A Matter of Souls (11 page)

Covington snorted. If she was going to be stubborn, he was going to be determined.

He wasn't sure how long it took. Sweat moistened the back of his neck; he was beginning to feel a little lightheaded. At the doorframe, he leaned to rest.

Beesi stepped to one side.

Under the front window was his workbench. Next to it was his stool.

“Come, come.” Beesi took his hand and nestled close, almost like she was becoming Covington's left side. He sat down hard on the stool and swallowed as he looked down. There were his tools, placed just as he liked them. Lasting pincers, small hammer, awls … and tucked underneath one of the smoothing sticks was a scrap of brown paper.

Covington slowly slipped it out and held it up close to his face.

It was his sketch of the dove-colored wedding shoe.

“Beesi, I—” The emotion stopped him. Beesi got down on her knees and looked up into his eyes.

“She gonna wait. They all gonna wait, for Covington's Fine Shoes.” Beesi squeezed Covington's right hand and drew the muslin window curtain back.

Covington saw his shingle hanging there, all of a piece, letters perfect and paint fresh. He grabbed Beesi's chin and kissed her, once, twice, three times.

“We've got a powerful love, Adebesi,” he whispered.

“Powerful, Covington,” she murmured back, brushing her lips against his eyes and forehead.

“We got somethin' powerful.”

G
irl! Put some more coal on that fire. I told you not to let it burn down so low. There's a chill in here! I don't want to look like a snow queen in my portrait. Hurry up, why don't you?” The plain young woman rustled only slightly in the direction of the little brown child in the corner of the room. The shining pleats of red silk that pooled around the young woman hardly moved.

The child blinked away sleep. She was so tired, she'd been dozing. It took her a minute to gain her senses, but she knew that her mistress wouldn't dare reach out to strike her. This time. She would never risk putting a hair out of place, not after the hours she'd spent carefully arranging her curls and painting her face for the picture-taking man.

And besides, he had said the mistress must be still as stone while he was preparing to make his exposure. But she could move her lips.

“Well? And can't you see that our guest needs some warm drink? You tell Annie Cook to send in a plate of sweets, too!”

The tall, red-haired man winked at the child as she jumped from the low, round stool where she was sitting. She took a chance and offered him a quick grin in return.

“How dare you get familiar with my company!” Mistress screeched, and a dainty pump flew past the child's head, almost landing on the hearth. The child darted her eyes to the fireplace, and the man laughed in genuine enjoyment as he bent to retrieve the shoe.

The child knew the mistress would take this as humiliation and make her pay dearly for it later on. It was almost worth it, she thought, crossing the soft wool carpet into the hall. That man had a laugh like music, and his eyes were like clear blue skies. She heard him speaking in low tones to the high squeaks of Mistress's complaints.

In the wide center hall, the child heard singing. It was an odd, welcoming thing, to hear singing in the middle of a December morning. Something made her bare feet move toward the front of the house rather than the rear, toward the kitchen. She drew back the lace curtain to see a group of people huddled across the street.

“'Tis the season to be jolly …” they were singing. The child pressed her small nose against the cold glass.

They were Colored people! She stared. They were Colored people, just like she was, and they had on pretty and plaid wool coats and bright hats and mufflers. They
had smooth, full faces and nice eyes, and they were singing to her from across the street!

As the child watched, one man in the middle, a broad-shouldered, honey-colored man with a gap right between his front teeth—that man lowered his songbook and looked at her.

A sudden draft blew in from underneath the wide front door, and the child dropped the curtain in fright and shivered in her cotton shift.

The singing stopped, and she was sorry that it had ended. With one timid finger she lifted the corner of the lace and twisted her head to peek out.

The Colored choir was gone, and the slate walk in front of the stately house was cold and empty.

The child took a deep breath, wondering how a body could manage jolly when her life was just plain misery.

She rushed into the kitchen and set the heavy kettle on the front burner of the stove. She lingered there because it was warm.

“Girl! Ain't you got nothin' better to do than slouch front a' the stove?” Annie Cook stuck her wide, dark face in from the food pantry. The child could see a few tiny, shiny specks, like Mistress's diamonds, flicker on Annie Cook's cheeks. She was in there eating sugar out of a tiny copper pan.

The child turned her back, reaching into the glass-front cupboard to take out two pink Limoges cups and saucers.

Something hard hit the back of her head. Even with her cottony black hair standing every which way, she felt the blow. Her eyes stung with tears as the pan clattered to the floor. She looked around to see Annie Cook's empty hands and satisfied sneer.

“Sassy lil' heifer! You betta think twice fo' you open yo' mout' t' Miss Maddie!”

The child blinked through blurry eyes and carefully arranged the teapot and sugar bowl on the round silver tray.

Why did people around this house throw things? As long as she could remember (in all her nine years), one or the other person was always yelling at her, telling her to move faster, or listen harder, or do better. Nobody ever asked how she got the roses to grow taller than she was (she talked to them), or how she knew to put what book at Mistress's bedside (she'd taught herself to read them), or if she was too tired or too hungry to do anything (when she always was both).

She knew she didn't belong to these people—to the mistress, who was unmarried and unmarriageable. The girl had not belonged to the mistress's sad, sickly mother or her mean, rich father. There had been a brown houseboy, Jeff, who was older than the old man, and more sour. The girl remembered the way Jeff limped around on cold mornings, his leg stiff and twisted from an old fracture that never healed right. The young mistress had turned him out when her father died. Jeff couldn't stand females or children anyway. And Annie Cook was always too busy cooking food,
sneaking food, or stealing food for her grown children to pay the child any attention.

So the child watched and listened and practiced reading in secret. She had no mother or father of her own, but she didn't belong to these people.

The child used to listen to the old man
pontificate
as his old man friends smoked and argued with him. She used to bring his newspapers and dust real slow while he exclaimed out loud to his wife who wouldn't listen about the world going to hell in a handbasket because Colored people had actually started turning out to vote.

He ranted because that W. E. B. Du Bois, “with his uppity light-skinned self,” wanted Colored people to be worldly, and that other one, Booker T. Washington, “with the nerve to have the name of a patriot,” wanted Coloreds to learn a trade and get paid the same as White men.

The child figured out that what made the old man mad was that Colored people
wanted
.

“It's about time!” The mistress had composed herself when the child returned. She was giggly and shy with the redhaired picture-taking man as the child placed the tray on a side table and poured tea.

“Say! Madeline, how about letting me take a picture of our little waitress here?”

The child felt a strange tremor run up from her heart to her throat. The mistress was silent, stunned by her guest's request. The child lowered her head and passed the photographer a cup and saucer.

“What is your name, child?” he asked in his direct, not-of-the-South voice.

“Girl,” she whispered, not looking at him.

“Madeline?” he asked. The child looked at his shoes.

“Oh, I forget if she ever had a name,” the mistress huffed. “She's just a girl. And I think you are perfectly ridiculous, William. Who would want a picture of a pickaninny?”

The photographer put his hand on the child's chin and made her look at him. She saw those eyes like skies.

“Let's clean her up, get her dressed in something presentable …” He removed his hand, almost respectfully.

“That is, if you'd like to be photographed.” He was speaking directly to the brown child.

She looked at the mistress, a storm of pale fury in her holiday finery—and feeling frisky, almost cheerful—the child grinned back at the picture-taking man and nodded.

“Well! I am most certainly not paying for this, William!”

“Never mind. This will be art, and art is for the future; don't you know that? Now I know you have some of your childhood frocks that you just couldn't part with, selfish
Maddie that you are. Shall I …” He turned toward the hall and the stairs leading up to the mistress's boudoir.

The mistress popped up and grabbed the child by her arm.

“You shall not! Come, Girl.” She dragged the child, twisting her arm, up the stairs.

The child didn't care, for once. Something had changed.

Keys clinked and locks clicked on the trunks the mistress drug out. She muttered and fussed to herself, of course, as she examined and tossed silks and linens and cottons onto the bed.

The child stood in the cold room, wide-eyed at the treasures.

Finally, the mistress stopped. A pale yellow cloud floated before the mistress's face for a second before she thrust it at the child and spun away.

“Hurry up! Don't make William wait.”

The child hugged the dress against her body. It was really for summer, she knew, because it was cotton. But it had a sheen to it, so that as she moved in the sunlight, she could imagine that it was silk. After she heard the mistress's feet on the stairs, she went back to the trunk. There was a petticoat and there were stockings; there was a pair of shining black boots with a beautiful pattern pierced into the hardly worn leather.