CHAPTER 15
In the quiet dark of the barn, Benjamin rose from milking the cows and nodded to his son. Lucian took the steaming buckets of milk up to the kitchen, where Ginny covered them with cheesecloth. She rested her hands on the sides of the buckets, soaking up the residual warmth. Mopping his forehead, Benjamin appeared in the doorway. Without a word, Ginny handed him a glass of the warm milk. He turned it up and took the whole in one draught.
“Where’s Samantha?” Benjamin asked.
“She be along,” Ginny said. “She gone to deliver a basket to Miss Belinda. Some early things. Carrots, radishes, lettuce, and peas and such. Can’t you keep up with your woman?” Ginny eyed Benjamin.
“All right,” he said. “All right now.” He shook his head and laughed.
Today, Benjamin and Samantha would wed, sure and legal with Judge Matthews presiding, though they would jump the broom after. And in spite of general disapproval among the slaves. Samantha’s demeanor from previous abuse had softened little, and her gratitude at her rescue was mostly absent. She carried her past like a hundred-pound sack of cotton.
Before dinner, Samantha returned from Miss Belinda’s. Her broad face glistened in the sunlight. She fanned her face with her apron and sat heavily on the cane chair beside the hearth. Handing her a cup of tea and a bowl of peas to hull, Ginny stood with her arms folded.
“How come you all tuckered out?” Ginny said.
“That woman is touched in the head.” Samantha continued fanning and scooted the chair away from the hearth. “Plain-out touched. Something wrong with her other than a dead husband. Just being a widow woman don’t make a body that crazy.”
“What she say?” Ginny said.
“Don’t ask me what she say. Ask me what she do,” Samantha said. She stretched her feet across the floor. “I’m at her door with my basket of goods, nice and polite, like Miss Emily say, and some young slave I don’t know, she open the door when I knock and say thank you and how you folks over to the big house and here come Miss Belinda, that wild hair a flying everywhere and she say, what that nigger woman want with us. That gal show Miss Belinda the basket and Miss Belinda go to yanking, say what that for, so a widow woman won’t starve? I ain’t no charity case. I’s a Matthews. She say, you get on out a here, nigger, but you tell Miss Emily I say thank you, anyway. You just tell her that and don’t you say no more, you hear me, nigger? Me, I’m backing down the steps and I hightail out of there, but I hear something clunk, clunk, and I turn round and that crazy woman throwing chunks of lettuce and carrots after me. Throwing everything right out that basket. Yelling, I don’t need no nigger woman coming ’round here with no vegetables. I got a garden of my own. I’s a Matthews. What I need with this garbage? You hear me, nigger?”
“Yeah, I know she touched,” Ginny said. For once she was in agreement with Samantha. “I seen it plenty times before, but sound like she’s got worse. Right now I got my mind on a bride. You gone wear that no-good dress to your wedding? You get on out of here, like Miss Belinda said.”
Ginny pulled a black iron stew pot from the hearth, stirred the contents, and lifted the spoon to her lips. She added salt, tasted, and rotated the pot back into the fireplace. Later in the day, she delivered a message of thanks from Miss Belinda to Emily, but there must have been a hint of something not convincing in her voice or face. Emily looked at her askance, but Ginny did not elaborate, just asked if Emily needed anything else before she went on down to the quarters.
Any special event called for great anticipation in the quarters. Although Samantha was not greatly liked, Benjamin’s wedding elicited an eruption of celebration. Uncle Corinth struck up his fiddle, Tolbert his banjo, and Lucian a mouth harp, with various odds and ends of percussion. Not only was this a day of joy and much oblique jesting at Benjamin’s expense, but a gathering of kin and friends from surrounding plantations, most of them as glad for a day of rest as for a night of carousing. The women wore their finest shirtwaists and wide-brimmed bonnets, ornamented with varicolored ribbons. Samantha was stoutly glorious in a green and yellow checked dress, a makeover from Miss Emily with extra fabric taken from the skirt to round it out more than a bit. For her straw bonnet, she had broken the rules of style, adding the natural black and white polka dots of guinea feathers instead of more ladylike ribbon trim. Some fine gallantries commenced among the men in their frock coats and Sunday hats, testing whose fried chicken was crispiest, and whose bread and butter pickles wanted for a bit more sugar.
“Ain’t so spare yet in this war, we can’t have a spoonful of sugar in the pickles,” Aunt Lucie chided. “Next thing we’ll be leaving the butter in the milk and just pour the cream on the biscuits.”
“And right on after that, them Yankee soldiers gone come through here and get the cows, won’t nobody have to take the butter out the cream, nor the cream out the milk, nor the milk out the cows,” Uncle Clive said. “Won’t make no nevermind about sugaring them pickles neither. We be following after them Yankees. Say they gone take good care us.”
“Yeah, Clive, you believe all that?” An old slave spoke in the husky voice of age. “I ain’t following nobody nowhere. You believing that talk. I don’t believe nothing white folks tells. Mayhap they believe it when they tell it, but next time they tell it, they done gone to believing something else. I don’t trust nobody I don’t know real good, and the ones I do know, I don’t hardly trust neither.”
The wedding ceremony had all the dignity Judge Matthews brought to any such event. The vows were solemn, with words some of these slaves had never heard before. Deep feelings of worth and seriousness pervaded those gathered. When the service ended, Benjamin and Samantha jumped the broom Lucian laid in their path. A great shout of celebration rose from the crowd and the music fired up. Spontaneous dancing surrounded the couple and drew them into the center of festivity.
From the edge of the crowd, Emily watched, humming low to herself and patting her feet and hands. She did not realize when exactly she began clapping in time to the music. Her father had given her a kiss and gone back up to the big house. She could not pull herself away. The music and the dance surged from one tune to another without faltering. Her feet under her wide hoops moved on their own. It took some moments for Emily to become conscious of Ginny beside her, matching her steps. At Emily’s recognition, both women laughed with joy.
“Well, Miss Emily, you got rhythm, honey. Natural rhythm. Come on now and dance. Show these folks how to do it. You come with me.”
“Oh, no, Ginny, I couldn’t. I wouldn’t want to intrude. And I don’t know the steps.”
“Steps? Honey, you don’t need no steps. Your body know its own steps. I see you over here dancing. You know all the steps you need to know.” Ginny offered her hand.
“Really, Ginny, you know I couldn’t. I would draw attention and this is their time.”
“All right, then. You and me just dance right here. Right where you dancing anyway, seemly or not.” Ginny took her hand and slipped into an open space just beyond the trees and the undulating crowd.
Laughing out loud, Emily lifted her skirts and let her feet and body have their way.