All Things New

by Lynn Austin

  “That’s not true! You’re just saying that because you don’t like him.”

  “Ask your papa, then. He’ll tell you. And you know Otis don’t tell lies. He saw Massa Daniel there that night with the other men, beating on poor old Willy and shooting their rifles.”

  “Otis isn’t my papa. My real papa was white, wasn’t he? Is that why you hate white men? Because my father was white?”

  “Don’t you dare talk to me like that!”

  “That’s why you won’t tell me who he is, isn’t it? You don’t want me to know that I’m white, too.” She turned away, but Lizzie grabbed her arm and yanked her back.

  As mad as she was, Lizzie still couldn’t tell Roselle the truth. She didn’t want to remember her own foolishness. Or her shame. But she had to tell Roselle something. “I’ll tell you this one thing about your father, and that’s all. He started wooing me with sweet talk, just like Massa Daniel’s doing. Carrying on and telling me I was pretty. But do you see your real father anywhere around here? Did he stay and love you and me or be a papa to you like Otis is?”

  Roselle looked down at her ragged shoes as her tears continued to fall.

  “No sir! Otis has been a papa to you in all the ways that count. And he’s a good husband to me, too. You find yourself a good God-fearing man like Otis. Someone who’s gonna stay with you and help you raise his babies after he puts them in your belly. You think Massa Daniel’s ever going to marry the Negro girl who empties his slop pail every morning?”

  A sob shuddered through Roselle. “I just wanted to dance,” she said softly.

  “I know, honey. I know. But there are bad men in this world who would take advantage of you for that.” Lizzie pulled her into her arms again. She understood how Roselle felt. She had been innocent and trusting, too, all those years ago, but it had ended so badly. Would it take a tragedy before Roselle would stop trusting? Lizzie released her daughter and picked up the tray again to take to the kitchen. “Let’s go to bed. The rest of this mess can wait until morning.”

  As tired as Lizzie was, she couldn’t fall asleep. Her mind whirled around like the people on the dance floor as she tried to figure out what to do about Roselle. She didn’t trust Massa Daniel. If he ever hurt her daughter, she would kill him. She would. Same as she should have killed Roselle’s father.

  Before she knew it, the rooster started to crow and Lizzie had to get up and make breakfast for everybody, had to try and make the food stretch to feed Miz Eugenia’s company from Richmond. Thank heavens she had Clara to help her now, and she could let Roselle sleep. Lizzie didn’t want to face her. And for sure she didn’t want Roselle waiting on the white folks in the dining room.

  On Sunday afternoon, when the work was done, everybody got ready to walk into Fairmont for their first prayer meeting at the Freedmen’s Bureau. Lizzie was so tired from her sleepless night that she would have liked to stay home and take a nap, but she couldn’t hurt Otis’s feelings that way. He and Saul and a few others had talked to Mr. Chandler, and he’d agreed to let them meet on the grassy slope alongside the tracks. He even said he would read the Bible out loud to them. Lizzie and Clara packed a simple picnic lunch for their families to eat afterward, and everyone set off for the walk to town, following the road, even though the path through the fields and along the railroad tracks was shorter. Old Willy wanted to come and he couldn’t walk that far, so Robert had offered to push him in the wheelbarrow.

  “Look at that sight!” Otis said as they passed the cotton fields. “The good Lord’s been blessing us with sunshine and rain and making our cotton grow.” In fact, the plants were so thick and green they could hardly see the pathways between the rows.

  But Lizzie’s eye was on Roselle, walking ahead of them. The smaller children crowded around her like a mama hen with her chicks as she played schoolteacher with them and made them say their ABCs. One minute Roselle was a child, skipping down the road just like the other little ones, and the next minute she was wanting to wear a fancy gown and dance with Massa Daniel. Lizzie thought of what might have happened last night if Miz Eugenia hadn’t interrupted, and she felt the fear return. She reached for Otis and tugged on his arm.

  “Otis? I think Roselle should work with you from now on instead of me.”

  “You mean out in the fields? Lizzie, why would you want such a thing?”

  “Because Miz Eugenia’s trying to make her into a fancy lady’s maid for Missy Mary, and Roselle is too good for that. I want a better life for her than combing some spoiled gal’s hair and lacing her corset.”

  “You ain’t making sense. How is working in the fields any better than working in the house?”

  Lizzie decided to tell him the truth. “We need to keep her away from Massa Daniel. He was sweet-talking her last night at the dance, saying she was pretty and asking her to dance with him.”

  Otis stopped walking. He stared at Lizzie. “Why would he want to dance with a colored girl when he hates us so much?”

  “You know exactly what he wants. Roselle doesn’t understand what can happen, Otis. She’s too trusting. I don’t want her in the Big House anymore. That place is so big, it’d be easy for Massa Daniel to get her off someplace by herself. She won’t like working in the fields, that’s for sure. But it’s for her own good.”

  Otis sighed and started walking again. “If only the school would start up again. I thought maybe we could all help Mr. Chandler rebuild it, maybe work on it at night or whenever we have an afternoon off. But nobody has time when there’s corn and vegetables to plant and so much other work to do. And you know we don’t dare go out at night.”

  “What are we going to do about Roselle?”

  “Bring it to the Lord, Lizzie. That’s why we’re having this prayer meeting. We’ll bring all our troubles to the Lord.”

  Mr. Chandler stood in the doorway of the little brick building that housed the Freedmen’s Bureau, greeting everybody. It looked just fine from the front, but when Lizzie walked around to the back, the room where the school had been looked like the inside of a fireplace, all black and charred and filled with burnt wood. That’s how much the white folks hated them, and Lord help her, Lizzie hated them in return for making her feel so helpless. She had to turn her back on the sight to keep the anger from twisting around inside her like a nasty vine.

  Dozens of other families had already arrived, and Lizzie tucked her feelings away as she greeted Dolly and Ida May and the others who used to work at White Oak. The children chased each other and took turns balancing on the tracks and jumping the railroad ties until the prayer meeting began. There were too many people to count, even if Lizzie knew how.

  Otis came up alongside her, interrupting her thoughts. “I need to talk to Mr. Chandler about the part of the Bible I want him to read. I’ll be right back and then we’ll get started.”

  “Wait. I’ll go with you.” The size of the crowd had given Lizzie courage, and as soon as Otis finished speaking to him, Lizzie made up her mind to speak to Mr. Chandler herself. He was as slender as a bean pole, and she had to look up to see his eyes, which were as pale as a faded blue shirt. “Massa Chandler, sir? We need to get the school going again right away. Our kids don’t care if it’s finished or not. They don’t mind sitting outside on the grass. But they need to learn how to read and write.”

  “I’m sorry, but the new books haven’t arrived yet. And there’s no teacher.”

  “Can’t you ask Miss Hunt to come back? Please? It’s the only way my kids will ever have a better life. Every day that the school stays closed they’re forced to work on the plantation, and they’re learning how to be slaves again instead of learning how to be free. ”

  “I understand, but—”

  “I heard Miz Eugenia say she’s making my Roselle into a lady’s maid for her spoiled daughter. It’s bad enough I have to empty her slops, but I don’t want my daughter to have to do it all her life, too. If Roselle and my boys don’t go to school, they’ll always be slaves, no matter what
the law says, no matter who won the war. Please open it again. Please!”

  He nodded and pressed his fist to his mouth as if he was thinking. She saw pity in his eyes and that gave her hope. “Give me a little time to think of something, Lizzie. Right now, I know Otis wants to get this meeting started.”

  “Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

  Otis had walked to the top of a little rise and stood in front of the group, holding up his hands for silence. A shiver of fear ran through Lizzie. He didn’t need to be coming forward as the leader of everybody. He’d only get himself in a mess a trouble. She hurried over to him and whispered, “I thought you said you weren’t preaching.”

  “I’m not. I’m just getting things started this first time. Go save me a place to sit. I’ll be right there.”

  Lizzie went back and sat down on the sun-warmed grass. Jack climbed onto her lap, and she put her arm around Rufus as he leaned against her. Roselle sat in front of them with her friends.

  “I asked Mr. Chandler to read something to us from the Bible,” Otis said when the crowd finally quieted. “Something I remember my pappy reciting. Then we can take turns praying and talking to the Lord.”

  Mr. Chandler was still paging through his Bible as he walked over to stand beside Otis. The pages were as thin as onion skins and rustled in the breeze. “I think I found the verses Otis wants me to read,” he began. “It’s actually two passages that he mixed together. One is from Psalm 126, the other from the book of Galatians.” He cleared his throat and began to read in his odd Yankee accent, speaking loud enough for everybody to hear: “‘When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, the Lord hath done great things for them.’”

  Someone in the crowd shouted, “Amen,” and Mr. Chandler looked up, smiling.

  “‘The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad,’” he continued. “‘They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.’”

  “Thank you, Lord!” someone else shouted. The pages of the Bible rustled again as Mr. Chandler turned them, looking for the second place.

  “‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.’”

  “That’s just the ones I wanted,” Otis said. “Thank you, sir.” He drew a breath and began talking to the crowd in the same calm, steady voice he used when he told bedtime stories or when he prayed. “Now everybody here knows that if you plant cottonseeds in the ground, you get cotton. Put corn seeds in and a corn plant grows. And like that verse just said, if you sow hatred year after year you’re gonna reap a war, like the one that just ended.

  “Now I know it seems like the only seeds we slaves ever get are things like hard work and pain and suffering. But if we give them to God, He can do a miracle under that ground. We see it every day. Put in a tiny seed, get a big green plant with blossoms and leaves and cotton. We can’t do it ourselves. We got to trust the Almighty. But today we can take all our suffering and give it to God, and you know what we’ll reap when the time comes? Joy!

  “They can burn our school and take everything else away from us, but they can’t take away Jesus. He’s with us always, and He promised us a better life with Him in heaven someday. Today we’re here to pray and bring all our trials to Him. But don’t be planting seeds of hatred. Give Jesus our tears and someday we’ll reap a harvest of joy.”

  To Lizzie the words felt like a warm shawl around her shoulders on a cold day. She wished she could trust Jesus the way Otis did, but she forgot how to trust a long time ago. Even so, her prayer today would be, Protect my Roselle. Keep her safe. Don’t let anything bad happen to her.

  Otis started to come over to sit down beside her, then turned back and said, “Oh, and one more thing. Don’t forget that Jesus said we’re supposed to pray for our enemies, too.”

  Pray for Massa Daniel? Or for Roselle’s father? Lizzie couldn’t do it. The words would stick in her throat like a mouth full of flour.

  Everyone bowed their heads and began to pray. Sometimes one person would pray out loud, sometimes everyone would pray at the same time, sometimes somebody would start singing a song. And though their cries were mournful and pleading at first, the afternoon ended just as Otis promised it would, with singing and laughter and joy. Most people had brought food along, and they spread everything out on the grass and shared it with each other in a great big picnic.

  Mr. Chandler had gone inside the building to let them worship alone, but late in the afternoon he came outside again and stood at the top of the rise to get their attention. “Please don’t leave yet. I have an announcement to make.” He waited until the crowd grew still. “As you know, it’s my job to take care of the freedmen—that’s all of you—looking out for your interests, seeing to your needs. Today I have to ask for your forgiveness because I haven’t done a very good job of that. A while back, several of you suffered a vicious beating in the woods, and two good men died of gunshot wounds. I’m determined to get justice for all of you, and especially for the two murdered men. But I can’t do it without your help. I talked to the authorities in Richmond about the violence, and they told me they can’t prosecute without witnesses. Please, I need everyone who was there that night, everyone who was injured, to come and talk to me. Tell me everything you remember. If I can combine all your pieces of information, we’ll stand a better chance of finding the men who were responsible and bringing them to justice.”

  “They’re never going to take our word as the truth,” Old Willy said, shaking his head. “Especially against a white man’s word.”

  “I’m going to hound everyone in the Freedmen’s Bureau, all the way to Washington, until I get justice. That’s my job. That’s why this bureau was created. Please, those of you who were there, come and talk to me.”

  “You gonna tell him it was Massa Daniel?” Lizzie whispered to Otis. He didn’t reply.

  “And one more thing,” Mr. Chandler added. “I’ve realized I allowed a group of evil men to keep me from seeing to one of your greatest needs—an education for your children. I’m sorry. Please send them here tomorrow morning for school. We’ll hold classes out here where you’re sitting or in my office if it rains. As of tomorrow morning, the school is officially open once again.”

  Rufus had been sitting at Lizzie’s side, but he leaped to his feet, too excited to sit. “Hear that, Mama? We’re having school again!” Jack jumped up, too, and they held hands and did a little dance right there on the grass.

  Otis reached for Lizzie’s hand and squeezed it tight. “See? The Lord is answering our prayers already.”

  “What about telling him about Massa Daniel and his friends?”

  “I need to pray about it first. There’s a difference between justice and revenge, and I need to make sure I’m doing it for the right reasons. I know Massa Daniel’s horse was there. I don’t know if he was riding it. And I don’t know if he was the one who shot those people.”

  “But Mr. Chandler said everybody needs to tell what they know.”

  “Mr. Chandler don’t understand the way things are here in the South. If we accuse a white man to his face, chances are the white man will still go free—but we’ll all be dead men.”

  “But it ain’t fair.”

  “Life won’t be fair until we reach heaven, Lizzie-girl.”

  On Monday morning, Lizzie was serving breakfast to the white folks in their dining room when Miz Eugenia looked all around and asked, “Where is Roselle? She needs to go up to Miss Mary’s room when we’re finished. It’s time she learns how to be a lady’s maid.”

  No, ma’am! Lizzie wanted to say. She n
eeds to learn how to read and write! She bit her lip to keep from saying the words out loud, then answered quietly, “Roselle ain’t here, ma’am. She went to school this morning.”

  “You’re lying!” Massa Daniel said. He looked so angry he could have breathed out fire. “I know for a fact the school is closed.”

  “It’s the truth,” Lizzie said, feeling scared and happy at the same time. “The school just opened up again. Today is the first day.” She risked a glance at Missy Josephine and saw that she was holding back a smile.

  Miz Eugenia looked like a woman who had just been robbed and didn’t know where to turn. “I suppose those two new girls went to school, too?” she asked. “What are their names?”

  “You mean Annie and Meg? Yes, ma’am, they’re gone off to school, too.”

  Lizzie quickly turned her back and carried the empty platter out to the kitchen so nobody would see her smiling. She told Clara about the white folks’ reaction when she got to the kitchen, and they both had a good laugh. Clara had just finished churning the cream from their new cow into butter and was pressing it into the butter molds.

  “You’d think she’d be happy to have butter again and cream in her tea. She say anything about that?”

  Lizzie shook her head. “They ain’t never happy. The more Miz Eugenia gets, and the more it’s like the old days around here, the more she wants.” Lizzie took a bucket out to the pump to fetch water for the dishes. She could see Otis and the other men out in the cotton field, and to her far left, rows of new green corn plants sprouting from the dark earth. She’d told Otis that she was willing to help him. She’d been a field slave like her mother, before moving up to the Big House, and in some ways she wished she still was, especially now that there was no overseer cracking his whip. But Otis wouldn’t hear of it.

  “That baby is gonna start kicking before we know it,” he’d said, pressing his hand against her middle. “You stay in the Big House where at least you can sit down once in a while and get out of the sun.”