74
Margaret.”
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She said nothing. The warmth I’d felt when I came into the room was turning out to be nothing more than the heat of the fire.
“Why you try to talk like white folks?” Nigel asked me.
“I don’t,” I said, surprised. “I mean, this is really the way I talk.” “More like white folks than some white folks.”
I shrugged, hunted through my mind for an acceptable explanation. “My mother taught school,” I said, “and …”
“A nigger teacher?”
I winced, nodded. “Free blacks can have schools. My mother talked the way I do. She taught me.”
“You’ll get into trouble,” he said. “Marse Tom already don’t like you. You talk too educated and you come from a free state.”
“Why should either of those things matter to him? I don’t belong to him.”
The boy smiled. “He don’t want no niggers ’round here talking better than him, putting freedom ideas in our heads.”
“Like we so dumb we need some stranger to make us think about free- dom,” muttered Luke.
I nodded, but I hoped they were wrong. I didn’t think I had said enough to Weylin for him to make that kind of judgment. I hoped he wasn’t going to make that kind of judgment. I wasn’t good at accents. I had deliberately decided not to try to assume one. But if that meant I was going to be in trouble every time I opened my mouth, my life here would be even worse than I had imagined.
“How can Marse Rufe see you before you get here?” Nigel asked.
I choked down a swallow of mush. “I don’t know,” I said. “But I wish to heaven he couldn’t!”
4
I stayed in the cookhouse when I finished eating because it was near the main house, and because I thought I could make it from the cook- house into the hall if I started to feel dizzy—just in case. Wherever Kevin was in the house, he would hear me if I called from the hallway.
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Luke and Nigel finished their meal and went to the fireplace to say something privately to Sarah. At that moment, Carrie, the mute, slipped me bread and a chunk of ham. I looked at it, then smiled at her gratefully. When Luke and Nigel took Sarah out of the room with them, I feasted on a shapeless sandwich. In the middle of it, I caught myself wondering about the ham, wondering how well it had been cooked. I tried to think of something else, but my mind was full of vaguely remembered horror stories of the diseases that ran wild during this time. Medicine was just a little better than witchcraft. Malaria came from bad air. Surgery was per- formed on struggling wide- awake patients. Germs were question marks even in the minds of many doctors. And people casually, unknowingly ingested all kinds of poorly preserved ill-cooked food that could make them sick or kill them.
Horror stories.
Except that they were true, and I was going to have to live with them for as long as I was here. Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten the ham, but if I hadn’t, it would be the table leavings later. I would have to take some chances.
Sarah came back with Nigel and gave him a pot of peas to shell. Life went on around me as though I wasn’t there. People came into the cook- house—always black people—talked to Sarah, lounged around, ate whatever they could put their hands on until Sarah shouted at them and chased them away. I was in the middle of asking her whether there was anything I could do to help out when Rufus began to scream. Nineteenth- century medicine was apparently at work.
The walls of the main house were thick and the sound seemed to come from a long way off—thin high-pitched screaming. Carrie, who had left the cookhouse, now ran back in and sat down beside me with her hands covering her ears.
Abruptly, the screaming stopped and I moved Carrie’s hands gently. Her sensitivity surprised me. I would have thought she would be used to hearing people scream in pain. She listened for a moment, heard nothing, then looked at me.
“He probably fainted,” I said. “That’s best. He won’t feel the pain for a while.”
She nodded dully and went back out to whatever she had been doing. “She always did like him,” remarked Sarah into the silence. “He kept
the children from bothering her when she was little.”
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I was surprised. “Isn’t she a few years older than he is?”
“Born the year before him. Children listened to him though. He’s
white.”
“Is Carrie your daughter?”
Sarah nodded. “My fourth baby. The only one Marse Tom let me keep.” Her voice trailed away to a whisper.
“You mean he … he sold the others?”
“Sold them. First my man died—a tree he was cutting fell on him. Then Marse Tom took my children, all but Carrie. And, bless God, Carrie ain’t worth much as the others ’cause she can’t talk. People think she ain’t got good sense.”
I looked away from her. The expression in her eyes had gone from sadness—she seemed almost ready to cry—to anger. Quiet, almost frightening anger. Her husband dead, three children sold, the fourth defective, and her having to thank God for the defect. She had reason for more than anger. How amazing that Weylin had sold her children and still kept her to cook his meals. How amazing that he was still alive. I didn’t think he would be for long, though, if he found a buyer for Carrie.
As I was thinking, Sarah turned and threw a handful of something into the stew or soup she was cooking. I shook my head. If she ever decided to take her revenge, Weylin would never know what hit him.
“You can peel these potatoes for me,” she said.
I had to think a moment to remember that I had offered my help. I took the large pan of potatoes that she was handing me and a knife and a wooden bowl, and I worked silently, sometimes peeling, and sometimes driving away the bothersome flies. Then I heard Kevin outside calling me. I had to make myself put the potatoes down calmly and cover them with a cloth Sarah had left on the table. Then I went to him without haste, without any sign of the eagerness or relief I felt at having him nearby again. I went to him and he looked at me strangely.
“Are you all right?” “Fine now.”
He reached for my hand, but I drew back, looking at him. He dropped his hand to his side. “Come on,” he said wearily. “Let’s go where we can talk.”
He led the way past the main house away from the slave cabins and other buildings, away from the small slave children who chased each other and shouted and didn’t understand yet that they were slaves.
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We found a huge oak with branches thick as separate trees spread wide to shade a large area. A handsome lonely old tree. We sat beside it put- ting it between ourselves and the house. I settled close to Kevin, relax- ing, letting go of tension I had hardly been aware of. We said nothing for a while, as he leaned back and seemed to let go of tensions of his own.
Finally, he said, “There are so many really fascinating times we could have gone back to visit.”
I laughed without humor. “I can’t think of any time I’d like to go back to. But of all of them, this must be one of the most dangerous—for me anyway.”
“Not while I’m with you.”
I glanced at him gratefully.
“Why did you try to stop me from coming?” “I was afraid for you.”
“For me!”
“At first, I didn’t know why. I just had the feeling you might be hurt trying to come with me. Then when you were here, I realized that you probably couldn’t get back without me. That means if we’re separated, you’re stranded here for years, maybe for good.”
He drew a deep breath and shook his head. “There wouldn’t be any- thing good about that.”
“Stay close to me. If I call, come quick.”
He nodded, and after a while said, “I could survive here, though, if I
had to. I mean if …” “Kevin, no ifs. Please.”
“I only mean I wouldn’t be in the danger you would be in.”
“No.” But he’d be in another kind of danger. A place like this would endanger him in a way I didn’t want to talk to him about. If he was stranded here for years, some part of this place would rub off on him. No large part, I knew. But if he survived here, it would be because he man- aged to
