The Freedom Maze (30 page)

The handwriting of the signature was different from the rest of the letter — firm and round.

Because Sophie’s birthday fell on a work day, Mama had decided they would celebrate it the weekend after. On July 6, the day of her actual birthday, Ofelia presented her with a cake — chocolate with white icing, Sophie’s favorite. When Sophie thanked her shyly, she said, “Least I can do, with all the help you’ve been, keeping your grandmama company and all.”

Sophie blew out her fourteen candles and Ofelia sat down and had coffee and cake with her and Aunt Enid. Then they all got down to the serious business of cleaning the house before Mama came. Aunt Enid even made an effort to tidy up the office, but it didn’t come to much.

Friday, after lunch, Sophie took a long bath. She slathered cream on her work-roughened hands and feet, braided her hair in a tail, put on the crispest of her new blouses and the fullest of her new skirts, and examined the result in the armoire’s mirrored door. A Fairchild woman stared back at her — long-faced, eagle-nosed, worried-looking, and a lot older than fourteen. Grimly, Sophie undid the braid and pulled her hair into two frizzy bunches below her ears, like Dorothy in
The Wizard of Oz.
It helped a little.

When she got down to the kitchen, Mama was sitting at the table with Aunt Enid, chatting and sipping a glass of ice tea. When she saw Sophie, her eyes widened with shock.

“What on
earth
have you done to your hair?”

She sounded so exactly like Young Missy that Sophie had to smile.

“Hello, Mama,” she said. “Did you have a nice trip?”

“Don’t try and change the subject. Why are you wearing your aunt’s clothes?”

“They’re mine, actually. We got them in Lafayette. I — had a growth spurt.”

At this, Aunt Enid’s muskrat look came on so strong that Sophie had to clamp her lips together to keep from laughing.

Mama heaved a martyred sigh. “I expect that means a whole new fall wardrobe,” she said. “Thank heaven for uniforms, is all I have to say.”

And that was that. Mama hardly looked at Sophie the rest of the evening, but kept up a lively stream of stories about someone called “Lou,” who took her out to dinner at Commander’s Palace and Galatoire’s and had a house on Lake Ponchartrain. School was going well and her boss had given her a raise — not enough to make keeping the Metairie house an option, but something. The only time she took any notice of Sophie was when she cleared the supper dishes and served up Ofelia’s chess pie and coffee.

“Gracious, darling!” Mama said. “How housewifely you’ve grown! I declare, I hardly recognize my lazy little daughter!”

Sophie slid into her seat and poked at her pie. It was going to be a long weekend.

During breakfast the next morning, Henry the yardman brought a parcel for Sophie. The return address was New York City.

It was a good-sized package, bundled up in brown paper and lots of twine, not nearly as neat as the packages Papa’s secretary usually sent. The handwriting on the label was unfamiliar, too.

“I can’t imagine what Rand was thinking, sending your present here,” Mama said. “We’re just going to have to carry it back home at the end of the summer.”

“Better open it,” Aunt Enid said. “There might be a letter.”

Sophie got the kitchen scissors and attacked the twine. She opened the box, took out an envelope addressed to her in the same writing as on the package, and laid it aside. Underneath were magazines: a half-dozen
New Yorkers,
a Sunday
New York Times
and a
Herald Tribune.
And books, four of them — two obviously kids’ books and two equally obviously for adults.

Sophie picked up
A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
and opened it curiously.

“Put that back in the box, Sophie,” Mama said. “We’re sending them right back where they came from. The very idea!”

Sophie looked up to see the envelope open on the table and Mama holding a typed page. Furious, she snatched it out of her mother’s hand.

“That was addressed to me.” She was surprised how calm she sounded. “So are the books. I get to decide what happens to them. Not you.”

Mama’s lips pinched to invisibility, and her eyes narrowed. Sophie glared back.

After a tense moment, Mama shrugged. “I’d hope a daughter of mine would have too much pride to allow herself to be bribed with a few books.”

Too angry to speak, Sophie tumbled everything into the box and carried it out to the garden shed, where she hid it under an upturned wheelbarrow. Grabbing the letter and a handful of
New Yorkers,
she ran out into the field.

After three weeks of hard work, the maze was starting to look more the way it should. Henry had scythed the grass, and was helping Sophie trim back the hedges. The path to the center was clear, as well as the little side-room where Belle Watling simpered above a freshly painted bench. By the time Sophie got to the central garden, she could read her letter in relative calm.

The letter was signed “Judith H. Martineau.”

Sophie read the letter twice. It was obvious that Judith H. Martineau really wanted Sophie to like her, but didn’t expect it to happen right away. Which was a good thing, because the name Martineau attached to the unfamiliar Judith H. made Sophie queasy. So did the fact that it contained no word from Papa — not even a P.S.

She glanced at
The New Yorker.
The cover was a drawing of two shadowy children chasing a flock of butterflies with nets. The children were tiny, the butterflies were giants loosely sketched in colored chalk. She’d never seen anything like it. The articles inside were all about people and places she’d never heard of. Most of the cartoons were incomprehensible, but an Addams cartoon, featuring a skinny lady with long black hair and a black dress that rippled around her feet like an octopus’s tentacles, made her laugh. Judith H. had a good sense of humor. Too bad Mama would never let them meet.

Mama appeared at the garden entrance, looking hot and bothered. Her high heels were smeared with dirt from crossing the field, and the curls of her permanent wave clung wetly to her forehead and neck. She’d never have lasted a minute in the sugarhouse.

“Enid said you’d be here,” Mama said. “I can’t imagine why.”

“I like it.” Sophie stood up. “Why don’t you sit here in the shade, and I’ll go fetch some lemonade.”

“You stay right where you are, Miss. You’ve been avoiding me ever since I arrived. If this is about that silly disagreement we had last time I was here, all I have to say is that I’m surprised at you.”

She didn’t look surprised. Although Mama was dark where Mrs. Charles was fair, curved where Mrs. Charles was flat, Mama looked just like Mrs. Charles confronting an errant slave: disgusted, impatient, and ready to pull out her rawhide.

Mama took a handkerchief out of her belt and patted her sweating forehead. “It’s hormones, I expect. Thinking you’re all grown up and able to decide things on your own when you’ve no more sense than a rabbit. I suppose now you’re going to tell me that you want me to let you visit your father and that woman in New York City. Well, you can’t. You’re much too young to travel alone. I wouldn’t sleep a wink for worrying you’d lose your money or your luggage or your ticket, or get yourself kidnapped. Besides, I can’t afford a ticket.”

As her mother talked, a familiar feeling of hopelessness crept over Sophie. She could argue or she could beg, but the outcome would be the same. Mama would fuss until Sophie gave in, and that was how it would be until the end of time. Unless she ran away. Maybe she could dye her hair blond, dress up like she was older, borrow some money from Aunt Enid, and travel up to New York on her own. Antigua had done it. So could she.

And Mama would just come after her, or call the police.

And then the world spun around, just as it had when she came back from the past, and Sophie realized that Mama didn’t actually own her — not the way Dr. Charles owned Antigua. She couldn’t keep Sophie from visiting her own father if Sophie wanted to. She could make an almighty fuss, but a fuss wasn’t a whipping. A whipping was the least of what Antigua would have suffered if Mr. Akins had caught her, and she’d chosen freedom anyway.

Sophie raised her head and looked her mother straight in the eye. “You don’t need to pay for it. If I write Papa and tell him I’d like to visit, I’m sure he’ll fix it so I can.”

Mama stared at her. “How can you talk so ugly to me, after everything I’ve done for you? Why, I took that horrible job so you could have the life you’re used to.”

“You like your job,” Sophie pointed out. “And I think I might want a different kind of life than the one I’m used to.”

“Ingratitude,” Mama said, “is very unattractive in a young lady.”

“I’m going to New York.”

Mama turned on her high heel and stalked out of the garden.

Sophie pressed her fingers to her eyes. She’d write Judith H. and Papa tonight. No matter what Mama said or did, she wouldn’t back down and she wouldn’t change her mind. Maybe Mama would come around in the end and maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe Papa wouldn’t like having her there, maybe she wouldn’t get along with Judith H. Maybe Sophie would be sorry, just like Mama said, and come running home again with her tail between her legs. Maybe she’d be happy and learn to do for herself. She’d never know unless she tried.

Sophie Fairchild Martineau got up from the stone bench, shook out her skirts and, walking in Antigua’s footsteps, left the maze.

Over the eighteen years I worked on this book, I had a lot of help from a lot of people. If I were to write a proper thank-you here to everyone who has inspired me, supported me, helped me with my research, listened to me agonize over a plot point, or asked just the question I needed to get me to the next scene or the next draft, this Acknowledgment would be as long as the book itself, so maybe it’s a good thing I’ve lost track. Okay, it’s not. But I hope the people I’ve inadvertently left out will forgive me; I’m sure I thanked you profusely at least once.

Much of my primary research took place during two trips to Louisiana, in 1994 and in 1996. The librarians of Loyola University library guided me to a manila folder full of advertisements for escaped slaves, one of which read “blond and blue-eyed, could pass for white.” The library of the Baton Rouge Rural Life Museum was full of useful volumes on plantation life. Madewood, Tezcuco, Alice, and Laura Plantations contributed gardens, layouts, floor plans, and useful details to my invented houses at Oak River. I pestered their docents — and the docents of Destrahan, the Port Allen Museum, and the Jeanerette Sugar Museum — with as many questions about life on a sugar plantation as Sophie had, and these amazingly dedicated historians, volunteers, and enthusiasts managed to answer them all. If I didn’t always ask the right questions, it’s not their fault.

For seeing this novel through the painful first draft and reading subsequent drafts at (approximately) five-year intervals, I would like to thank the Genrettes: Laurie J. Marks, Rosemary Kirstein, and Didi Stewart. Linda Post and Mimi Panitch helped me talk through the plot. Ellen Klages, Caroline Stevermer, and Eve Sweetser patiently read several drafts and provided encouragement. The Massachusetts All-Stars — Kelly Link, Gavin Grant, Cassandra Clare, Joshua Lewis, Holly Black, Sarah Smith, and Ellen Kushner — put their fingers on all the weak points and gave excellent suggestions for strengthening them.