“Thank you, child. You done good work,” she said, taking his chin, turning up his face and seeing that his eyes had indeed begun to well. She gave the boy a dipper of water and daubed at his eyes with her apron. “You come back here with your mama day after tomorrow,” she said. “I’ll have a proper loaf of bread for her, and see if I don’t have a sweet cake for you too.”
The boy smiled at that, turned and bounded out of the cabin. Bett sighed and closed the door. She returned to her work, pressing and mixing the dough with the spoon. Yes, she thought, this sorry loaf would probably serve. It was well suited to what was sure to be an equally sorry day.
Chapter Three
LILLIE RETURNED HOME at a brisk run, glancing all the while at the slowly rising sun and trying to guess whether Mama would be awake by now. When she drew near the large patch of pebbly dirt that surrounded the line of little slave cabins, she slowed. Here she would step lightly, the better to mask the sound of her feet crunching the soil. She tiptoed to the door of her cabin, opened it slowly—thankful that it didn’t squeak—and peeked in toward her bed. Plato was still deeply asleep and had not, near as Lillie could tell, even shifted his position since she left. She sighed in relief and opened the door further—then slumped. Mama was sitting at the little eating table, sipping a mug of sassafras tea and looking at her sharply.
“Mama—” Lillie began, but Mama silenced her with an even harder glare. Lillie’s brother stirred slightly, and Mama glanced toward him, then summoned Lillie to the eating table with a tick of her head. Lillie stepped quietly across the cabin, trying not to meet Mama’s gaze. She did glance up to see that there was a second mug on the table, and this gave her hope. It had always been Mama’s habit to make herself tea in the morning, but just in the last year, she had begun making some for Lillie as well. They had never spoken about this new practice; one day Mama was putting out a single mug, and the next day there were two. Lillie still smiled when she picked up her tea each morning. The fact that it was there waiting for her today might mean that Mama wasn’t as cross with her as she feared.
“Child,” Mama now hissed, in a voice that said yes, she was surely mad, “where have you been?”
Lillie sat at the table and wrapped her hands around her mug, feeling its warmth. She hesitated. “To see Bett,” she answered. She knew better than to fib now.
Mama rolled her eyes. She’d surely reckoned as much, which explained why she didn’t look angrier. She liked Bett, and she had been sorry in the last year when Lillie seemed to have lost interest in the company of the old woman, but today was not the day to go out on adventures without asking first.
“You know what happens to slaves when the appraiser man comes?” Mama asked in a hard whisper.
“They gets sold off,” Lillie answered.
“You know what happens to the ones what misbehaves?”
“They gets sold first.” It was a lesson Lillie had been taught when she was small and had been made to repeat many times since.
Mama nodded. “Bett ain’t no help on a day like today, child,” she said. “Mindin’ yourself—and mindin’ me—is all you gots to do.”
Lillie said nothing and nodded, then picked up her mug and sipped the tea. It was hot and it was good, sweetened with a drop or two of the little bit of honey Mama kept and used only on days when she reckoned they all needed a treat. Lillie glanced up and smiled at Mama. From across the cabin came a small snort, and Lillie’s brother rolled over, breathed deeply and stretched. Lillie stifled a giggle.
“Plato’s wakin’,” she said, and Mama looked toward the boy warmly.
Mama had not been happy about giving her son an odd name like Plato, but Lillie’s papa had insisted upon it for reasons he held dear but didn’t much discuss. Mama herself had an unusual name. She was known as Phibbi, which was an African name for a girl child born on a Friday. The overseer and the Master forbade anyone to use the name and addressed Mama instead as Franny, so the other slaves did as well—at least when they were in the company of white folks. In private, they used Mama’s true name, and Mama was grateful to them for that. Lillie too had a proper African name—Quashee, which meant a girl child born on a Sunday. Papa had given her the name, told her about it as soon as she was old enough to understand it and explained that she should never use it outside of their cabin until the day she was free, when she could carry it with the pride she should.
As slave cabins went, Lillie’s family’s was a good one—particularly to Lillie and Plato themselves, who had been born here and knew no other home. It had a strong plank floor; a good chimney that Papa had built of oyster shells, sand and lime; and enough dishes, mugs and spoons to fill the cupboards Papa had also built. There was a small table where the family took their meals and there were two chests of drawers for the clothes Mama made. A curtain down the center of the cabin separated the children’s bed from Mama and Papa’s, but now that Papa was gone, Mama mostly kept it open. The only times she’d pull it shut were on those nights, which still happened now and then, when she would slip into bed and cry till near sunup—something Lillie and Plato learned not to ask her about, since she always answered the same way.
“Mind the things what’re yours to mind,” she’d say, and Lillie would know to do as she was told.
It had been four months now since Papa had died—on the twenty-second of May, the dispatch had said, in the siege of Vicksburg, in Mississippi. Only last week, Mama had removed the black mourning rag she’d nailed to the cabin door—and only then because the overseer had ordered her to.
“It spooks the other slaves, Franny,” he snapped. “Take it off or I’ll take the rag and the door along with it.”
Lillie herself still cried most every day for Papa. The pain at first had been like a solid thing—a hot stone inside her belly. Now it was more of a terrible, heavy everywhere-ache. She could stand it until something would remind her of Papa—a slave’s laugh that sounded like his, a whiff of pipe tobacco that smelled like his. Once she’d even cried at the rough touch of a hog’s bristly back, because it reminded her of the rough feel of Papa’s unshaven face when he gave her a kiss. And when anyone on the plantation spoke of freedom, she thought of Papa most powerfully of all.
Freedom for all the slaves—but mostly for his own family—was something Papa had talked about all the time. And for a while, it seemed that it was coming. It was late in 1863 now, and at the beginning of the year, word went’round that even as the war between the armies of the North and the South raged on, Mr. Lincoln had signed a paper—a proclamation, Lillie’s mama said it was called—ordering freedom for all the slaves in all the Rebel states. The news crept slowly from plantation to plantation and everywhere was met with scowls from the white folks and secret smiles from the black folks. But smart people of both colors knew the paper didn’t change much.
“This mean we can pack up our things and walk North tonight?” Lillie’s papa asked her when she and Plato had jumped and whooped enough over the news.
“No,” she answered.
“Does it mean I can earn my own livin’ and work my own land?”
“No,” she repeated.
“Just so,” he said. “The South is a weasel, and we is the chickens. Weasel don’t let go of a bird when you read him a rule tellin’ him to. He lets go when you shoot him.”
Papa soon decided that he wanted to help out with that shooting himself. Just last spring, word was sent out that the Army of the South, desperate for more men, had begun accepting slaves as soldiers, assigning them to battlefield jobs like cooking, nursing, horse-shoeing or digging. All able-bodied male slaves over sixteen would be accepted with the promise that if they survived, they would be freed. When not enough family men volunteered in the coastal counties of South Carolina, the promise of freedom was extended to their wives and children too—even if the men themselves were killed in the fighting. And when a plantation owner complained that he’d paid good coin for his workers and didn’t want them shot up
in the war or freed by the Army, the Army just threatened to confiscate his other male slaves too, which quieted the objections fast.
Going to war in exchange for his family’s freedom was an idea that appealed to a sensible man like Papa, and one evening after work was finished and dinner was done, he announced that that was what he planned to do. The family argued, the children cried and Mama even threatened to stand and block the door. But they knew that Papa had made up his mind, and the next morning he was gone. Before he left, he hugged Lillie tight.
“I’ll come home again, Quashee,” he said.
But Lillie’s papa never did come home. Just three months after he left, he died, one of the many, many casualties at Vicksburg. The family grieved terribly, but took some comfort from the thought that the freedom Papa had wanted for them would now be theirs. Just two days later, however, they learned that even that wasn’t to be. A telegraph message was delivered to the Big House telling the Master that upon Papa’s death, he had been found in possession of a small purse of coins—gold coins, and Yankee ones at that—that he was assumed to have stolen. Since he couldn’t pay for his crime, the family would have to, and the promise of freedom that had been made to them would be denied. Later, the Army delivered the bag of coins to the Master—a common practice when a slave had stolen something and the rightful owner could not be found. The Master was pleased with this arrangement and, like all Southerners who came across Northern money, vowed not to spend any of it till he had gone through all his Confederate money first and had no other choice. If the South won, he could melt the coins down for their gold; if the North won, Southern currency would be useless and he’d need to hold tight to any Yankee wealth he had. Either way, the arrangement suited him fine, and he liked to boast that he had turned a far tidier profit than he could have from simply selling Papa at auction.
Lillie knew—knew—her father could not have done any thieving, but only weeks later, a slave who’d served alongside him and lost a leg in the fighting was freed and sent home to South Carolina. He brought word to the plantation that, yes, the coins had been found in Papa’s pocket, and, yes, they were Yankee gold. Lillie cursed the coins and cursed the war and cursed the South and cursed slavery itself, but she had no thought at all of cursing her papa. He was an honest man who’d lived an honest life and, she was certain, had died an honest death.
None of that, of course, could possibly help her or her family on slave appraiser day, and as the sun rose higher, the appraiser’s visit drew closer by the minute. Lillie finished her tea and sat in silence as Mama quietly prepared the family’s breakfast—mush, a bit more honey and some stunted but sweet melon she’d been able to raise in her garden. Finally, the morning horn sounded—a hoarse blast from an old bugle. All the slaves would be expected to be awake before the last echo of it had died away.
The noise from the horn made Plato jump, then he murmured and climbed out of bed. As he had every night for the past four months, he had worn one of Papa’s old shirts to bed. It hung down closer to his ankles than his knees and even now, seeing it on him made Lillie’s eyes well up. He walked sleepily over to the table and sat down without a word, then picked up his spoon and began eating his mush. Mama and Lillie exchanged a smile. It always took Lillie a while in the morning to wake up and find her appetite. Mama was the same way, but Plato would go straight from bed to breakfast, sometimes without even fully opening his eyes.
“Boy,” Mama said, “one day you’re gonna put your spoon in a bowl o’ mud if you don’t look at what you’re eatin’ first.”
“S’mush, Mama,” Plato said with his mouth full. “S’good.”
Lillie tried to eat too, but she had no stomach for food—and would not have much time to linger over it anyway. Once the horn sounded, it meant the appraiser was already on the grounds and was visiting with the Master and the Missus in the Big House, where he’d be given a small breakfast before setting about the day’s business. Mama hurried the children through their meal—Lillie managing a few spoons of mush and a few bites of melon—and then began to take out the clothes they’d all be wearing.
When the appraiser was here, the slaves did not wear what they wore every day, but instead were instructed to dress in the best clothes they had—or at least the cleanest ones—and to wash and comb with particular care. The girls would be expected to decorate their hair with bits of ribbon if their mamas had any. The boys would be expected to close their top shirt button—if their shirts had a top button. This, like the extra food and the extra sleep, was believed to make the slaves more appealing.
Unlike many slave girls, Lillie did own a proper dress, one that had belonged to Mama until the night before a recent plantation dance, when she had brought it out and asked Lillie if she’d like it for her own. Lillie at first thought she was being teased. Her shape had been changing this season, that was sure, rounding out in a way that made her clothes a snugger fit than they once were. Still, if she favored anyone’s looks, it was less those of her mother—who remained shapely and lovely even deep in her thirties—than those of her father, a tall, rangy man who’d seemed to have been made up mostly of straight lines and sharp angles. Lillie had always felt cheated by that, reckoning that a girl ought to resemble her mama and a boy ought to resemble his papa. But now that her own papa was gone, she told herself it was good there was someone whose appearance would always call him to mind. Mama’s dress did fit Lillie, but not without some cutting and stitching to make it more suited to her.
What Plato would be wearing today was not clear. The boy did not yet have a fancy suit of clothes, but in recent months Mama had been quietly making him one at night, as a treat for his sixth birthday. When Papa died, she stopped for a while and the birthday passed without a gift. But she’d picked the work up again lately—the better to busy herself on those nights when she couldn’t sleep.
Now, as Lillie slid into her dress, Mama went over to her drawer and took out what she’d made: a pair of brown pants, a scratchy white shirt and a little green jacket that looked like it belonged more to a squire than a slave boy. “Seems like you’re growed enough for a good suit o’ clothes,” she said, turning around and showing them to Plato. “I reckon these’ll serve.”
Plato beamed—a bigger smile than Lillie or Mama had seen from him at any time since Papa died—and began dancing excitedly from foot to foot. “Mama, Mama, Mama!” he said. “Can I put it on? Can I put it on? Can I put it on?”
“Yes, you can,” Mama said with a laugh, holding the clothes higher to prevent him from grabbing them straight from her hand. Then she settled him down and helped him into the little outfit, showing him how to fasten all the buttons. When she was done, Plato stood, looking himself up and down.
“I look just like the Little Master!” he exclaimed, having often seen the Master’s eight-year-old son walking about the plantation in his many fine suits of clothes.
“No!” Mama snapped, with a suddenness that startled both Lillie and Plato. “The Little Master looks like the Little Master. You look like Plato. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, Mama,” Plato answered meekly.
“Good,” Mama said. She smoothed the jacket on his shoulders and tugged the sleeves until they hung properly. “Fine a child as this,” she muttered to herself, “the Little Master would be lucky to look like you.”
At last Mama took her own best dress down from a hook and began putting it on. Just as she was finishing, there was a loud rapping at the cabin door; before she could answer, the door flung open and the overseer stepped in.
The overseer at Greenfog was a man called Mr. Willis, and he was more or less like all the other overseers on all the other plantations. He was perhaps forty years old—young enough that he was still capable of moving fast and handling a whip, but old enough to have been doing plantation work for many years and to know how to keep such a big place running. He was a small, wiry man, with a large bald patch on the top of his head that would turn a deep, fiery red at
the first flash of springtime. Lillie sometimes fancied that she could read his temper at any moment by looking at just how dark a shade of red his head had become.
“Franny,” Mr. Willis now said brusquely, “finish yourselves up and get outside. Lineup’s already started.”
Mama accepted that the white folks would never address her as Phibbi, but she always hesitated a bit before responding to the name Franny, as if she could never quite accustom herself to the form of address. “Yes, sir,” she said after a moment. “We’ll be along presently.”
“See that you are,” Willis answered. He looked Plato, Lillie and Mama up and down. “I expect the traders will be interested in the lot of you,” he said with a sharp little laugh. Then he turned his eyes particularly to Mama, allowing them to linger there in a way Lillie didn’t like. “I’ll be ’specially sorry to see you go, Franny.” He barked his little laugh again and left the cabin as abruptly as he’d entered it.
Mama watched the man go without a word, then looked at the children and nodded toward the door. Plato didn’t move, and Lillie too felt rooted where she was. Mama put her arms around their shoulders and smiled.
“Ain’t no different than when Papa was here,” she said. “Hold him in mind, and you’ll be fine.” She nudged both children gently, and they all stepped outside.
Just as the overseer had said, the lineup was already forming. Every slave on the plantation would be present except Bett, who was too old to sell and had been for a while. All the others were now clustering in ragged groups in front of their cabins, and Mr. Willis, along with two slave drivers, strode back and forth in front of them, flicking their whips and summoning them forward into a neat row. The bigger of the two whip men was known as Bull, because that seemed to capture both his build and his wits. The other one—who was called by his proper name, which was Louis—was a tick smaller and a bit brighter. Neither man was shy about using his whip, but Bull seemed truly to love it. He was known as a marksman with almost any lash and was said to be able to whip a blueberry off a fencepost without touching the wood or leaving a stain of blue juice behind. The slaves crossed the whip men at their peril, and this morning none of them chose to. They assembled side to side as they were instructed, mothers and fathers holding their children’s hands.
Freedom Stone Page 2