“This eez Maizee Freedmon.” Leon, the French houseman, sous chef, and chauffeur, announced the next applicant.
“Merci, Leon.” Mary stood and welcomed the job candidate. “Good morning, Maizie. Please sit down.” Mary pointed to the chair on the other side of her desk. A girl appearing to be in her teens looked around the room. Putting down her bag and hat, she took a seat. She was wearing a dress and an old pair of ill-fitting shoes. Dirty socks hung around her ankles.
“Would you like a glass of water?” asked Mary. “It comes from an artesian well on our property. It’s very pure, not like the city water.”
“No thank you, ma’am.”
Mary looked up at the young girl seated before her. Her eyes were deep blue and captivating, her hair a dark brown, wavy mop.
“Maizie is your name?”
“Yes ma’am. Maizie Sunday Freedman.” The girl shifted in her seat and folded her hands in her lap like a well-behaved child.
“That’s an unusual name: Maizie. It’s a nice name.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“You can call me Mrs. Glidewell.”
“Yes ma’am—I mean Mrs. Glidewell.”
“You live around here?”
“Sort of.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not too close.” Maizie’s hands moved from her lap to the arms of the chair. Mary took a clean sheet of paper from her desk drawer and wrote the young girl’s name at the top.
“Did you walk here?”
“My mama helped me get here. She was thinkin’ you might have a job for me.”
“So your mother brought you?”
“Not exactly.”
“So you came on your own accord.”
“That’s right.”
“No matter. Most of our employees live here. Where you live now is not a problem.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
“’Mrs. Glidewell.’ Please call me that.”
“Oh yes, sorry. Just that I am used to calling fine ladies ‘ma’am.’”
“I see, but I prefer ‘Mrs. Glidewell.’ So Maizie, shall we get started with the job interview?” Before Maizie could respond, a well-dressed gentleman wearing a very clean leather cowboy hat came into the office. He was holding a few packages and letters.
“Mary, here’s the mail,” he said and bent down to give her a quick peck on the cheek.
“Thank you, dear. James, this is Maizie Freedman. I’m interviewing her for a position.”
“Good Morning, Maizie. I’m Mr. Glidewell.” Maizie simply nodded and shifted her gaze to the mail on the desk.
“I have to get down to the backside and check on the horses. I wish we had more jobs to fill.” Maizie eyes were downcast as she seemed to look at her feet. She put her hands back in her lap and sighed.
“Maizie, let’s begin our interview. I never hire anyone without getting answers to a lot of questions.” Mary smiled and looked again into Maizie’s blue eyes. There was so much sadness in the young girl’s face. Mary felt her heart breaking.
“Mrs. Glidewell?”
“Yes, Maizie.”
“See, I never been in such a nice house before.”
“I’m glad you like it. My husband bought this property a decade or so ago. Then we built this ranch.”
“It’s just so big. I’m not sure I’m fitted for such a place. Don’t know how to act, really.”
“Well you are here. I’m here. You are acting just fine. Let’s do the interview. Can’t hurt.” Nodding, Maizie looked around the room and nervously adjusted her dirty socks. Then the interview began.
Chapter 4
Maizie’s Diary
March 23, 1931
I have been here for a few days now. Mrs. Glidewell, she’s the boss, gave me this diary. I don’t know much about diaries, but she said it was a book to write in. I didn’t know what to write, so she said that my first few pages might tell who I am. So, here goes.
Everyone calls me Maizie, but I am Maizie Sunday Freedman. That’s my whole name. I was born on a Sunday in 1915. I don’t know what date. Mama said it wasn’t important. My mama thought I was born at the end of February, but she wasn’t sure. It could have been March. She was in hiding at the time. February was a tricky month with leap year and all, and she didn’t have a calendar to look at or anyone to tell her what the date was. She said she knew it was a Sunday because she could hear a choir singing from a church the day I was born. That’s what she told me. She was always telling me stories, some made up, some not.
My mama wasn’t married and she was very poor. She was having a baby all by herself. A white girl delivering a lightly colored child was wrong to folks in Mississippi. She was scared and alone. She said she laid in tall grass and looked up into the sky when her pains came. She told me about one cloud that looked like an angel. It was comforting, she said. My mama was always talking about angels who watched over us. Some were in the sky and some were right here on earth. You can count on them, she told me. I had to believe my mama, ’cause she was all I had.
She loved telling me stories about angels. She wondered why an angel wasn’t watching over my daddy. You see, my daddy was lynched for loving her. When she told me, I didn’t know what lynched was. “White folks killed him,” she said. The white people who looked after my mama sent her away because she was having a colored baby. Told her to leave and never come back. My mama said that was fine ’cause her home wasn’t a home anyway. I don’t know who the people were. Mama never told me.
My mama had secrets, I guess. She
