She made a sound of disgust and rushed toward me. Or at least I
thought she was rushing toward me. When I jumped out of her way, she kept right on going through the door that I had been standing in front of.
I looked after her and shook my head. Then I took the chair that was near the fireplace and put it beside Rufus’s bed. I sat down and Rufus looked up at me solemnly.
“Did you ever break your leg?” he asked. “No. I broke my wrist once, though.” “When they fixed it, did it hurt much?”
I drew a deep breath. “Yes.” “I’m scared.”
“So was I,” I said remembering. “But … Rufe, it won’t take long. And when the doctor is finished, the worst will be over.”
“Won’t it still hurt after?”
“For a while. But it will heal. If you stay off it and give it a chance, it will heal.”
Margaret Weylin rushed back into the room with water for Rufus and more hostility for me than I could see any reason for.
“You’re to go out to the cookhouse and get some supper!” she told me as I got out of her way. But she made it sound as though she were say- ing, “You’re to go straight to hell!” There was something about me that these people didn’t like—except for Rufus. It wasn’t just racial. They were used to black people. Maybe I could get Kevin to find out what it was.
“Mama, can’t she stay?” asked Rufus.
The woman threw me a dirty look, then turned gentler eyes on her son. “She can come back later,” she told him. “Your father wants her down- stairs now.”
More likely, it was his mother who wanted me downstairs now, and possibly for no more substantial reason than that her son liked me. She gave me another look, and I left the room. The woman would have made me uncomfortable even if she’d liked me. She was too much nervous energy compacted into too small a container. I didn’t want to be around when she exploded. But at least she loved Rufus. And he must have been used to her fussing over him. He hadn’t seemed to mind.
I found myself in a wide hallway. I could see the stairs a few feet away and I started toward them. Just then, a young black girl in a long blue dress came out of a door at the other end of the hall. She came toward
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me, staring at me with open curiosity. She wore a blue scarf on her head and she tugged at it as she came toward me.
“Could you tell me where the cookhouse is, please?” I said when she was near enough. She seemed a safer person to ask than Margaret Weylin.
Her eyes opened a little wider and she continued to stare at me. No doubt I sounded as strange to her as I looked.
“The cookhouse?” I said.
She looked me over once more, then started down the stairs without a word. I hesitated, finally followed her because I didn’t know what else to do. She was a light- skinned girl no older than fourteen or fifteen. She kept looking back at me, frowning. Once she stopped and turned to face me, her hand tugging absently at her scarf, then moving lower to cover her mouth, and finally dropping to her side again. She looked so frus- trated that I realized something was wrong.
“Can you talk?” I asked.
She sighed, shook her head.
“But you can hear and understand.”
She nodded, then plucked at my blouse, at my pants. She frowned at me. Was that the problem, then—hers and the Weylins’?
“They’re the only clothes I have right now,” I said. “My master will buy me some better ones sooner or later.” Let it be Kevin’s fault that I was “dressed like a man.” It was probably easier for the people here to understand a master too poor or too stingy to buy me proper clothing than it would be for them to imagine a place where it was normal for women to wear pants.
As though to assure me that I had said the right thing, the girl gave me a look of pity, then took my hand and led me out to the cookhouse.
As we went, I took more notice of the house than I had before—more notice of the downstairs hall, anyway. Its walls were a pale green and it ran the length of the house. At the front, it was wide and bright with light from the windows beside and above the door. It was strewn with oriental rugs of different sizes. Near the front door, there was a wooden bench, a chair, and two small tables. Past the stairs the hall narrowed, and at its end there was a back door that we went through.
Outside was the cookhouse, a little white frame cottage not far behind the main house. I had read about outdoor kitchens and outdoor toilets. I hadn’t been looking forward to either. Now, though, the cookhouse
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looked like the friendliest place I’d seen since I arrived. Luke and Nigel were inside eating from wooden bowls with what looked like wooden spoons. And there were two younger children, a girl and boy, sitting on the floor eating with their fingers. I was glad to see them there because I’d read about kids their age being rounded up and fed from troughs like pigs. Not everywhere, apparently. At least, not here.
There was a stocky middle-aged woman stirring a kettle that hung over the fire in the fireplace. The fireplace itself filled one whole wall. It was made of brick and above it was a huge plank from which hung a few utensils. There were more utensils off to one side hanging from hooks on the wall. I stared at them and realized that I didn’t know the proper names of any of them. Even things as commonplace as that. I was in a different world.
The cook finished stirring her kettle and turned to look at me. She was as light-skinned as my mute guide—a handsome middle-aged woman, tall and heavy-set. Her expression was grim, her mouth turned down at the corners, but her voice was soft and low.
“Carrie,” she said. “Who’s this?” My guide looked at me.
“My name is Dana,” I said. “My master’s visiting here. Mrs. Weylin told me to come out for supper.”
“Mrs. Weylin?” The woman frowned at me.
“The red- haired woman—Rufus’s mother.” I didn’t quite catch myself in time to say Mister Rufus. I didn’t really see why I should have to say anything. How many Mrs. Weylins were there on the place anyway?
“Miss Margaret,” said the woman, and under her breath, “Bitch!” I stared at her in surprise thinking she meant me.
“Sarah!” Luke’s tone was cautioning. He couldn’t have heard what the cook said from where he was. Either she said it often, or he had read her lips. But at least now I understood that it was Mrs. Weylin—Miss Margaret—who was supposed to be the bitch.
The cook said nothing else. She got me a wooden bowl, filled it with something from a pot near the fire, and handed it to me with a wooden spoon.
Supper was corn meal mush. The cook saw that I was looking at it instead of eating it, and she misread my expression.
“That’s not enough?” she asked.
“Oh, it’s plenty!” I held my bowl protectively, fearful that she might
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give me more of the stuff. “Thank you.”
I sat down at the end of a large heavy table across from Nigel and Luke. I saw that they were eating the same mush, though theirs had milk on it. I considered asking for milk on mine, but I didn’t really think it would help.
Whatever was in the kettle smelled good enough to remind me that I hadn’t had breakfast, hadn’t had more than a few bites of dinner the night before. I was starving and Sarah was cooking meat—probably a stew. I took a bite of the mush and swallowed it without tasting it.
“We get better food later on after the white folks eat,” said Luke. “We get whatever they leave.”
Table scraps, I thought bitterly. Someone else’s leftovers. And, no doubt, if I was here long enough, I would eat them and be glad to get them. They had to be better than boiled meal. I spooned the mush into my mouth, quickly fanning away several large flies. Flies. This was an era of rampant disease. I wondered how clean our leftovers would be by the time they reached us.
“Say you was from New York?” asked Luke. “Yes.”
“Free state?”
“Yes,” I repeated. “That’s why I was brought here.” The words, the questions made me think of Alice and her mother. I looked at Luke’s broad face, wondering whether it would do any harm to ask about them. But how could I admit to knowing them—knowing them years ago— when I was supposed to be new here? Nigel knew I had been here before, but Sarah and Luke might not. It would be safer to wait—save my ques- tions for Rufus.
“People in New York talk like you?” asked Nigel. “Some do. Not all.”
“Dress like you?” asked Luke.
“No. I dress in what Master Kevin gives me to dress in.” I wished they’d stop asking questions. I didn’t want them to make me tell lies I might forget later. Best to keep my background as simple as possible.
The cook came over and looked at me, at my pants. She pinched up a little of the material, feeling it. “What cloth is this?” she asked.
Polyester double knit, I thought. But I shrugged. “I don’t know.” She shook her head and went back to her pot.
“You know,” I said to her back, “I think I agree with you about Miss
