Her father said, “Treat them as members of the family.” The lawyer’s tone, confirming his understanding.
“He felt that way about all his servants. That they were to be treated with kindness, as members of the family.”
Her father’s eyes swept over Catherine and Caro, who sat unmoving, their black dresses severe against the red velvet of the side chairs in which they sat. “He meant more than that.”
Pereira said, “He meant for you to take care of them.”
“How?”
“To make provision for them and to maintain them.”
Her father’s voice rose, as if he were making a point in the courtroom. “Did my brother leave anything for their maintenance? Did he set aside any money for it?”
“There’s enough in the estate for that, as for the other servants.”
“Did he really want me to free them?”
Both Catherine and Caroline flinched as though they had been slapped.
“In that, he trusted you to follow your conscience,” Pereira said quietly.
Emily swallowed. She glanced at Caroline, a sidelong glance, and saw how she knotted her hands in her lap. She was so fair of skin that her knuckles showed white against the black dress.
To the look of exhaustion and grief on Caroline’s face was added the pallor of shock. Emily dared to let her eyes linger on them both, the widow and the orphan, and felt their grief sing along her nerves and reverberate in her heart.
Her stepmother dismissed the two women, and her father offered Mr. Pereira refreshment, which he declined, saying that the press of business summoned him back to Charleston. As soon as Ambrose closed the door behind him, Susan turned to Lawrence. She wrung her handkerchief in her hands as though she wanted to tear it asunder. She said, “We’ll have to sell them.”
Her father sat up with the straight spine of the military man that his father had wanted him to be. “I can’t,” he answered.
“Why not?”
“James has made his wishes clear.”
Susan’s eyes blazed, anger turning their blue dark and murky. “You never spoke to him when he was alive,” she said. “You never considered him, not for a moment. Why do you let him order you now that he’s in his grave?”
Her father flushed a feverish red. “I won’t defy the provision of his will.”
“Oh, nonsense! No one knows what the will says, except for us.”
“And Pereira,” her father said. He gestured toward the second floor. “And them.”
“Lawyers don’t tell secrets. Not if they want to do business.” She gestured toward the second floor, too, the ragged handkerchief waving in the air. “And no one will listen to anything they say.”
Her father leaned forward, but Susan interrupted his unspoken words. “When we get back to Charleston, we’ll arrange it.”
Her father leaned farther forward. Emily had never seen him look like that, his mouth so tight, his eyes so narrow. “The moment they go onto the auction block, everyone will know. It will no longer be a secret. Or a private shame. It will come into the full light of day. Do you want that?”
Her stepmother stared at her father as though he were a fool. “Not if you sell them in Mississippi or in New Orleans.”
“As though slave dealers are discreet!”
Her stepmother continued to glare at the man she had married. “I won’t have them in my house,” she said. “I won’t stand for that!”
Her father glared back at the woman he had promised to cherish. “We’ll make some arrangement,” he said.
The next morning, as Emily read in the back parlor, her stepmother marched into the room, a bundle of cloth in her arms. “Emily, come with me.”
Emily looked up from her book. “What is it, Mother?”
“I need you to help me.” Two grim lines showed on either side of her stepmother’s mouth.
Emily sighed and closed the book. She followed her stepmother up the stairs to the room that had been Kitty’s. The door was closed, but her mother threw it open without knocking.
Kitty and Caro sat side by side on the bed, still dressed in their mourning finery. They held hands. Both raised their heads at the sight of Susan, but neither spoke.
Susan said, “Get up, both of you.”
Wordlessly, still holding hands, they rose.
Susan said, “You can’t stay in the house. You’ll leave today.”
“Where will we go?” Kitty asked.
“You’ll call me ma’am,” Susan said, her voice cold.
Kitty raised her eyes to Susan’s. “Where will we go, ma’am?”
“There’s a cabin for you on the nigger street.”
Kitty drew in her breath in surprise. “The nigger street?”
“Don’t talk back to me,” Susan snapped.
“Wherever we go, we’ll need some time to gather our things,” Kitty said. “Ma’am.”
Her stepmother’s eyes flashed. “You won’t take anything that’s in the house.” She added, “Not your dresses or your jewelry.”
Kitty let her eyes linger on her new mistress’s face. “James gave those things to me.”
Susan said, “Your master’s gifts don’t belong to you. Nothing in this house belongs to you.”
Caro clutched her mother’s hand. “My books! Let me take my books.”
“Books! Nothing leaves the house. None of it is yours,” Susan repeated.
Emily spoke. “Mother, at least let her have a Bible.”
“Bible! She shouldn’t be able to read a book.” Susan glowered at Emily. “And don’t you think of giving her one!”
Susan had often been curt with her servants, but Emily had never heard her speak so hatefully to a slave. Susan snapped, “You’ll leave those dresses.”
Kitty stared at Susan, but Caro cried out, “Will we go away naked?”
Susan lifted the bundle she carried in her arms. “I’ve brought you clothes.” She undid the bundle and handed it to Kitty. “Take off your clothes and put these on,” she said.
Kitty shook out the bundle. It contained a brown dress in the roughest kind of cotton, a coarse white apron, and a headscarf of the same material. There was a cotton chemise to go under the dress, and it had been washed so many times that it was thin and grayish. The shoes were heavy and stiff, the kind the cobblers called nigger shoes. They were the clothes of slaves who labored in the rice fields.
Susan said, “Put them on.”
Caro said, “I can’t wear this! At least let me put on my muslin.”
Susan grabbed Caro’s free arm. “You’ll do as I say, and you’ll keep your mouth shut.”
Kitty’s eyes blazed. “Don’t touch her,” she said.
“Who are you to order me?”
Kitty’s eyes blazed. “I was James’s wife,” she said.
Susan grabbed Kitty’s wrist. “I’m not as soft as my husband,” she said. “You’ll do as I say, or you’ll feel the lash. I’ll do it myself.” She tightened her grip on Kitty’s wrist until Kitty winced in pain.
“Let her go!” Caro cried. “You’re hurting her!”
Susan released Kitty’s wrist and turned her attention to Caro. “That goes for you, too,” she hissed. “I’ll beat you and I’ll relish it.”
“You will not.”
Susan slapped Caro on the face so hard that her hand left a red mark. Caro touched her face as though no one had ever slapped her before.
“Let her be,” Kitty said.
Susan growled, “Undress, or I’ll give her ten lashes, here and now.”
Kitty stared at Susan. In a soft voice, full of contempt, she said, “You won’t touch my daughter.” Her hands went to the buttons on the front of her mourning dress. As Susan watched, she began to undo them.
“Mama,” Caro said, her voice a plea. “Let me help you.” She reached for Kitty’s buttons.
Susan said, “Shall I slap you again?”
Kit
ty unbuttoned her dress.
In extreme discomfort, Emily said, “Mother, please. Leave them alone. Let them do this in privacy.”
“Why should I? And why should you care if they strip down to the skin? They aren’t ladies. They’re slaves.”
“I won’t stay here to watch,” Emily said thickly.
“Yes, you will. I need your eyes, too. I don’t trust either of them.”
Emily averted her eyes, but she could hear the sounds of undressing, as familiar as her own ritual before bedtime or a bath. The rustle of silk as it was unbuttoned. The swish of a crinoline as the wearer stepped out of it.
Kitty stood before her new mistress in her corset and her underthings.
“Didn’t you hear me?” Susan snapped. “Everything comes off. Everything.”
“My corset?”
“A slave doesn’t need a corset!” Susan shouted.
Kitty stared at Susan as though her new mistress had gone mad. “Whatever do you want with my corset?”
Susan reached again for Caro’s arm. “Ten lashes,” she said.
Kitty’s voice was thick with contempt. She said to Caro, “Unlace me.”
“Mama!” Caro cried.
“Do it.”
When the corset was on the floor at Kitty’s feet, Susan said, “The rest.”
Kitty unbuttoned her chemise and let it fall to the floor. Her face was stony. She unbuttoned her pantalettes, and they, too, slipped to the floor. She stepped out of them and stood naked before Susan.
Susan caught Emily by the hand. “Look at her. Not so proud now, is she?”
Emily caught a glimpse of round bosom, flat belly, gleaming thigh, dark fleece. The flash of Kitty’s beauty brought a stain of shame to her face. It was a concubine’s beauty, the nightmare of every planter’s wife.
Kitty said, “Are you satisfied now, ma’am?”
Susan glanced at the earbobs that sparkled on Kitty’s lobes. “The earbobs, too.”
Kitty’s voice faltered. “They were a gift from James.”
“Which isn’t yours to keep.”
Kitty’s hands rose protectively to her ears. “My memory of him.”
Susan shouted, “Why should I care that you have a memory of the man who kept you? Take them off!”
Caro darted forward. “How dare you!” she cried.
Susan grabbed Caro by the wrist. “I’ll call Ambrose to bring my husband’s belt,” she said. “The one with the heavy buckle.”
A tear trickled down Kitty’s face. She bit her lips as she took off one earbob, then the other.
“Give them to me,” Susan said. The slender hand deposited the sparkling, gleaming jewelry in her stepmother’s upturned palm. Susan’s hand closed over the earbobs. “Get dressed,” she ordered.
Emily turned away again, her ears alert to the scratch of the rough cloth being drawn over the skin and the sound of feet struggling into ill-fitting shoes.
Susan said, “The headscarf, too. Cover your hair. All of it.”
Emily looked up. With unsteady fingers, Kitty wrapped the scarf around her head and tied it as she had tied her mourning scarf.
“Now you,” Susan said, nodding at Caro.
Before Caro could speak, before she could get herself another threat of punishment, Emily said, “Mother, stop it. Go away. I’ll stay with them.”
“What’s gotten into you, Emily?” Susan said.
Emily ground her teeth as she said, “Kindness.”
“If they take anything—”
Emily cried, “Then you can give me ten lashes too!” She shoved her stepmother toward the door.
“Emily,” Susan warned her, as she walked stiff-legged from the room.
Shaking, Emily said to Caro, “I won’t watch. I’ll turn my back.” She felt as though she might faint. “Tell me when you’re ready.” She turned away, staring at the clothes press, listening to Kitty’s voice, a soft murmur, as she helped Caro with her buttons, her crinoline, and her corset laces and as Caro donned the dress and the shoes.
In the same soft voice, Kitty said, “Miss Emily.”
Emily turned. They were unrecognizable, their beauty and dignity gone. With the shapeless dresses, the headscarves that obscured their faces, and the heavy shoes, they looked like the poorest kind of slaves just up from the rice fields, who spoke Gullah so thick that educated people couldn’t understand them. For a wild moment, Emily wondered if their cultivated speech would disappear along with their silk dresses and their ladies’ underthings.
“Emily?” Susan called from the landing. “Are they ready?”
“Yes,” Emily said.
“Send them down. The back stairs!”
Caro’s face was dark with grief and anger. Emily turned away, unable to look or watch them go.
Emily wanted the retreat of her own room, but on the landing, she hesitated. The door to the room that had been Caro’s was ajar. She slipped inside.
Like everything in the house, the room had been neglected. The bed was messily made inside its cage of mosquito netting, and clothes lay heaped on the bedside chair. Beneath the disorder, it was unmistakably a girl’s room. The bed, a four-poster on a small scale, had been painted white, and the coverlet, also white, was embroidered with roses and lilies. The dressing table was covered with girlish trinkets: a rosewood box, a lace collar, and a hairbrush, tortoiseshell like her own. It was finer than her own, inlaid with silver, the initials too ornate to read.
She reached for a discarded dress and shook it out. It smelled of cedar to deter moths, and it was whole and soft in her hands. She stood before the dressing table mirror and held the dress against herself. She leaned forward, startled by the sight of herself in a color other than black.
As she handled the dress, it released another scent, a faint fragrance of lilies of the valley and an even fainter tang of sweat, Caroline’s odor. The smell was too intimate. It was like a touch on the cheek.
Shaken, she thrust the dress away and let it drop back on the chair.
In the corner of the room stood a mahogany writing desk, and on the desk sat a crystal inkwell. On the well-used blotter lay a blank sheet of cream-colored rag paper, the same as Emily used to write her letters. Beside it was a volume bound in leather. A familiar tome. Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, the same book that her uncle had sent on her birthday.
Emily fell into the desk chair. She felt dizzy. This room was exactly like her own in every house that her father owned. It was the room of a planter’s daughter.
Chapter 3: Goods and Chattels
Caro and her mother stood on the threshold of the side door that opened onto the yard. The cabins were just beyond, visible from the house. Kitty held out her arm, as she always did when they descended the curving staircase. “Shall we?” she asked.
Caro couldn’t speak. She nodded.
Kitty stepped into the yard. She grimaced. “My shoes are too small,” she said.
“Mine are too big.” Caro bent down to slip them off. “You take them.”
Kitty slipped off her shoes and rested her hand on Caro’s shoulder as she forced her feet into Caro’s shoes instead. She steadied herself. “Now you,” she said to Caro.
Caro bent down to pull on the shoes. When she rose, Kitty put her arm around Caro’s shoulder to pull her close. “Better?”
Caro couldn’t reply.
The cabin intended for them was easy to find because the door had been left ajar. Her mother gently tugged on her arm. “Let’s see,” she said.
Caro viewed the room through the open door. The dirt floor had been recently swept, and the hearth had been cleaned of ashes. The cabin was empty. Not even a blanket for a makeshift sleeping pallet lay on the floor.
Caro turned at the sound of a quiet step and the rustle of a cotton dress. It was Dulcie, her face sweaty from the kitchen, her apron dirtied. She took in the ragged dresses and the coarse shoes, and her eyes traveled to Kitty’s naked earlobe
s. Her voice full of sorrow, she said, “Oh, Kitty.”
As mistress of the household, Kitty had rarely sought Dulcie in the kitchen. Dulcie had come to her.
It was different now.
As a little girl, Caro had liked to spend time in the kitchen, sitting at the great pine table while Dulcie and her daughters kneaded bread, shucked oysters, peeled shrimp, or plucked chickens. In the winter, when the air was chill, the great hearth gave off a pleasant warmth, and the smell of boiling rice, along with whatever savory dishes would be served with it, filled the room.
Today this kitchen was stifling. When they stepped inside, the rest of the servants awaited the midday meal at the big pine table. Ambrose said, “Sit with us.”
Kitty sat, carefully arranging her skirt. She patted the bench beside her. “Caro, join me.” Kitty sniffed the air. “Peas and rice?” she asked, as though she were still the mistress of the house. “They feed you peas and rice now? James was more generous than that.”
Ambrose gestured toward the house as though Lawrence and Susan might be able to hear. “Talk low,” he said.
Caro thought, He’s schooling us, as the slaves say among themselves. She remembered her father’s notion of schooling, Cicero and Thomas Macaulay, and she had to bend her head and blink hard. She picked up her spoon, but Ambrose said, “Wait until I say grace.”
Caro opened her mouth to protest, but Kitty said, “Caro, it’s only polite.”
As though it matters, Caro thought. But she put down her spoon and let Ambrose linger over a prayer for the food and for the new massa and missus. Hank, Dulcie’s youngest, shifted uncomfortably on the bench beside his mother. “I’m hungry,” he whispered.
“Hush,” Dulcie said.
So the lengthy prayer was an admonition for all of them. When Ambrose finished, he picked up his spoon, but the only person hungry enough to eat was little Hank.
Dulcie said to Kitty, “Ambrose tell us about the will.”
“Really? What did he say?” Kitty shot Ambrose her own look of reprimand.
“That Marse Lawrence inherit everything. The place in Colleton County, the house in Charleston, and this place. And all of us.”
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