1877
Through Christmas and New Year, the men devoted every daylight hour to stripping lumber from the big house, turning it into a cold, hollowed-out skeleton. The final demolition took on an intensity––men crawled like termites over the scaffolding, dismantled every trace of the old mansion––the last vestige of their bondage.
When the foundation lay bare, only Samantha’s toilette and the storage closet at the back of Mama Zoé’s quarters survived, a looming hulk filled with the Waters family ledgers. Al hauled them across the road and stacked them in shoulder-high towers in Toby’s room. “If I don’t go to jail, I’ll read these dusty tomes. Find out if I was one of my father’s assets.” His fingers traced the faded green bindings. Then he turned away. “I almost forgot. While I loaded the last of the ledgers, Mama Zoé invited us to be the first visitors in her new house.”
Amelia wrapped her arm around her husband’s waist. “Let’s go now. I’ll take some of the pound cake I made for supper.”
Mama Zoé’s little white house sat back from the road very near the new school. Her only request had been, “make it so I see every ray of sunshine and feel every breath of air.”
Amelia had offered to help sew curtains, but Mama Zoé insisted, “I don’t want anything blocking my view.”
Mama Zoé opened the door before they stepped onto her front porch. “I saw you coming. I look out the windows all the time.” She led them through her parlor to the kitchen. “Look at the table. It’s so light in here that you can see the colors in the oilcloth.”
She stopped at her bedroom door. “Ella still sleeps with me. She uses her room for sewing. Most days, one of the neighbor women come to use the machine. At night, it’s Ella’s.”
Amelia smiled at the neat stack of patterns, rows of colored thread, and the lamp next to the sewing machine. “I’ve seen the light in this window when Al comes in from night patrol.”
“After Ella finishes her studies, she sews until all hours. The child’s going to make a fine seamstress.” Mama Zoé’s voice sounded thick with emotion.
When the time came for the grand jury in early March, rain fell steadily all Saturday and through the night. Al returned from patrol near dawn and crawled into bed shivering. “If it starts icing up, we may have trouble getting to town. We better go before the weather gets worse.”
She cupped his haggard face in her palms. How much longer could he sleep half a night and toss with worry the other half? “I’ll drive, and you sleep.”
When he brought the buggy around to the back porch, he wore a broad-brimmed hat dripping rivulets of rain and a heavy yellow slicker that hung barely above the mud. He pulled another hat and slicker from under his arm. “We keep these in the barn. They fit men as big as Hébert. But you’ll still have to carry your bustle in the trunk.”
Amelia turned away to hide her smile. The fashion-conscious gentleman she had married had no idea that she never intended to wear a bustle and drive a buggy in a rainstorm.
They had not ridden far before Al slumped against her, oblivious to the rain dripping off the hood onto the shoulder of his slicker. She reached for her umbrella and opened it to shield the sleeping man.
The carriage lurched through a quagmire of mud and ruts. Ditches bulged with swirling water. She scanned the bushes lining the road, watching the moisture take form, hardening into icicles. Finally, the welcoming sign of smoke curls drifted from chimneys in Camptown.
Wally met them at the door, hustling them out of their slickers and offering hot coffee.
“You’ve got a fat letter from Toby.” Cora pressed the envelope to her lips as though she were offering a surprise.
Al’s hands, still red from the cold, tore open the envelope. He settled, bundled in his heavy coat, in a chair behind the counter. “He says the snow’s so high it’s hard to get to the hospitals. He’s working at Mass General as a house-pupil of Dr. Henry Jacob Bigelow. He says Bigelow’s the finest surgeon at the medical school. All the students watch the great man operate three days a week.” Al read silently, studied the pages, then shook his head. “He’s been talking to Bigelow about my leg. He’s sending a drawing of a Hanger Limb.” Al glanced at the image and handed the paper to Amelia. “A man named Hanger lost a leg in the war. He used barrel staves and metal to build the contraption.”
Amelia held the drawing while Wally and Cora huddled against her, staring at the sketch of an artificial leg that bent at the knee and again at the foot. It looked cold and hard. “Toby won’t be home until July. Gives you plenty of time to think about it.”
Al propped his leg on a coffee barrel. “This weather makes me ready to cut it off. Don’t know how I’ll feel by summer.”
Despite the sleet and dropping temperatures, a steady stream of customers––white and colored––showed no interest in making purchases. Instead, they kept up a steady stream of questions: “Do you expect to get off? “My brother-in-law got indicted even with three colored men on the grand jury.” “They’ve got to be able to read, so they aren’t part of the scum in Camptown.” “If you go to the pen, will you sell the store?” “How’d you manage in the dark to shoot Packerman right between his eyes?” “Me and my brother made sure Hébert got out of town safe.”
Al kept his responses upbeat, but the darkening fatigue under his eyes showed the strain of responding to the curious.
When they closed the store and climbed the stairs to the apartment, Al said, “I didn’t think to come up here earlier and light this stove. Let’s get in bed until it warms up.”
They moved the bed near the stove, away from the windows frosted white with ice, and wrapped together shivering in the cold space beneath the heavy quilts.
Amelia nuzzled Al’s scratchy cheek. “You were so kind to all those nosy people. I wanted to tell them to go away.”
“You kept mopping up their muddy tracks.” Al’s cold fingers stroked her cheek.
“Do you think they’ll indict you?” She felt him tense and immediately wished she’d not said what was nagging at her.
“Who knows? At least Hébert or one of the other Negroes on our place didn’t kill him. Today, I kept thinking of how it would be if I were my father’s black son.”
The next morning, it was too cold for the curious to gather outside the courthouse to wait for Al to return from the grand jury. Instead, people packed Waters Mercantile, buying a few items, drinking pots of coffee, and pacing the wood floor in a steady drumbeat of boot heels and swishing skirts. They stared in silence as Al walked back across the frozen street between McAdoo and Stephen Hackworth. The men entered the store, red-faced from the cold.
McAdoo raised furry black eyebrows at the crowd standing still as statues. “The grand jury has several cases to hear. Probably get a decision by the end of the week.”
“Did they treat you right?” The voice came from the back of the store.
Al grinned. “Couldn’t have been nicer.” He motioned for Amelia to follow them upstairs. The men moved through the crowd, shaking hands and accepting encouragement.
They were partway up the stairs when the front door kicked open. A short man anchored by two whiskered giants stepped inside and stood with feet spread, rifles across their chests. “Al Waters, you murdered my pa. You better hope the grand jury gets you. If they don’t, I will.”
Al turned, looked across the store. “Jarrell Packerman.”
A voice rang out. “Jarrell’s the one what raped the little Parson girl. The sheriff’s got a warrant on him.”
Jarrell had no time to raise his gun before a swarm of men pounced in a bevy of grunts and thuds. “Hold them down.” “Stomp on their hands.” “Don’t let them get their rifles.”
The crowd had grown by the time the sheriff arrived, his hat balanced atop a black wool cap, the collar of his greatcoat almost swallowing his head.
“You’re the fellow I’ve been hoping this killing would suck back home. We got witnesses who want to send you to the pen.”
“I need a lawyer,” Jarrell shouted as the sheriff and his two deputies hustled all three men toward the door.
“You’re staying in jail. I ain’t taking no chances on you running.”
Upstairs, Al motioned McAdoo and Hackworth to chairs at the table. “I hope this doesn’t open a can of worms for Ella. I don’t know who the sheriff has for witnesses. Ezra was working in the store when it happened.”
McAdoo grunted. “From the tone I heard downstairs, some of the former neighbors are eager to say they saw Jarrell at the house.”
“They’re not going to let him get out of this.” Hackworth kept his great coat bunched up as though he were in the midst of a blizzard.
Al nodded, kept running his hand through his hair, kinked into tight curls by the wet weather. “I’d like to see Jarrell go to trial, but not at the expense of Ella’s mental state. She’s finally broken out of that chrysalis.”
McAdoo’s face wrinkled into a frown. “The grand jury won’t get to Packerman for a couple of days. Gives us time to see if Ella’s willing to tell her story.”
Amelia tried to steady her hand while she poured coffee “Is there any hope a grand jury will indict a white man for what he did to a colored child?” She blinked hard to stop tears that refused to be quiet. “I can’t imagine putting that child through all this if there’s no hope.”
“I know all three of those Negro grand jurors. They will not be intimidated,” Hackworth said.
“Right. They take their job seriously. I’ve seen them indict their own when they think they’re in the wrong. I believe the whites are equally dutiful.” McAdoo took a sip of his coffee and smiled at Hackworth. “Thanks to this man’s relentless work, we’ve got Carl Schutze. He’s a DA we can trust to be fair.”
Al stared into his cup. “If she were white, an indictment would be a sure thing.”
The sun peeped in and out of the clouds, melting the ice to slush. The little mare acted invigorated by the cold and wanted to trot at a faster pace than McAdoo’s horse. Al kept looking back to make sure they weren’t leaving the lawyer behind.
“I wonder if Ella will come.” Amelia held tight to Al’s arm. “I’ve never heard her utter a word about any of it. I remember how that painting of Charles terrified her.”
When they reached home, Mama Zoé seated them in her parlor on the rose-colored settee and little chairs from Samantha’s bedroom. Al watched her pour coffee, searching her serene expression for any hint of mistrust, for any sign of concern that he had brought a white lawyer from Brenham.
Mama Zoé held her cup on its gold-edged saucer, never lifting it to her lips as she listened to McAdoo.
Al blew out his breath before he realized he’d been holding it. “Do you think she’s strong enough to do it? Or that she’ll be willing?”
“She has soared, risen like a phoenix from the ashes of that house.” Mama Zoé gazed out the windows toward the school. “We’ll have to ask her.” Her eyes, gray as steel, settled on John McAdoo. “We will not push her.”
“Absolutely not.” McAdoo sat very straight, taking tiny sips of his coffee, never indicating that the strength made his mouth pucker.
“She’s coming. I’ll meet her on the porch.” Mama Zoé rose, gliding across the room, a swan over a placid lake.
When Ella stepped through the door, her great black eyes took in each face, cautious as a doe. She bowed slightly when Al introduced McAdoo and eased onto the edge of the settee.
McAdoo explained how the grand jury worked while Ella’s eyes moved between the lawyer and Al.
Finally, she brought her hands to her chest, fingers laced together. “Will they put Jarrell Packerman in jail?”
“We never know how a trial will turn out. The only chance we have of putting him in prison is for you to tell the grand jury and then the trial jury what he did to you.” The lawyer kept his voice low; his great furry brows pinched into a solid black line.
“I want him to go to prison.” Her eyes remained as unwavering as Mama Zoé’s. “When do I have to tell?”
“We’ll leave tomorrow. You’ll testify the next morning.” McAdoo’s cup rattled when he set it on the table.
“I need to tell Ezra, so he won’t worry.” Ella turned toward Amelia. “Can I wear my new dress?”
“That would be perfect.” Amelia held her arms rigid against her sides, commanding herself to stay in control, to keep this child from seeing her tremble.
The next morning, Ella clasped Mama Zoé, buried her face for a minute in the older woman’s breasts and then raised her chin, and the two sets of eyes seemed to weld a bond of strength. Ella—taller than her twin by two inches––clutched her brother’s shoulders. “I’m making sure he goes to the pen.”
The boy nodded, as near tears as Amelia had ever seen. “I’ll be praying.”
Ella didn’t wait for Al’s hand. She pulled her skirt aside and exposed long white drawers stuffed into the top of her boots as she scrambled into the carriage.
They rode for some time with Ella peering over the top of the blanket watching red-tailed hawks soaring and then swooping down for something they spotted on the ground. “My pappy called them chicken hawks even though they don’t eat chickens. He said the ma and pa both feed their babies.”
Al pointed his gloved hand. “If you watch, you’ll see them fly back to their nest in that oak standing all by itself in the middle of that field. They like a perch high above the surrounding area so they can spot threats for their young.”
“Even birds protect their babies.” Ella’s eyes followed the hawk to the tree and then she dipped her face into the blanket. “But not all.”
Speak carefully. Amelia wrapped her arm around Ella’s shoulders. “Sometimes mama birds don’t know how to care for their babies.”
“What makes them not know?”
“Maybe their mama died, and they didn’t have anyone to teach them.”
Ella kept her face buried in the blankets. “Mama Zoé’s teaching me.”
“She’s a good mama.” The cold wind dried Amelia’s tears long before Ella lifted her face out of the blankets.
Cora did not hide her surprise when she met Ella. “I had no idea you were so young.”
“I’m almost thirteen.” Ella lifted her chin, seemed to grow taller.
“Your last dress sold. I have two dollars for you.” Cora rushed to the cash drawer.
Ella stuffed the bills in her carpet bag and carefully withdrew a dress. “Mama Zoé said I should bring this with me. She said to buy springtime cloth and a new pattern.”
“I’ll show you how to put it on the mannequin.” Cora led Ella back to the ladies’ section of the store. “Can you believe what Ella sewed?” Cora called as she followed the proud girl pushing the mannequin across the floor.
Al, Amelia, and two customers clapped while Ella stood smiling, her shoulders rising, sucking in breaths of pleasure. She ran her fingers along the fitted sleeves and sand-colored bodice. The skirt in shades of brown plaids lay in folds cascading from a lowered waist and stopping just before touching the floor. “I left a deep hem to make it longer. And wide seams to make it bigger.”
“Your dresses need to be in the Independence store. The college girls will be good customers,” Al said.
“Mama Zoé says if I keep sewing, I’ll always make my way.” Ella dropped her eyes without saying more.
That night Ella slept pressed hot against Amelia, at times crying out, and then settling down to soothing words. She roused early, buffed her boots and combed her hair back away from her face. She picked at her eggs and biscuits. “Mister McAdoo says he can’t go in with me, but he’ll be right outside. Will you be there?”
“We’ll be right there waiting.” Al pushed his plate aside, downed several cups of coffee.
When they stepped onto the front porch, Amelia felt Ella draw back, her eyes scanning the faces. She and Al clutched the child’s hands anchoring her between them.
Crowds loitered in the early morning sun inside the fence circling the courthouse. Amelia looked directly at the people, and most of the gawkers had the courtesy to look away and not stare at the child.
They squeezed Ella between them as they sat on a long wooden bench. Men who appeared to have nowhere to go walked past, the thump of their boots on the wood floor echoed through the building. Cigar smoke spiraled above their heads, turning the long corridor into a choking haze. Finally, a clerk ushered Ella into the jury room.
“If one of those bastards had said a word to that child, I’d have slugged him,” Al muttered.
“Maybe you better wait until the grand jury finishes your case,” Amelia whispered.
“Sorry. I’m just blowing steam.”
“I know, but I wish you wouldn’t.” She patted his gloved hand.
When the door finally opened, McAdoo leaped to grab Ella’s hand and lingered for a moment looking into the jury room. He turned, smiling. “This young lady did a brilliant job.”
Trembling, Ella fell against Amelia.
Al reached for the child’s hand and thrust his cane forward to clear their way through the crowd descending like vultures from every doorway.
Voices, too far into the crowd to be identified, called out. “White men don’t get respected nowadays.”
“Hey, McAdoo, you going to side with that nigger kid against one of your own?”
“Yeah, the Packermans are good men. We got one kilt and the other accused by a bunch of lowlifes from Camptown. We know what goes on out there.”
Ella stopped like she’d hit a wall––frozen––staring at a huge man. He bent toward her, his black eyes placed low in the sockets, peered from beneath a broad-brimmed hat.
Al extended his cane, and the crowd gave way. “I’m getting her out of here.” He spoke to McAdoo.
McAdoo’s voice rose. “I’m identifying every man who can give me a personal account of what goes on in Camptown. I don’t want any gossip or hearsay. I want to know who frequents the place and wishes to tell the entire town all about it.”
They climbed the outside stairs to the apartment and Ella collapsed on the bed, clutching her coat around her like a shield. Al pulled up a chair, his mind racing with a fury that made it hard to hold his hand steady enough to untie the child’s cap and stroke the sweat-soaked hair away from her face.
“Did that man hurt you?”
She nodded, her face buried in the pillow.
“Do you know who he is?”
“He’s a planter. He jumped out our window when they came to help me.”
Al shoved his chair back. “Amelia will stay with you while I talk to McAdoo.”
“Be careful.” Amelia touched his chest––a plea to calm down.
“I’m being careful to do this right.” His breath smelled like his own puke.
Al hustled down the outside stairs, met McAdoo crossing the street, and the two walked away from downtown and turned south into the country.
“You know that man who scared Ella?”
“He’s Bertram Sikes. Mean as a cur dog. He must have come to see if Ella recognized him. I doubt we’ll see him again.”
“You think they’ll indict Jarrell?” Al tried to keep pace with McAdoo’s long strides.
“I think so. But Ezra will have to testify. Packerman’s lawyer is a slimy bastard who’ll paint Ella as a child whore. Ezra’s got to be ready to smear his mama’s reputation.”
“From the neighbors’ description of events, Sikes is the one they caught raping Ella,” Al said. “Now he knows that Ella can identify him.”
“He’s running scared. Long gone by now.”
“It’ll be a damned shame if Sikes gets away and Packerman gets off.” Al placed his cane between the ruts in the road trying to ease the pain throbbing up his groin. “I’d hate to see those kids get slapped down again.”
It’s too bad Gerard Parsons was the parent who died. Malaila looked like a goddess and was rotten to the core. Gerard was smart as hell––dumb as a post about women.”
“He’s left smart kids,” Al said.
“Yep. If all this crap doesn’t make them lunatics.”