Freeman (46 page)

But still…the note of caring in the girl’s voice was welcome to hear.

“I am fine, Adelaide,” she said. “They did not hurt me.”

“I heard about Miss Bonnie,” said Adelaide. The girl paused. “I liked her. She was real nice.”

“I know,” said Prudence. “I liked her, too.” She tried to smile, but didn’t quite.

“And poor Bug. You know, he tried real hard to learn to read.”

“Yes, Adelaide. I know.”

“Are you gon’ open the school again?”

The question surprised her. “No,” she said, and she realized it was the first time she had said it out loud. “I do not think it would be safe.”

“Done tried to tell her that,” said the man. There was still an apology in his voice. “I think she just need to hear it from you.”

“But
why
?” insisted Adelaide. “I
like
going to school.”

“I know you did,” said Prudence, “and I enjoyed being your teacher, but we have to be practical in our considerations. The people in this town will no longer allow me to teach you.”

“The
white
people you mean.” Her features had collected themselves into a scowl.

“Adelaide!” The man—her father, Prudence assumed—was scandalized.

Prudence simply nodded. “Yes,” she said, “the white people.”

“It ain’t fair,” said Adelaide.

“There is no such word as ‘ain’t,’” said Prudence, automatically. “You are right, however. It is not fair at all. Sometimes, Adelaide, that is just the way life works.”

The man put a hand to the girl’s back. “All right, Adelaide. You done had your chance to see her like you asked. Now it’s time for us to get on and leave Miss Prudence be.”

The girl held Prudence’s eye for a moment, then made a sound of disgust and turned away. The man turned to follow, then turned back. “Miss Prudence, I want you to know somethin’,” he said. “It ain’t worked out right—I mean, it
didn’t
work out right—but it ain’t your fault these people act the way they do. And we want you to know we appreciate what you tried to do for us.”

“We?”

He lifted a hand to encompass the whole town or at least the colored remnant of it. “All us,” he said. “We all thankful for you comin’down here, tryin’ to teach our chil’ren an’ us.”

It was too much. “You should not be thanking me. It is because of me that half your town was burned down.”

He shook his head. “Ain’t the way I see it, Miss. Ain’t the way most folks sees it, I reckon. Wasn’t you run through this town killin’ folks for no good reason and settin’ they houses on fire. That was…”

He paused and Prudence finished the thought. “That was white people,” she said.

“Yes, ma’am.” He gave her a serious look. She smiled at him. He sighed,
then added, “Color ain’t nothin’ but color, ma’am. People just people, just actin’ how they been taught.”

“I wish I could believe you,” said Prudence.

“You should, ma’am. Save you a peck of heartache, I expect.” He touched the brim of his hat and led his daughter away. Prudence sat. Five minutes later, Miss Ginny came down the street carrying two glasses of lemonade, sweat trickling down the sides. Prudence went inside to get another chair and they sat together in companionable silence, watching the shadows lengthen over Main Street. The lemonade was blessedly cool and just tart enough. Prudence had to fight a temptation to drink it all in one long pull.

“Hot,” Miss Ginny said.

“Extremely,” said Prudence.

“They be makin’ contract for the freedmen to harvest the cotton ’fore too long. You want to try somethin’ bad, you try pickin’ cotton in this heat.”

“I cannot imagine how difficult it must be,” said Prudence.

Miss Ginny sipped her lemonade, nodded toward the building behind them. “How that man doin’?”

“He is the same as he ever was,” said Prudence. “There has been no change.”

“You gon’ sleep in there again tonight?”

Prudence nodded. “He may need me.”

“You doin’ the best you can for him, you know.”

“I know.”

“Ain’t your fault, it don’t work out. Ain’t your fault he hurt.”

Prudence only looked at her. She didn’t trust herself to reply.

They sat together without speaking. A wagon ambled by. Prudence finished her lemonade.

“Bonnie wouldn’t want to see you like this,” Miss Ginny said, finally.

“Actually,” said Prudence, “Bonnie would likely welcome my newfound introspection and humility, but she would find them a tad belated.”

They were silent together a moment. Miss Ginny glanced off. “You be leavin’ soon, I expect. Once that man in there get on his feet. Or if he die. You be leavin’ after that.”

“I had not given it much thought,” said Prudence. “I suppose I will.”

The old woman swung her eyes around. There was something accusatory in them that took Prudence by surprise. “You be leavin’” she said, “and I won’t see you no more. Never no more.”

“Miss Ginny…” But Prudence didn’t know what words came next. She stammered into an awkward silence.

Miss Ginny sighed. “You know, they’s something I should have told you a long time ago. Just couldn’t figure out how. Or when. Now I s’pose I ain’t got no choice.”

Prudence stared, waiting. Flies buzzed at a pile of fresh droppings in the middle of the street. A stray breeze lifted a few wisps of Miss Ginny’s thin hair that had escaped being tucked neatly into a bun. After a moment, the older woman said, “I knew your daddy.”

“Yes,” Prudence said. “I know. From when he came down here to buy the slaves he used to set free.”

Miss Ginny shook her head. “No. I mean, I met him the first time he come down here, ’fore he bought anybody.”

“I do not understand.”

“He come down here to see the land—Cyrus’s land. As you know, Cyrus ain’t had no chil’ren, so when he died, he left the land to your daddy, same as he done the furniture company. Saw your daddy ’mos like a son, I expect. And after Cyrus died, your daddy come down here with two little girls—the oldest, she weren’t no older than four—and his wife. I reckon these be your sisters and your mama.”

“I never knew he brought them here.”

“Probably your sisters be too young to remember. And I expect it ain’t the kind of story your daddy gon’ want to tell his baby girl.”

“What do you mean?”

Her smile was sad. “You got to let me tell this my own way,” she said. “Done argued with myself for weeks ’bout whether I should tell it at all.”

Prudence could hear the soft clucking of hens from behind the warehouse. A group of soldiers walked by, arguing loudly. “Go on,” she said.

Miss Ginny gave her a direct look. “Your daddy were a good man, mostly. Better than most, in fact. Want you to know that. He come down here thinkin’ he might keep the land, run it like Cyrus done—hire somebody to take care the house, keep the slaves in line, like Cyrus done. But he ain’t really knowed what it was like to own no slaves, you see? Done lived up in Boston, most his life, and he ain’t knowed. And first day he get here, first thing he see is this little gal get whipped ’cause she hungry and done stole a peppermint from the overseer’s wife. Weren’t nothin’ new to us; overseer
used to give out these terrible whippings. But it seem like that just offended your daddy. He fired that overseer on the spot, kicked him off the property.

“Then he call a meetin’ of all the slaves, say he gon’ make us a deal. He say, ‘Pick one’a y’all to be overseer instead. Y’all work my land for me, and I pay y’all a share of the crop.’” Miss Ginny chuckled. “You should of seen the looks on them folks’ faces when he said that. ‘Is he serious? Is this white man funnin’ us?’ What he was talkin’ ’bout, it was ’mos like bein’ free. But he were serious. We seen that after a time. So we voted for a ol’ fellow name of Bob—had a bad eye, but he was the best worker you ever seen. And he was fair. That’s all we ever asked. We ain’t never mind workin’, just want to work for somebody treat us right.”

Prudence smiled. “Well, my father always believed—”

Miss Ginny went on as if Prudence had not spoken. “Anyway, they was a girl at that meetin’,” she said. “Pretty thing. Long hair, sassy eyes, smile remind you of the sun comin’ up some bright, clear morning. Course, I might be a touch slanted on that. She were my daughter, see. Elizabeth her name. All the mens fancied her, but she ain’t give no more than a hi, howdy do to none of ’em.”

The spindly little woman paused. She lifted her head and gave Prudence a look so direct that Prudence blinked. “Your father fancied her, too,” she said. “And I don’t mind tellin’ you, she fancied him right back.”

Prudence did not breathe. “What are you saying?”

“I’m sayin’ they spent time together. I’m sayin’ he slept with her.”

“No.” It was a plea.

Miss Ginny nodded, slowly. “Yes’m,” she said. “Your mama and your sisters up to the house and your daddy down in the quarter with Lizzie.”

Prudence’s whole world lurched violently on those words. “My father was not that sort of man,” she said.

Affection embraced pity in the eyes that looked up at her. Miss Ginny smiled. “Honey,” she said, “they all that sort of man.”

“Why are you telling me this?” Prudence asked.

“Got my reasons,” Miss Ginny said. “You’ll see. And they’s more. After your daddy finished his business and went back to the North and left ol’ Bob to run the place, we found out Lizzie pregnant. By the time your daddy come back down to inspect his land, she done had the baby. In fact, the baby about a year old. A little girl. Pretty little thing with real light skin, just beginnin’ to toddle. And he fell in love with her, your daddy did. Told
Elizabeth he was takin’ her back to Boston with him. He wouldn’t have no child of his raised as a slave.”

Prudence’s voice caught. “Bonnie,” she whispered.

They had always been so close, each the earliest companion the other could remember, sharing one another’s secrets and hopes, more like sisters than friends. Now she understood. They really were sisters after all.

But Miss Ginny’s face creased in confusion. “What?”

“You are saying Bonnie was his daughter. You are saying she was my sister, my real sister.”

Miss Ginny pitied her with a smile. “No, that’s not it,” she said. “He didn’t get Bonnie til two, three years later. Took her and her mother up to the North, just like he told you. Bonnie weren’t the first slave he freed. His own daughter were the first.”

“Well, then, what happened to her?” asked Prudence.

Miss Ginny didn’t answer. She regarded Prudence as if waiting for her. Willing her. Prudence did not understand. Then, all at once, she did. Adrenaline drove a spike hard through her chest. “No,” she said. Another plea.

“I ain’t sure what happened to that child,” Miss Ginny admitted. “Maybe he did what he said he would, took her to a convent in Boston for the nuns to raise. Maybe he done that. But if you want to know what I think, if you want to know what I
believe
…”

A pause. A direct look. “I believe he probably took that baby into his home and raised her, never told her who she really was nor what she really was. I believe she grew up to be a woman with more heart sometime than common sense. And I believe right now, she sittin’ on a chair next to me, tryin’ to convince herself ol’ Ginny crazy, and maybe she right about that. All I know is, when I seen you that first time right here on this street, I thought you looked so much like my Lizzie. And then, when I got to know you, good God. She had that same fire inside her, wouldn’t let nobody tell her what to do, same as you. That’s how she wound up with your daddy. I begged her not to, but you couldn’t tell her nothin’.”

Prudence had the odd sense that if she stood up, she would just keep going. “My mother,” she said, and then she stopped. She could not get enough breath.

She tried again. “My mother died in childbirth.”

“Is that what he told you? Well, if she really were your mother, maybe
she did. Or maybe she walked out on him when he come home with some other woman’s child in his arms for her to raise. Or maybe she died of somethin’ else altogether. I can’t tell you what happened to her. I can tell you what happened to Lizzie. She shriveled up after he took her daughter away. Like she ain’t cared no more ’bout livin’. She wanted to fight him, but how she gon’ fight him? He a white man takin’ his property. He got every right to do that and she ain’t got no right at all, ’cause she his property, too.”