The Lost Quilter (12 page)

“The new mistress?” echoed Joanna. Marse Chester’s mother had lived in Virginia forever and had never been the mistress of Oak Grove. Maybe the plantation had come down through the wife’s family, not Marse Chester’s. “You mean Mrs. Chester’s mother?”

“No. None of us ever seen her,” said Tavia. “Marse Chester’s first wife died of consumption two winters ago. She was a kindly woman—never beat a slave, always saw that we had enough to eat, tend us when we sick. She gone only six months when Marse Chester marry his children’s teacher. She come here from a city up north.”

Auntie Bess shook her head. “Lived all her life in a free state, but she took to slave owning as quick as if she born to it.”

“And here we been thinking we got ourselves a new abolitionist mistress,” said Pearl.

“Hush, Pearl,” admonished Tavia, glancing at the door. “What if Aaron walk by and hear you?”

Pearl shrugged as if unafraid, but she sat down on the edge of the largest bed and clasped her hands tightly in her lap.

“The new mistress only four years older than Marse Chester’s eldest girl, and Miss Evangeline hate her,” said Auntie Bess. “She’d bite her tongue off before she’d call the new mistress Mama. Don’t get caught between them two.”

“Keep quiet and do as you told and you be all right,” said Tavia, passing Joanna a small, flat sweetgrass basket holding a slab of hoecake and a piece of dried fish.

Joanna thanked them for the warning and devoured every bite of her meal, hoping that the next drawing day wasn’t far off. When the mistress assigned Joanna to Leah’s cabin, she hadn’t given the household extra rations. It was little wonder that Leah had taken the first opportunity to send her away so that feeding her would be someone else’s problem. Joanna hated to think of Tavia and the others spreading their scarce rations even thinner on her account.

The women’s warning lingered in her thoughts as she picked the last crumbs from the bottom of the basket. She would never forget how, as a child, she had sought refuge in Ruth’s kitchen when the tension between the two Mrs. Chesters from Virginia escalated, and how the younger mistress had disliked her on sight simply because she was her mother-in-law’s purchase. If she did something to please one mistress, she earned the enmity of the other, but if she did nothing, she angered both and paid a double price.

Joanna never understood why some white ladies couldn’t get along with one another. If they had their choice of companions, maybe they could afford to bicker and squabble with the women
of their households, but plantations were so far apart that most white ladies rarely saw any others except members of their own family. Back in Virginia, the younger Mrs. Chester had spoken well of her mother-in-law only after her death. If white women were torn from their mothers and sisters in childhood, or lived with the daily threat of losing daughters to the Georgia traders, maybe then they’d learn to cherish their women kin while they remained among the living.

In the darkness, Tavia sorted out the sleeping arrangements, assigning two to a bed—herself and her son Paul in one, Auntie Bess and the youngest daughter in another, Pearl and Joanna in the largest. Joanna had not slept off the ground since Pennsylvania, and as Pearl offered her one of the rough blankets, she asked how they had come to have three beds. “My uncle Titus made them,” Pearl told her, her voice growing faint as fatigue overcame her. “My mama’s younger brother.”

Joanna drifted off to sleep, heart pricked by envy. She thought she could have borne a thousand seasons picking cotton if she could have lived with her mother, if she could have known her uncles. That, she realized, was how the Chesters of Oak Grove kept their colored folk from running away. The older Marse Chester knew what his brother never learned, perhaps because his own family life was so miserable. It was difficult to run away, but harder still to leave beloved relations behind, especially knowing they would bear the runaway’s punishment. How could a husband abandon a wife to beatings and starvation, a mother her child?

Unless the whole family ran off at once, they must all stay put. It was a trap, an impossible trap, one she could escape only if she never allowed herself to care about anyone at Oak Grove.

But she knew it was already too late for her to turn her heart
to stone. The kindness of the women who had taken her in, who had made room for her in their crowded cabin, had seen to that.

It was still dark in the cabin when Pearl shook her awake the next morning to gather firewood and fetch water. Outside, the sun was low in the sky, the forest of live oaks a dark, moss-draped silhouette in the east along the river. Other figures moved in the shadowed mists—shawl-wrapped women, slender girls, half-naked children—hunger urging them on. Joanna collected dry, dead branches while Pearl dipped a tightly woven sweetgrass basket into the swift-moving stream. They worked in silence, slowly waking up to the day—another long day picking cotton in the hot sun for Pearl, a day full of strange newness and unknowns for herself.

Back at the cabin, Tavia quickly packed two sweetgrass baskets with corncakes and salt pork. Covering each with a tight-fitting lid, she distributed the last of the corncakes between Pearl, Joanna, and herself. “You’ll get your noon meal at the big house,” she told Joanna between bites, handing one basket to Pearl and tucking the other beneath her arm. “Can you help Auntie Bess lay a fire so she can make the children their mush? Mistress won’t be up yet, so you got time. Me and Pearl got to get to the fields before Aaron do.”

She didn’t need to explain why. Joanna agreed, glad for something to do to thank them for their kindness. Pearl touched her arm in passing as she and her mother hurried out the door. “We’ll eat better tonight. Uncle Titus going hunting.”

“Hunting?” Joanna asked Auntie Bess after the other two women were gone. The younger Marse Chester had forbidden his slaves to hunt. “With what? Sticks and stones?”

Auntie Bess shrugged, searching through a pile of sacks in the corner for the cornmeal. “Some of the men use sticks and stones, if that all they got. Titus, he borrow the marse’s old hunting rifle. Sometime he take possum or squirrel, sometime he get a deer. But today I think it’ll be rabbit. He say he set some snares yesterday.”

Joanna stared at her in disbelief. “Marse Chester give his slaves guns?”

“Not any slave. Just Titus. And Aaron, and one or two others.” Auntie Bess cackled through a toothless grin. “I know what you thinking. Why not just shoot Marse Chester? Well, what Titus gonna do then? Where he go? What happen to Tavia and her children after he run off? Girl, you gonna make that fire so I can feed these children or not?”

Quickly Joanna laid the dry sticks in the fireplace, but before she could light the tinder, Auntie Bess waved her off and urged her to hurry on up to the big house. “Mind yourself,” she cautioned as Joanna hurried out the door. “Tell Sophie you Tavia’s friend and she look after you.”

Munching the dry corncake, Joanna hurried up to the big house, her nervousness tempered by the comforting thought that Sophie, whoever she was, might help her find her way in the unfamiliar household as a kindness to Tavia.

When Joanna reached the house, she found the stout cook outside at the pump, panting heavily as she worked the handle with one thick arm and held a large pot beneath the spout with the other. “You there,” she said, spotting Joanna. “Come help me.”

Joanna quickly complied, holding the pot beneath the cool, gushing water while the cook threw her weight against the stubborn, creaking pump handle. “Would it kill Marse Chester to let me oil this thing?” she grumbled, pausing to catch her breath and wipe her brow with the back of her hand. Then she beck
oned impatiently to Joanna. “Don’t just stand there, girl. Bring it to the kitchen.”

“I’m Joanna,” she said, following the cook inside.

“I know.” The cook gestured to the cookstove. “Leave it there.”

“Do you know where I can find Sophie?” asked Joanna, hefting the heavy pot onto the stove and shaking water droplets from her apron.

“She usually in the kitchen.” Then the cook sighed and added grudgingly, “All right. I’m Sophie.”

“Oh.” Joanna watched hungrily as Sophie brought out a jar of sourdough starter and a sack of flour. “I’m living with Tavia now, and since they didn’t get any rations for me, I thought maybe—”

“You living with Tavia?” Sophie interrupted. “Augustus say Mistress put you with Leah.”

“Leah…didn’t have enough room.”

Sophie harrumphed. “Oh, but Tavia, she got lots of room.” Shaking her head, she reached into a cupboard for a mixing bowl. “Leah already took your ration. You want it, you got to get it from her.”

“When did Leah come for my ration?”

“This morning before sunup.”

“And you just let her take it?”

Sophie shot Joanna a warning look. “She your head of household, as far as anyone tell me.”

“How am I supposed to get it back?” Joanna asked. “She’s not likely to give it to me if I ask nicely. What am I supposed to do? Steal it from her cabin while she in the fields?”

“Not unless you a lot stronger than you look,” retorted Sophie. “Your ration gone, girl, but since you Tavia’s friend, I’ll see what I can find for you. No sense in them children going hungry on your account.”

Joanna knew it was the most she could hope for. “Thank you.”

“You best get on. Mistress’ll want you ready for work before breakfast even if she don’t give you nothing to do. Wait out back for the housekeeper.”

Joanna nodded and hurried off to the back door of the big house. The housekeeper, neatly attired in a calico dress, starched white apron, and white cap, opened the door as quickly as if she had been watching through the window for her. She led Joanna to a parlor and admonished her to stand and wait for the mistress.

Alone, Joanna waited, rocking from her heels to her toes when her feet grew tired. A clock chimed on the mantelpiece; from another room came the clinking of china as someone set a table. Overhead, floorboards creaked, followed by the sound of voices and footsteps on the stairs. Joanna stood alone in the parlor while the Chesters ate their breakfast and was standing yet when a young woman with clear blue eyes and long blond curls piled on top of her head swept into the parlor.

“You must be the new seamstress,” she said, then raised a hand to her throat as her gaze lit upon Joanna’s scarred cheek. “Good heavens. What happened to your face?”

“Burn scar, miss.”

“Is it a brand? I’ve heard they sometimes brand runaways.” She waved a hand dismissively to indicate she didn’t require an answer. “No matter. You’ve come just in time. I’m spending most of the spring and summer with my aunt in Charleston to avoid the malaria season, and Daddy’s bought me some delicious fabrics for my wardrobe. No matter what Mrs. Chester says, don’t let her talk you into finishing her dour old dress before starting my new gown. Understood?”

“Yes, miss,” said Joanna, ducking her head. What did the young lady expect her to do if the mistress wanted her dress completed right away? Should she sew the dress with one hand and the gown with the other?

The young woman’s eyebrows arched. “You agreed so quickly that you must not be aware of the risks involved.” She lowered her voice and drew closer. “Don’t let my stepmother know that you’ve set her dress aside in favor of mine. Her first two husbands died under mysterious circumstances.”

“I won’t, miss,” Joanna replied shakily. Mrs. Chester didn’t look old enough to have already gone through two husbands, but she would heed the young woman’s warning—and finish her stepmother’s dress first. Why risk upsetting a murderess?

“Good.” The young woman, who appeared to be sixteen or seventeen, looked her over speculatively. “How long do you intend to stand there idle—what was your name?”

“Joanna, miss. Until the mistress come, miss.”

“That will do, Evangeline,” said Mrs. Chester, appearing in the doorway. “You have reading to attend to.”

Evangeline pursed her lips, inclined her head gracefully to her stepmother, and glided from the room with a soft rustling of rose silk. Mrs. Chester sighed quietly and turned her attention to Joanna. In sharp contrast to her stepdaughter, she wore a dress of somber brown, her hair parted in the middle and pulled back into a smooth knot at the nape of her neck. Her round spectacles caught the light as she led Joanna to a small closet off the kitchen where a sewing basket and pile of mending as high as her knee awaited.

“Attend to your master’s clothes before the children’s. When you’ve completed the mending, I want you to finish my dress.” The mistress gestured for Joanna, who stood a head taller, to take
a bundle of blue-and-brown plaid wool down from an upper shelf. Joanna unfolded it to find pieces cut for a dress—a skirt basted to a bodice, two sleeves with white cuffs pinned in place, a collar creased from folding. Joanna quickly saw that whoever had begun the dress fashioned garments much differently than she did. Although the dress was nearly half-finished, it would take Joanna at least as much time to redo poorly sewn seams and properly align the bodice than if she had started from scratch.

She hid her dismay from the mistress, who continued, “You may work in here if you like, or outside in the yard where the light is better. If my stepdaughter badgers you about her new gown, you have my permission to remind her that if she does not finish her Greek translations to my satisfaction, there will be no visit to her aunt in Charleston, and no need for a new gown. Her father may indulge her vanity, but not I. Her constitution is no more delicate than her younger brothers’, or my own. I daresay that if we can brave the risk of yellow fever and malaria, so can she.”

“Yes, ma’am,” said Joanna, though she wouldn’t dare say any such thing to Miss Evangeline. Just as she had feared, she had found herself exactly where everyone had warned her not to tread—caught between the demands of two mistresses. The Bible said a man could not serve two masters, but Joanna thought serving two masters would be easy compared to serving two jealous mistresses.

She sewed all morning beneath the shade of a live oak not far from the big house, mending torn trousers and popped seams. She guessed the ages of the three younger children from the size of their clothes—two boys and a girl, of whom the youngest was about four. As she sewed a button on a young boy’s Sunday suit, she imagined her own son wearing it proudly as he rode in the
carriage Hans Bergstrom had arranged to carry them to Canada, and then she gasped aloud as shock struck her with the force of cold water.