Calico Girl

by Jerdine Nolen

  Hampton had tried to comfort his mourning wife, but Ruth knew Joseph was lost to them forever. And now with war brewing, it would be near impossible to find where the boy was sent, so deep into Confederate territory.

  Ruth was grateful to have a husband like Hampton. He was patient and kind. As a free man he could leave and go where he pleased, but he didn’t want to do that.

  Despite being so learned, he never put on airs. She always felt he loved her, but sometimes she didn’t know why. She never felt herself so much of a pretty woman as his first wife, Sara, who had bright skin color with fine features. You could see Hampton and Sara all rolled up in Callie, whom Hampton loved more than the flowers love the sun.

  Hampton loved Ruth just as fiercely, just as brightly. He never questioned her silence. He never pushed her to speak until she was ready. When she did speak, he treasured those words like the pearls they were.

  Ruth didn’t know what she would do if she lost him, too.

  Sometimes Ruth felt such turmoil, she did not always know how to express herself, her joy, her pain, her grief, her sorrow, and her understanding of the world. As a small child she had fallen off a water wagon and hit her head against an iron wheel. The accident caused her to lose her voice. For a while she did not speak, long enough that folks wondered if she ever would again.

  Ruth did speak, but there was never confidence in the hollow sound of her voice. At times it was difficult just getting her thoughts out in the way she wanted. And so she remained quiet, saying very little or nothing at all, but she listened, and watched, and noticed everything. It made her attuned to the feeling of others.

  She sometimes saw her thoughts as tangled pieces of thread in the bottom of her sewing basket.

  But there were other times when all of the thoughts would straighten out and coil around like on a spool of thread. Times like that she felt her thoughts were clean as a day after rain. She could hear the words in her mind as straight as pins in cloth, lined up the way she wanted to say them, clear like the sound of a bell.

  When she knew what she wanted to say and how she wanted to say it, you could not deter her. She started talking and didn’t stop until she had said all there was in her mind to say, even when her voice grew hoarse.

  She often wondered if the accident loosened her thinking. There was less holding her together than other folks. And the life of a slave made her unwind more quickly than she should have. But when Joseph was born, or when she married Hampton and embraced Callie as her own, and then when Charles was born, she felt the seams tighten, not as tight as she saw in others, but through it all, the love she felt for her family was enough.

  This time it was different. Grief had too strong a hold on her. After Joseph was sold, she began to rise early. She would sit for hours with her arms across her body as if she was trying to hold her whole self together, as if the seams had been ripped out of their stitching. She wished she could pin herself together the way she would pin a dress pattern. There was nothing like that to help her.

  One morning as light began to flow in through the tiny window, she looked around her cabin room at what was left of her sleeping family. The seams that held them together were unraveling; she saw it in the slump in Callie’s shoulders, in the tone Hampton took with Mister Henry—stifled, tired. Little Charlie had taken another bad cold. The stitching was coming undone in her family, just as it had for her all those years ago. And she could do nothing to stop it. But she knew she needed to do something.

  “Enough,” she finally whispered to the incoming growing light. “Enough.”

  • • •

  Hampton and Ruth sat in silence under the dark of the night sky, the stars barely twinkling. They sat together, silent but together.

  Callie woke and stumbled to the cabin door in a sleepy stupor.

  “What happened?” she asked with eyes barely open.

  “Go back to bed,” Hampton said gently. He took the child back into the cabin and joined his wife again.

  Ruth could see the toll their way of living was taking on her husband. Hampton was free; he could have gone off and left them a long time ago. She had asked him one day why he hadn’t left as some men have done. He took her in his arms and asked, “How can I leave the better parts of me behind?”

  Ruth decided she had had enough of quiet. Her mind and her thoughts were all straightened out. It was her time to speak, though she did not know exactly what she would say. But when she opened her mouth she found her truth.

  She took Hampton’s hand in hers.

  “It is no one’s decision but your own to choose what your living has been and will be, Hampton,” she began. “No one knows what path you are on, or where you are going, but God. What you take away with you is what makes you who you are.

  “All around the world, everyone has a way of seeing the world for themselves. They are entitled to it. But the job of the life that lives inside of you is for you to take the better and the best and the most that this world can offer. Take it from all the good and beauty you can find, Hampton. Some things in the world are unclean and ugly. Some things are as clean and beautiful as a new day.

  “The old world is being burned and torn apart, Hampton. But beauty is everywhere, even in the ashes. Something beautiful and brand new will rise from it.

  “You can never lose when you go looking for the beauty of your life. Let it surround you, and make you what you are meant to be. Let it make you whole. And let no one decide that for you. Plant yourself like a seed to be delivered to the world that is your choosing.

  “The brightness of the day is the light you carry inside your heart.

  “I must. You must. We all must do what we can to live and to carry on the best we can, so that one day, our children, or their children, will have the right to live free.

  “Don’t you see, Hampton, this old world is giving way? I feel it—don’t you? The war is going to change everything. We must live as if we are planning for the new and better world that is to come.”

  And then Ruth had said what she needed to say.

  The two, husband and his wife, sat and talked long through the rest of the night until there was little more of it.

  Before sunrise, a decision was made. Hampton would go to Fortress Monroe to see for himself how things were. This would not warrant saying anything to Catherine Warren, not now. There was nothing to tell, not yet.

  Besides, Hampton thought, I’ll return long before supper. I won’t even be missed.

  But, he was missed, and in missing him Ruth felt hollow.

  • • •

  When Callie awoke, the cabin was quiet. The door was open and she could see Mama Ruth. She could smell the smoke from her medicine fire. Callie went to where Little Charlie was sleeping, lay down beside him, and rubbed his back. He opened his eyes, reached for her hand, and smiled. Then the coughing began, and the crying. Callie picked him up and rocked him until he closed his eyes again and went back to sleep; his breathing was labored.

  “Mama Ruth,” Callie said, giving her a morning hug. “Where is Papa?”

  “He’ll be back directly.”

  “Is there anything you need me to do? Mistress needs me to do some housework again today.”

  “No,” she said, nodding, “but thank Elsa for the beef tallow.” As she kissed Callie’s forehead, she noticed they could look each other in the eye. Her heart swelled at that, and she tucked the warmth of that feeling away for another time.

  Ruth kneeled in front of the little fire she had made in the pit outside her cabin door. She was grinding the healing herbs that she had gathered from deep in the woods. She had a small amount of beef tallow. It would have to be enough, but she was still grateful for it.

  She sat pounding the stems and the roots of the plant, hoping they would soothe her baby boy. Overnight the fever seemed to have eased a bit, but the baby still took to awful coughing spells that shook his whole body.

  Ruth poked and stirred at the small fire—she watched the
sparks and embers rise into the air then go out. Still, she would not let her mind drift.

  Ruth mixed the mash of herbs into the grease and heated the mixture long enough for everything to melt and blend together. It needed to cook for a while to draw out the healing properties.

  Once it cooled, she rubbed the salve over Little Charlie’s body, his neck, and behind his ears. She had enough for a few days. She hoped it would heal the sickness. The rattling cough would not break, it would wake him up and he would cry through the night. Ruth did not know what else she could do to break the awful cough. She swaddled the boy tightly in a piece of cotton she had left over from a quilt she had sewed for her mistress.

  After a time, Little Charlie was settled down and sleeping. Ruth listened to the sound of his breathing. It calmed her. She was tired, not just in her body, but her heart and soul were weary of holding so much together for so long.

  • • •

  May 26, 1861

  Days drifted from one to the other. Ruth had not heard any word from Hampton; tomorrow would be three days since he left. She would not let herself think the worst of what could have happened to him. She had to live for the children now.

  Ruth picked up her basket of piecework. She sat at the open cabin door so she had enough light to see what she was doing. Every now and then a warm breeze or a summer cloud would move across her face.

  The warmth of the sun felt so nice on her face. But that did not ease her aching spirit. She thought how good it would be to just close her eyes and let the sun shine on her face—for just a little while. Charlie had not stirred. The remedy seemed to be working. She was thankful for that, very thankful.

  • • •

  She didn’t know how long she had been sleeping. She awoke when something, it must have been a cloud, blocked the warmth of the sun from her face. She thought she might be dreaming.

  But it was Mistress Catherine standing over her, blocking the sun from her. What business did the mistress of the house have here in the Quarters? The mistress barely left the house, and she never came down to the Quarters. If she needed something or someone, she would send another to fetch it or them.

  Ruth could not understand why Mistress Catherine had shown up in her dream.

  But it was not a dream.

  “Ma’am,” Ruth said, trying to get quickly to her feet. Now awake, she certainly could not understand what her mistress was doing in the Quarters at her cabin. Ruth stood silent as a stone, unable to pull her thoughts together; she must have slept too deeply.

  Three days ago, the horse took fright at something, and it took six hours to set her bones. There are neither mail nor telegrams. People seem to be in waiting for news. So many troops have gone and are still going. Henry . . .

  —Catherine Wilcomb Warren’s diary

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Catherine Wilcomb Warren

  May 26, 1861

  Later that day

  The mistress considered Ruth for a few moments before she spoke. Catherine did not know exactly what to say to her. She felt she hardly knew her. Even after all these years of dressmaking and dress fitting, the woman was almost a stranger.

  Catherine knew Hampton’s first wife very well. She had loved Sara, and would never allow herself to get that close again. So Catherine kept a respectable distance, and Henry encouraged it.

  “I see you have a nice little garden there,” Catherine said, pointing across to the garden patch. It was set off from the rest of the yard by large rocks. “Those look to me like turnips,” she said, eyeing the leaves. “Are they tender?”

  Ruth was trying as fast as she could to come out of her sleeping stupor. She needed to make sense out of what was before her.

  “Did you have any luck with the collards?”

  “Oh yes, ma’am. We sent some up to Elsa,” Ruth managed to say.

  “Yes, I remember the collards. They were good. I think I could have a taste for turnips, if they are tender,” the mistress said trying to give Ruth a chance to respond to her. She knew Ruth to be a woman of few words.

  Catherine thought she would wait another minute. She was considering whether she would head back up the hill and forget the reason she came down to her cabin.

  Then Ruth found her words.

  “Ma’am, Mistress? Yes, the turnips are very nice. I had Callie bring some to you to the kitchen door yesterday. She said the door was locked so she knocked; but no one came to answer. She left them there for you, though.”

  “Yes,” Catherine began. “We may not have heard her. I have taken to keeping the house locked up. These are such uncertain times.” The woman looked away from Ruth.

  “Uncertain,” Ruth repeated. “You are welcome to have some. I can have Callie take some back to the house with you. Is Meek still helping Elsa with the cooking for you up there?”

  “She is.”

  “I’ll clean them up and have Callie bring them to Elsa.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” Catherine said. “I’d be happy to take them with me now. I cannot tell you how much I have had a taste for turnips and cornbread with a bit of salt pork.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Ruth laughed. “That sounds very tasty indeed.”

  “Well, the cornbread and the pork are out of the question, but I will be happy to have the turnips.”

  Ruth quickly put her sewing back on top of the basket. She went across the road to her little garden. “I’ll pick you a few nice ones—tender ones,” she said, smiling.

  “Not too many. I know you have to eat too.”

  Ruth used her apron to brush off the loose dirt from the turnip roots. “Let me go wash some of the dirt off.”

  “Never mind,” her mistress said. “I can take them like this.” Catherine seemed eager to hold the plants whether they were caked with dirt or not, claiming them as hers.

  “How is Little Charlie? Callie tells me he has a fever and a bad cough.”

  “Yes, he does, and I don’t know what else. I doctored on him a while ago and finally got him to rest. It seemed to quiet his cough. I thought I could get a little rest for myself just now. Then I woke up and saw you.”

  “I have a bit of cough syrup here from Elsa’s cabinet,” Catherine said, reaching for something in the folds of her skirt. She handed the bottle to Ruth. “Keep it. Use it all if you need to.”

  Ruth took the precious bottle, holding it in both her hands.

  “Thank you so much. Thank Elsa for me. I surely appreciate this, Mistress. I’ll give him a dose before he sleeps tonight. Maybe that would help him rest through the night.”

  Catherine fashioned a weak smile as she held the turnips in her arms. She did not seem to mind the dirt on her bodice. “I hope it helps,” Mistress Catherine replied.

  There was a stillness neither one could fill with words or smiles or gestures. The two women stood facing each other not in judgment but curiosity.

  It was somewhat comforting for Ruth to see her husband’s face in the face of her mistress, even if some days it frightened her too. Ruth found herself staring at her mistress as if she were some kind of map with signs and a direction post that would help her discover something new.

  “It sure is an honor to have you come here,” Ruth said, breaking the silence. “But if you had sent word, I would have brought them up to the house for you.”

  “When we were children,” Catherine began, “Nancy, our nurse, would sometimes dress us alike.

  “Hampton had so much of the Wilcomb blood in him people who didn’t know our family often thought we might be twins. But as you know I am older than Hampton.”

  Ruth looked at her mistress without saying a word.

  “He got the name Hampton from me. I named him for the nearby city of Hampton, Virginia.”

  Catherine broke her gaze. This talk made her uncomfortable. These kinds of familiar things did not get talked about at all and especially in mixed company, slave to master. Catherine shifted her weight from foot to foot. Suddenly she could not sto
p herself from speaking, as if the floodgates had opened.

  “I was not raised for these kinds of affairs,” Catherine said. “I don’t think I ever really considered what side of things I stood on. I was taught that this was all men’s business. You can imagine that left me ill prepared to cope with the upheaval of what is happening in our lives. There was so much being done. . . .” And then her voice trailed off as if she was poised on the brink. Of what? Catherine didn’t know.

  “But you tell me, Ruth, what could one woman do?”

  Catherine seemed to have held on to her thoughts for too long. Now her words stood between the two women, creating a denser forest—a higher wall to climb.

  “I love Hampton,” Catherine finally said. “You know we lost my sister, Eloise. Mother, Father are both gone. I never had—” Her voice finally broke.

  “Hampton is my only family, he is all I have—my father’s only son. But I always felt him to be my brother, even though we only share one parent.” She paused and her words gathered weight over Ruth.

  “It was hard on Mother. But she had been ill so long. I am glad she did not live long enough to know Hampton because she would have loved him and that would have broken her heart. She had already suffered so much before she died.

  “The relations we have between each other . . .” Catherine paused, seeming to consider what she was going to say. And then she began again.

  “The relations we have between each other, slave and master, are crude and strange, I will grant you that. Many of us do not question slavery. It is something that we just accept. But I daresay that I do not wholly know how to live in it. It can make you feel that a part of you is all but disappeared or someone else breathes through your lungs, sees through your eyes, speaks your words, and stands in your place entirely.” Catherine stood motionless, seeming to try to catch her breath.

  “I loved Sara, too,” Catherine began again. “I think it grieved me as much when she died as it did Hampton. She was Hampton’s wife and so that also made her my sister. I accepted her.