Sarah Ridge
Ridge Land, Cherokee Nation Territory
Spring and Summer 1829
C
arpenters arrived from Tennessee to improve Major Ridge’s log home. Ushering in the spring, the sound of grinding saw teeth and smells of rich resin from newly seasoned lumber permeated the house. John drew the plans for second floor renovations, experimenting with architectural design, and oversaw construction. He helped build a beautiful staircase landing with three glass windows, making sure the banister rail was low enough for the children to hold.
Porches extended from each side of the house, as was the country’s fashion—a plantation, not a farmer’s cabin. The house centered on such a scene of plenty, two stories high with four brick fireplaces warming eight rooms, paneled with hardwood, chinked, and painted white. Thirty glass windows overlooked the budding orchard and the Oostanaula River, framed by walnut trees running beside poplars, lilies, and reeds. With its accompanying plantation, Ridge Ferry was in higher cultivation than most homes in the region.2 Only Vann’s brick mansion surpassed it.
With the aeration and planting begun, my darling Clarinda turned four. For her birthday, Vann sold John his painted mare, Equoni, for the simple price of Clarinda’s kiss on his cheek. We gathered at the fence when Peter led the horse from the stable to the paddock gate for Clarinda’s first ride. Sitting high atop his shoulders, Major lifted Clarinda to straddle the horse’s broad back, so small atop the broad, blue-eyed horse. After mounting behind her, Major draped a leather thong holding a wooden four-hole flute over Clarinda’s head. In an endearing gesture, he waved one finger and touched the whistle to her nose. “Don’t take it off, my Clarinda, so we can hear you. Always.”
John and I stood outside the paddock gate. Major looked apologetic and said, “She can’t speak commands. I thought this might do.”
Clarinda learned quickly that the more she blew, the more vibrations she felt. Major held her little frame and captured her attention, holding one finger in the air. Instantly, Clarinda understood and blew hard, piercing our ears with the sound. Then, Major heeled the horse a quarter turn around the ring and stopped. They did this for minutes, stopping and starting. Then, he held two fingers to her, and she responded, while he heeled Equoni into a trot. One whistle for a quarter turn and two for a run through the circle. The horse learned the signals as quickly as she did.
Clarinda interpreted her world with constant questions. She was a child of nature, more comfortable in barked trees than painted chairs. Often, rather than sign, she gathered by the hand me or John, Honey or Grandmother and took us to her question rather than make gestures without sight. My greatest wonder became watching her uncover answers from the fields and river. I watched her think, enthralled by her magical language, enhanced by the lack of hearing.
Mother Susannah arrived at the paddock holding toddling Rollin’s tiny hand, who squealed, trying to pull away, crawling under the fence. John picked him up and put him on his shoulders. Mother Susannah protested her husband’s fearlessness with Clarinda’s new mare. In what, I was sure, wouldn’t be the last time, she repeated her warning. “She’s too small for this, Skahtlelohskee. She needs a pony.” As soon as Mother spoke, unexpectedly, Major let go. Clarinda started and stopped Equoni with her whistle, reins, and heels.
Rollin turned two at the end of March. Not to show any favoritism to either grandchild, Major carved Rollin a wooden oxen team, sanded smooth with dull horns matching the giant beasts bringing lumber from the sawmill. Rollin loved to watch them, squealing and pointing when the oxen crossed the river ferry.
Rollin babbled more than he listened. With childhood banter in two languages, John was better equipped than I to understand his meaning. John and Rollin talked while they sat barefoot on the floor. They built towers of wooden blocks and knocked them down with the carved oxen. In shape, father and son were mirror images of one another, with a matching hairline and the same shaped feet, Rollin’s toes wiggling in miniature. The two conversed about whether it might rain the next night or whether the trickster rabbit stole the otter’s coat. Rollin’s bilingual vocabulary grew by the day. He played beside his sister, adding her language to his others, touching his fingertips together to sign that, for one second, he’d let her hold his toy ox.
One morning in late April, Clarinda’s quilt was tousled, but she wasn’t tucked inside. I had little reason to panic. She and Honey must be with Mother Susannah. I grabbed my dressing gown, hefted Rollin on my hip, and we crossed the short distance to the main kitchen. I assumed I’d find Clarinda’s sticky hands next to Honey kneading dough. But when Rollin and I arrived, no one was there. No one had kindled the fire in the hearth since last evening, the air stale. My stomach turned topsy-turvy with worry.
I ran outside to scan the nearby orchard. The heat from Peter’s forge pulsed in waves from the open barn door. I overheard Honey’s voice and Clarinda’s whistles between clatters and bangs of the hammer on the anvil. Clarinda must be feeding apples to her horse. Rollin and I stopped our hurried pace and waited outside with our backs to the open barn door, listening.
The clanging stopped when Honey said, “Whatcha prayin’ for? You either be singin’ and shoein’ or prayin’ and fishin’.”
Peter chuckled and replied after a single hammer strike, “I talks to my brother all da time. Never knew a time or a tune without him.”
“Where he at?”
“Drew died last fall. We ‘smithy together. So’s, I keep on imaginin’ him carryin’ all dem high notes.”
“My papa used to shoe da horses, but he wouldn’t sing after Mama died. He just grumble. He gone too, a few years back.”
“I think it harder to pray for rain than to complain when it falls. Requires faith some people ain’t got. See some only have a little cup, and they can’t fill it themselves, let alone pour water to the brim for others to drink. Just who they be.”
Honey changed the subject. “Let me hears you sing.”
Peter said, “Promise’n you won’t make fun?” I heard a tool drop to the wooden barn floor, followed by shoes scuffling on hay.
He cleared his throat. “You’s ain’t givin’ it back, is you? Tills I sing?”
“Sure ain’t.” I imagined Honey’s hands on her hips, holding Peter’s hammer hostage.
Clarinda’s whistle filled the silence in their conversation and set Peter’s key like a tuning fork. His voice was deep for a man not yet twenty.
“If you can’t pray like Peter
If you can’t be like Paul
Go home and tell your neighbor,
He died to save us all.”3
Peter didn’t continue the hymn to its chorus. After the verse, he lofted its last syllable, and said, “Thank you, ma’am.”
Honey told him, “You sings so fine. I don’t sings no more. No good come from it.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Miss Honey. It lightens a sadness too heavy to carry alone. Even this mute child makes song, ‘septin’ it all be the same note.”
Honey was brutally honest in two languages. Peter matched her forthrightness. Their voices enriched our daily bread, baked through—but rarely buttered.
And I continued his song, kissing Rollin’s sweet head watching the peaceful sunrise. “There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.”4
L
Throughout the summer, Clarinda and I rode Equoni down Ross Ridge Road to visit Quatie. Her husband and mine spent the spring avoiding one another, with silence doing nothing to heal their divide. When I asked John if he minded us seeing her, he stopped what he was doing, took Rollin from me, and allowed me time.
Traveling the three miles didn’t take long. We met near the bent sycamore stretching over the Oostanaula. When we arrived, Quatie floated on her back. Her shift reflected the summer sun, clinging to her upper body while spreading wide around bare toes. We undressed down to our shifts to join her in the clear water.
She shouted up the bank, “It eases the strain of his weight.” Quatie insisted the growing child in her womb would be a boy, and his name would be Jacob, even though she couldn’t know for certain.
“What if Jacob is a girl?” I said, holding Clarinda’s hand and wading into the trickles over our calves.
Quatie dismissed my question. “Then, I will call her Rachel.” She put her arms around her growing belly and replied with assurance. “But this time, I will give my husband a son, a warrior. He stills and grows strong.”
“Jacob is a noble name. He fathered twelve sons, leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel.”
“As will mine,” Quatie said.
Clarinda pointed down the road. Honey found us. How Clarinda knew, I couldn’t say.
Quatie sat in the shallows and took Clarinda to her lap while I raised my legs high to step out of the river and climb the brushy bank. When I intercepted her, Honey had tears in her eyes.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. “Is someone hurt?”
“No,” Honey hiccupped, “nobody hurt.”
“Why are you crying?”
Honey shrugged her shoulders and wiped her tears with the back of her hand. She stared back up the road. I touched her face, and she turned back. “You don’t have to tell me, Honey, but you may feel better if you do. Come to the riverside. Splash water on your face.”
Honey left her dress and shoes on the shore and waded waist-deep in her shift before she stopped sniffling. Quatie released Clarinda, who floated on her back downriver toward Honey. We watched them hold their breath and dip their heads in the river.
Quatie whispered, “Do you know what upset her?”
“She’ll tell me in her own time.”
The two returned to the shallows and floated, stretched their legs and toes on top of the water. They held hands, drifting downriver.
Honey yelled with her eyes closed to the sun. “Sarah, I ain’t bad.”
I shouted back. “There’s nothing you could do to make me think you were.”
Honey put her feet down and pushed Clarinda back, who splashed her way back to me. “When I tell you why I’s cryin’, I don’t want you to be prayin’ for my soul, thinkin’ I’ve grown into some evil womern, cause I ain’t. Since you were here, and there weren’t nothin’ to do for a time, Peter and I went fishin’. He’d caught a big ‘un, and we got excited. Then, dat man grab my face and kiss me!” Honey blurted. “I cried the whole way here, not knowin’ what else to do.”
Quatie laughed, and asked, “Why would kissing him make you evil?”
Honey mumbled, holding her chin down, “‘Cause Peter don’t know.” She corrected herself. “Doesn’t know.”
Quatie responded quickly, “What doesn’t he know?”
Honey whispered, ashamed. “That I can’t give him no babies.”
Quatie tilted her head toward the sun and laughed. “Kissing won’t give you a baby.” Then she wrapped her arms around Jacob, or Rachel, growing inside her.
“I knows dat. Just don’t want Peter expectin’ more dan I can give, not after them men take me a few years back.” Honey scrunched up her eyes.
I put Clarinda in Quatie’s lap, waded over to Honey, and wrapped my arms around her.
Quatie asked from behind me, shifting her playful tone to one more serious. “What men?”
Honey shrugged her shoulders and looked to me to find words in her stead.
“White men took Honey a few years ago. Since she was so young when it happened, after her injuries, she may not be able to have children.”
Honey said, “Theys took you too, Sarah.”
“I know, sweet girl.” I took her face in my hands. “Look at me. We survived.” She buried her face in my chest. I said, “You’re safe. We’re safe.”
Honey looked up. “But I can’t be marrying Peter.”
Quatie lightened our somber mood. “Why do you think you have to marry Peter? Because he kissed you?”
I laughed, too, against all my efforts to hold back. I said, “Honey, you don’t have to marry Peter, but if you love him, that’s entirely different.”
“I don’t have nothin’ to compare to how I’s feels. He talk to me like no one else do—close like. Feel him walkin’ up behind me ‘fore I see him. See him grinnin’ when he thinks I don’t be lookin’. I’d know his singin’ from a barn full of donkeys brayin’ and horses neighin’.”
Quatie said, “I should hope so. Come sit beside me. My mother and I are of the Bird Clan and mate for life. Sometimes promises come before the feelings. If you’re lucky, feelings come before the words, so the promises have something to hold on to.” Then Quatie’s eyes became unfocused, and she looked behind her. “And then, other times, there are only a few words and no feelings at all.”
Honey waded to the opposing shoreline and sat on the bank, gripping her knees, making a tent of her shift. She said, “I want the talkin’ and the listen’, the singin’ and the smilin’.” She looked at a rope swinging from a nearby tree branch. “Tender like,” she said. “A love that, in time, don’t unravel but tighten da knots.”
I said, “My mother didn’t think it was right for me to love John so much. She forced our separation because she couldn’t understand what she saw. She couldn’t imagine how love grew between two people so different. So, she sent John home and ordered me to New Haven to stay with my grandparents. It cost us two years of heartbreak to convince her otherwise.”
Quatie tilted her head. She said, “That wasn’t the way with Ross and me. I was a widow with an orphaned daughter. He married me because I was Cherokee, loaning him my family’s heritage. Ross needed a Cherokee wife to give him Cherokee children. Many white men marry Cherokee women. He could provide for us. We made a good match.”
She was right. There were many mixed couples here where the husbands were white. But there were only two marriages I knew of where Cherokee men had married white women: Elias and Harriet, John and me. God knows John and I suffered man’s judgment for binding our lives together. Elias and Harriet too.
Quatie said, “Many marriages have been built on less. I must love Ross now.”
I let her remark go unanswered, thinking she lost her sentiment in translation. Like John, Quatie thought in Cherokee.
Honey spoke up in our silence. “Well, I got them feelin’s, but no promise.”
I said, “You’ve got more than you think if Peter kissed you. I wanted John to kiss me long before he ever did.”
Quatie remarked with near sarcasm, “All I want is for Ross to want to kiss me.” Then she continued, quieter, talking to herself, “Things will change after Jacob is born.”
Honey asked, “What should I do? Should I tell Peter ‘bout what Lovett and Whitmore did? What if he thinks I wanted dem men to do those things? Mother Susannah said never to tell no one.”
I asked, surprised, “The shame was theirs alone, Honey. Was that his name? Lovett?”
Honey said, “I’ll never forget that man’s name.” She spat, “The one with the greazy yellow hair hiding evil eyes under the brim of dat hat.”
I cupped water in my hand and splashed my face, washing clean the smell of the man’s whiskey breath returning to my nose.
Quatie swam behind me. “You all right?”
I took a deep breath when she touched me, fading my memory’s smell. I said, “None of what happened was your fault, Honey. Tell Peter when you trust him enough. You’ll know then that he cares for you despite all that happened. But if you don’t want him to kiss you again, you must tell him that, too.”
Honey looked beyond the trees. “Don’t seem right to make him think one thing and gets another.”
“Honey, if God wants you and Peter together, you will be. And if He wants to give you a child, He will. It is a truth I trust.”
“Maybe Peter be prayin’ and singin’ for me, and I don’t even know.” She settled the matter enough. “All right with you if I take Clarinda home? If my hands are busy talkin’ to her, Peter won’t ask me questions. I’s have to be thinkin’ ‘bout what I wants to say.”
I spoke aloud and signed. “Tell Papa I’m with Queen Quatie and will be home soon.”
Quatie laughed. “Cherokee don’t have queens; we have blessed women, war women.”
I said, “Remember you told her about the bees? It’s her name for you.”
Honey helped Clarinda climb the bank and twisted the bottom of their shifts to release the water before dressing again. The afternoon was so warm, they’d be dry before reaching the house. Honey and Clarinda held hands and passed out of sight while Quatie and I floated in the cool water.
How might I explain to Quatie what Honey only hinted at? She’d be curious, as would I in the same situation.
I said, “Let’s swim where it is deep.” Our heads rose above the surface. She could stand. I was on my toes, treading water. “John avoids bringing it up for fear of upsetting me. Avoiding the subject doesn’t help me like he thinks it does.”
Quatie said, “Men are too busy to take our thoughts into account.”
John never hesitated to ask for my thoughts. Perhaps Ross was not the same.
Quatie asked, “What happened?”
“No one knows how old Honey is. I imagine she’s fourteen or fifteen now, but when the Man in the Hat, Lovett, took her, she was a tiny thing, with blossoms in her hair and a father who thought her more a nuisance than a daughter. Her Cherokee mother died when she was young.
“She followed some white men singing in the woods, too curious for her own good. She was gone an afternoon and a night before we realized she was lost. John and Major were away, so Arch and I set out to find her.
“We found her miles from home, bound, beaten, and raped by three white men transporting whiskey across Cherokee territory. Arch’s horse wasn’t enough to trade for her life, but I sealed the deal. They released Honey’s ropes and bound them to my wrists.” I showed her the scars, lifting my hands above the water’s surface. She reached out and ran her hand along the indentations in my skin.
I said, “Lovett said he would trade me and the child growing inside me for whiskey with McIntosh. He dragged me behind a horse for miles. I freed myself from the ropes and hid in a cave. Arch brought Honey home and waited for John, Elias, and Major. The four of them tracked the horses and wagon to find me.”
Quatie asked, “I don’t need to ask how they got you free.”
“I didn’t see them kill the men. I heard it. Afterward, John called to me through the maze of that cave. When I reached him, he had blood on his hands. When we passed the bodies…” I closed my eyes. “Clarinda was born deaf four months later.” Suddenly paranoid, I swam away from her, watching downriver. No one was there. I turned back, admitting a never-spoken guilt. “Clarinda’s muteness is my fault. Mother Susannah warned me not to go, but there was no one else.”
Quatie was quiet when she climbed out of the water and wiped her face with a cloth from her bag. She faced me. “Honey would be dead if you hadn’t gone. You did nothing wrong, except have a heart too big. The Great Spirit gave Clarinda, and you, what you both could manage. Your men followed my people’s Blood Law. A life for a life, as your Old Testament says. Although if anyone told the Georgian Guard, they would convict John, his father, and Arch. It would make no difference how right they were.”
Quatie’s face was kind, radiating light from the inside. Her eyes didn’t hold pity or blame. From them, she didn’t judge me but understood what Honey and I endured and survived. I followed her, dragging heavy limbs through the water, but my mind was lighter for having told someone. Our shifts clung together when we embraced and squeezed the water from our hair before dressing.
She touched my hair again, as she had done the day we met. “Like copper in the sunlight. Even when it is wet.”
I touched hers in return. “Like onyx, smooth, holding every color underneath.”
She mounted her horse and called over her shoulder. “Meet me next week? Same day, same time.”
“I will,” I promised, and we each went down the Ross Ridge Road, traveling in opposite directions. On the way, I filled my pockets with cottonwood buds, rich in resin, to make John a healing balm for his hip. With sticky fingers and full pockets, I sang the hymn where only Jesus listened. “There is a balm in Gilead that makes the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead that heals the sin-sick soul.”5
L
At summer’s end, Mother Susannah woke us in the hours before dawn. When John answered the door, Mother Susannah said, “Quatie is laboring with the child. It is too soon. Her eldest daughter sent for us both. Hurry.”
From Quatie’s kitchen, I waited through the sounds of bearing and birthing. Quatie’s youngest, Jane, sat on my lap. The next morning, Mother Susannah opened the door, releasing Quatie’s quiet sobs, held silent behind wooden walls. Mother Susannah held a bundle in her arms and passed the cry-less child to me, face covered in a blanket. Rachel Ross was stillborn in the light of day.
Quatie was not well. She sat straight up, sweat dripping from her face, struck to stillness with the unfathomable emptiness in her once full mother’s heart.
I walked outside and looked down the road, expecting to see Ross’ horse gallop in, to be by his wife’s side. But Ross never arrived. Standing in the doorway, I uncovered the baby’s face, eyes closed as if she were a porcelain doll painted in colors too light. I touched her cheek and placed my hand on her still chest. I covered her face again and felt my womb, knowing another heaven-sent soul grew under my fingertips.
For Rachel, four women mourned quietly at dawn. Quatie’s body would heal, but I prayed God’s healing balm over her spirit.
L
September announced that summer was through. Quatie recovered, although she tired easily. The last time I visited her, we walked among her peacocks, and she shared how distant Ross had become since Rachel’s loss. The father left the mother to grieve in solitude. I couldn’t imagine enduring such a heart-wrenching ache alone. After Rachel’s loss, time released the tensions between Ross and John, and they talked instead of walking in opposite directions. The more they spoke, John’s empathy for Ross’ loss brought his forgiveness.
While I hung clean clothes over the line, I overheard Major speaking to John, leaving the back door open to the house. Major’s calloused hands stopped my chore. John dropped the shirt back into the basket. Major Ridge turned me by the shoulders to face him. He cleared his throat and spoke, with John’s voice overlapping his father’s sentences.
“It was you, Sarah, who convinced me—on the ride home from Ross’ house nearly a year ago. I heard your heart; it sounded like my son’s. Last year, he requested land to improve, to build a home for your growing family. But I told him no. With these improvements, I realized how selfish my reasons were. I could not bear to part with Rollin, Clarinda, John, or you, daughter. Joy fills my life to care for each of you.
“With the profit from last year’s cotton crop and the money my son earned translating for the Creek, there was enough to build you a fine home, a mirror of your family’s house in Cornwall. Near a running creek, the house sits atop a hill on valley land near my acreage, with ample room to graze horses and cattle. Mountains surround Ridge Valley. To the east, the morning sun streaks the horizon with lavender and crimson.
“With my hands, I built you the most pleasing kitchen porch facing the west, so you can read to my grandchildren before they sleep. Like President Jefferson’s Monticello, John has shelves for his law books, a place to negotiate with future American presidents. And for you, my daughter, behind your kitchen stands a hothouse to grow flowers instead of tears.”
He signed, releasing the sentiment as he let go of my arms, and grasped the beaded multicolored sheath crossing his chest. “You’ve shed enough since coming here.”
Because I knew John, knew him to his core, his emotion stood behind responsibility and obligation. John said, “There are no words for the honor you’ve given us, Father. We will make the land improvements profitable.”
He took us both close to his chest with an honest embrace, gripping us with his solid forearms. “You both make our lives profitable. That is more than enough.”
Too maudlin for such a warrior, Major left us shocked. He crisscrossed through the row in the apple orchard, passing Honey and Peter, who separated their joined hands, putting space between them as he approached.
Major shouted over his shoulder. “With this gift, I will send ten servants to seed and harvest the fields and assist Sarah in maintaining the house.”
John repeated Major’s offer. Before he could escape hearing, I returned his shout. “I will own no one.” I sensed John’s surprise, but I continued. “They can come if they choose. I welcome anyone’s help, but those who come must be free to make the choice themselves.”
Before turning my words to Cherokee, John hesitated for an unnecessary moment. His father stopped walking down the path and looked back. Then, with brisk and vast strides, he returned to my side but said nothing. Instead, he reached for my arms, turning me gently by the shoulders toward his cotton fields.
Ridge slaves moved in a silent dance, hearing music coming from the rolling brown dirt that was spotted white with cotton buds. Bent brown backs curtsied and bowed, adorned with seamed straps of burlap sacks full of the fruits of their labor. He showed me just how many hands were needed to do such work.. I understood but would not retreat or cower. He studied me, nodded once, and returned to the barn.
When he walked away, John wrapped his arms around me, lifting me above the ground. He whispered in my hair, “No one else could have convinced him as you just did.”
He set me on my feet. I said, “I wish I could talk to my father the same way.”
“You will. There will come a time when you must speak so to him.”
I said, “Take me home,” and grabbed his hand.
Honey approached and took my other hand. She said, “If dem babies is comin’, I’m goin’ too.” I stared at our connection, the contrast of color between our interwoven grasps.
Peter came to John’s side and shook his outstretched palm. He said, “This what freedom feel like?” He took Honey’s hand.
Our circle was tight.
Peter lifted his head and closed his eyes to the afternoon sun. He sang, “There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole. There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.”7
That evening, from the west-facing porch of Tantarara, Running Waters, I wove my hands under John’s arms and rested my head against his back. He wrapped his hands around mine.
Underneath such rose and gold peace, in colors blended by cloud-like feathers, my faith renewed. The sky’s refrain echoed the promise of the land, in a chord overtoned by a passing angel choir.