Delia Sherman

by The Freedom Maze

  “Soap boiling.” Antigua pointed to where three Negro women with their sleeves rolled up were stirring a big iron pot over an open fire.

  Sophie sneezed. “That’s not what soap smells like.”

  “How else pig fat and lye supposed to smell? What you make your soap from in New Orleans? Manna?”

  “I don’t know. We buy our soap at a store.”

  Antigua rolled her eyes. “I ’spect everything better in New Orleans.”

  Sophie didn’t bother to respond. It was obvious the slave girl was bound and determined to take everything she said as a slight and an insult. There’d been girls like that at school. The only thing to do was keep her mouth shut and hope Mammy was friendlier.

  Antigua picked her way across the yard with her pink skirts held up out of the mud, with Sophie trailing behind, gaping at the busy slaves like a tourist on Bourbon Street. Each cabin was a workshop, and the work done there spilled out into the yard: barrel making, carpentry, leatherwork, forging iron. They fetched up at a cabin where a woman sat in the door, stitching at a cloud of white stuff. A mysterious, rhythmical clacking came from inside.

  “Afternoon, Asia,” Antigua said. “This here is Sophie. Mr. Robert send her on a boat from New Orleans. Mrs. Charles say give her some decent clothes.” Antigua wrinkled her nose. “Better wash her first. And be quick. I taking her to Mammy, and there ain’t much time before dinner.”

  Asia bundled the white cloud into her arms. “She better come on in, then.”

  Sophie followed Asia into the cabin. The clacking came from a huge wooden loom worked by a shadowy figure, arms flying, flat, bare feet working the treadles like a giant spider.

  Asia shook her head. “That Antigua. She so full of herself, she liable to bust like a bullfrog one fine day. This here’s Sophie, Hepzibah. She need some decent clothes, right quick.”

  The clacking died away, and the weaving woman disentangled herself from the loom. When she stood up, Sophie saw she was thin, and would have been tall if her back hadn’t been curled like a hoop. “Welcome, Sophie. That a mighty pretty dress you got there.” Hepzibah took a fold of the blue gingham shirtwaist and rubbed it between her fingers. “I ain’t never seen such fine weaving. Where this fabric come from?”

  Sophie pulled away nervously. “New Orleans. My mama bought it for me.”

  “Then your mama ain’t got good sense,” Asia said. “That dress ain’t seemly for a big girl like you. Make a nice Sunday dress for one of the childrens, though.”

  “No!” Sophie crossed her arms tightly, panicked. What if changing her clothes meant she couldn’t go home? What if she left her dress in the past and Mama was mad? “It’s mine. You can’t have it.”

  Hepzibah frowned. “It ain’t Christian, keeping something ain’t no use to you when there’s a plenty other folks could use it.”

  Her expression told Sophie that Hepzibah wouldn’t hesitate to remove the dress by force. Reluctantly, she took it off—and her bra, and her underpants—and, miserably embarrassed, stood in a corner while Asia sponged her briskly with cold water out of a bucket. Hepzibah gave her a pair of coarse cotton drawers and a nightgown-like chemise, a long brown homespun dress and a sacking apron. When Sophie was dressed, Asia raked through her hair with her fingers and braided it in six tight plaits, tied a white cloth she called a “tignon” over them, and knotted the ends into rabbit ears.

  “There,” she said. “I ’spect you be getting something nicer directly. Light-skinned girl like you bound to end up in the Big House.”

  Sophie came out into the yard, feeling awkward and itchy and hot. Antigua sauntered away from the young stable hand she’d been teasing and gave Sophie a contemptuous once-over. “Well, you clean,” she said. “Ain’t nothing ever going to make you decent.”

  Sophie spared a wistful thought for the Natterjack, whose magic made the time-traveling children fit in whenever they went. What with wondering what was going to happen to her and Antigua hustling her from pillar to post, she was much too worried to pay much attention to the scenery. She passed the maze without even thinking to look at it.

  And then she saw Oak River Big House.

  It stood on a rise surrounded by gardens and flowering trees, three stories of bright red brick, with a wide gallery, tall white columns, and a double stair that curved graceful arms around a marble fountain in which a stone nymph poured water out of an urn. It was splendid and proud, and any Fairchild who entered it must be proud, too.

  Sophie stood up straighter. She’d asked the Creature for an adventure, and adventures had to be full of misunderstandings and hardships, or what was the point? She was a Fairchild, and this was her ancestral home.

  She followed Antigua around the fountain to a blue door that opened onto a long, stone-floored corridor. A young black man in a short blue jacket came out of a door carrying a glass on a silver tray. “Careful, Antigua,” he said. “Young Missy send her a note, make her cross as two sticks.”

  Antigua shrugged and herded Sophie into a room furnished with a big desk and shelves full of papers.

  “Mammy, this here’s Sophie,” she announced, curtseying. “She from New Orleans.” And then she left.

  Sophie, who’d been expecting someone fat and jolly and Aunt Jemima-ish, studied the Negro woman behind the desk with a sinking heart. She was thin as a rake, nunnishly dressed in black and white, and looked about as jolly as Mama in a temper.

  The woman glanced up from the note she was reading, adjusted her narrow steel spectacles, and fixed Sophie with a sharp gaze that reminded her uncomfortably of a particularly strict math teacher she’d had in fifth grade.

  “Mrs. Charles has told me about you, Sophie. She says you are rude and spoiled and possibly a thief. I won’t tolerate a thief, and I won’t tolerate uppity behavior, whatever color you are. The law doesn’t care who your father is, and neither do I. If your mother was a slave, so are you. Do you hear me?”

  Sophie gaped at her. “You can’t talk to me like that!”

  Mammy got up from her desk and slapped Sophie across the face.

  Sophie put her hand to her stinging cheek. “You hit me!”

  “If you don’t keep your thoughts and your eyes to yourself, I’ll do more than that.” Mammy took Sophie’s arm in a firm grip. “You need to learn your place, girl. You can sit in the linen room for a spell, think things over.”

  Locked in the linen room, Sophie had plenty of time to plan what she was going to say to the Creature when it showed up, about throwing her into an adventure and then just abandoning her. She tried to think what she might have said to the Fairchilds to persuade them she wasn’t a slave, moved on to imagining how Mama would have handled Mammy, and spent some time worrying over whether Mama would think she’d run away and call the police.

  If Mama even noticed.

  Sophie closed her eyes, clicked her bare heels together, and repeated “There’s no place like home” until she started to cry. When she was cried out, she wiped her face on her apron and distracted herself by poking through the sheets (heavy linen) and towels (heavier linen). She stood by the window and watched the shadow of the Big House creep slowly over the geometrical beds of the formal garden. Mid-afternoon, she saw a procession of slaves trotting into the house carrying big tin boxes slung on poles. She wondered what was in the boxes. She wondered if anybody was going to give her anything to eat.

  Time passed. The shadows crawled. She wished she had something to read.

  The slaves brought the boxes out again and carried them around the corner of the house and out of sight. The light faded, palmetto bugs whirred against the ceiling and shadows of hunting bats flitted silently across the sky. And then it was night, and a slave she hadn’t seen before was at the door with a lantern, telling her to come along.

  “Mammy, she say you sleep in the Quarters tonight, maybe it teach you to mind you manners.”

  As the slave girl led her through the fragrant, buggy darkness, Sophie leaned that her name was S
ally, that she was a housemaid, and just about the nosiest person Sophie had ever met. Too tired to think of any answers to her questions about New Orleans and Sophie’s mother and Mr. Robert, Sophie just shook her head, which brought on a furious speech about folks who thought they were better than other folks that kept Sally busy until they reached the oak grove.

  “See this here?” Sally swung the lantern to illuminate the first few feet of a narrow path. “Just follow it on a ways, and you come to the Quarters. Africa say she take you in, the good Lord know why. First cabin to the right.”

  It’s not easy to follow a path you can’t see. Sophie groped her way forward step by step, jumping at every noise and stubbing her bare toes on every stick and stone. By the time she reached the end of the trees, she was jumpy as a cat. She also desperately needed a bathroom.

  In front of her, a double row of cabins glowed faintly in the moonlight, their doors open to catch whatever breeze should happen to chance along. Behind them, a field of young cane rustled sleepily to itself, and cicadas fiddled wildly.

  Sophie climbed to the porch of the first cabin to the right and peeked cautiously through the uncurtained window. Firelight flickered on the face of the slave woman who’d given her the corn cake, stirring an iron pot hung over the fire on a hook. On the floor, a child was playing with a baby, and three men sat around a rough table, their faces grim in the flickering light of a smoky candle.

  Sophie’s pulse stuttered nervously. The men looked just exactly like the kind of dirty, ragged Negroes Mama had warned her against, except they were all working. One was stuffing a sack with what looked like a tangle of black thread; the second was sewing another sack closed. The third man sat in the only chair in the room whittling with his head bent like he was too tired to hold it up. Around them, the walls were covered with clothes and tools hung on hooks; baskets and bunches of herbs dangled from the ceiling. The air was still and hot and thick with grease and sweat and small, biting insects.

  If there’d been anywhere else to go, Sophie would have crept away again. As it was, she hesitated until the child looked up and saw her at the window. “Who that?”

  Sophie moved shyly to the door. “Sophie.”

  The child scrambled to its feet. Sophie couldn’t tell whether it was a girl or a boy, its hair trimmed like a lamb’s wool close to his head, its bony body covered by a coarse brown shirt. “My name’s Canada. You come to supper?” The child took Sophie’s hand and pulled her forward. “This here’s Sophie. She ain’t borned here.”

  “She sure as shooting ain’t,” one of the men said. “Dr. Charles a good Christian gentleman. Ain’t it just like Mr. Robert, though?”

  Africa turned from the fire. “Hush, Flanders. Ain’t her fault who her pa is. Come here, sugar.”

  Sophie edged around the table, clutching her skirt so it wouldn’t touch anything.

  “This here’s my husband, Ned.” Africa laid a gentle hand on the skinny man’s shoulder. He raised his face, pale brown and deeply lined.

  “Pleased to meet you, sir,” Sophie said shyly.

  Ned showed a graveyard of yellow teeth in a wide smile. “I pleased to meet you, too, child.”

  “The boys are Poland and Flanders,” Africa said. “The baby’s Saxony. Tote me some water, Canny girl. I’m making us some spoon bread to welcome Sophie to Oak River.”

  By this time, Sophie was ready to burst. Not wanting to ask about a bathroom where the men could hear, she followed Canada outside. But she couldn’t make her understand.

  “I don’t know ’bout no bathroom,” the little girl said. “The water in the cistern here’s for drinking. Sometimes we washes in a barrel, but in summer, mostly we swims.”

  “I don’t have to wash,” Sophie said. “I have to tinkle.”

  “Tinkle?”

  Sophie was ready to die of embarrassment. “Pee.”

  Giggling, Canada led her to a little wooden house out in the field behind the cabins. It smelled foul, it was full of flies, and there wasn’t any paper, only a basket of scratchy moss to clean up with. Sophie was past caring.

  Supper was greens and a little chicken and the water they’d been boiled in—pot liquor, Africa called it—and a deliciously creamy spoon bread, eaten more or less in silence, which suited Sophie just fine. She was tired and frightened, and hadn’t the first idea what slaves liked to talk about.

  As soon as the last crumb of spoon bread disappeared, Canada and Africa cleared the table, Poland put the baby to bed in a basket, and all three men went out into the night—to hoe their vegetable-patch, Canada said. Sophie sat in Ned’s chair, trying to keep out of the way and wondering where she was going to sleep.

  A woman came to the door asking Africa to step round to the Big House, as Korea’s baby was on the way. Africa bustled around pulling gourds and dried plants from the rafters and tying them in a sack, then left in a hurry.

  Canada yawned. “Time we go to bed. Momi, she sometimes out all night when a baby come.”

  She took Sophie’s hand and led her into a tiny back room. Sophie could just make out two ticking mattresses, covered with pieced quilts, taking up most of the floor space. Canada gestured to the smaller one. “This my bed,” she said. “But you can share.”

  Sophie had never shared a bed in her life and didn’t want to start now. But there wasn’t anyplace else to sleep. She began to cry helplessly.

  “Aww,” Canada said. “You homesick for you Momi?” She put her skinny arms around Sophie’s waist and her head against her shoulder. “Don’t you cry. She send you a message, I ’spect, next boat from New Orleans. You going to like it here. Folks is nice, mostly, and Old Missy and Dr. Charles, they don’t believe in whipping ’less you do something real bad. Lie down now and go to sleep. Everything look better in daylight. You wait and see.”

  Chapter 8

  An iron clanging woke Sophie while it was still dark.

  “Morning bell,” a child’s voice informed her. “Momi say I supposed take you to Mammy. Can you watch Saxony while I do my chores?”

  The mattress crackled as Canny scrambled away. Sophie sat up and rubbed her face. She felt grubby from sleeping in her clothes, hungry, and even more tired than she’d been when she lay down. The adventures of the day before hadn’t been a dream after all. The Creature had really taken her back in time, and her ancestors had really mistaken her for a slave. The magic hadn’t ended at midnight or when she went to sleep. It looked like she was stuck in the past until the Creature took her home.

  If it even intended to. Maybe, Sophie thought, the Creature was an evil spirit, whose treats were really tricks. Maybe it was laughing itself sick in whatever betwixt and between place it lived. She just hoped leaving her here until the war started wasn’t its idea of a good joke.

  She would have liked a real bathroom with running water and Cheerios for breakfast. What she got was an outhouse, a bucket to wash in, and a hunk of cold cornbread, just like everybody else.

  The sky grew pearly with dawn. Africa and her menfolk left for work. Canada handed Saxony to Sophie, who held the dark little thing gingerly while Canada rolled up the mattresses and swept the floors with a straw broom nearly as big as she was. By the time everything was tidy, the sun had burned away the mist and Saxony was fussing.

  Canada heaved the baby onto her hip. “I fetch Saxy here down to old Auntie Europe—she look out for the picanninies. Then I show you the bestest way to the Big House.”

  It had rained in the night, and the morning smelled clean and damp. Sophie waited for Canada on the front steps, scratching at some new bug bites on her leg and trying not to think about whether Mammy would slap her again or if Dr. Fairchild’s mama was as mean as his wife.

  There was certainly plenty to distract her. Chickens scratched and squabbled in the dusty road between the cabins, ignoring scrawny dogs, who ignored them back. From the cabin next door, a tethered goat gazed with yellow, slotted eyes through the fence slats at the rows of vegetables in Africa’s garden
. Birds sang from the oak grove and dipped and soared above the restless cane.

  The Good Old Days were sure livelier than the present. Sophie thought she’d like them just fine, if she didn’t have to be a slave.

  Then Canada ran up, and it was time to go to the Big House.

  Thinking it over, Sophie decided that Canada must be her official magical sidekick and guide. She certainly acted like one—pointing out the fastest shortcuts to the Big House and the yard, warning her what parts of the gardens were off-limits, telling her how to deal with Mammy.

  “She bark like a mad dog,” Canny said, “but she don’t hardly ever bite ’less you sass her. You just bend real respectful, say yes’m and no’m and keep you eyes down, and she be happy as a goat in a briar patch.”

  Like Miss Ely, Sophie thought, remembering the strict math teacher. It’s just playacting. I don’t really have to mean it. She grinned at Canny, knocked on Mammy’s door, went in, and bobbed politely.

  “There you are,” said Mammy. “That headcloth looks like a possum’s been nesting in it.”

  Sophie glanced up, caught a fierce dark glare, and looked down again. “I’m sorry. I didn’t have a mirror.”

  “Sass and excuses!” Mammy whipped off Sophie’s tignon and refolded it. “If it were up to me, I’d send you right back to Mr. Robert. But Mrs. Fairchild’s a kind, Christian lady and she takes her responsibilities seriously. Just you keep in mind that kind is not the same as weak. Mrs. Fairchild ran this plantation all alone when Master passed and Dr. Charles was off North learning to be a doctor. She still runs it. She’s not likely to be impressed by a mongrel slave wench who thinks she’s as good as white folks.” Mammy yanked the tignon tight. “Follow me.”

  A few moments later, Sophie was on the gallery of the Big House, curtsying to her five-times-great-grandmother, Mrs. Charles Fairchild of Oak River Plantation, with her eyes fixed on the spreading pool of her wide black skirts. She felt slightly sick.