by Lynn Austin
Rufus and Jack wouldn’t have to work in the fields, either. Lizzie smiled, remembering the looks on their faces as they’d carried the books they’d earned from Missy Jo to school to share with the others. No sir, Lizzie wasn’t going to let Miz Eugenia or Massa Daniel spoil her day. She was going to take all of those seeds they kept throwing at her and hand them over to Jesus so they could grow into joy.
27
JULY 3, 1865
Lizzie’s children were back in school. Josephine rejoiced when she heard the news at breakfast, even though she would miss teaching them. They had been bright, alert pupils, eager to soak up everything she taught them. She wondered who Alexander had found to teach them and felt a little sad that it wasn’t her. Of course, it was impossible to do such an outrageous thing. Mother would banish her to Richmond before ever allowing Josephine to become a common schoolteacher, much less teach a classroom full of Negro children.
The hot July day stretched endlessly before Josephine, as long and empty as all the others. She missed her days at Mrs. Blake’s house when they had learned how to cook together and when Josephine would work in the garden in the morning before the sun grew too hot. Now her only guilty pleasure was sewing. She had decided to try fashioning a skirt and bodice for herself from two worn-out dresses. “If I’m going to entertain suitors, I’ll need something nice to wear,” Jo had told her mother to pacify her. She didn’t dare take out her needle and thread too often, though, or appear to be enjoying her labor, or Mother would become upset.
Jo was sitting in the parlor that afternoon stitching a side seam, the slippery taffeta rustling beneath her fingers, when she saw the children coming home from school. The boys chased each other in a game of tag; the little girls fluttered around Roselle like hummingbirds. Jo put aside her sewing and went outside to talk to them, standing in the back doorway as they raced into the yard. She could hear Lizzie and Clara working in the kitchen and smelled sweet potatoes baking. “How was school? Did you have a new teacher?” Jo asked.
“Mr. Chandler taught us today,” Jack said as he made a game of jumping on and off the wooden walkway. “But he doesn’t teach the same way Miss Hunt did.”
“He said maybe our old teacher might come back,” Rufus added. “But we liked you teaching us the best, Missy Jo.”
She ran her hand over Rufus’s wooly hair. “That’s sweet of you to say so, but I’m not a real teacher.” She was glad the children felt free to talk with her and even laugh with her after they’d all worked together. She missed being with them and had even considered hiring them to tame a few other portions of the badly overgrown plantation grounds, just to spend time with them again. But going to school was much better for them than doing yard work.
The children skipped away and she was about to go inside when Roselle called to her, “Missy Josephine, wait.” Roselle took Josephine’s hand in both of hers and pushed a piece of paper into it, closing her fist around it. “Mr. Chandler asked me to give that to you,” she whispered.
Josephine opened her hand as Roselle hurried into the kitchen and found a crumpled, folded note with Miss Weatherly printed on it. Jo glanced all around, then quickly walked to the terrace on the side of the house to read it. Her heart pounded as if she had run circles around the house instead of walking slowly. She found a patch of shade and leaned against the newly whitewashed railing with her back to the house. Alexander’s handwriting was as tall and slender and angular as he was, and it made her smile. She pictured his blue eyes and fuzzy brown whiskers and heard his Yankee accent as she read:
My dear Josephine,
Can we meet? I long to be assured that I didn’t get you into trouble with your family, and . . . well, the plain truth is that I miss talking with you. I’ll be at the tree house tomorrow, just after dawn like the last time. Then the same time the following day in case you cannot come tomorrow for some reason. Or you can always send a note back to me and ask Roselle to deliver it. I anxiously await your reply.
Yours,
Alexander Chandler
She should throw the letter away. No, she should burn it in the fire so no one would ever see it. Instead, she put it in her pocket where she could reach in to touch it every now and then.
For the rest of the day Josephine thought about his request and tallied all the reasons why she shouldn’t go. She should send a message back with Roselle, explaining the promise she’d made to her sister, explaining there was no point in continuing their friendship. But Jo was wide awake the next morning before the rooster had a chance to crow, and after making sure Mary was sound asleep, she carried her clothes into the guest room to get dressed. She didn’t take time to pin up her hair, letting it fall loose down her back so she could say she had been to the privy if anyone caught her outside.
The air was already warm when she slipped through the back door and hurried down the path to the tree house. She wouldn’t stay long, she told herself. Just long enough to see him again.
Alexander was already standing beneath the tree house waiting for her. As soon as he saw her, he broke into a grin and jogged up the path toward her, his hands outstretched. “Josephine! I’m so glad you came.” She had the irrational urge to run into his arms and hold him tightly. Instead, she reached for his hands and took them in hers, squeezing them briefly before letting go. She hoped he wouldn’t say awkward things like he had missed her. She was afraid of what she might say in return, and so she hurried to speak first.
“I can’t stay long. I promised my sister I wouldn’t meet with you again, and I’m breaking my promise.” She glanced back, determined to keep her eye on the trail this time. And she wouldn’t let Alexander hold her hand no matter how warm and strong and wonderful it felt.
“Did I get you into trouble with your family?”
Jo shook her head. “I convinced Mary not to tell, but I had to promise not to see you.” The morning air was still, without a breeze. She heard the new cow lowing in the barn, waiting to be milked, the rooster crowing to be fed.
“How have you been, Josephine?”
“Fine, thank you.” Her words came out more stilted than she intended, but her feelings were in such a state of confusion that she didn’t know what to say or how to say it. “We can’t be friends anymore, Alexander. I mean, I’ll always consider you a friend, but we can’t meet anymore. I came today because I wanted you to know that it wasn’t because of anything you said or because I was angry with you, but . . . well, because . . .”
“I’m a Yankee.”
“Yes. And a man. I’m not sure how things are done where you come from, but down here it isn’t proper for an unmarried man and woman to be alone together without a chaperone.”
“My intentions are honorable, I assure you.”
“I know. I’m not worried. But I’m risking my reputation by coming here.” There. She had said it plainly. She was also risking more confusion and sorrow if she continued to see him because their friendship was impossible. And she was running the risk of caring for him even more than she already did. “What have you been doing? How is your work progressing?” she asked.
“I’m sure you’ve heard that I’ve reopened the school.”
“Yes. The children were very excited about it. I didn’t realize the building had been repaired.”
“It hasn’t. But I decided to hold classes outside since the weather is so nice. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing.”
“What made you change your mind?”
“Your servant Lizzie begged me to reopen it—and she’s right. The only way the next generation of freedmen will ever have a better future is if they can get an education.”
“Roselle told me you’re teaching the children yourself.”
“I admit I’m a terrible teacher. I wrote to the Missionary Society and asked them to please send Miss Hunt or someone else right away, but it will still take a few weeks. And so I was wondering . . . is there any way at all that you could teach them in the meantime? I know I as
ked you before, and I understand why you had to refuse, but—”
“Nothing has changed.” She took another glance down the trail. “Unlike the women you know up north, I’m not free to go wherever I want to and do whatever I choose. That’s the way it is down here. I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too. I have a goodly amount of other bureau business to attend to, and it won’t get done while I’m tied up with teaching. I need to return to Richmond, for one thing. An important part of my job is to get justice for the freedmen, so I’m trying to arrange an investigation into the beatings and the two murders and the fire. The school is government property, and the arsonists must be brought to justice.”
Josephine didn’t know what to say. She suspected that Daniel was one of the men responsible for the fire and for the beatings in the woods. What he and the others had done was wrong, but she didn’t want the Yankees to send him to jail. Could they try him for murder? Hang him? What would become of White Oak?
She shouldn’t be here, Jo realized. She shouldn’t be talking to a Yankee. She was being disloyal to her family and to the South. “Was there something else you needed to tell me?” she asked, taking a small step away from him. “I can’t be gone long. I shouldn’t have come at all, but . . .” But she had wanted to see him. She had missed him. Being here was wrong in every possible way, yet she thought of Alexander every single day, thought of him when she lay in her bed at night. On the evening of the dance she had foolishly wished that he would walk through the door, tall and handsome, and ask her to waltz with him. She had pretended it was Alexander she’d waltzed with instead of Henry Schreiber.
“I understand,” he said. “Since we don’t have much time, I also wanted to ask if you’re still mad at God, still unable to pray?”
“I avoid God altogether,” she said, looking down at her feet and the shoes he had given her. “I go to church with my family because it’s expected of me, but I’m simply going through the motions.” She took another small step away from him. Maybe if she did it in small increments, it wouldn’t hurt so much when she finally turned her back and walked away.
“Have you tried yelling at God? Getting angry? Telling Him what you think?”
She gave a short laugh. “I’m just beginning to do that with real people like Harrison Blake. I have even talked back to my mother a bit—something I never would have dared to do before I met you. But I still don’t have the nerve to yell at God.”
“You don’t really have to yell,” he said, laughing. “Just talk freely, like you and I always do.”
“He doesn’t answer my questions out loud the way you do.” She looked up at him, and his grin made her smile. “You’ve acted as His spokesman, Alexander, giving me a lot of things to think about. I’m grateful.”
“You look so pretty with your hair that way,” he said softly. “I’ve missed you, Josephine.” He hadn’t stopped looking at her since she arrived. She closed her eyes, longing to say that she missed him, too, but there was no point at all in doing so. Their friendship was impossible. Anything more than friendship was scandalous.
“I need to leave. I’m so sorry. I feel bad about breaking my promise to Mary.”
“Wait!” He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. She kept her head lowered, hiding the tears she didn’t want him to see. “Could we write to each other? That wouldn’t be breaking your promise, would it? We could send letters to each other through Roselle.”
“I don’t have any paper. I used it all up writing letters to my brothers during the war. I know that sounds like a feeble excuse but it’s true.”
“Then I’ll send you some paper. And ink, too, if you need it. I’ll send it this afternoon, in fact. Please, Josephine? You could ask me questions in your letters, and I’ll try to answer them. I need to know how you’re doing.”
She shouldn’t agree to write to him. But if she said good-bye today and walked away, she might never see him again, never speak to him again, and she couldn’t bear the thought. “I suppose we can try writing for a while.”
Even that seemed deceitful to her. She would have to do it in secret or Mother would want to know where the writing paper had come from and who the letters were for. But Josephine couldn’t deny the relief she felt at having a way to continue their friendship.
“Thank you, Josephine.” His words came out like a sigh of relief. He squeezed her hand before letting go. “And one more thing . . . ?” he asked as she started to walk away. She turned to look at him. “Please give God another chance?”
Josephine made it all the way back to the house without being seen and was sitting at the dressing table in their bedroom, pinning up her hair when Mary awoke. They went down to breakfast together, but Jo avoided her sister’s gaze, certain she would read the guilt in her eyes. Or maybe the happiness.
“I have good news, girls,” Mother announced at breakfast. “I have invited Mrs. Schreiber and Mrs. Gray to tea today. I expect both of you to be there, of course, and to make our guests feel welcome. Their sons would make very good matches, as you know.”
Josephine stared at the tabletop, trying to quell a rising sense of panic. Her father had once explained to her how he and the other men hunted pheasants by getting the slaves to move through the brush in an ever-tightening circle, chasing the birds into the hunters’ path. She felt like one of those helpless birds now. Her mother was a strong, determined woman. Her plans left no room for escape.
“But . . . but Joseph Gray is nearly ten years older than Mary,” Jo blurted. “She’s much too young for him.”
“I’ll be seventeen in August.” Mary’s cheeks were as bright as ripe apples. She had spent a lot of time with Joseph at the dance, and Jo could see that she was sweet on him already.
“Mary is the perfect age,” Mother said. “And as you know, your father was a few years older than me. The young men in our community are ready to settle down after the war. We can’t afford to wait too long.”
“Why don’t you just say it, Mother: I’m twenty-two and plain and practically a spinster already. Go ahead and find Mary a husband, but please leave me alone.”
“Leave you alone? To do what, dear?” Mother kept her voice pleasant, but Josephine heard the hard edge behind her words. “Do you plan to immerse yourself in religion like Great-Aunt Hattie did, reading the Bible all day and moralizing? I know you don’t believe me, but being the mistress of your own home, raising children and having a good man to take care of you is very satisfying. There are few other options that will give you that satisfaction.”
Josephine knew it was true. She looked down the long, lonely road of spinsterhood and saw nothing—no home of her own, dependent on her family’s goodwill for her support until the day she died. Alexander had insisted the war had set her free, and while that might be true for women up north, it was not true for her.
“What do you think of Henry Schreiber, Josephine? You talked with him at the dance, didn’t you?”
“He seems pleasant enough. I hardly had time to get to know him.”
“That’s what courtship is for. You might at least give him a chance before you give up. And the place to start is by being pleasant to his mother.”
Henry was one of Daniel’s friends, one of the men who had attacked Otis and Willy and burned the school. Alexander had reminded her again this morning that two Negroes had died that night. Might she or Mary end up married to a murderer? Would she always look at her husband and wonder if he was capable of killing an innocent man—and never dare to ask?
“And, please, Josephine,” Mother finished, “let’s hear none of your radical ideas about doing your own gardening or cooking or sewing.”
At her mother’s tea that afternoon, Josephine felt like an item on display. She had attended similar teas before the war with the same object of snaring a husband—that much hadn’t changed. But the war had changed Josephine. She was finding her voice, and she longed to speak up, speak out, to choose her own husband or choose not to marr
y at all. But she remained quiet, demure, doing what was expected of her for her mother’s sake and for Mary’s. A portion of the Schreibers’ land adjoined White Oak, and as Josephine listened she realized that Daniel and Henry were scheming to create an empire by combining their families and their two plantations. She wouldn’t be allowed to stand in the way of her brother’s plans by refusing a marriage proposal.
The afternoon couldn’t end soon enough for Josephine. The moment Roselle returned from school with a supply of writing paper and ink for her, she went upstairs to hide in the guest room and write to Alexander.
Dear Alexander,
I don’t understand why you believe that God intended for the war to set me free in the same way that it gave the Negroes their freedom. My mother has embarked on a campaign to see me happily married, a campaign I am not at all in favor of. But the alternative, spinsterhood, is also unattractive. I am not as starry-eyed as my sister, dreaming of romance with a handsome, wealthy husband—not that any men in our community are wealthy these days. And while I have protested that I don’t care if I ever marry, the truth is that spinsterhood is a very lonely life, where single women are shuttled from one relative to the next for the rest of their lives, becoming a somber, powerless presence in each unfortunate household they visit.
You asked what I wanted for my life and my future, and I still don’t understand the question. Don’t you know that I’m not free to want anything for myself, any more than the slaves were free to dream of their futures before the war? If you could kindly explain what you meant—
She stopped. Was her tone too harsh, too demanding? She had a sudden memory of Alexander gazing at her this morning and saying, “You look so pretty with your hair that way.” She forced back her tears and continued writing.
I’m sorry if I sound strident, but I’m so confused. The future I once expected to have with marriage and a family now seems unacceptable to me, but I don’t like the alternative, either. I would greatly appreciate your advice and wisdom.