by Joyce Hansen
“I hope you ain’t laughing along with them.”
“No, sir.”
The women came after church to help out and sit with Rose awhile. Simon went outside to get the fishing lines, and Obi had to disappoint him again. He recalled that the few times anyone else fished with him and Buka, it wasn’t the same. He tried to explain it to Simon. “Grace has seen a lot of sorrow. Her mind is troubled. She likes the water. It seems to help her mind some.”
Simon’s long thin face dropped. “Yes, sir.”
“I need you to be here in case something happen to Rose so you can call me. By the time them women talk, and cry and wail, it be tomorrow before anyone let me know anything.”
“Yes, sir,” Simon repeated.
Obi was sorry. Simon wasn’t in a much better condition than Grace, but at least his mind was all in one piece. “We’ll go fishing together when Aunt Rose get better,” Obi promised.
Grace and Obi walked to the river and sat at the bank, Grace wiggling her toes in the water. Obi’s mind drifted. Since his and Easter’s cabin was so small, he might build a separate kitchen. He wondered whether Mr. Richards would ever contact him again. When Rose was better, he’d go to Elenaville again.
Obi felt a tug on the line. When he glanced at the opposite side of the creek, he saw Simon racing toward them. His heart pulled and wrenched in his chest. The death watch was over. Obi wished that Simon would slow his pace some. He didn’t want to hear the message. Why was God so hard on them? Simon could barely talk, but Obi thought he saw traces of a smile. This fool boy gone mad.
“Mr. Obi... Mr. Obi... Mr. Obi, Miss Easter here!”
Chapter 22
Thou art the soul of a summer’s day,
Thou art the breath of the rose.
—PAUL LAURENCE DUNBAR
“What?” Obi dropped his line in the water, and the fish swam away, line and all.
“Miss Easter... the lady who write you.”
Obi scrambled off the grass before he fell in the water too. “You sure? You ain’t making some mistake?”
“That’s what the lady say, Mr. Obi.”
“Come on, Grace.” He pulled her up, and they raced back to the cabin. Obi practically crashed into the back room like a wild man. There she was. Easter. Sitting on the edge of the bed, leaning over Rose. Two other women stood around the bed. When Obi saw her, he wanted to gather her up in his arms. “Easter?” he asked, as though he still didn’t believe his eyes.
She stood up, and he wondered for a moment whether he was dreaming. Was this stylish young woman in a maroon traveling suit with a short jacket and long skirt and a small maroon hat to match, was this young woman his little Easter? No more a girl in a homespun dress. The last time he saw her she was wearing dusty trousers, and her hair was cut short like a boy’s. But she had had the same smooth, deep brown skin, heart-shaped face, and full mouth that he saw before him.
At first he was too shy and ashamed to hold her, sweaty and rough as he was. But she was his Easter.
“Easter,” he murmured huskily. “My Easter?” They embraced and kissed, and he held her to him tightly. Then, embarrassed, he became aware of the women smiling at them and Grace staring at the floor. He hadn’t realized that she’d followed him into the room.
Obi introduced her to Easter.
“Hello, ma’am,” she said shyly.
“Come on child, you stay with us.” One of the women took Easter’s place on the edge of the bed and motioned for Grace to sit next to her. “Mr. Obi and Miss Easter have to talk.”
His arm still around Easter’s waist, Obi kissed her forehead and led her into the main room. Simon still stood at the door. “Mr. Obi, can I go fish now?”
“Go on. There’s another line in the bucket. Make sure you catch something.”
They sat down at the table, across from one another, and Easter began to cry. She wiped her eyes and tried to control herself, but couldn’t. “Obi, I’m sorry. I can’t believe I’m finally seeing you again after all these years.” She reached across the table and rubbed his smooth face. Even more handsome. Mature. She lowered her voice. “And Rose, she’s so sick.”
“Maybe she get better now that you here,” Obi said clasping her soft hands in his rough, callused ones.
“So silly, crying like a baby. After you told me that Charlotte and the little girl you and Rose cared for died, and then when you wrote me and Miss Fortune wrote me about Rose, I had to come home. I had to be here with you. To help you. Obi, I had so much to do before I left, I didn’t have time to even answer your letters.”
She sounded just like Miss Fortune, he thought. She learn Yankee speech well. It was strange, though, coming out of her mouth.
Her eyes welled up again. “I hate to see Rose like this. She’s so thin and weak.”
“Seeing you help her along.”
She nodded. “I hope so.”
There was so much he wanted to say. He didn’t know where to begin, so he said what was foremost on his mind. “You home to stay, Easter?” He thought he felt her hand twitch.
“Yes. Until Rose gets better, then I...”
Grace entered the room. “Ma’am, Aunt Rose want you.”
He watched Easter walk away from him and noticed her carpetbag sitting next to the rocker near the fireplace. Obi was nervous, agitated, excited, pacing the small cabin, feeling as though he were in a box as he listened to the murmur of the women’s voices. Hardly believing that Easter was here. Her voice, soft, smooth, wafted from the bedroom. He didn’t know what to do with himself, so he rummaged through the box where he kept his stationery. He removed Jason’s letter so that he could read it to Easter.
Easter walked out of the room wearing her old homespun dress—the same kind of dress she used to wear when they lived at the Jennings farm.
“Now you look like my Easter. How is Rose?”
“She’s feverish still. The women are going to make her some broth.”
“Too many of them in there. Going to suck up all she air.”
“Obi, you’re the same, yes? Still don’t like to have a lot of crowd around you.”
“Let me show you the cabin,” Obi said.
“Our cabin,” Easter corrected him.
They walked along the narrow footpath that led to their future home.
“I always remembered how pretty the island is, Obi. I miss it so.”
“A lot of the trees come down in the storm.”
“Not all. There’s enough left, Obi. You can hardly tell there was a storm. I really missed the moss hanging from the trees.” She gazed at the trees, the sky, as if seeing all of it for the first time. “There is still snow in Pennsylvania,” she said. “Here it feels like spring.”
“Well, here it is.” He studied her face closely. She smiled, but Obi doubted that it was a true smile. He thought he saw disappointment in her eyes as he imagined how small the cabin must look compared to the Fortune’s home in Philadelphia.
“It’s lovely, Obi. It really is.”
He didn’t believe her, and with Easter standing next to him, the cabin looked even smaller and cruder.
“It’s not what you been used to living in up North.”
“I’ve been living in someone else’s home. This be my home.” When she laughed, her eyes curled exactly the way he remembered.
“Now you sound right again. Like one of us. Easter, the house I was building for us was going to have a porch all around it so that we could look out at the sunset and at Rose’s cabin and fields.”
“Obi, even in this little cabin we can see Rose’s fields.”
“Yes. All the trees blow down.”
“It’s just how you look at it, Obi.” She clasped her hands. “You know we can plant fruit trees. And you can put a fence around the property, and I’ll plant flowers around it.”
“You always liked flowers. You know what I was thinking too. Building a separate kitchen.”
“Obi, this is fine the way it is.” She looked in
side. “Just need some furniture.”
“Maybe I’ll add another room. We have a bedroom, with a bed, Easter. I know you ain’t like sleeping on a pallet on the floor again.”
“You sound more hopeful than your letters.”
“Because you’re back here with me.” Obi tried to be diplomatic, but he didn’t know how. “Easter, let us marry. We can go to the magistrate tomorrow.”
“I have to go back and finish school and work a few months more.”
They sat on the dirt floor and leaned against the wall. He put his arm around her, and she rested her head on his shoulder.
“You don’t want to marry?”
“I do, but not before I finish what I started.” She paused and stared at him. “I told them that I would return to Philadelphia as soon as Rose is better, and I’ll make up the time I’ve been away.”
“So if you stay here a month, instead of returning in May you come back in June?”
She nodded.
“Easter, I don’t want you to go back. I want you here with me.”
“I said my plan was to go back, Obi. But when I see you—I don’t know what to do.”
“We should get married, Easter. That’s all you need to do.”
For the first time in eight years she felt whole. Away from him all of those years, she had been separated from a part of herself. “Obi, we will find our way. Figure out what’s best to do.”
“I find my way. We marry, and I take care of you. That’s what’s best to do.”
Easter listened to the cries of the seabirds. Obi’s arms were strong around her, as they’d always been. Even when she was a child.
Obi dug in his pocket. “Jason found his way. I thought he’d be with us.” He pulled the letter out of his pocket. “Read this letter from him.”
“Big yam foot?” She threw her head back and laughed.
“I don’t think that’s funny,” he mumbled.
“He’s angry with you, but he still loves you. He was angry with me when I went back to the plantation for him.”
“We need to go up there and get him when Rose is better.”
“Jason wouldn’t stay down here. And we can’t make him. He’s not a child anymore. He’s right, you know. You took your freedom, and now he’s taking his.”
“You got him before.”
“That was different. He was a child then. I wanted to free him. Now that I freed him, I can’t put him back in chains.”
“I’ve seen them show people. Many of them be beggars and vagabonds.”
“All we can do is love him and pray for him. Whenever I write him, I tell him not to forget who his people are. Some people take the long way home, don’t you know.” She stood up and pulled him off the ground. “This feel like when we used to sneak and have those picnics, remember?” She giggled.
“I don’t want you to leave, Easter.”
“Obi, when I left to come here, I had to see you. When you write and tell me Rose is sick and the children are dead, I had to come home to help you, see you.” She squeezed his hand. “When I’m near you like this, right here with you, I feel like I never want to part from your side again. But my plan was to leave when Rose gets better.”
“You could teach here.”
“Then I couldn’t marry at all. I told you that in my letter. Female teachers working for the society must be unmarried. But I could run my own private school.”
“I need to begin a life too. I need a wife and a family, and I’m not waiting another eight years. If you leave, then I leave too.”
“I told you, there’s no decent work in Philadelphia.”
“I’d go to the West, where there’s land. I tired hearing about land for sale here. I ain’t seen none yet. You could meet me there when you finish with school.”
He recognized the familiar frown lines that always appeared on her forehead when she was upset. “I want us to stay here, not in the West. New Canaan is our home.”
“Then don’t leave.”
“Obi, my head is spinning. Right now we have to see about Rose, you know. Remember, Obi, you left me and Jason. You went across the river.”
“You didn’t want to come with me, Easter,” he said angrily.
“That’s past. God make it so that we’re back together.”
“And you making it so that we separate again,” he retorted.
“Obi, can’t you understand how I feel?” she pleaded. “When you left me in the camp, I understood why you left.”
He put his arms around her as the shadows deepened outside the cabin.
“I’m not arguing with you. I just don’t want you to leave. That’s all. But I’ll try to understand.”
“We’re together now. That’s what’s important.”
“But for how long?”
“Until Rose is well.”
“Suppose she never gets well,” he said.
“I feel deep inside me that she will.” Her voice cracked slightly.
Obi wished he could be as sure as Easter.
“I guess we better go back now, and see about Rose,” Easter said.
Before they left, Obi gazed around the cabin. “Me and Simon can sleep in here tonight,” he said. “So you can have some privacy.”
“I’ll make a pallet in Rose’s room. I don’t want to disrupt you and the boy.”
“You used to sleeping in a bed.”
She put her arm in his as they walked down the footpath toward Rose’s cabin.
“I’m so tired, Obi, I could sleep in a cow pasture. You haven’t finished the floor or put in a window yet in the cabin. I’ll be fine in Rose’s room.”
“I’ve slept on the bare ground and under the sky when I was in the army. And Simon, that boy can sleep anywhere. I’ll put a piece of tarpaulin up to the window.”
After living in the big city and a big house, he wondered whether she already felt as though she were in a cow pasture. What would happen to them? Eight years apart. They were no longer the same people.
Chapter 23
The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,
As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,
Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam
In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.
—GEORGIA DOUGLASS JOHNSON
March 1869
In the week following Easter’s return, she cared for Rose as best she could and puzzled over Grace, who politely did everything Easter ordered her to do, saying, “Yes ma’am, no ma’am,” but when she had no chores, would still sit in the rocker and hold Araba’s blanket. Easter knew from her own work at the orphanage that she should not impose herself on the child but wait for Grace.
Obi tried not to think about Easter leaving or Rose dying. He meticulously completed putting in the cabin floors and the shutters on the windows. When Samuel saw the floor, he said, “Man, you have to build a whole new house around this fancy floor.”
Every afternoon that week Easter and Obi spent a few moments alone, sitting together inside the cabin for only a short spell and, as Obi said, “Learning each other again.”
They leaned against the wall, his arm around her, her head on his shoulder, just as they’d sat together the first time he showed her the cabin. They tried to close the chasm of eight years spent apart. They told one another their stories.
And on a rainy Friday afternoon, as they sat inside the cabin listening to a gentle spring shower, they finished talking about the past and had to face the present and an uncertain future.
“I know you don’t think much of New Canaan, but you helped many people, especially Rose. If you weren’t here, what would have happened to her?”
“The villagers would’ve helped her. You know that.”
“But not the way you helped. And the children, Obi. You surely helped them.”
“One is dead, no help there. And the girl and boy latch themselves to me for no reason.”
“Araba’s life was short. You and Rose made i
t sweet in the end.”
“That little girl never stayed down once she learned how to walk, you know. She keep getting up no matter how many times she fell,” Obi said. He leaned back on the wall and closed his eyes and smiled as a simple truth was revealed to him. Araba was the messenger. Life knocks you down, but you keep getting back up.
Easter gave him something else to think about. “Children know. They know who loves them and who will harm them,” she said.
He rubbed her back tenderly. “Where you learn that? In them schoolbooks?”
“I saw it in the orphanage. Children know.”
He was quiet a moment, enjoying the faint scent of rosewater from her hair and the back of her ears. “You love that work, don’t you?”
She nodded.
“I know you don’t belong in no field, behind a plow. You ain’t no farmer’s wife. And I ain’t no farmer.”
“You understand how I feel then?”
“Yes, but I still want you to stay.”
“Will you understand if I go back North?”
“You want me to smile and say, Yes, Easter, I happy for you and I want you to go North? I will understand. I will wait for you. But I won’t be happy about it. People dropping dead around us like flies. All we have is this time. We don’t know nothing about tomorrow. No matter what happens, Easter, I have to keep pulling myself up is all.”
“Tomorrow is God’s will, not ours.”
“Leaving me is your will, not God’s.”
She said nothing. Just kept her head on his shoulder. He’ll wait, she thought. I will hurry back. One day he’ll truly understand.
After Easter went back to the cabin, he continued working. He was going to surprise her with a fine table—their first piece of furniture. He’d try to complete it before she left. He adjusted the rack of boards he’d made and lit a small fire under them. He picked up a long, thick piece of wood, placing it over the rack.
Suddenly, a familiar voice startled him. “Jennings, I want to see you too. When I asked for you at the store the lady said she didn’t know you. But I’d find Mr. Booker here.” His sharp eyes peered around the yard and at Obi’s cabin.