The Freedom Maze (5 page)

Aunt Enid was in the kitchen, topping and tailing beans while Ofelia stirred a pot of something spicy smelling. According to Aunt Enid, Ofelia was a great cook in the Creole tradition, but all Sophie could taste was pepper. She preferred Lily’s macaroni and cheese.

“Aunt Enid, I can go swimming in the bayou?”

Aunt Enid looked startled. “I thought you were dead set on the maze.”

“Too spooky,” Sophie said.

Ofelia picked up a spice jar, shook some into the pot. “That maze is haunted, sure enough. All kinds of shadows in there. Best you keep away.”

Aunt Enid chuckled. “They’ll leave fast enough when Henry mows the paths. No self-respecting ghost could be expected to put up with the stink and noise of that old mower of mine.”

Sophie doubted that. So, judging from the way her mouth pursed up, did Ofelia.

“You’ll feel better about the place,” Aunt Enid went on, “when you can be sure of not getting lost again. Once the paths are clear, all you have to do is follow the white stones, and you’ll be either in or out in no time.”

“That will be lovely,” Sophie said politely. “But I’d still rather go to the bayou, if that’s all right with you.”

Aunt Enid gave her permission, along with lots of advice about staying away from ’gators and snakes, in case they might be poisonous. Sophie began to wonder if maybe she should just go ahead and take her chances with the ghosts. But she didn’t want Aunt Enid to think she couldn’t make up her mind, so next morning, armed with a thermos of Ofelia’s cold tea and mosquito repellant, she set out to walk along the bayou.

She clambered over roots and around swampy patches until she got tired, then sat with her back to a shaggy cypress trunk and read
The Dutch Shoe Mystery
by Ellery Queen until the mosquitoes came out. By the time she got back to Oak Cottage, she was muddy, scratched, bitten up, and late for supper for the second time in a week.

Aunt Enid wasn’t happy. “You little hoyden! I know you don’t dare carry on at home like this, Little Miss Butter-Wouldn’t-Melt, and let me tell you, you should be ashamed! Why, I was fixing to call Henry to start dragging the bayou for your dead body!”

On and on she went. Sophie stared at her dirty feet and listened, feeling smaller and guiltier by the minute.

Aunt Enid stopped fussing mid-sentence. “Goodness gracious, child, don’t look like that. It’s not the end of the world.”

Sophie wasn’t at all sure of that. Mama would likely never speak to her again if Aunt Enid sent her home now. “I’m so sorry, Aunt Enid. I didn’t mean to be late. I won’t ever do it again.”

“Of course you will.” Aunt Enid sounded impatient. “You’re a child. I never heard of a child yet had any more notion of time than a chipmunk. Tell you what. The old plantation bell’s around here somewhere. Why don’t we hang it on the porch, and then I’ll ring it when I want you. And you’ll come running. Right away, you hear? No lollygagging.”

Sophie risked a glance. Aunt Enid was smiling. “No lollygagging. I promise.”

“Good. Go wash your hands, now. And your feet. And better change your clothes. I swear, you’re wearing half the bayou.” And Aunt Enid began to dish up the jambalaya Ofelia had left warming in the oven.

Next day, Sophie helped Aunt Enid as she dug around in the garden shed like a terrier after a bone. She unearthed her favorite hoe, a split willow basket, and finally, under a moldy tarp, a rusty iron bell about the size of a basketball.

“I knew it was here,” Aunt Enid said triumphantly. “Daddy always said old man Fairchild had it cast with a handful of silver dollars, to give it a sweet tone. Doesn’t look like it’ll ring, does it?”

Once they’d rubbed the bell with steel wool and oiled the clapper, Henry hung it by the kitchen door. It rang with a deep clear tone that carried easily as far as Sophie was likely to wander.

And she did wander. During a run of hot, clear days that made going outside more attractive than staying in, Sophie got acquainted with the bayou. She loved the strange, gnarled cypress knees poking out of the still brown pools, the piping and creaking and calling of animals and birds, the rich smell of living water and growing things. If she sat very still, she could spot muskrats swimming, their eyes bright and anxious as they scouted for ’gators, and watch egrets standing on one leg like feathery statues, heads cocked as they hunted crawfish. By the end of the week, she had lost her straw hat in the bayou and her sandals under the bed. Her arms and legs were mosquito-bitten and scratched, her feet were getting callused, and her skin was turning brown.

Sophie was proud of her tan. She’d never had a nice one before, even when Papa and Mama had taken her to the Caribbean for Christmas vacation when she was ten. Mama had turned golden, Papa had turned a rich leathery color, but Sophie had just gone lobster red and peeled. Now she was a kind of tawny brown, just like the girl in the Coppertone ad.

Grandmama, when she noticed, was not pleased. “You look like a little colored child,” she said irritably. “You might just as well plat up that frizzy hair of yours and be done with it.”

Sophie smoothed her hair self-consciously.

“In
my
day,” Grandmama went on severely, “a
real
lady had a peaches and cream complexion. We wore hats and gloves and carried parasols when we went out and bathed our faces with lemon water to bleach out the freckles.” She sighed. “I do hope you’re not taking your Aunt Enid as a model, dear. Her skin’s that weathered, she might as well be a farm woman.” A crafty look pulled at the soft wrinkles around her eyes. “Why don’t we start those tatting lessons tomorrow?”

Tatting, Aunt Enid had told her, was making lace with a tiny metal shuttle, and that was all Sophie intended to learn about it. “Tomorrow is Sunday,” she pointed out. “We’re going to church in the morning. And the Reverend D’Aubert is coming to see you in the afternoon.”

“Monday, then. First thing. But you will remember to wear a hat when you go out, won’t you, dear?”

Sophie crossed her fingers behind her back. “Yes’m. Good night, Grandmama.”

The next week turned rainy. Sophie spent it mostly on the window seat, working her way through the children’s books filling the bookcase. Some of them were very old: a battered copy of
Swiss Family Robinson
had “Charles M. Fairchild, his book, 1845” written in a spidery script on the inside cover. Mama’s name was in
The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew.
The Story of the Amulet
had belonged to Aunt Enid. It was about time travel and magic creatures, and Sophie loved it.

By Friday she was read out and restless. For once, it wasn’t raining, but the air was so hot, just breathing was an effort. Sophie walked slowly upstream to a pool she’d found, still as black silk, flecked with green duckweed. She’d cooled her feet in it before, keeping a sharp eye out for arrow trails on the water and logs with eyes. Today, she stripped to her underpants and slipped into the cool wetness. As she floated, she looked up through the feathery cypress leaves to the white-hot sky above, listened to the cackling of the moorhens, and wondered whether her friend Diana had ever been swimming in a bayou. Probably no — Diana liked swimming pools and white sand beaches and thought wild animals belonged in zoos. Diana didn’t belong in the same universe as Aunt Enid and Oak Cottage, any more than Papa did. Mama, now, Mama belonged to Oak Cottage. Maybe that was why she and Papa couldn’t be happy together.

Sophie thought of the months before Papa left, with Mama locked in stony silence and Papa hiding in his den, when he was home at all. She hadn’t been surprised when he went away for good. “Silence is golden,” he always said. “But absence is goldener.” Sophie just wished he’d taken her with him.

“Wishing again? You the wishingest girl I ever did see.”

Sophie floundered upright, splashing and sputtering as the muddy water got in her mouth.

“Easy now. Ain’t no call to put youself in no taking.”

It was the voice she’d heard in the maze. “I’m not in a taking,” she said. “I’m startled. It’s not nice just to say things out of thin air like that.”

“It ain’t nice to
fib,
” the voice said. “Why, you shaking like an old dog with palsy.”

“I am not. And even if I was, it would be because I was annoyed. Nobody likes stupid invisible ghosts creeping up on them.”

“You think I a
haunt
?” The voice was indignant.

“I don’t know what you are, and I don’t care. Now, go away, so I can put my clothes on.”

“Can’t.” The voice was smug. “I
is
away. And I ain’t going nowhere. That there cottonmouth, though, look like he swimming right at you.”

In a heartbeat, Sophie was out of the water and on shore, her blouse clutched to her chest. “Cottonmouth? Where?”

The only answer was a chuckle.

Sophie struggled grimly into the shorts and blouse, too mad to be embarrassed.

“Don’t you go away!” the voice commanded. “I got something particular to say to you.”

Sophie buttoned up her blouse. “Me, too. Good-bye. I feel silly talking to the air. If you have something to say, come out here and say it where I can see you.”

“Ain’t you the bold one! I warn you, I mighty powerful juju. I sits at the doorway betwixt might be and is, betwixt was and will be, betwixt here and there. I breaks chains and bends laws, and Old One-Eye himself weren’t strong enough to master me. You
sure
you want to see me?”

This sounded even scarier than Old One-Eye, if Sophie had believed a word of it. “I’m sure.”

A thousand shades of pink and tan and copper and brown swirled in the air like cotton candy at a fair, spinning into a ball that drifted onto a cypress knee, uncurled its arms and legs, and opened wide, bright, amber eyes. Its podgy body was covered in a short, dense pelt blotched chestnut and white and black, and it had a deer’s long and mobile ears above a round, mischievous face. It was like nothing she’d seen before — except maybe the multicolored animal she’d followed to the maze.

It was also even funnier looking than the Psammead from
The Story of the Amulet.
Sophie tried to smother a giggle and failed. The creature’s ears pricked forward. “You laughin’ at me, missy?”

“No. I’m just —”

“Ain’t that just like a Fairchild!” the creature interrupted. “Beg to see me, and when I obliges, she laugh! When I gets done, missy, you going to laugh out t’other side your mouth.” It swelled up indignantly.

“I’m sorry,” Sophie said hurriedly. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”

The creature humphed and folded its arms across its fat belly. “You better not.”

“Can I ask you a question?”

The creature shrugged. “Free country. Freer than it used to be, anyway.”

“What’s your name?”

“Don’t have a name.”

“Everybody has a name.”

“I ain’t everybody,” said the creature smugly.

Sophie had an idea. “Are you Rumpelstiltskin?”

The creature laughed delightedly. “I ain’t heard that one before. Old Man. Br’er Rabbit. Hobgoblin. Compair Lapin. But never Rumpel —. What that name again?”

“Rumpelstiltskin. It’s in a book. What are those other names? Are those all yours?”

“Ain’t you been listening, girl? I told you, I ain’t got no name. Them’s what peoples
calls
me. Them’s people’s names, not mine.” It paused, ears twitching. “You auntie calling you.”

This sounded like typical magic creature double-talk to Sophie. “No, she’s not. It’s nowhere near supper time yet.”

The deep clang of Aunt Enid’s bell rang out, startling two herons into flight. “What I tell you?” The creature immediately began to fade — slowly, like the Cheshire cat, feet first.

“Don’t go,” Sophie pleaded. “You said people. What people?”

“Colored peoples. Black peoples. Red peoples. Even some white peoples. Conjure mens. Two-headed womens.” The creature was gone from the chest down now, and grinning like a jack-o’-lantern. Sophie noticed that it had no teeth, only bony plates like a baby. “You can have one more question, if you asks quick.”

“Will I see you again?”

The bell rang, an insistent iron summons.

“Auntie getting resty.” The creature was now all mouth and eyes and twitching ears.

“One more question. You promised.”

The creature’s ears disappeared and its mouth grew transparent. One liquid eye faded from sight. The other one winked and was gone.

Sophie waited a moment, in case it returned, then reluctantly started home. At the edge of the trees, something tickled her ear — a single word:

“Yes.”

Aunt Enid met Sophie at the kitchen door.

“Where were you?” she asked crossly. “Texas? Your Mama’s on the phone.”

Sophie ran through to the office and picked up the receiver. “Hello, Mama.”

“Where on earth were you? Not by the bayou, I hope. There are snakes, you know, and alligators. And the water is filthy.”

Sophie made a face. “No, Mama.”

“Have you heard from your father recently?”

Over the past year, Sophie had received exactly two letters and six postcards from her father. They contained descriptions of Broadway and Times Square, funny stories about the neighbors in his apartment building, and all his love for ever and ever. She wasn’t sure he even knew she was in Oakwood. “No, Mama.”