It was dark when I woke. Not even the birds were awake or singing their morning call. I reached for my boots and pants, then crept down the hall. I stopped at Ma’s door, pushed it open just a crack, and pressed my ear close to listen. The fluttered whisper of her sleep came through. I breathed easier.
Down the stairs and out the door, I pulled on my boots and wrapped my jacket tight around me. A fierce March wind had blown up during the night.
I figured to go to Ashland’s slave cemetery and dig Nanny Sara’s grave before the others woke. Ruby’d told me about a pine tree that Nanny Sara’d loved, where to dig if there was room for a grave there. I meant to have it ready for whatever service she wanted. I also figured I’d best be handy when Ma roused. I didn’t know how she’d manage once she realized all over again that Grandfather was dead. What other memories might that trigger? How could we contain her?
Digging helped, the pushing, pulling, hefting. My hands nearly froze, and I wished mightily for gloves. It was only March, the air carried a bite, and the Carolina clay gave way only because it had to. I was less than halfway down. The morning light filtered through the trees as Ruby showed up, shovel in tow.
“That’s the way I met you.” I smiled.
“Don’t you worry. I won’t be using this one on you, Mista Robert. I appreciate all you doin’ for Mama.”
“Nanny Sara was one of the best people I’ve ever known, Ruby. I’m proud to do whatever I can by her.”
“That makes two of us. Let’s dig this grave.” And we did. Together we dug it deep, and the deeper we went the less the wind ripped at us. We’d finished by the time the sun, shooting in and out between clouds, rode high over our heads. We found a slate to set at its head till we could carve a proper marker. Noah’d said he wanted to do that for Nanny Sara.
Ruby pushed windblown tendrils of hair from her eyes and looked around at the other graves. She walked among the markers, reading the few pine-carved and slate-scratched names out loud, saying who she remembered, who she’d not known.
“You read real well.” Not many slaves could read, and I wondered how she’d learned.
“Miss Charlotte taught me.” Ruby sat on dried needles behind the shelter of Nanny Sara’s pine. “Miss Charlotte was the best white woman I ever knew, besides Miss Lydia.”
Miss Lydia was Grandmother Ashton. “I never knew her.”
“You missed out. Miss Lydia a fine lady, a good heart, even though her husband’s ways sometimes shamed her.” Ruby turned away. “I apologize, Mista Robert. Sometimes I forget he was your grandfather. You’re not much like him.”
“I knew my Grandfather for what he was, Ruby. You don’t need to apologize. And don’t call me ‘Mister’—please.”
She smiled. “All right, then.”
I wondered how such a fine woman got tangled in with Grandfather. My wonders must have been written on my face.
“Masta Marcus was a weak man, a selfish man, but he didn’t seem such a bad man till Miz Lydia died. When he lost her he lost everything that held him back from ugly.” Ruby closed her eyes. “I guess I don’t have to tell you. Mama said you know.”
I sat across from her. “I know about you helping Ma and Pa elope. I know about Grandfather taking you—” I looked away, not wanting to finish, not able to look in her eyes. “I know about Jeremiah, and that Grandfather sent you away.”
“I never saw my mama or my baby again.” Ruby wrapped her arms tight around herself.
“How did you end up with Grandaunt Charlotte?”
Ruby looked up. “It was because of Miz Grace, Masta Marcus’s older sister. Miz Grace was the mistress of Mitchell House, Miz Emily’s grandmother. When Masta Marcus vowed to sell me off, Miz Grace said she knew just the buyer. Masta Marcus didn’t care, didn’t want the money. His only concern was that he never set eyes on me again. Miz Grace assured him I’d be sent so far South he’d never hear my name.” Ruby looked away, shivered. “Miz Grace protected me, all she could. She sent me to her younger sister—her black sheep sister—Miz Charlotte, in South Carolina.”
“Why did they call her the ‘black sheep’?”
“Oh, she ran off with a French-speaking man—rich, and just off the boat. He was an abolitionist to boot—if you can dream there’d be such a thing. Mr. Marcus wouldn’t have anything to do with his sister. Even though Miz Charlotte married the man, her brother never spoke her name again. It was like she was dead to him.
“Miz Charlotte treated me more like a hired servant, never like a slave. She taught me to read and write, to speak proper, though she couldn’t tell nobody about any of that. She never had children of her own. I think she thought of me like her daughter sometimes.” Ruby smiled. “But, oh, how I missed my mama.”
“She never knew where you were.”
Ruby shook her head. “As long as Miz Grace was alive she’d send news about Mama and Jeremiah along to Miz Charlotte, who’d let me read her letters. They couldn’t risk letting Mama know where I was. If word ever got to Masta Marcus, there’d be the devil to pay, and his name was still on my bill of sale. Miz Charlotte couldn’t bring herself to sign her name to it, and Miz Grace didn’t dare.”
“Aunt Grace died, when?”
“About the time Mista Albert’s own wife died—when that baby boy born.”
“Alex.”
Ruby nodded. “Sixteen years ago. Miz Grace was so sick and grieved she followed Miz Rose to her grave. That was the last I heard of Mama or my boy, the last Miz Charlotte heard.”
I thought about that, about all the secrets that pulled down Ruby’s life, over and over. I wondered if even Ruby knew them all. I yanked the dead grass, angry for the many years she’d missed with those she loved most in this life, and how all of that heartache fittingly lay at Grandfather’s door.
Ruby stood and clutched the pine tree, leaned her cheek against it. “I helped your mama run off with your daddy because of the way he looked at her. I’d never seen a man look at a woman like that. He looked at her—not like he owned her, but like he cherished her—treasured her—held her high in his thoughts. I never knew your mama to be so happy, not since before we laid Miz Lydia in the ground.” Ruby shook her head sadly. “I thought, simple as it sounds, that if Miz Caroline could have that kind of love, that kind of happy, maybe someday it would find me too.”
Ruby pulled the turban from her hair and wiped her eyes. “You know, after he take me I never wanted a man. Miz Charlotte offered to let some good colored man court me.” She shook her head. “But I couldn’t bring myself to think there’d be any love in that. There was no love in what Masta Marcus did to Mama. There was no love in what he done to me.” She shuddered, and the tears fell like rain.
I waited, not knowing what to say.
“So all these years later I’m still asking, where is that happy? And I’m still asking… is there never any end to sadness?”
I turned away. It was a question I’d asked, even before the war. It was a heated, dark question that, at least for me and my family, had its roots all tangled and bound up in slavery. My fists clenched. I felt the fever rise inside me. I vowed again to do all I could to rip slavery from our family, from everywhere I could reach, to cast it forever into a pitching, burning fire.
I thought about what Gen. Sherman was doing and the reasons he did it—how it didn’t seem to have much to do with ending slavery but how slavery would end if the North won the war. I thought about Pa and his part—aggressive, but without a gun. I thought about Mr. Heath, and the Henrys, and our years helping the Underground Railroad. I thought about Cousin Albert and how he thought the coloreds needed slavery, how he thought they’d be lost without it. I thought of his men, fighting and deceiving and dying to protect what was theirs, and what they believed was theirs. I thought about President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and how far that had to go to be more than words on paper.
My heart pounded and the heat behind my eyes built. I paced, away from Ruby, fearful that if I stood too close I might explode. I had to do something.
I pictured myself in Federal uniform, blowing holes in shackles and chains, blasting away at auction blocks with the Sharps my grandfather had given me as a boy. Then I conjured an image of Grandfather and Jed Slocum.
It was all I could do not to grab my shovel, leave Ruby standing there, and walk to Grandfather’s grave, dig it up, rip the casket apart, and spit openly on his bones.
But what I did was walk up behind Ruby, behind my blood aunt, and wrap my arms around her while she cried.