Under the Tulip Tree

by Michelle Shocklee

  “I wanted to stand up and say something in that woman’s defense,” Jael said, her eyes welling with tears, “but I was scared.”

  Frankie tugged Jael down into an embrace. “You done the right thing, baby girl. It wasn’t your fight. There may come a day when you gotta stand up for yo’self, but today wasn’t it.”

  They stayed in one another’s arms for a long moment, with Frankie whispering words I couldn’t make out. I glanced at Alden, wondering if we should leave, but he was looking at the floor, hands clenched. In the short time I’d known him, I’d learned the inequality of the races didn’t sit well with him. No doubt he wished he could locate that streetcar conductor and share a choice word or two.

  Jael sniffled again before rising to her feet. “What are you all talking about?”

  “I was just telling Rena and Alden ’bout the time after the fighting stopped here in Nashville. Sam was still in the hospital, but it looked like he might recover.” A deep frown filled Frankie’s face. “But the better he felt, the more that man kept on me about going to work in the prison hospital and caring for the men there.”

  “You mean the Confederates?” Jael’s mouth hung open. “They didn’t deserve any kindness.”

  After what she’d witnessed on the streetcar, I couldn’t blame her for her strong opinion. The thought of a black person coming to the aid of the very people who’d kept them enslaved surely seemed offensive.

  Frankie sighed. “There were so many prisoners, the folks tending them couldn’t keep up. I thought poorly of anyone who went to help, but Sam wouldn’t let up. ‘You gotta go to them, Frankie,’ he’d say every day. ‘One of them prisoners needs you.’” She shook her head, her face pinched with aggravation as though Sam had just spoken the words.

  “Why did Sam think a Confederate needed you? You didn’t know any, did you?”

  “None that I could recall. Mr. Waters’s son was too young to join the army when they left the city in 1862. I heard later the South was taking boys as young as fourteen by the end of the war, so I don’t know if Grant Waters joined up or not.”

  “Then who needed you?” Jael’s question echoed my own.

  Frankie settled back in her chair, rubbing her gnarled fingers as she often did when deep in memories. The clock on the wall ticked several minutes away before she finally answered.

  “Someone I never expected to see again.”

  Sam improved a little each day. He had a long way to go to be fully recovered, but every morning brought new victories, like sitting up, feeding himself, and reading from his Bible.

  The matron of the hospital, a disagreeable woman with the fitting name of Miz Stoney, never had a kind word to say when I passed her in the hallway. She seemed put out that the men in the beds refused to mend as fast as she desired, and nothing I or any of the volunteers did ever met with her approval.

  “That woman shouldn’t be working in a hospital,” I said to Sam one day after hearing Miz Stoney rail at the young woman I’d seen stargazing. I didn’t know what infraction the young volunteer had committed, but she was in tears after Miz Stoney was finished. “She’s too mean. Miz Illa should be the matron.”

  “Miz Illa doesn’t want to be a matron. She’s free to go between hospitals and the camps, tending to the needy in ways she couldn’t if she was kept at one hospital.”

  I saw the wisdom in his observations. “Well, if not Illa, then someone else who has a heart that isn’t made of stone.”

  Sam smiled. “You’d make a good matron.”

  I rolled my eyes heavenward. “As though they’d allow the likes of me to be matron.” My gaze swept the room. More beds had been added to accommodate more wounded, and the room now had thirty patients crowded into it. I helped the volunteers tend some of the men, but Sam was my main concern.

  “Listen, Frankie,” Sam began, but I held up my hand to cut off his words. I knew what he intended to say. He’d already said it a dozen times.

  “I told you. I won’t go nurse the prisoners, so stop asking.”

  Hurt filled his eyes, and I regretted the harshness in my voice. My tense shoulders eased. I didn’t want to argue with Sam. “Do you want me to read to you?”

  He nodded.

  I took up the Bible, turning to the book of Psalms, when Sam said, “I’d like to hear Luke, chapter 6.”

  I eyed him. He’d never asked for a text so specifically before. I flipped pages until I found the passage and began reading. I smirked when I came to verse 24. “‘But woe unto you that are rich! for ye have received your consolation.’”

  I looked up. “That sounds like he’s talking about the Confederates.”

  “All Confederates aren’t rich,” Sam said softly, his eyes remaining closed as he listened.

  I scowled. He was right, although I didn’t like to admit it. I kept reading. “‘Woe unto you that are full! for ye shall hunger. Woe unto you that laugh now! for ye shall mourn and weep.’”

  I didn’t say it aloud, but I thought for sure Jesus must have had the Confederates in mind when he spoke those words. They were sure mourning now that the Yanks had whipped them and sent them on the run with their tails between their legs.

  Eagerly I went on to the next verse, wanting to prove to Sam the text was indeed about Southerners, but I stopped halfway through verse 27. I silently read the remaining words, and I knew. This was why Sam chose this passage.

  “What’s it say, Frankie?” asked Henry from the bed next to Sam’s. The young man with a leg missing waited for me to continue.

  Sam’s eyes were open now. I fumed when I met his steady gaze. “I think I’m done reading for the day.”

  He ignored my hard tone and gave me a patient look. “Please finish it, Frankie.”

  I narrowed my gaze. “It don’t change anything.”

  He nodded.

  With gritted teeth, I read, “‘But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you. Bless them that curse you, and pray for them which despitefully use you.’”

  I felt every eye in the silent room on us. The other patients had heard me argue against tending the prisoners. Their nods of agreement told me I was right. Every one of them had been used by white people. They’d all suffered at the hands of masters and overseers. They lay in this hospital because of men who wanted to keep us in bondage simply because of the color of our skin.

  Sam didn’t speak, but it didn’t matter. I knew what he’d say, and I didn’t want to hear it.

  Low conversations eventually resumed throughout the room. Henry sent me one last look of sympathy before he closed his eyes. He’d joined the Federal Army mere days before a Confederate cannonball blew off his leg. How would he feel if I up and left him and the others to go tend the very men who’d done that to him?

  I closed the book and laid it in my lap, staring at the black leather cover. Since the day I’d made peace with God, I’d fallen into a comfortable belief in him and the words printed in the Bible. I wasn’t as passionate about it as Sam was, but it felt good to know there was Someone more powerful than the white people in charge of my world. Why he let them rule over us was still a mystery, but I thought I’d begun to trust him.

  Now I wasn’t sure I trusted him at all. How could he ask me to love my enemies? The very thought left me with a feeling of betrayal deep in my soul. Betrayed by God and by Sam.

  “Give me one good reason why I should step a toe in that prison hospital.”

  Sam’s eyes were closed again, but I knew he’d heard despite me trying to keep my angry voice lowered so the others wouldn’t hear.

  He turned his head and met my gaze. “Because you ain’t like them.”

  It wasn’t the answer I expected. “What do you mean?”

  “You ain’t like them,” he repeated. “You wouldn’t treat someone badly because they had white skin. I’ve seen you care for the officers the last two years, doing their laundry, tidying their rooms. Sure, it was your job, but you didn’t have to give so
much attention to them as you did.”

  I thought back to the days before the battle began. In my hearing, General Thomas told one of his colonels that I’d taken such good care of his officers, their wives would be jealous upon their return home. The comment pleased me then, but now I wished he hadn’t noticed. I wished Sam hadn’t noticed.

  Why, I wondered, had I worked so hard for the officers? The gold coins I received might be an obvious answer, yet I knew it wasn’t because of them. I’d worked just as hard for Mr. Waters back at the warehouse and never earned a cent.

  “You ain’t like them, Frankie.” Sam’s soft voice drew me from my thoughts. His eyes held no condemnation. Only peace.

  Suddenly my anger with him ebbed until nothing remained.

  This man knew me. He saw me. And he loved me in spite of it all.

  “I can’t do it, Sam,” I whispered, fear rising at the thought of entering the prison hospital. I’d been willing to tend white Union soldiers, but I could not bear the thought of touching the men in gray. Their kind had wounded me too deeply with their hands, their words, their actions.

  “Will you think on it?”

  My every instinct screamed to refuse even that small concession, but the earnestness on his face was too much. “I’ll think on it.”

  Over the next three days, we settled into a truce. Sam didn’t ask me to help the Confederate prisoners, and I pretended everything was fine. But on the inside, I was a mess. Even my dreams were haunted by men in gray, begging for help.

  Illa came to my tent early the fourth morning. I hadn’t slept well. Nell hadn’t come back to the tent last night, and I worried she’d found another good-for-nothing to spend time with. Between Sam and his confounded plea, and Nell and her confounded naiveté, I wanted to pull the blanket over my head and hide from the world.

  “Sam told me of his request for thee to work in the prison hospital,” Illa said at my questioning look.

  I sat up, shivering in the chilly morning air. I wasn’t in the mood to hear another sermon on why I should help those men. “If you’re here to tell me you agree with him, I’d rather not hear it.”

  She sat on the edge of Nell’s empty bed. “Then it will surprise thee to hear me say I don’t believe thee should do it.”

  She was right. I was plumb shocked. “I don’t believe it. You, the woman who left your home and family back in Pennsylvania to tend slaves and strangers alike, you’re telling me not to go help in the prison hospital? That isn’t what the Good Book says.”

  “No, it isn’t. Thee is correct on that. But it also says, ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.’”

  I frowned.

  She continued. “‘And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing.’”

  I’d known Illa long enough to know she wasn’t a woman who wasted words. There was a lesson here, and she wanted me to discover it.

  “Sam says we are to love our enemy.”

  “Yes, we are,” she agreed, “but love cannot be forced or coerced. It has to be freely given. The words I quoted from the apostle Paul tell us we can do great and wonderful things, but without love, without charity of heart, they are meaningless.”

  Understanding slowly seeped into me.

  I was willing to help my fellow man at the hospital. I was even willing to nurse the white Federal soldiers who’d arrived the night of the battle. Those men had given a great sacrifice for me and all the other slaves. Freedom didn’t come without a price, and they’d been willing to pay it.

  But to offer care and compassion to men who fought against freedom? Who wanted to keep me in bondage? That I couldn’t do.

  “Sam will be disappointed.”

  She remained quiet for a long moment. “Sam has learned to love as Christ loves. It doesn’t matter to him what the person looks like or what they’ve done. He simply loves them. That isn’t an easy thing to do. I’ve struggled with it myself at times.”

  This surprised me. “I woulda never guessed. You’ve never shown that here.”

  She smiled. “That’s because thee sees me now, filled with God’s grace and love. Had thee seen me before I went through the Refiner’s fire, thee would know my failures. I overflowed with hatred for people I’d never even met.”

  “Who?”

  “White Southerners who owned slaves.”

  I stared at her. “You hated your own kind?”

  “They were not my kind, at least in my mind. They were evildoers, the lowest of mankind. I had no pity for them and certainly held no love in my heart for someone like that.”

  My breath caught. Her words exactly described what had lived inside of me since the day I was sold away from Mammy.

  Hatred. Darkness, always lurking in the shadows of my soul. Sometimes I could hide it and pretend it wasn’t there. Since meeting Sam and Illa, I’d witnessed what love truly looked like, felt like. I wanted that, and yet the darkness wouldn’t let it take hold. Not completely, anyway.

  “How did you overcome it?”

  She stood, a look of peace shining in her eyes. “I didn’t, Frankie. Not on my own.”

  After she left, I mulled over everything she’d said. I knew she wanted me to ask God to help me love the wounded prisoners. Sam wanted the same. But did I? It was easier to hate. Hatred had been my constant companion for so long, I wasn’t sure I could love. Not the way they wanted me to.

  The next morning, I made my way into the city. With my head down against a cold wind, I nearly ran into a well-dressed young woman standing in the middle of Cherry Street, not far from the prison hospital, silent sobs shaking her slim shoulders. She looked so lost and forlorn I couldn’t pass on by.

  “Ma’am, can I help you?”

  She stared at me, blue eyes brimming with tears. “My husband just died.”

  I stood with her while she wept. When she quieted, I asked, “Was he a soldier?”

  She nodded, her lips trembling.

  “I’m sorry for your loss, ma’am. The Federal Army has done a lot of good in these terrible years of war. I hope your husband’s death won’t be in vain.”

  She looked aghast. “Whitley was a captain in the Confederate Army. He’s been here in this wretched prison hospital for weeks. They refused to let me take him home to Richmond, where he could get proper care, and now he’s dead. I hope every one of your Federal soldiers suffers the same fate.”

  She ran off sobbing, leaving me with a terrible ache in my gut. Illa’s words echoed in my mind, like the loud-sounding brass she’d spoken about. “Without charity of heart, they are meaningless.” Meaningless.

  I stared after the woman, although she’d disappeared in the morning crowds. Like my Sam, didn’t her Whitley deserve decent care whether he lived or died? Whether he was white or black? No matter which side he’d fought on? Like as not, I wouldn’t have been able to save her husband, but did that matter?

  I ran the rest of the way to the hospital on College Street, directly to Sam’s bedside.

  He read the anguish on my face and reached for my hand. “Tell me.”

  With sobs, I told him about the young woman and her husband, about Illa’s visit and my nightmares.

  “What should I do, Sam? What should I do?”

  A soft smile slowly lifted his lips. “‘But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies.’”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  My insides tumbled and my knees shook, but I walked into the prison hospital with my head high two days later. Illa had secured a volunteer position for me with the matron, and I was assigned to the second floor. The smell of sickness lingered in the air when I entered. Illa confided that this hospital was not as well maintained as the others, even the one for black soldiers. I couldn’t blame those in charge for their neglect. These men were the enemy, after all. Illa
and Sam’s encouragement to get past those sentiments was the reason I was here, but not everyone felt the way they did. I would have never stepped a toe inside the building if it weren’t for Sam’s persistence.

  The Federal soldiers standing guard eyed me as I climbed the stairs, but they didn’t prevent me from passing by. With a deep breath, I opened the door of the room I was to attend. My task was to shave the men who couldn’t do so for themselves, yet the very thought of being so near a white man—especially a Confederate—sent wave after wave of fear coursing through my veins.

  Low murmurs of conversation hummed in the big room. Several windows along the far wall revealed the disagreeable weather outside, and the space held a chill despite a stove in the corner.

  A nurse with bright-red hair poking from her cap changed the bandage wrapped around the foot of a patient. I’d heard many of the Confederate soldiers didn’t have shoes and had resorted to binding their feet in rags. The bitter weather, however, was no match for such inadequate coverings, and frostbite had claimed far too many toes and feet.

  The nurse glanced up at me and noted the shaving kit and bowl of water in my hands. “You can start there,” she said, indicating a gentleman lying abed near a window. He gazed out to the cloudy sky, and I imagined he wished he were anywhere but this prison hospital. He looked older than most of the soldiers I’d seen, his once-dark hair nearly completely gray. A days-old scruffy beard covered hollow cheeks.

  I made my way to the man’s bedside. “Sir, would you like a shave?”

  He turned and frowned when he saw me. His eyes darted to the nurse. “Where’s that other lady? The white one. I want her to shave me.”

  The nurse continued to wind a clean bandage around her patient’s foot. “Mrs. Williams transferred to a different hospital. If you wish to be shaved, then Miss . . . ?” She glanced at me.