May 1, 1865—Freedom
The air was hushed with quietness as Louella stood on the porch of the cloth house, breathing in fresh, free air. The war was over. The shackles had been loosed. And Mr. Lincoln had been shot dead.
Lots of people on both sides bled and died for the cause of freedom. Overseer Brown found out yesterday that his son, Anthony, wouldn’t be coming home from the war. And although there wasn’t a man more deserving of a broken heart than Overseer Brown, Anthony had been decent to her while they were growing up. He’d just chosen the wrong fight.
“Gal, will you get off that porch and come try this dress on?” Mama Sue said.
She was free, and she was jumping the broom with Reverend William, a forty-four-year-old man, twenty years older than she, and loads smarter. Louella didn’t so much mind that since he’d taught her to read. “I’m coming.”
“We got work to do before we present you to that fine reverend.”
“Mama Sue, you shouldn’t be talking like that. William is a man of God.”
Miss Saddie harrumphed. “He still a man, and he’s gon’ be right proud to see you in this here dress.” She lifted the cream-colored frock from her mending table.
Mama Sue’s eyes lit up like Christmas morning when she saw the lace on the arms and the waist of the dress. She waved Louella over. “I can’t wait to see you in this.”
Louella had only laid eyes on a dress this fine on white women entering the big house for fancy teas and other social gatherings. “That’s not the Negro cloth you normally make our clothes with. Where’d you get such finery?”
Miss Saddie ran the cloth house, making all the clothes for the plantation workers on the loom or with needle and thread. The only fabric Miss Saddie had ever been permitted to use was something the white folks had branded “Negro cloth.” It was cheap wool or low-grade cotton that itched something terrible.
“Never you mind where I got it from,” Miss Saddie told her. “All you need to know is you’ll be jumping the broom in this fine frock today.”
She wouldn’t be jumping the broom at all if Mama Sue hadn’t refused to leave the plantation. Her grandmother was convinced that Louella needed a husband in order to be safe outside the plantation.
“Undress down to your shift,” Miss Saddie told her.
“I don’t have a shift.”
Miss Saddie pinched her lips together. “I didn’t think of that. Should’ve made one for you.”
Since she didn’t have a shift to wear under her gown, Louella slipped the dress on and prepared to feel the scratchiness of the fabric. When no itch came to her, she relaxed in the dress, which draped around her ankles. The silk of the fabric clung to her waist as the lace covered the cuffs of her sleeves. As she twirled around, Louella’s eyes lit with delight. “I get to wear this dress, for sure and true?”
Mama Sue wrapped her arms around Louella. Tears rolled down her face. “It’s yours, my sweet girl. You’re going to be a beautiful bride—more beautiful than any other bride this plantation has ever seen.”
Louella smiled at her grandmother, but she wondered how beautiful everyone would think she was if they knew she wasn’t in love with William. She liked him . . . respected him. But too much hate was in her heart for love to grow for anyone else. She’d told William this, but he was determined to marry anyway. And her grandmother kept pushing her toward him, so Louella agreed to go through with the wedding.
* * *
Reverend Wallace, Mr. Montgomery’s pastor, stood in front of Louella and William and pronounced them man and wife. They were standing outside the big house. Mr. Montgomery and his new wife, Mary, were sitting on the front porch with Mary’s three kids from her first husband, who died in the war. Overseer Brown and his wife, Constance, were also seated on the porch, sipping lemonade and scowling at them. On the opposite side of the porch, Louella’s friends and family stood on the grass.
As the reverend pronounced them man and wife, ol’ glassy-eyed Montgomery came down from the porch and placed a broom on the ground in front of them. William and Louella jumped over the broom and then shared a kiss.
The sun was like a bright light shining down on them. Louella lifted a hand above her eyebrows to dim the light as she came out of the embrace with William. Glancing around, she saw people were smiling, cheering for them. Shouldn’t she be happy, full of smiles and bubbly with joy?
But then she heard Constance say, “Is that darky allowed to wear such finery while white women in Mississippi make do with the rags we have left?” Louella then remembered why she wasn’t happy and could never be happy as long as she was tied to the Montgomery Plantation.
“Wouldn’t have dared wear such a dress before that dang Lincoln ruined our way of life,” Mary said.
Deflated, Louella lowered her head. She turned from the porch to the grass where friendly faces greeted her. But Mary swept down from the porch and demanded her attention anyway. “Gal, have you been stealing out of my closet?”
Louella shook her head. “I wouldn’t take nothing from you.”
Snarling at her, Mary pulled at the sleeve of her dress, tearing a piece of the lace. “This is my lace, and you stole it.”
Louella shook with rage. Her fist clenched as she weighed the pleasure of knocking Mary on her coddled behind against the pain of being chained and imprisoned for the rest of her life.
William pulled Louella closer to him. “I’m sure all of your silk and lace are right where you left them.”
“We’ll see about that.” Mary harrumphed, then swung back around and stalked up the porch steps. “If anything is missing, you’ll pay for your thievery.”
Louella unclenched her fists, but her cheeks puffed with fury. She nudged William away from her. “I knew we shouldn’t’ve jumped the broom in front of the big house. Nothing good ever comes from mucking around with white folks.”
“You’ve got it wrong, Louella. We’re right proud to see you and William jump the broom.” Mr. Montgomery touched his hand to his chest. “I gave that lace to Saddie for your dress.”
A prickly sensation crept up Louella’s back. She lifted a shoulder as she slipped her hand beneath the fabric and used her fingernails to scratch away the itch while Mr. Montgomery stared at her as if waiting on a thank-you.
Mary took her hand off the doorknob and swung back around. “You did what?”
“I gave Saddie the lace.” He turned those glassy eyes that held no emotion in Mary’s direction, then pointed toward the seat she had vacated. “Please sit back down and let William and Louella enjoy their day.”
Mary’s lips tightened, but she did as Montgomery bid her, then leaned close to Constance, and the two women whispered back and forth.
Louella ignored the hateful women on the porch because her hate was stronger. Mr. Montgomery could die waiting on a thank-you and that would suit her just fine.
Mr. Montgomery cleared his throat, patted William on the shoulder. “Thank you for letting us share in your day.”
“Of course, sir.”
Mr. Montgomery turned to the wedding attendees who were standing in the yard. He looked crestfallen as he said, “We thank you all for attending the festivities today. If times were better, we would have a nice meal out here in the yard for everybody.” He stretched out his hands and let them drop to his sides. “The war hasn’t been kind to us, so Mirabel and Sue have made a spread for y’all out by the cotton fields. Enjoy, and we’ll figure a way forward from this debacle the North has gotten us in.”
Louella didn’t know what debacle Mr. Montgomery was referring to. The way she saw it, things were finally looking up. She needed to convince William and the rest of her family to get away from this plantation. Mama Sue was the only reason she stayed after the war ended. Her grandmother feared that something worse than what had already befallen them would come and crush their souls if they left this dreaded place.
So here she was, marrying the man of her grandmother’s dreams. She prayed that William would love her enough to take away the pain that had lodged in her chest like a spreading sore.
William picked her up and carried her up the hill toward his church. A few of the men had gone hunting and come back with two rabbits and three coons. Mirabel pulled the collards she’d been growing in her vegetable garden. Mama Sue made corn muffins and grits.
The Montgomery Plantation had about forty workers—Louella refused to think of any of them as enslaved people any longer. All forty of the workers took part in the festivities. She even found herself smiling and enjoying the fact that she was a for sure and true married woman now. Then she turned to the left and caught sight of that oak tree. Rubbed her wrist as an itch tickled its way up her spine, reminding her that Mr. Montgomery was responsible for the fine dress she wore today.
Mama Sue pinched the back side of her arm. “Fix your face, girl. You a married woman now.”
“Be right back.” Louella went into the parsonage. The few clothes she owned had been brought to her new home this morning. She slipped out of the wedding dress and put on her brown skirt with a tan button-down shirt.
Louella then took the dress that she had been so thankful for earlier in the day back outside. She walked over to the fire Mirabel and Mama Sue were using to cook the food and dropped the dress. As the embers of lace floated up from the fire, tears of misery poured from her soul.
William pulled her into his arms. “Louella, what’s this? Why’d you burn that dress?”
She wiped the tears from her face as flames danced in the air like they were in a hurry to get away from the ashes beneath. Her lips tightened, and her nostrils flared with the steam of hate. “I never asked him for that dress.”
In all her life, she’d only asked Mr. Montgomery for one thing. Her pleas had fallen on a cold-hearted master with a need to line his pockets rather than give a little girl back the mother she desperately craved.
William shushed her. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know he gave Miss Saddie the material for your dress. I think he wanted to do something nice for you.”
Too late for that. “It’s too much for me, William. I wish my mama and daddy were here to see that I done married myself a good man. Wish they knew that no massa can tear me away from you.”
“What’s wrong with Louella?” Ambrose asked as he came over to them.
William rubbed her back. “She’s fine. Let’s give her a minute. Help me move the food inside the church so we can eat our meal without all these flies buzzing around.”
Mama Sue walked back over to the picnic table. She kept an eye on Louella. Once William asked that the food be moved into the church, she stood, lifted the bowl of grits off the table, and yelled out to the people, “You heard the reverend. Let’s move this food inside.”
“That’s too much fuss,” Louella told him.
William put his index finger under her chin, grinned at her. “Never too much fuss for my queen.”
“So now you gon’ call me a queen, huh? Queen of what, is what I want to know.”
“Don’t doubt it, Louella. My mother told me about our homeland. Our people came from kings and queens. We were never meant to be enslaved or to know the kind of pain you sorrow with.”
His words were lyrical, soothing her soul. “I’d very much like to hear more about your mother’s homeland.”
“Then I’ll tell you more later tonight when we’re alone.”
After they ate, their friends and family went back to their homes, and Louella stayed in her new home with William just to the left of the church. William’s small house was supposed to make her happy—it wasn’t as run-down as the shack she shared with her grandmother. But on her first night in the house, after she and William had consummated the marriage and her husband was asleep and snoring, she got up to get a drink of water.
She wrapped a shawl around her body to cover her nakedness, walked over to the keeping room, dipped the ladle in the bowl, and sipped the warm water. After quenching her thirst, she turned toward the window, staring out at the cotton field. That same rotten field that she’d worked in since her eighth birthday. The same day she’d asked her daddy why life was so hard for colored folk.
He sat her down on his lap and said, “I wish I could answer that for you. Plain and simple fact is, I don’t know.”
There was sadness in her daddy’s eyes, so Louella put a hand on his cheek. “What’s wrong?”
He took the handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead. “To tell you the truth, I been dreading this day.”
“Huh?” Her face scrunched as her eyebrow lifted. How could her daddy dread the day she was born?
“Thing is, Massa say you old enough to work in the field with me. I gotta show you the ropes today.”
She didn’t get a cake on her birthday that year. Didn’t get a doll. She did, however, get her first blister. From that day on, she dragged her feet every morning as she walked up the hill with her daddy to the cotton field. As years went by, she listened to her daddy tell stories about freedom and about the war and how soon Abe Lincoln would loose the shackles from their feet.
She no longer worked in the field. William had gotten her a job at the big house as a maid to that hateful Mary about a week after the war ended. She was trying her best to endure Mary’s contempt.
Now she was living in a house that caused her to see the field and that oak tree every day. Why such gut-wrenching cruelness was heaped on her was something she planned to ask the good Lord about when she finally saw Him face-to-face.
She went back to bed, but the minute her eyelids shut tight, she saw her daddy hanging from that old oak tree. She wished she could tell her daddy that slavery days was over. Wished he knew that old Abe Lincoln had come through for them.
Tears seeped through her closed eyelids and rolled down her face. The horror show going on in her head wouldn’t loose her. Whimpers set her soul on fire as her eyes popped open. Her hands reached out to grab hold of her daddy and bring him back.
William jumped up, looking around as if something or someone was about to do harm to them. He rubbed his eyes and then pulled Louella into his arms. “Beloved, stop crying. You’re safe. You’re with me.”
“I saw him. My daddy’s d-dead.” She was shaking.
William squeezed her closer to his chest. She clung to his warmth, but it was only a momentary balm. Her eyes filled with buckets of pain, the overflow drenching both of them in a deluge of sorrow. “Why’d he have to kill my daddy? Why couldn’t Daddy live to see this day?”
“I know this is hard, but I’m here. Let my love take away your sorrow.”
Louella laid her head on William’s chest. A dark cloud of misery was following her around, making prey of her. “Tell me more about your mother’s homeland . . . about the people and how they cared for each other.” She needed to be bathed in the warmth of other lands, to know there was a place she belonged.
William chuckled, wiped her face. “How many times do you need to hear the same old story?”
Sighing deeply, Louella told him, “If you can stand telling it, I need to hear it about a hundred more times.”