The oversized painting featuring a wide dirt road, bordered by towering trees in full bloom, had hung for decades above the sofa in Nell Henry’s living room. Today, her two daughters-in-law stood before the framed piece of art and one commented, “Mother Henry, you really should take the painting to Antique Roadshow.”
“I agree,” said the other. “It looks very old. It could be worth a mint.”
Nell laughed. “Afraid not! I bought it at a starving artists’ sale. I thought its perspective would make this narrow room look bigger.”
She remembered that day clearly. The artist was a nervous type, her eyes darted back and forth as she asked if Nell was certain she wanted to buy it. Her odd line of questioning made Nell suspect she’d decided not to sell it, but the woman was adamant that wasn’t the reason. The artist said two others had purchased the painting, but both had returned it. Now that Nell stood gazing at the artwork, she wondered if it had something to do with how large the painting was.
Nell lowered her voice to a whisper. “She told me when the buyers took the painting home, they said it made them feel weird. Then she muttered something about how she felt ‘captive’ when she painted it, as if someone else held the brushes.”
Naturally, she had scoffed at that nonsense and paid for the painting. It hung there for over thirty years. She had never experienced anything strange when looking at it. In fact, she thought about replacing it with something more contemporary, but something about it made her hold on to the painting.
Nell’s granddaughter, five-year-old Madison Henry, or “Maddie,” had been listening in on their conversation. She squeezed herself with glee. Grandma wouldn’t sell the painting to those men on television. Whenever she slipped away from her big sister and cousins, she’d go into the living room to gaze into the painting. The trees grew smaller and the road became narrower. She wondered what was at the end of the road.
Sometimes, when she’d stand in front of it, Maddie imagined she was looking out a big window. Then she’d whirl around and look out the real window. Outside, houses and cars filled the view. When Maddie spun back, she saw all those beautiful trees and the road that begged to be followed. Sometimes she’d lie on her back on the sofa and hear bunnies hopping in the grass under the trees, see squirrels burying nuts, and birds flying through the trees. If she moved to the other end of the sofa, she might see a dog run down the road or a cat slowly cross it. If she stood on the couch, which, of course, she wasn’t supposed to, Maddie could press her cheek against the painting and hear birds chirping. Once, she even heard the sound of children playing.
One day Maddie stood on the back of the sofa, and she lifted her right foot up and placed it on the road. She almost put her left on there too, but she heard grandma coming. Embarrassed, she quickly got down from the couch and ran to give grandma a big hug.
The next time Maddie was alone in the living room, she put both feet on the road and began to walk. Walking! She actually walked right into the picture, and it scared her to pieces. She quickly backed up and landed feet first on the sofa. Grandma came in at that moment and frowned.
“Maddie, I’m surprised at you. You know sofas aren’t trampolines.”
Madison lowered her gaze. “Sorry.” Then she quickly glanced up to see if the painting showed her footprints. It looked fine. Maybe I just imagined it, Maddie thought. But even at her young age, Maddie knew it was too real to be a dream. She had walked a little way down the road. Now, more than ever, she wanted to walk to the end.
Months later, right after turning six, Madison felt brave enough to try to walk into the painting again. The perfect opportunity came when her parents went away on a trip with her aunt and uncle. All of the Henry granddaughters stayed at Grandma’s. Maddie waited until everyone else watched Disney movies on Grandma’s old VCR in the den. Maddie climbed on the back of the sofa and walked into the painting.
She had been walking quite a distance when a hand grabbed her shoulder. “What do you think you’re doing, Miss Mindy Lou? Look at those funny clothes! Seems to me like you’re running away,” said the woman with a voice that reminded Maddie of her mom’s favorite movie, Scarlet and the Wind, or something like that.
What? Maddie felt completely confused. Why is this weird talking woman calling me Mindy Lou? Why did she say my clothes, just jeans and a t-shirt, look funny? She looked back at the African American woman, who looked a lot like Miss Russell, her first grade teacher whom she adored. But unlike Miss Russell, who always wore pretty clothes and had a fancy hair style, this woman wore a long black dress with a big white apron over it, and her hair was bound in a blue kerchief And she says my clothes look funny, thought Maddie as she tried to wiggle out of the woman’s grip.
“Not so fast, Missy. Just because your folks aren’t here, don’t mean you can get by with anything. I’m taking you back to Miss Schill.”
She swung Madison around and headed toward the biggest house the little girl had ever seen. It was white and across the front had a large porch with a bunch of tall, fat poles going across. The woman marched Madison inside and up a wide flight of shiny stairs to a room where three little blonde, blue-eyed girls chattered as they worked on something with needles and colorful thread. They looked up at Maddie and giggled.
“Where’s Miss Schill?” demanded Maddie’s captor.
One of the girls, who looked quite a bit like Madison, piped up. “Flora, don’t you remember? She’s giving Miss Cynthia a lesson on the pianoforte.”
The woman’s eyes widened as she looked from the speaker to Maddie. “You’re Mindy Lou. Who are you?”
In a quiet voice, Maddie answered, “I’m Madison Henry.”
“Oh, you’re a Henry cousin.”
Maddie listened as all three girls began to talk at once. Not one denied she was her cousin! Maddie figured this might turn out to be fun. At that point, the governess, Miss Schill, came to investigate the commotion. Recently, the master of the plantation, Mr. Henry, had hired her to care for Miss Cynthia and Miss Mindy Lou and to help Cynthia with her piano lessons. Last night, Master Henry’s brother and wife had arrived from their plantation. Their plan, Miss Schill learned, was to leave their girls also in her care while the four adults traveled to Atlanta for an auction.
Maddie heard Miss Schill’s almost inaudible murmur. “I thought there were only two cousins, but here’s a third who looks like all the others but dressed like one of the little slave boys in blue pants, like broadcloth, and an odd white shirt. Poor thing. She’s probably been hiding away in the slave quarters since yesterday.” Miss Schill stepped to the dresser, opened a drawer, grabbed a thin white dress like the others wore, and handed it to Maddie.
Miss Schill returned to Cynthia’s lesson. Madison shrugged and changed her clothes. All eyes were on her, and the little girls gasped when they saw her “Hello, Kitty” underwear. Maddie rolled her eyes and sat down. One of the girls handed her some embroidery work. Maddie, who had never held a needle before, tried to mimic the others’ needlework. They whispered to each other and laughed at this curious girl’s clumsy efforts. Not one to cry easily, Maddie held back her tears.
The girl who looked like her, Mindy Lou, laid down her embroidery and put her arm around Maddie, “It’s all right. It’s near time for dinner.”
As the ice broke, the girls clustered around Maddie and started to ask her questions.
“Who are you, really?” asked one.
“I’m really Madison Henry, but you can call me Maddie.”
“How did you get here?”
“I just walked down the road.”
“Oh, are you from the next plantation?”
“No, I’m from down the road.”
“You act different. I don’t think you’re from around here,” Mindy Lou scoffed.
Miss Schill interrupted. “Time to get ready to eat.” The governess poured water from the pitcher into a bowl for the girls to wash their hands. Maddie whispered to Mindy Lou that she had to go to the bathroom. That word confused Mindy Lou, but she figured it out and showed Maddie another bowl to squat over.
As they walked down to the kitchen, Mindy Lou commented, “I hope you just had to make water. Flora says we’re old enough to go to the outhouse to do our big business.”
Maddie wrinkled up her nose as she remembered using an outhouse, once on a camping trip. Just then, they reached the kitchen. Maddie had never seen anything like it. No refrigerator and no microwave, just a big black stove and a wooden table with benches. Dinner was bowls of something yellow called mush with milk. Seeing Maddie’s look of distaste, Mindy Lou explained, “When Father and Mother are here, we eat in the dining hall. We have meat and sauce with hot biscuits, and greens and pie for dessert. While they’re gone, Cook is lazy”
Maddie tried a spoonful of mush and began to gag. Mindy Lou looked offended. “It’s not that bad. Put some sorghum on it.” Maddie didn’t like it any better with the sweet, dark brown syrup. Curious about Maddie’s distaste, Mindy Lou asked what she usually ate.
“Pizza rolls, chicken nuggets, and I eat tacos and mac and cheese.”
Mindy Lou had no idea what these things were, but said, “They sound terrible.”
Maddie started to argue but stopped herself, “What do we do after this?”
“We take a nap.”
Maddie looked shocked. “Naps are for babies.”
“Maybe where you come from, but here everyone naps. It’s too hot to do anything else.” Maddie dutifully lay down for a nap, but as soon as the other girls were sleeping, she got out of bed. She looked out the window and there was the road. It was time to escape this crazy place and go back to Grandma’s.
Mindy Lou had only pretended to sleep and saw Maddie creep toward the door. She shifted and whispered to Maddie, “Do you like kittens?”
Maddie’s eyes lit up. “Yes.”
“There are some new ones in the hayloft. If we’re quiet, we can sneak out there.”
Soon, the two girls sat in the loft, each petting a kitten so tiny that one finger spanned the space between its miniature ears.
Bonding with her look-alike over the irresistible kittens, Maddie asked, “How old are you?”
“I’m eight, going on nine.”
Maddie was surprised. They were the same size. With her sixth birthday just this past week, she announced, “I’m nearly seven.”
With that settled, they went on to other topics. Maddie was curious about all the African American people working in the fields out the loft window. “Who are they?” she asked Mindy Lou.
“They’re slaves. Don’t you know anything?’
“What are slaves?’
“My father, he’s master of the plantation, buys them. They work for him.”
Maddie’s eyes grew round in disbelief. “Buys people? Nobody buys people!”
“Yes, they do. We need a lot of people to work the plantation.”
“Does your dad, I mean father, pay them lots of money?”
“No, he doesn’t pay them anything, and he whips them if they don’t work.” Mindy Lou pointed to a horsewhip hanging on a peg on the barn wall below them.”
Maddie couldn’t believe her ears. Enraged she asked, “Why?”
“Because. They’re not like us.”
“You said I’m not like you either.”
A mean look came over Mindy Lou’s face. Her eyes shifted from blue to a greenish-yellow. “You’d better watch it. You aren’t like us, and when my father finds out you’re here, he’ll make you into a slave and whip you unless you do what he tells you.”
Maddie began to tremble. Mindy Lou continued to give her an intimidating look. “We’d better get back to bed before anyone finds out we left, or I’ll tell everyone it was your idea.” She raised her eyebrows and pointed to the whip.
They had just slinked into their cots when Miss Schill came into the room. “Young ladies, you’re free to play under the big trees.”
Maddie tried to avoid Mindy Lou as much as possible. Her thoughts turned again toward going back down the road. But, for now, she had to play along just a while longer. She sidled next to one of the younger girls. “What do you play?”
Charlotte, who also had big blue eyes like all the Henry cousins, answered, “Ring around the Rosy.”
“That’s a baby game.”
Rebecca, whose blue eyes turned the same yellow-green that Mindy Lou’s had, sneered. “Then what games do you play where you come from, Miss Maddie?”
“Well, mostly computer games”.
“What’s a computer?’
“It’s this machine thing. An iPad. Everyone has them.”
“What else do you do?”
“We watch television.”
“What’s that?” Cynthia asked.
Maddie felt so superior. Mindy Lou said she didn’t know anything, but it was these girls who didn’t know anything at all. “A television is like a picture, except you watch it and see people walk around and hear them talk.”
The girls couldn’t comprehend what she was telling them, so one of the cousins changed the subject. “Let’s play with our dolls.” Off they went to get them.
Maddie called after them. “Do you have Barbies?’ but all she received was another blank look from each girl.
After a while, the music teacher, a jolly-looking man with a pink bald head and round body, arrived and called the girls inside for their lesson.
“Time to sing scales and motets,” Cynthia said.
“What are motets?” Maddie asked.
“Really old songs,” Cynthia answered
“I know a really old song!” offered Maddie. She jumped up with air guitar in hand and belted out, “Rock around the Clock.”
The girls laughed, but the music teacher couldn’t have been more appalled. His face turned bright red, and he looked as if he would explode. He shrieked at Maddie, who felt certain he was going to hit her. “You should be ashamed of yourself. I have never heard such atrocious music in my life.”
After music, it was time to eat again. Cold biscuits and honey with buttermilk made up the meal. Miss Schill announced it was time to practice penmanship. Mattie had no idea what she meant, but she liked dipping the funny pen into the ink and dribbling it all over the paper.
For bath time, everyone took turns in the huge pan in the kitchen. After that, Maddie lay in bed. Only one thing was on her mind. She wanted to leave. She didn’t want the master to return. She didn’t want to be turned into a slave. But it was so dark, she was afraid if she left now, she’d get lost. She decided to wake up early, before everyone else, and go home.
Maddie woke to the governess telling the girls to dress and eat quickly, because the schoolmaster was coming today. There was a classroom upstairs, and that’s where the girls headed after their meal. The schoolmaster asked Miss Schill to stay and help him with the two extra students. Then he noticed Madison.
“I see we have another pupil,” commented the man in the long black coat with bushy black eyebrows and ridiculous looking glasses on the end of his nose. “Let’s see what you know. What’s 10 times 16?”
“I don’t know. We don’t do multiplication until third grade.”
“Very well. Find England on the globe.”
Maddie recognized a globe, but no one had ever asked her to find something on it. She was smart and figured England started with an E, so she pointed to the first E word she saw, Egypt. The girls all laughed behind their hands.
“Hmm, so you don’t know multiplication and you don’t know geography. Here’s an easy one. Who is the President of the United States of America?”
Of course, she knew the name of the President, but Maddie refused to answer. She didn’t want the teacher to yell at her again.
Some of the cousins, whom Maddie realized liked her and didn’t want her to fail again, whispered, “Mr. Buchanan.”
“Answer my question!” The schoolmaster was not amused.
Still, Maddie refused to answer.
“She doesn’t know,” Mindy Lou hissed to Rebecca. “I knew she wasn’t from here.”
With a stony look, Maddie stared straight ahead. All the girls began to laugh in their high-pitched voices. To Maddie, they sounded like mad cats ready to pounce, biting and scratching at her. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw that the schoolmaster had taken a wooden paddle from a hook on the wall.
She started to get up to run, but Miss Schill grabbed her by the shoulders. The sweet, pretty lady’s eyes turned wild, her expression threatening. “You will not be disrespectful to the schoolmaster. There’s only one thing to do with such a naughty girl who is disrespectful to her elders and who makes up things like you’ve been telling the other girls.”
As the governess clutched Maddie’s arm and took her from the classroom, Mindy Lou had a smirk on her face. Maddie wondered if Mindy Lou had been led away like this.
“Please, Miss Schill,” Maddie pleaded as she thought to herself, I have to get away from all these people with whips and paddles, who keep grabbing me.
“Not another word!” The governess led the scared child downstairs and outside to something that looked like a slide at the playground but much wider. It was really a heavy wooden lid. Holding onto Maddie with one hand that dug into her flesh, Miss Schill pushed the hinged door until it fell over on the ground revealing a dark staircase. The stairs led to a door in the foundation of the house.
Guiding her down the stairs, Miss Schill told Maddie, “Master told me the other governesses always put naughty children in here.” She opened the door and shoved Maddie into a small dark room that had an ugly smell of rotten potatoes and wet dirt. “You will stay down here in the root cellar until Master comes back.”
Maddie begged in her loudest voice, but she heard Miss Schill slam the heavy lid closed. Maddie was terrified. The room was dark, and she was alone. As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she began to see cloth bags all around. She peered into a bag of apples and grabbed one to eat. At least, she wouldn’t starve to death before Mindy Lou’s father came back.
She finished the apple and curled up in a corner on the dirt floor and began to cry. “I wished I’d never walked into that stupid picture.” She wiped away tears with her hands, grimy from the dirt floor. She missed her family; they were probably worried. She wiped at her runny nose with her hands. “Even if I don’t starve,” she sobbed, “Master will make me a slave, and if I don’t work hard, he’ll whip me. I’m only a little girl.”
Was this what life was like for some people in the past? She had never heard of buying people, of whipping them to make them work. They may have laughed at her for not knowing how to find certain countries on a globe or not knowing her times tables, but at least she knew that what they were doing was wrong. Nobody deserved to be treated the way the so-called master treated those poor slaves.
Except for her crying, it had been perfectly still in the dark cellar, but a sound caught Maddie’s attention. It sounded like someone was throwing rocks at the door. She listened for a while. No, not rocks, but rain. The room grew colder, and Maddie tried to wrap herself up in a small empty bag. It didn’t even cover her legs.
The sound of gnawing caught her attention. She sat perfectly still, hoping the noisy creature wouldn’t find her, but it squeaked and ran across her bare legs. She screamed. “A rat! A rat is going to eat me!”
Two young boys, slaves, ran by, trying to find shelter from the rain. They heard Maddie’s screams coming from the root cellar. “Oh, probably Miss Mindy Lou,” she heard one of them comment. “She’s always getting herself in trouble.”
“And,” said the other, “when we let her out, she gives us apples.”
The two worked together and swung open the cellar door. They dashed down the stairs and opened the inner door. It wasn’t Miss Mindy Lou. It was something with a face made from mud, wrapped in part of a gunnysack, and it was running up the stairs after them! They hollered and ran as fast as they could up the stairs and away, while Maddie ran in the opposite direction, back toward the road.
It rained harder, but Maddie didn’t let that, or the road that quickly turned to mud, stop her. She’d seen what was at the end of the road. She wanted to get back to her own place with bathrooms, Barbies, television, iPads, good food, and nice teachers. As she slogged through the mud and saw her exit, she felt something wonderful in her heart. More than her modern comforts, Maddie appreciated the importance of living in a land where no one was a slave, and it didn’t matter what you knew if you didn’t know how to do the right thing.
She landed in a heap on the sofa. She was safe. She was home.
“There you are, Sweetie, it’s time for lunch!” Grandma came in and stared at Maddie. “Why is your face so dirty, and where did you get that funny old dress?”
Before Maddie could answer, Grandma Henry raised her voice. “And your shoes. They’re covered in mud. Get off the sofa right now!”