Chapter Six

Richmond, October 1856

Back in Richmond, my life quickly returned to its old routine. I couldn’t forget everything I’d experienced, but I managed to push most of it from my mind, packing away my disquieting thoughts and my grief like the dolls and other toys I’d outgrown. For the next two years, my mother’s condition seemed to slowly improve. She spent more and more time downstairs in the drawing room instead of in her bedroom, and she even entertained guests for dinner once in a while. One afternoon when I came home from school, Ruby called me to my mother’s sitting room.

Mother was smiling, and her curtains and shutters were open, but she couldn’t seem to be still. She flitted restlessly around the small room, her hoop skirts swirling, her nervous hands picking up first one object, then another, quickly discarding them again.

“I have some wonderful news I want to discuss with you, Caroline. In private.” Her voice had that frenzied breathlessness I’d grown to dread. “Ladies don’t talk about such things in polite company, you know.”

“What things?”

“You must tell no one, Caroline, but I’m finally expecting another child. I waited to tell you until the doctor was certain I was past the danger point. He says the baby is strong and healthy, and I’m not likely to lose it. But just to be sure, I must stay in confinement for the remainder of my time. I’m not even allowed to go to church.”

I tried to act pleased, but the news terrified me. I recalled the terrible grief I’d felt after the babies died at Hilltop, and I worried about what would happen to my mother if her baby died. I tried to pray, putting all my worry into Jesus’ hands, as Eli had taught me, but the worry and fear grew and swelled inside me even as the baby grew inside my mother.

One cold February day when Eli brought me home from school, the doctor’s carriage stood parked by our front gate. Fear gripped my stomach in its fist and wouldn’t let go. “Is Mother sick again?” I asked Eli.

“Better ask Tessie. She know.”

“Is it time for Mother’s baby?”

“Shush! Ain’t fitting to talk of such things.”

As soon as I came through the door, Tessie was waiting for me. “Where’s Mother? Can I see her?”

“Now, you best stay down here, child, ’til the baby come.”

I thought I could hear my mother moaning now and then as I waited nervously in the parlor. Tessie finally took me outside to the kitchen to distract me. Esther had all sorts of pots and kettles going in the fire, as usual, and the fragrant room quickly swallowed some of my fear in its steamy warmth. I sat down at the table across from Eli and watched the cold sleet wash down the windowpane outside.

“What’s it like to have a baby?” I asked.

Esther rolled her eyes. “Ain’t no picnic, I tell you that.”

“What makes Mother cry out so?”

Eli leaped up from his chair and fled the kitchen.

“Hush, now,” Tessie warned.

“Why won’t anyone tell me?” I asked.

“Because it ain’t fitting to talk about such things,” Tessie scolded. “You find out when the time come. And I ain’t gonna say no more about it, so quit asking.”

When I heard Daddy’s carriage arrive, I ran back through the cold sleet to the house. He immediately went upstairs to talk to the doctor, then came down again and asked Gilbert to pour him a drink. I went into the library to see him, but Daddy never did sit down in his chair. He paced nervously across the room to the window, looked out at the doctor’s carriage, covered with slush, then paced back to his desk, over and over again. I grew tired just watching him.

“Is Mother all right?” I finally asked.

“The doctor says so.”

I was afraid to ask about the baby.

Neither of us ate much of the supper Esther had made, but I saw Ruby carry up a huge tray of food for the doctor. The baby still hadn’t come when it was time for me to go to bed. I slept poorly, listening to Mother’s moans in the night.

The next morning, Tessie came to sit beside me on the bed, gently stroking my hair. “You mama had a little boy baby last night,” she said softly. “But he all blue, just like the others. He in heaven now, with the angels.”

“What about Mother?”

“She okay.”

“Is she . . . is she going to die?”

“No, the doctor say she ain’t gonna die. But I think she want to.”

The doctor was wrong. Before nightfall, my mother was dead.

Mother’s older sister, Martha, came down from Philadelphia by train for the funeral. Aunt Anne and Uncle William drove into town from Hilltop. Jonathan, who now attended the College of William and Mary, arrived by paddle steamer from Williamsburg. He wrapped his arm around my waist to hold me up as I stood beside Mother’s open grave in Hollywood Cemetery. The gaping hole in the ground, the bare tree branches, the black mourners’ clothes all looked stark against the frozen white ground. I had just turned sixteen, and my first grown-up dress, with long sleeves and proper hoops, was a black mourning gown.

That night after everyone else had gone to sleep, I slipped from my bed and went down the hall to my mother’s room. Ruby sat all alone on the edge of Mother’s neatly made bed, a single candle on the dressing table casting an eerie light. Ruby looked up as I entered, and I saw that she’d been crying.

“Ruby . . .” My voice sounded loud in the quiet night. “Ruby, there’s something I need to know.”

“You as pretty as she always was,” Ruby murmured as I stepped closer. I cleared the knot of fear from my throat.

“The doctor said my mother was fine after the baby was born . . . but Mother died.”

Ruby said nothing. I didn’t want to ask the question out loud, but she wasn’t going to make this easy for me.

“How . . . how did my mother die?”

Ruby shook her head as if she wanted both me and my question to go away. I knelt on the floor in front of her, face to face, taking her hands in mine.

“I came here to see Mother the day the baby was born. She didn’t have a fever. She wasn’t sick. . . .” I waited. “Please tell me, Ruby.”

“Seem like . . . seem like maybe your mama make a mistake,” she said in a tiny voice. “She not sleeping much, you know . . . and maybe she want to sleep. Laudanum pill always help her sleep, but maybe . . . maybe she take too many this time . . . by accident.”

“Is that what you think, Ruby? That it was an accident?”

She closed her eyes. By the light of the single candle, I watched the tears roll down her cheeks. When she opened her eyes again, she smiled. “I glad they bury her little baby with her. Now he won’t be all alone in that cold ground. Your mama so worried about that. Said a child need its mama.” She squeezed my hands tightly, her eyes pleading, begging me to understand. “Your mama didn’t want to leave her child all alone, Missy Caroline.”

I wanted to understand, but I couldn’t. I was her child, too. I needed my mother. And she had left me all alone.

My father seemed to age twenty years overnight. He wouldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and spent most of the time in his library, where Gilbert endlessly refilled his glass. Daddy and Uncle William had shouted at each other in loud voices the night before my uncle returned to Hilltop, but I didn’t hear what they’d said. When it was time for Aunt Martha to return to Philadelphia, she and Daddy called me into the library one night. The sight of his griefravaged face brought tears to my eyes.

“I have business overseas, Caroline,” Daddy said without preamble. “I’m sailing at the end of this week. Aunt Martha has offered to take you to Philadelphia to live with her for a while.”

I couldn’t find the words to tell him that I didn’t want anything to change, that too many things had changed already. I felt this new loss as if it had already taken place. “I want to stay here, Daddy,” I said desperately. “With you.”

“I can’t stay, Caroline.” He glanced up at me, then quickly looked away. I knew I reminded him of Mother. I saw the resemblance myself in the mirror every morning. “I’ll be gone for several months,” he continued. “Your Aunt Martha doesn’t think you should stay here alone.”

“I won’t be alone. I have Tessie and Eli and Esther. . . .”

“That’s not an option,” Daddy said harshly. “If you stay in Richmond you will have to board at school.”

His words filled me with dread. I’d lost my mother, and now I was losing my daddy and my home, too. Aunt Martha came to me, slipping her arm around my shoulders, taking my hand in hers.

“Boarding schools are terribly lonely places, Caroline. After all you’ve been through, don’t you think it might be better if you lived in a home for a while, with your family? I have two girls of my own who are about your age. They’ll be company for you.”

“The only other choice,” Daddy said, “is to stay with my brother at Hilltop.”

I didn’t care for any of those choices. I knew I would hate boarding school—the cold gray hallways and barren rooms, standing in line for everything. I had no friends there—the other girls weren’t like me at all. Nor could I go back to Hilltop with an aunt and uncle who thought I belonged in an asylum. My cousin Jonathan was away at college, and I didn’t think I could stand being at Hilltop without him, living in the plantation house with papered walls and rich food on the table while the slaves lived in drafty cabins with dirt floors and cornshuck beds. I would never get used to seeing beautiful children like Caleb and Nellie hungry and sick, knowing their mothers were praying that they would die. That left Philadelphia as my only option—and I had no idea what to expect if I went there. Aunt Martha was as plump and plain as one of Esther’s biscuits. She had none of my mother’s beauty nor her shifting moods. She seemed kind.

She gently squeezed my hand. “Come to Philadelphia with me, Caroline.”

“How long would I have to stay?”

“As long as you’d like. You can enroll in school with my girls.”

“Could I come home again if I didn’t like it there?”

“You’d have to agree to give it a reasonable amount of time,” my father said. “It’s not easy traveling back and forth at the drop of a hat. Especially after making all the arrangements for school.”

“Why don’t we say . . . at least until the school term ends in June,” Aunt Martha said. “That’s only four months away. Then we can see how you feel about staying longer.”

In the end I agreed to go. I didn’t seem to have much choice. Aunt Martha wanted to leave by the end of the week, which didn’t give Tessie much time to pack our things.

“I’ve never ridden on a train before, have you?” I asked Tessie the night before we were scheduled to leave.

“No, I sure ain’t never been on any train.” Her voice sounded muffled, coming from inside the huge steamer trunk she was bending over.

“Are you excited, Tessie?”

She straightened, still holding a pile of folded clothes in her hands. She looked puzzled. “Excited? I ain’t going on the train with you, Missy.”

“What?”

“Oh, child . . . didn’t they tell you? I staying here. I thought you knew.”

I ran from the room, raced down the curved stairs, and barged into my father’s library without knocking.

“I’ve changed my mind,” I told him. “I don’t want to go to Philadelphia.”

It took him a moment to recover from my outburst. He looked disoriented, disheveled, the glass in his hand nearly empty. His shirtfront was wrinkled and stained, his usually neat hair unkempt, his face flushed. “It’s too late now. I’ve purchased your train ticket, made all the traveling arrangements, notified the school. You’re going to Philadelphia.”

“You didn’t tell me Tessie wasn’t coming. I don’t want to go without Tessie.”

He looked away. “Well, I’m sorry, but Tessie can’t go. It’s out of the question.”

“Why? Why can’t she go?”

He tried to relight his cigar, but his hands shook so badly he couldn’t strike the match. “People do things differently up north. They don’t have Negro mammies, for one thing. And they don’t care very much for people who do. The abolitionists and free Negroes will fill her head with crazy talk about running away.”

“Tessie would never run away from me.”

“Don’t be too sure. It’s different up there, you’ll see. Tessie would be out of place, like a fish out of water. Ever see what happens when you take a fish out of water?”

“I need Tessie—”

“No! I need her here!” He picked up the whiskey bottle, sloshing it all over his desk as he poured another drink. This man wasn’t my daddy. I couldn’t bear to watch him toss back his head and drain the glass. I stalked to the door.

“You’re sixteen now,” he said as I reached it. “It’s time you outgrew your mammy.”

I stumbled up the stairs, trying not to cry. I was afraid that if I started I wouldn’t be able to stop again. I would never outgrow my mammy. Hadn’t Ruby been my mother’s mammy all her life?

Tessie came to me as soon as I walked into the room. Her beautiful face was etched with concern. She rubbed my shoulders and stroked my hair, murmuring, “I thought you knew, baby. I thought they told you.”

“Would you be a fish out of water if you went with me?” I asked, still fighting my tears.

“Is that what your daddy say?”

“Yes. And he said he needs you here.” Her hands froze. She looked at me with an odd expression on her face, but it passed before I could define it.

“Your girl cousins won’t have mammies in Philadelphia,” she said, her hands caressing my shoulders again. “They be jealous of you if I there to fuss all over you. Best thing for you is to fit in, do like they do when you up north.”

“But I’ll miss you!”

She pulled me close, hugging me so tightly I could scarcely breathe. I heard sniffing and knew she was crying, too.

“Baby, you like my own child since the day you was born. I couldn’t love you more if you my own flesh and blood. But you just about all grown up now. You be wanting a husband to share you room one these days, not an old colored woman like me.”

I hugged her tightly in return, my tears finally falling. “You’re not old at all. And I’ll always want you with me, forever and ever.”

But the mention of a husband reminded me that Tessie was secretly married to Josiah. They saw each other only rarely, but maybe she didn’t want to go away to Philadelphia where she would never see him.

“I’ve made up my mind,” I said firmly. “I’ve decided to go to Hilltop instead of Philadelphia. I’ll go tell Daddy. He’ll let you come with me to Hilltop.”

She caught my arm in time to pull me back. “Listen, child. Your daddy won’t let me go there, either. I certain of that.”

“But why not?” Tessie didn’t answer. I lifted her chin so I could see her face. “Is it because of Josiah? I know you’re secretly married—”

“Hush your mouth!” Tessie’s eyes went wide with fear. “Don’t you ever say such a thing in this house!”

“Is that why Daddy sold Josiah to Hilltop . . . so you couldn’t be together?”

She pulled me into her arms, smothering my words as if trying to smother flames. “Child, don’t you go around opening doors that are better off closed and locked. It only lead to trouble— especially for Josiah. Forget you ever ask all these questions. Leave things the way they are. Promise?”

I nodded.

“You go on with your aunt to Philadelphia. Then, if you don’t like it there, you can always come on home to Richmond again. And I be here waiting for you.”

I watched Eli carry my trunk downstairs to the carriage the next morning and wondered who I would share all my troubles with in Philadelphia, who would answer all my questions. Gilbert was driving us to the train station, so this was the last time I would see Eli. The thought of saying good-bye to him made my heart ache inside, but when he returned to my room for the last load, I knew I had to try.

“I wish I didn’t have to go away to Philadelphia,” I said.

He nodded, his gray head bowed in grief. “I know . . . I know. Sure won’t be the same around here without my Little Missy. No one asking me questions all the time . . . no one to drive to school. . . .”

I was a grown girl of sixteen, too old for a mammy, too old to sit on Eli’s lap and listen to his stories. But when he finally looked up at me and I saw the love and the tears in his eyes, I was a child again. I ran into his arms. He hugged me as tightly as Tessie had.

“I’ll miss you so much, Eli!”

“Me too, Little Missy . . . me too.” When we finally let go, he wiped my tears with his thumb. “You remember to hide all them words I teach you in your heart . . . you hear?”

I nodded, tapping my chest the way Grady used to do. “They’re in there, Eli.”

“And anything too big for you, just take it to Massa Jesus.”

“I will.” I thought about Eli’s terrible secret, the secret that could get him killed. I stood on tiptoe to kiss his bearded cheek and whispered, “Be careful, Eli.” Then I turned away so I wouldn’t have to watch him go.