Come Juneteenth (10 page)

"W
HAT DID
that man do to you?" Mama cried.

But Sis Goose only burst into deeper crying and ran up the stairs to the room we shared together.

"Let me go," I begged Mama. "She'll tell me. Please, let me do it, Mama."

She agreed and I followed Sis Goose upstairs. She was on the edge of her bed, sobbing. I sat down next to her. "When you're ready, you tell me," I said solemnly. "I'll kill him before I let him hurt you."

She stopped sobbing for a minute, then took her hands down from her face and looked at me. "There are different ways to hurt people," she said.

I nodded yes. I told her I knew all about the ways there were to be hurt.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she said then.

"What?"

"Colonel Heffernan did. This afternoon. He told me ... he,"—and she hiccupped—"he told me..."

"What? What did he tell you, Sis?"

"That I and all the slaves on this place should have been free for over two years.
Two years!
That the slaves in the states have been free all that time. He laughed at me.
He said I thought you all were so wonderful, but what kind of family keeps a member in slavery when they don't have to?"

She stood up. She glared down at me. Her nostrils flared. "All of you," she gasped. "Even Gabe." And she wailed out his name and threw herself down on the bed, sobbing even worse now.

I stood up and leaned over her. "Sis, you don't understand."

"What? What's to understand? What could there possibly be to understand? I was a slave, Luli. For two years longer than I had to be. You all could have at least told us! Over at Aunt Sophie's, she had me waiting on the table. She wanted me to clean the chamber pot! What's the matter with you people? What's wrong with you? We weren't supposed to have any secrets from each other. I trusted you!" She wailed it out and cried even more.

I was getting frightened now. Her chest was heaving, her breath coming in short spurts. "Sis," I said, and I sat down and put my arms around her.

She threw them off.

"We never treated you like a slave," I told her. "And Pa was scared that if you knew, others would know, too, and then there would be a slave uprising in Texas. War, Sis! Crops rotting in the fields. Fences down. Fruit trees ruined. We'd be back again to having no wheat for bread. Or corn. Like my Grandpa Holcomb."

Was she even listening to me?

"I trusted you," she blubbered.

"Sis, it's all over. You were treated well. Pa never would let anybody hurt you. How would it have been different if you were free?"

She stared at me. "Don't even say that, Luli. I know you aren't that stupid. I would have done things, for one."

"What?"

"Well, maybe I would have taken a trip with my pa on his steamboat. Mayhap I'd have gone to Europe with Aunt Sophie, as a free person. Who knows? But it would have been
my
choice. Mine."

"And Gabe...?" I asked.

"Gabe. Oh God!" And she covered her face with her hands again. "For certain I wouldn't be carrying his child. I would have wed him properlike. For certain."

Now I felt the breath go out of me. "You're carrying his child?"

"Yes." And she gave a little laugh. "There's one for you. A secret I kept from you. How does it feel? And from him. He doesn't know. I'm only three months. And don't you dare tell anybody."

I felt something break inside me. So, it was all over then between us. I felt betrayed. But if I felt that way, how did she feel?

She gave a little laugh. "That night we spent in this very house—" and her voice broke off. "You see what I became because I thought less of myself? A white man's wench. Like my mama."

"Stop it, Sis Goose."

"My daddy was right," she told me. "In the end, that's what I am. Just a goose in a courthouse full of foxes."

There was no more to say. What could I say? Little remained between us.

"At least," she said, "the Yankee colonel up at the big house was honest with me. That's more than Gabe could be."

Then she had a thought. "You must make me a promise now, Luli."

More secrets? I shuddered. "What?"

"It can make up for your not telling me I should have been free. You can promise me that, no matter what, you won't tell anyone I'm carrying Gabe's child.
No matter what happens.
Most especially you won't tell Gabe."

A heavy promise. I sighed, wondering what I was agreeing to. But if I could make things up to her for this whole stupid family—

"Yes," I said. "I promise."

S
IS
G
OOSE
was full of secrets, I was beginning to learn. She carried them as if in a large bag on her back, and if you asked the right question, you could hear a pop. She wouldn't answer, but no doubt her burden got lighter.

This very night she came downstairs with some of her belongings tied in an old tablecloth.

"Where are you going?" Mama's voice cracked, because she already knew, because she likely already knew her beloved Sis Goose was moving out.

At first Sis Goose just shrugged.

"You owe Mama an answer," I said, trying to sound stern like Gabe. Sound like him? Gabe would have lifted her from her feet and carried her, wailing, upstairs.

She near whispered it. "The colonel wants me to wait on him at night, bring his drinks late while he plays cards," she said.

"We know that already," Mama said. "Just like we know he's rough and coarse. What we don't know is why you need a tablecloth full of belongings to do it."

"I know he's rough and coarse," Sis Goose returned, "but he and his men stand for freedom. I waited years to be free. And none of you told me about the slaves in the states these past two years. Not even Gabe. So Heffernan can be all the rough and coarse he wants. I'm going to wait on him, and I'm going to move to the quarters at night, where I belong."

Mama said nothing for a moment. Then she blurted out something in a strange language, a terrible language.

It sounded violent and angry. But I didn't know what it was. I never even knew my mother knew another language. Everybody in this family, it seemed, had secrets.

Then Mama went upstairs to bed.

It was my job to lock the house up every night and so I did, leaving only the back door open for when I returned. Then I took myself across the distance that separated us from our old home.

The first thing I noticed was the damage done to Mama's small front orchard. All the Bermuda grass underfoot was scuffed and marked with horses' hooves and boots.

The trees, the orange and the quince and pomegranate, the peach and plum, were stripped bare of fruit. Along the walk that led to the front steps, the pink crape myrtle and azaleas, the roses and yellow jasmine were stomped down and trampled upon.

I went up the steps and knocked on the front door of
my own house. From the front gallery I could see blazing chandeliers and hear men's laughter inside.

A private answered the door. "The butter and egg lady is here," he called out in jest.

"Who?" asked an aide, coming into the hallway.

"That bratty little kid who's been giving you all the trouble."

"Oh. Let her in."

I adjusted my eyes, going into the bright hallway. The light shone harshly on scuffed floors and ruined carpet on the stairway.

"Who is it?" A voice came from the front parlor.

"That bratty little kid who's been causing all the trouble," I told him.

"Well, don't come in here and cause any today, miss," the private said, "his honor ain't in the mood." He ushered me into the front parlor where I saw Heffernan lounging in Mama's good horsehair couch with his feet up on the Chippendale coffee table. Marks from wet glasses marred the wood. In the background the draperies on the windows hung in disarray, the secretary doors were open and coats carelessly hung on them.

The remains of supper lay on the coffee table, too, with flies buzzing around. All over the place were empty whiskey and rum glasses.

"Ho," Heffernan greeted me. "So it is. The white daughter, you mean. Come on in. What are you selling?"

"I'd like to speak to you alone," I said with all the dignity I could muster.

"Sounds serious." He pushed some newspapers from a nearby chair onto the floor. "Here, sit. You Southerners are all so damned serious."

If I had my gun,
I told myself,
I'd shoot him.

But that wasn't the way.
I told myself that, too. Leastways not now, not yet. "I prefer to stand," I said.

"Sit! That's an order!" He shouted it out. Oh, he was used to giving orders all right, but if he were any good at what he did he wouldn't have to shout it.

I sat. "I have a complaint," I said.

"Against who? One of my men been making eyes at you?"

"Against you," I said bravely.

That piqued his interest. "Go on."

"You didn't have to tell Rose she could have been free two years already. Did you?"

"Who's Rose?" He looked at his aide, a Captain Cochran, sitting nearby. "You know any Rose? Why haven't I been told about her?"

Cochran gave a small smile. "Sis Goose," he said.

"Oh. The mulatto wench. And just why does that upset you?" he asked me. "If I had my way I'd shout it from the front gallery to every negro on this place. 'You could have been free over two years and those termites over at the log house didn't tell you.
Over two years. Now what are you all gonna do about it?'
Know what they'd do? Kill
the lot of you in your beds at night. And it's what you rightly deserve, you hypocritical bunch of pious sewer rats."

"We didn't do anything every other planter in Texas, every slave owner in Texas, didn't do," I said. "What could we do? Let the crops rot in the fields?"

He sat forward. "Did it ever occur to those pea brains of yours to pick up a hoe and work in the fields yourselves?"

"My grandpa and pa and grandmother did that. They carved this place out of the earth itself!" I was getting heated. I wanted to cry. But I mustn't. In the name of all my ancestors, I mustn't.

He leaned forward on the couch, reached out, and took up my hand. "Look at this little paw," he said. "You've never done more than make candied violets, I'll wager."

I pulled it away. "I brush and care for my own horse. I can load a gun, clean it, and shoot it better than you can."

He roared with laughter. "We must have a shooting contest one of these days."

"I'm ready whenever you are."

"They say, sir, that her brothers taught her to shoot," Cochran put in.

He scowled. "Brothers, eh?" He becalmed himself.

"Yes. And they should be coming home soon," I told him quietly. "And when they do they'll shoot you."

More laughter. Then he went solemn on me. "Let me tell you, little girl. The war is over. Anybody shoots me
now, it's murder. Three million men on our side alone died to free the likes of your Old Pepper Apron and Sis Rose."

"Sis Goose," Cochran reminded him.

"Sis Rose, Sis Goose, Sis Gander. Whatever you call her. You couldn't even give her the honesty of calling her by her own name."

"Her father named her that," I told him.

He reached onto the table for a cigar and Cochran lighted it for him. He leaned back, inhaled it, and blew out a puff of smoke. "Damn good cigars your old man has got around here. Damn good whiskey and rum and everything. You people live high on the hog and expect everybody else to do your dirty work. Well, the war's over, and we won. Time to do your own dirty work. And time I enlightened that little Sis Goose to what rotters her people are. She thought you were all so wonderful. Doesn't anymore though, does she? Moved out on you."

"She's still family," I told him.

He picked up one of Mama's good dinnerware saucers and flicked his cigar ashes into it. "I wanted her to live in this house. In her old room. She wouldn't. Said it wouldn't look right." He laughed and shook his head sadly. Then he half raised his eyes to look at me. "Family, hey? Tell me, which one of your brothers got her pregnant?"

I went white. I felt myself go weak and clutched the side of the chair. And I said nothing.

"Sir." Cochran took a step forward.

"Shut up, Cochran. Let me handle this. Well?" he put it to me again. "You got the answer to that? I've heard all about your Southern men taking midnight walks to the quarters. Whichever one it was didn't even have to go to the quarters now, did he? Had what he wanted right in the house."

"It isn't like that," I started to say.

"Oh? What's it like then? Let me tell you, little girl, in my travels in the South I thought I'd seen it all, but this—" and he waved a hand, as if there were no words to describe what he wanted to say. "This little Sis Goose girl has been treated so badly I couldn't bear the way she adored all of you and thought she was family. Would family keep her in slave labor for over two years when all her brothers and sisters back in the states were free? I had to tell her." He crushed out his cigar and stood up. "Now get the hell out of here before I really get mad. Cochran, get me some rum. I've got a bad taste in my mouth."

The interview was over. I got to my feet shakily and made my way from the room. "You wanna know what General Tecumseh Sherman of our army said?" he asked.

I stopped but did not bother turning.

"Said he wanted to bring every Southern woman to the washtubs." He shook his head. "Damn. I wish I'd said it."

E
VERY DAY
Pa asked for Sis Goose.

I had noticed that since the Yankees came he seemed more frail and kept even more to himself than usual.

He never came out of his study now and we had plenty of blue-sky days. He took the arrival of the Yankees as a personal affront aimed just at him. It became as if he himself had been beaten. Many times I caught him looking out the window of the room he now used as a study, which was in front of the log house.

He would be staring up at his old house on the slight rise a distance from us. If he saw that I caught him at this, he'd turn and shake his head and cuss softly under his breath, and tell me to sit down and keep him informed as to what was going on around the place.