The Freedom Maze (11 page)

The pen scratched softly, the flies buzzed lazily against the ceiling. Sophie was on the edge of drifting off to sleep again when a clattering on the porch jerked her awake. The door flew open and a man stomped in. He was dirty and roughly dressed. Sophie thought he was another field hand until she saw that he kept his broad-brimmed hat on his greasy curls and looked Dr. Charles straight in the eye.

“Devon Cut needs a new gang-driver,” he said.

Dr. Charles kept on writing. “Give it to Old Guam.”

“Guam? That pipe-sucker?” His voice was like a street car braking. “He ain’t done an honest day’s work since the day his mammy weaned him.”

“Mrs. Fairchild has chosen Old Guam, and I agree.” Dr. Charles laid down his pen. “By the way, Akins, I’ve had a letter from Chicago. The new evaporators are on their way to New Orleans and should be here, God willing, in a few weeks. Have you read those articles I gave you?”

Akins tipped his hat to the back of his head. “Yessir,” he said. “That there evaporator’s a fine machine, but I’m thinking it’s a mite complicated for them niggers to run.”

“Given that a black man invented the apparatus, I have no doubt black men can learn to operate it, given the proper training.” Dr. Charles got up and put on a black frock coat. “Come along to the Big House, and we’ll discuss it. Why, hello, Canada. Have you come to visit Sophie?”

Sophie saw Canada, looking very small and black and meek, standing in the door with a large covered basket on her arm. “Yessir.” Her voice was so low Sophie could hardly hear her. “I brung her some broth.”

Dr. Charles patted the little girl’s head as he left. Akins ignored her completely. As soon as they were out the door, Canada turned and stuck out her tongue.

“Who’s that horrible man?” Sophie asked.

“That old Mist’ Akins, the overseer. His mama beat him with an ugly stick so hard, it gone straight on till his soul.”

Sophie laughed. “You’re funny, Canada.”

“White folks calls me Canada.” She pulled a canister from the basket. “You call me Canny.”

Sophie pulled herself up against the thin pillow. There was so much she didn’t know about living in the past. If she was going to be stuck here for a while, she’d better learn — preferably before she saw Mammy again. “Canny, will you tell me about Oak River?”

“Sure. What you want to know?”

“Everything, I guess. I never lived on a plantation before.”

Canny giggled. “You surely ain’t. Flandy like to bust himself laughing when he hear ’bout you asking for a bathroom!”

Sophie flushed. “I know I’ve got a lot to learn.”

“What you want to know?”

“Well, how soap is made and what a gang-driver does and why there’s a curtain over the bed, to start off with.”

Canny nodded. “Well, a gang-driver, he watch the field hands so they don’t slack off. The mosquito bar keep the mosquitoes from eating you all alive in the night. I don’t know nothing ’bout soap-making ’cept it stink to Heaven, but I know lots ’bout doves. I takes care of all the doves in the pigeon house.”

“Tell me about the doves, then,” Sophie said. “But I also need to know about cooking and washing and ironing and —”

“Ain’t nobody know all that,” Canny said. “And if ’n they did, they too busy to hang round here telling you about it.” She thought a moment. “Tell you what. Tomorrow’s Saturday. Everybody gots a plenty of chores, but I asks around some, see who can maybe come by for a spell. That suit you?”

“That suits me just fine,” Sophie said. “Thank you.”

Canny unscrewed the canister and poured a fragrant golden stream into a tin cup. “Momi say if this set well, she see ’bout trying you on boil chicken and white bread. You gots to drink, too — water, milk, sassafras tea.”

“Your Mama sure knows a lot about sick people.”

“Momi know everything there is about everything,” said Canny. “Momi a two-headed woman.”

“Huh?”

“A two-headed woman. Sometimes, when she bring the babies and tend to folks and make
gris-gris,
she not just herself, but the other one, too.”

“The other one?” Sophie remembered the velvety face in her dream. “You mean Yemaya?”

“Shush — that name a special secret. Maybe Momi tell you about it by and by.” She made a face. “Maybe she tell me, too. Now drink up you soup, and I tell you a story. You ever heard how come snakes got poison in they mouth and nothing else ain’t got it?”

“No,” said Sophie.

“Don’t they tell no stories in New Orleans?”

“They tell lots of stories. Just not that one.”

Canny settled down cross-legged at the foot of the bed. “When God make the snake, he put him in the bushes to ornament the ground. But things didn’t suit the snake, so one day he get on a ladder and go up to see God.”

Sophie finished the fragrant chicken broth, took off her glasses, and listened sleepily as the snake complained to God about getting stomped on and God gave him poison to protect himself. Canny described how, when the snake got a little carried away with his gift, the other animals climbed the heavenly ladder to complain in their turn. Sophie’s eyes grew heavier and heavier. About the time God was coming up with an answer to their complaints, she fell asleep.

First thing next morning, along with a basket containing broth and
ashcakes and sassafras tea, Canny brought a skinny girl called Tibet and a lively, round-faced boy called Young Guam and Sophie’s education on plantation life began.

At first, Sophie was too shy to open her mouth. Tibet and Young Guam were closer to her age than Canny, maybe eleven or twelve. They were dark and dusty and ragged, and their talk was full of words she didn’t know, like billets and crushers and black moss, and how lazy white folks were, making other folks do things anybody with gumption would know how to do for themselves. Sophie couldn’t help wondering if Lily and Ofelia said the same things about Mama and Aunt Enid — about Sophie herself, come to that.

If the children of Oak River didn’t think much of the Fairchilds, they purely hated Mr. Akins. “He ugly as a ’gator,” Tibet said, “and twice as mean. He catch you sucking on a tee-niny piece of cane, he whup you bloody.”

“Worth it, though,” Young Guam said. “I sure do love me some sugar cane. You ever chewed cane, Sophie?”

Sophie, who had never seen sugar that didn’t come in a bowl, shook her head.

“’Course she ain’t,” Tibet scoffed. “City girls don’t got no call to chew cane. City girls eats white sugar, double refined.”

“I’d chew cane, if I could get it,” Sophie said shyly. “I wouldn’t want to get whipped, though.”

All three children hooted, even Canny, and started in boasting about how many whippings they’d had and how long it had been before they could sit down afterward, with each teller outdoing the last and laughing like a beating was the funniest joke in the world.

Sophie didn’t know whether she was supposed to laugh along or feel sorry for them.

Tibet gave her a measuring look. “Hush up you mouth, Young Guam. Sophie here ain’t well enough for this kind of talk.”

“What kind of talk she well enough for, then?”

Canny poked Young Guam in the shoulder. “I told you! You supposed to tell her ’bout Oak River!”

“Oak River a big place,” Young Guam said. “What you want to know?”

“Everything,” said Sophie. “I’ve never lived on a plantation, you see.”

“We ain’t never even been to New Orleans,” Tibet said wistfully. “I hear it a mighty fine place.”

Canny brightened. “Why don’t we tell Sophie ’bout Oak River and she tell us ’bout New Orleans, turn and turn, like hoeing cane?”

Everyone agreed that this seemed fair and then looked at Sophie, waiting for her first question.

“Um. What’s black moss?”

Tibet answered. “You know that old grandfather moss hanging from the trees? Well, you takes that and puts it in a barrel of water for a week or two and . . . Wait — I show you.”

She ran outside, returning a moment later with a handful of something black and drippy that smelled strongly of spoiled vegetables. She stripped off the rotten leaves and dumped what was left in Sophie’s lap.

“This here’s black moss. You lying on it. White folks sits on it. We picks it, and Dr. Charles, he sell it in New Orleans and give us the money.”

Sophie touched the springy, wiry black stuff. It felt like soft steel wool.

“Cutting wood for the sugarhouse boilers pay better,” Young Guam broke in. “When I gets big, I going to cut me about a million cords, buy my freedom, and go to New Orleans. Now you tell ’bout your master’s house. I bet it ain’t as big as Oak River.”

That day and the next, whenever any Oak River children could get away from their chores, they came to the slave hospital to explain things to Sophie. Some told her about sugar-making, from planting chopped-up sections of cane — billets — in the spring to burning the fields after the harvest was over. Others told her about the French Cajun peddlers who traded printed calico and pins for homemade jam and pickles and whittled wooden toys. In return, Sophie told them anything she could think of about New Orleans that didn’t sound too modern: the shops on Royal Street and the old Negro men playing trumpets in the French Quarter and the big houses in the Garden District where her godmother lived, and the balls her mother went to, dressed in silk and pearls. Sometimes she’d forget, though, and mention streetcars and movie theatres.

The children listened to these unlikely wonders open-mouthed. Finally Young Guam said, “Sophie, you lie faster than a horse can trot.”

The way he said it, Sophie realized he was paying her a compliment.

At dawn Monday morning, Sophie woke up to Africa folding back the mosquito bar, and two white petticoats and a yellow dress lying across her bed.

“Dr. Charles, he say you fit to go to work, so I brought your clothes.”

By now, Sophie knew that the only servants on Oak River more important than Africa were Aunt Winney, who looked after Old Missy, Uncle Germany, the Oak River butler, and Mammy. Cooks were special. And Africa was not only a cook, but a two-headed woman. “Thank you,” she said. “For being so nice to me.”

Africa smiled. “You welcome. My Canny’s taken a shine to you. Lie back now and let me take a look at you.”

When she’d dug her strong fingers into Sophie’s belly and peered into her eyes, she said, “You’re mighty spry for a girl nearly dead with fever less than four days ago. The Orishas must be looking out for you. Still, no harm in helping them along some.”

She pulled a little leather bag from her apron pocket, tied up with red yarn and smelling pleasantly of mint and lavender, and hung it around Sophie’s neck. “That’s a
gris-gris,
” she said. “For protection. Don’t you never take it off, now. And don’t let nobody see it.”

Sophie touched the bag, the soft leather smooth and warm under her fingers. Another mystery, another thing she ought to know and didn’t. “I won’t.” She looked up into the rosewood face. “Thank you for taking care of me. I thought I was going to die.”

Africa laughed. “Not for a long time yet, the Good Lord willing. You put on that frock, now, and get your tail on up to the Big House.”

It was a good thing, Sophie thought later, that she’d seen in the hospital how slaves acted around white folks, or she’d never have gotten through her first day with Mrs. Fairchild. It was like living with Mama, only more so: never speak until she was spoken to, never raise her eyes, never sit down, always do what she was told, promptly and without argument.

The children had told Sophie everything they knew, but being yard-children, they had no more idea than she about what a lady’s maid was supposed to do. Aunt Winney was despairing. “Can’t iron, can’t mend, don’t know a buttonhook from a corset-stay! My land, Missy Caro, what we going do with her?”

Old Mrs. Fairchild was sitting at her vanity in a vast ruffled wrapper, looking like a big white hen. “Now, now Winney — it’s not the child’s fault. If she’s spoiled, it’s her upbringing that’s to blame.” She patted Sophie’s cheek. “She’s a bright girl. I just know she’ll make us proud.”

Sophie, not used to praise, felt a rush of affection for the old lady, who was, after all, her grandmother. “Thank you, ma’am,” she said. “I’ll surely try.”

Mrs. Fairchild smiled. “Now, stand over by the armoire and stay out from underfoot while Winney gets me ready to face the world.”

It was quite a production, involving a chemise tucked into long white drawers, a stiff corset, a hoop skirt like a steel bird cage, and an undershirt with long, balloon-like black sleeves that filled out the short, open sleeves of her black silk dress. Finally, Aunt Winney brushed, oiled, braided, and coiled her mistress’ long gray hair and covered it with a frilly white cap that looked very much like one of Aunt Enid’s toilet roll covers. The final touches were a pair of pearl and gold dangly earrings, a cameo brooch, a gentlemanly gold-handled cane, and a lace handkerchief, which Mrs. Fairchild tucked into her belt.

“Thank you, Winney. I’ll be spending the morning with Mammy and the accounts, so you and Sophie can make a start on her training. Be good, now, Sophie, and mind what Aunt Winney tells you.”

She was hardly out the door before Aunt Winney had hustled Sophie into the dressing room, sat her down on a three-legged stool, and got down to brass tacks.