Louvenia’s eyes, to Sarah, looked sad and even a little scared. Maybe she was remembering her thrashing, too. Sarah didn’t want her sister to feel cross with her, because Louvenia was her only playmate. In fact, although Sarah would never want to admit it to her, Louvenia was her best friend, her most favorite person. Next to Papa and Mama, of course.
Sarah squeezed Lou’s hand. “Come on, I’ll help. We won’t play no mo’ ’til we done.”
“We ain’t gon’ be done ’fore Papa and them come back.”
“Yeah, we will, too,” Sarah said. “If we sing.”
That made Louvenia smile. She liked to sing, and Papa had taught them songs he learned from his pappy when he was a boy on a big plantation he said had a hundred slaves. Sarah couldn’t sing as well as her sister—her voice wouldn’t always do what she told it to—but singing always made work go by faster. Mama sang, too, when the womenfolk came on Saturdays to wash laundry with them on the riverbank. But Papa had the best voice of all. Papa sang when he was picking, and to Sarah his voice was as deep and pretty as the Mississippi River on a full-moon night. Papa always started singing when he was tired, and Sarah liked to watch him pick up his broad shoulders each time he took a breath before singing a new verse, as if the song was making him stronger:
O me no weary yet,
O me no weary yet.
I have a witness in my heart,
O me no weary yet.
Sarah and Louvenia enjoyed the uplifting messages in Mama’s and Papa’s songs, which were mostly about Jesus, heaven, and Gabriel’s trumpet, but they also liked the sillier songs Mama didn’t approve of, the ones Papa sang on Saturday nights after he’d had a drink from the jug he kept hidden behind the old cracked wagon wheel that leaned against their cabin. Sarah and Louvenia thought those songs were funny, so that was what they sang that afternoon as they crouched to chop weeds from Mama’s garden:
Hi-ho, for Charleston gals!
Charleston gals are the gals for me.
As I went a-walking down the street,
Up steps Charleston gals to take a walk with me.
I kep’ a-walking and they kep’ a-talking,
I danced with a gal with a hole in her stocking.
Together, as Sarah and her sister yanked up the stubborn weeds that grew frustratingly fast around Mama’s rows of green beans, potatoes, and yams, they sang their father’s old songs. Finally, the boredom that had felt like it was choking Sarah all day long in the hot sun finally let her mind alone. Instead of fantasizing about slave-kitchers Papa had told them so many stories about, or fishing for catfish, or the peppermint sticks at the general store in town she was allowed to eat at Christmastime, Sarah thought only of her task. Her hands seemed to fly. She’d chop the soil to loosen it with the rusted old hatchet Papa let her use, then pull up the weeds by the roots so they wouldn’t come back. Chop and pull, chop and pull. Sarah didn’t stop working even when the rows of calluses on her small hands began to throb in rhythm with her chopping. By the time they saw Mama’s kerchief bobbing toward the house in the distance, followed by Papa’s wide-brim hat, their weeding was finished, and they were lying on their backs in the crabgrass behind their house, arguing over what shapes they could see in the ghostly moon that was just beginning to make itself visible in a corner of the late-afternoon sky.
The cabin’s windows, which were pasted shut with paper instead of glass during cooler months, were a curse in the winter, since they were little protection against the biting cold even with the shutters tied shut. But now, in spring, when the bare windows should have been inviting in a cool twilight breeze, the air inside the cabin was so still, so stiff and hot that Sarah hated to breathe it. It felt to her like hot air was trapped in the wooden walls, in the loose floorboards, in every crooked shingle on the drafty roof. Sarah watched the sunlight creeping through the slatted cracks in the walls and ceiling where the mud needed patching, wishing dark would hurry up and come and make it cool. Hungry as she was, Sarah wished Mama didn’t have the cookstove lit, because it only made the cabin hotter. And it wasn’t even summertime yet, Sarah thought sadly. By summer the heat would be worse, and the sun would bring out the cotton they would have to pick come the first of September.
Papa swatted at the big green flies and skeeters hovering above the table. Mosquitoes always seemed to know when it was suppertime, Sarah thought. Papa’s arm moved lazily in front of his face as he shooed the insects, as if he were hunched over the table asleep. Sarah knew better than to try to talk to Papa too soon after he’d come back from the fields, especially close to June. Sarah and Louvenia were both too small to help in the fields in late May, because that was when Papa, Mama, and Alex pushed plows to break up acre after acre of soil to tend the cotton plants properly. Sarah and Louvenia did weeding, or on some days carried water and corncakes out to the croppers. Papa hated plowing those deep furrows between the rows, and Sarah could see how much he hated it in the lines on his frowning, sunbaked face as he sat at the table. Papa and Alex were barebacked, so slick with sweat they looked greased up.
Papa and Alex spoke to each other with short grunts and words uttered so low Sarah couldn’t make out what they were saying, man-talking that came from deep in their throats. She’d heard men speak that way to each other in the fields, or as they rested on the front stoop and shared a jug and rumbles of laughter. Papa grunted something, and Alex smiled, muttering husky words back. Sarah knew her brother was nearly a man now, and she’d seen the change in the way Papa treated him. It was the same way Mama was treating Louvenia like a grown woman, expecting her to cook and mend and do a bigger share of fieldwork. Everyone was grown-up except her.
Sarah knew she could go to her pallet and play with the doll Papa had made her out of cornhusks wrapped together with twine, but she wanted to be more grown-up than that. She walked across the cabin—she counted twenty paces to get from one side to the other; she’d learned numbers up to twenty from Papa—and stood by the cookstove on her tiptoes to watch Mama stir collard greens in her big saucepan while Louvenia sat on the floor and mended a tear in her dress. Mama had one kerchief on her head and one knotted around her neck, both of them gray from grime. Her cheeks were full, and she had a youthful, pretty face; skin black as midnight and smooth like an Indian squaw’s, Papa always said. Gazing at her, Sarah wondered if her mother would ever become stooped-over and sour-faced like so many other women she had seen in the fields.
Sarah expected Mama to tell her to get from underfoot, but she didn’t. Instead she gave Sarah a big, steaming bowl. “Pass yo’ papa his supper,” Mama told her, and Sarah grinned. The smell of the greens, yams, and corn bread made her stomach flip from hunger. Papa’s eyes didn’t smile when he took his food from Sarah, but he did squeeze her fingers. Sarah knew that was his special way of saying Thank you, Li’l Bit.
Outside, Papa’s hound barked loudly, and Papa and Alex looked up at the same instant. They all heard the whinny of a horse and a heavy clop-clopping sound that signaled the arrival of not one horse, but two or more. An approaching wagon scraped loudly in the dirt.
“Who’n de world … ?” Mama said, leaning toward the window.
“Not-uh,” Papa warned her, standing tall so quickly that his chair screeched on the hard packed-dirt floor. “Don’ put your head out. Git back.” Something in Papa’s voice that Sarah couldn’t quite name made her stomach fall silent, and it seemed to harden to stone. His voice was dangerous, wound tight, and Sarah didn’t know where that new quality had come from so suddenly. She had never heard Papa sound that way before.
Silently, Mama took Sarah’s hand and pulled her back toward the stove at the rear of the cabin. Louvenia was still sitting on the floor, but her hands were frozen with her thread and needle in midair. Alex stood up at the table while Papa took long strides to the doorway, where he stood with his arms folded across his chest.
“Whoa there!” a man’s voice outside snapped to his horses. It sounded like a white man. Sarah felt
her mother’s grip tighten around her fingers, her face drawn with concern.
Papa’s whole demeanor changed; the shoulders that had been thrust so high suddenly fell, as if he had exhaled all his breath. He shifted his weight, no longer blocking the light from the doorway. The dangerous stance had vanished. “Evenin’, Missus,” Papa said, nearly mumbling.
“Evening, Owen,” a woman’s voice said.
A frightening thought came to Sarah: I hope they ain’t here to take our house away. She didn’t know why the visitors would do something like that, but she did know that she’d heard Mama and Papa talking about their payment being late. And she knew that their house, like everything else—including the land as far as they could see, Papa’s tools, their cottonseed, and even the straw pallets they slept on—belonged to the Burney daughters. Time was, before ’Man-ci-pa-tion and the war that ended two years before Sarah was born, and before Ole Marster and Ole Missus died in ’66 (“Of heartbreak,” Mama always said, because of their land being overrun by Yankees and their crops and buildings burned up), the Burneys owned Mama and Papa and a lot of other slaves besides. Some of those slaves, like Mama and Papa, still worked on the land as croppers. But some of the other slaves, Mama told her, were so happy to be free that they’d just left.
Where’d they go? Sarah had asked, full of wonder at the notion that the other freed slaves had crossed the bridge to go to Vicksburg, or even beyond. The only other places she knew about were Mississippi and Charleston, like in the song. Had they gone away on a steamship? On a train?
They went on they own feets, pullin’ every scrap they owned on wagons, Mama said. And Lord only know where they at now. Might wish they was back here. Now Sarah had a bad feeling. She wondered why Mama and Papa hadn’t pulled a wagon with every scrap they owned and left on their own feet after freedom came, too. If they had, they wouldn’t be late on their payment, and these white folks wouldn’t be coming to take their house.
“ ’Scuse the hour, Owen, but we were on our way from an affair in town.” The woman’s voice floated from outside. Despite Sarah’s nervousness, the stranger’s voice sounded like music to Sarah as her words rose and fell in the breeze. An affair, Sarah repeated to herself. She didn’t know what the elegant word meant, but it intrigued her.
“It’s just Missus Anna,” Mama said, relieved. “Go sit down at the table, Sarah.”
Quickly, Sarah did as she was told, climbing into a chair that rocked back and forth on uneven legs. Her attention was riveted to the doorway. Visitors to their cabin were rare, and white visitors were unheard of except, rarely, to leave their washing.
Daddy was mumbling the way Alex did after a scolding. “I figger I know what you callin’ after, Missus… . Soon as we git the eggs to market, we can pay—”
“No business tonight, Owen. I know you’ll pay. You always do. Hope I’m not disturbing supper,” she said, then her voice changed, growing slightly softer as she addressed someone else: “I’ll just be a moment, George. I’m going on in.”
The man outside muttered something, but Sarah couldn’t hear him except for two words: One was hoodoo, which Sarah knew meant magic; the other was niggers. He didn’t sound happy.
Papa stepped aside, and the woman ducked through their doorway to walk inside. She was tall and thin, like something that might break, with chocolate-colored hair pinned on top of her head in feathery rings. Gentle strands of her hair bobbed above her brow. What would it feel like to have that soft, pretty hair? Sarah was also captivated by the woman’s marvelous white dress. Gold buttons glistened up and down her lacy breast, and beneath her thin waist, the dress flared out into graceful layers that floated above the floor. Faint, lovely patterns were woven across the fabric like something sewn by angels. Sarah’s mouth fell open as she stared. She had never seen such a dress! She could even smell the dress’s crispness from where she sat.
“Evening, Minerva. Oh, you are sitting down to eat! I feel so badly about the hour, but it couldn’t wait another day,” the woman was saying, sounding nearly breathless. “Oh, my goodness, look how all these young’uns have grown! I just don’t believe it.”
The woman walked directly up to Sarah and leaned over to look at her face. She cupped Sarah’s chin in her hand, and it was the softest hand Sarah had ever felt. A touch so soft and buttery it could melt clean away. “Don’t even tell me this is the baby! You remember me? How old was she when I last saw her, Minerva … ?”
“ ’Bout three o’ fo’, I think,” Mama said. She had pulled her rag from around her neck and was twisting it in her hands, shifting her weight from foot to foot. Mama looked troubled. “ ’Tain’t tidied in here, Missus Anna… .”
Wasn’t tidied! Sarah wondered why her mama would say such a thing. Sarah and Louvenia took turns sweeping the bare floor each morning with a brush-broom. The table, the chairs, two footstools, and some crates were the only furniture except Papa’s rocker on the porch, but all of their belongings were in neat piles. Mama always said any house that worshiped God should stay as neat as if Jesus himself were calling at suppertime. “That ol’ table look like it ’bout to break, an’ dem pallets on the flo’ full of flies… .” Mama said, mumbling like Papa.
Then, gazing back at the splendid newcomer, Sarah understood. Their cabin was too … raggedy for a woman in a dress like that. Sarah couldn’t imagine this woman curling up on the floor to sleep on one of their pallets, or sitting at the table in one of the chairs that might stain her dress with sweat. Mama was ashamed, Sarah realized, and suddenly she was, too. The foreign feeling slapped her face hot.
Sarah knew she had been to this woman’s big plantation house called Grand View when she was little, but she didn’t remember the visit. And she didn’t remember this woman, although she wondered how she could have forgotten her. The woman’s soft fingers lingered at Sarah’s chin a while longer, then slipped away. “Oh, ’Nerva, stop talking nonsense. Let me look in my handbag, because I know I have something this little one’d like.”
“Me, too, Missus Anna?” Louvenia blurted suddenly, and Mama gave her a harsh look.
The woman laughed. “Oh, of course, little Lou. I wouldn’t forget you.”
To Sarah’s amazement, the woman produced a wrapped piece of brown candy.
“You like taffy, Sarah?” the woman said, holding the candy close to her face.
Sarah nodded eagerly, although she had no idea what in the world taffy was. She’d seen candy in jars when Mama shopped for flour and sold their eggs in town, but the only candy Mama ever bought her was a peppermint stick at Christmas. Her taste buds pricked. “Yes’m.”
“Now, you may have this piece if you know what to say,” the woman told her.
Sarah’s heart tumbled with panic. Her fingers were already twitching to take the candy dangling before her nose, but suddenly her mind was wiped blank. What did this lady want her to say? Did she want her to tell her what a pretty dress she had? Or how nice her hand felt because it wasn’t rough like Mama’s? Sarah didn’t know what to say to a white lady! Her eyes darted over to Louvenia, who was gazing at her with envy, then to Mama, who looked impatient, as if it were clear as day what the answer was.
“Sarah, what you say?” Mama said crossly. Then, seeing Sarah’s confusion, Mama made her voice gentler. “Like what I tol’ you the other day ’bout that molasses? ’Member?”
Sarah didn’t remember a thing, and the stinging behind her eyes warned her she was close to tears. The candy was right in front of her, but now she’d never have it at all!
“It starts with a ‘P’ …” the white woman said instructively, coaxing. More perplexed, Sarah began to blink fast, trying as hard as she could to keep her tears away.
“She don’t know what that mean, Missus Anna,” Papa said, and Sarah felt her chest loosen with relief even as the shame she’d felt earlier flared again. “She ain’t learnt spellin’.”
“Please!” Louvenia finally hissed at Sarah. “You s’posed to say please.”
/> Was that all? Even though her mouth had become suddenly dry, Sarah forced herself to speak as loudly as she could: “Kin I … please … have it?”
“Of course!” the woman said. Her face lit up as if Sarah had said something extraordinary, but Sarah knew please was a regular word Mama told her to say when she asked for something. How could she have guessed this lady wanted her to say a plain word like that?
“Kin I please have one, too, Missus Anna?” Louvenia said.
Papa spoke up in a voice more like his own: “I don’ know if you need to be spoilin’ ’em with that store-bought candy, Missus Anna. It’s much ’preciated, but …”
“Oh, come now, Owen, one piece won’t hurt them.” She said it as if that were the end of the matter, even though she was talking to Papa, and Papa made the rules. Sarah looked at Papa, amazed he didn’t speak up and tell her that was that, but he didn’t. Instead, he shoved his hands in the pockets of his scuffed pants and let his face go hard.
“Not before you eat your supper, all right?” the woman said after both Sarah and Louvenia had the treasured pieces of candy in their possession, and they nodded. Sarah tried to say thank you, but the words were stuck in her throat because she was sure Papa was about to tell the woman to take the candy back. But he never did.
“Anna!” the white man’s voice outside called impatiently above the horses’ snorts.
The woman pursed her thin pink lips together, standing upright again. She spoke hurriedly, fanning a fly from her face. “Oh, have mercy, George is as impatient as Daddy was. George says it’s blasphemy to cotton to Negro hoodoo, but all the same, here’s why I’m calling: The town was buzzing today about Yellow Jack. Vicksburg, too, I hear tell.”
The Black Rose Page 2