Lithie was a kitchen slave; she was light of skin and as graceful as a bird. She was also insolent, an unappealing characteristic that forced her to be relegated to kitchen work, and of the lowliest kind.
Although Crystal had almost no contact with the woman, she was aware of her existence and had felt the battery of hostile looks thrown her way in their infrequent encounters.
In the six weeks since the trip to Twin Oaks, Crystal had nearly forgotten the incident involving the slave Joseph. But she was reminded one day as she entered the kitchen and heard Lithie’s two words. The first was Joseph and the second was a derisive her. But even at that, the words would have been shrugged off had it not been for the reaction seen on the ring of dark faces around the room. The only one with an indifferent look was the one who had caused the startled look to appear on everyone else.
Crystal’s words came automatically as she studied the faces. “I’m looking for Auntie T. She’s mending the dress I want to wear today.”
“I would think you could be more considerate of the poor old woman,” came Lithie’s retort. The other slaves shrank away from her, turning aside their dismayed faces. She continued, “You’ll get more work out of an old horse if you don’t ride it so hard.”
For a moment Crystal dropped her head, feeling nearly as if she were the grubby kitchen maid. She studied the tall, slender woman, noted the graceful tilt of her head, the almond eyes, then said, “It’s a pity you aren’t an actress; you have such airs.”
There was a nervous titter of laughter from the others. Lithie lifted her head even higher as she said, “Yes, ’tis a pity, and a pity you are such a mouse with the possibility of being anything you desire.”
Taking a step forward, Crystal asked, “Can you read and write?”
“Of course not. That ruins good kitchen maids.”
The door flew open and Tammera panted into the room. “Missy, your mama is looking for you.” Straightening her cap she addressed the group. “And it’s a whipping for the likes of all of you if you don’t lower your voices and get this kitchen cleaned before dinner.”
Breathing heavily, Tammera followed Crystal. “What lies is that Lithie feeding you?”
“Lies?” Crystal turned to meet Tammera’s worried frown, “It wasn’t a lie at all. Auntie T, why is she such an uncomfortable person to be around?”
“Because she’s never come to task with accepting.”
“You mean accepting life the way it is? She’s a slave. I recall she was very angry when we went east to Boston.”
Tammera’s hand stretched toward Crystal. “Did she—say something?”
Crystal frowned over the intensity of the question. Slowly she said, “Auntie T, she was very proper. It is only her attitude, not so much what she says. Please, I feel sorry for her; don’t tell Mama she is quarrelsome today.”
The door clicked behind Crystal and she turned. “Oh, Maman!”
“What is the problem?”
Hastily Tammera said, “Ma’am, ’tis nothing. Lithie is upset today. I think it might be she needs a change of work.” For a moment, Crystal watched her mother and Auntie T study each other.
Mama looked at Crystal. “My headache is very painful today. I believe I will visit the doctor instead of keeping our appointment.”
Crystal sighed and watched her mother close the bedroom door. “Never mind the dress, Auntie T, I won’t need it.”
Tammera shook her head slowly. “Your father left lessons on his desk. Might be nice to work in there.”
Crystal nodded without enthusiasm. She had turned toward the stairs when she remembered the conversation she had overheard in the kitchen. “Auntie T, is there another slave named Joseph?”
Tammera shook her head. “Where did you get that idea?”
“Lithie said ‘Joseph and her’ just as I walked into the kitchen. I wondered, because at Uncle Pierre’s—” Tammera leaned forward with a frown starting between her eyebrows.
Crystal hesitated. “It’s not important.” She went back down the stairs to the library.
Tammera watched Crystal walk down the stairs. She pushed at the frown starting just under her mob-cap and murmured, “The dear Lord protect you from finding out the truth about Joseph, cause sure enough, it will kill you.”
Conscious that Tammera was watching from the head of the stairs, Crystal stopped to wave her fingers at her before entering the library.
Just as she walked into the room, Lithie turned from the desk at the far end of the library. “Oh,” she gasped, dropping her hands from her face. “Just you. I came to dust. I’ll just slip out the garden door and do my work later.”
“Cassie does the dusting tomorrow,” Crystal said. “Why—”
Lithie had disappeared through the open door.
With a shrug, Crystal went to the desk for her books. But at the desk she stopped short, murmuring, “That’s Father’s family record book. I can’t imagine him being so careless!”
As she went to close the book and place it in the desk drawer, she stopped. “A Cabet family history,” she murmured. “I wish it wasn’t so precious that I can’t be allowed to read it.” Her hand drifted lightly over the dark red leather cover. Then with a sigh of regret, she lifted the heavy leaves together and closed the book. As she moved the cumbersome volume, a slender piece of heavy paper slipped out of the book.
“Oh, dear! How will I ever know where to put the paper?” she whispered.
The heavy script on the vellum caught her attention. A legal document, she thought to herself. She had flattened the single page and was reading it when her father entered the library. But even then the words on the sheet had no meaning until she saw her father’s face.
The color surged to his face as he roared, “Crystal, why have you been into my cabinet? You know I’ve forbidden you to do so!”
“Papa, I haven’t opened the cabinet. The book was on the desk and I needed to move it. The paper—fell out.” Slowly she lifted the paper. She looked at him and realized the obvious must be said. “Papa. This document. It says that Evangeline Cabet is my mother. And is she your daughter?”
That man she called Papa nodded slowly. Now she saw the strain on his face, the defeat. She said, “You talked about regretting some things in your life. Is this one of them?”
“Of course.” He came slowly to the desk and dropped heavily into the chair. “And I regret this. I should never have kept the paper in the house. Joseph, mentioned in the paper, is the slave who escorted you at Pierre’s. He is your father, and Evangeline Cabet, our daughter, is your mother.”
Crystal tried to understand the words, but the only thing she understood was that this man was not her dear papa. For a moment he was a stranger. Not a grandparent, only a stranger confirming the words she had read.
But in the next moment, while each waited for the other to speak, she comprehended the deeper meaning of the paper.
“This is why my skin is darker than yours. I am half slave.” Her voice was growing brittle. “Tell me, why does my father work in the fields, and where is my mother?”
He sighed. Like an old man, he settled deeper in his chair until his chin rested against the stiff whiteness of his collar. “If I were a slave, half-Negro with a white father, and I had an impetuous, lovely young girl throw herself at me, I suppose I would have behaved in the manner in which your father behaved. It is that fact that kept me from having him shot eighteen years ago.”
“I heard what you said to Uncle Pierre about letting him work in the fields until he drops.”
His face contorted painfully. “You will force me to face the ugliness of myself?” He was silent for a moment and then he added, “I’ve tried to protect you from knowing. Now you’ve chosen to disobey me by reading the book.”
“That isn’t so.” Crystal felt her chin go up. With a part of her mind advising her that she was talking back to Papa, there was a moment of astonishment. She took time to wonder if knowing the story had given her courage. She pondered the strangeness of being adrift, separated from the people she claimed as mother and father. For a moment she felt rootless, confused. “The book was spread out on the desk. I tried only to fold it together and place it in the drawer.”
With a curious light in his eyes, he asked, “You mean you wouldn’t have been tempted to pry?”
Crystal frowned. “I suppose it is more the fact that you simply have said no. It made my curiosity more wrong than the deed. Strange, because I don’t feel that way about the letters in Mama’s chest. I’ve pried at Auntie T to tell me about them.” He was nodding as she talked, and with a slight smile he said, “I must reward her faithfulness.”
“What about my mother? Where is she?”
“She is living in France. We’ve had no communication from her in the past five years. I suppose that she is happy. She married well. But our long ago action has—”
“Made her bitter?” she asked, feeling set apart from it all.
He shook his head. “It is more. How do you reconcile values? I sense she has absolutely no respect for us. I would neither free your father nor allow her to marry him.”
With a touch of his own bitterness showing, he met Crystal’s gaze and added, “Of course, that was what he had planned all along.”
Crystal reached for the doorknob and he added, “Please, don’t mention this to your mother, nor to Auntie T. I will handle the situation with your mother when her health has improved.”
As if sleepwalking, Crystal went to her room. Tammera was there stitching the dress with the torn lace. Going to the window Crystal examined the gardens, the budding orange trees, and the hacks passing down the street.
Auntie T said, “Why you sigh like that? Crystal, since you’ve been back from that ungodly North you don’t read your Bible and pray like you did before. Now I know what the priest say. But your Auntie T say if you stay close to the Lord, you listen to Him and let Him listen to you.”
Pushing the hurt deep inside, Crystal managed to turn with a teasing grin, saying, “I shall tell Mama you don’t listen to the priest.”
Tammera shook her needle at Crystal. “Don’t you sass me! And don’t forget, before I came to this place, I listen to God and pray to Him every day—sometimes all day long. I don’t need any man to teach me how to please the Lord when I already know.”
“I’m sorry,” Crystal murmured. “I have neglected my Bible, only sometimes it doesn’t seem to have anything to do with life.”
Tammera shook her head slowly. “Might be. I gets burdened down, the Lord say ‘cast your burden, Tammera.’ I get fussed up with life, and the Lord say ‘remember there’s still heaven.’ Sugarlam, if you got troubles, the Lord help. If you don’t know you got troubles, then thank Him for the blessings. I guess you can’t embarrass Him with just talking out the problems. Sometimes the only way He can get our attention is by letting a few problems in our life.”
She heaved herself to her feet and shook out the folds in the frock. “Now I go press this. You pray.”
Crystal stared at the door for silent, leaden minutes. Finally she said, “Lord, I haven’t talked to you for a long time. Will you please help me remember how to pray?” And then in another minute, with an embarrassed catch in her voice, she said, “About today, what happened down there. Please don’t let people find out about it. It hurts to know I’m just a slave, or at least halfway.”
Strangely enough, getting the terrible thoughts into words seemed to help. She closed her eyes and tried to recall the face of that man, but all she could remember was the curious light in his eyes when he learned her name. He knows, and I think seeing me made him very happy.
****
Heavy rains turned the following Monday into a dreary one and turned the roads into yellow rivers of mud. They then spewed their dirty water into the true ponds and rivers, bordering them with a line of yellow as the muddy water poured in.
The restlessness Crystal felt seemed to have spread throughout the whole house. The maids trembled at the thunder and crept silently about their tasks. The cook clanged kettles, and all the savory smells didn’t balance her unrest. After prying at Tammera’s gloom, Crystal gathered her books and went down to the library.
Uncle Pierre and Papa stood before the dark fireplace with glasses in hand. They turned as she entered. “Oh, pardon!”
Looking surprised and ill at ease, the two murmured greetings. Papa added, “We are just leaving and won’t return until evening. Come, Pierre. We’ll gather the papers later.” Turning to Crystal he added, “I’ve left lessons for you on the table. Please read the Sir Walter Scott book and I’ll write questions later. Also, avoid disturbing the papers. They are related to business, and I’ve placed them in the order in which we will use them.” He hesitated, kissed her, and hurried out of the room.
Cassie was waiting at the door. As the men walked past, Papa said, “You heard me tell Crystal, do not bother the papers on the desk. They are important and must be kept in order.”
Cassie cocked her head, waiting. When the front door closed she turned to Crystal. With a pleased smile she said, “I know where they go. They going to slave market, I hear them talk about getting slaves to replace Joseph and Lithie.”
“Replace?” Crystal puzzled over the statement. “Cassie, I saw Lithie just this morning.”
“Yes, but they’re going. And there’s not a one who cares—about Lithie, anyway. I don’t know Joseph.”
“Joseph,” Crystal said slowly. She pressed her fingers against her forehead trying to understand the jumble of emotions fighting for attention. Relief! Now no one will know. I can be Mama and Papa’s girl again.
But a new thought occurred, stemming from the Bible verse she had read that morning. As Cassie began her dusting, Crystal murmured the words she had read, “‘We then that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak, and not to please ourselves.’”
“I’m not certain I know what infirmities are.” She addressed Cassie’s back.
The woman turned with a shrug. “Me? I don’t know either. Better look it up in that dictionary. Least you can read.”
Crystal sat at the desk and watched Cassie. Finally she reached for the dictionary, placed it on the stack of papers and thumbed her way through it. “‘Infirmity. Being feeble, having a failing.’ I guess that means old people.”
She closed the book and tried to erase the damage the book had done to the neat stack of papers. “I think Father needs help with his papers,” she murmured as she lined the edges and thumped the papers into a neat pile. Now she realized what the papers contained.
With a quick glance, she thumbed her way through them. Here in front of her were the documents and bill of sale for each of the slaves. She recognized the names. This one was the bill of sale on Cassie, and this one was Tammera’s. The papers bore the numbers assigned to the slave, a description, known background and the date of purchase. Quickly she found the one for Joseph. He had been bought as a child of fourteen. That was four years before her birth! She felt her throat squeeze tight. With a strange sensation of being led where she didn’t want to go, she folded the paper and stuffed it into her pocket.