“Little girl, this place sure is somethin’ ,” Mattie spoke out loud, shaking her head as she retrieved Miss Elizabeth from the couch.
Mattie turned a full circle, following the wandering flowers along the wallpaper until she was looking at the rocking chair once again. Mattie pulled the rocking chair close to the window, sat with Miss Elizabeth in her arms, and looked out over the slave quarters. Occasionally she glanced at the door to confirm no one was watching her. She stared and rocked, rocked and stared, as if desire alone could will her spirit across the divide.
Eventually Poppy came out of their cabin with Samuel in his arms. Leaning close to the window, Mattie searched her son’s face for any signs of distress. Poppy turned away from the Big House and headed toward Rebecca’s for Samuel’s morning feeding. Samuel’s little head poked above Poppy’s shoulder, his placid face bobbing in rhythm with Poppy’s gait. Mattie stared hard as her son got smaller and smaller until he faded out of sight altogether like a leaf floating down a river.
Washed over with yearning and loss, Mattie could not bear to watch her world any longer. She sought out the soft bed in her strange room. She placed the baby in the middle of the mattress and then she lay down and wept. Burrowing her head in her arms, her tears flowed and flowed, like a hot summer storm, down her cheeks into the fluffy feather pillow. She ached for her son with such a force that it was difficult to breathe.
When her sobs subsided she raised her head to look at the stranger sleeping next to her. Tiny blue veins showed beneath translucent, pale skin in Miss Elizabeth’s eyelids. The fragile and dependent baby lay unaware of the world around her. Mattie touched tiny eyes, nose, lips; her hand trailed across the infant’s soft chin, her small, vulnerable neck. A wave of hatred washed over Mattie. She shuddered with repulsion.
Mattie laid her hand across the tiny mouth and pressed down until it covered two small nostrils as well. Her heart pounded fiercely behind her ribcage. In a few minutes this could be over. The infant squirmed, her lips parted, and a loud, sudden cry escaped from the small body. Mattie jerked her hand away.
“I trapped here, but I ain’t so desperate, little one,” Mattie whispered fiercely, “I ain’t gonna hurt you, little miss,” reassuring herself, not the oblivious child.
Mattie collapsed on her back. Exhausted, she longed to sleep, to escape into her dreams, but as she lay flat on her back, her mind filled with images. She pictured Samuel screaming in Rebecca’s arms, his back arched in utter protest. She wondered if Rebecca would remember to swaddle him just right, with his arm bent up, if he cried hard. She replaced the image of screaming Samuel with an image of him utterly satisfied on Rebecca’s breast. That was not much better.
She rose and went back to the window. She pressed her ear hard against the glass, listening for sounds of her son. Nothing. She only heard the loud swoosh of her own pulse.
“Rebecca know how to take care of a baby,” she whispered out loud. “She real good and she love Samuel. Rebecca and Poppy gonna take good care of him.”
Mattie prayed out loud, “Dear God, it me, Mattie. I know it mornin’ and I mostly only talk to you at night, but today I need extra help. Please watch over my Samuel. Make him happy to get food from Rebecca, but not so happy he forget about me. Help me to treat this here little baby good. And make her not need me for so long so I can get back to my family. Thank you for listenin’ to me extra. Amen.”
Mattie lay back down in bed and turned her back to the infant. She willed herself to sleep. When she awoke a few hours later, she found herself curled around Miss Elizabeth, like a mother cat encircling her kittens.
Chapter 2
Two days later, the housekeeper intruded into the large bedroom just as Mattie settled in the rocking chair to nurse Miss Elizabeth. Mattie rose like a soldier coming to attention.
“Your mistress is recovered enough to see her daughter,” Mrs. Gray declared. “Bring the infant to Madam’s chambers at two o’clock.”
“Yes, ma’am,” responded Mattie. “Excuse me, ma’am. I don’ know what you mean by two.”
Mrs. Gray sighed and shook her head in disbelief. “That is a time,” she declared sharply, rolling her eyes. “Have you not noticed the chime from the clock in the parlor?”
Matte replied, “Yes, ma’am, I hear the sound it make every so often.”
“Every fifteen minutes there is a short song. Each hour it strikes according to the time. Can you count?”
Mattie nodded, working to hide her confusion, and replied, “Yes, ma’am. Up to ten.”
“Well, you shall have to learn more, or at least come to understand the partitions of an hour. You will be given a time to do your tasks and know when to do them by the clock.”
Mrs. Gray explained the workings of time to the woman who had previously lived by the movements of the sun. Mattie did her best to follow Mrs. Gray’s complicated instructions. She understood that she needed to count each time the clock struck. The number of strikes would be the hour.
“So,” Mrs. Gray went on, “when the clock strikes two times, it is two o’clock and time for you to return to the room where Miss Elizabeth was born. Do not sit unless you are invited to. Remember to answer ‘ma’am’ each time you are spoken to.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And do not exhaust her,” Mrs. Gray insisted. “She is still recovering from the ordeal of childbirth.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Ann, bobbing in a sea of pillows and fabric, eagerly waited to meet her daughter. Open draperies let in the warm sunlight and made the room bright. The marble bedside table supported a bouquet of bright flowers. Whirls marked the marble top: white and black swirling in an intricate dance, pushing close, mixing in some places, staying unique in others.
Smiling down at a small pillow, Mrs. Ann held it like an infant, rocking it back and forth. In her mind she practiced a greeting, “Hello. I am your mother. You are my daughter, Elizabeth.” At the sound of a knock, she hastily set down the pillow and once again smoothed down her covers.
“You may enter,” Mrs. Ann called out. “Good day, Mattie,” the young mother added, her hungry eyes intent on the bundle in Mattie’s arms.
“Good afternoon, ma’am,” Mattie spoke deferentially from the doorway.
Every time someone called her ma’am, Ann Wainwright felt a fraud. Nearly a year after her wedding, she was still adjusting to the fact that she was married and living on a Tidewater plantation hours away from her real home. And now she was a mother and did not quite know what was expected of her. Conceiving on her honeymoon had pleased both her husband and her mother-in-law. That the child was a daughter was a disappointment they expected her to remedy soon enough.
As Mrs. Jonathan Wainwright, she presided as the mistress of the house, at least in theory. But she was hardly involved in the running of Fair Oaks: Mrs. Gray handled day-to-day matters, and her mother-in-law, Grandmother Wainwright, was loath to relinquish her role as hostess of Fair Oaks. Mrs. Ann had few opportunities to socialize either as a host or as a guest, since she was in confinement almost immediately after arriving at Fair Oaks. She had yet to make the necessary social connections that were essential for her establishing herself in this place.
Mrs. Ann beckoned Mattie over with a wave of her hands. The young mother studied her daughter in Mattie’s arms.
“She is not so beautiful, is she?” Mrs. Ann stated matter-of-factly.
“She young yet,” replied Mattie.
“I suppose,” Mrs. Ann responded. “I have never seen one so young before. Is everything going as it should?”
“Yes, ma’am. She strong. She a good baby.”
“Let me hold her.”
Mattie carefully placed Miss Elizabeth into Mrs. Ann’s eager arms.
“She is quite light. I imagined her heavier. Are they normally so red?”
“I don’ know, ma’am. This the first white baby I ever seen.”
“You have experience with babies?” Mrs. Ann inquired
.
“Yes, ma’am. I been at births. I always take care of the babies around; I watched the young ones while their folks worked the tobacco when I little.” Suddenly self-conscious to be saying so much, Mattie stopped speaking.
“Mrs. Gray chose well when she selected you.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Mrs. Ann asked, “You have a son? Am I correct?”
“Yes, ma’am. He three months.”
“A son. How nice for you.”
Having run out of questions and answers, an uncomfortable silence filled the space between the two women. They stared at the baby held in an awkward embrace. After a few minutes Miss Elizabeth started squirming. Mrs. Ann jiggled her daughter up and down, then held the girl close against her breast. The infant turned her head toward her mother, opening her mouth wide, bobbing her face into her mother’s breast. Startled, Mrs. Ann jerked her baby away.
Alarmed, she inquired, “What is the matter with her?”
“She turning her head for food. She hungry, ma’am,” replied Mattie.
“I suppose so. Well, I cannot be of any help to her. Here, you give her what she needs,” Mrs. Ann directed as she handed her daughter over to Mattie.
Mattie took the infant but continued to stand next to the bed, uncertainty written on her face. The infant turned her head into Mattie’s body. Mattie slipped her pinky into the infant’s eager mouth. Mrs. Ann watched Mattie sway from side to side, comforting the infant but making no move to suckle her.
After a long, strange silence, Mrs. Ann spoke, “You may sit in the chair. I wish to see you do it.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Settling into the chair where she first held and nourished Miss Elizabeth, Mattie gave the baby her breast. After Miss Elizabeth suckled for a while, Mrs. Ann spoke again.
“Yes, that is unseemly.”
Chapter 3
All the residents of Fair Oaks honored the Sunday Sabbath, though the house slaves did not forgo their duty to keep their owners fed and comfortable. After gathering in the drawing room to listen to a reading from the Bible, the house slaves prepared for the Sabbath dinner while the Wainwright family worshipped with the Episcopalian congregation in Charles City. For most of the year, with the exception of harvest, the field slaves were given a day of rest from sunset on Saturday until sunrise on Monday.
One Sunday afternoon, just past Miss Elizabeth’s three-month mark, Mrs. Gray and Skinny Emily interrupted the quiet of the nursery. Mrs. Gray, a fixture at Fair Oaks for nearly thirty years, had moved east from her modest home in western Virginia three weeks before her twenty-eighth birthday. As a newly widowed woman with no prospects for another marriage, she had found herself in need of a position that would grant her status in society as well as a residence. Her role as housekeeper on this grand estate gave her both. She prided herself on running the household well. Though her family had owned no slaves, she quickly developed the necessary skills to deal with them fairly and effectively. Bringing in a field hand to feed Miss Elizabeth had seemed unwise to Mrs. Gray, but there had been little choice after the wet nurse they had rented died suddenly of a high fever.
Mrs. Gray spoke crisply from the doorway, “Miss Elizabeth is old enough to be away from you for a few hours. As you are fortunate enough to live near your family, you may visit with them on Sunday afternoons beginning today. Instruct Emily on how to care for Miss Elizabeth when you are away.”
“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am,” Mattie responded, hiding her excitement from the housekeeper.
“You must return by supper, though you may be called in earlier,” Mrs. Gray commanded before she left the room.
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mattie’s heart raced. She was anxious to touch and caress her dear son. She yearned to hold him, feed him, and be his mother for a time. Each day she spent hours staring out the nursery window tracking her people. Once or twice a day over the last months she had briefly seen Samuel coming and going. She watched as his cheeks grew fatter and bits of black fuzz formed on his head. She searched for hints of his personality, studying the way he moved his head or looked around. Of course he never saw her. He was nearly twice the age he’d been when she left him. Mattie feared that he did not remember her at all.
Though Mattie longed to rush out to the Quarters, she attended to Miss Elizabeth’s needs first. Settling into the rocker to nurse, Mattie unbuttoned her dress. Miss Elizabeth arched her back, flapped her arms, and squealed in excitement and anticipation when she saw Mattie’s movements. Nestling against Mattie’s breast, Miss Elizabeth drew out sustenance from her nurse. The baby’s deep blue eyes gazed intently into Mattie’s caramel irises as her pink fingers patted and stroked Mattie’s soft brown skin. Miss Elizabeth grinned up at Mattie, causing milk to dribble out the sides of her mouth.
“Silly girl,” Mattie admonished the baby, tickling and teasing her. “You gotta pick: eatin’ or smilin’?”
Turning her attention to Skinny Emily, Mattie gave directions for the infant’s care. “She don’ like to be in a wet diaper so get her a dry one right away. If she fussy, sometimes she satisfied with my finger. She like to be walked round the room, lookin’ out the window and lookin’ at herself in the mirror.”
Clearly irritated, Skinny Emily replied, “I cared for babies before. How much trouble can she be?’
“She no trouble,” declared Mattie. “She a good baby.”
“She a baby. A baby just a baby. They all alike,” said Emily.
After Miss Elizabeth had her fill, Mattie brought the child up to her shoulder and slowly rubbed the girl’s back. Years of experience had taught Mattie that there was no rushing a baby. It only took longer if you tried to make it go quick. Rocking the baby, looking like patience itself despite her yearning to be with Samuel, a soft song rose from Mattie.
Go to sleepy little baby
Go to sleepy little baby
Your momma’s gone away and your daddy’s gone to stay
Didn’t leave nobody but the baby
A soft belch escaped from Miss Elizabeth’s tiny mouth.
Go to sleepy little baby
Go to sleepy little baby
Everybody’s gone in the cotton and the corn
Didn’t leave nobody but the baby
Miss Elizabeth grew heavy, melting against Mattie’s body.
You’re a sweet little baby
You’re a sweet little baby
Honey in the rock and the sugar don’t stop
Gonna bring a bottle to the baby
Mattie moved Miss Elizabeth down into her arms and cradled her close, rocking back and forth.
Don’t you weep pretty baby
Don’t you weep pretty baby
She’s long gone with the red shoes on
Gonna meet another lovin baby
The little one’s eyes glazed over, her eyelids slowly blinked shut and then open, shut and then open, then shut.
Go to sleepy little baby
Go to sleepy little baby
You and me and the devil makes three
Don’t need no other lovin baby
Mattie continued the gentle song, rocking slowly, confident of lulling Miss Elizabeth to sleep.
Go to sleepy little baby
Go to sleepy little baby
Come and lay your bones on the alabaster stones
And be my ever lovin baby
Miss Elizabeth lay with her silky soft head against Mattie’s strong, warm arm. Her open pink mouth glistened with saliva and breast milk; heavy, limp arms flung back at her sides. Mattie gently wiped away the pooled milk in the corners of Miss Elizabeth’s mouth before deftly transferring her to the bed they shared in Mattie’s small anteroom. Miss Elizabeth tipped her head back to protest. Bending over the baby, Mattie rested her hand on the girl’s back to settle her back into a deep sleep and waited patiently until she heard the sound of rhythmic breathing. After a last pat, Mattie turned away to go to her family.
An unbroken string
of Mattie’s ancestors going back to her great-great-grandparents had lived at Fair Oaks since its founding in 1690. The plantation, which sat on the northern bank of the James River, was part of the Virginia Company’s westward expansion. As was customary, land grants were given in proportion to the number of people a grantee imported to tame the land. Commander Theodore Pryne had the funds to bring thirty Europeans and Africans as indentured servants, so he was given fifteen hundred acres to plant. All indentured servants, both European and African, agreed to work off their debt for seven to fifteen years. After that they were to be released and given five acres of land, a bushel of seed, and the freedom to pursue their own fortunes in the New World.
Quickly the landed gentry realized that their plantations would not be profitable if they paid their workforce. Thus Mattie’s African ancestors were not turned free or given the means to farm for themselves but held in perpetual bondage after the Virginia Assembly passed a law in 1705 clarifying once and for all the status of Africans in the colony. It declared “all servants imported and brought into the Country…who were not Christians in their native Country…shall be accounted and be slaves. All Negro, mulatto, and Indian slaves within this dominion…shall be held to be real estate.” In addition, social status for slaves would be transferred from mother to children rather than from father to child. Those changes in social codes ensured eighteenth-century planters of Virginia a steady supply of workers.
Yellow Crocus: A Novel Page 2