The Freedom Maze (26 page)

Antigua was only under the summerhouse two more days.

It was Friday evening. Sophie was practicing writing
Omi Saide, slave of Mr. Franklin Preston of Rich Meadow Plantation, Georgia,
with a half-burned stick on a bit of rag. It didn’t look much like Maître Jacques’s scrawl, but it didn’t look like her usual writing, either, and she was feeling pretty pleased with herself. She was trying a masculine flourish on the signature when Sally came tumbling breathlessly into the cabin.

“Lord ’a mercy, Sophie, where Africa at?”

Africa poked her head out of the back room. “What is it, Sally? What’s gone wrong?” Her skin went ashy. “They found her, didn’t they? They found my little girl.”

Sally shook her head. “No, they ain’t found her, not yet. But they will tomorrow, sure’s Judgment Day.”

“Tell me.” Africa sat down in Ned’s chair. Sally had launched into her story when Canny called out that she wanted to hear, too, which woke Saxony, who started screaming. Africa disappeared into the back and returned a few minutes later with Saxony hiccoughing on her hip and Canny hanging on to her arm. She settled Canny into Ned’s chair and herself and Saxony under Yemaya’s vévé.

“You’d oblige me, Sally, if you start again.”

Sally sniffed, but told the whole thing over again from the beginning.

Before supper, the slave-hunter had come knocking on the door of the Big House, insisting he had to talk to Dr. Charles. Samson had shown him into the parlor where the doctor was sitting with Old Missy, closed the door, and put his ear to the crack.

Mr. McCormick, he said he’d been thinking, and he thought the runaway wench hadn’t gone into the swamp at all. He thought she was maybe laying low somewheres near Oak River — maybe even on Oak River land — waiting for the hue and cry to die down.

Old Missy, she said that didn’t sound likely to her, but Dr. Charles wasn’t so sure. Mr. McCormick said he had his best tracker tied up under the gallery, a blue hound with a nose could sniff out a baby in a barrel of polecats. Unless Antigua grew wings and flew away, that hound would find her. He asked Dr. Charles for permission to take the hound all over every inch of the plantation and see if they could flush her out.

Sally took a deep breath. “Old Missy, she say this
her
plantation, Mr. McCormick need
her
permission, and he ain’t got it. Dr. Charles say Antigua
his
property, and he got a good mind to give Mr. McCormick and his blue hound free rein. They still jawing it over when the supper bell ring, but it got to come round Dr. Charles’s way in the end, he being the man of the house. Soon’s he could, Samson run find me and I run here. I don’t know no more than a sucking child where Antigua be, but it ain’t going to be safe much longer, and Lord, O Lord, what we going do?”

The more Sally talked, the more excited she got, and the more excited she got, the quieter Africa was. Watching her rock Saxony, Sophie couldn’t say what she herself was thinking, which was that the blue hound would find Antigua sure as little green apples, and then there would be whippings and disgrace, with the slave market at the end of it, inescapable as Fate.

“Now’s not the time for losing hope,” Africa said. “Now’s the time for thinking. If I can get anywhere near that blue hound, I got a powder will fix him so he don’t know what he’s smelling. But I can’t stop Mr. McCormick poking around in every hole and corner big enough to hide a chigger. We got to keep him away from that summerhouse.”

“So
that
where she be!” Sally exclaimed.

Africa glared. “So now you know all about it, I’ll know who to blame if anybody finds out.”

“I ain’t telling, no, not me,” Sally protested. “I keeping right out of this sorry mess. ’Sides, you aiming to move her, ain’t you?”

“You propose to smuggle her into the Big House and put her under Old Missy’s bed?” snapped Africa. “Because that’s the only place Mr. McCormick’s blue hound won’t stick his nose.”

“Start her off North tonight, then.”

Africa shook her head. “We’re not ready. We’ll do it if we have to, but it’d be better if she went by day. I threw the bones over it,” she said unsteadily. “They said she’d go by day.”

A silence fell, broken only by the crackle of the flames. Then Canny said, “Sophie, take off them spectacles and looky here at me.”

Sophie couldn’t imagine what Canny was getting at, but removed her glasses obediently. Out of the fog of nearsightedness, she heard Africa say, “I don’t know, Canny. She’s like, but she ain’t the
same,
not by a long shot.”

“We gussies her up, Mr. McCormick won’t know the difference. I bet he never even seen Miss Liza.”

It took a minute for Sophie to figure out what Canny was suggesting and another to find her voice. “But Miss Liza’s sixteen!”

“What do you think, Sally?” asked Africa.

Hard fingers turned Sophie’s face from the white-and-black blur that was Canny to the red-and-cream blur that was Sally. The housemaid pulled the tignon off Sophie’s head, undid her braids, and combed out her hair, testing the texture of it between her fingers.

“Might could do,” she said. “
With
the right dress, and rice powder and hair oil, and gloves for them hands and a bonnet and a shawl and a reticule. But ain’t nobody going to believe Miss Liza lazing ’round the summerhouse at dawn, in the middle of the winter, all by her lonesome.”

“Oh, yes, they would,” said Sophie. “If they thought she was waiting for Mr. Beau.”

Sally shook her head. “Old Missy, she tell Mr. Beau not to come ’round here till Christmas.”

“All the better,” said Sophie. “It’s just the fool sort of thing Miss Liza would think was romantic.”

“May be,” said Sally doubtfully. “But where the clothes coming from? You ain’t got no fancy walking dress here, I suppose? Nor no poke bonnet?”

Africa shook her head. “Nothing that would fool a blind mule. Not anywhere in the Quarters.” She turned to Sally.

“Oh, no.” Sally let go Sophie’s hair. “Oh, no. I ain’t stealing a hairpin, let alone a walking dress, and you can tell Mammy whatever you wants.”

Africa moaned. “This is my baby girl, Sally. She’s facing a life of suffering and pain if you don’t help her now.”

“She ain’t my baby girl, and I ain’t studying to catch no suffering and pain my own self. I ain’t doing it, and that’s that.”

The baby started to cry again as Africa’s arms tightened. “I swear you won’t know a peaceful minute, Sally, not from dawn to dawn. Your feet’ll be on fire, your eyes’ll jump out of your head . . .”

Sally shook her head mulishly. Sophie got an inspiration. “Asia mends Miss Liza’s clothes. I’m sure she’d help.”

Sally clapped her hands in relief. “Asia! Now, why didn’t I think of her? I go gets her now, brings her here, she take care of everything, you see. I gets Asia and dresses Sophie here up like a white lady, then you won’t hoodoo me, will you, Africa?”

“No.” Africa sounded very tired. “I won’t hoodoo you.”

Sally hurried off into the night, and Africa set herself to soothing Saxony. When the baby was asleep on her shoulder, she turned to Sophie. “Sally’s right. This is craziness. If you get caught, Antigua isn’t the only one going to get whipped bloody. We have to think of something else.”

“There ain’t nothing else,” said Canny. “Sophie ain’t afraid. Is you, Soph?”

Sophie sighed. “I’m plenty afraid. But it doesn’t matter. There’s nobody else can do this.”

Africa got up. “Then we’ll chance it. I surely can’t think of a better plan. You got grit and you got a cool head, sugar. We’re counting on them both.” She laid the sleeping baby in Sophie’s arms. “Now, put Saxy to bed and fetch in a bucket of water. You going to be a lady, you have to be clean.”

The rest of the night passed in a furtive bustle of preparation. Folk kept dropping by the cabin. Sally sent Samson from the House with pen, paper, and ink. A couple of stable hands volunteered to keep an eye on Mr. McCormick’s progress through the plantation. Uncle Italy said he’d drive Antigua to the steamboat landing and buy her passage to New Orleans. Finally Sally showed up with Asia, toting a bundle wrapped up in a paisley shawl — body linen, a mustard-yellow serge walkingdress with a standing collar, and a pair of brown button boots Mrs. Charles had given her. The boots were too narrow, but the dress fit pretty well. Sophie had grown taller and thinner since she’d come to Oak River, but not thin enough to do without a corset.

“A lady always wear a corset,” said Asia firmly. So she and Sally hooked and laced her into one, with a corset cover on top, and tied some lace-trimmed drawers and a hoop and a petticoat over it all. They threw the heavy skirt over her head, hooked it snug around her waist, and eased her arms into a tight-fitting jacket that buttoned up to her chin, hiding her worn
gris-gris.

Asia looked Sophie over critically, tsked, unbuttoned the jacket, stuffed some rags into the top of her chemise, adjusted them, and buttoned her up again. Sally brushed Sophie’s hair mercilessly, oiled it, rolled it over a rag into a crescent at the nape of her neck, and skewered it in place with a pair of shell combs. The final touch was a dusting of rice powder to lighten her skin.

“Don’t squinch up you eyes like that,” Sally scolded. “Miss Liza don’t never squinch up her eyes.”

Sophie tried to stop squinting and prayed she wouldn’t do it when she was talking to McCormick. Her body felt strange. The corset held her straight and still. The high collar made her hold her chin high. Her hands were encased in tight tan leather gloves, buttoned at the wrist. A deep poke bonnet shaded her face — Sally’s Sunday pride-and-joy, covered in stolen brown velvet hastily tacked on to hide the red cloth. A reticule dangled from her wrist for her spectacles and Antigua’s travel pass, which she had written out in a quiet moment. Everything was as ready as it was going to be, and it was almost dawn.

Sally draped the paisley shawl across Sophie’s elbows.

“You a right picture,” she said approvingly. “I hardly knows you from Miss Liza, and I done dressed you.”

Sophie wished Africa had a mirror. If she was going to be this uncomfortable, she’d like to know how she looked.

“One more thing.” Africa tipped a small mound of dark powder from a little pouch and brushed it onto Sophie’s skirts, then put the pouch into her hand. “Sprinkle a little of this in the garden — four-five piles in different places.”

Sophie tucked the pouch in her reticule and looked over at Canny, propped in her father’s chair, a healing
gris-gris
tied around her waist, her face dotted with healing scabs and pink scars, blinking furiously. She ran back and knelt down beside her in a rustle of petticoats. “Wish us luck, Canny. I’ll tell Antigua you were the one thought up this plan, so she knows what a clever little sister she has.”

“What if it don’t work? What if you all gets caught and whupped and . . . ”

Sophie kissed the little girl on the forehead. “Hush now. It’ll work just fine.”

“I ain’t never going see Anti again,” Canny said mournfully.

“You don’t know that,” Sophie said. “Maybe you’ll go up North yourself some day, find her living in New York as fine and comfortable as you please.”

“You think so?”

“Time to go, sugar,” Africa said. “You all can talk later, when Antigua is free.”

It was a dark, cold walk to the maze. The boots pinched Sophie’s feet, and the tight corset made her breathless. The maze was quiet as death, except for the swish of her mustard-colored skirts over the grass. When they got to the summerhouse, Sophie called softly to Antigua that it was time.

A moment later, Antigua was out of the hidey-hole and hanging onto Africa like a leech. Mother and daughter disappeared into the summerhouse and Sophie busied herself depositing neat little piles of Africa’s powder here and there in the garden. Her heart was beating so hard she felt sick. What if she forgot to take off her glasses? What if she took one look at Mr. McCormick and froze like a possum in torchlight? What if she couldn’t keep him out of the summerhouse? She remembered the stories she’d heard from the visiting servants, of runaways whipped and fettered and collared with bells. She remembered the tale of Ole One-Eye.

A wave of nausea swept up from her pinched-in belly. Frightened she’d throw up and ruin all Sally’s work, Sophie gulped cold air.
I can do this,
she told herself sternly.
It’s just playacting. I do it all the time. I pretend to be stupid, I pretend not to mind when I’m treated like a little dog. I pretend to be a yard child. All I have to do now is pretend to be a white girl.
A white girl raised to think that the whole world exists to polish her boots. A white girl who thinks people can be property.

The sky paled to sunrise. An owl hooted, late home from his night’s hunting. It was the signal. McCormick was heading towards the maze.

Sophie heard shouting. The sharp bark of a dog insisting loudly that it smelled something interesting circled closer through the maze. She removed her glasses, folded them, and put them in her reticule. Her mind felt as blurred as the garden seen through her naked eyes. The barking and shouting came nearer. One of the men sounded horribly familiar.

A blur of motion by the garden entrance told her that the hunters had arrived.

“Mr. Akins!” she exclaimed in what she hoped was Miss Liza’s high-bred whine. “What on earth are you doing here?”

There was an awkward pause. The blurry mass moved close enough so that Sophie could make out that it was made up of several men, some of them black, and a dog straining against a rope. “Miss Fairchild?” said Mr. Akins uncertainly.

Sophie’s heart beat so hard, she was sure Mr. Akins could hear it. She licked her lips, then cocked her head like she’d seen Miss Liza do, careful to keep her eyes wide. “You’re looking for Antigua, aren’t you? Tiresome wench. I hope she drowned in the swamp.”

“Begging your pardon, miss,” said another man — Mr. McCormick, she guessed. “Crusher’s mighty interested in this here garden. How long you been here?”

Sophie shrugged her shoulders daintily. “I don’t know. Not long.”