“Mae, of course not.” He grabbed her arm, whispering over the hushed voices around them, “Let’s go into the other room so we can talk.”
“I’m not going nowhere!” She yanked her arm away and stumbled backward. “Did you kill my husband?”
All fluttering stopped. Everyone stared. Jackson could feel the blood rushing to his face.
He unbuttoned his black jacket and walked into the foyer, nodding and smiling at guests as he marched by.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Mae chased after him.
He whispered in James’s ear and waited at the entrance.
Seconds later the butler and a field slave had Mae by the elbows. She kicked and flailed and screamed as they carried her out the door. “Put me down! I mean it, put me down! Jackson, yours is coming!” They whisked her down the steps and around the corner.
Jackson turned to the spectators and grinned. “Not to worry, she won’t be back.” He turned to slam the door when he saw a frail-looking man on his property in the distance. He squinted. Rex? This was ridiculous.
“Excuse me a moment, won’t you?”
Jackson skipped down the steps and jogged over to him.
“Rex, what are you doing here?”
“You told me you were going to talk to Caroline. You lied to me. You wasn’t never gonna ask her, were you?”
“Actually, I was, but somebody sent a crazy heifer to my house.”
“I was just mad.”
“I don’t care what you were. You knew you were supposed to keep your mouth shut. So no, now you won’t get to speak to her. You’re going to get nothing but an old-fashioned beating if you don’t get off my property right now.”
“I can’t. I think I’m dying.” Rex slithered to the ground.
“Your choice. Get up or I’ll—”
“Break my neck?” He squirmed into a ball on the grass.
“If you’re not up and out of here by the time I get back upstairs, I’m going to send some of my boys to take care of you.”
“Isn’t that funny? Me and Henry used to be your boys.”
“Get off my land.”
“Yeah, we was your boys, but now, now, you’re for the other side just like your wife!”
“That’s where you’re wrong. I’ve never been for nobody. Just against most.” He spat at him. Rex flinched out of the way. “And tonight, it’s me against you.”
“You sure about that? I’ve got something for you.”
“I’m leaving. I’ve got a wedding waiting on me.”
“I don’t think you do.”
Jackson stormed into the house, slamming the door behind him. He had to keep it together until he got to Caroline. He needed to get to that woman.
“Jack!” Andrew walked up to him, gripped his shoulder. “Great seeing you, friend.”
“You too,” Jackson murmured, still moving through the crowd.
“Whoa, slow down. I haven’t seen you in months, and this is the kind of greeting I get?”
“I’m sorry. I’ve just got a lot on my mind.”
“Nerves getting to you? I understand. Listen, I just wanted to congratulate you.”
Jackson extended his hand and smiled. “Thank you.”
“You and Lydia—”
“What did you say?” He blinked.
“I’m sorry, I meant Caroline.”
“Who’s Lydia?”
“Caroline.” Andrew chuckled. “Elizabeth calls her Lydia sometimes.”
Jackson couldn’t move. A dagger. That was all he felt. A dagger straight through his heart.
“What did you say?” His words came out shaky. He cleared his throat.
“Jackson?”
He stormed into the living room and downed two glasses of wine as he scanned the crowd of dark-haired women, searching for one.
He marched back into the dining room. A tall blonde in red stood near, laughing loudly and wagging her finger at the man beside her. When she stepped aside, the hairs on Jackson’s neck raised. There she was. Caroline. In perfect view.
He dangled a woven cotton patch of red circles and purple diamonds in his hand and stepped closer. “What is this, Lydia?”
“What?” In the back corner of the dining room, Caroline stood, trembling.
“You heard me. Rex found this in one of my worker’s cabins.”
Her wide eyes, her tremor, told him everything, weakened him at his core.
“I’m sorry.” She stepped away from him.
“Were you with that Colored? Did Rex and Henry see you?”
Jackson leaned into her. “Answer me, Caroline!”
She stumbled backward over the hem of her dress into the wall.
With a sweep of his arm, he slid the tablecloth and the candles to the floor, the sound of glass permeating the room.
But that was all Jackson heard. Glass falling. In all the movement of men and women slipping by him, scattering through the room, grabbing coats and stoles, servants rushing, smoke rising and flames igniting, all Jackson heard was glass. Shattering. His heart breaking. He watched Caroline clutching her necklace, crumpling to the floor.
A pearl clinked against the wood, then another. One by one they fell, like a flood.
Lydia scrambled out of the dining room, slipping on pearls.
“Caroline!” Jackson yelled from the smoky dining room floor, stumbling and staggering toward the one disappearing down the hall.
Smoke billowed into the hallway and quickly filled his lungs, but it was the fire that frightened him. It had flared so quickly, he could see flames raging from the dining table to the foyer. He would have to figure another way out. “Caroline!” After he got to that woman.
She was a liar. But he knew that. He always knew deep down she was dishonest. In time, he could feel it, feel her lies rotting inside him. Knew it the day he found her on the side of the road, but lust kept him coming.
Jackson dragged himself down the hall toward Caroline’s quarters. Halfway there, he propped himself up against a wall, panting. He was panicking. He could feel his chest closing up on him. Coughing, he doubled over with his arms wrapped across his stomach. He was weak, weaker than he’d ever remembered. He tumbled to his knees. On his stomach, he crawled, slithered his way to her room. Out of breath, he glanced up at the doorknob several feet away.
He should’ve never let her in his house. None of them. Annie. James. They were bad news. He coughed. The smoke was burning his eyes, altering his vision. Timothy had died because of them. Jackson couldn’t breathe. He was getting light-headed. Timothy died because… He inched his way forward, stretching for the knob, but his fingers slipped.
He died because of me.
Jackson’s breath was fading.
Why did that Colored have part of Caroline’s blanket? Was she…? He wouldn’t allow his mind to go there. He knew he hadn’t made the same mistake as Timothy. He went for the whitest skin, the greenest eyes. She wasn’t… She couldn’t be. He was suffocating, gasping for breath. No! But she cared too much for them, knew their ways too well. Had he fallen for a…He tried to rise but everything went black.
There was smoke. Lots of it. Lydia could smell it coming in from under the door, quickly clouding the room gray.
She had to get out fast.
A rock crashed against the glass. Lydia startled. She ran to the window and pried it open. Annie paced among dozens of panicked slaves and wedding guests.
“Miss Caroline! You all right?” She waited for her nod. “Listen, you gotta get out now!”
“I smell the smoke.”
“No, ma’am, it’s bad. The whole thing could burn down any minute. We see the flames coming through the windows and the front door from here. You gotta get out fast. It’s moving quickly.”
“Is everyone else out?” Lizzy. Andrew.
“Yes.”
“Miss Caroline, you hear me?” Annie yelled. “You gotta get out now. Jump. It’s not so far down.”
Lydia wept as she stood
in front of the open window. Frightened for her baby, for her life, she stood waiting.
“Miss Caroline!”
But this was it. The moment she had waited for had come. She was not Caroline. The truth had surfaced. She was Lydia. She was the same woman who had survived before. And in that second, when the breeze brushed against her face and she slid out onto the sill, she knew she would make it again.
Lydia jumped.
How she so easily left it all behind, leapt from a house that she had dreamed of all her life, left the world she had so desperately wanted, she didn’t know until she was falling, flying through the air, freeing herself from the weight of it. Sometimes you had to lose life to find it.
Tangled in yards of satin, Lydia felt Annie’s hands helping her to her feet.
“I ain’t seen Master Whitfield.” Annie looked from the window to Lydia, her eyes wide and worried.
“Annie.” Lydia shook her head.
“What? Ma’am, is he still in there? Is he still in the house?”
“Annie, I’m so sorry,” she sobbed.
“It’s all right. It’s my duty, not yours.”
Annie sprinted toward the blazing house. Lydia chased after her.
“Annie! Annieee!”
At the base of the steps, Lydia caught her by the hem of her skirt. Annie tripped, falling forward.
Lydia blew out relief, her fingers still gripped around the coarse wool. “I got you.”
The moment she said it, Annie broke free. She bolted up the stairs and burst through the glowing door. A laid-down life fading in the flames.
CHAPTER FORTY
A blue-eyed Black.
Ruth knew as well as all her community, it wasn’t uncommon for a Colored to have light eyes like Lydia. But to match it with dark skin, now that was something different. That was something different entirely.
At the loom, Ruth’s hands rested, not on the wooden posts, the beams, nor the side panels, nor the spun silk she would soon weave into fine cloth, but on her face.
She had seen the reflection of her chocolate skin many times in the ripple of the river, inside the dim silver of spoons she polished when she was a girl, and once in her mistress’s looking glass. Many times she had admired her complexion, smooth as the pudding she craved at Christmas.
Even now it still felt velvety, her fingertips slipping only into shallow smile lines, which she was happy to have. All she had endured and she still had joy.
“What does this look like?” she asked Odessa and Abram. She knew they were awake, though at times they feigned otherwise late at night. Folks were so silly. Very little was hidden from blinded eyes. She saw more now than she ever did with sight.
“What’s that, Ruth?” Abram asked. Ruth could hear him rising, shifting into a more comfortable position.
“My eyes. What do they look like? I know they’re blue, but what do they look like in my face?” She laughed at the question. She knew good and well what she looked like from the screams, the panting, the gasps, the shattering of glass, the stumbling, the fumbling of feet, the mere disturbance of children and parents alike. Still, she couldn’t imagine.
“They’re just blue, Ruth. That’s all. If you like blue, you’re fine.”
She laughed. He chuckled.
Her friend rose from the place where she sat quilting and walked to her. She placed her withered hands over hers.
“What do you say, Dessa?”
She didn’t answer for a while, just stood rubbing her hands over Ruth’s. Finally, she cleared her throat. “I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Dessa.” Ruth pushed her hands away. “Don’t start that, hear? I know you’re sorry, but there ain’t no reason for it. I don’t know how many times I’ve got to tell you. Stop all that.” She could hear the whimpering that streaked her nerves. “I’m fine. I just wanted to know what you see.”
Odessa returned her fingers to her face and smiled. Yes. Ruth could feel her smiling down. “Pretty, Ruthie. Pretty.”
Still? She had been beautiful, had been told by many just that. And that beauty had kept Master Tim’s hands on her at all hours. She lost count of the nights, the afternoons, the mornings he came to her. But she had had enough. Had stolen the knife of her enemy from the back pocket of the trousers crumpled next to his drowsy body one night. When his eyes shut, she hid it under the washbasin until the day at the shed, led there by Odessa’s cries. A cry, looked like life would have it, she was cursed to hear every day for the rest of her life.
She wanted to see her eyes for herself, but she was fine settling for the view of her friends. She wasn’t one to fret about injustice, the things that kept many of her people bound in anger. What she couldn’t change she left alone and sought peace in other pleasures. The loom was her love. When she touched it, handled it, the tension she carried was released, but tonight she sought a different pleasure.
“When’s the last time you been outside?” Ruth clasped her hands. “Lydia’s wedding?” But they had not ventured outdoors even then. “Both of you. I’m talking to both of you. Come on, get up!”
She stood up, shifting the bench back with the force of her thighs. “Come on now. We’re going out.”
“But you can’t see.”
“But I can feel. When’s the last time you felt some air on your face, Dessa? Seen the world outside of this here place?”
“Long time. Ain’t had the strength to, not after…” A whimper. “How long it been, Abram?”
“Can’t go back that far.”
“Well, this is it. Tonight we’re going out.”
“How we getting out there?” Abram asked. “Can’t walk worth nothing. Legs so weak…”
“One step at a time. Come on, Dessa, help me up.”
Odessa placed her hand on Ruth’s shoulder, but she slipped forward and fell into the loom. Ruth could feel the frame of it shake, she could feel her lover toppling, the heavy weight of it falling forward. She tried to catch it, hold the side panels up, but she couldn’t balance the load. She heard Odessa scream, the loom tumbling on top of her, knocking her to the floor.
Abram was at her side fast, quick for a sick, old man.
“Ruth! Ruth, are you all right?”
“Abram!” Asking her foolish questions! “I’m trapped. I can’t move from under it.”
“I’m going to get you out. Hold tight.”
To her surprise, she wasn’t panicking, just uncomfortable. At least she could move her arms. If he could just get his wife to be quiet, she would be all right. Odessa couldn’t even speak for the wailing coming out of her mouth.
“I need to get help.”
“No you don’t. You ain’t leaving me here like this. You just said you could barely walk. I might be dead by the time you get back here.”
“Dessa’s with you.”
She didn’t say a word. Didn’t have to.
“All right, I won’t leave you, but I don’t know what to do.”
“You don’t know what to do? Get this thing off me!”
“I don’t think I can.”
“Try, Abram. Try.”
Ruth could feel Abram pushing, prodding, straining, until he let out a big breath over his panting. “I don’t know, Ruth. Without help…I need help.”
He was quiet. Anxiety was building now, masking her ability to detect, discern. “What are you doing? Abram?”
“Asking for help. Look, Ruth, I need to do this a different way.” He scooted behind her, knelt near her head.
Sliding his arms under hers, he pulled her to him. The loom wobbled forward. Ruth could hear it coming down before it hit, crashing against her skull.
She could hear the gasps, the cries, the uttered reverence of the Lord’s name.
“Is she dead?” Odessa asked.
From the pain deep inside her head, she wished she were. It seared like lightning behind her eyes. But when she opened them, she blinked. A fuzzy figure behind the wood moved toward her.
“Abram…Odessa?”
“You’re all right. Thank God.”
Ruth blinked again and again, every shadow becoming light, every fog clearing. She swung at the wood over her, scrambled under its weight, energized, renewed, strengthened by what was happening to her from the inside out. The couple pulled her legs from under, and she wiggled free.
“Abram. Odessa.” She said each name slowly, slowly, taking in the vision of the faces that were becoming more and more clear. She pulled herself up and sat at her friends’ side. It was strange seeing them. Though they had been together for more than twenty years, she had last seen them as young folk. Abram’s thick hair was now gone, but his gift, his strength, was back.
“I can see.”
“What? What did you say?”
“I can see.” Ruth nodded at the gray-haired woman. “I can see you.” She reached out and touched the face of her friend. She saw, as she had often felt, the toil of the years. She saw the pain for the first time and wept. “You can see?” Odessa’s hand gripped hers. Her eyes widened just like the eyes Ruth remembered. “You can see, Ruthie?”
But she couldn’t answer. She nodded. For the first time in twenty years, it was her nodding and crying, staring into the dry, steady eyes of a woman who smiled. Odessa smiled until she laughed, light and sweet.
“She can see, Abram. She can see!”
Abram sat with his head in his hands, his shoulders sunken. He looked up with red-stained eyes.
“It couldn’t be.”
“I can see you, Abram.” Ruth grabbed his wrist. “I can see the hands that healed me.” She touched the scar on the inside of his palm.
“One more,” he whispered. “He gave me one more.”
Ruth didn’t know what he meant, but it didn’t matter. She was seeing for herself. She shook her head. It was too much. The blessing. This wave of grace.
“I was blind…,” Ruth said, but the rest of the words caught in her throat.
EPILOGUE
Every pull of death pushed her closer to life.
With tears, Lydia pulled her way forward through the black night. Scuffed, battered, and soiled in her white gown, she moved through the maze of oak and hickory, through the path of pines, over stubble, patches of worn blue grass, fallen twigs, moss. The beauty of the things that bred around her, these natural wonders she had first come to recognize as a child, she could now see. She knew them like she knew her own flesh. Through the wiry thicket she ran, her breath catching in her chest until it rose to her lips in a soft pant.
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