Charleston's Daughter

by Sabra Waldfogel

  The Guardsman behind the desk spoke with scorn. “What is your business here?”

  Emily stepped forward and rested her gloved hands on the wood of the counter, where so many others had rested their hands and elbows. She thought, My father is a wealthy man, a planter. The Southern Voice found the sugar to hide the poison of her anger. “Oh, sir,” she said to the Guardsman. “There’s a slave of ours here. But it’s all a misunderstanding. The girl is my father’s servant.”

  “Where is your father? Why isn’t he here?”

  “He’s engaged in attending the political convention. I’ve come with Mr. Pereira, who is his lawyer. I believe we can straighten this matter out.” She was shaking.

  “Well, hurry it up,” the Guardsman said.

  Tell a tale, she thought. “Sir, the girl just came up to Charleston from Colleton County, and we haven’t bought her a badge yet. I’m so sorry, sir. We’ll make it right.” She smiled, holding out the envelope clenched in her fist. She said, “For your trouble, sir.”

  He pocketed the money. He said, “We’ll bring her out. What’s her name?”

  “Caroline. Caro.”

  “All right.” He stared at her, then at Pereira. “And make sure she keeps it about her when she walks the streets.”

  “Sir? Will you give us the badge today?”

  He stared at her again. “We have them made up,” he said. “We’ll send it out when it’s ready.”

  When Caro emerged into the waiting room, Emily fought off the desire to embrace her and reached for her hand instead. Caro shook her head.

  Pereira cleared his throat, and all three of them left the waiting room to leave through the stone arch.

  Emily said, “I’m so angry I can’t contain myself.”

  “You?” Caro said. Her face was an ashen mask. “Why would any of this anger you?”

  “Oh, Caro!”

  Caro said, very low, “Think of me.” She turned away, her walk swift and angry.

  Two weeks later, Emily sat with Susan in the back parlor. It was warm for May. Usually, by this time of year, they were well into their preparations for their visit to the pines. This year, her father insisted on staying in Charleston over the summer, telling them both that he would need to speak to voters at every frolic and every gathering until the election in November. Her stepmother grumbled. Her father said, “I thought you were deep in your business of refurbishing the house.”

  “Oh, I am,” she said.

  “Well, don’t stint on it,” he said.

  “Oh, I won’t.”

  Now Emily agreed as Susan asked her if the back parlor would look better with a new settee. She smoothed her skirt and ached for the privacy of her room, where she could write for Hearth and Home at her desk. Ambrose tapped on the door. He bore a silver tray. “The morning’s mail, ma’am,” he said, as he set the tray on the side table.

  Susan nodded without looking up, and Ambrose backed from the room.

  Susan opened the mail, piece by piece, using the letter opener with the efficiency that a soldier brought to a sword. She smiled as she opened a small, creamy envelope, the sign of an invitation. At the sight of the heavy envelope made of coarse paper, she looked puzzled. “The city of Charleston? What do they want? Whatever could this be, Emily?”

  “Isn’t it addressed to Papa?”

  “Well, it is, but it can’t be anything shameful, could it?” She slit open the envelope and the contents fell into her lap. She picked up the metal lozenge and let it rest in her palm. She laughed. “Oh, he meant it to be a surprise,” she said happily. “Another servant! What a peculiar man he is. Trying to make me happy in secret.” She rose. “I can’t wait to thank him!”

  Emily trailed after her into the study.

  Her father sat at his desk, the ledger before him, his forehead furrowed.

  “Is it the estate again?” Susan asked, her tone gentle.

  He put down his pen and sighed. “What else?”

  “More trouble?”

  “Always. Why have you interrupted me, my dear?”

  Susan held up the badge. “To thank you! Oh, Lawrence, another servant, just as I wished! When are you going to the Slave Mart? I’ll go with you.”

  “Susan, whatever is this about?”

  “Isn’t that why you bought another badge? To please me?”

  Now he frowned. “I renewed the old ones at the end of last year,” he said. “I never bought another one.”

  Susan’s face fell.

  Her father said, “It must be a mistake. I can’t imagine how it happened.”

  Trembling, Emily said, “I bought it.”

  “You!” her father exclaimed.

  “When you were at the convention. The Guard picked up Caro and wanted to arrest her for not having a badge. Mr. Pereira and I straightened the matter out. I paid for a badge for her.”

  Her father’s gaze was so intense that it unsettled her. A courtroom gaze. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “Papa, Mr. Pereira told me that the city would fine us twenty dollars for a slave without a badge. I hoped to spare you the expense.”

  “Why didn’t he ask me about it?”

  Emily flushed. “And leave Caro in the Work House? It hardly seems right, Papa.”

  Her father drew in a sharp breath. “Why was she running free in the streets of Charleston? No wonder she was arrested.”

  “Papa, she needs to walk from Tradd Street to King Street to deliver the laundry that you’ve commissioned her to wash. That’s hardly ‘running free.’”

  Her father said, “I’m tired of it. She’s our servant, and she should be under our control.” His gaze rested on Susan. “You’ll have your wish, my dear. We’ll bring her into the house, where we can govern her with a firm hand.” He nodded at Emily.

  “But I don’t want her,” Susan said. “I won’t have her in the house!”

  Her father looked pleased, as though he had resolved a thorny difficulty. “Haven’t you always told me that you can command any servant, my dear? Here’s your chance. She’ll be yours to command.”

  Emily waited until she was calm enough to reason with her father. She slipped into the study at the end of the day, when he allowed himself a little whiskey. She found him in his wing chair, the glass on the little table at his elbow, his eyes closed.

  He looks so tired, she thought, feeling a flash of affection for him, despite all the distance between them. “Papa?” she asked. “May I sit with you for a little?”

  “You have an argument to make, don’t you, miss?”

  “Not an argument, Papa. Just a notion, as the servants say.”

  “When they try to get round me. What is it, Emily?”

  “It’s about the girl. The servant, Caroline.”

  “Yes, Emily? What is your notion?”

  “If you really want to bring her into the house as a servant”—she swallowed hard because she was about to defy her father, no matter how sweet her tone—“would you consider giving her to me as a maidservant? I like her, Papa. It would be easy for me to command her.”

  To protect her and treat her with Christian charity.

  His ease was gone. He was burdened again, and stern along with it. “No, I can’t,” he said.

  “Oh, Papa,” she said, making herself sound girlish. “Why ever not?”

  He sighed. “Emily, when you have a house of your own, you can order it however you like. But this isn’t your house to order. It’s your mother’s and mine, and you’ll need to let us decide how to treat our servants.”

  “Papa, please. Remember the will.”

  Her father sat up straight in his chair. He was a slight man, but his anger made him seem taller. “Emily, they are not members of the family. There’s no reason for you to defend them.”

  She remembered Joshua’s voice, low and choked and full of pain for the life he had cast off. Now she choked, too. “Christian charity,” she whispe
red.

  “It starts with charity,” he said. “Where does it end up? With insolence. With disobedience. With rebellion.”

  She thought of the iron spikes on the fence out front, the cheval de frise that would tear the flesh of any would-be insurrectionist to shreds. She said softly, “She’s a servant in our charge. Not a criminal or a conspirator.”

  “A firm hand,” he reminded her. “Emily, I’ve made up my mind to bring her into the house, and your mother will decide how to make use of her. That’s enough.”

  “It is not!” she said.

  “Leave it alone,” he said.

  She rose. She cried, “I can’t! My conscience torments me!”

  He rose too. He seemed to tower over her. He said, “I won’t have you going to Tradd Street to warn her. If she disobeys me, if she runs away, I’ll punish her. I’ll hire a slavecatcher to find her. I can sell her, the will be damned.”

  After breakfast, when she and her stepmother had settled in the parlor, Susan said to Emily, “I’m going to the upholsterer’s today. He says he has something pretty for the new dining room chairs.”

  Emily nodded.

  “Come with me,” Susan cajoled.

  “I have some letters to write,” Emily said. A half-truth. She owed Hearth and Home a thousand words.

  “We have the carriage today!” Susan said, full of cheer.

  “It’s all right, Mother. I’m not as fond of upholstery as you are.”

  “Goodness, Emily, what will you do when you have to choose your own? Let the upholsterer choose for you? Come with me. You look peaked. The air will do you good.”

  Emily sat in the carriage in silence. Susan tried again to cheer her. Her tone was sweet. “What is it, chick?” she said, using the endearment of Emily’s childhood.

  Emily couldn’t tell her. She thought of Caro all the time, and she felt too worried and too unhappy to try to lie.

  The upholsterer’s shop reminded her of Thomas Bennett’s, even though his counter was marble instead of mahogany. The upholsterer himself was a light-complected man of color, well-dressed and well-spoken. He said to Susan, “I’m pleased to see you, ma’am. I have some lovely silks to show you.”

  “I can’t wait to see them,” Susan said, her face alight.

  He disappeared into the back and reemerged with an armload of bolts of cloth. He laid them on the counter. “What catches your eye, ma’am?”

  “Oh, that one,” Susan said, pointing to a figured pattern in bright-red silk.

  “It’s very striking, ma’am.” He unfurled it and let her stroke it.

  “So nice,” she said.

  He unrolled another bolt, a subtler pattern in blue and cream stripe. “This is very handsome, too,” he said. “Mrs. Manigault was here yesterday, and she admired it.”

  “Did she take it?”

  “Yes, ma’am, she did, for all her new parlor chairs.”

  Susan rested her hand on the red silk. He said, “Ma’am, the red is very fine-looking. But I believe you might tire of it.”

  Susan looked from the bright pattern to the subtle one. She wavered. “Emily, what do you think?”

  I have no opinion, Emily thought. But the upholsterer’s eyes were upon her, and for his sake, she said, “The blue and cream is very elegant.”

  Even in her distress, Emily saw the faintest smile on the light-complected face. He had not raised his voice or contradicted either of them. But he had guided her stepmother toward the tasteful thing without slighting her own taste. How well he got round his customers. Emily envied his tact.

  Susan smiled. “You’re right, Emily,” she said. “We’ll be as elegant as Mrs. Manigault.” She turned to the upholsterer. “The blue and cream. For a dozen chairs. How soon can you have it ready?”

  As she did every week, Caro trudged into the kitchen of the house on King Street and set the clean wash on the wash table. Her arms ached. She had never learned Sophy’s Low Country trick of carrying the load on her head. She asked Dulcie, who kneaded bread on the table reserved for cooking and eating, “Where’s Bel?”

  Dulcie didn’t raise her head. She slapped the dough with her palms, making a sound like a blow on human flesh. “Must be in the house. She be back in a moment.”

  Caro leaned against the wash table’s edge. She had no desire to wait. She wanted next week’s dirty wash, and she wanted her money.

  The door slammed, and Bel clattered into the kitchen. Dulcie said irritably, “How many times I tell you about slamming the door?”

  Bel’s apron was dazzling in its whiteness. She said to Caro, “Marse Lawrence want you. You come with me.”

  Caro tried to sound light, but she felt a sweat of fear trickle down her sides. “What is it?”

  “Do I know?” Bel said, and she tugged on the side door so hard that it complained on its hinges.

  At the library, she pulled Caro into the room and said, “Marse.”

  Lawrence sat at the desk. He wiped his pen and blotted the page. He looked up and said, “You can go, Bel,” in a voice without praise in it.

  She had not seen him since he had refused to sell her. Caro was alone with her father’s brother. With her master. With the man commanded to treat her according to his conscience.

  He said, “I’ve decided what I’ll do with you.”

  This man still commanded her. Had he changed his mind? He could still sell her. Her fear swelled in her chest.

  He said, “Mrs. Jarvie needs another servant. You’ll stay in the house and work for us.”

  “Stay here?”

  “Yes. Go to Cressy. You’ll work under her.”

  “Sir—”

  “You’ll remember to call me ‘master,’” he reminded her, in a cold tone that was worse than anger.

  She swallowed. “Master,” she said, making no effort to soften it with the Low Country slur. “My mother. She needs me. How will she manage?”

  He said, “That’s not my worry.”

  “She isn’t well. Let me stay with her, to help her.”

  “Sickly, is she? I don’t need a servant who’s sickly.”

  “Please,” she pleaded.

  Lawrence said, “Bel will take you to the kitchen. Cressy will acquaint you with your new duties.”

  To be in this house, under Cressy’s hand. To be truly a slave to Susan and Lawrence Jarvie. After all her efforts to live as though she were free, it had come to this. She went weak in the knees. “And if I won’t?” she asked, knowing that sass in this house was insolence and rebellion.

  He rose. “I’m a fair man, but I punish those who deserve it,” he said. “And for those who remain insolent, there’s the Work House.”

  She didn’t bother to back out of the room. She bolted, out the side door, past Ambrose, down the driveway, to the gate, hoping that it had been left unlocked after she arrived.

  It had not.

  Ambrose came hurrying after her, too fast for dignity. He caught her arm, already bruised by Bel’s grip, but his touch was gentle. “Don’t run like this. It go worse for you.”

  “To bring me into the house! To make a slave of me!”

  Ambrose shook his head, a father’s rebuke. “You is a slave. Did you forget?”

  “Ambrose. You were kind to me once. You were a friend to me once. Open the gate and let me go.”

  His face creased with sadness, he said, “Oh, Caro. Oh, sugar. I can’t.”

  Bel retrieved her. She grabbed Caro roughly by the arm and kept her grip as they made their awkward way through the yard and into the kitchen, where Cressy sat at the table. At the sight of Caro, she rose. “I knew you’d try to run away.”

  “My mother. I must tell my mother.”

  Cressy laughed, a mirthless sound. “Oh, she find out soon enough,” she said. She said to Bel, “Take her upstairs and get her dressed. Leave her there until I come for her.”

  Bel dragged her up the narrow stairs to the second floor where
the house servants slept. Through the narrow hallway, which smelled of the smoke and grease from the kitchen. Bel unlatched a door and pushed Caro inside. The room’s only window was darkened with dirt. Within stood a pine chair and a rope bed with a ragged blanket. It was just like the room where she and her mother had spent their first dreadful weeks in Charleston.

  On the blanket was a pile of cloth. Bel released Caro and said, “You take off that dress you wear and put that on.”

  “I will not,” Caro said, her voice shaking.

  Bel slapped her hard across the face. She said, “You do like I tell you, or I tell Cressy, and she tell Missus. And she punish you worse than that. She have a switch.”

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Marse send you to the Work House,” Bel gloated.

  Caro hesitated.

  Bel said, “You hurry or I tell Cressy.”

  Caro raised her eyes to Bel’s. Bel’s expression was pure malice. Caro saw the joy in talebearing in it and the further joy in punishment. She said, “What have they promised you to spy on me and bully me?”

  Bel slapped her again on the spot that was already raw. “Take off what you got on. Your boots, too. And give it all to me.”

  Caro thought, She wants my good boots. And she’ll rub her big feet raw in them. She said, “God help your soul, Bel.”

  Bel laughed. “You, talking about God! You godless! Never prayed in your life!”

  Caro undressed as though she didn’t care that Bel watched. Look all you like, Caro thought. You’ll never be taller, or slenderer, or lighter of skin. Being cruel to me won’t help you with that.

  The dress was gray cotton, new and whole and clean, and the apron was bright white and freshly starched. The shoes were rough but serviceable. They were too big, thankfully. Sophy had shown her how to wrap her feet in rags to make ill-fitting shoes fit better.

  When she was dressed, Bel said, “Fold up your things nice before you give them to me.”

  Caro obeyed.

  As Bel took the dress and the boots that had been Sophy’s gift, Caro asked, “Don’t I get a badge, as the other servants do?”