by Joyce Hansen
The sky was a pale pink, and the clean morning air smelled of flowers and pine. Easter was pleased with her decisions as she ran to the cottage. She started a fire so that she could prepare grits for their breakfast. Little Ray and Jason still slept.
Rose walked into the kitchen wearing her field apron over her shift and carrying her straw hat. She frowned when she saw Easter.
“Where your schoolteacher dress and your slippers? Why you dress like that? And barefoot.”
“School close until a new teacher come.”
Rose rested her hat on the rocking chair. “I thought you was the teacher until then.”
“Maybe I teach Sunday School. Remember Brother Thomas say the children should have a Sunday School? I give them reading then.” She poured the grits into the boiling water as Rose stared at her incredulously. “I going to help you. Me and some of my students help you bring in the crop from Rayford field so you get all the land he work for.”
“Easter, I can’t ask you to—”
“You didn’t ask.”
“No, Easter. The children need school. And you know how you hate field work. I manage.”
“Tell me who love field work? Yes, I hate it, and I will always hate it.”
Rose took the dishes off the mantel. “Don’t you worry about me. I get that land Rayford work for.”
Easter put her hands on her hips and faced Rose. “Rosie, you couldn’t make me stay in them fields when I didn’t want to, and you can’t keep me out if I want to help you.”
In June Easter received a letter from Miss Grantley:
My Dear Easter,
I was very disturbed by the terrible news. I do not in any way blame you for feeling the way you do. I too am ashamed at the way some of my fellow citizens have comported themselves.
Easter, one of the greatest lessons of our sojourn on earth is that we must not let the wrongdoings of a few people cause us to become bitter ourselves. There are many good people in the Northern Missionary Society who want to help you.
Please do not close your mind to ever coming north and continuing your studies. It would be a loss to the numerous students who will not receive the gift of your love.
I have some further news. A new teacher will be coming to the plantation in September to continue the school. She is a wonderful young colored woman who graduated from the Philadelphia School for Colored Youth.
I know that you will welcome her and help her to settle in. Easter, please think about your decision and reconsider.
With Much Affection,
Amy Grantley
Easter read the letter twice. She was always happy to get a letter from Miss Grantley, but her mind was set. Miss Grantley didn’t understand. Easter couldn’t forget the day the Union soldiers rode onto the plantation. She couldn’t forget Rayford or Brother Thomas, who still could not speak. She folded the letter and put it away, glad that the children would be getting a real teacher.
As Easter walked toward the cotton fields, she closed her mind to Miss Grantley’s letter and advice, having learned how to shut her mind like a door when she worked in the fields. The only thing that she reminded herself of was her promise to help Rose keep the land.
Chapter
Fourteen
Had my first regular teaching experience … it was not a very pleasant one. Part of my scholars are very tiny … it is hard to keep them quiet and interested while I am hearing the larger ones. They are too young even for the alphabet.
The Journal of Charlotte Forten
Teacher, 1862–1864, Port Royal, South Carolina
September 1865
The cotton bolls began to blanket the fields. Easter and Jason, with sacks hanging from their shoulders, picked the soft, white bolls. Jason worked a few feet ahead of Easter. She noticed that he’d grown a little taller and fuller without her knowing when it happened. He’d been unusually quiet too for the past four months. Still thinkin about Rayford and what happened, she supposed. Nobody been feeling too right. Usually Jason kept up a stream of chatter while he worked, and when he was tired of talking, he’d sing, sometimes songs he’d made up himself.
When she and Jason stopped to eat lunch, Jason ate with her instead of sitting with the other youngsters. They found a shady spot under a tree at the edge of the fields.
“When you goin’ back to the Bureau?” Jason asked.
“Never. No sense goin’ back there. They can’t help me find Obi.”
“When you leavin’ here? Thought you want to find Obi so bad and leave here?”
“When Rose get settle with her land, we go and look for Obi. I glad you want to find him too.” She took a bite of cornbread.
“I want to leave, Easter. I hate these field. I hope you find Obi soon.”
“What? You comin’ with me, Jason.”
“I want to go with Dr. Taylor.”
“Who?”
“The man with the show, remember?”
“Jason, I thought you forget all that. Suppose that man is evil?”
“Then I leave him and come back.”
Easter stared at Jason, seeing for the first time that he was losing his baby face and beginning to look like a young man. He ate his rice slowly and seemed to be deep in thought. Suddenly he said, “You remember my real mother?”
She was surprised. He’d never asked about his mother before. “I tell you while we work. Make the time go fast.”
People were heading back to the fields. A flock of sea gulls flew toward the ocean. They picked up their sacks and walked back to the cotton fields. Jason worked steadily as Easter related his story. “You beginnin’ to look like your ma. She was pretty, and our old mistress like her a lot. …”
While they ate supper that evening, Paul, who now managed the plantation, visited them.
“Paul,” Rose greeted him, “have supper with us.”
He sat down, and stretched his legs out before him. “No thanks, Rosie. Just come to bring you good news. We get a letter from the missionaries.” He handed Easter the letter. “You can read it. They sendin’ us a teacher is what it say. And I want you to go to the ferry landing in Elenaville to meet her, since you been our teacher when we had none.”
So a week later Easter, dressed in her good violet dress and her worn brown leather slippers, waited at the plantation gates for James to bring the carriage around. They were going to meet the ferry that was carrying Miss Emmaline Fortune, their new teacher. She’d traveled by train from Philadelphia to Charleston and would continue on to Santa Elena by ferry.
Although it was early Saturday morning, Easter heard hammering in the forest. The men were at work clearing the land that would soon be theirs. The first building would be a church and the next a school. She heard James’s rickety carriage approaching the gate. He’d purchased the carriage from a planter who was selling his lands and other property. James provided carriage service to the blacks in the area. They didn’t use the regular carriage line because either the drivers wouldn’t stop for black passengers or there’d be a fight between blacks and whites before they reached their destination. For short trips James still used his mules and wagon.
Easter was glad James arrived before Jason woke up and discovered she was going to Elenaville. When the carriage pulled up, she was surprised to see Julius jump out. “Miss Easter, I joinin’ you on your trip. A lady shouldn’t travel alone.”
“Well, what James be? A ghost?” she asked as he helped her into the carriage.
“James have to worry with them old horses. See that they get us there.” Six other people were already in the carriage, which wasn’t supposed to hold more than that comfortably.
Easter squeezed in beside a heavy-hipped woman. “Julius, if you stay, then we have more room.”
“Can’t let you go alone.” He smiled playfully, squeezing in beside her.
As soon as they started off down the road, the heavy woman popped out of her seat like a cork out of a bottle. A thin little man sitting next to her was almost k
nocked down. “Mercy, what caught you?” he asked.
“Something’s alive under this seat! James!” she yelled out of the window.
Easter was getting angry with James and Julius—Julius for taking up needed space and James for piling people in the carriage so that he could make as much money as possible. Julius checked the seat as the woman leaned out of the window, still yelling for James. “You should be paying us to ride in this thing,” she shouted.
Julius found the culprit—a spring poking out of the leather.
“Seem like she have enough rump back there to cushion that,” the woman across from Easter whispered.
That school teacher goin’ back to Philadelphia if we take her home in this confusion, Easter thought.
James stopped the carriage, and the woman got out and climbed up to sit next to him. Easter was relieved; she carefully stayed away from the lively spring.
They reached Elenaville and went straight to the dock. While James fed his horses, Easter found a shady spot under a live oak tree. Julius walked over to her and sat down. “Easter,” he said, flashing a wide smile, “there’s something I want to ask you.”
She knew what was coming. He’d been buzzing around her ever since he’d come home from the army.
“I want you to marry me, Easter. I a hardworking man, not like some of these lazy scamps.”
She sighed and stared at her scratched hands. “I have to find Obi.”
“Where you findin’ him? Why you not lookin’ for him now?”
“I helpin’ Rose. I can’t look for him yet.”
“I wonder if he tryin’ to find you?” Julius’s face was serious now, the high cheekbones sharp and slightly glistening with moisture.
“He is lookin’ for me.”
“Don’t you want your own family? A real family?”
“Obi and Jason my family.”
“Jason not your child. How about your own child, and me for a husband? And a farm we all own. How about that?”
It made sense. What a woman should want. But suppose she did marry Julius and then Obi came for her? “Julius, I have to finish helping Rose, then I find Obi.” She kept staring at her hands.
“You and me alike,” he continued. “Ain’t got no ma, no pa, no real kin and no memory of none.” He placed his hand over hers. She let her hands remain under his for a moment—at first it felt strange sitting there like that with Julius. When it began to seem not so strange, she removed her hands.
“Easter, I want a wife.”
He was one of the best young men on the plantation; she owned nothing and had no one. But Obi’s face clouded her vision.
“Easter, don’t give me no answer now. Think on it—but don’t think too long.”
She had to try and explain how she felt. “Julius, I—”
He touched her lips lightly with his hand. “Don’t say nothing till you think on it. Don’t want you to tell me no on such a pretty day.”
Easter tried to put Julius’s offer out of her head as they waited for the ferry, but the war in her mind was beginning. Since she wasn’t going north and had no land or anything, maybe …
They spotted the ferry approaching the dock. Easter, Julius, and James concentrated on the passengers disembarking. “All I see is white peoples,” James remarked.
Easter saw her first. She noticed the gray silk traveling suit with a gray hat to match. Then she saw that the lady wearing the outfit was not white but was a light-brown-skinned young woman who looked confused and a little nervous. “There she is.” Easter pointed, ignoring James’s “How you know?”
Easter was embarrassed by the way James stared at the woman with his mouth hanging open. She poked him with her elbow. “She think you a dunce, James.”
They walked quickly toward the young woman. James was the first to speak. With a large swooping gesture he took off his battered straw hat, placed it against his chest, and almost bowed to the ground. “We happy to welcome you here, miss.”
She smiled sweetly, “Excuse me, sir, what did you say?”
Easter was surprised that she sounded exactly like a Yankee. Julius bowed and said something, which the woman still seemed not to understand. Easter arranged the words in her mind the way Miss Grantley had taught her how to say them.
“Good evening, are you Miss Fortune?”
The woman nodded.
“We from—we are from the Williams plantation, and we come to carry you there. My name’s Easter, and these two are Julius and James.”
“I’m pleased to meet all of you.” She smiled warmly, especially at Easter.
There were no passengers on the return trip, so they could all stretch out. Easter made sure that Miss Fortune didn’t sit on the seat with the broken spring.
When they returned to the plantation, everyone was there to welcome the new teacher. Jason ran up to them excitedly. “Easter, why didn’t you tell me you was going to Elenaville?” he shouted.
“Jason, don’t be rude. Say hello to Miss Fortune, our new teacher.”
Jason bowed. “Good evening, Miss Fortune, I so please to meet you. Now, Easter, why you—”
Rose tried to snatch him. “Stop actin’ the fool, Jason,” she said as she handed the teacher a basket of fruit and pies.
“What a welcome,” Miss Fortune exclaimed. “I didn’t expect this.”
Rose and Easter helped the teacher settle into Rose’s old cottage. Rose had moved out of the cottage and back to the quarters with Melissa and Easter. “I can’t live in that house without Rayford,” she’d told Easter. Miss Fortune looked around the kitchen as they entered the cottage, which Rose and Isabel had cleaned. Easter hoped that the teacher liked it.
“This is fine. Clean and cozy,” Miss Fortune said.
“The bedroom is that way, miss,” said Rose. “I have to go and see about my little boy.”
“I go now too and let you rest. Charlotte, one of your students, comin’ here tomorrow to fix breakfast for you.” Easter wasn’t in a hurry to leave, but she thought it only polite to do so.
“Do you have to go too, Easter? It would be nice to have company while I unpack.” Miss Fortune’s brown eyes were slightly slanted and looked soft and kind.
“Oh yes, ma’am. I’ll help you,” Easter said, picking up one of the bags and carrying it to the bedroom. Easter wondered what other wonderful dresses Miss Fortune had tucked away in her suitcases.
“You don’t have to do anything. I just want your company. I want to change into something simpler.” Easter tried not to stare as Miss Fortune changed her suit.
She knew that it was rude to stare, but while the teacher struggled to pull a plaid dress over her head, Easter had the chance to get a good look at her bloomers. She’d never seen such fancy underwear, so much lace and ribbon. Easter was suddenly ashamed of her own violet homespun dress and her old slippers.
“Easter, was that perky young fellow your brother?” Miss Fortune asked as she hung up her traveling suit.
“No ma’am,” Easter said politely, wondering how many sets of such underwear the teacher owned.
“He seems so close to you.”
“We been together since he was a baby.”
Miss Fortune hung up another dress. “How did that come to be?”
Easter told Miss Fortune her story. The teacher listened intently as if she were hearing a strange and adventurous tale. When Easter finished, Miss Fortune said, “You’re a smart, resourceful young woman. Miss Grantley told me about you when she wrote to me after she learned that I was coming down here.” She sat down on the bed next to Easter. “You should be continuing your education.”
“I never want to live with the Yankee, Miss Fortune. It’s bad enough with these buckra down here.”
“What?”
“That’s the word we have for the whites who live here—buckra.”
“Oh, I see.” She twisted her hands and her soft brown eyes took on a faraway look. “I am lucky. My grandfather was a freeman who became wealthy in
the sailing business. We have never been slaves, nor have we ever been poor. Yet I still suffer scorn because of my color. And many of my northern colored brethren, especially if they are poor, suffer as greatly as you do in these newly freed states.” She stared closely at Easter. “Education is our only weapon against such ignorance. The missionary society sincerely wants to help students such as you. Getting an education is a necessity for colored folks. We have so much work to do.”
Miss Emmaline Fortune became an important part of Easter’s life. She spent most Saturday and Sunday evenings in the teacher’s combination kitchen and sitting room, practicing her reading and writing, remembering how much she missed school. Easter was still torn between her dreams of being with Obi, her wish to study, and Julius’s steady proposals of marriage. Only in the quiet of Miss Fortune’s cottage was she truly at peace.
By the end of the year much of their land had been cleared, and thirty families purchased fifteen hundred acres of land and received the portions of land that they’d earned. Their Christmas and Emancipation Day celebrations included rejoicing over their success in obtaining land. Yet there was a tinge of sadness as people remembered Rayford and watched the silent Brother Thomas, who had not regained his speech.
Cabins were built by teams of men and boys from the various families working together. Another year of planting, growing, and harvesting ended. The Williams family, along with the cook, butler, and one or two other loyal servants, moved back to the big house. More changes were in the offing.
Chapter
Fifteen
I’ve known rivers:
I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the
flow of human blood in human veins.
My soul has grown deep like the rivers.
Langston Hughes
January 1, 1866
Easter and Rose talked quietly at the pine table while Little Ray, Melissa, and Jason slept. They’d just finished celebrating Emancipation Day, and Rose and Easter were having their nightly cup of tea before going to bed.