Charleston's Daughter

by Sabra Waldfogel

  “How is your mother?”

  Her distress was too much for her to mask.

  Emily asked, “Is she ill?”

  “No, Miss Emily. Not ill. But not right, either.”

  Emily recalled the weeks after Robert’s death, when all food tasted like sand, the days were the weight of iron, and the nights were a torment of waking every hour in a sweat to remember that he was gone and she was still here. She said softly, “She grieves for your father.”

  “Oh yes,” Caro said, and she blinked, pretending that the sun bothered her eyes.

  “Can I help?” Emily asked.

  Caro blinked again. “She wears your shawl,” she said.

  “And the portrait?”

  “She cherishes it.”

  “The other gift?”

  Caro’s eyes widened in surprise.

  Emily thought, I’ve transgressed, even to mention it here.

  But Caro said, very softly, “I cherish it.”

  Sophy called to Caro. “What are you whispering about with Miss Emily?”

  Sophy observed, too, Emily realized. And saw closely. She pulled the sketchbook from her pocket. “Sophy, would you oblige me?”

  “How, Miss Emily?”

  “Would you let me sketch you?”

  Sophy glanced at the sketchbook and the pencil. “Take my portrait?”

  “Just a quick sketch.”

  “All right. What you want me to do?”

  “Whatever you were doing before I interrupted you.”

  “Singing out my wares?”

  “Yes.”

  She sketched—it was rough and quick—and showed it to Sophy. Sophy said, “Caro, look.” She laughed. “It look just like me!”

  Emily was pleased. She had captured Sophy’s energy and her dignity and had even caught the intrepid look in her eye. Emily tore the page from the sketchbook. “Keep it, Sophy,” she said.

  “Thank you, Miss Emily.” She gathered up her empty basket and put the sketch into it. “Caro, we go home,” she said, her voice a warning.

  Emily left the market trembling, as though she had done wrong.

  At home, she sat at her desk, thinking of Mr. Aiken’s words, that a writer’s life—an observer’s life, as he had offered to her—was a lonely one. The other girls of her acquaintance were like Camilla Aiken, intent on marriage and disdainful of books. Now she had met a kindred spirit. And she was her father’s slave, one he disliked so much that he had banished her from his sight.

  It wasn’t unusual to feel affection for a slave. Emily liked her maid, Lydia, whose voice was soft and whose hands were gentle with her laces and her hair. She liked their cook, Dulcie, who fussed over her in the kitchen and always offered her a biscuit or a cookie to eat. She liked her father’s manservant, Ambrose, whose sense of decorum made him protective of her. But this was different. It went beneath the surface of the neat gray dress and the servant’s mask, the guise of a slave. It flew to the heart, which yearned for books, and to the soul, which hungered to speak of them.

  You shouldn’t even be able to read, her stepmother had said to Caro.

  She thought of Caro’s eyes, so dark at the thought of her mother’s grief, so bright with pleasure as she held a book in her hands.

  Yes, she thought.

  Emily left for Tradd Street wrapped in a shawl against the chill of late fall, a basket over her arm as a ruse. Her sketchbook, hidden deep in her pocket, bumped against her leg as she walked. She had lied to her stepmother about where she was going. She had lied to Ambrose, too. Her stepmother had believed her. Ambrose had pretended to.

  She shivered as she stood at the gate, waiting for Sophy. She told herself, I don’t have to do this. She could perform another act of charity. She could see Catherine and inquire after her health. She could make another sketch of Sophy.

  What did she yearn for? How much did she yearn for it?

  Her heart pounded as Sophy opened the gate to her. “You here for Caroline, I reckon,” she said, as though she knew. “You go on, she in the kitchen.” She smiled. “I go out. You two can whisper all you like.”

  Caro sat alone in the kitchen, stringing beans for midday dinner. She looked up, set down the beans, and rose. “Miss Emily? Do you want some coffee?”

  Too nervous to accept, Emily shook her head. She sat and so did Caro.

  Caro said, “My mother is resting, but I can bring her to see you.”

  Emily found her voice. “No, I came to talk to you.”

  Caro sat very still. She asked, “What is it, Miss Emily?”

  Was she afraid? Emily thought of her stepmother’s cruelty and her father’s threats. She had to force her words out. She stammered, “The book. The Melville book.”

  Caroline’s eyes opened wide. “The book?”

  “Yes. I wanted,” she stammered. “I wanted to know if you’d finished it.”

  “The book?”

  “I wanted to ask what you thought of it.”

  Relief flooded Caro’s face. “Miss Emily, it’s not right to ask me. You must have friends. Others you can talk to about what you read.”

  Emily hadn’t realized how tightly she had knotted her hands. She said, “Not one like you.”

  Caro reflected. “What do you want from me, Miss Emily?”

  Emily thought of Joshua Aiken urging her to overthrow the tyranny of Madame Devereaux, who had taught her to keep her opinions to herself. She took a deep breath. “To tell me what you really thought of Mr. Melville’s book.”

  She had spoken as though they were friends. But friendship didn’t grow in slavery’s soil. It was a fragile seedling nurtured by kindness. She thought of Lydia’s gentleness, Dulcie’s solicitude, and Ambrose’s concern—all the result of command.

  Caro deliberated. And when she spoke, she spoke as the girl whose father had taught her Latin and Greek. “Such a fierce book,” she said. “Full of so much longing.”

  “Longing?”

  Caro talked to her, but she addressed something beyond her as well. “Captain Ahab. A man full of desire. Maddened by it. In pursuit of something he can never capture, and that destroys him.”

  “There’s great danger in that kind of hunger, I think,” Emily said, feeling it roil within her.

  “Oh yes. But a great inspiration, too.”

  What did Caro long for? Emily ached to ask. But she did not. She said, “It was an unsettling book, as well as a difficult one.”

  “Books don’t always cheer us,” Caro said.

  “That’s true,” Emily said. “Although I’m gladder when they do.”

  “My father always said that books help us reflect on ourselves and understand ourselves better. Sometimes there’s great pain in reflection. And in understanding.”

  Why did Emily think again of Joshua Aiken, who knew that she wrote because her soul was so hungry? “You would rather understand,” she said to Caro. “And feel the pain along with it.”

  “Yes, I would,” Caro said.

  She was a slave, but she had been raised as a planter’s daughter. Their connection was fraught with danger. And with inspiration. Emily asked, “Is there anything else you would like to read?”

  Caro smiled. It transformed her face. She said, “Whatever you bring to me, I’ll read it with pleasure.”

  Once Emily had found the subject for her sketch, she struggled with it. She wrote out her thousand words over and over, wanting them to speak clearly to the Yankee strangers who knew nothing of Charleston. She was writing a tale of adventure for the ladies of the North, and if she twined philosophy around it, she wanted it to be light enough for them to digest easily.

  She still kept Robert’s portrait on her desk, but as she wrote, she recalled the face of Joshua Aiken, his eyes lit with humor, his mouth mobile in the midst of that dark, bristling beard, his South Carolina voice made brisk by tenure in the North. And as she struggled with the words, crossed them out, and wrote again, she
thought of Caro saying, Whatever you bring to me, I’ll read it with pleasure.

  On a dull winter day, when the light had failed so much that she would need a candle to write any more, she put down her pen and shook out the cramp in her hand. She had made a fair copy, good enough for someone to read. She worried again about the words she had written because she was still afraid to send them to Mr. Aiken. He had encouraged her, but he had a cold, businesslike eye for literature, too. He would want more than something he could praise. He would want something he could sell.

  She heard a voice, torn between a slave’s decorum and the fierce desire of an agile mind to talk about what it treasured. It’s not right…surely you have a friend you could show it to.

  She murmured, “Not like you.”

  She tucked her thousand words, her three sheets of paper, into her sketchbook and put everything into her pocket. She slipped from the house, avoiding the eyes and the questions of her servants and her stepmother.

  She found Caroline and Sophy in the yard, at work at the washtub. She said, “I’m sorry to interrupt you.”

  Caroline straightened up and put her hand to her back. “I’m happy to be interrupted,” she said.

  “Sophy, may I purloin Caroline from you for a moment?”

  Sophy looked darkly at Emily. “Is that a big word that mean take her away from her work?”

  “Just for a moment.”

  They settled in the kitchen, where the hearth gave off a warmth that made sweat prickle along her spine.

  Caro said, “What is it, Miss Emily?”

  This time she didn’t stammer. “I’ve brought you something new to read.”

  Caroline’s eyes gleamed. “Another book?”

  “It’s something I wrote.” She began to stammer again as she explained about meeting Mr. Aiken and about his request for a piece of writing for Hearth and Home.

  Caroline listened intently. When Emily had finished, she said, “You’re asking me to read something you’ve written. And to tell you what I think of it.”

  “Yes,” Emily said.

  “Is that a command, Miss Emily?”

  “No,” Emily said softly. “Will you try?”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  Caro read it slowly, taking care, and the time she spent was the longest half hour that Emily had ever suffered. When she looked up, Emily felt short of breath. She asked, “What do you think?”

  There was a long, terrible silence, and Emily broke it with a rush of words. “Don’t fox me. Don’t flatter me, either.”

  Caro put the manuscript on the table, laying her hand on it as though it were a pet. She smiled. She said, “I like it very much, Miss Emily.”

  Emily had not realized that she was shaking. “You do?”

  “Yes. It’s clever. It’s subtle. You write about our eagles, the ugly birds we’re so proud of, but you speak of us. The little drawings—are those yours?”

  “Don’t you remember that I drew Sophy at the market?”

  “Yes, I do. You drew the turkey vultures at Sophy’s feet!”

  Emily breathed out in relief. “Now I can only hope that Mr. Aiken will like it, too.”

  “I trust that he will,” Caro replied.

  “You read so keenly. You understand.”

  Caro laid her hands flat on the table. Her fingers were shriveled with being in the wash’s hot water, but the fingers were long and tapered, shaped to hold a pen. “As my father taught me,” she said, her voice very low.

  Dulcie’s little boy ran to the post office to retrieve the day’s letters, but Ambrose brought them to Susan on a silver tray as she and Emily sat in the back parlor. Susan flipped through them, taking the letters addressed to herself. She picked up an envelope and looked at it in puzzlement. “Emily, what is this? Why is a Mr. Aiken of Hearth and Home writing to you?”

  Emily’s heart pounded so hard that she had to cough. She said brightly, “Oh, Mr. Aiken! I met him when I was in Sumter County. He’s a cousin to Jane and Camilla. He works for a ladies’ magazine up North. I believe he wants me to take out a subscription.”

  Susan turned the envelope over. “That’s quite rude of him,” she said. “Soliciting you for his business because you’re a friend to the Aikens. We take Godey’s, and we certainly don’t want it. Write to him and tell him so.”

  Emily held out her hand. “Give me the envelope so I have the address, and I will.”

  She put the envelope in her pocket and restrained the impulse to bolt up the stairs to the privacy of her room. She waited until her stepmother had sifted through all the letters and complained about how many she would need to reply to, then excused herself.

  She sat heavily in her desk chair—it was Caro’s old chair, a pretty thing made of mahogany and too fragile for strong emotion—and opened the envelope with clumsy, trembling fingers.

  “My Dear Miss Jarvie,” she read, and the words swam before her eyes. What if he had hated the piece? What if he never wanted to hear from her again?

  I was delighted to receive your thousand words. The story of the eagles of Charleston strikes just the right exotic note for our readers. And your touch of satire will reach the cleverest among them. I didn’t know that you could draw. The drawings are delightful, too.

  We usually pay two dollars for a thousand words, but because of the drawings, I have increased your payment to three dollars. I have enclosed a bank draft for that amount.

  I understand how southern families feel about a daughter’s name in print and have taken the liberty of giving you a nom de plume. In our pages, you will be “A Southern Voice.” I hope that will be agreeable to you.

  I am even more delighted to tell you that I would be glad to publish your sketches regularly. We can accommodate one a month, and if all goes well, even more.

  I close with the most cordial of regards—

  Mr. Joshua Aiken, Editor

  She reread the letter. She held up the bank drafts. She shook her head in wonderment and secreted everything in her pocket.

  As soon as she could slip past her stepmother and servants, she had someone to see.

  She found Caro in the kitchen, stirring a pot of rice. Sophy, who escorted her from the gate, said to her, “You got that purloining look on your face, Miss Emily. Go on, take her away from her work. You can go upstairs to talk. Warmer than the yard.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “Follow me,” Caro said, putting down the spoon. She led her up the staircase, which was more like a ladder, to the second floor. She was uneasy on it. Caro grasped her hand. “Careful,” she said. “I had to get used to it, too.”

  “Where are you taking me?”

  Caro led her into the narrow hall and pushed open the first door they came to. “It was a servant’s room when the house was open,” she said. The room was meagerly furnished, with a little rope bed bare of blanket or sheet and a chair. The walls had been painted white, but they were now cracked and peeling.

  “Does anyone stay here now?” Emily asked.

  “No. But it’s quiet. Take the chair, Miss Emily, it’s a nicer place to sit than the bed.”

  As Emily sat, Caro said, “Have you brought me something new to read?”

  “I have,” she said. She pulled the letter from her pocket. “Tell me I’m not dreaming.”

  She waited as Caro read the letter, swiftly, since the letter was so much shorter than the sketch had been. “Not a dream at all,” she said, smiling. “Not when there’s a bank draft with it.”

  “I never received a bank draft before. What shall I do with it?”

  “I never had a bank draft, either,” Caro said.

  For a moment, Emily saw the pampered daughter of a rich planter who never touched a coin or worried about money.

  “But if you went to a lawyer, I’m sure he could help you. Like Mr. Pereira.”

  Emily frowned. “He handles some of my father’s affairs,” she said. “I don’t want
my father to know that I’m writing or that I’m being paid for it.”

  “Tell Mr. Pereira so. He’s very discreet. He always was with my father’s affairs.” Caro handed her the letter.

  Emily said, “My stepmother received the letter, and it would have been the worse for me if she’d opened it.”

  “She shouldn’t know that you write, either.”

  “She would hate it, even more than my father,” Emily said.

  “Have the letters sent to me,” Caro said.

  “To you?”

  “I go to the post office to retrieve the mail, and no one would think anything of it. Hah!” she said. “They can think I’m retrieving letters for Miss Mary.”

  “Why would you do that?” Emily asked.

  “To help you,” she said, and Emily heard the rest. “To spite them.”

  Emily said, “Is it right, Caroline? To bring you into an intrigue?”

  “Who would suspect me of an intrigue?” she asked, folding her hands and dropping her eyes to the floor.

  She hides in plain sight, Emily thought. The lady or the slave, depending on who looks or who does not. “Don’t you open the letters,” Emily said. But it was not quite the tease she intended.

  Caro looked up. “I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said, a tease to match Emily’s intention. “How should I let you know that I have a letter for you?”

  Whenever she went out, Emily looked for subjects. She took her sketchbook, which let her see more keenly. It gave her an occupation and a determination on the street. It made her brisk, like the far-off citizens of Cincinnati who surrounded Mr. Aiken himself.

  She halted on the sidewalk before the house on King Street, the splendid house that Uncle James had willed to them. The Jarvies had yet to move, since the Herriot relations he had rented to were loath to leave. Her stepmother was impatient, but her father said, “I won’t press them. I need their goodwill.” He had turned his thoughts to running for the Assembly again. He would need their support.

  A heavy wrought iron fence fronted the house. She had walked past this house many times, but today she saw the twisted iron spikes, sharp enough to wound anyone who tried to surmount them, that fortified the fence.