CHAPTER 26
The late spring, if it could be called that, brought with it news of Confederate defeats as the Union collected strategic control of vital strongholds: Pea Ridge and partial control of the Missouri and Mississippi rivers; Shiloh and the death of General Albert Sidney Johnston, one of the Confederacy’s finest; and most crucial, control of the mouth of the Mississippi and the surrender of New Orleans. Only one victory enhanced the strength of the Confederacy: the routing of Union forces from Winchester, Virginia, and a victorious culmination to “Stonewall” Jackson’s Shenandoah Valley Campaign. The weather was miserable, unseasonably cold and very wet, as if the land itself exuded the vast residue of death covering its surface.
In time the weather broke. Peals of laughter spilled in through the open window. Emily, tired of struggling with her stitches, tucked the needle into her sewing and stood. She pulled the curtain back to see Rosa Claire and Aimee lying on the ground, heads almost touching, the color of their skin barely distinguishable. Two toddlers squealing with delight. Their glee was contagious and Emily laughed, not knowing at what. By the time she went down the hall and out the front steps, Rosa Claire was sitting up, one arm outstretched, the other hand jiggling against it. Emily watched from a little distance as Aimee rose and fingered the back of Rosa Claire’s hand.
“What do you have there, children?” Emily said after a few moments.
The children answered with wild giggles and pointing fingers. Kneeling beside Rosa Claire, Emily spotted the object of their hilarity. The caterpillar was black with fine pinstripes along its back and a bright yellow underbelly. Both tips were black and marked with white dots that looked like huge eyes.
“Look, Mama, it has two heads,” Rosa Claire said, pointing. She could hardly get the words out between giggles.
“Well, now, just look at that,” Emily said. “How do you think he knows which way to go?” She held her fingers against the top of Rosa Claire’s hand while the caterpillar wriggled onto her hand. “Well, looks as if this head has the lead for now,” she said. “Do you think he’ll go the other way? Put your finger there, Aimee. Maybe he’ll go the other way.” When Aimee touched the opposite end, the caterpillar sped its way up Emily’s wrist. “Well, now, he seems to like me, don’t you think?” she said.
“But, Miss Emily,” Aimee whispered, “don’t he like me, too?”
“Of course, he does. How could he not? Here, put your finger here.” Emily guided the child’s finger so that the little creature crawled onto her hand.
“Make him go this way, Mama,” Rosa Claire cried. She put her finger at the other end, but the caterpillar did not change direction. “Don’t he like me, too, Mama?”
“Put your hand the way he is going,” her mother said.
“But I want him to use his other head. See, Mama”—Rosa Claire pointed—“he’s got two heads.”
“What if it’s only there to fool you?”
“Fool me? Why?”
“Well, maybe it isn’t you he wants to fool, Rosa Claire. Maybe to fool something that might want to hurt him. Like a bird, perhaps.”
“A bird?” Rosa Claire took the caterpillar back and dropped it into her hand. Aimee hovered over her, stuck out her finger to make a bridge. The caterpillar crossed between them.
“Well, you know the saying ‘the early bird gets the worm.’ Birds eat little bugs and caterpillars, but if they get the wrong end, or if they get confused by those big, false eyes, this one just might get away.”
The caterpillar wriggled up Aimee’s arm. Rosa Claire turned peevish at not having a turn and Aimee relinquished it into her hand, then ran to the edge of the yard and returned with a bit of moss and a handful of leaves. “The caterpillar needs a nest,” she announced, and proceeded to create a circle of overlapping leaves centered with moss. Rosa Claire approved and was willing to give the caterpillar up to its “nest.” She pulled at Aimee’s hand and the two went running off to the other side of the house, leaving Emily and the caterpillar to each other’s company. Emily watched them disappear. She looked down at the circle of leaves, the soft moss, and smiled. If only I had another head, she thought. If I knew which way to go.
* * *
Jessie lay between clean sheets on the four-poster bed Nathan had built anew for her. Aimee lay beside Jessie, her pale nose tight against her mother’s skin. She loved her mother’s rich scent, like yeast rolls set to rise. Across the room, Ginny pressed her hands to the window in the growing light, her soft pink nails luminous against the chocolate of her fingers. She rotated her wrist, comparing the blush of her palm to her nails in the colorless dawn. Behind her, Ginny heard the child stirring.
As she turned, Ginny was struck by the image: the dark mother with her childlike appearance, and the pale child, her little hand curled into her mother’s hair. Ginny tiptoed to the bed. Aimee looked up, curious, but Jessie did not wake. Aimee turned her face back to her mother’s neck, inhaled, and surrendered herself to Ginny. Quietly, Ginny carried the child into the other room and nestled with her in the rocking chair by the fire.
“Your mama need rest now, baby.” Aimee snuggled her head into Ginny’s angular shoulder. “Mama gone sleep all day, I expect. So we gots to be real quiet. Your pappy coming before long. Gone take you up to Miss Emily’s. Maybe she take you on a picnic with her—you and Lavinia and her childrens. You like that, baby?”
Aimee nodded without lifting her head.
The door of the cabin creaked and Nathan ducked into the warm room.
“How she doing, Ginny?”
“Quiet. Sleeping. Bleeding done stopped for now. Baby’s gone, Nathan. Would have been a boy. Benjamin out working on a box and Lucian got a little grave dug. Out beside your arm. Jessie gone be all right.”
Nathan rubbed his chilly hand against his pant leg and squatted by the fire. He stirred the embers with the iron poker. Standing up, he tousled Aimee’s coppery hair. She twisted her face toward him and slid from Ginny’s lap into his one-armed embrace. He began a little jig, humming and tapping his feet. Leaning back, Aimee giggled, ruffling his beard with both hands.
“You gone be a good girl for your pappy?”
A silent nod.
“All right, then. I expect we better get you fixed up. Ginny, put some yellow ribbon in this gal’s hair, please, ma’am.”
As he set Aimee down, Ginny studied Nathan’s drawn face, the anguished look he hid from the little girl.
“Ain’t gone be no more, is there, Ginny?” he said. “Why God give me a white slave daughter and there ain’t gone be no more?”
“She gone be all right, Nathan.” Ginny began to twist little strands of Aimee’s hair.
Aimee, assuming the remark to be about her, said, “I be good, Pappy. Aimee a good girl.”
“I know that, my honey bee. For sure, I do know that.”
They watched Aimee down the steps, then skipping toward the lane, where she turned to wait for Ginny. Nathan moved back into the house. Ginny caught hold of his arm.
“She ain’t gone be your last child, Nathan. I’m sorry about your boy, but Aimee ain’t gone be your last. Jessie gone be all right and you gone have more babies of your own.”
* * *
Emily drew aside the heavy curtain in the parlor, only to drop it again. Her mind darted in confusion as she paced the room. She sat and rose again. Every thought had its counter. She could no more still her mind than her feet. Emily turned from the window to see Ginny, watching from the doorway.
“What’s got you going, Miss Emily?”
Emily merely shook her head and leaned against the window.
“How about some tea? Maybe some talking?”
When there was no response, Ginny went to fetch tea, leaving Emily to struggle with herself while the kettle heated. When Ginny returned with the tray, Emily was sitting on the divan. Ginny settled the tray on the table between them, took her own cup, and sat down.
“All right,” Ginny said, and took a sip. “All right, now.”
Emily sat back without touching the cup. “Ginny,” she said, “I want Aimee to come and live in the house. I want to raise her.”
“She ain’t yours to raise, Miss Emily.”
“I know that, Ginny. But she’s almost totally white. I can give her a life she won’t otherwise have.”
“New Orleans full of white slaves. Lots of other places, too. What kind of gumption got into you?”
“The picnic, Ginny. The picnic last week. Watching Aimee with the children, seeing how like them she is.”
“All God’s childrens like that, Miss Emily. Ain’t you seen that for yourself? You and me, playing together little.”
“Oh, Ginny, of course. That isn’t what I meant. I meant how she looks.” She picked up the cup, set it back down. “Except for her hair, she could be one of my children.”
“But she ain’t one of your children. She’s Jessie’s child. Jessie losing this baby, what might be last. Conklin’s harm ain’t over, by far. And you thinking about taking another child from her. And all this time, I thought I knew you.”
“Oh, Ginny, it’s not to take her away. Of course not. It’s to give her a life. Don’t you see that?”
“What I see is—well, you asked me and I’m gone say it. What I see is privilege. White slaving privilege. You thinking you can do what you please with somebody else’s child. That’s a slaving mind, Miss Emily.”
Emily stared into Ginny’s eyes, the words and the truth penetrating. She did not look away when she nodded. There was a long silence before Ginny spoke again.
“Well, you could ask, Miss Emily. Ain’t no harm asking.”
* * *
Jessie and Nathan entered by the back door. Ginny brought them into the parlor and motioned for them to sit down. The two looked at one another and continued to stand. Ginny repeated the invitation to sit. As they settled uneasily on the edge of the fine chairs, Ginny served them tea from the sliver service. No one looked in Emily’s direction.
“I done told Jessie and Nathan your thoughts, Miss Emily. So no need to explain that part. You all just got to talk to one another.” Ginny sat down and sipped her tea.
For long minutes the only sounds were the clink of cups and saucers, and the tinkling of spoons. At last, Nathan cleared his throat.
“I don’t much know what to say, Miss Emily.”
“No, Nathan, neither do I,” said Emily. She waited. “Perhaps I should never have—however, I did. And now we must deal with this in the open.”
“Yes’m.”
Emily regarded Jessie, who had not raised her eyes from her cup. “I have no intention of taking your child from you, Jessie. Can you look up at me and believe that?”
Jessie looked up and, after a moment, nodded.
“I don’t know what I thought, Jessie. It’s all so complicated and strange. But I watched her with the children picnicking last week and I just felt how wrong it is that Aimee shouldn’t have every opportunity my children have.”
“Ain’t that something every child should have?” Ginny said.
“Yes.” Emily looked from one to the other. “Yes, it is. But you and I know we can’t, I can’t, change the world. That’s why we are at war. I can only do the things that come to me to do, however small they may be.”
“Changing our girl’s life ain’t nothing small, Miss Emily.” Nathan’s words struck hard. Emily nodded her head.
“They’s too many things don’t nobody know, Miss Emily. Not till too long after to make it right again. Every choice, we take a road we don’t know. That girl love her mama like she love the air she breathe. She love me, too.” Nathan saw that Emily heard him. “And ain’t no assurance she ever be accepted among white folk. Especially not ’round here. Might be a lot worse life than the one she got already.” Nathan rubbed his knee, then folded his hand over the stump of his arm. “Ain’t no assurance she be accepted much among black folk, either. Maybe she won’t have no place on earth where she belong.”
Emily rose and walked to the back of the divan.
“All right,” she said, “what about this? What if she comes to the house during the day? Jessie, you will be here with her. You are already in the house and she simply joins you. She studies with my children. She spends her days with us instead of at Auntie Mag’s. She eats her primary meals here and learns her table etiquette. She will have all the advantages of the same training as my own children.”
“But she gone live with us?” These were Jessie’s first words.
“As long as she reasonably would in any case.”
“Mayhap she get herself refined, she won’t want to be with us.” Nathan looked down at Jessie and she at him.
“All right,” Jessie said. “Us gone ponder this and then we talk some more. May not be right soon, Miss Emily.”
* * *
Three weeks passed before Jessie searched Emily out in her father’s library. She stood inside the door, her eyes roving the shelves of books. She rested her gaze at Emily’s questioning face, nodded, and left without a word.
Aimee took her place in the children’s schoolroom and at the table with Emily’s children. Jessie’s presence was constant, and often Aimee, tired of studying, ran to play in her mother’s shadow. No one coerced her one direction or another. The transition was almost unnoticeable, so easily did her time with the other children extend. In the evenings, she walked home with her mother, chattering about whatever had interested her most during the day. At the cabin, she regaled a tired Nathan with a running flow of fascinating new information and, in spite of fatigue, he absorbed it like a sponge.
* * *
Under her spade, the earthworm wriggled up through the disturbed surface and over a clod of dirt. Emily wiped her forehead and stood back. The worm was just slipping back into the sod when she bent to pick it up. She dropped her gloves on the ground, careful not to lose the worm. Its gentle twisting motion tickled her palm. For a moment she was a child again, her hand thrust into a small, rough bag full of worms, searching among the squirming bodies to capture one. She could hear her father’s laughter and Benjamin’s, could almost smell the scent of pipe tobacco as her father bent to examine the prize she held up to him. “Benjamin’s taking me fishing,” she had said. And Benjamin had.
Emily had been too squeamish to put her worm on the hook. She couldn’t bear to hurt it, and Benjamin had to bait her line for her. She remembered looking away as he slipped it on the hook, but she had been elated, dancing and clapping, when a bit later, he pulled a flashing silver fish from the water. The skill of his thick fingers unhooking the fish fascinated her, as did the contrast of its metallic skin to the warm brown of his. She remembered with chagrin how she had asked in childish innocence if his fingers tasted like chocolate when he licked them. Laughing, he had rehooked the fish on a big ring submerged at the water’s edge. Entranced by the fish and the sparkling water as it floundered about in the shallows, Emily had stepped into the creek and squatted beside it. Benjamin had made a big hullabaloo and lifted her dripping and kicking out of the creek. He had left the pole on the bank, grabbed up the fish and the bag of worms in one hand, her by the other, and taken her straight home. She remembered how her father had laughed and then, in relief, Benjamin also.
But after Benjamin had gone and Ginny had helped her into dry clothes and shoes, her father had sat with her in the parlor. She could see his stern face even now, warning her against entering the creek, or any water other than the bath. But as he talked, she also felt the freedom of the water washing over her body, its delightful cold, the tingling jolt of it splashing on her face. Emily had tried to honor her father’s warning, which she interpreted as more dutiful than sincere. The water and the worms drew her like a magnet. She begged to go again, then again, until at last she tagged along with Benjamin whenever he went to fish, even if it meant an escape from the tutor. She learned to dig for the worms, bait her own hook, snag the bite when it came, and pull in her own catch. She learned to remove her shoes and stockings, tuck her skirts into her sash, and regale her father with tales that did not include wading in the shallows. And she learned that Benjamin would not tell a tale that differed from hers.
Now, dropping the worm into her apron pocket, Emily lugged the spade along toward the shed, where Benjamin was at work sharpening a plow blade. When he looked up, she jiggled an earthworm in the air, laughing. “I’d forgotten the fun we had,” she said. “Put down that file and come with me to fetch the children.”
Rosa Claire and Aimee were fascinated. Rosa Claire thrust it right under Aimee’s nose, making her shriek, then giggle. Emily did not scold her.
The little group trooped off toward the creek. At the edge of the woods, Emily stopped and took the spade in spite of Ginny’s protests. She thrust it into the rich earth. With only two jabs, a trove of worms appeared, and other bugs as well. Rosa Claire and Aimee vied with one another as they tallied up the worms they let fall into a coarse bag Benjamin had filled with a scoop of moist dirt. Emily joined the children in bagging the worms and relinquished the spade to him. When the supply was adequate, they trooped down to the waterside for the children’s first fishing adventure.
They returned with five fish for supper, one for each of them, four caught by Benjamin and one by Ginny, but alternately pulled to shore by each of the children as they waded barefoot in the shallows. Two fish had gotten away, to Rosa Claire’s immense disappointment. Aimee was indifferent, but happy out in the fresh air. Tired, thoroughly soaked, and overwrought with excitement, the children poked at one another and fussed as the group trudged home. The wet hem of Emily’s skirts dragged heavily across the ground. She had not even attempted to resist the temptation of the shallows. I am happy, she thought in surprise. How long since I have been happy?