Emily looked her uncle up and down with disgust. How could he chastise Mr. Burrows? The man had done nothing wrong. Had her uncle been so long in the North that he had forgotten his roots?
She, at least, wasn’t bound by her uncle’s wishes. Turning back to Mr. Burrows, she continued, “I imagine runaways keep you pretty busy. We lost one off our place this year, too.”
“Emily,” her uncle warned, but she ignored him.
“These Yankees don’t understand how things really are. They get all the wrong ideas from that book, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. They don’t realize the Negroes have need of direction and provision.”
As she spoke, Ezekiel stood at the side of the room and never fluttered an eyelid, but the black woman who helped serve the meal glared balefully in Emily’s direction.
Emily was undaunted. “I hope you catch that fellow. Sometimes the slaves get a little rebellious, like a spirited horse, and they need a firm hand.”
Sturgis and Satterfield snorted contemptuously.
“Emily, that will be enough,” her uncle commanded.
A sudden baying erupted in the backyard. A glance out the window showed two rangy bloodhounds loping through the carefully manicured garden. They stopped, nosing about in a patch of purple asters. Dirt and blooms began to fly beneath huge paws.
With a muffled oath, the bounty hunters jumped up, stumbling in their haste. Mr. Burrows rose also. “It’s been a pleasure,” he said with a swift bow. “If you’ll excuse me.”
The smaller dog still ripped into the flower bed, but the larger one had moved on. It snuffled about the tea roses and stopped to water the hedge as the two men charged out the door. Emily barely stifled a giggle as one of them lunged for its collar.
Isaac stood up from the table and cleared his throat. “Emily, would you accompany me to my office, please?” He wasn’t smiling.
“Of course, Uncle,” she beamed.
In the office, Isaac closed the door and crossed his arms in consternation. “It seems you’ve sufficiently recovered your energy from your trip, my dear. You put on quite a presentation out there. So I believe tomorrow will be soon enough to assign you some chores.”
Her smile vanished and her face opened in shock.
“I know your mother has not raised you to be extremely industrious, but I believe a bit of labor is beneficial. So tomorrow you will accompany Shannon.”
“You cannot be serious!”
“I assure you, I’m quite serious.”
Emily balled her fists at her sides and felt warmth creep into her cheeks. “Uncle Isaac, I am not a slave. And my parents did not send me here to be treated like one. I absolutely refuse to spend my whole day laboring!”
“No, no, you misunderstand,” he explained with a lifted eyebrow. “It’s just for a while in the evenings. You’ll be far too busy attending school to help during the day.”
Emily’s mouth popped open, and her eyes bulged like a sausage that’s been squeezed too hard in the middle.
The corner of her uncle’s mouth began to twitch again. “Pick your chin up off the floor, dear. You couldn’t possibly have thought I’d hire you a tutor.”
Speechless, she whirled to leave, but he stopped her. “One more thing. Jarrod Burrows could charm the stink off a skunk, but I don’t want you consorting with him. So no more performances like that last one, please.”
She met the command with stony silence, her chin up and her eyes flashing. She would consort with whomever she pleased. When she found her voice it came out strained. “I will be writing home about this,” she seethed. Contemptuously, she looked him up and down. “I cannot even fathom how you can be my uncle, you—you Yankee!”
He gave her a grave stare. “Oh, my dear, we are so much more alike than you would ever care to admit.”
Chapter 4
Emily stepped daintily over a mud puddle. It had rained overnight, and the streets were an equal mix of gravel, manure, and quicksand. Already her slippers were caked with filth, and mud polka-dotted her pantalettes and the hem of her second best dress. Up the street, she could see the schoolhouse and hear the squeals and laughter of children.
“I still don’t understand why we couldn’t drive,” she complained to her uncle.
“Every other child in this town walks. God gave you two good feet. Use them.”
“But I’m not used to walking. My feet are delicate.”
“Then I’ll buy you a pair of sturdy shoes and a sensible dress to go with them.”
At this Emily lifted a haughty chin. “I am the daughter of William and Marie Preston, and I will dress like it!” This morning, more than any other morning, it was important that she look her part. Her schoolmates must not notice her trembling knees or guess her uncertainty.
“You may dress like Saint Nicholas for all it matters to me,” her uncle stated, “but I will not drive you to school every morning.”
He was so unreasonable! She stomped her foot, splashing more mud on herself.
“Look what you’ve made me do,” she wailed, holding the hem of her dress.
Isaac knelt down and wiped at the fabric with his handkerchief. “Sweetheart, you’re going to have to try a little harder to fit in around here. I’ll help if you’ll only give me a chance.”
She flung a drop of mud off her face. “I do not need your help.”
He rose. “I’ll meet you here at noon, just this once, to walk you home for lunch.”
“I can find my own way, thank you,” she snapped.
“I’ll be here.”
~
The schoolhouse was a small, one-room wooden structure that looked completely out of place in the city that had grown up around it. It was long and low, with a tiny bell tower on the roof and four windows along each side. The building wasn’t quite square anymore, and here and there the paint was flaking where tiny fingers picked at it during recess. The schoolhouse sat on a large lot, apart from its neighbors, looking lonesome, old-fashioned, and much too tired to manage the number of children playing in its yard.
As Emily watched, a little girl stepped out the door and pulled the bell rope. The tinny sound acted like a drain. It emptied the schoolyard, sucking and swirling the children right into the door of the little building. Emily let herself be pulled along through a coatroom full of hooks and shelves that held only the pails of three children who wouldn’t be walking home for lunch.
She emerged in a room crowded with neat rows of benches. Every seat had room enough for two children, with a shared tabletop extending from the seat just ahead. Across the front of the room stretched a square of black-painted boards, and in the back corner, close to where she stood, a coal heater squatted beneath a flue that rose through the ceiling.
A man sat writing at a desk on the far side of the room. He was young and capable-looking, unperturbed by the rabble flooding in around him. As Emily watched, he rapped once on the table with a wooden rod, and silence washed over the room like soft rain.
“Good morning, class. We will begin this morning by reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Oh, hello,” he interrupted himself, catching sight of Emily standing in the back. “You must be Emily Preston. My name is Mr. Marbliss. Your uncle has already registered you.”
Moments before, students had pushed past her as if she were a plank on one of the walls. Now every one of them craned their neck to gawk at her. She smirked and shook out her curls.
“What grade are you in, Emily? Your uncle wasn’t certain.”
She let her words grow slow and broad and Southern. “I don’t know. I’ve never attended school.”
“Surely you’ve had some instruction,” he prompted.
She looked down her nose at her new classmates. “Where I come from, we are assigned tutors. We don’t cram into a schoolroom like chickens in a coop.”
That prompted whispering among the benches. Emily noticed the dark look that passed between two big girls at the back of the room. She smiled sweetly at them.
“Well, you’
re one of us now,” Mr. Marbliss responded shortly. “Take the seat there next to Abby.”
Emily marched up to a timid-looking girl and flounced down beside her. The teacher followed with a slate and a few books, which he placed on the desktop.
“All right, let’s begin,” he announced.
The morning passed in a flurry of spelling, grammar, and arithmetic. Emily was assigned to the sixth grade and kept up with her class just fine, except in long division, which she had never been particularly fond of anyway. When Mr. Marbliss dismissed them for recess, the children poured from the desks like sand through an hourglass.
Emily waited for the room to clear before making her way to the grassy schoolyard. Outside, the two girls from the back row stood waiting. One was tall, wispy, and blonde; the other was of medium height, with beautiful dark curls and plump cheeks. Neither looked inviting.
As Emily passed between them, the girls fell into line behind her. She chose to ignore them and settled on a stump at the side of the building. A few girls played hopscotch nearby on a grid they had scratched in the mud. The rest of the children tore around in circles, throwing a ball at each other and shrieking like savages.
Just then the ball flew her way, and before she could duck, it struck her in the shoulder. It didn’t hurt, but the laughter of her schoolmates brought sharp color to her cheeks. Angrily, she snatched up the ball and heaved it across the road.
“Did they hurt you?” a voice mocked at her elbow. “Poor dear. Perhaps you could have them stripped and beaten, just like at home.” It was the dark-haired girl.
The blonde came up on her other side. “You’re a regular princess, aren’t you? Maybe we should put our shawls down so you don’t get your dainty little bum all dirty.” Their laughter held no cheerfulness.
Emily glowered, “What do you want?”
Instead of answering, they crowded onto the stump on either side of her. The blonde continued, fingering the lacy edge of Emily’s skirt. “What a beautiful dress. European, no doubt. And satin slippers to match. Too bad they got so dirty. You should have stayed in your castle with your tutor instead of scratching around in the mud with all of us chickens.”
Emily strode away with a toss of curls, but the girls followed, bolder now.
“It’s true, isn’t it?” the brunette spoke again. “You are a princess, with a big house and a room full of china dolls and your own pony and,” she fixed Emily with a stare, “a village full of slaves.”
The accusation was meant to make her squirm, but Emily answered smugly. “Two hundred and thirteen of them. Ella Wood is the fourth largest estate in Charleston County.”
The girl held her gaze. “How does it feel wearing fine clothes, driving a fine carriage, living in a fine house, knowing you didn’t earn any of it?”
Emily’s eyes flashed. “My father is the hardest-working man I know.”
“Do you honestly believe it’s right for one person to own another?” the girl challenged.
Emily’s chin came up, her blue eyes boring into the dark ones. She could almost hear sparks flicking between them. “I do.”
As they stood locked together, the blonde sighed in mock dismay. “That’s such a pity. My daddy told me about the bad place people like you will go to someday.”
Emily tore herself away and smiled sweetly at the girl. “Oh, I know all about that, sugar. My parents sent me there just this week.” She flounced toward the door just as the recess bell rang.
Emily spent most of penmanship class watching customers go in and out of the dry goods store across the street. Mr. Marbliss had to reprimand her three times. And she had barely half of her history assignment read before school was dismissed for lunch. At her teacher’s insistence, she brought the textbook home.
Her uncle was true to his word. “How’d it go?” he asked when she reached the corner where he waited.
“Splendidly,” she groused. “The teacher drives us like mules, and the lovely girls I sit by are spawned from dragons.”
“That bad, huh?”
“They think I’m some kind of devil because I come from a slave-holding family.”
“And you didn’t flaunt that, I’m sure.” His voice held sarcasm. “You’ll have to get used to that around here. In some circles, sympathies lie pretty heavily with the slave.”
He led her through the kitchen’s back door where the thick, yeasty smell of fresh bread wafted over them. At the cookstove, the black serving woman was stirring a big pot that sent up heavenly vapors.
“Emily, this is Julia Watson. She runs my kitchen, and I couldn’t have chosen a finer cook. Julia, my niece, Emily Preston.”
The black woman nodded and offered an even “How do you do?” but her eyes remained aloof.
“She keeps the room at the back of the kitchen, there. Her son bunks with Zeke. He’ll be along soon. And you’ve already met Shannon, I believe. She lives across town with her sister’s family.”
“Hello, Emily.” The red-haired woman smiled at her from a work table where she sliced crusty loaves of bread.
Emily stiffened. “You may continue to call me Miss Preston, please.”
Shannon’s smiled faltered. “Of course, miss,” she stated with an uncertain glance at Isaac.
Her uncle let the moment pass with a slight shake of his head. “I always eat lunch in the kitchen,” he informed Emily, drawing a chair up to a simple wooden table in the corner. “I prefer the informality. Come join me.”
She slid onto a bench pushed against the wall. Julia brought them each a steaming bowl of vegetable soup and two thick slices of bread. The meal was simple but delicious. While she ate, Emily noticed Shannon slipping in and out of the dining room serving a few guests.
Her uncle told her, “I might not be here when you get home from school. I need to haul a load of firewood from my timber lot west of town, but Shannon will be here. A few guests checked out this morning, and their rooms need cleaning. Shannon will help you get started.”
Emily’s mouth tightened. Twice more she had wrangled with her uncle on that subject, even pitched a screaming, kicking tantrum in the middle of the lobby, but all to no effect. She was about to launch into further objections when a figure burst through the kitchen door like a runaway team. When it stopped to drop a pile of books on the table, Emily could see it was a colored boy a little taller than herself.
Julia whirled from her place at the stove and threatened the boy with a wooden spoon. “Malachi Watson, you go back out dat door and come in proper, you hear?”
The boy hunched up his shoulders and ducked his head like a sunflower drooping over its stem. “Yes, Mama.”
Isaac chuckled. “He’s just being a boy, Julia.”
“Dat’s no boy. He a wild animal.” She stirred the soup, talking low and fast. “Ain’t no wild animal gonna live under dis roof if I gots sumpin’ to say about it, no sir. He can jus’ go back outside and act like a son o’ mine.”
By this time the boy had come back in and was grinning sheepishly at Isaac. The man waved him over.
“Malachi, this is my niece, Emily Preston. Emily, this is Julia’s son, Malachi.”
“It’s fine to meet you,” Malachi said with a grin that revealed even white teeth.
Emily looked the boy over. He had skin the color of strong tea before the cream was added, and his eyes were as dark as the midnight sky. They sparkled with intelligence and humor. His black hair was rather long and gave him a couple extra inches in height.
Julia plunked the simple meal in front of her son. “Chil’ gots no sense. No sense at all,” she muttered.
“You from down south?” he asked.
Emily ignored him but he didn’t seem to notice. “I’ve never been south. Mama and Daddy have been there, but they came north when they were freed. I was born right here in Detroit.”
Julia set a glass of milk in front of the boy. “You’s one o’ de lucky ones.”
Emily pulled her history book out and began to read with
out another glance at either of them, but Malachi was unabashed.
“I have homework too,” he stated, patting his own pile of books. “Sometimes it can get pretty heavy. I have to walk all the way from Second Baptist Church. That’s why I was late to lunch.”
Emily looked up in surprise then snorted down into her pages. A colored school? Everyone knew black people couldn’t learn, but in Michigan they had their own school!
Julia cast dark looks at her from the stove, making her own opinions abundantly clear.
First Shannon’s disrespect, now Julia’s. Emily glanced at her uncle to gauge his reaction, but he seemed completely oblivious. She sniffed in disdain. Isaac didn’t seem to have much control in his own house.
Ezekiel came through the dining room door. “Marse Isaac, you’s got cus’umers dat wants a room.”
“Thank you, Zeke.” Her uncle wiped his mouth on a napkin and excused himself.
Ezekiel immediately set to work washing dishes. When they were clean and stacked in their places, he puttered around the kitchen helping Julia with odd jobs.
Emily frowned. Zeke wasn’t her uncle’s hired labor. He was here to serve her. He was one servant she could control.
“Zeke!”
The dignified old man answered immediately. “Yes, miss?”
“Zeke, my soup is cold,” she pouted. “Get me a new bowl.”
He bowed. “Sho’ thing, miss.”
Malachi fell silent, watching, and Julia glared at Emily from across the room as she slopped a ladleful of soup into a new bowl. Zeke delivered it stolidly.
“Dat be all, miss?”
“No. I want another piece of bread. This time with butter on it.”
The loyal old slave did exactly as she bid. When he returned, she flicked her silverware off the edge of the table.
“Oh, clumsy me. I’ve knocked my spoon onto the floor. Zeke, be a dear and pick it up.”
Malachi’s eyes grew black as he watched the old man struggle to bend over. Emily smiled triumphantly. At least Zeke still knew his place.
Malachi jumped from his chair, scooped up the spoon, and with a pointed look at Emily, handed it to the old man. Emily frowned and swiped it from Zeke’s outstretched hand. “Thank you, Zeke,” she snapped, glaring at the boy.
The Candle Star Page 3