The next morning at breakfast I asked Daddy if I could stay at Hilltop instead of going home with him. He considered it for a long moment without answering. “Please,” I begged, “Jonathan and I are just becoming friends—and I don’t have any friends back home.”
“All right,” he finally agreed. “But Tessie and Eli will have to come back to Richmond with me.”
I knew Daddy needed Eli to drive the carriage home, but I couldn’t understand why Tessie had to leave, too. I’d never been without my mammy before, and I didn’t want to be without her now.
“Why, Daddy? Why can’t Tessie stay here with me?”
“Because there are plenty of servants to help out around here. Tessie is needed back home.” He wouldn’t look at me when he spoke, and I had the feeling there was more to it than he was willing to say. But he had made up his mind, and I could tell that I wouldn’t be able to change it. Before I’d come to Hilltop I never could have imagined being separated from Tessie. But my adventures with my cousin had made me stronger, braver. I decided to stay without her.
I ran upstairs to my room where Tessie was packing our things, and told her I was staying and she was going home. I bravely fought my tears as we kissed and hugged good-bye, then I hurried outside to say good-bye to Eli. As I neared the barn I heard his gentle voice, but it didn’t sound like he was talking to the horses or to Massa Jesus. I peered around the open doorway and saw him deep in conversation with his son, Josiah. I waited outside, giving them time alone. But I couldn’t help overhearing their conversation.
“There something I need you to do for me, Pa,” Josiah said. “I need you to take care Tessie for me when you get back home. She my wife now. We jump the broom the other night.”
“Son . . . you didn’t!” Eli sounded shaken. “You know you can’t marry Tessie without Massa’s say-so. And you know for sure Massa Fletcher ain’t giving it to you.”
“I don’t need no white man’s say-so.”
“Son, listen—”
“No! She’s my wife now. Ain’t no one telling me I can’t marry the woman I love.”
“Tessie’s going back to Richmond with Miss Caroline and me,” Eli said firmly. “So how you two gonna be husband and wife?”
“I plan on buying our freedom someday. I’m working as a blacksmith now. If Massa hire me out, I can earn my freedom doing extra work, then I move to town and make enough money to buy hers.”
“You know my massa ain’t never gonna sell Tessie to you. And you know why.”
“She’s my wife now!”
“Not without Massa’s say-so she ain’t. Son, the path you heading down lead to nothing but trouble. They get mad at you, they sell you south as fast as you can turn around.”
“They wouldn’t sell me—”
“They sold Grady!”
Something about the way Eli spoke those words—as if he still couldn’t believe they were true—sent a shiver through me.
“Please, Josiah,” Eli begged. “Don’t act this way.”
“I have to!” he shouted. “I’m not like you. I can’t lay down and be a dog for the massa. I’m a man, not a dog!”
Eli grabbed his son’s shirtfront and hauled him close, speaking right in his face. “Now you get one thing straight. I know I’m just as good as any white man. Ain’t no difference between me and Massa Fletcher in God’s sight. Bible say there neither slave nor free, but we all one in Christ Jesus.”
Josiah shook himself loose. “If you believe that, then why you acting all yes sir and no sir? Why you letting them white folks treat you like dirt? How can you live with yourself?”
“Because Jesus is my massa, not Massa Fletcher, and Jesus tell me I have to turn the other cheek. He say do good to them that persecute me. Night before He died, He wash all them white men’s feet, even the one who betrayed Him. And He say, ‘Do just like me.’ Jesus is God’s son and the white folk treat Him like dirt! They whip Him till He half dead, then they crucify Him. Ain’t no different than way they treat us. Jesus say, ‘Take up you cross and follow me.’ God knows how we’re treated, Josiah. He put us where we are for time being and give us a job to do. And even if I can’t see a reason why, I gonna do this job for Jesus. I gonna love white folks, whether they love me back or not, ’cause that’s what Jesus tell me to do.”
“How you know what Jesus say?” Josiah said angrily. “That’s only what them white preachers say is in the Bible. They tell us that stuff to keep us low. I don’t believe any of it. They lie to us.”
“They not lying. That’s what the Bible really say.”
“How you know?”
“ ’Cause I can read it for myself!”
The shock of Eli’s words seemed to rip through the air like a whip. The hair on my arms stood on end. “You have to kill a Negro if he learns to read.”
Josiah stared at his father, stunned. Eli seemed shaken by his own confession, too. In a quieter voice, he said, “I know how to read, son. I have me a Bible of my own. Preacher man in Richmond give it to me one time and I reading it every day. I know what it say. It say ‘Love you enemies . . . return evil with good . . . bless them that persecute you.’ ”
I could tell Josiah wasn’t listening. He shook his head as if dazed. “You never told me you could read.”
“Well, now you know. I can.”
Josiah’s voice rose in volume. “Then why didn’t you teach me how to read?”
“Son, I waiting all your life till you learn to control your temper. But you never did learn. If I teach you to read, I be killing you myself. I may as well be stabbing a knife in you. Devil get ahold of you and use your reading for his purpose, not God’s.”
As they stared at each other, I saw all the anger leave Eli’s face. It was replaced by sorrow. “Josiah, I be going soon. I can’t leave here with bitterness between us. Lord knows when I ever see you again.”
Eli went to his son, embraced him. At first Josiah’s arms hung limp at his sides. The two men were the same height, had the same wide shoulders and strong arms. One head of hair was black, the other gray. Slowly, Josiah lifted his arms and returned his father’s embrace.
“Guard your heart, son,” Eli said in a hushed voice. “That’s what God looks at—your heart. Most folks look at the outside things, like the color of your skin. But God looks at your heart.”
I settled comfortably into the rhythm of country life, enjoying the freedom of long, leisurely days, the excitement of new places to explore, and the contentment of my cousin’s friendship. The carefree life I led wasn’t typical of a woman’s life on the plantation, though. Grandmother and Aunt Anne worked hard all day, everyday, overseeing the work that needed to be done. There was laundry to scrub, candles and soap to make, homespun cloth to be woven and dyed, then sewn into clothing for both the slaves and the family. The garden needed to be tended, the house cleaned, the food preserved, the cows milked, the butter churned, meat salted and smoked, and three hearty meals cooked and served each day. I wanted nothing to do with learning how to take charge of all that work.
I’d always been a bit of a tomboy when I’d played with Grady—before my teachers at the Richmond Female Institute tried to drum into me that proper young ladies didn’t climb trees or wander through the woods or lie on riverbanks fishing. But for those few wonderful weeks at Hilltop, I didn’t care about being a proper young lady. The Institute had taught my mother to be a lady, and I shuddered at the thought of living a life like hers. I loved the outdoors, and I didn’t care one bit if my complexion turned as sunbrowned as Jonathan’s. We explored the woods together, read books to each other beneath the trees, and simply gazed up at the stars and talked. I noticed that he was careful to keep me away from the harsher side of plantation life, such as the slaves laboring in the fields beneath the blazing sun, or life down on Slave Row, but one lazy, rainy day, as we sat in the parlor playing a game of dominoes, I asked him about the man I’d seen with the lash scars on his back.
“Our overseer isn’t a cruel man,” Jonathan replied. “He might yell and crack the whip a few times over everybody’s head, but he would never give forty lashes like that unless it was absolutely necessary. My father would never allow his slaves to be abused.”
“Then why did he whip that man?”
Jonathan hesitated, choosing his words as carefully as his next domino. “We caught him stealing bacon from our smokehouse. He had to be whipped in order to set an example. Otherwise, all the other slaves might start stealing from us, too. It’s your turn,” he added impatiently.
I studied my remaining dominoes, then played one. “I once saw slaves in Richmond wearing leg-irons and chains,” I said. “Daddy told me it was because they’d tried to run away.”
“Our people hardly ever try to run away. They know they have it good here. We take good care of them.”
“But their cabins are so small, and they only have dirt floors, and—”
“The slaves don’t care. They’re used to it. They’re not like us, Carrie.” He was growing annoyed. I didn’t know whether it was from our conversation or because he’d had to draw a half-dozen dominoes from the bone pile before finding one he could use. “Besides,” he added, “our slaves are treated a lot better than the immigrants who work in the factories up north. Ever see where they live? And nobody gives them free clothing and food like we give our slaves.”
I played another piece, then hid my last domino in my hand so he couldn’t see it. “If the slaves are contented and happy, then why does everyone worry so much about them rebelling like Nat what’s-his-name?”
“Some of the slaves are fools and very easily led. If another leader like Nat Turner came along, they might be persuaded to do anything.” Jonathan groaned when he had to draw three more dominoes.
“No one could ever persuade Eli or Tessie to murder me,” I said, playing my last piece.
Jonathan stood, sweeping the dominoes into the box with one hand as if wiping a slate. “I’d trust Josiah with my life, too. But there are more than fifty colored folk down in Slave Row and only half a dozen of us up here. We’d be fools to turn our backs on them.” He was angry. And I knew it wasn’t because I’d won the game. I decided never to talk about such things with him again.
The next morning, with the sun shining brightly again, Jonathan and his father left to attend a meeting at a neighboring plantation. Afterward, they were going to spend a few days drilling with the local militia—Jonathan’s first time.
“Seems like I’ve been waiting all my life to finally join the militia,” he said with a grin. He lifted an imaginary gun to his shoulder, aimed, and fired. “Can’t wait to get my hands on a rifle for once, instead of Pa’s old shotgun.”
Jonathan’s older brother, Will, was left in charge of the plantation for a few days. I hadn’t gotten to know Will at all. He was more serious than his easygoing younger brother and told me flatout that he was much too busy to entertain me in Jonathan’s absence. Bored, I turned to my six-year-old cousin Thomas for companionship.
Thomas’ playmates were the little Negro children who ran around the yard chasing chickens and running errands. They were delighted when I took charge of them, organizing their play, teaching them new games, reading stories to them beneath the pear tree. We quickly became friends, the younger children clinging to my skirts and fighting over whose turn it was to sit on my lap or hold my hand. I tried not to play favorites, but I couldn’t help falling in love with Nellie, the pretty little Negro girl whose job it was to fan my grandmother as she sewed or napped in the sweltering heat of early August.
One day, Nellie’s little brother Caleb somehow escaped from the old granny who usually tended the little ones down on Slave Row, and he followed her up to the plantation house. He couldn’t have been more than two years old, toddling along behind her, naked as the dawn.
“Go on! Get back where you belong,” Nellie scolded as my grandmother called impatiently to her from the house. But Caleb wouldn’t go home, and every time Nellie took a step toward the back door to obey Grandmother, Caleb followed her, wailing loudly. “You can’t come in the house!” she told him. “You ain’t allowed!”
We always left the doors open, and I could see that he was going to follow her right inside. With my grandmother yelling threats, Nellie didn’t have time to take Caleb home.
“Go on inside, Nellie. Hurry,” I told her. “I’ll take him back.” I lifted the howling boy into my arms and headed down to Slave Row, soothing his tears as I went. He was a beautiful child, with smooth, ebony skin and dark, soulful eyes. Long before we reached his shack, I’d won a smile from him—and lost my heart to him.
From a distance, I heard babies crying in one of the cabins. Outside, two toddlers no older than Caleb played in the dirt street, unattended. Then the old Negro granny who had interrupted my uncle’s church service emerged from one of the cabins. She peered beneath it, around it, then up and down the row calling, “Caleb! Caleb, where are you, child?”
“He’s here, Granny. I have him.”
She watched me approach, shaking her head. “That one always getting away from me. And I got my hands full today with all them sick babies.”
She scooped up the two squirming toddlers and disappeared into the cabin. I followed her, carrying Caleb. “Go on, set him down here with these ones,” she said, putting her two charges down on the dirt floor. “Time they eat something.”
She chased a swarm of flies away from a wooden bowl, took a wedge of corn bread out of it, and broke off a chunk for each child. Caleb devoured his, then carefully picked up all the crumbs that had fallen in the dirt and ate those, too. Meanwhile, Granny turned her attention to the squalling babies. There were four of them—all naked, all crying at once—lying crossways on a mattress stuffed with corn shucks. She picked up the first baby, jiggling him in her arms, and ladled a spoonful of water into his open mouth.
“Got my hands full today,” she repeated. “All four of ’em sick with fever.”
I picked up one of the other babies, a little girl, and spooned water into her mouth like Granny was doing. The child’s sweaty body was as warm as a baked potato and covered with a nastylooking rash.
“You should bathe them in cool water,” I told Granny. “It helps bring the fever down.” That was what Tessie always did whenever I had a fever. Granny looked at me helplessly.
“How I gonna do all that and keep these others from running off, same time?”
“I-I’ll help you. If you could fetch some cool water in a basin . . . and some clean cloths . . .”
Caleb clung to my skirt as I worked, wailing for more food. All I could find was the other half of the corn bread, so I divided it among the three children. Too late, I realized it was probably Granny’s lunch.
She and I worked hard, bathing and rocking the babies—while trying to keep the three bigger ones from toddling away. I didn’t realize how much time had passed until I heard the dinner bell ringing up at the plantation house.
“I have to go,” I told Granny. “But I’ll come back to help you this afternoon.”
I hurried up to the house for lunch and found the dining room table spread with food—smoked pork, potatoes roasted in butter, green beans and tomatoes picked fresh from the garden that morning, soft white biscuits spread with melting butter, and sweet potato pie for dessert, still warm from the oven. My cousins Will and Thomas shoveled down their food as if it were their last meal. I couldn’t eat a bite.
“What’s wrong, dear?” Aunt Anne asked. “You’re not getting sick on me, are you?”
“No, ma’am. I’m fine.”
“Then you’d better start eating, or these boys of mine won’t leave you a thing.”
I ate. But I wrapped most of my lunch in my napkin, hidden on my lap, to bring down to Granny and the children. I was ashamed of myself for ever taking all this food for granted. I kept thinking of the slave who had been whipped for stealing bacon, and of the Bible verse my uncle had quoted: “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal . . .” Dry corn bread hardly seemed equal.
“Aunt Anne, some of the little slave babies are sick,” I told her when the meal ended. “May I please take some ice down there to help cool their fevers?”
“Our ice?”
“Yes, please. They don’t have any ice of their own.”
She frowned as if she was very annoyed, but I knew she didn’t mean anything by it. Aunt Anne had a very kind heart. “You don’t need to concern yourself with our slaves, Caroline. I’ll go down after we have a little rest and see what I can do for them.”
“Please, ma’am . . . I don’t want to rest. I want to help the babies. They know me now. And I want to bring them my talcum powder. I think the rash must itch them.”
She studied me for a long moment with the same expression Jonathan often gave me—as if what I’d said was very odd. “All right,” she finally said. “I’ll have one of the darkies carry down some ice for you. I’ll come as soon as I can.”
I bathed the babies, then soothed their itchy skin with talcum powder while Granny and the three older children shared the remains of my lunch. Two of the babies eventually slept, while the other two whimpered softly, exhausted from crying.
“They have measles,” Aunt Anne said when she arrived a while later. “I pray to the Good Lord that you don’t catch it, too, Caroline. I fear you’ve already been exposed.”
For the next week, I hurried down to Slave Row early every morning to help Granny tend the sick babies. Unable to eat, they grew very weak. Caleb and the other two toddlers came down with measles, too, then my sweet little Nellie and another child her age fell sick. I nursed them all day and would have stayed all night if my aunt had allowed it. The children grew sicker and sicker.
“We should pray for them,” I told Granny one day after my aunt had gone back to the house to prepare some more willow bark tea. Granny shook her head.
“We don’t pray for our babies to live. All they’ll ever know is misery and slavery. Much better if Jesus just take them home right now.”
“You don’t mean that! No mother would ever want her babies to die!” I thought of my mother, grieving for her dead babies.
“Well, these here mamas do. They know them babies better off in Jesus’ arms than growing up to be a slave. Better she give them to Jesus right now than to the massa to be sold later on. Then she never have to wonder where her children are at, or if they suffering.”
I lay in bed that night thinking of Granny’s words. I wondered who suffered more—my mother, who knew her babies were in heaven, or Tessie, who didn’t know where her child was or if she’d ever see him again.
The next day I didn’t return to the cabin. I was sick with the measles myself.
Aunt Anne immediately sent for the doctor. Hovering over my bed day and night, she worried herself nearly to death until it became clear that I would recover. When Jonathan returned, she let him sit with me during the day, reading books to me, telling me all about the grand time he’d had with the militia, playing checkers with me when I finally felt well enough. He’d already had the measles.
“How are Caleb and Nellie?” I asked him one day. “And all the babies?” I had tried asking Aunt Anne but she only grew vexed with me for pestering her about them.
“Fine,” he said offhandedly.
I threw one of the bed pillows at him in frustration. “You’re not telling me the truth. I want to know the truth.”
“You shouldn’t get so involved, Carrie,” he said, tossing back the pillow. “They’re only slaves. You wouldn’t be sick yourself right now if you hadn’t meddled where you had no business meddling.”
I felt pulled in two directions at once. I liked Jonathan and I wanted him to like me, but I hated the way he talked about the Negroes, the way he treated them. I knew it bothered him that I cared so much, but I couldn’t help myself. I’d held and soothed and rocked those little babies. I’d fallen in love with Nellie and little Caleb. I needed to know how they were faring. I flung back the covers and lowered my feet to the floor.
“If you won’t tell me the truth, then I’ll just have to go down there and see for myself.”
“Over my dead body!” He came out of his chair in a flash, scooped me up as if I weighed nothing at all, and dropped me back into bed. “Now listen,” he said when we were both calmer, “the truth is, I don’t know how any of them are. We’ve all been too worried about you to bother with them. But if you promise to stay put, I’ll send for one of the Negro girls who lives down there. She can tell you what you want to know.”
That afternoon one of the scrub maids came, a tall, dazedlooking girl about my own age. She showed no emotion at all as she stood in my bedroom doorway and told me the awful truth. “Nellie on the mend now, Miss Caroline. But Caleb and little Kate gone to be with Jesus. All four of them babies gone, too. No help for them, I guess.”
All the grief that I’d felt over losing Grady returned, magnified tenfold. I wept and wept. I couldn’t stop crying. Even when I was no longer sobbing out loud, the tears silently fell, all that day and into the night. It scared me that I couldn’t seem to stop. It scared Aunt Anne, too. She sent for the doctor.
“Caroline has recovered from the measles,” he told her. “But I think you’d better take her home.”
I wept as I watched the servants pack
my clothes, along with the bird’s nest and the butterfly’s wings
and all the other treasures I’d collected with Jonathan. Uncle
William would accompany me to Richmond tomorrow. I was sorry to go,
yet I knew I couldn’t bear to stay. Slave Row wasn’t visible from
the big house, but that didn’t stop me from thinking about it.
Later that night, I awoke to the sound of voices in the next room. My aunt and uncle had left their bedroom door ajar, and I could hear them talking as they prepared for bed.
“Do you suppose her hysteria could have been caused by her fever?” Aunt Anne asked. “She seemed fine the first few weeks she spent with us. A little skittish, perhaps, but she didn’t cry like this.”
My uncle’s boots dropped to the floor, one after the other. “Her mother’s the same way, Anne. Goes from one extreme to the other. She has terrible crying spells. It’s a real shame, but it looks like the daughter is turning out to be the same way.”
The thought of being just like my mother started my tears falling all over again.
“Poor George must certainly have his hands full with two of them like this,” my aunt said. “I had only one of them and I was at my wits’ end. Has he considered an asylum?”
“Heavens, no! George nearly took my head off when I suggested it.” The bed creaked as one of them climbed into it. “No, my foolish brother wanted to marry that woman—the belle of all Richmond. I tried to warn him that she was high-strung, but he just had to have her. Now he’s living with that mistake.”
“Jonathan asked me if he could go to Richmond with you tomorrow,” my aunt said after a moment.
“No. I already told him that he couldn’t.” The shaft of light from their doorway vanished as one of them snuffed out the light. “Caroline is a beautiful girl, Anne, in spite of her moodiness. She has a hypnotic quality about her—a vulnerability—that attracts foolish young boys like Jonathan. From now on, I don’t want him anywhere near her.”
I heard the haunting song of the slaves the next morning for the last time. As we drove past them laboring in the fields, I looked away.