The Abolitionist's Daughter

by Diane C. McPhail

  Outside the cabin door, Emily sat with her back against the rough wall, knees pulled up under her crossed arms, her face hidden. Her anguish destroyed all etiquette and Emily reverted to childhood. When she heard footsteps at her side, she did not move.

  “He gone live, Miss Emily, and he ain’t even gone be cripple,” Ginny said.

  Emily did not raise her head.

  “He’s gone have a tale to tell his great-great-grandbabies. Yes’m, he’s gone have some kind of tale,” Ginny said.

  Her steps faded back into the house. After a while, they came again. Without moving, Emily could see the toe of Ginny’s boot.

  “You know, honey child, one of these days you gone have to stop getting froze up over things. It don’t serve nobody. Now, come on, let’s go home.”

  Emily watched the toe of the boot.

  “You ain’t budging?” Ginny said. “Well, all right. I be back.”

  Ginny’s voice echoed from inside the cabin, talking loud, assuring Lucian and Samantha that the chamomile would help, especially with a slug or two of the brandy she had brought from the house; that she would be close by in the night if needed; that she would be there again at first light. The women’s voices sank into a murmur, then rose.

  “You get that woman off my porch,” Samantha said. “She think she got the only crop of suffering ’round here?”

  An inaudible response.

  “She got grief, do she?” Samantha’s deep voice rose over the sounds of the night. “Well, ain’t I got grief? Ain’t we all got grief? We just ain’t got room for it ’round here. We got slave grief. And all her fine freedom papers don’t make that go away. Now get that woman out of here.”

  The toe of the boot reappeared. It touched Emily’s, then tapped it, three times, hard. Emily’s head snapped up.

  “You will show me some respect!”

  “I believe that’s what I’m doing.” Ginny half squatted, one hand propped on her knee. “You gone keep wearing them petticoats?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Them tore up petticoats? You gone keep on wearing them? Because if you ain’t, I’m gone be needing the rest for fresh bandages, and I’d just as soon they be clean next time.”

  Emily stared at Ginny’s pink palms, the dried bloodstains on her cuff.

  “No. I mean, yes. No, I won’t use them. And yes, of course you can have them.”

  “Then, you better stand on up here and let me take you to the house so I can get them washed and get some supper in you.”

  “I don’t want any supper.”

  “All right. I’ll fix you some buttermilk and cornbread. They’s some left over from dinner. It ain’t much, but still might be more’n you’ll eat. Now let’s you and me go.”

  Ginny extended her hand and Emily took it. She braced herself against the wall to rise, standing immobile as the sharp needles of blood returned to her legs.

  “You got tomorrow, honey,” Ginny said. “And a good heap of days after that, I expect. He ain’t going nowhere soon.”

  The sleepless night passed and the first edge of dawn pushed gray through the interweaving of pecan and oak along the path through the quarter. Grateful for the light, Emily made her way to Benjamin and Samantha’s cabin. The slaves emerging in the morning gloom nodded and gave her space. Emily nodded, but did not raise her eyes. Samantha opened the door to Emily’s knock and turned a silent back. Approaching the bed, Emily waited. The cover of quilted scraps was neatly tidied and folded back. Benjamin opened his eyes and tilted his head, pushing up on his elbows. Raising her hand, Emily shook her head. Benjamin lay back, his eyes closed. Emily waited.

  “Forgive me, Benjamin,” she said at last. “I am terribly sorry.”

  “Yes’m. I knowed that from the start.” He did not open his eyes until she had gone.

  * * *

  In the shade of the side porch Ginny, churning the morning’s butter, alternately hummed and regaled Rosa Claire with bits of folklore. The girl was entranced. Emily appeared at the door and motioned for Rosa Claire to come and tidy up. Ginny smiled down at her and nodded. “You gone hear the rest. Don’t you bother. Never knew the end of a story to run off by itself,” she said. “Go mind your mama now.” Rosa Claire hugged Ginny’s arm before following her mother into the house.

  Samantha sauntered across the yard, fanning herself with an old palmetto fan.

  “Hot enough?” she said. “Where’s that devil ax woman?”

  “Always hot enough. She’s inside. And you best watch your mouth,” Ginny said. “Could get a lot hotter.”

  Samantha frowned and fanned. “I hear men’s dying out on the march, falling out from the heat. Never heard of no slaves in the field dying from the heat. Them white men ain’t got stamina.”

  “You got news or opinions, Samantha? Here, take this dasher. I got something in the house to finish.”

  “Hmhh.” Samantha started down the steps, but changed her mind and took up the churning.

  Inside Rosa Claire yelped as Emily pulled at a tangle in her hair. Ginny took the brush from her and jerked her head for Emily to find something else that needed doing. While she wound new ribbons into the blond curls, Ginny finished the tale she had begun about a messenger raven who taught people how to fly. She patted Rosa Claire’s shoulder and sent her out to play, with instructions not to get herself dirty.

  In the parlor, she found Emily stirring up dust with the feather duster. “Now what you doing?” she said.

  “I am cleaning my own parlor, Ginny. What does it appear I am doing?”

  “Truth? Looks like you just shifting dust from one place to another.”

  “Well, it just comes right back in, anyway. In this heat with the windows open. Is this how it is, Ginny? Nothing ever really done?”

  “That’s it, Miss Emily. Nothing is ever done. Not in this life.”

  Emily flicked the duster over the tops of the window frames. A cascade of dust floated in the air, accentuating the rays of morning sunlight through the open window.

  “Hand me that thing,” Ginny said, as she coughed and reached for the duster. “Come on now, Miss Emily, hand it to me.”

  “Stop it, Ginny.” Emily yanked the duster behind her.

  “Stop trying to get that thing from you before you stir up a dust storm?”

  “No.” Emily gazed up into Ginny’s face. “Stop calling me Miss Emily.”

  Ginny shook her head.

  “I mean it, Ginny. You are a free woman and so am I. You have been the closest person to me in my life, more than my mother. So this is my last command to you. You will call me Emily.”

  Ginny turned sideways and stared out the window. She pulled the curtain back, fingered the lace, and cleared her throat.

  “All right, Emily. There, I done it. And you heard it. You remember now you heard it, because you ain’t never gone hear it again.” Ginny dropped the curtain edge and faced Emily. “Now you gone hear the rest of what I got to say. You don’t know what you talking about. You got these grand ideas—and I’m not saying they ain’t good. Or they ain’t right. But you don’t know any more about life than you know about this dust you stirring up in here. You go on like that and you gone stir up something you can’t settle like this dust. You gone get me killed, or worse. You gone get me raped or burned and then killed.” Ginny snatched the duster from Emily’s hand.

  “You think ending slavery gone put things right? You forget we living amongst them that’s fighting to the gates of hell and right on in to keep us down? They’s gone be some flesh to pay for this war, however it come out. And most of it gone be black. We gone be to blame whoever win this thing. You think because Mr. Lincoln say we free now, everything gone be like it ought. Well, it ain’t. Just like life, it ain’t never gone be done with till it’s done. And ain’t neither one of us gone live to see it, Miss Emily.” Ginny waved the duster in the air and left the room.

  CHAPTER 31

  “Miss Emily. Wake up.” Ginny shook her, then sh
ook her again. Emily opened her eyes, started up from the sofa, her focus on Ginny’s face coming slowly. “You all right, honey. Just you wake up now.”

  Emily sat, her hands against her temples, shaking her head.

  “What you dreaming, child? You moaning like somebody dead. I can’t hardly wake you up.”

  “Oh, Ginny.” Emily lay back against the sofa, her arms limp at her sides. “I—yes, it felt like death. It was, Ginny. It was death.”

  Emily stared at Ginny, laid her head against her bony shoulder.

  “I was wading in the swamp, following a snake like a brilliant underwater rainbow. The water got all stinking and foul. And there was a bird, like a fragile peacock made of lace and filigree, dying in the water. Everywhere I touched, it fell apart. I loved it so, Ginny. But it was dying and decaying, making the water deadly. And I saw a young blue heron there behind it, so dull, but vulnerable and alive, and I knew it would die in this putrid water. When I touched it, it was soft, and I clung to it, staring at the color of the dying bird I could not save. And though I loved it so deeply, I had to let it die to save that young blue heron. It was such a grief, Ginny, like the grief—” She stopped, choking on her breath.

  Ginny stroked her hair and hummed some tune that sunk into Emily with familiar comfort. They sat like that, the mistress and her servant, the servant with her sister-child.

  “Miss Emily, I got something to say. You know the Bible talking about Eden, how Eve and Adam sinned, eating that apple or whatever it was, and God run them out and set that angel with the fiery sword to punish them?”

  Emily nodded against Ginny’s shoulder.

  “You know what that fruit really was? It was the Truth. The knowledge of good and evil. Those two just got a wild longing for truth.” Ginny shifted her weight. “Now I got another story for you. About yourself. You been trying all your life to get back into Eden. You think that’s what life’s supposed to be about, finding Paradise again. But it ain’t. You been spending your whole life headed the wrong direction, looking over your shoulder wishful for that garden, like Lot’s wife looking back. Mercy you ain’t turned to a pillar of salt. Now, you got to look the other way, look toward life the way it is. And life the way it is may not be so fine, but it’s life. God didn’t put that angel with the flaming sword at the gate for punishment. No, God put that angel there for protection. That’s a strange grace, I know. But God knowed it was way too dangerous for us to go around pretending life could ever be Eden in a world so broken as this one.”

  CHAPTER 32

  In the early morning, Lucian hitched Old Joy to run a section harrow on the north field. He also hitched a newly acquired, however ancient, mule to the plow. Emily caressed the gray muzzle of the mule, Remnant, so named because he had been the last creature sold when her neighbor gave up trying to survive the war and the weather without her man, packed up her brood of children, and left for Alabama. Emily did not mind that the mule was old, and he did not seem to mind his new name. She tugged at his bridle and set her hand to the plow. This would be her first field on her own. She did not stop until she had turned a small plot for sweet corn.

  At the edge of the field, she surveyed the tantalizing furrows, like a beginner’s quilt with an awkward pattern. She had done it. A plot of her own. She and Remnant, with Benjamin’s spotty dog trotting at her heels, lying down panting at the end of each row while she turned the mule and the plow. Now, he lay at her feet, eyeing her, resting and waiting. Her legs trembled, but she dared not sit to rest. A sudden desire to drop seed corn into the furrows caught hold of her. The ground was broken. But far from ready to plant.

  The field was of insignificant size, a learning field. From the turn row, Benjamin limped out and surveyed her work. Emily was intensely aware of his whitening beard, his frayed shirt, and her deep regret.

  “Well, I reckon now this ground is broke, you wanting to plant something,” he said.

  “How do you know that?” she said, tilting her head toward him.

  “Oh, been there myself. Remember the first field I plowed by myself. It was even crookeder than yours.”

  Emily smiled. “How old were you?”

  “Now that I don’t rightly remember. Real young. Skinny, little old thing. But I seen the dirt open under that plow and I wanted me nothing but some seed corn to drop in.” Benjamin wiped his eyes with a handkerchief. “Yes’m. Didn’t give a hoot that field wasn’t near ready yet. No turning plow, no section harrow, nothing. Just wanted to see the corn drop in that open ground.” Benjamin chuckled, deep and throaty.

  “And did you?” Emily laughed with him, stretching her aching arms and back.

  “Well, my Uncle Dothan—he wasn’t my uncle, but that’s what us kids called him. We didn’t have no daddy, you see. Well, we did, but he got sold, somewhere off down the river we heard, but we never did really know.”

  Emily studied the crooked furrows, the image of her father flooding her. Benjamin cleared his throat. He bent awkwardly, favoring the injured leg, and picked up a clod of dark earth, working it with his fingers, sifting it down into the furrow below. Watching his hand, Emily thought how like the earth he was, as if he had sprung from it whole, warm and dark.

  “Well, anyhow, Uncle Dothan come hunting me ’round dinnertime. I was that took up with my field, I didn’t even hear the dinner bell. He’s real quiet a while, just looking at me and my work. I hadn’t never done any work you could look at and see what you had done, right in front of your eyes. After a spell, he say, ‘Come on, boy, ain’t you hungry after all that work?’ But I couldn’t stop looking. Finally he say, ‘You wanting something to go in that dirt, ain’t you, boy?’ and I nodded.”

  Benjamin scrutinized Emily’s profile.

  “So Uncle Dothan, he say, ‘Now, boy, they ain’t no way from here to there, except from here to there. You go shortcutting and your work gone be lost. You and your corn, too. Ground ain’t ready yet. Got three, four more passes to go. But I know what you wanting. You wanting life to grow. Here, now, go put this in there somewhere.’ And he reach in his pocket and put something in my hand I can’t see. Then he say, ‘Get on now, boy, before I starve.’ ”

  Benjamin reached in his pocket and held his hand out to Emily. She opened her palm. Both of them laughed, Benjamin’s broad face rounding out.

  “Now, you go put that somewhere in that broke-up ground, Miss Emily. Then you best come eat,” he said.

  In Emily’s palm lay a single hard kernel of corn. For a full five minutes, she stood with her fingers closed around Benjamin’s offering. With her eye on the center of the field, she followed the crooks and turns of the rows and slipped the hard, slight seed into the earth.

  * * *

  “Ah, child, now that’s an onion, sweet and juicy. Makes your Ginny want to cry. You want a slice of that onion. You might like it, baby. It only takes tasting. Looky here.” Ginny took the onion, put it to her lips, and bit it like an apple.

  Rosa Claire pushed back, shaking her head, ready to cry.

  “Don’t want none, do you, honey child? Sure make them butter beans tasty. Ain’t you gone eat nothing? How about some cornbread, baby? With fresh butter? And some pot liquor? You ain’t got to taste no old onion.”

  Rosa Claire scooted closer, her chin resting on the table edge, watching.

  “How ’bout some sweet milk with your cornbread, baby?”

  Perched on a thick dictionary, the little girl raised her head and nodded, reaching for the handle of her dented silver cup.

  A noise at the back door caught Ginny’s attention. Adeline scraped her feet on the step, a basket on her arm loaded with early peas, carrots, beets, and radishes. There was no telling when she might appear and disappear just as quickly. Once she had brought a rag doll small enough to fit into Rosa Claire’s pocket. Ginny uncoiled her long, lean body and bolted toward the door.

  “Don’t be perturbed, Ginny,” Adeline said. “I won’t be staying and I won’t even ask if Emily is at home. I assume sh
e’s not around.” She stepped inside. “Here, take these. Once they’re fixed and on the table, they will taste like she might have planted them herself.”

  “Well, Miss Adeline, she out working the field. She don’t never rest.”

  “Seems that is what women all over are learning to do for themselves these days, Ginny.”

  The dictionary tumbled to the floor as Rosa Claire clambered from her seat and tugged at the corner of Adeline’s basket. Adeline handed the basket to Ginny and stooped level with the child. She fingered Rosa Claire’s blond curls, winding an unruly lock around her finger. Dancing on tiptoe, Rosa Claire threw her arms around Adeline’s neck.

  “Grammy—” Her voice was hardly a murmur.

  “Are you being a good girl for Ginny? Eating your dinner?” Adeline saw the untouched food.

  “She ain’t too hungry today, Miss Adeline. We about to have us some cornbread and sweet milk, though.” Ginny smiled and nodded at the child for affirmation. “You hungry, Miss Adeline? I fix you a plate.”

  “No, Ginny, thank you, though. This will have to do me for now. It’s not worth the risk for me to want too much.” She touched the top of Rosa Claire’s hand and waved. “Let Grammy go. I’ll see you again soon.”

  Rosa Claire blew a kiss from her wrist, rather than her fingertips.

  “Bye-bye, Grammy. I see you, too.”

  Ginny resettled the child back on the dictionary and pushed aside the plate of food. In an empty saucer, she broke up the buttered cornbread, spooned pot liquor over it, and handed the child a small silver spoon. Rosa Claire spilt the juices on the table and on her bib, but she ate.

  Ginny sat beside her for a moment, her eyes out the window. Then, putting her hands on her knees for leverage, she rose and emptied the fresh vegetables into larger baskets on the porch, tucking Adeline’s basket under a corner table. Stepping back, she assessed its visibility. The table wobbled as she held its edge. Another chore to put on Nathan’s list. Ginny tucked the basket farther back with her toe. When she straightened, Rosa Claire was finishing her milk, head tilted back to catch the last drop from the cup.