It was very odd, though, to see the waitress lower her gaze when she put down Sophie’s plate and to hear her speak in a soft “white folks” voice, as if she was talking to Miss Liza. Odd and unpleasant. Even painful.
“Quit staring at that girl,” Aunt Enid said when the waitress had gone back into the kitchen. “You’ll embarrass her.”
Sophie felt a flash of anger. “She’s not a girl,” she said. “She’s a grown woman.”
Aunt Enid glanced around nervously, then leaned forward. “You are Mrs. Charles Fairchild’s granddaughter,” she said, very low. “Her white granddaughter. And Mrs. Fairchild’s granddaughter knows better than to talk about things she doesn’t understand in a public place where folk might hear her.”
Sophie opened her mouth and shut it again. There wasn’t any point in arguing with a Fairchild, even a nice one.
When they got back to Oak Cottage, it was late enough that Ofelia, who liked to get home before dark, was waiting on the gallery with her hat on. Aunt Enid hadn’t even stopped the Thunderbird before she was down the steps and in her own car. So she didn’t really see Sophie until she came into the kitchen next morning to see her frying up an egg for breakfast.
Ofelia took one look, threw up her hands, and ran out of the kitchen.
Pausing to take the pan off the burner, Sophie followed and found her backed up against the gallery steps, her hand to her chest. “Uh-uh,” she said. “Whatever you’re fixing to tell me, I don’t want to hear it. This place haunted with all kinds of strange goings-on and sadness. Only way I can do my work is to pay none of it no mind. And I got to work, or my babies don’t eat. I’m just the hired help. You need someone to talk to, you talk to God.”
Six months ago, Sophie might have cried or sulked, and Ofelia might have given in. Today, she said, “You’re right, Ofelia. I’ll do that,” and went back inside. She was disappointed, and a little hurt, but the last thing she wanted was to be like Old Missy and make folks mind her just because she was white and rich and free and they weren’t.
What had become of Old Missy, anyway? And what had happened to Oak River when the war started? Aunt Enid just looked at Sophie wall-eyed when she brought the subject up, so she turned to Grandmama, who just naturally assumed everyone was as interested in Oak River’s history as she was.
The first time Sophie took the coffee tray up to Grandmama, she was greeted with a scowl. “What are you doing here? Where’s Ofelia?”
“Ofelia’s busy, Grandmama. Here’s your coffee, just like you like it.”
At first, Grandmama kept wondering aloud what Enid was thinking of to leave her own mother at the mercy of a gawky girl. But by the time Sophie had found her favorite handkerchief and her fancy work, she’d calmed down some.
“Thank you, child,” she said at last. “I’m glad someone has thought to teach you manners since last week.”
Sophie smiled. Dealing with Grandmama wasn’t all that different from dealing with Old Missy, really. Both of them believed in their God-given right to run everybody’s life for them. Old Missy was just a little nicer about it. Had she ended up crotchety and bedridden, Sophie wondered. Or had she died before she’d gotten as old as her descendant? No, her descendant’s wife. Despite her family pride, Grandmama was only a Fairchild by marriage.
“Grandmama, I’d purely love to hear more about Oak River in the old days. Did you and Grandpa live in the Big House?”
Grandmama glared. “How old do you think I am, miss? Mr. Fairchild—your grandpa, that is—never lived in the Big House. His father, Stephen Fairchild, was raised there, but he brought his bride home to Oak Cottage. Your grandpa boarded the old place up after his mother passed on in 1926. I remember because I was expecting your mother.” She frowned, as if at unpleasant memories. “There wasn’t much left after the war. Things got lost and burned and sold to pay the high taxes the Yankees put on everything. Except for these old doodads.” She waved her hand at the crowding tables and chairs.
“What happened to the Big House?”
“The Yankees looted it,” said Grandmama. “Took every last piece of silver and jewelry in the house, down to Mrs. Fairchild’s pearl and gold ear-bobs, so the story goes. One of the proudest families in the parish, eight hundred acres of cane and nearly two hundred slaves to work them, and overnight, just about, they came down to nothing but a handful of servants and a load of debt.”
Who had stayed, Sophie wondered. Mammy, for certain, and Aunt Winney, and maybe Uncle Germany and Aunt Europe and Uncle Italy—the old ones who’d have a hard time making a new life away from Oak River. But what about Africa and Ned, Asia and Hepzibah and Sally and Samson? What about Poland and Flanders? What had happened to Canny?
But Grandmama wouldn’t know the answer to any of these questions.
“What happened then?” Sophie asked.
“I disremember,” said Grandmama. “There was a son, I know, worked like a slave to save the place. Had to sell off everything but the Big House and Oak Cottage and maybe a hundred acres, but they got along pretty well until the Depression. That’s when Grandpa’s daddy had to sell the rest of the cane fields.”
Sophie tried and failed to imagine Dr. Charles cutting cane or Mrs. Charles scrubbing floors. Sophie shuddered. If she’d been a terror to live with when life was good, what must she have been like when life was hard?
Grandmama was nodding to herself. “It used to gall Grandpa like a stone in his shoe. He was so proud of his family and all they’d had. He knew all about them. Sometimes I thought he was more interested in folks who’d been dead and buried a hundred years than his own children. He was always playing with those papers.”
Sophie came to full attention. “Papers?”
“Letters and plantation books and such. He showed me a letter written by Mr. Patrick Fairchild II, your great-great-great-great-great-grandfather, he’d be, to his wife, Caroline. I never did see such hen-tracks; I couldn’t make head or tail of them.”
Sophie leaned forward. “Are the papers still here?”
“Of course they are. They’re important historical documents.”
“Would you mind if I looked at them?”
Grandmama looked pleased. “I don’t suppose it would do any harm. As long as you were careful.”
Next morning, Sophie went to the office to look for Grandpa Fairchild’s papers.
If Dr. Charles or Young Missy and her rawhide strap had left their shadows in the room, Sophie couldn’t feel it. She opened a window and rummaged through cardboard boxes and antique trunks in a breeze scented by roses and magnolia. She unearthed dress patterns from the 1920’s, thirty years’ worth of seed catalogues, an old dress box from La Maison Blanche full of old photographs, and a dozen lace handkerchiefs wrapped in tissue. Finally, in a cabinet behind the sofa, she found what she was looking for.
Like Aunt Enid, the antebellum Fairchilds had been of a saving disposition. They’d kept the plantation books, of course—heavy, leather-bound books full of lists and columns of numbers representing barrels of sugar sold and slaves bought, sold, born, injured, dead. There were also numerous manila envelopes tied with tape and carefully labeled: Bills of Sale—Clothing, Machinery, Household Goods, Slaves; Letters—Business—1825-1830; Letters—Personal—1850-1851; Advertisements—Slaves Wanted; Advertisements—Runaways.
The file on runaway slaves was thinner than the others. Inside, Sophie found yellow, brittle clippings, offering rewards for the return, “alive and unharmed,” of missing Fairchild human property. The runaways were mostly men, often purchased in New Orleans. The advertisements were arranged in roughly chronological order, beginning with the oldest. Familiar names caught Sophie’s eye: Germany, known as Old One-Eye; Flanders; Betty. And then, at the very bottom of the pile:
Two female slaves, ran from Oak River Plantation, St. Mary’s Parish, Louisiana, November 1860. May be traveling as mistress and maid. Antigua, 18 years, 5’6”, medium skin, good teeth, comely. Sophie, 14 years, 5’6”, brown h
air and eyes, fair skin, can read and write. Could pass for white. Reward for their return: $500 for either, $800 for both. Reward for information as to their whereabouts: $200 for either, $300 for both.
Sophie read it over twice. Reward, $500. A lot of money, though not, of course, as much as the rewards for healthy field hands. Old Missy must have really wanted them back. Slightly dazed, Sophie went in search of Aunt Enid, found her in the garden, weeding tomatoes.
“Look at this,” she said, holding out the yellowed scrap.
Aunt Enid wiped her earthy hands on her shirttail, fished her reading glasses out of her pocket, and stared at the advertisement until Sophie couldn’t contain herself any longer. “It’s me and Antigua, see? ‘Sophie, 14 years, 5’6’”? She offered a $500 reward.”
Aunt Enid looked at Sophie over the top of her glasses. It was a cold look, a Fairchild look. “Yes. I see. Could pass for white. Well.” She handed the paper to Sophie. “You better put this back where you found it.”
The trees in the old oak grove were swagged with enough Spanish moss to buy both Poland and Flanders their freedom. Sophie followed a faint and weedy path through the grove to what was left of the Quarters. Most of the cabins had been swallowed by the commercial cane fields, but Africa’s was still there, first cabin on the right, next to the trees.
Even ignoring the boarded-up windows and the rotting porch and the planks nailed across the front door, it didn’t look the way Sophie remembered. The shake roof had been replaced with tin, and the wooden foundation repaired with cement blocks. The fence and cistern barrel were gone, and an electrical wire dangled from a hole in the wall.
Sophie sat on the porch steps and closed her eyes, trying to imagine Canny beside her, shucking black-eyed peas. It didn’t help. The Quarters Canny had lived in had been loud with folks calling to each other, the squawking of chickens and the squealing of pigs. They had smelled of cooking and wood smoke and animals. All Sophie could hear now was the swelling roar of cicadas and the rustle of the cane. All she could smell was dust.
It was like sitting in a graveyard.
Sophie cried, and wished that the Creature would come take her back to the past, and then was mad at herself for wishing something so stupid. The past had been horrible—full of germs and cruelty and folks who thought it was good and moral to own other folks as if they were dogs or horses. She wouldn’t want that back again, not for any reason.
When Sophie was all cried out, she watched the shadows creep over the cane field and thought about masters and overseers and slaves and slave hunters. It was hard to believe, now that she didn’t have them right in front of her, that such folk had ever really existed. But it was even harder to believe that she had lived in this ruin, had hoed and watered and picked beans in that weed patch, a slave among other slaves, the property of Mrs. Patrick Fairchild II of Oak River Plantation.
Chapter 23
Next morning, Sophie asked Aunt Enid for permission to work on the ruined garden at the center of the maze.
Aunt Enid looked startled. “What do you know about gardening?”
“I know the difference between a rose cane and a bramble,” Sophie said. “I know how to use a hoe. Most important, I know what that garden’s supposed to look like. Please?”
The muskrat look grew more pronounced. “I don’t know, Sophie. It’s awful hot. It wouldn’t do to have you keeling over from heatstroke.”
“It’s not as hot as the sugarhouse.”
Aunt Enid threw her hands up in surrender. “The tools are in the shed. Help yourself—just put them away when you’re done. And wear gloves, for gracious’ sakes. Sister’s purely going to create when she sees your hands.”
“She’s going to create anyway,” Sophie said. “Did she say when’s she coming down to visit?”
“The weekend after your birthday, don’t you remember?” Aunt Enid sighed. “There’s bound to be ructions, one way or another. If we’re lucky, she’ll be so exercised over the state of your extremities that she won’t notice what’s happened in the middle.”
Over the next week, Sophie pruned and cleared and weeded and hoed and scrubbed the moss from the stone benches. She found the sundial half-buried in the ground, set it back on its column, and planted zinnias from the Piggly-Wiggly under it. If she could have found a way to replace its motto with “Papa Legba throw the rock tomorrow that kill the chicken yesterday,” she would have. Aunt Enid gave her advice when she asked for it and some peonies she’d lifted from her own garden, but otherwise left her alone. Sophie was grateful. The maze garden was hers, and she didn’t want anybody else meddling with it.
In the afternoons, she encouraged Grandmama to talk about the Fairchilds’ proud past. One day, she brought up the dress-box of old photographs from the office.
Grandmama was very excited. “My land, child, don’t put that dirty thing down on the bed! You don’t know where it’s been. Drag that little table over, yes, right up by the bed, and go get a sheet to spread over the coverlet. Didn’t your mama teach you anything?”
Sophie got the sheet and the table, opened the box, and laid out the photographs in rows. Soon dozen of Fairchilds were staring up at her: men in suits and ties and the uniforms of three wars, women in big hats and flowery dresses of various lengths and styles, solemn-eyed children dressed in their Sunday best.
Grandmama tapped one flyspecked picture with a bent forefinger. “This was taken after the war.”
Sophie didn’t need to ask which war—for Grandmama, it was always the War Of Northern Aggression. She took up the photo and examined it. A tall, handsome, harried-looking man Sophie didn’t recognize was standing on the front gallery of the Big House, his left hand on the shoulder of an old woman in a rocking chair, wearing a frilly white cap just like Old Missy’s.
Sophie looked closer. It was Old Missy, grown thin and bent. And that was Mrs. Charles beside her, scowling fit to curdle milk. Miss Liza sat at their feet, dressed in black and holding a moon-faced baby in her lap. Sophie didn’t recognize the fourth woman in the picture. She stood in the circle of the man’s arm, dark-haired and beautiful, her hands resting on the shoulders of a sturdy little boy.
Sophie turned the picture over and squinted at the thin, scratchy writing. “Oak River,” she read aloud. “1866 or 1867. Mrs. Patrick Fairchild II, Elizabeth Fairchild Waters and her son Beaufort Sinclair Waters III, Frederick Andrew Fairchild, Robert Andrew Fairchild, Louisette Fairchild.”
Robert Andrew Fairchild? Louisette?
Sophie studied the faded faces. Mr. Robert didn’t look like the kind of man who would run away from his debts to her. And what was he doing at Oak River anyway? Where was Dr. Charles?
She handed the photo to Grandmama.
“If that’s Mrs. Charles Fairchild, where’s Mr. Charles?”
Grandmama considered. “Her husband was a Doctor Fairchild, if I remember correctly, and he died in the war, along with his son-in-law. The younger brother inherited. Robert, that would be. They had to call him home from France with his wife and child.” She smiled at the faded sepia faces. “Pretty thing, isn’t she? Foreign, of course.”
It was a good thing that Grandmama was hard of hearing, because Sophie couldn’t for the life of her have explained why she was laughing. She hadn’t lied to Dr. Charles after all. Mr. Robert must have married Louisette in France, then forced the family to accept her as white when he came back after the war.
Sophie studied her ancestress’ proud, beautiful face. She looked happy, Sophie thought. She also looked a little like Mama.
A few days later, Aunt Enid found Sophie in the office, going through the plantation files again.
“You’re going to wear those old papers right out, looking for what’s not there,” she said. “I’m going to drive you into Oakwood, introduce you to Mrs. Robinson at the Parish Museum. She’s got things in that back room of hers nobody’s set eyes on since Grant was president.”
Twenty minutes later, Sophie was standing in the dan
k, neon-lit exhibition area of the Parish Museum, shaking hands with a plump little woman in pale green rhinestone glasses and a print cotton housedress.
“A school project!” Mrs. Robinson burbled. “How exciting! It’s so important for young people to understand their heritage, I always think. And Mrs. Fairchild’s granddaughter, too! Our papers are a terrible mess, I’m afraid—most folks come in here are more interested in the artifacts.” She gestured at dusty glass cases stuffed with sewing baskets, knitted cotton stockings, hair receivers, buttonhooks, and shaving mugs.
Sophie smiled at her patiently. “My assignment is to find out more about the slaves.”
Puzzled wrinkles gathered behind the rhinestone glasses. “Can’t recall anybody asking about the servants before. You won’t find any papers—they couldn’t write, you know. And so many things got lost.” She shook her head. “We have a few artifacts—cane knives and wooden plates and so on, from the Oak River Quarters, mostly. And an old stool from Doucette. Oh, and a trunk Ned Roberts brought in after his mama passed. Been in his family since the war, he said, but Ofelia was bound and determined to get it out of the house. Can’t imagine there’s much in it, but you’re welcome to look.”
Excitement leapt in Sophie, but she kept her voice even. “Thank you, ma’am. I’d like that.”
The trunk was in a back room piled high with cartons and boxes. “That’s it over there,” Mrs. Robinson said, “under the quilt. It’s a lady’s trunk, pre-war, I’m pretty sure, and I didn’t want any harm to come to it. You call me if you need anything, now.”
As Mrs. Robinson left the room, Sophie whipped the quilt off the trunk and opened its domed lid. To her joy, it was filled with papers, tied neatly into bundles, each one labeled with its contents and their dates. Sophie took them out gently, one by one, until she came to a thin bundle tied with a faded yellow ribbon. The label read: Aunt Omi to Grandma, 1861-1870.
Delia Sherman Page 22