THOUGH I’D brought many a meal to Edom in the log house, I never thought about what it would mean to live there. Always it had seemed so empty, so echoing, with its bare wood floors and fireplaces of native stone.
It was made of cottonwood logs, hewn as smooth as glass, with round holes every so often to shoot a rifle out of at attacking Indians. Downstairs was a large hallway, with two large rooms on either side. The back gallery connected to the kitchen. Upstairs were two more large rooms, and soon all the place was filled up with whatever furniture Colonel Heffernan allowed us to take out of the main house.
He would allow us women only one mirror, two mule chests, and each of us one bed. Edom, who had always lived in a small back room, walked around mumbling and talking to Grandpa Holcomb as if the man were still alive.
“Good thing you’re dead, Gabriel,” he said to Grandpa’s ghost. “Or this would kill you fer sure.”
But as old as he was, he was a help in moving Pa’s books into one of the downstairs rooms, and in making a study come into being.
He was free now, with all the other slaves, Edom was. But for the last ten years he hadn’t lifted a finger on the place, except to sit outside and tell stories to the little negro children. Pa had been caring for him all the while.
We had nothing to cook on but the old iron skillets and pots that hung in the hearth in the kitchen. Colonel Heffernan wouldn’t allow us to have Mama’s brass pans or kettles. As for servants, he allowed us only Melindy and Molly and kept Old Pepper Apron and others to cook and clean for him.
Sis Goose and I wanted to cry at first, but Mama made a game of it. “Your grandpa and grandmother lived in this house under worse circumstances. At least we don’t have Indians. At least we have bread and salt. Let’s see if we can be as brave as they were.”
But soon we had more to worry about. While Sis Goose was allowed to sleep and live with us, she was, on Heffernan’s orders, to stay in the big house to be at his beck and call during the day.
She was to wait on his table. Serve him his tot of rum every afternoon on the front porch, along with cheese from the buttery and fresh plums and peaches and pomegranates from the small orchard Mama kept in front of the house.
That orchard was Mama’s pride and joy. And so was Sis Goose.
And the first night of her indenture Sis Goose came home crying.
“WHAT DID that man do to you?” Mama cried.
But Sis Goose only burst into deeper crying and ran up the stairs to the room we shared together.
“Let me go,” I begged Mama. “She’ll tell me. Please, let me do it, Mama.”
She agreed and I followed Sis Goose upstairs. She was on the edge of her bed, sobbing. I sat down next to her. “When you’re ready, you tell me,” I said solemnly. “I’ll kill him before I let him hurt you.”
She stopped sobbing for a minute, then took her hands down from her face and looked at me. “There are different ways to hurt people,” she said.
I nodded yes. I told her I knew all about the ways there were to be hurt.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she said then.
“What?”
“Colonel Heffernan did. This afternoon. He told me . . . he,”—and she hiccupped—“he told me . . .”
“What? What did he tell you, Sis?”
“That I and all the slaves on this place should have been free for over two years. Two years! That the slaves in the states have been free all that time. He laughed at me. He said I thought you all were so wonderful, but what kind of family keeps a member in slavery when they don’t have to?”
She stood up. She glared down at me. Her nostrils flared. “All of you,” she gasped. “Even Gabe.” And she wailed out his name and threw herself down on the bed, sobbing even worse now.
I stood up and leaned over her. “Sis, you don’t understand.”
“What? What’s to understand? What could there possibly be to understand? I was a slave, Luli. For two years longer than I had to be. You all could have at least told us! Over at Aunt Sophie’s, she had me waiting on the table. She wanted me to clean the chamber pot! What’s the matter with you people? What’s wrong with you? We weren’t supposed to have any secrets from each other. I trusted you!” She wailed it out and cried even more.
I was getting frightened now. Her chest was heaving, her breath coming in short spurts. “Sis,” I said, and I sat down and put my arms around her.
She threw them off.
“We never treated you like a slave,” I told her. “And Pa was scared that if you knew, others would know, too, and then there would be a slave uprising in Texas. War, Sis! Crops rotting in the fields. Fences down. Fruit trees ruined. We’d be back again to having no wheat for bread. Or corn. Like my Grandpa Holcomb.”
Was she even listening to me?
“I trusted you,” she blubbered.
“Sis, it’s all over. You were treated well. Pa never would let anybody hurt you. How would it have been different if you were free?”
She stared at me. “Don’t even say that, Luli. I know you aren’t that stupid. I would have done things, for one.”
“What?”
“Well, maybe I would have taken a trip with my pa on his steamboat. Mayhap I’d have gone to Europe with Aunt Sophie, as a free person. Who knows? But it would have been my choice. Mine.”
“And Gabe . . . ?” I asked.
“Gabe. Oh God!” And she covered her face with her hands again. “For certain I wouldn’t be carrying his child. I would have wed him properlike. For certain.”
Now I felt the breath go out of me. “You’re carrying his child?”
“Yes.” And she gave a little laugh. “There’s one for you. A secret I kept from you. How does it feel? And from him. He doesn’t know. I’m only three months. And don’t you dare tell anybody.”
I felt something break inside me. So, it was all over then between us. I felt betrayed. But if I felt that way, how did she feel?
She gave a little laugh. “That night we spent in this very house—” and her voice broke off. “You see what I became because I thought less of myself? A white man’s wench. Like my mama.”
“Stop it, Sis Goose.”
“My daddy was right,” she told me. “In the end, that’s what I am. Just a goose in a courthouse full of foxes.”
There was no more to say. What could I say? Little remained between us.
“At least,” she said, “the Yankee colonel up at the big house was honest with me. That’s more than Gabe could be.”
Then she had a thought. “You must make me a promise now, Luli.”
More secrets? I shuddered. “What?”
“It can make up for your not telling me I should have been free. You can promise me that, no matter what, you won’t tell anyone I’m carrying Gabe’s child. No matter what happens. Most especially you won’t tell Gabe.”
A heavy promise. I sighed, wondering what I was agreeing to. But if I could make things up to her for this whole stupid family—
“Yes,” I said. “I promise.”