Dulcie bent down to whisper in Caro’s ear. “Sophy promise me that she come if your mama start to fail. And I tell you the moment I know.”
She began to dream about Sophy’s message, and the nightmare woke her nightly in a sweat of fear. She thought about her mother all the time, and everything seemed like a waking dream: the endless, dirty tasks; the meals she was too tired to eat; Cressy’s angry mask; and Bel’s smirk. When Dulcie caught her sleeve to whisper to her, “In the yard,” she didn’t take it in at first.
Dulcie said, “Sophy here. It’s nigh, she say. You come soon.”
Caro began to untie her apron. She had become so thin that she had to wrap the strings around her middle twice. “Now, Dulcie. I’ll go now.”
Dulcie said, “No, don’t run away. We manage it, Ambrose and I. We let you slip away near dark.” She added, “I tell Miss Emily, too.”
“No,” Caro said.
“She want to help.”
Caro shook her head. “She can’t,” she said.
That evening, after supper but before curfew, Dulcie tugged on her sleeve. They walked down the driveway, where Ambrose waited at the gate. Ambrose said to Caro, “You go. We manage it with Marse and Missus.”
Dulcie took off the badge that she wore on a string beneath her dress. “You take this,” she said.
Caro slipped it over her head and pressed her fingers to it. It was warm from Dulcie’s skin.
Dulcie hugged Caro. “I’m so sad for you,” she whispered.
Ambrose said, “You do what you got to do. And take care.” He embraced Caro, too.
Caro walked swiftly into the street. It was high summer, when all the fragrant flowers of Charleston were at their peak. Magnolia, azalea, and camellia all perfumed the warm evening air, and the crape myrtles were blazoned with red blooms. Caro thought of the August heat that had accompanied her father’s sickness. She remembered sitting at his bedside as he failed, the air scented with flowers, lavender water, and the sweat of fever. She shivered and pushed the memory away.
Once at Tradd Street, she asked Sophy, “How is she?”
“Still with us.”
“How long?”
Sophy took her hand. “Not long.”
The light in the shack was dim. A single candle flickered; as the sun set, it barely made a dent in the darkness. It was hot, even with the door ajar to catch an evening breeze. The smell of her father’s sickroom, sweat and lavender water, was intertwined with the fragrance of magnolia and the reek from the midden.
Kitty lay motionless on the bed, her eyes closed, her hands crossed over her chest, and Caro was suddenly terrified that she had come too late. Kitty’s eyes flickered open. “Caro,” she said, her voice faint.
“Mama, I’m here,” Caro said, and she clasped her mother’s hand, feeling the papery skin over bone. Sophy had pulled both chairs up to the bed and Caro sat.
“My darling girl,” Kitty said, her voice almost too faint to hear.
She struggled not to cry. The dying needed attention. Tears could wait.
Sophy sat next to Caro, a lavender-scented cloth in her hand. She bathed Kitty’s forehead with it. Caro thought of the night two years before, when she and her mother had sat with her father, anointing him with lavender water and fretting whenever the ice melted and the water warmed.
Sophy stroked Kitty’s hand and spoke gently to her. “We here, Caro and I,” she said. “We stay with you.”
Kitty nodded, an imperceptible movement. She struggled to speak. “I’m so sorry, Caro,” she whispered.
Caro bent to kiss her mother’s cheek. “Mama, no,” she whispered back.
The sun set, and the shack darkened except for the flame of the single flickering candle. Her mother’s face fell into deep shadow, the light-brown skin ashen in the darkness, the closed eyes hollow, the mouth sunken.
Caro remembered it too well, sitting at her father’s bedside, unable to look away, certain that each breath would be the last. Kitty’s breathing became slow and uneven. But her chest continued to rise and fall.
Caro sat unmoving in the hard pine chair. She remembered the ache of sitting and watching and waiting as her father failed.
Kitty’s breathing became erratic, and when it halted, Caro thought, This is the last. But her mother kept breathing.
It was too hard to watch every moment, and Caro let herself look away. She asked Sophy, “How will I bury her?”
Sophy said, “We worry about that when we have to.”
She and Sophy sat together throughout the night. Just before dawn, as the birds of Charleston began to wake and to sing, Kitty’s breaths slowed even more. Caro listened in an agony of her own, not knowing if there would be another breath.
And as the sun began to rise, as the light began to turn the oilpaper windows to their daytime color, the dying woman rasped. And stopped. And rasped again. And stopped.
And then there was silence, and both Caro and Sophy knew that Kitty was gone.
Caro rose to cradle her mother’s hand in her own. Life seeped from the dead woman quickly; even though her hand was still warm, her face was the waxen color of death. Caro wept.
Sophy washed the dead woman’s face for the last time with lavender water and straightened the coverlet over her. She clasped Caro’s hand. “I come back later to lay her out proper,” she said.
They stood in the yard as the sun rose. Sophy said, “You’d best go back before they miss you.”
Caro remembered Sophy telling her about her husband’s death, how Lawrence Jarvie gave her only a few hours to mourn, enough time for a funeral service and a burial. I’ll have less than that, she thought.
Sophy didn’t embrace her or let her weep. She said, “You save your grief for later. Now ain’t the time.”
When Caro returned to King Street, she found Cressy waiting for her in the yard. Her face creased, her arms folded, Cressy said, “You been out all night.”
Caro felt too tired to reply. She nodded.
“Massa and missus both furious.”
Because you told them, Caro thought. Her head ached.
Cressy said, “They want to see you now.”
Dulcie opened the kitchen door and wiped her hands on her apron. “I go with you,” she said. The three of them walked together through the side door, where Ambrose met them. He said to Cressy, “I go with you, too.” When Cressy pushed Caro into the study, Dulcie and Ambrose followed and came to stand beside her, their quiet presence bolstering her.
Lawrence said, “I asked for Caro. She ran off last night without my permission. Why are the rest of you here?”
Dulcie said, “Marse, we know she was away last night, but we come to tell you why.”
“It’s of no concern. She was gone last night, after the curfew, and she didn’t come back until this morning.”
Ambrose said, “Marse, you been good to us, and we grateful to you for it. We done our best to be good servants to you. Please, Marse. Let Dulcie and me speak.”
Someone with a light step and a rustling skirt came into the room. Even before Lawrence said, “Not you, too,” Caro knew that it was Emily.
Dulcie said, “Massa, I excuse Caro to go last night. And Ambrose open the gate for her.”
“All of you! Defying me!”
“Please, Massa,” Dulcie said. “It weren’t to let her run away. Her mother fail last night. She go there to sit with her, close her eyes, say her goodbye.”
“She broke the law.”
Ambrose said, “Massa, please, she a good girl who do the right thing for her mama. Massa, you been kind to us. Treated us right. Can’t complain of a thing. But it trouble me, it trouble Dulcie too, that you think to rebuke a girl who love her mama and take care of her in her last hours.”
“A runaway, whom you abetted—”
Emily said quietly, “No, Papa. A loving daughter who acted out of kindness. As we should, as we would with any of our servants, to let
her lay her mother to rest.”
“Christian charity,” Lawrence mocked her.
“Not even that, Papa. Common decency.”
Lawrence stared at Caro. “What do you have to say for yourself?”
She was too tired to force herself to speak in the slave’s diction. “Master, please let me lay my mother to rest.”
“To run away again!”
“No, master. Not to run away. With your permission, to arrange for the funeral and attend it.”
Emily broke the silence. “As we would for any servant, Papa.”
“I won’t pay for it.”
Caro said, “With your permission, I’ll go to my uncle Thomas to ask for his help in arranging the funeral. He’s her brother.”
At the mention of Thomas, his mouth tightened. “I don’t care about your mother’s relatives, or if she has any relatives, or if you do,” he said, even though he knew full well who her relatives were. “And don’t think about running off again. I’ll have the Guard hunt you down to bring you back, and you’ll go right to the Work House. Do you understand me?”
Caro bent her head. “Yes, master.”
Not an hour later, Caro walked down the driveway, accompanied by Ambrose, to go to Thomas Bennett’s shop on Queen Street. She had heard Ambrose cajole Lawrence into it, insisting that he would keep an eye on her. But as they shut the gate behind him, Ambrose held out his arm and said, “Lean on me, Miss Caro. You look done in.”
The worry that kept her awake last night and the fear she had felt in Lawrence Jarvie’s presence had worn off, and she felt fatigue hit her like a flash of lightning. She had no stomach for the task of seeing Thomas and asking for his help. She thought, I am an orphan now. She pushed the thought away. No time to grieve, not until the funeral, and maybe not even after that.
On Queen Street, outside Thomas’s shop, stood a familiar figure. “I didn’t want Papa to know,” Emily said. “But I had to be here, too.”
Caro was so tired that all she could do was to nod. Emily opened the door, and their odd caravan—the mourner, the rebellious daughter, and the faithful servant—filed in to stand before the mahogany counter. Thomas Bennett stood behind it, writing. He looked up and laid down the pen, careful to prevent a blot.
Then he allowed himself the emotion of grief. “Kitty?”
Caro said hoarsely, “She died last night.”
“Come around the back. All of you.”
In the yard, out of his customers’ or employees’ sight, he put his arms around Caro and stroked her hair. Releasing her, he said, “Poor Kitty. God rest her soul.”
“The funeral,” Caro said, her voice as thick as if she’d caught a cold. Or if she’d been weeping for hours. It was too hard to speak in complete sentences. “To honor her. To lay her to rest.”
“There are difficulties.”
“You loved her. Help me, Uncle Thomas.”
Emily said, “Mr. Bennett, if there’s anything I can do to help…”
“No, thank you, Miss Jarvie,” Thomas said, dismissing her. “This is a family matter.” In a softer tone, Thomas said to Caro, “Let me talk to Maria. We’ll make some arrangement. Where is she?”
“Tradd Street,” Caro said. “Ask Sophy. She can help.” She sagged against Ambrose, who braced her with his strong shoulder. She asked, “Is Danny here?”
“No,” Thomas said. “He’s not.”
“Tell him,” Caro said.
Thomas said, “Of course.”
In death, Kitty would not rest beside free people of color. Thomas found a plot in the Black Fellowship Society cemetery and persuaded Reverend Girardeau of Zion Presbyterian to preside at the service for the unchurched Kitty. Thomas also found a mourning dress for Caro. It must have belonged to Anna or Charlotte because it was too short and too wide for her tall, slender frame. It didn’t matter. For the few hours that she would wear it—for the few hours that she would publicly grieve for her mother and be counted as a mourner—it would suffice.
On a weekday morning, the church was empty save for the Bennetts and Pereiras, and they sat in the front pews to hear the reverend lead the service. Caro scarcely heard the words of prayer. She was in a fog again, as she had been when her father died, and the only thought that penetrated it was that she was now alone in the world.
Afterward, she stood at her mother’s graveside and listened to the clods hit the coffin. She thought of a life in which she would be a slave by her master’s whim. A life in which she would never be able to marry the man she loved or call her children her own. A life in which the only freedom was here, in death.
After the service, after the words at the graveside, Danny tugged on her sleeve. He said, “My mother is having the funeral meal. Come with us.”
“I should go.” Back to the King Street house, back to the kitchen, back to servitude, where her mourning would be over, while her grief ate away at her heart.
“Stay with us.”
“No,” she said, and she walked away. Emily caught up with her. Caro stared at her cousin and said, “Let me go.”
Emily caught her hand. “Caro.”
Caro raised her eyes to her cousin’s. “I can’t go back,” she said.
They both knew what she meant.
“Tradd Street,” Caro said, her voice hoarse with fatigue.
Emily nodded. “Sophy.”
“If you come with me…” Emily took Caro’s arm. “Mistress and maid, going on an errand together. Who will know any different?”
“You’d do this.”
Emily said, “We don’t run. We walk slowly, like we’re going to the market and have all the time in the world.”
Caro nodded.
It was torment to stroll. Caro’s muscles twitched with the urge to run, and she felt Emily’s arm tremble with the effort of pretending to be nonchalant.
They passed through the crowd on the sidewalk, slaves and free people of color going about their business. No one gave them more than the passing glance necessary to prevent a collision on the crowded sidewalk.
When they turned onto Tradd Street, which was less traversed than King, they both breathed a sigh of relief. Emily gripped Caro’s hand, and they forced themselves to continue their leisurely pace.
At the gate, ringing for Sophy, Emily abandoned her calm and shifted from one foot to another in a fever of impatience. “Sophy,” she whispered. “Hurry!”
When Sophy arrived at the gate, she took in the two of them: their urgent air, their black dresses. Emily said, “I can’t stay. Help Caro.”
Sophy said, “Help her how? Help her run away?”
“God help all of us, Sophy,” Emily said and turned on her heel.
As she walked away, Caro heard her stifle a sob.
Sophy glared at Caro, but she opened the gate. “Come in,” she said.
Caro slipped into the driveway. Sophy clanged the gate shut. “You in a proper mess,” she said.
“And if I went to the Work House? Then how would I be?”
“You a runaway. He come after you, try to find you.”
“Not if you help me.”
Sophy said sharply, “Not if he sell me, too.”
Caro grabbed Sophy’s hands. “I need to hide. Not here.” She grabbed Sophy’s arm. “I’ll go tonight. Just let me stay here until tonight.”
Sophy fell silent. Looked away. Pondered. Finally she said, “You do that, you get caught. I get a message to Sunday. He know what to do.”
“Does he help people who run away?”
Sophy said fiercely, “Hush. You go upstairs and stay quiet. Lay low.”
Sophy hid her in the smallest room above the kitchen, unused as a bedroom. It was empty, save for a chair. Sophy brought her a dress—her own dress, the everyday calico. “You put this on. They look for a girl in a black dress.” Sophy left her to dress and returned with a bundle.
“What’s this, Sophy?”
“Your go
od dress that Danny give you. And that book Miss Emily give you.”
“Where am I going, Sophy?”
As she closed the door, Sophy said, “You hush and wait.”
Later that afternoon, Caro heard the clatter of wheels and the clop of hooves in the driveway. A carriage? Surely not. Sophy ran up the stairs. “Come down and stay in the kitchen until I tell you it all right.”
Caro heard a deep voice outside the door. “Hear you need me to make a delivery, Miss Sophy,” he said.
“Up to the Neck.”
“Where’s the parcel?”
Sophy opened the kitchen door and beckoned to Caro, who followed her. Outside, a deep-bottomed wagon, hitched to a sturdy brown horse, had been parked. It was Sunday’s friend Lewis. He said, “I take my wagon home to the Neck.” He gestured toward the wagon, where a piece of canvas covered the wagon bed. “Won’t be easy, lying on them boards, but it ain’t far.” He held out his hands to Caro. “Let me boost you up.”
With his help, she clambered into the wagon. The wagon bed was full of bricks, but he had made a space for her, a narrow aisle. “Lie down,” he said. She lay on the wooden slats of the wagon bed—he was right, it wasn’t easy—and wriggled to fit among the boards. The air was thick with brick dust. He covered the wagon bed with the canvas. “You all right?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“Now you lay still and stay quiet.”
Not far, he had said. It was a half hour on foot to Calhoun Street, the border between Charleston and Charleston Neck. It would be swifter by wagon.
He slapped the reins, and the horse moved forward, making the wagon creak and groan. She listened as the horse’s hooves clopped on the cobblestone of the driveway. She felt the wagon lurch as they turned onto the street.
It was dark under the canvas, and she sweated in the hot air trapped beneath the heavy cloth. She could hear the sounds of the street—other draft horses and wagons, the swifter pace of carriage horses, and the higher squeal of carriage wheels—and the sounds of the sidewalk, where people milled, talked, shouted, and laughed. A chestnut seller, a man with a sweet tenor voice, sang about his wares.
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