Candle in the Darkness (10 page)

I’d always been a bit of a tomboy when I’d played with Grady—before my teachers at the Richmond Female Institute tried to drum into me that proper young ladies didn’t climb trees or wander through the woods or lie on riverbanks fishing. But for those few wonderful weeks at Hilltop, I didn’t care about being a proper young lady. The Institute had taught my mother to be a lady, and I shuddered at the thought of living a life like hers. I loved the outdoors, and I didn’t care one bit if my complexion turned as sunbrowned as Jonathan’s. We explored the woods together, read books to each other beneath the trees, and simply gazed up at the stars and talked. I noticed that he was careful to keep me away from the harsher side of plantation life, such as the slaves laboring in the fields beneath the blazing sun, or life down on Slave Row, but one lazy, rainy day, as we sat in the parlor playing a game of dominoes, I asked him about the man I’d seen with the lash scars on his back.

“Our overseer isn’t a cruel man,” Jonathan replied. “He might yell and crack the whip a few times over everybody’s head, but he would never give forty lashes like that unless it was absolutely necessary. My father would never allow his slaves to be abused.”

“Then why did he whip that man?”

Jonathan hesitated, choosing his words as carefully as his next domino. “We caught him stealing bacon from our smokehouse. He had to be whipped in order to set an example. Otherwise, all the other slaves might start stealing from us, too. It’s your turn,” he added impatiently.

I studied my remaining dominoes, then played one. “I once saw slaves in Richmond wearing leg-irons and chains,” I said. “Daddy told me it was because they’d tried to run away.”

“Our people hardly ever try to run away. They know they have it good here. We take good care of them.”

“But their cabins are so small, and they only have dirt floors, and—”

“The slaves don’t care. They’re used to it. They’re not like us, Carrie.” He was growing annoyed. I didn’t know whether it was from our conversation or because he’d had to draw a half-dozen dominoes from the bone pile before finding one he could use. “Besides,” he added, “our slaves are treated a lot better than the immigrants who work in the factories up north. Ever see where they live? And nobody gives them free clothing and food like we give our slaves.”

I played another piece, then hid my last domino in my hand so he couldn’t see it. “If the slaves are contented and happy, then why does everyone worry so much about them rebelling like Nat what’s-his-name?”

“Some of the slaves are fools and very easily led. If another leader like Nat Turner came along, they might be persuaded to do anything.” Jonathan groaned when he had to draw three more dominoes.

“No one could ever persuade Eli or Tessie to murder me,” I said, playing my last piece.

Jonathan stood, sweeping the dominoes into the box with one hand as if wiping a slate. “I’d trust Josiah with my life, too. But there are more than fifty colored folk down in Slave Row and only half a dozen of us up here. We’d be fools to turn our backs on them.” He was angry. And I knew it wasn’t because I’d won the game. I decided never to talk about such things with him again.

The next morning, with the sun shining brightly again, Jonathan and his father left to attend a meeting at a neighboring plantation. Afterward, they were going to spend a few days drilling with the local militia—Jonathan’s first time.

“Seems like I’ve been waiting all my life to finally join the militia,” he said with a grin. He lifted an imaginary gun to his shoulder, aimed, and fired. “Can’t wait to get my hands on a rifle for once, instead of Pa’s old shotgun.”

Jonathan’s older brother, Will, was left in charge of the plantation for a few days. I hadn’t gotten to know Will at all. He was more serious than his easygoing younger brother and told me flatout that he was much too busy to entertain me in Jonathan’s absence. Bored, I turned to my six-year-old cousin Thomas for companionship.

Thomas’ playmates were the little Negro children who ran around the yard chasing chickens and running errands. They were delighted when I took charge of them, organizing their play, teaching them new games, reading stories to them beneath the pear tree. We quickly became friends, the younger children clinging to my skirts and fighting over whose turn it was to sit on my lap or hold my hand. I tried not to play favorites, but I couldn’t help falling in love with Nellie, the pretty little Negro girl whose job it was to fan my grandmother as she sewed or napped in the sweltering heat of early August.

One day, Nellie’s little brother Caleb somehow escaped from the old granny who usually tended the little ones down on Slave Row, and he followed her up to the plantation house. He couldn’t have been more than two years old, toddling along behind her, naked as the dawn.

“Go on! Get back where you belong,” Nellie scolded as my grandmother called impatiently to her from the house. But Caleb wouldn’t go home, and every time Nellie took a step toward the back door to obey Grandmother, Caleb followed her, wailing loudly. “You can’t come in the house!” she told him. “You ain’t allowed!”

We always left the doors open, and I could see that he was going to follow her right inside. With my grandmother yelling threats, Nellie didn’t have time to take Caleb home.

“Go on inside, Nellie. Hurry,” I told her. “I’ll take him back.” I lifted the howling boy into my arms and headed down to Slave Row, soothing his tears as I went. He was a beautiful child, with smooth, ebony skin and dark, soulful eyes. Long before we reached his shack, I’d won a smile from him—and lost my heart to him.

From a distance, I heard babies crying in one of the cabins. Outside, two toddlers no older than Caleb played in the dirt street, unattended. Then the old Negro granny who had interrupted my uncle’s church service emerged from one of the cabins. She peered beneath it, around it, then up and down the row calling, “Caleb! Caleb, where are you, child?”

“He’s here, Granny. I have him.”

She watched me approach, shaking her head. “That one always getting away from me. And I got my hands full today with all them sick babies.”

She scooped up the two squirming toddlers and disappeared into the cabin. I followed her, carrying Caleb. “Go on, set him down here with these ones,” she said, putting her two charges down on the dirt floor. “Time they eat something.”

She chased a swarm of flies away from a wooden bowl, took a wedge of corn bread out of it, and broke off a chunk for each child. Caleb devoured his, then carefully picked up all the crumbs that had fallen in the dirt and ate those, too. Meanwhile, Granny turned her attention to the squalling babies. There were four of them—all naked, all crying at once—lying crossways on a mattress stuffed with corn shucks. She picked up the first baby, jiggling him in her arms, and ladled a spoonful of water into his open mouth.

“Got my hands full today,” she repeated. “All four of ’em sick with fever.”

I picked up one of the other babies, a little girl, and spooned water into her mouth like Granny was doing. The child’s sweaty body was as warm as a baked potato and covered with a nastylooking rash.

“You should bathe them in cool water,” I told Granny. “It helps bring the fever down.” That was what Tessie always did whenever I had a fever. Granny looked at me helplessly.

“How I gonna do all that and keep these others from running off, same time?”

“I-I’ll help you. If you could fetch some cool water in a basin . . . and some clean cloths . . .”

Caleb clung to my skirt as I worked, wailing for more food. All I could find was the other half of the corn bread, so I divided it among the three children. Too late, I realized it was probably Granny’s lunch.

She and I worked hard, bathing and rocking the babies—while trying to keep the three bigger ones from toddling away. I didn’t realize how much time had passed until I heard the dinner bell ringing up at the plantation house.

“I have to go,” I told Granny. “But I’ll come back to help you this afternoon.”

I hurried up to the house for lunch and found the dining room table spread with food—smoked pork, potatoes roasted in butter, green beans and tomatoes picked fresh from the garden that morning, soft white biscuits spread with melting butter, and sweet potato pie for dessert, still warm from the oven. My cousins Will and Thomas shoveled down their food as if it were their last meal. I couldn’t eat a bite.

“What’s wrong, dear?” Aunt Anne asked. “You’re not getting sick on me, are you?”

“No, ma’am. I’m fine.”

“Then you’d better start eating, or these boys of mine won’t leave you a thing.”

I ate. But I wrapped most of my lunch in my napkin, hidden on my lap, to bring down to Granny and the children. I was ashamed of myself for ever taking all this food for granted. I kept thinking of the slave who had been whipped for stealing bacon, and of the Bible verse my uncle had quoted: “Masters, give unto your servants that which is just and equal . . .” Dry corn bread hardly seemed equal.

“Aunt Anne, some of the little slave babies are sick,” I told her when the meal ended. “May I please take some ice down there to help cool their fevers?”

“Our ice?”

“Yes, please. They don’t have any ice of their own.”

She frowned as if she was very annoyed, but I knew she didn’t mean anything by it. Aunt Anne had a very kind heart. “You don’t need to concern yourself with our slaves, Caroline. I’ll go down after we have a little rest and see what I can do for them.”

“Please, ma’am . . . I don’t want to rest. I want to help the babies. They know me now. And I want to bring them my talcum powder. I think the rash must itch them.”

She studied me for a long moment with the same expression Jonathan often gave me—as if what I’d said was very odd. “All right,” she finally said. “I’ll have one of the darkies carry down some ice for you. I’ll come as soon as I can.”

I bathed the babies, then soothed their itchy skin with talcum powder while Granny and the three older children shared the remains of my lunch. Two of the babies eventually slept, while the other two whimpered softly, exhausted from crying.

“They have measles,” Aunt Anne said when she arrived a while later. “I pray to the Good Lord that you don’t catch it, too, Caroline. I fear you’ve already been exposed.”

For the next week, I hurried down to Slave Row early every morning to help Granny tend the sick babies. Unable to eat, they grew very weak. Caleb and the other two toddlers came down with measles, too, then my sweet little Nellie and another child her age fell sick. I nursed them all day and would have stayed all night if my aunt had allowed it. The children grew sicker and sicker.

“We should pray for them,” I told Granny one day after my aunt had gone back to the house to prepare some more willow bark tea. Granny shook her head.

“We don’t pray for our babies to live. All they’ll ever know is misery and slavery. Much better if Jesus just take them home right now.”

“You don’t mean that! No mother would ever want her babies to die!” I thought of my mother, grieving for her dead babies.

“Well, these here mamas do. They know them babies better off in Jesus’ arms than growing up to be a slave. Better she give them to Jesus right now than to the massa to be sold later on. Then she never have to wonder where her children are at, or if they suffering.”

I lay in bed that night thinking of Granny’s words. I wondered who suffered more—my mother, who knew her babies were in heaven, or Tessie, who didn’t know where her child was or if she’d ever see him again.

The next day I didn’t return to the cabin. I was sick with the measles myself.

Aunt Anne immediately sent for the doctor. Hovering over my bed day and night, she worried herself nearly to death until it became clear that I would recover. When Jonathan returned, she let him sit with me during the day, reading books to me, telling me all about the grand time he’d had with the militia, playing checkers with me when I finally felt well enough. He’d already had the measles.

“How are Caleb and Nellie?” I asked him one day. “And all the babies?” I had tried asking Aunt Anne but she only grew vexed with me for pestering her about them.