Yellow Crocus: A Novel (7 page)

“I do not believe this is wise,” stated Mrs Gray. “She will not become used to the new arrangement if we bring Mattie every time she fusses.”

“I am not concerned with my daughter becoming accustomed,” Mrs. Ann declared. “The doctor made it quite clear she must drink something. Let Mattie through. Now!”

Mrs. Gray stood aside. A bitter, metallic smell hung in the air. Miss Elizabeth’s small form lay under a light sheet. A rush of tenderness filled Mattie. She reached her hand to Miss Elizabeth’s hot forehead and brushed damp hair away from her face.

Kneeling by the bed, she whispered quietly into Miss Elizabeth’s ear, “Mattie here now. I here now, beautiful girl. You gonna be all right.”

Then she slowly, carefully, lay down next to Miss Elizabeth and gently pulled the baby into the crook of her arm, rubbing her back with one hand while caressing her face with the other.

Mattie murmured repeatedly, “I here now. You gonna be all right.”

The child slowly opened her eyes and reached up to Mattie’s face. A weak smile drew up the corners of her mouth, her eyes closed again. She buried her face into Mattie’s chest. A croaky “Ma-ie” came out of Miss Elizabeth’s dry lips.

Relieved, Mattie smiled at the sick child and gave her a tender kiss. “That right. It me. Mattie here. Let see about gettin’ you somethin’ to drink, baby girl.”

Mattie startled when Mrs. Ann interrupted their private reunion, “I will leave you two alone then.”

Filled with a mixture of relief and sorrow, Mrs. Ann turned to Mrs. Gray and spoke definitively, “Elizabeth will move back in with Mattie. See to it that her belongings are returned and a wet nurse is secured for Jack immediately.”

“Yes, ma’am. As you wish,” replied Mrs. Gray, making it clear she questioned Mrs. Ann’s judgment.

Into the baby’s dreams came the real Mattie, not the dream Mattie, but the real one. This Mattie held the girl close and gave her sweet, warm milk. Lisbeth was not scared anymore.

Chapter 5

MAY 1839

M
attie nestled behind her husband as they lay in bed. She loved the feel of Emmanuel against her body. Her hand rubbed his strong chest, her knees spooned into the valley of his legs, and her cheek rested against his back. She planted kisses on his spine and took in his musky smell. Left alone in Samuel and Poppy’s cabin, they basked in two glorious days together, a rare treat given by Emmanuel’s overseer and agreed to by Mrs. Gray.

Mattie expected that Massa hoped she would produce another child, but she would not give him one. This was not her fertile time, and if it were, she would have taken precautions. Though she longed for more babies, she was not going to have more children that she would have to be separated from.

Emmanuel was an attractive man: deep brown eyes, smooth skin the color of coffee, with strong muscles from years of physical labor. As a child he was drawn to the carpenter’s shed where he was put to work as an apprentice rather than being sent to the fields. When he reached manhood, the overseer moved him to the smith shop, where he spent the hours from sun-up to sundown working bars of ore into nails, horseshoes, and spikes. Pouring his frustration and resentment into red, hot metal, he shaped objects that kept the plantation running. Though he hated the plantation and yearned to be free from his bondage, he took great pride in his craft, so he did not intentionally sabotage Massa and the overseer with poor metal work.

Mattie met nineteen-year-old Emmanuel soon after her sixteenth birthday. She had been at a dance that was held in a musty old barn during the one week of the year the field hands did not have to work, the “Big Times” between Christmas and New Year’s. She had been sitting on a hay bale, taking in the sights and sounds around her and giggling with Rebecca. Mattie had clapped along to the pounding drum while the folks around her sang:

Juba this and Juba that, Juba killed a yeller cat, Juba this and
Juba that, Hold your partner where you at.

She leaped in surprise when a handsome stranger from an unknown plantation invited her to dance with him.

They soon jumped the broom, committing themselves to one another. Once a month Emmanuel made the three-mile walk over to Fair Oaks for a visit. Mostly he came on a Saturday for the night, but a few times a year he was given a Friday off too.

Emmanuel rolled over to face Mattie. “Been thinking this might be the spring to head out.”

Mattie sighed. “Thought we already agreed. Samuel too young.”

“I been thinkin’ I can go on ahead. Then you two join me next year or the year after when Samuel big enough.”

“You crazy!” Mattie cried out. “There ain’t no way I can travel through the forest all alone with a little one. You leave us and you leaving us for good. This my home. It ain’t perfect, but we alive and we get to be together some of the time. You run off to God knows where and maybe we never gonna see you alive again.”

“But Ohio ain’t that far,” Emmanuel insisted. “I gonna make it. I know it.”

“Ohio gonna be there in a few years, when Samuel big enough to make the trip. You just hold on a little longer,” Mattie said. “It ain’t so bad in the meantime.”

Emmanuel had been raised on stories of the freedom land. His father, Manny, had made two attempts to secure his freedom as a young man and had the wounds to prove it. Growing up, Emmanuel had begged his father to recount the tales. Manny didn’t need much begging, though he pretended to. His wife, on the other hand, chastised him for “filling the boy’s head with stories of the promise land.”

Emmanuel’s father told him, “The first time I ran I wasn’t much more than twelve. I was a working out in the fields when suddenly I seen there weren’t nobody around me. I just dropped my sack of tobacco and tore off. Made it nearly to the next county when they caught me. My own overseer got me and brung me back. They cut off the top of my ear and sent me back to work the next day.”

Right on cue, young Emmanuel asked, as he always did, “Did it hurt? When they cut off your ear?”

“Nah, not so much. It was worth that bit of my ear for a taste of freedom.”

Eventually Emmanuel learned that it had hurt. An infection set in, making his father’s ear swell and ooze pus. Manny gave up most of the hearing in his left ear for those hours on his own.

“The next time I run,” Manny would go on with his tale, “I was sixteen years old or so. I planned it, but God weren’t with me that time either. A sudden storm made the river flood. Made it all the way to the banks of the Moback—two counties away—but then I couldn’ go no further. I know’d if’n I went into the river I’d a never come out again. I wanted freedom, but not to meet my maker. I had no choice. Only thing to do was sit down right by that river and wait. The dogs found me first. See. Right here? I still got their teeth marks on my arm.

“They took my toes the second time. Usually they take the whole foot, but they figured without my three toes I could work good but not run. They was right too. So son, when you ready to take your chances on getting to freedom, I got two things you keep in mind. Wait till you be a full man and run in May or June. It ain’t so cold, but the big thunderstorms ain’t come yet.”

Emmanuel had talked of running the first time he was alone with Mattie. Every winter he made plans for the next spring. Each year she argued that it was too soon. Mattie hoped that Emmanuel’s talk was just that. She didn’t share his dream of freedom, did not want leave her home and family to head out into the wilderness. She desperately hoped her love and their son would make Emmanuel stay. But every year when late spring rolled around, Mattie said a final goodbye in her heart whenever they parted. She expected that one day he would simply be gone.

“Forget about Ohio,” Mattie cajoled, pressing her body into his. “You in Virginia right now, with me, all alone, in this here bed. What you gonna do about that?”

She moved in closer, bringing her mouth so close that she could feel his breath. Emmanuel smiled, gazing through the dim light into her eyes, and ran his large hands across her back. He kissed her tenderly on her full lips. She parted her mouth, darting the tip of her tongue out to explore his mouth.

Pulling back, he asked, “Do you suppose that little girl gonna interrupt us again?”

“Her name Lisbeth,” replied Mattie, “and no, I don’ suppose she will. She fine when I left. I don’ imagine she be gettin’ sick two times in a row.”

“Good. I don’ want to get all hot and bothered jus’ to have you disappear on me,” he teased.

“Let’s see about gettin’ you all hot and bothered.”

Pushing him onto his back, she climbed over him, straddling his belly. She kissed him deeply, bringing his tongue into her mouth. She pressed against him until he forgot all of his plans to leave Virginia.

After making love, Emmanuel kissed Mattie, rolled over, and fell asleep. Mattie wrapped her arms around him and nestled in close, her body humming with joy. A good man was hard to come by and she knew she was lucky to have this one. She’d be fully satisfied if she knew she could keep him.

In the sitting room, after Sunday supper, Lisbeth sat with Mother, a book of nursery rhymes open before them, while Father read by the fire. Muttering to himself at regular intervals, he clearly disagreed with the author of this particular text. Grandmother sat on a chair, attempting to look busy with crewel work.

“Mat-tie come?” demanded the anxious two-year-old.

“Elizabeth, you must not speak to me in that tone,” admonished Mother.

“Lisbeth want Mat-tie,” declared Lisbeth plaintively.