the text “We all must die” that was almost as rousing — and much shorter — than anything Sophie had heard from Old Guam. To her surprise, he didn’t so much as crack a smile the whole time, and when the service was over, shook Young Guam’s hand and said he was sorry for his loss as if he really meant it. Then Marcus thumped Young Guam on the shoulder and the three boys grinned at each other and took off screaming like hawks to climb the nearest tree.