The Seeker (5 page)

Charlotte stopped in her tracks and knew instinctively the scene before her was something her father would think unfit for her eyes. One part of her wanted to run from the sight, but another part of her couldn’t stop staring as a couple of men prodded a boy in chains up on the block. A black boy surely only a year or two older than Charlotte.

He stared over the heads of the men eyeing him straight at Charlotte. She had expected to see fear on his face or perhaps dismay, but instead there was smoldering anger. Somehow she knew without a word passing between them that he hated her. Not because of anything she’d done, but because she had no chains to keep her from going where she willed. She looked straight at him, hoping he would see how sorry she felt, but he jerked against his chains as his look grew fiercer. Later she decided it must have been the same as hot coals dropping on his heart to think about her walking away in freedom he would never know.

“Keep your eyes down, boy,” the man behind him had shouted as he hit the boy so hard he fell to his knees under the blow.

Charlotte whirled and ran back up the street the way she had come until she found her mother shopping for parasols while Willis sat in the carriage and waited.

She didn’t tell her mother what she’d seen. She didn’t tell anyone, not even Mellie. Especially not Mellie. The raw hatred in the boy’s eyes haunted her sleep for weeks until Aunt Tish took her aside.

“What’s the matter with you, chile? My Mellie says you ain’t sleepin’ hardly none at all. That you toss and turn till the sheets is all a-tumble on your bed. You best be comin’ clean to your Aunt Tish with whatever is tormentin’ you.”

And so she let the words come out to say what she’d seen.

Aunt Tish got too quiet as she sat beside her at the kitchen table. Charlotte couldn’t remember her ever sitting so quietly for so long.

Finally Charlotte said, “I did see it. I’m not lying.”

“I knows you did, chile. You don’t have to do no explainin’ what it looked like to me. I been there. Me and my Mellie both, though she was just a babe with no sense of nothin’ but her mammy’s arms. The Massah bought me off the block so’s I could wet-nurse you.”

Charlotte looked at Aunt Tish. She’d always been part of her life, warm and kind. Full of wisdom and sometimes laughter. There was no laughter now. “Did you hate him?” Charlotte whispered. “The way that boy hated me.”

“I didn’t think it would help anythin’ for me to let hatred build up in my innards. But I had to fight against it when he stopped shoutin’ out bids on Jonah. We’d done jumped the broom before Mellie was born. I thought then right at first maybe he didn’t have the money and as how I ought to be glad enough me and Mellie weren’t goin’ downriver. Little babies die goin’ down the river. That’s what Jonah told me. Not to worry none about him. He could take whatever they threw at him on those cotton plantations.”

Charlotte had no words to say as Aunt Tish looked away at the wall as if she could see beyond it to the south where her Jonah might still be picking cotton. “But then when we got here and I saw the Massah had a mess of slaves, I had to fight powerful against the bitter gall that wanted to poison me. It still rises up to smote me at times.”

Tears pooled in Charlotte’s eyes and dripped down her cheeks. And she felt the boy she’d seen was right to hate her. She choked out the words. “Do you hate me too, Aunt Tish?”

“Now, now, chile. You’s like my own.” Aunt Tish laid her calloused black hands on Charlotte’s cheeks. “You knows my heart could never hate you. And that poor boy you saw wasn’t hatin’ you either. He was hatin’ how life is. And fact is, I can see it in your eyes. You’d a turned him free as you be right now if you coulda done it. That’s what you got to ’member, chile. You’d a set him free if ’n you coulda.”

Charlotte stared at the black woman’s loving face. “But Aunt Tish, I can’t even set you free, can I?”

“No, chile, you can’t. Not now, but maybe someday. And then I knows you’ll do the right thing by me and Mellie.”

Charlotte hadn’t thought about the slave boy for a long time. She had blocked him from her mind, blocked it all from her mind. Things were the way they had to be. The way her mother and father had always told her they were meant to be. Why the memory came sneaking back to unsettle her thoughts on this night, she had no idea.

Perhaps because everything was different, thrown up in the air to land who knew where. Certainly not as she’d ordered or planned. Edwin standing up to her. That artist, a man she didn’t even know, kissing her. Her own wantonness to allow such a happening. Her father lying down beside that woman in her mother’s bed. A woman young enough to perhaps bear him the son he’d always wanted. Mellie not there to unfasten her buttons. Grayson slipping out of her hands and with it the power to do that right thing by Aunt Tish and Mellie the way she had promised in her heart as she sat beside Aunt Tish at the table that day so many years ago.

Now there were those who said the country was going to war because Lincoln seemed poised to do what she had not had courage or strength to ask her father to do already.

5

Charlotte was still staring in the mirror when Mellie slipped into the room to help her out of her dress. “You done had to try, didn’t you, Miss Lottie?” she fussed as she pulled the rest of the buttons loose with quick fingers.

“I don’t like being captive to a dress.”

Charlotte stood up to let Mellie untie the top of her hoops. They fell to the floor with a soft clatter as the silky skirt collapsed against her legs. She pulled her arms out of the sleeves and stepped out of the piles of emerald fabric. Mellie gathered up the dress quickly and spread it out on the bed before it could get too rumpled.

“How about squeezed half in two with a corset?” Mellie said as she pulled loose the ties on Charlotte’s stays. “It ain’t no easy thing bein’ a lady. Same with that Miss Selena. She had her stays pulled so tight it took me five minutes to work the lacings loose enough to get her out of the contraption. It’s a wonder she wasn’t faintin’.”

“I’ve heard she does at times.” Charlotte rubbed her sides and pulled in a deep breath that felt wonderful as she sat back down at the dressing table in her camisole and pantalettes. “I ain’t surprised,” Mellie said as she began pulling the pins out of Charlotte’s hair and brushing it out. “You want me to massage your feet, Miss Lottie?”

Charlotte took the brush from Mellie and began pulling it through her hair herself as she said, “You’re every bit as tired as I am, Mellie. You need to go on to bed and massage your own feet.”

“I didn’t have to dance with ever’ man in the state,” Mellie said, but she didn’t try to take the brush away from Charlotte. Instead she sat down on the bench at the end of Charlotte’s bed, slipped off her shoes, and held her feet out in front of her to wiggle her toes inside her black stockings. “I was watchin’. How many times did that old Mr. Robertson step on your toes?”

“Too many.” Charlotte groaned at the memory. “But he’s always generous whenever Father needs funds for his campaigns.” “Then let that new woman your daddy brung home get her toes stepped on.”

“I don’t want to talk about her tonight, Mellie. Please.” Charlotte put down the brush and began plaiting her red hair in a thick rope.

“Fine with me.” Mellie stood up and pushed Charlotte’s hands aside to finish the job quickly and efficiently. “Then how about we talk about that Mr. Wade what come with them? Now, he is one fine-lookin’ gentleman. And did I hear somebody say he was paintin’ that woman’s portrait?”

“You did, and I don’t know about gentleman.” Charlotte’s cheeks warmed at the memory of her lack of control. How could she have been so wanton?

Mellie leaned back and eyed Charlotte in the mirror. “Sounds like you must have run up on him in your mama’s garden. I did note you looked a mite breathless when you come in from outside.”

“Nobody can breathe with those stays squeezing your ribs in a vice.” Charlotte pointed toward the corset she’d shed moments before.

“Then it didn’t have naught to do with Mr. Edwin chasin’ in like some storm had hit out there and then you runnin’ in all aflush some minutes later followed by that painter feller with a grin like as how he’d just eat the last of Mammy’s dried apple tarts.”

“You see entirely too much,” Charlotte said.

“What else I got to do but look, and you know you like hearin’ about what I see. Like that Janie Preston. You’d think that girl would figure out yellow makes her look like yesterday’s leftover gravy, but it didn’t seem to bother Mr. Matthew. I think he’s about to get caught.” Mellie was always a fountain of information after any party on who was making eyes at who or which men were plotting political alliances. “’Course tonight most all the young ladies were findin’ ways to sashay up to that new man. The ‘no gentleman’ from the garden.”

“He’s famous,” Charlotte stared down at her hands. “Has illustrations in
Harper’s Weekly
all the time.”

“You don’t say? On top of bein’ so fine lookin’.” Mellie tied off Charlotte’s braid and sat back down on the bench. She folded her white apron in pleats for a minute before she said, “Fact of the matter is, you might not be the only one the likes of him is gonna cause trouble for.”

“What do you mean, trouble?” Charlotte turned on the dressing table stool to study Mellie.

“I kept my eyes down, Miss Lottie. I swear I did. I didn’t even take a peek up at him, but he talked to me.” Mellie glanced up at her and then down at the pleats she was folding and unfolding with nervous fingers. “I mean like I was a person. Not a slave. Like you talk to me. Like I matter.”

“What did he say?”

“He asked me if I liked it here. Like I was one of the party ladies instead of a servant there holdin’ a tray of tarts.” Mellie reached up and yanked off the cap she’d been wearing for the party and ran her hand through her black curls. “I didn’t know what to say—he just stood there till I had to say somethin’.”

“And did you tell him you liked it here?” Charlotte kept her eyes on Mellie’s face, but she was seeing the boy on the block again. She held her breath as she waited for Mellie’s answer.

Mellie didn’t look at Charlotte. Instead she stared at the flickering light of the gas lamp beside the door for a moment before she said, “You know I wouldn’t want to be nowhere ’cept with you and Mammy. But . . .” She let her voice trail off as she looked back down at her apron and began folding it in pleats again.

“But what?” Charlotte reached over and touched Mellie’s arm. “You know you don’t have to worry about what you say to me. I want you to talk to me.”

Mellie finally looked straight at Charlotte. Her dark brown eyes looked sad. “I do know that, Miss Lottie. Mammy says that’s part of my problem. How you’ve been more sister than mistress. Mammy says it’s give me ideas I might be better off forgettin’ about. That slave girls ain’t supposed to know how to read like you taught me. And I taught Mammy. She says I’d best never be lettin’ on about none of that. Or lettin’ myself fall in love with no long-legged field hand. She understands how I might want to, bein’ all of twenty now, but she says that would set my feet on a sure path to sorrow.”

Charlotte searched for something to say to make Mellie feel better, but nothing came to mind. There was truth in what Mellie said. They sat there in silence a minute before Mellie went on.

“But not ever knowin’ about lovin’, that’s reason for sorrow too, ain’t it, Miss Lottie?”

Finally Charlotte said, “I don’t know, Mellie.”

Mellie shook her head as her mouth hardened into a thin line. “You speakin’ the truth there, Miss Lottie. That’s sorrow you gonna know too if you settle on Mr. Edwin. There ain’t never gonna be no lovin’ between the two of you. It ain’t in the man.” She stood up and carefully gathered up the dress. “You sure did look pretty tonight,” she said as she hung the dress on a padded hanger in the wardrobe. She laid out Charlotte’s nightgown before she started toward the door. “If you don’t need nothin’ else then.”

“Wait, Mellie.” Charlotte stopped her before she could turn the knob.

Mellie looked back at her, ready to do whatever she asked. Her training from childhood on. Take care of Miss Lottie. Charlotte was relieved to see no hint of the hate she remembered in the slave boy’s eyes, but she could still see the sorrow there like the glint off water down a deep well. “Did you ever think maybe love is glorified too much?”

“I don’t know, Miss Lottie. Could be won’t neither one of us ever find out for sure unless’n we try it for ourselves. But the Good Book that Mammy is always after me to read speaks highly of it.”

“But that’s love for God. Or for your neighbor. Not love between a man and a woman.”

“He made Eve for Adam and told them to have babies. He put the want to for that kind of love in a body’s heart too. And you know if you’ll think on it, there ain’t all that much difference between folks no matter what color their faces is when it comes to thinkin’ on love. That’s how come Mammy still looks to the south and wonders about my daddy even all these years after they carried him off.”

Charlotte shifted uneasily on the dressing table stool. Of course she’d thought about being in love the way Mellie meant. Her imagination had tingled as she read great love stories, but real life didn’t often mirror the fantasy of stories. In real life a person had to be practical. A person had to do what was expected. She looked at Mellie and sighed a little before she said, “I guess I’ve always thought there were more important things than love. The kind of love you’re talking about.”

Mellie’s face softened. “That might be a good thing if you stay fixed on Mr. Edwin. I heard him talkin’ last night. About goin’ to them Shakers what don’t think the Lord intended no Adam and Eve lovin’ the way I’m thinkin’ on it.”

“I know. Everything’s turned upside down tonight. Everything.”

“You’ll figure it out, Miss Lottie. You just need to get some sleep so’s your head can think up the ways. Come mornin’ you’ll find a way to turn things back right.”

Come morning
. Charlotte echoed Mellie’s words in her head as she pulled on her nightgown and crawled under the covers Mellie had turned back for her. And she did always find a way. This wouldn’t be any different. She could turn things back right. Come morning.