The Loom

by Shella Gillus

  “Today?”

  She nodded and grasped her fingers. “May have already done it.”

  “My Lord.”

  “Can you believe it, Grandma?”

  “Yes, chil’, I can.”

  Joy sprang Lydia to her feet. She lifted her hands and twirled herself into another world. With a spin of worn cotton, she was lifted out of the tiny log cabin into a grand hall of royalty.

  “Grandma, I’m going to march out of here a free woman.”

  “I like that, Lydia.” Lou laughed. “I like that.”

  “I’m going to hold my head up high.” She jutted her chin forward. “Don’t need to look at the ground no longer, begging, pleading, because I’m going to walk around land I own. Bury my bare feet in grass that is mine, Lou. Mine.” She wiggled her toes and put her hands on her waist. She took a step. One, two, three steps, one foot in front of the other, she strutted back and forth for the one who rooted her on. “Oh yes, I am going to eat the richest foods.” She couldn’t think of any. “Wear the finest gowns.” These she knew well. “Satin and silk and lace, Lou, weaved, knitted, and sewn by somebody else’s tired hands.” Let them work for hours creating something for her back. “I’m going to go the furthest place my mind can take me.” She had no idea where. Anywhere but here. And then she remembered John’s words. “I am a rich, free woman, a seller of purple. You know what purple is, don’t you, Grandma?” She didn’t even wait for the woman to answer. “It’s the color of kings and queens.”

  “Oh my, my, my.” Lou shook her head. She was feeling it too.

  Free!

  It was the most beautiful thing.

  Lydia fell to her knees, laid her head back in her grandmother’s lap, and let the tears roll, slip into her ears. Lou caught the ones she could in her palms.

  “Isaiah would be so proud knowing.”

  He would. That right-sided grin would light his face. Yes, it would.

  “I wish you could come.”

  “For what? Baby, I already got what you trying to get.” She hummed a slow tune before she opened her mouth and sang, “I’m going to meet Jesus. Going to meet Jesus. Yes, I’m going to meet Jesus. Going to meet Jesus after a while.” It was slow, but sad? Not one bit.

  Lydia hadn’t heard her sing the song in years. Years. “Oh, Lou.” She buried her face into the coarse burlap against her cheek. “What will I do without you?”

  “Don’t you worry. You ain’t never going to be without me. Not for a minute.”

  Lydia sat in the dark on the redwood bench her father crafted, waiting for John.

  The sky was as black as the night she ran free. She tilted her head when she saw him, a shadow moving toward her, among the trees. She could see his arms, his legs lift, the outline of a man, strong and tall like her daddy. She slid to the edge of her seat and waited, watched him come to her like a dream.

  “John.”

  “Lydia.”

  She rose to embrace him, but before her arms could lock around his neck, he gripped her elbow and stepped back.

  “Is everything all right?” She looked at him, could barely make out the details of his face, nothing to read. “Let’s go inside.” By the candlelight. “Oh, and I have something for you. You hungry?”

  He shook his head and followed her indoors.

  “You’re back late.”

  “Yeah, I was here earlier before you came.”

  “Well, how did it go?” The silence between them, the pause of that moment, waiting, waiting to hear if they had been granted life, hovered endlessly. She could feel her shoulders rise. Seemed they never did fall. “Well? Did you talk to Dr. Kelly?”

  “I did.”

  He tormented her with each sigh, with every break in his speech. She was much too tense. She laughed. “You taunting me?”

  “No. I’m sorry, Lydia.”

  “It’s all right.” She could see him now. Charcoal eyes watching her, flashing white every glance away. “What did he say?”

  John propped himself against the wall, a knee bent and a foot flush against the logs behind him.

  “Lydia, did something happen with you and Dr. Kelly?”

  The words entered her ears, tumbled to her heart.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, did you… Did he… I don’t know, Lydia, you tell me.”

  She shook her head. She could see his chest rising and falling, waiting. “No,” she said finally, but her hesitation told him all he needed to know.

  “Lydia…” He shook his head. “Tell me it’s not true. Lydia?”

  “It’s not. Not like you think.”

  “So something did happen?”

  She turned away but could see him from the side standing for a long time with his face in his hands. When he looked back at her, his brows crinkled close and low. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I don’t know.” She was starting to tremble. “I was scared.”

  “You were scared?” He rubbed his hand over his head and paced. “I can’t believe this.”

  “Please, John.”

  “You lied to me?”

  “Not really, no.”

  “Not really? What kind of answer is that?”

  “I’m sorry.” Would he believe her? Believe she could resist another? How she had clung to him, needed him every night?

  He shook his head.

  “John.”

  “Lydia, I’ve been up there in that man’s face! A man who has…done what? Tell me. Tell me what happened.”

  “Why do you want to live that?” She didn’t want to live it. She had buried it the night they wed.

  “You were scared? Scared of what? Scared of me? What did you think, Lydia? Am I so evil? So awful? Have I ever given you reason not to trust me? Have I?”

  “No. None of those things.” She tried to keep her voice steady, failed with every word.

  “But you were scared?”

  “Yes.”

  “You were scared?”

  “Yes!”

  “You were scared of what?”

  “I was scared to hurt you. I was scared you would feel awful you couldn’t protect me. You walked me up those steps right into his hands. But what could you do? What could you do? What could a slave do?”

  He stared at her. He didn’t move, just stared until she dropped her head. She had said too much.

  They were silent the rest of the night. When he crawled in front of her under the worn blanket she hated, he turned on his side, his back to her.

  So sorry. So sad, she nestled close, wrapped her arm around him, grazed the back of his head, ran her palm across his neck, his ear.

  “Don’t you want me anymore?”

  The pause pierced.

  “Lydia, I don’t even know who I’ve got.”

  She slid to her back and stared at the wood-shingled roof. It was true. He didn’t know her. Never did. This was her life. One heartache after the other. Just her place in the world.

  What could a slave do?

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Lydia grazed the lips of the man she loved and draped him in the woven blanket of red circles and purple diamonds she had finished. Circles and diamonds. The cycle of life. Birth. Life. Death. Rebirth. She watched him sleeping, the covering rising and lifting, freedom already giving breath.

  He would have a better chance leaving without her, could save half his money for the journey and his settling up North.

  She cried as she stumbled out, doubled over when she stepped under the threshold and turned to him for one last glance. How did one leave love?

  Push.

  It was early morning, still dark out when she stepped into her grandmother’s cabin. No one, nothing remained in the gray darkness except a faded, striped apron sprawled near the door. Panic rose inside her until she remembered the crate and her fear weakened with sadness.

  In The Room, Lydia caressed creased foreheads and the sunken cheeks of the sleeping until she reached the one
against the back wall. Lou among them. She kissed the old woman’s temple and prayed, pouring the words like oil over her. “The Lord watch between me and thee when we are absent one from another.” Stay with your heart, Lou had said. Lydia had tried, but failed. How did one follow a wayward heart?

  Minutes later, she watched through her bedroom window as the doctor and his wife stepped into the carriage, Charles holding the reins. It was Lizzy who kept her standing, staring, watching until the sight of her friend slipped away.

  Lizzy.

  She let the folds of the drapes fall over the window frame as the mares trotted off.

  Slowly, she walked to the three-legged table and lifted a woven chocolate dress she had made for Lizzy. And as always, it was her flesh, her skin that touched it first. She clasped the pearls Lizzy had given her around her neck and stood in front of the mirror.

  There was no difference.

  She peeked through the door of Cora’s room and found the girl slumbering, her evergreen blanket kicked beneath her feet lush and thick like grass. Grass that is mine, Lou. Mine.

  Push!

  When Lydia pushed through the front door, hat in hand, she pushed through the pain and walked down the steps she had grappled on. There was no turning back. The pain. It was more than the push for life. It was the death. Like the losing of a limb.

  The searing ache in her heart slowed her, but nothing stopped her from moving moment to moment, inch by inch into a new world and further from the commitment of love, the ancestry of Africa, and the twenty-year bondage of being who and doing what another dictated. Draped in the clothes of a wealthy White woman and pearls, she left it all behind.

  Lydia teetered by the road in the low-heeled boots she still hadn’t mastered. Before she could gather herself, a White man in a wagon stopped for her.

  Though fear clenched her throat, his eyes told her he didn’t see a Colored, but a woman, a beautiful woman. She traveled with him past county lines until evening, when he pulled over to the side of the road and offered more than a place to rest.

  She resisted kindly and waited until his eyes closed. When his breathing gave way to a wheezing hiss, she stole away and journeyed until her legs trembled and she fell in exhaustion under a towering cedar.

  She rested then walked slowly into a new day. Hours later, she heard trotting behind her.

  “You all right, ma’am?” Another White in a wagon.

  She froze.

  “What are you doing out here this time of morning?” He looked behind him. “You out here by yourself?”

  The terror she felt must have shown in her eyes.

  “I’m not going to hurt you or nothing, ma’am. I’m just wondering if I can be of service somehow.”

  “No. No, you can’t, but thank you,” she said in her most ladylike diction.

  “All right then.” He tipped his hat of straw and clicked his tongue but tugged on the reins before the horses moved.

  “Uh, if you don’t mind my asking, where you headed?”

  “Just up the road, to town.” She had no idea where she was going, hadn’t planned a bit of it.

  “Are you going to the junction to get the coach?”

  She nodded.

  “Well, let me give you a lift. You might just make it before it pulls off. I hate to see a little thing like you walking alone. No telling what kind of wild animals running loose ’round here. Especially with them coons running away all the time.” He peered down at her.

  She swallowed hard. Oh, please…

  “You all right, ma’am?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m fine.” She was weak, feeling weaker by the moment. She needed to sit, to rest. “I suppose I will accept that ride.” She let her lids flicker a few times and smiled. “If you’re still offering.”

  “Of course.” He jumped down to help her climb inside. “It’d be my pleasure.”

  “You’re not from around these parts, are you? I’ve never seen you around here.”

  “No. No, I just got here.”

  “Do I know your people?”

  “No. I don’t think so.”

  “Where you from?”

  Think! “Manassas. Manassas, Virginia.” It was the first place that came to mind.

  “Not terribly far. If you catch the coach you’ll be there shortly.”

  She feared someone might recognize her, but right away she calmed herself. The last time she ran, she had been a slave, dressed in slave clothing. But now she was a White woman dressed as a lady, and to her surprise the only eyebrows raised when her driver helped her down from his wagon in front of the general store were of men taking interest in her beauty.

  “There’s the coachman feeding his horses, miss,” he said, releasing her. “They’ll probably be pulling out shortly. Travel safe, now. Good luck to you.” He hopped back into the wagon and nodded his good-bye before riding off.

  Lydia drew the bonnet close against her cheeks and dropped her eyes when the store owner’s slaves assisted other passengers, two middle-aged men, inside the coach. It was the dark faces that concerned her, that she feared would see through her disguise. When they returned inside, she lifted her head but startled at what she saw in the distance.

  Charles sat several feet away in the front of an empty wagon, much like the one he had driven for her and John. When he tilted his head in her direction, her heart thumped. Foolishly, she watched him dismount and walk toward her before she scrambled into the coach.

  “Where you headed, ma’am?” the driver barked as he sprang into the driver’s seat.

  “Manassas, please, sir.” She glanced over her shoulder for John’s friend. Maybe he hadn’t seen her.

  “You know the fare already, ma’am?”

  “Yes, sir.” She didn’t know. Wouldn’t have done her any good if she had.

  As the coach rolled out of town, she bit her tongue, the tip of torn flesh raw. Slowly, the taste of salt filled her mouth and she swallowed the blood of her heritage.

  Lydia wept softly on the ride, her head bowed, her face covered by her bonnet. An older passenger, a woman with a thin, long neck, looked down at her, her eyes shifting, her chin lifting higher each time Lydia glanced her way. The display of discomfort danced between them for several miles before she handed Lydia an embroidered handkerchief.

  Lydia glanced down at the folds of her dress bunched up into fists that had turned her knuckles white. She loosened her grip and took the cloth from the stranger. They rode in silence, Lydia rubbing the delicate flowers in the corners of the cloth, grateful to have something to do with her hands.

  “Manassas, Virginia,” the driver announced before the coach rolled to a stop. Passengers rose around her and the swing of skirts swept against her. A heavyset man in a tight frock coat stepped on her foot, but Lydia didn’t flinch. She just sat, clinging to the cloth in her lap.

  “Ma’am.”

  She was the last one remaining. A nervous flutter kept her still, quiet.

  “Ma’am. You’re here. Manassas, Virginia.” His pink face scrunched. “That is where you were headed, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes, sir. It’s just…I don’t have a way to pay you. I’m sorry.”

  “Your fare has been covered.”

  “Has it?” Lydia looked around. No one knew her. She prayed no one knew her here.

  “Yes.”

  “How? By whom?”

  “The woman who sat across from you. The older one. I assumed you knew her.”

  “No.”

  “Well, you’re covered.”

  “Thank you.” Lydia rose slowly. “Thank you, sir,” she said, stepping onto the arrival platform. She glanced up at the blue sky. Thank You.

  She was here. Manassas, Virginia, once again.

  Fatigue and road weariness seeped into her bones as she stumbled with quivering knees up the dusty road, yanking free the skirt stuck to her thighs. She scoped the magnificent view of a plantation grander than Kelly’s land. Paying little attention to her steps, she stumbled
into a burrow and twisted her ankle. A wrenching pain shot up her leg as she tumbled to the ground near the edge of the road, breaking the heel of her boot.

  Lydia twisted around to the sound of hooves and gravel behind her. A covered wagon slowed and the driver, a squatty slave boy, clicked his tongue and yanked on the reins. Two chestnut mares halted and the young one jumped clumsily to the ground. Dusting himself off, he staggered to the side of the stage. Parting the tan linen tarp, his passenger appeared.

  “Jackson?”

  “Caroline, what are you doing out here? Are you all right?” Leaping down from his carriage, he glanced around. “Are you alone?”

  Very.

  “It’s all right,” he said to his driver, waving him off with the back of his hand. When the boy disappeared behind the wagon, Jackson whispered, “What’s going on? Do you need help?”

  She needed it. Didn’t want it.

  “I think I twisted my ankle.” She held up the two-inch ivory heel.

  “Let me help you.” Jackson knelt and wrapped his arm under hers, lifting her to her feet. The pain. When her toes grazed the ground, she flinched. When she pressed the ball of her foot against the damp ground, she yelped.

  “Oh yes, you need help.”

  “I’ll be fine.” She hobbled forward and shrieked.

  “I insist.” Jackson looped her arm around his, shifting her weight against his large frame. Lydia hopped against him into the carriage.

  “Now tell me. What were you doing out here alone?”

  “Leaving.” How much of the truth could she share?

  “Leaving? Leaving what? Leaving whom?” He stared at her.

  “My father died.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that. My condolences. Does Elizabeth know?”

  “Yes. She knows.”

  “Well, I’d imagine she would be glad to take you in. I’m certain you could stay with her.”

  “I did. I was with her, but her father, her father tried to…” She dropped her head in shame. If only she had told John.

  “I understand. Enough said.”

  “I just left, walked away with nothing.” She held up the broken leather. “But this heel.” She forced a smile for all the broken she held on to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY