Aunt Omi. Omi Saide. Antigua. Antigua had survived.
Sophie blinked back tears, then took the bundle to the desk under the window, untied the ribbon, and carefully unfolded the first letter.
Dear Momi:
My friend Sue Potter is writing this for me because my writing ain’t all that good yet. I am in New York City now. I won’t say everything that happened to me on the way here, because it too long a story and maybe it might make trouble for the people who help me. Although I guess the war is trouble enough for everybody.
Don’t worry about me. I have a job making shoes in a factory. It pay enough to live on and a little left over. New York is dirtier than a pigsty and I never knew there could be so many folks in one place, but I got good friends. Sue is teaching me reading and writing. You will like Sue. She is dark as Popi and she born free.
I miss you all, Momi, and worry and pray for you every day. When the war over, maybe you all can get away from Oak River, come up to New York, live with me. Tell Sophie she should come too.
The handwriting of the signature was different from the rest of the letter—firm and round.
Omi Saide, was Antigua.
Because Sophie’s birthday fell on a work day, Mama had decided they would celebrate it the weekend after. On July 6, the day of her actual birthday, Ofelia presented her with a cake—chocolate with white icing, Sophie’s favorite. When Sophie thanked her shyly, she said, “Least I can do, with all the help you’ve been, keeping your grandmama company and all.”
Sophie blew out her fourteen candles and Ofelia sat down and had coffee and cake with her and Aunt Enid. Then they all got down to the serious business of cleaning the house before Mama came. Aunt Enid even made an effort to tidy up the office, but it didn’t come to much.
Friday, after lunch, Sophie took a long bath. She slathered cream on her work-roughened hands and feet, braided her hair in a tail, put on the crispest of her new blouses and the fullest of her new skirts, and examined the result in the armoire’s mirrored door. A Fairchild woman stared back at her—long-faced, eagle-nosed, worried-looking, and a lot older than fourteen. Grimly, Sophie undid the braid and pulled her hair into two frizzy bunches below her ears, like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. It helped a little.
When she got down to the kitchen, Mama was sitting at the table with Aunt Enid, chatting and sipping a glass of ice tea. When she saw Sophie, her eyes widened with shock.
“What on earth have you done to your hair?”
She sounded so exactly like Young Missy that Sophie had to smile.
“Hello, Mama,” she said. “Did you have a nice trip?”
“Don’t try and change the subject. Why are you wearing your aunt’s clothes?”
“They’re mine, actually. We got them in Lafayette. I—had a growth spurt.”
At this, Aunt Enid’s muskrat look came on so strong that Sophie had to clamp her lips together to keep from laughing.
Mama heaved a martyred sigh. “I expect that means a whole new fall wardrobe,” she said. “Thank heaven for uniforms, is all I have to say.”
And that was that. Mama hardly looked at Sophie the rest of the evening, but kept up a lively stream of stories about someone called “Lou,” who took her out to dinner at Commander’s Palace and Galatoire’s and had a house on Lake Ponchartrain. School was going well and her boss had given her a raise—not enough to make keeping the Metairie house an option, but something. The only time she took any notice of Sophie was when she cleared the supper dishes and served up Ofelia’s chess pie and coffee.
“Gracious, darling!” Mama said. “How housewifely you’ve grown! I declare, I hardly recognize my lazy little daughter!”
Sophie slid into her seat and poked at her pie. It was going to be a long weekend.
During breakfast the next morning, Henry the yardman brought a parcel for Sophie. The return address was New York City.
It was a good-sized package, bundled up in brown paper and lots of twine, not nearly as neat as the packages Papa’s secretary usually sent. The handwriting on the label was unfamiliar, too.
“I can’t imagine what Rand was thinking, sending your present here,” Mama said. “We’re just going to have to carry it back home at the end of the summer.”
“Better open it,” Aunt Enid said. “There might be a letter.”
Sophie got the kitchen scissors and attacked the twine. She opened the box, took out an envelope addressed to her in the same writing as on the package, and laid it aside. Underneath were magazines: a half-dozen New Yorkers, a Sunday New York Times and a Herald Tribune. And books, four of them—two obviously kids’ books and two equally obviously for adults.
Sophie picked up A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and opened it curiously.
“Put that back in the box, Sophie,” Mama said. “We’re sending them right back where they came from. The very idea!”
Sophie looked up to see the envelope open on the table and Mama holding a typed page. Furious, she snatched it out of her mother’s hand.
“That was addressed to me.” She was surprised how calm she sounded. “So are the books. I get to decide what happens to them. Not you.”
Mama’s lips pinched to invisibility, and her eyes narrowed. Sophie glared back.
After a tense moment, Mama shrugged. “I’d hope a daughter of mine would have too much pride to allow herself to be bribed with a few books.”
Too angry to speak, Sophie tumbled everything into the box and carried it out to the garden shed, where she hid it under an upturned wheelbarrow. Grabbing the letter and a handful of New Yorkers, she ran out into the field.
After three weeks of hard work, the maze was starting to look more the way it should. Henry had scythed the grass, and was helping Sophie trim back the hedges. The path to the center was clear, as well as the little side-room where Belle Watling simpered above a freshly painted bench. By the time Sophie got to the central garden, she could read her letter in relative calm.
Dear Sophie, it said.
Your father has told me so much about you, I feel like I must know you. But I don’t, not really. So when it came time to send you a birthday present, I had to take my best guess.
Your father said you read everything, even the backs of cereal boxes, but mostly make-believe and kids’ books. This makes perfect sense to me. Stuart Little and The Princess and the Goblin are among my favorite books in the world.
But fathers don’t always realize that daughters grow up. Now you’re fourteen, your tastes may have changed. So I’m also sending some books that don’t have magic in them, except the magic of taking you to a place you’ve never been before.
Also, I’m sending some magazines. The New Yorker has some funny cartoons (Charles Addams is my favorite), and there are theatre and movie reviews and lists of museums.
The reason almost everything I’ve sent is about New York is that it’s my hometown and I love it. It’s also because your father and I would like you to come and visit us before school starts. I know how annoying it can be to have adults plan everything over your head, so we haven’t said anything to your mother yet, in case you’d rather not come. But if you would, just drop us a line or give us a call, and we’ll take it from there.
I only had brothers, growing up, and always wanted a little sister to share books and my favorite exhibits at the Metropolitan Museum with and shopping and ice-cream soda at Schrafft’s. And your father is full of plans about going to Horn & Hardart’s Automat and rowing on Central Park Lake.
Do come and visit, Sophie. It’ll be fun.
The letter was signed “Judith H. Martineau.”
Sophie read the letter twice. It was obvious that Judith H. Martineau really wanted Sophie to like her, but didn’t expect it to happen right away. Which was a good thing, because the name Martineau attached to the unfamiliar Judith H. made Sophie queasy. So did the fact that it contained no word from Papa—not even a P.S.
She glanced at The New Yorker. The cover was a drawing of two
shadowy children chasing a flock of butterflies with nets. The children were tiny, the butterflies were giants loosely sketched in colored chalk. She’d never seen anything like it. The articles inside were all about people and places she’d never heard of. Most of the cartoons were incomprehensible, but an Addams cartoon, featuring a skinny lady with long black hair and a black dress that rippled around her feet like an octopus’s tentacles, made her laugh. Judith H. had a good sense of humor. Too bad Mama would never let them meet.
Mama appeared the garden entrance, looking hot and bothered. Her high heels were smeared with dirt from crossing the field, and the curls of her permanent wave clung wetly to her forehead and neck. She’d never have lasted a minute in the sugarhouse.
“Enid said you’d be here,” Mama said. “I can’t imagine why.”
“I like it.” Sophie stood up. “Why don’t you sit here in the shade, and I’ll go fetch some lemonade.”
“You stay right where you are, Miss. You’ve been avoiding me ever since I arrived. If this is about that silly disagreement we had last time I was here, all I have to say is that I’m surprised at you.”
She didn’t look surprised. Although Mama was dark where Mrs. Charles was fair, curved where Mrs. Charles was flat, Mama looked just like Mrs. Charles confronting an errant slave: disgusted, impatient, and ready to pull out her rawhide.
Mama took a handkerchief out of her belt and patted her sweating forehead. “It’s hormones, I expect. Thinking you’re all grown up and able to decide things on your own when you’ve no more sense than a rabbit. I suppose now you’re going to tell me that you want me to let you visit your father and that woman in New York City. Well, you can’t. You’re much too young to travel alone. I wouldn’t sleep a wink for worrying you’d lose your money or your luggage or your ticket, or get yourself kidnapped. Besides, I can’t afford a ticket.”
As her mother talked, a familiar feeling of hopelessness crept over Sophie. She could argue or she could beg, but the outcome would be the same. Mama would fuss until Sophie gave in, and that was how it would be until the end of time. Unless she ran away. Maybe she could dye her hair blond, dress up like she was older, borrow some money from Aunt Enid, and travel up to New York on her own. Antigua had done it. So could she.
And Mama would just come after her, or call the police.
And then the world spun around, just as it had when she came back from the past, and Sophie realized that Mama didn’t actually own her—not the way Dr. Charles owned Antigua. She couldn’t keep Sophie from visiting her own father if Sophie wanted to. She could make an almighty fuss, but a fuss wasn’t a whipping. A whipping was the least of what Antigua would have suffered if Mr. Akins had caught her, and she’d chosen freedom anyway.
Sophie raised her head and looked her mother straight in the eye. “You don’t need to pay for it. If I write Papa and tell him I’d like to visit, I’m sure he’ll fix it so I can.”
Mama stared at her. “How can you talk so ugly to me, after everything I’ve done for you? Why, I took that horrible job so you could have the life you’re used to.”
“You like your job,” Sophie pointed out. “And I think I might want a different kind of life than the one I’m used to.”
“Ingratitude,” Mama said, “is very unattractive in a young lady.”
“I’m going to New York.”
Mama turned on her high heel and stalked out of the garden.
Sophie pressed her fingers to her eyes. She’d write Judith H. and Papa tonight. No matter what Mama said or did, she wouldn’t back down and she wouldn’t change her mind. Maybe Mama would come around in the end and maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe Papa wouldn’t like having her there, maybe she wouldn’t get along with Judith H. Maybe Sophie would be sorry, just like Mama said, and come running home again with her tail between her legs. Maybe she’d be happy and learn to do for herself. She’d never know unless she tried.
Sophie Fairchild Martineau got up from the stone bench, shook out her skirts and, walking in Antigua’s footsteps, left the maze.
Acknowledgements
Over the eighteen years I worked on this book, I had a lot of help from a lot of people. If I were to write a proper thank-you here to everyone who has inspired me, supported me, helped me with my research, listened to me agonize over a plot point, or asked just the question I needed to get me to the next scene or the next draft, this Acknowledgment would be as long as the book itself, so maybe it’s a good thing I’ve lost track. Okay, it’s not. But I hope the people I’ve inadvertently left out will forgive me; I’m sure I thanked you profusely at least once.
Much of my primary research took place during two trips to Louisiana, in 1994 and in 1996. The librarians of Loyola University library guided me to a manila folder full of advertisements for escaped slaves, one of which read “blond and blue-eyed, could pass for white.” The library of the Baton Rouge Rural Life Museum was full of useful volumes on plantation life. Madewood, Tezcuco, Alice, and Laura Plantations contributed gardens, layouts, floorplans, and useful details to my invented houses at Oak River. I pestered their docents—and the docents of Destrahan, the Port Allen Museum, and the Jeanerette Sugar Museum—with as many questions about life on a sugar plantation as Sophie had, and these amazingly dedicated historians, volunteers, and enthusiasts managed to answer them all. If I didn’t always ask the right questions, it’s not their fault.
For seeing this novel through the painful first draft and reading subsequent drafts at (approximately) five-year intervals, I would like to thank the Genrettes: Laurie J. Marks, Rosemary Kirstein, and Didi Stewart. Linda Post and Mimi Panitch helped me talk through the plot. Ellen Klages, Caroline Stevermer, and Eve Sweetser patiently read several drafts and provided encouragement. The Massachusetts All-Stars—Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, Cassandra Clare, Joshua Lewis, Holly Black, Sarah Smith, and Ellen Kushner—put their fingers on all the weak points and gave excellent suggestions for strengthening them.
N. K. Jemisin, Alaya Dawn Johnson, Nisi Shawl, K. Tempest Bradford, and Nalo Hopkinson were kind enough to discuss white privilege, class and race, cultural appropriation, and Writing the Other with me, and to read the manuscript for howlers. Helen and Tim Atkinson kindly lent me their house as a retreat when I wrote my last draft. Doselle Young spent hours with me on Skype, working out the frame story. Donnard Sturgis (a.k.a. Sophie’s godfather) has answered many questions about Voudon, Yemaya, and Papa Legba. Silvana Siddali, Associate Professor of American History at St. Louis University, helped me with details of ante-bellum politics, fashion, and culture. Insofar as The Freedom Maze is accurate, it’s due to all of them. Any mistakes and glitches, of course, are entirely my own work.
Great thanks are due to Kelly Link and Gavin J. Grant of Big Mouth House. They read this book as friends and writing-group members and approached me, years later, as editors and publishers. I am more grateful than I can say for their faith in me and for giving Sophie and her friends a chance to tell their story to a wider audience.
Thanks, too, to Jane Yolen (a.k.a. Sophie’s godmother) who encouraged me to write the book in the first place.
Finally, I thank Ellen Kushner, partner of my joys and sorrows. She drove around Southern Louisiana with me, wandering through cane fields, peering in the windows of ruined slave cabins and moldering plantation houses, going through envelopes of yellowing clippings from 19th century newspapers, and visiting endless plantations and museums. She listened to me agonize over the characters, the plot, the setting, the pacing, and the style of this book, and read it almost as many times as I did. Without her support—and the occasional stern pep talk—I doubt I would have finished it.
Delia Sherman was born in Japan and raised in New York City, but spent vacations between her mother’s relatives in Texas and Louisiana and her father’s relatives in South Carolina. With a PhD in Renaissance Studies, she proceeded to teach until she realized she’d rather edit and write instead. But retaining her love of history, she has set novels and sho
rt stories for children and adults in many times and places. Her work has appeared most recently in the YA anthologies The Beastly Bride, Steampunk! and Teeth. Her New York Between novels for younger readers are Changeling and The Magic Mirror of the Mermaid Queen. Delia still enjoys teaching writing workshops, most recently at the Hollins University Masters Degree Program in Children’s Literature. She lives in New York City, but travels at the drop of a hat.
Since 2001, Small Beer Press, an independent publishing house, has published satisfying and surreal novels and short story collections by award-winning writers and exciting talents whose names you may never have heard, but whose work you’ll never be able to forget:
Joan Aiken, The Monkey’s Wedding and Other Stories
Poppy Z. Brite, Second Line: Two Short Novels of Love and Cooking in New Orleans
Ted Chiang, Stories of Your Life and Others
Georges-Olivier Chateaureynaud, A Life on Paper (trans. Edward Gauvin)
John Crowley, Endless Things: A Novel of Ægypt
John Crowley, The Chemical Wedding*
Alan DeNiro, Skinny Dipping in the Lake of the Dead
Hal Duncan, An A-Z of the Fantastic City*
Carol Emshwiller, The Mount
Carol Emshwiller, Report to the Men’s Club
Carol Emshwiller, Carmen Dog: a novel
Kelley Eskridge, Solitaire: a novel
Karen Joy Fowler, What I Didn’t See and Other Stories
Greer Gilman, Cloud & Ashes: Three Winter’s Tales
Angélica Gorodischer, Kalpa Imperial (trans. Ursula K. Le Guin)
Alasdair Gray, Old Men in Love: John Tunnock’s Posthumous Papers
Elizabeth Hand, Generation Loss
Julia Holmes, Meeks: a novel
Delia Sherman Page 23