All Things New (28 page)

“I’m not. I’m just getting things started this first time. Go save me a place to sit. I’ll be right there.”

Lizzie went back and sat down on the sun-warmed grass. Jack climbed onto her lap, and she put her arm around Rufus as he leaned against her. Roselle sat in front of them with her friends.

“I asked Mr. Chandler to read something to us from the Bible,” Otis said when the crowd finally quieted. “Something I remember my pappy reciting. Then we can take turns praying and talking to the Lord.”

Mr. Chandler was still paging through his Bible as he walked over to stand beside Otis. The pages were as thin as onion skins and rustled in the breeze. “I think I found the verses Otis wants me to read,” he began. “It’s actually two passages that he mixed together. One is from Psalm 126, the other from the book of Galatians.” He cleared his throat and began to read in his odd Yankee accent, speaking loud enough for everybody to hear: “‘When the Lord turned again the captivity of Zion, we were like them that dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with singing: then said they among the heathen, the Lord hath done great things for them.’”

Someone in the crowd shouted, “Amen,” and Mr. Chandler looked up, smiling.

“‘The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad,’” he continued. “‘They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. He that goeth forth and weepeth, bearing precious seed, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.’”

“Thank you, Lord!” someone else shouted. The pages of the Bible rustled again as Mr. Chandler turned them, looking for the second place.

“‘Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting. And
let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.’”

“That’s just the ones I wanted,” Otis said. “Thank you, sir.” He drew a breath and began talking to the crowd in the same calm, steady voice he used when he told bedtime stories or when he prayed. “Now everybody here knows that if you plant cottonseeds in the ground, you get cotton. Put corn seeds in and a corn plant grows. And like that verse just said, if you sow hatred year after year you’re gonna reap a war, like the one that just ended.

“Now I know it seems like the only seeds we slaves ever get are things like hard work and pain and suffering. But if we give them to God, He can do a miracle under that ground. We see it every day. Put in a tiny seed, get a big green plant with blossoms and leaves and cotton. We can’t do it ourselves. We got to trust the Almighty. But today we can take all our suffering and give it to God, and you know what we’ll reap when the time comes? Joy!

“They can burn our school and take everything else away from us, but they can’t take away Jesus. He’s with us always, and He promised us a better life with Him in heaven someday. Today we’re here to pray and bring all our trials to Him. But don’t be planting seeds of hatred. Give Jesus our tears and someday we’ll reap a harvest of joy.”

To Lizzie the words felt like a warm shawl around her shoulders on a cold day. She wished she could trust Jesus the way Otis did, but she forgot how to trust a long time ago. Even so, her prayer today would be,
Protect my Roselle. Keep her safe. Don’t let anything bad happen to her.

Otis started to come over to sit down beside her, then turned back and said, “Oh, and one more thing. Don’t forget that Jesus said we’re supposed to pray for our enemies, too.”

Pray for Massa Daniel? Or for Roselle’s father? Lizzie couldn’t do it. The words would stick in her throat like a mouth full of flour.

Everyone bowed their heads and began to pray. Sometimes one person would pray out loud, sometimes everyone would pray at the same time, sometimes somebody would start singing a song.
And though their cries were mournful and pleading at first, the afternoon ended just as Otis promised it would, with singing and laughter and joy. Most people had brought food along, and they spread everything out on the grass and shared it with each other in a great big picnic.

Mr. Chandler had gone inside the building to let them worship alone, but late in the afternoon he came outside again and stood at the top of the rise to get their attention. “Please don’t leave yet. I have an announcement to make.” He waited until the crowd grew still. “As you know, it’s my job to take care of the freedmen—that’s all of you—looking out for your interests, seeing to your needs. Today I have to ask for your forgiveness because I haven’t done a very good job of that. A while back, several of you suffered a vicious beating in the woods, and two good men died of gunshot wounds. I’m determined to get justice for all of you, and especially for the two murdered men. But I can’t do it without your help. I talked to the authorities in Richmond about the violence, and they told me they can’t prosecute without witnesses. Please, I need everyone who was there that night, everyone who was injured, to come and talk to me. Tell me everything you remember. If I can combine all your pieces of information, we’ll stand a better chance of finding the men who were responsible and bringing them to justice.”

“They’re never going to take our word as the truth,” Old Willy said, shaking his head. “Especially against a white man’s word.”

“I’m going to hound everyone in the Freedmen’s Bureau, all the way to Washington, until I get justice. That’s my job. That’s why this bureau was created. Please, those of you who were there, come and talk to me.”

“You gonna tell him it was Massa Daniel?” Lizzie whispered to Otis. He didn’t reply.

“And one more thing,” Mr. Chandler added. “I’ve realized I allowed a group of evil men to keep me from seeing to one of your greatest needs—an education for your children. I’m sorry. Please send them here tomorrow morning for school. We’ll hold classes out
here where you’re sitting or in my office if it rains. As of tomorrow morning, the school is officially open once again.”

Rufus had been sitting at Lizzie’s side, but he leaped to his feet, too excited to sit. “Hear that, Mama? We’re having school again!” Jack jumped up, too, and they held hands and did a little dance right there on the grass.

Otis reached for Lizzie’s hand and squeezed it tight. “See? The Lord is answering our prayers already.”

“What about telling him about Massa Daniel and his friends?”

“I need to pray about it first. There’s a difference between justice and revenge, and I need to make sure I’m doing it for the right reasons. I know Massa Daniel’s horse was there. I don’t know if he was riding it. And I don’t know if he was the one who shot those people.”

“But Mr. Chandler said everybody needs to tell what they know.”

“Mr. Chandler don’t understand the way things are here in the South. If we accuse a white man to his face, chances are the white man will still go free—but we’ll all be dead men.”

“But it ain’t fair.”

“Life won’t be fair until we reach heaven, Lizzie-girl.”

On Monday morning, Lizzie was serving breakfast to the white folks in their dining room when Miz Eugenia looked all around and asked, “Where is Roselle? She needs to go up to Miss Mary’s room when we’re finished. It’s time she learns how to be a lady’s maid.”

No, ma’am!
Lizzie wanted to say.
She needs to learn how to read and write!
She bit her lip to keep from saying the words out loud, then answered quietly, “Roselle ain’t here, ma’am. She went to school this morning.”

“You’re lying!” Massa Daniel said. He looked so angry he could have breathed out fire. “I know for a fact the school is closed.”

“It’s the truth,” Lizzie said, feeling scared and happy at the same time. “The school just opened up again. Today is the first day.” She risked a glance at Missy Josephine and saw that she was holding back a smile.

Miz Eugenia looked like a woman who had just been robbed and
didn’t know where to turn. “I suppose those two new girls went to school, too?” she asked. “What are their names?”

“You mean Annie and Meg? Yes, ma’am, they’re gone off to school, too.”

Lizzie quickly turned her back and carried the empty platter out to the kitchen so nobody would see her smiling. She told Clara about the white folks’ reaction when she got to the kitchen, and they both had a good laugh. Clara had just finished churning the cream from their new cow into butter and was pressing it into the butter molds.

“You’d think she’d be happy to have butter again and cream in her tea. She say anything about that?”

Lizzie shook her head. “They ain’t never happy. The more Miz Eugenia gets, and the more it’s like the old days around here, the more she wants.” Lizzie took a bucket out to the pump to fetch water for the dishes. She could see Otis and the other men out in the cotton field, and to her far left, rows of new green corn plants sprouting from the dark earth. She’d told Otis that she was willing to help him. She’d been a field slave like her mother, before moving up to the Big House, and in some ways she wished she still was, especially now that there was no overseer cracking his whip. But Otis wouldn’t hear of it.

“That baby is gonna start kicking before we know it,” he’d said, pressing his hand against her middle. “You stay in the Big House where at least you can sit down once in a while and get out of the sun.”

Rufus and Jack wouldn’t have to work in the fields, either. Lizzie smiled, remembering the looks on their faces as they’d carried the books they’d earned from Missy Jo to school to share with the others. No sir, Lizzie wasn’t going to let Miz Eugenia or Massa Daniel spoil her day. She was going to take all of those seeds they kept throwing at her and hand them over to Jesus so they could grow into joy.

27

J
ULY
3, 1865

Lizzie’s children were back in school. Josephine rejoiced when she heard the news at breakfast, even though she would miss teaching them. They had been bright, alert pupils, eager to soak up everything she taught them. She wondered who Alexander had found to teach them and felt a little sad that it wasn’t her. Of course, it was impossible to do such an outrageous thing. Mother would banish her to Richmond before ever allowing Josephine to become a common schoolteacher, much less teach a classroom full of Negro children.

The hot July day stretched endlessly before Josephine, as long and empty as all the others. She missed her days at Mrs. Blake’s house when they had learned how to cook together and when Josephine would work in the garden in the morning before the sun grew too hot. Now her only guilty pleasure was sewing. She had decided to try fashioning a skirt and bodice for herself from two worn-out dresses. “If I’m going to entertain suitors, I’ll need something nice to wear,” Jo had told her mother to pacify her. She didn’t dare take out her needle and thread too often, though, or appear to be enjoying her labor, or Mother would become upset.

Jo was sitting in the parlor that afternoon stitching a side seam,
the slippery taffeta rustling beneath her fingers, when she saw the children coming home from school. The boys chased each other in a game of tag; the little girls fluttered around Roselle like hummingbirds. Jo put aside her sewing and went outside to talk to them, standing in the back doorway as they raced into the yard. She could hear Lizzie and Clara working in the kitchen and smelled sweet potatoes baking. “How was school? Did you have a new teacher?” Jo asked.

“Mr. Chandler taught us today,” Jack said as he made a game of jumping on and off the wooden walkway. “But he doesn’t teach the same way Miss Hunt did.”

“He said maybe our old teacher might come back,” Rufus added. “But we liked you teaching us the best, Missy Jo.”

She ran her hand over Rufus’s wooly hair. “That’s sweet of you to say so, but I’m not a real teacher.” She was glad the children felt free to talk with her and even laugh with her after they’d all worked together. She missed being with them and had even considered hiring them to tame a few other portions of the badly overgrown plantation grounds, just to spend time with them again. But going to school was much better for them than doing yard work.

The children skipped away and she was about to go inside when Roselle called to her, “Missy Josephine, wait.” Roselle took Josephine’s hand in both of hers and pushed a piece of paper into it, closing her fist around it. “Mr. Chandler asked me to give that to you,” she whispered.

Josephine opened her hand as Roselle hurried into the kitchen and found a crumpled, folded note with
Miss Weatherly
printed on it. Jo glanced all around, then quickly walked to the terrace on the side of the house to read it. Her heart pounded as if she had run circles around the house instead of walking slowly. She found a patch of shade and leaned against the newly whitewashed railing with her back to the house. Alexander’s handwriting was as tall and slender and angular as he was, and it made her smile. She pictured his blue eyes and fuzzy brown whiskers and heard his Yankee accent as she read:

My dear Josephine,

Can we meet? I long to be assured that I didn’t get you into trouble with your family, and . . . well, the plain truth is that I miss talking with you. I’ll be at the tree house tomorrow, just after dawn like the last time. Then the same time the following day in case you cannot come tomorrow for some reason. Or you can always send a note back to me and ask Roselle to deliver it. I anxiously await your reply.

Yours,
Alexander Chandler

She should throw the letter away. No, she should burn it in the fire so no one would ever see it. Instead, she put it in her pocket where she could reach in to touch it every now and then.

For the rest of the day Josephine thought about his request and tallied all the reasons why she shouldn’t go. She should send a message back with Roselle, explaining the promise she’d made to her sister, explaining there was no point in continuing their friendship. But Jo was wide awake the next morning before the rooster had a chance to crow, and after making sure Mary was sound asleep, she carried her clothes into the guest room to get dressed. She didn’t take time to pin up her hair, letting it fall loose down her back so she could say she had been to the privy if anyone caught her outside.

The air was already warm when she slipped through the back door and hurried down the path to the tree house. She wouldn’t stay long, she told herself. Just long enough to see him again.

Alexander was already standing beneath the tree house waiting for her. As soon as he saw her, he broke into a grin and jogged up the path toward her, his hands outstretched. “Josephine! I’m so glad you came.” She had the irrational urge to run into his arms and hold him tightly. Instead, she reached for his hands and took them in hers, squeezing them briefly before letting go. She hoped he wouldn’t say awkward things like he had missed her. She was afraid of what she might say in return, and so she hurried to speak first.

“I can’t stay long. I promised my sister I wouldn’t meet with you again, and I’m breaking my promise.” She glanced back, determined to keep her eye on the trail this time. And she wouldn’t let Alexander hold her hand no matter how warm and strong and wonderful it felt.

“Did I get you into trouble with your family?”

Jo shook her head. “I convinced Mary not to tell, but I had to promise not to see you.” The morning air was still, without a breeze. She heard the new cow lowing in the barn, waiting to be milked, the rooster crowing to be fed.

“How have you been, Josephine?”

“Fine, thank you.” Her words came out more stilted than she intended, but her feelings were in such a state of confusion that she didn’t know what to say or how to say it. “We can’t be friends anymore, Alexander. I mean, I’ll always consider you a friend, but we can’t meet anymore. I came today because I wanted you to know that it wasn’t because of anything you said or because I was angry with you, but . . . well, because . . .”

“I’m a Yankee.”

“Yes. And a man. I’m not sure how things are done where you come from, but down here it isn’t proper for an unmarried man and woman to be alone together without a chaperone.”

“My intentions are honorable, I assure you.”

“I know. I’m not worried. But I’m risking my reputation by coming here.” There. She had said it plainly. She was also risking more confusion and sorrow if she continued to see him because their friendship was impossible. And she was running the risk of caring for him even more than she already did. “What have you been doing? How is your work progressing?” she asked.

“I’m sure you’ve heard that I’ve reopened the school.”

“Yes. The children were very excited about it. I didn’t realize the building had been repaired.”

“It hasn’t. But I decided to hold classes outside since the weather is so nice. It’s not ideal, but it’s better than nothing.”

“What made you change your mind?”

“Your servant Lizzie begged me to reopen it—and she’s right. The only way the next generation of freedmen will ever have a better future is if they can get an education.”

“Roselle told me you’re teaching the children yourself.”

“I admit I’m a terrible teacher. I wrote to the Missionary Society and asked them to please send Miss Hunt or someone else right away, but it will still take a few weeks. And so I was wondering . . . is there any way at all that you could teach them in the meantime? I know I asked you before, and I understand why you had to refuse, but—”

“Nothing has changed.” She took another glance down the trail. “Unlike the women you know up north, I’m not free to go wherever I want to and do whatever I choose. That’s the way it is down here. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too. I have a goodly amount of other bureau business to attend to, and it won’t get done while I’m tied up with teaching. I need to return to Richmond, for one thing. An important part of my job is to get justice for the freedmen, so I’m trying to arrange an investigation into the beatings and the two murders and the fire. The school is government property, and the arsonists must be brought to justice.”

Josephine didn’t know what to say. She suspected that Daniel was one of the men responsible for the fire and for the beatings in the woods. What he and the others had done was wrong, but she didn’t want the Yankees to send him to jail. Could they try him for murder? Hang him? What would become of White Oak?

She shouldn’t be here, Jo realized. She shouldn’t be talking to a Yankee. She was being disloyal to her family and to the South. “Was there something else you needed to tell me?” she asked, taking a small step away from him. “I can’t be gone long. I shouldn’t have come at all, but . . .” But she had wanted to see him. She had missed him. Being here was wrong in every possible way, yet she thought of Alexander every single day, thought of him when she lay in her bed at night. On the evening of the dance she had foolishly wished that he would walk through the door, tall and handsome, and ask
her to waltz with him. She had pretended it was Alexander she’d waltzed with instead of Henry Schreiber.

“I understand,” he said. “Since we don’t have much time, I also wanted to ask if you’re still mad at God, still unable to pray?”

“I avoid God altogether,” she said, looking down at her feet and the shoes he had given her. “I go to church with my family because it’s expected of me, but I’m simply going through the motions.” She took another small step away from him. Maybe if she did it in small increments, it wouldn’t hurt so much when she finally turned her back and walked away.

“Have you tried yelling at God? Getting angry? Telling Him what you think?”

She gave a short laugh. “I’m just beginning to do that with real people like Harrison Blake. I have even talked back to my mother a bit—something I never would have dared to do before I met you. But I still don’t have the nerve to yell at God.”

“You don’t really have to yell,” he said, laughing. “Just talk freely, like you and I always do.”

“He doesn’t answer my questions out loud the way you do.” She looked up at him, and his grin made her smile. “You’ve acted as His spokesman, Alexander, giving me a lot of things to think about. I’m grateful.”

“You look so pretty with your hair that way,” he said softly. “I’ve missed you, Josephine.” He hadn’t stopped looking at her since she arrived. She closed her eyes, longing to say that she missed him, too, but there was no point at all in doing so. Their friendship was impossible. Anything more than friendship was scandalous.

“I need to leave. I’m so sorry. I feel bad about breaking my promise to Mary.”

“Wait!” He reached for her hand, and she let him take it. She kept her head lowered, hiding the tears she didn’t want him to see. “Could we write to each other? That wouldn’t be breaking your promise, would it? We could send letters to each other through Roselle.”

“I don’t have any paper. I used it all up writing letters to my
brothers during the war. I know that sounds like a feeble excuse but it’s true.”

“Then I’ll send you some paper. And ink, too, if you need it. I’ll send it this afternoon, in fact. Please, Josephine? You could ask me questions in your letters, and I’ll try to answer them. I need to know how you’re doing.”

She shouldn’t agree to write to him. But if she said good-bye today and walked away, she might never see him again, never speak to him again, and she couldn’t bear the thought. “I suppose we can try writing for a while.”

Even that seemed deceitful to her. She would have to do it in secret or Mother would want to know where the writing paper had come from and who the letters were for. But Josephine couldn’t deny the relief she felt at having a way to continue their friendship.

“Thank you, Josephine.” His words came out like a sigh of relief. He squeezed her hand before letting go. “And one more thing . . . ?” he asked as she started to walk away. She turned to look at him. “Please give God another chance?”

Josephine made it all the way back to the house without being seen and was sitting at the dressing table in their bedroom, pinning up her hair when Mary awoke. They went down to breakfast together, but Jo avoided her sister’s gaze, certain she would read the guilt in her eyes. Or maybe the happiness.

“I have good news, girls,” Mother announced at breakfast. “I have invited Mrs. Schreiber and Mrs. Gray to tea today. I expect both of you to be there, of course, and to make our guests feel welcome. Their sons would make very good matches, as you know.”

Josephine stared at the tabletop, trying to quell a rising sense of panic. Her father had once explained to her how he and the other men hunted pheasants by getting the slaves to move through the brush in an ever-tightening circle, chasing the birds into the hunters’ path. She felt like one of those helpless birds now. Her mother was a strong, determined woman. Her plans left no room for escape.

“But . . . but Joseph Gray is nearly ten years older than Mary,” Jo blurted. “She’s much too young for him.”