content, no longer curious. I didn’t push her. I had already decided I wouldn’t. I thought she would return to real- ity when she was strong enough to face it. Tom Weylin, in his loud silence, clearly thought she was hopeless. Rufus never said what he thought. But like me, he didn’t push her.
“I almost don’t want her to remember,” he said once. “She could be like she was before Isaac. Then maybe …” He shrugged.
“She remembers more every day,” I said. “And she asks questions.” “Don’t answer her!”
“If I don’t, someone else will. She’ll be up and around soon.” He swallowed. “All this time, it’s been so good …”
“Good?”
“She hasn’t hated me!”
10
Alice continued to heal and to grow. She came down to the cookhouse with me for the first time on the day Carrie had her baby.
Alice had been with us for three weeks. She might have been twelve or thirteen mentally now. That morning, she had told Rufus she wanted to sleep in the attic with me. To my surprise, Rufus had agreed. He hadn’t wanted to, but he had done it. I thought, not for the first time, that if Alice could manage to go on not hating him, there would be very little she couldn’t ask of him. If.
Now, slowly, cautiously, she followed me down the stairs. She was
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weak and thinner than ever, looking like a child in one of Margaret
Weylin’s old dresses. But boredom had driven her from her bed.
“I’ll be glad when I get well,” she muttered as she paused on a step. “I hate to be like this.”
“You’re getting well,” I said. I was a little ahead of her, watching to see that she did not stumble. I had taken her arm at the top of the stairs, but she had tried to pull away.
“I can walk.”
I let her walk.
We got to the cookhouse just as Nigel did, but he was in a bigger hurry. We stood aside and let him rush through the door ahead of us.
“Huh!” said Alice as he went by. “’Scuse me!”
He ignored her. “Aunt Sarah,” he called, “Aunt Sarah, Carrie’s having pains!”
Old Mary had been the midwife of the plantation before her age caught up with her. Now, the Weylins may have expected her to go on doctoring the slaves, but the slaves knew better. They helped each other as best they could. I hadn’t seen Sarah called to help with a birth before, but it was natural that she should be called to this one. She dropped a pan of corn meal and started to follow Nigel out.
“Can I help?” I asked.
She looked at me as though she’d just noticed me. “See to the supper,” she said. “I was going to send somebody in to finish cooking, but you can, can’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Good.” She and Nigel hurried away. Nigel had a cabin away from the quarter, not far from the cookhouse. A neat wood-floored brick- chimneyed cabin that he had built for himself and Carrie. He had shown it to me. “Don’t have to sleep on rags up in the attic no more,” he’d said. He’d built a bed and two chairs. Rufus had let him hire his time, work for other whites in the area, until he had money enough to buy the things he couldn’t make. It had been a good investment for Rufus. Not only did he get part of Nigel’s earnings, but he got the assurance that Nigel, his only valuable piece of property, was not likely to run away again soon.
“Can I go see?” Alice asked me.
“No,” I said reluctantly. I wanted to go myself, but Sarah didn’t need either of us getting in her way. “No, you and I have work to do here. Can you peel potatoes?”
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“Sure.”
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I sat her down at the table and gave her a knife and some potatoes to peel. The scene reminded me of my own first time in the cookhouse when I had sat peeling potatoes until Kevin called me away. Kevin might have my letter by now. He almost surely did. He might already be on his way here.
I shook my head and began cutting up a chicken. No sense tormenting myself.
“Mama used to make me cook,” said Alice. She frowned as though try- ing to remember. “She said I’d have to be cooking for my husband.” She frowned again, and I almost cut myself trying to watch her. What was she remembering?
“Dana?” “Yes?”
“Don’t you have a husband? I remember once … something about you having a husband.”
“I do. He’s up North now.” “He free?”
“Yes.”
“Good to marry a freeman. Mama always said I should.” Mama was right, I thought. But I said nothing.
“My father was a slave, and they sold him away from her. She said marrying a slave is almost bad as being a slave.” She looked at me. “What’s it like to be a slave?”
I managed not to look surprised. It hadn’t occurred to me that she didn’t realize she was a slave. I wondered how she had explained her presence here to herself.
“Dana?”
I looked at her.
“I said what’s it like to be a slave?”
“I don’t know.” I took a deep breath. “I wonder how Carrie is doing—
in all that pain, and not even able to scream.”
“How could you not know what it’s like to be a slave. You are one.” “I haven’t been one for very long.”
“You were free?” “Yes.”
“And you let yourself be made a slave? You should run away.”
I glanced at the door. “Be careful how you say things like that. You
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could get into trouble.” I felt like Sarah, cautioning. “Well it’s true.”
“Sometimes it’s better to keep the truth to yourself.”
She stared at me with concern. “What will happen to you?”
“Don’t worry about me, Alice. My husband will help me get free.” I went to the door to look out toward Carrie’s cabin. Not that I expected to see anything. I just wanted to distract Alice. She was getting too close, “growing” too fast. Her life would change so much for the worse when she remembered. She would be hurt more, and Rufus would do much of the hurting. And I would have to watch and do nothing.
“Mama said she’d rather be dead than be a slave,” she said.
“Better to stay alive,” I said. “At least while there’s a chance to get free.” I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.
Suddenly, she threw the potato she had been peeling into the fire. I jumped, looked at her. “Why’d you do that?”
“There’s things you ain’t saying.” I sighed.
“I’m here too,” she said. “Been here a long time.” She narrowed her eyes. “Am I a slave too?”
I didn’t answer.
“I said am I a slave?” “Yes.”
She had risen half off the bench, her whole body demanding that I answer her. Now that I had, she sat down again heavily, her back and shoulders rounded, her arms crossed over her stomach hugging herself. “But I’m supposed to be free. I was free. Born free!”
“Yes.”
“Dana, tell me what I don’t remember. Tell me!” “It will come back to you.”
“No, you tell—”
“Oh, hush, will you!”
She drew back a little in surprise. I had shouted at her. She probably thought I was angry—and I was. But not at her. I wanted to pull her back from the edge of a cliff. It was too late though. She would have to take her fall.
“I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” I said wearily. “But believe
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me, you don’t want to know as much as you think you do.” “Yes I do!”
I sighed. “All right. What do you want to know?”
She opened her mouth, then frowned and closed it again. Finally, “There’s so much … I want to know everything, but I don’t know where to start. Why am I a slave?”
“You committed a crime.” “A crime? What’d I do?”
“You helped a slave to escape.” I paused. “Do you realize that in all the time you’ve been here, you never asked me how
