A Light to My Path (12 page)

Kitty leaned over the rail as far as she dared and peered down. The gray water looked angry and bottomless. The boat bobbed up and down, rocking like a runaway wagon. The motion made her stomach feel queasy. She closed her eyes for a moment until the feeling passed.

“I think I like riding in a carriage a lot better,” she said.

Missy made a face. “Don’t be such a baby. A steamboat will get us there much faster.” She strode away from Kitty as if she was tired of her and joined a group of white people standing at the stern.

Kitty decided to watch the scenery drift past along the shore and ignore the churning river. They passed through thick, green woods, buzzing with insects. Then the woods gave way to marshes

and creeks, where alligators drifted like fallen logs and herons and other waterfowl waded near the bank. Every now and then they passed a plantation, the rice and cotton crops newly harvested. As Kitty gradually grew used to the motion of the ship and the churning water, she began to relax, enjoying the chance to rest and do nothing. It was the first rest she’d had after the week-long flurry of packing.

Missy Claire and her family made the trip to their town house in Charleston twice a year—during the hottest summer days to enjoy the city’s sea breezes, and again in the winter when the city’s social season was in full swing. Kitty and the other house slaves had to pack everything the family would need into hatboxes, satchels, steamer trunks, and bureaus with handles that could be easily transported. Massa Goodman even had a clever traveling desk that folded all up with his important papers still inside, so he could carry it back and forth between Charleston and the plantation. Twice a year, Kitty had helped the other servants get ready, but she had always stayed behind at the plantation. This year, Kitty had finally been promoted from mammy’s helper to chambermaid, and she’d been allowed to make the journey for the first time.

“Your mama, Lucindy, was a chambermaid, too,” Mammy Bertha told Kitty. “Missus Goodman only wants pretty gals up in the Big House where white folks might see them. It’s lucky you’re real pretty, like your mama.”

“Yours is a very important job,” Missy’s mother had warned when Kitty’s training had begun, “so no more of your silliness. We’ll see if you can learn to behave properly and wait on a lady.”

That’s what Claire was, now—a lady. She’d had five birthday parties since Kitty had lived with her in the Big House, and at fifteen, Claire was old enough to dress like a grown-up in longsleeved dresses and hoop skirts, old enough to wear her pale brown hair pinned up on her head. Her figure had changed, too—to that of a woman. Kitty envied her, but Missy had pointed to Kitty’s tiny bosom one morning and said, “You’ll have a woman’s figure, too, in a year or two.”

One of Missus Goodman’s maids was teaching Kitty how to dress Missy’s hair. She had to be careful and not pull too hard when combing out the snarls or Missy would slap her. But Kitty loved colorful things, and she loved choosing the perfect hair ribbon or jeweled comb to make Missy look pretty.

She had been brushing Missy’s hair last night before bed when Missus Goodman came into the room to talk to Claire. “This is your first winter season as a young lady,” she’d said, “so it will be a very important one for you. You’re old enough to begin courting a husband, and that’s what you must think about during all the parties and dinners and balls and receptions you’ll attend. These are golden opportunities to be seen by the right sort of people and to make a favorable impression. Your future depends on it.”

Kitty had wanted to ask Missy Claire how she felt about being paraded all around Charleston like an item for sale, and how she felt about getting married and going off to live with a husband. They used to talk and giggle about all sorts of things back when Missy would let Kitty climb on her bed and sleep down by her feet. But Claire behaved very differently now that she was all grown up. It was as if she and Kitty had never laughed and played together at all or pretended that Kitty was a cat. She was Claire’s slave, not her friend. If she dawdled or made a mistake or did something to displease Missy, she would earn a smack and a reprimand, just like any other slave.

Missy Claire had grown too old for dolls and games, too sophisticated to have a slave play with her and entertain her. Kitty dusted and cleaned Missy’s room, emptied her slops, made her bed, mended and brushed and cared for her clothes. Meanwhile, Missy Claire studied lessons with a governess every day, reading and writing and studying history, arithmetic, and French. She was also learning the womanly arts of needlework and watercolors. Kitty loved to gaze at the beautiful strands of wool in Missy’s sewing basket, a rainbow of soft colors that Missy would stitch into pretty designs. But Kitty was never happier than on those days when she hauled Missy’s easel and watercolors outside for her and stood beside her to fan away the bugs while Missy tried to paint the Great Oak Tree or a river scene.

Missy Claire was not a very good artist. She couldn’t seem to judge shapes and sizes and colors the way that Kitty could, and she lacked the patience to practice until she got better. The first time Claire had tossed her paintbrush onto the ground in frustration, Kitty had scooped it right up.

“It ain’t so bad, Missy Claire. All you need to do is add a little more color here … and here… .” She had dabbed paint on to the picture as if it was the most natural thing in the world to clean up Missy’s pictures the way she cleaned up everything else for her. And from that very first time, Kitty had fallen in love with the feel of the paintbrush as it slid across the page, leaving a trail of color.

Missy let Kitty fix all her pictures, after that. And the tutor praised Missy’s work, never guessing that an ignorant slave had painted most of it. Kitty didn’t care. When she found a half-used folio of paper that Claire had thrown into the trash, she felt as though she’d discovered gold. “Can I have this old paper, Missy Claire?” she begged. “Please … please?”

“I don’t care,” she said with a shrug. Then, in a rare moment of kindness, she added, “Here … you may as well have a pencil, too.” Kitty carried the treasures all around with her, sketching late at night when her work was all done. She longed to sketch the scenes she was seeing from the riverboat, but her satchel of belongings had been stowed below with the rest of the luggage. She had to be content to soak it all in, hoping that she could remember and recapture the scenes someday.

A few hours later, dozens of fishing boats and heavier river traffic told Kitty that they were approaching the city. By the time they finally docked in Charleston, her heart pounded so wildly with excitement she was afraid it might burst. She wished she had a hundred eyes so she could look at a hundred things in a hundred directions at once. Everything seemed to move faster in Charleston, as if the days and nights had speeded up. Everything was louder, too, and there was more of everything—more ships, more houses, more people, and certainly more horses and carriages than Kitty had ever seen in her life. She followed Missy off the ship and down the pier, gazing all around, trying to take it all in.

“Stop dawdling,” Claire ordered, “or we’ll leave you behind.”

“Sorry, Missy Claire.” But she couldn’t help gawking. There was so much to see in Charleston.

A carriage arrived to meet them, and Missy Claire and her family climbed onboard. Massa Goodman had hired a wagon to transport their luggage, and Kitty watched as slave porters unloaded all their goods from the ship, hauling the cargo down the pier on their backs. She and the dozen other servants who had come from the plantation rode on the wagon with the luggage, sitting on top of it as they bumped down the lumpy cobblestones. So many carriages and horses jammed the streets that Kitty wondered how they would ever make any progress. She savored her first impressions of Charleston, inhaling the scent of tobacco and horses and a bakery.

The buildings downtown looked enormous to her: mountainous structures of brick and tabby and glass, with church steeples so tall she had to tilt her head way back to see the tops. They passed stately public buildings with pillars and statues and fancy carving, and tiny green parks with palmetto trees and neat flower beds. Best of all, Kitty saw color everywhere she looked—on the ladies’ dresses and flowered hats, on the canvas awnings that shaded the shops, on the brightly lettered signs that hung above the storefronts. She couldn’t read any of the signs, but most of them had pictures painted on them to show what was sold inside.

The traffic gradually thinned as they left the downtown area and drove through residential streets. The houses looked as big as Missy’s plantation house, but instead of being surrounded by fields and trees and grass, the city houses were crowded close together on small patches of land. One row of homes was painted a rainbow of colors with contrasting shutters and trim. Kitty itched to get out her paper and pencil—better still, Missy’s box of watercolors—and try to capture all of these wonderful sights.

The wagon finally reached the Goodmans’ town house and drove around to the courtyard at the rear. The house sat at the very edge of the city, overlooking the water, with broad piazzas that wrapped around the front and side of the house to catch the ocean breezes. The bay across the street looked bigger and wider than any river Kitty had ever seen. She longed to explore the mansion from top to bottom, but there wasn’t time. She had to follow Missy’s luggage upstairs to her bedroom and unpack all Missy’s things so she could get settled into her room. It was late at night before Kitty even saw her own quarters.

The slaves slept dormitory-style in a long, drab, two-story building behind the house. The kitchen and washhouse were downstairs, the slaves’ rooms upstairs. Bessie, her husband, Alfred, and a third slave stayed year-round to take care of the house. The remainder of the slaves—a dozen or more—traveled with the Goodmans from the plantation each time: the butler, cook, footmen, parlor maids, scullery maids, and chambermaids like Kitty.

The room Kitty shared with three other chambermaids had little more than a fireplace, a shuttered window, and two wooden beds. By the end of that long first day, Kitty was so tired from the fresh air, the excitement, and all the hard work, that she climbed in beside her bedmate and fell sound asleep.

Missy Claire spent the first few days that they were in Charleston shopping. She begged her mother to bring Kitty along with them. “She has a good eye for pretty things, Mother,” Missy Claire insisted. “And she always knows which colors go best together.” Kitty gladly followed Claire and Missus Goodman from one store to the next as they bought hats, shoes, jewelry, combs, and ribbons for Missy’s hair, and bolts of colorful fabric for new dresses. Charleston had a store for anything you wanted to buy, and Kitty shopped until her feet ached, savoring every minute of it. She loved choosing beautiful things for Missy, even if she would never wear any of them herself.

One afternoon, Missy Claire and her mother stopped for refreshments at a tearoom. Kitty stayed outside with Alfred, the coachman, riding beside him high on the driver’s seat. As they drove around the block, looking for a place to park the carriage, Kitty heard a strange jangling sound like broken bells. Trudging toward her from a side street was a long line of slaves, all chained together in two long rows. Shackles bound their wrists and feet, and they were forced to shuffle awkwardly, barely able to walk as the short, heavy chains that were fastened to their ankles dragged across the cobblestones. The slaves walked with their heads down, their backs bowed, passing through a gated entrance and into a grim building made of tabby.

“Is that a jail?” she asked Alfred.

“No, it’s the slave mart.” He spoke in a hushed voice, as if they were driving through a cemetery. He suddenly seemed in a big hurry to drive past the building, and he didn’t relax again until they had turned the corner.

“What’s a slave mart?” Kitty asked. She spoke as softly as he had.

“Them slaves is for sale,” he said with a sigh. “White folks are buying and selling them in that building, just like they buy and sell other things.”

Kitty had seen the endless variety of goods in the stores in Charleston, but she had never imagined that there would be a store for slaves, too. All of the slaves she knew had been born on Great Oak Plantation, starting out as little babies, just as she had. But Bertha said that Kitty’s mama had been sold after she’d tried to run away. Kitty tugged on Alfred’s sleeve to get his attention.

“If Massa Goodman was to sell one of us,” she asked, “would we go to a store like that, do you think?”

“I reckon so. Why?”

“He sold my mama when I was a little girl. Think she might still be in there?”

“No, they don’t stay there very long,” he said gruffly. “Slave trader comes along and buys her, he could be taking her anywhere… . That’s just the way it is.”

“Oh.”

Kitty had no choice but to accept this sad truth and give up the notion of ever seeing her mama again. It had seemed to her like such a long, long way to Charleston from the plantation, and she knew from the pictures in some of Missy Claire’s books that the world was an even bigger place than she could ever imagine. No telling where her mama went after she was sold.

For the next few minutes, Alfred was too busy maneuvering through the traffic and searching for a place to park the carriage to talk to Kitty. When he finally found a place within sight of the tearoom, he pulled the carriage to a stop, hitched the horses to the post, then climbed back up on the seat beside her to wait. A chilly breeze blew from the nearby river and Kitty hugged her shawl tightly around her, wishing she had white skin so she could sit inside the carriage, out of the wind—or better still, sit at a table inside the cozy tearoom.

“If you work real hard and do whatever Massa say,” Alfred said softly, “you never have to worry about being sold.”

Kitty was a little surprised to learn that he’d been thinking about the slave mart all this time—but then, so had she.

“I don’t even remember what my mama looked like,” she said.