The Freedom Maze (8 page)

“
Mama
!”

“Do as your mother says, puss,” Dr. Fairchild said.

“But, Daddy!”

“Now, Liza.”

Miss Liza flounced away. Dr. Fairchild took Sophie’s chin in his large, warm hand and studied her carefully, just like Grandmama. Sophie felt her face heat uncomfortably.

“Well.” Dr. Fairchild let her go. “Your master is Mr. Robert Fairchild, isn’t he?”

Sophie nodded numbly.

“Robert always did spoil his servants,” Mrs. Fairchild observed.

“My brother,” Dr. Fairchild said, “treats his servants as he was taught to treat them.”

“Which includes sending them on a long journey upriver without so much as a sack? And what about her traveling pass?”

“Very true, my dear. Do you have a traveling pass, Sophie?”

Sophie tensed. “I lost it?”

“You lost it.” Dr. Fairchild made an impatient noise. “Don’t you know how dangerous it is for a girl like you to be without a traveling pass? If the patrollers found you, they’d put you in chains and drag you back to your master, and that would be a lot of trouble for everybody.”

Mrs. Fairchild said, “This is all very well, Dr. Fairchild, but it doesn’t tell us what she was doing in Elizabeth’s bedroom.”

Dr. Fairchild sighed. “Very well, Lucy. Sophie. Why were you in Miss Liza’s room? The truth, now.”

Because it’s my room, a hundred years from now.
“I — got lost.”

“A likely story! If you ask me, Dr. Fairchild, there’s more to this girl than meets the eye. Have you ever seen anything like those spectacles?”

Sophie touched her glasses. They were just ordinary, blue plastic frames with little metal flowers on the temples. “My father gave them to me.”

Mrs. Fairchild sent her a glare that could have stripped paint. “If you refer to Mr. Robert as your father again, I
will
have you whipped.”

“Now, Lucy, the girl probably doesn’t know any better. It’s like Robert to have spoiled her, just as it’s like him to send her without writing to warn us. Unless, perhaps, he wrote Mother. Or she might have a letter with her. Do you have a letter from your master, child?”

“I lost that, too.” Sophie found it all too easy to sound pathetic. “I lost everything.”

“Convenient. I don’t mind telling you, Dr. Fairchild, I don’t believe I’ve ever heard such a collection of untruths since the day I was born.”

Dr. Fairchild sighed. “Well, she’s a Fairchild — no question about that. I’ll talk it over with Mother tonight and write Robert in the morning. In the meantime, we’ll just presume she’s a new addition to the family. Antigua?”

The slave girl had been standing by the door so quietly, Sophie had forgotten she was there. She acknowledged her name with a little curtsy. “Yes, Dr. Charles.”

“Get this girl something to eat, then take her to Mammy.”

Mrs. Fairchild took up her knitting again. “You, girl. How old are you?”

“Thirteen, ma’am.”

“I thought you were younger. Thirteen is much too old to be running around with your legs showing. Get her something decent to wear, Antigua. As for you, girl, I can’t even begin to imagine what you’re used to in Mr. Robert’s household. In my household, you will behave with proper humility, or you will be punished.”

“Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”

Dizzy with relief, Sophie curtsied and followed Antigua out of the office. She thought she’d done pretty well, all things considered. A member of the family, Dr. Charles had said. Maybe things were going to work out after all.

It had been raining in 1860, too. The sky was a patchy gray, and the
wet grass clung to Sophie’s legs as she followed Antigua around the back of Oak Cottage and along the edge of the garden.

A whiff of something good brought water to her mouth. “What’s that?”

Antigua snorted. “You don’t know roast chicken when you smells it? I thought you just acting simple so’s Dr. Charles feel sorry for you. Maybe it ain’t an act, huh?”

Sophie was stung. “I’m not simple.”

“Then don’t ask fool questions.”

Sophie shut her mouth and wondered when the friends she’d wished for were going to show up.

They walked up to Aunt Enid’s garden shed, looking bare and businesslike without its blanket of vine. Sophie peered through the open door into a noisy, smoky room full of women in long dresses shelling beans, stirring pots, chopping vegetables, and kneading bread on Aunt Enid’s potting table. The mammoth fireplace was all cluttered with pots on hooks and a long spit with chickens strung along it like beads on a string. The air was hot and sticky as boiling molasses and hummed with flies.

Sophie stepped back, hoping Antigua would bring her food outside.

“Well, looky there!” a voice exclaimed. “A stranger!”

Next thing she knew, Sophie was standing at the center of a semicircle of curious black faces asking questions faster than she could answer them.

“Where you from?”

“Ain’t you light!”

“What-for them things setting on you nose?”

Sophie hadn’t been this close to so many Negroes since she was eight and Mama had stopped her going to church with Lily. She’d liked Lily’s church, where the singing was a lot more lively than at St. Martin’s Episcopal and the ladies were all got up in fancy hats. These women, in their faded dresses and tightly wrapped headcloths, frightened her.

Sophie pushed her glasses up on her nose and smiled nervously.

“Well, Miss High-and-Mighty!” a short, round woman exclaimed. “Can’t you answer a civil question?”

“Don’t act more foolish than God made you, China. Can’t you see the child’s scared half to death?”

The woman who had spoken was tall — as tall as Papa, with reddish-brown skin and a blue headcloth. The other women moved aside to give her room.

Knowing authority when she saw it, Sophie held out her hand. “How do you do?”

“Well, I never,” China said, and everybody laughed.

“Hush yourselves, now,” the queenly woman said. “Ain’t you never seen a body with manners before?” Her hand, hard and scaly with work, folded around Sophie’s. “I’m Africa, Old Missy’s cook.”

Antigua appeared at Africa’s elbow. “She belong to Mr. Robert. Or so she say.”

A dozen pairs of eyes turned to Sophie with a new and intense interest. She felt her ears burn.

“Oh, she Mr. Robert’s, sure enough,” said a dark, skinny woman.

Someone else laughed. “And ain’t it just like him, sending off his high-yellow girl for his mammy to raise up for him?”

Africa ignored them. “What’s your name, child?”

“Sophie.”

“Sophie.” Africa’s smile showed missing teeth. “And what’re them things on your nose, Sophie?”

“Glasses.”

Africa held Sophie’s chin and lifted her glasses off her nose. The world disappeared into a multicolored blur. Sophie squeaked and made a blind grab.

“Don’t fret, child. I’m just looking,” said Africa.

“But I can’t
see
! You don’t understand!”

“I sure enough don’t.” Africa dangled the glasses by the earpiece. “Old Missy, she don’t have spectacles like these. Dr. Fairchild,
he
don’t have spectacles like these, and he’s a medical man. How come you got them?”

“So I can see,” Sophie almost wailed. “Give them back to me. Please!”

Africa held the glasses up to her eyes, yanked them away as though they’d bitten her. “Whoo-eee! You blind as sin, child!” She handed them back. “Better take good care of them. Oak River ain’t New Orleans. If they get broke, you’ll just have to do without.”

“Not less you ask Mr. Robert to get you some more,” said Antigua nastily. “What work you do at Mr. Robert’s house, anyway?”

Sophie settled her glasses back on her nose. “Work?”

“Yes,” Antigua sneered. “Work. You know — what black folk do and white folk don’t?”

Sophie looked down at her feet, sun-darkened and streaked with dried mud. There was a scratch above one arch and a bug crawling on her big toe. The feet surrounding her were mostly darker, but two or three might have been as pale as hers under the dirt. She tried to imagine what would happen if she raised her head right now and announced that she was not a slave, but a genuine white Fairchild, brought into the past by magic.

They’d think she was crazy, just like Antigua had. And if she insisted, they’d probably tell Dr. Fairchild, who would think she was crazy, too. Maybe if she just went along, and was agreeable and polite, she could keep out of trouble until the Creature showed up to rescue her.

Africa clapped her hands sharply. “Y’all get back inside and get on with dinner. Unless you’re hankering to tell Mrs. Charles she ain’t going to eat until three?”

“No, ma’am,” said China with feeling. “I likes my black skin just fine on my back where it belong.”

The other women laughed and went back into the kitchen. Africa looked down at Sophie. “I ’spect you wants a corn cake.”

Sophie hesitated. That kitchen was probably as full of germs as it was of flies. And none of those slaves looked very clean. Still, she
was
hungry, and she loved corn cakes. Lily used to make them, light and spongy and a little sweet. Besides, she was the heroine of this adventure, and heroines never got so much as a head cold.

“Please, ma’am. If it’s not any trouble.”

Africa led her through the flies and heat to a wooden bin full of flat, grayish things that looked like cardboard cookies. The corn cake tasted even more like cardboard than it looked, but Sophie was empty enough to choke it down anyway, and even remembered to thank Africa for it before going outside, where Antigua was sitting on the bench waiting for her. “Come on, if you done stuffing you face. I gots work to do.”

She got up and trotted purposefully away, Sophie at her heels.

As they came into the yard, Sophie was hit with a truly eye-watering stink. “What’s
that
?”

“Soap boiling.” Antigua pointed to where three Negro women with their sleeves rolled up were stirring a big iron pot over an open fire.

Sophie sneezed. “That’s not what soap smells like.”

“How else pig fat and lye supposed to smell? What you make your soap from in New Orleans? Manna?”

“I don’t know. We buy our soap at a store.”

Antigua rolled her eyes. “I ’spect everything better in New Orleans.”

Sophie didn’t bother to respond. It was obvious the slave girl was bound and determined to take everything she said as a slight and an insult. There’d been girls like that at school. The only thing to do was keep her mouth shut and hope Mammy was friendlier.

Antigua picked her way across the yard with her pink skirts held up out of the mud, with Sophie trailing behind, gaping at the busy slaves like a tourist on Bourbon Street. Each cabin was a workshop, and the work done there spilled out into the yard: barrel making, carpentry, leatherwork, forging iron. They fetched up at a cabin where a woman sat in the door, stitching at a cloud of white stuff. A mysterious, rhythmical clacking came from inside.

“Afternoon, Asia,” Antigua said. “This here is Sophie. Mr. Robert send her on a boat from New Orleans. Mrs. Charles say give her some decent clothes.” Antigua wrinkled her nose. “Better wash her first. And be quick. I taking her to Mammy, and there ain’t much time before dinner.”

Asia bundled the white cloud into her arms. “She better come on in, then.”

Sophie followed Asia into the cabin. The clacking came from a huge wooden loom worked by a shadowy figure, arms flying, flat, bare feet working the treadles like a giant spider.

Asia shook her head. “That Antigua. She so full of herself, she liable to bust like a bullfrog one fine day. This here’s Sophie, Hepzibah. She need some decent clothes, right quick.”

The clacking died away, and the weaving woman disentangled herself from the loom. When she stood up, Sophie saw she was thin, and would have been tall if her back hadn’t been curled like a hoop. “Welcome, Sophie. That a mighty pretty dress you got there.” Hepzibah took a fold of the blue gingham shirtwaist and rubbed it between her fingers. “I ain’t never seen such fine weaving. Where this fabric come from?”

Sophie pulled away nervously. “New Orleans. My mama bought it for me.”

“Then your mama ain’t got good sense,” Asia said. “That dress ain’t seemly for a big girl like you. Make a nice Sunday dress for one of the childrens, though.”

“No!” Sophie crossed her arms tightly, panicked. What if changing her clothes meant she couldn’t go home? What if she left her dress in the past and Mama was mad? “It’s mine. You can’t have it.”

Hepzibah frowned. “It ain’t Christian, keeping something ain’t no use to you when there’s a plenty other folks could use it.”

Her expression told Sophie that Hepzibah wouldn’t hesitate to remove the dress by force. Reluctantly, she took it off — and her bra, and her underpants — and, miserably embarrassed, stood in a corner while Asia sponged her briskly with cold water out of a bucket. Hepzibah gave her a pair of coarse cotton drawers and a nightgown-like chemise, a long brown homespun dress and a sacking apron. When Sophie was dressed, Asia raked through her hair with her fingers and braided it in six tight plaits, tied a white cloth she called a “tignon” over them, and knotted the ends into rabbit ears.