The Triumph of Grace (15 page)

Honeysuckle—that was the slave who reminded Grace of a pale Mama Muco—gave Grace instructions about the house and the jobs she would be expected to perform. Grace paid her scarcely half a mind. As soon as she could manage to get in a question, she asked, "Do you happen to know of an African man by the name Cabeto?"

Honeysuckle stared at her. "There be many slaves here," she said.

"You would remember him," Grace said. "Cabeto was in a terrible accident, and he is lame in his left leg. His brother Sunba is with him, and Sunba has a badly injured shoulder.They are both very big and very strong."

"Those sound to be African names," Honeysuckle said."African names gets stripped off slaves here. What be their slave names?"

No longer Cabeto and Sunba? Grace had never considered such a notion.

"They probably be dead, anyway," Honeysuckle said with a shrug. "Forget Africa, Grace. Forget everyone from before."

But Grace would not forget. She could not.

When Grace went to the quarters reserved for the house slaves, before she lay down on her cot and pulled the blanket over herself, she asked the other slaves, "Does anyone know a large, strong slave with a lame left leg? His African name is Cabeto, but I don't know his slave name. He is with his brother, whose African name is Sunba. Sunba has an injured shoulder. Does anyone know them?"

Only Tucker, the man she had first seen in the flower beds with his hoe, bothered to answer her. "Walk out to the fields and you find fifty big, strong slaves, lame and injured. If you wants a man, take you'sef one of them."

Grace did not sleep that night. For the first time since the slavers dragged Cabeto onto the slave ship in chains, she slept close to the same place he slept. She could almost hear his heart beating next to hers . . . Almost feel his strong arms around her . . . Almost feel his breath on her cheek.

Almost.

Y
ou always stands up when white folks is around," Honeysuckle instructed Grace. "No matter if your back be breakin' and your body be achin', you stands up just the same.If you doesn't, you gets the whip."

The jobs assigned to Grace included helping Melly out with the kitchen cleanup, making certain the dust and dirt stayed outside the house, and keeping the furniture and floors clean and polished. One day while Grace was on her knees in the parlor polishing the carved wooden chair legs, she started to giggle. How Mama Muco had hated to dust furniture! Such useless work, she had insisted. Why waste so much time and effort wiping away dust that would just settle back in the very same place tomorrow?

What would Mama think if she could see me now?
Grace wondered.

Grace sat back on her heels and looked around the plantation parlor. A dark red humpbacked sofa pushed against the far wall with two large windows filled up most of the width of the room. A straight-backed chair fitted in on either side of it.Dusting and polishing those two chairs had already taken up much of her time.

The furniture was not nearly so fine as what her father had brought to Africa by ship to furnish the London House. Those furnishings had ornate cushions and pillows, intricate carvings, and inset wood.

What would these white folks think if they saw my library in Africa?
Grace thought.
Rows of bound books. Some with pictures . . .

A wonderfully colorful rug, intricately woven in a pattern of birds and flowers, covered most of the floor. To the side of the sofa was a stunning marble fireplace that encompassed a goodly portion of the adjoining wall. Brass andirons gleamed in the fireplace— or at least they would gleam after she polished them. Over the mantle hung a painting of two yellow-haired children—a young boy in a blue suit with white blouse and stockings, and a girl, somewhat younger, in a white dress with ruffles and lace, and blue ribbons in her hair. The children were seated together on a tiny horse.

All morning, Grace worked in the parlor. She scrubbed, polished, washed, and waxed. She still had not finished when Melly called to her to come to the kitchen and help clean up after luncheon.

Actually, kitchen work quite appealed to Grace. Perhaps she would get something to eat. She'd had very little since she left Sullivan's Island for the auction block. Just some bread and cheese, and when she awoke at dawn, a bowl of porridge.

"Phiba done fetched and heated the water," Melly said.She pointed Grace toward the stone sink with a pile of dirty dishes and pots on the table beside it. "Now you get to work.And take care with them plates and glasses, too. Break one and Missus will whip us both."

"Nobody goin' to break nothin' in this kitchen," Honeysuckle said with an air of finality. She picked up a stack of soiled laundry and tossed it toward the back door.

Grace wiped her sleeve across her face. Even though the fire was dying down in the fireplace, the bake oven still glowed hot. The kitchen was stifling. Without looking at her, Honeysuckle said, "You gets used to it."

Gingerly Grace picked up a plate from the top of the stack and sighed. Every plate looked as though it had already been licked clean.

"If you woulda' come here sooner, you coulda' had some of the mutton scraps off the white folks' plates," said Melly.

"Is there anything else I can eat?" Grace asked as she poured warm water over the plate.

"Ever'thin' be gone," Melly said. "You shoulda' come sooner."

Carefully, Grace laid the plate aside and picked up another.She poured warm water over it, set that one aside, too, and picked up a third plate. Then a fourth one and a fifth. When no plates were left in the stack, and when all the fine glasses were washed, Grace cleaned up the pewter spoons and knives and set them aside, too. After that she went to work scrubbing the pots. When the entire stack of dirty things had been washed, Grace wiped the table clean.

Only then did Honeysuckle say, "Here be somethin' for you."

She laid out a thick slice of still-warm bread, a chunk of cheese, and a portion of mutton.

"Oh, thank you most kindly!" Grace said.

"Melly speaks true," said Honeysuckle. "You has to come before the master and mistress finish eatin' if you wants to get a share of their leavin's."

"Insufferably lazy, every last one of you darkies!" Eva Williamson huffed. She was in the midst of one of her regular inspections of the kitchen. "Why, any white lady alive would have had this kitchen clean as a pin hours ago! Do I not provide you with the nicest skillets for cooking? Do I not make the best saucepans available, and even a rolling pin for your pie crusts? Do you not have a fine oven right here inside the kitchen to bake the bread, and a spacious fireplace, as well?"

The slaves stood in a line throughout their mistress's rant, their heads lowered respectfully.

"And you!" she said. Here she swung around to point at Grace. "I do believe you are the most incompetent and slovenly of the lot! My husband paid a goodly sum for you, and I expect you to earn back that price!"

Grace looked up and opened her mouth. It had been her intention to ask what it was she had done wrong, but she did not get the chance.

"And no impudence from you, either!" Eva snapped. "You will remember yourself. You are my slave! I do not wish to get my whip, but I shall if you make it necessary."

After a bit more huffing, she turned on Honeysuckle. "The house is your responsibility," Eva said.

"Yes'm," Honeysuckle replied. "We has everythin' we needs, ma'am, and we do thank you for it, too."

It amazed Grace to hear the head slave's cheerful voice after the sound and unfair scolding they had just endured.

"That you most certainly do," said Eva. "And in return for my generosity, I expect a well-run house."

"Yes'm," Honeysuckle said with a pleasant smile.

After the mistress left, Honeysuckle said to Grace, "White folks likes to see us slaves cheerful and content. It don't matter to them if our lives is nothin' but work and work and work. It make no difference what we thinks or how we feels. Cheerful and content, that's all that matters."

"
Pshaw!"
Melly spat.

But Grace knew perfectly well how to act cheerful and content on command. She had learned that skill at her mother's knee. Lingongo had taught her daughter how advantageous it was to obey the white man when necessary, but when his back was turned, how easy to do exactly as she pleased.

Cheerful and content, Grace could do. And she did.

Which was why Eva Williamson, demanding though she was, quickly decided that she liked Grace, after all. Grace didn't complain, and she was always pleasant. Furthermore, Eva could understand every word she said, a most delightful trait in a house slave.

Eva often hit Phiba as punishment for mumbling or for bumbling or just for "unpleasantness." Melly sometimes got slapped, too, especially if Eva didn't like something about the food served her. But Grace never did. In fact, within weeks Eva started to reward Grace with extra privileges.

"Get the water buckets, Grace!" Melly ordered.

Grace had rushed to the kitchen a bit late because Mistress Eva had kept her in the parlor with endless instructions on how to more effectively polish wood furniture. Now Melly was impatient and tired of the wait. She wanted Grace to wash the luncheon dishes.

"Phiba sent for the water boy from the slave cabins, and he waits outside with the buckets," Melly groused.

A small boy did indeed stand outside the door, a heavy wooden yoke draped over his small black shoulders, balanced by two full buckets of water. He struggled to stand under the weight of the load.

Grace ran to take one of the buckets. But as soon as she did, the unbalanced load tumbled and the other bucket poured out on the ground. The little boy burst into tears. "Now I has to go back to de well and haul dem buckets up all over agin'!" he cried.

Honeysuckle took the bucket from Grace and poured the water into the kettle over the fire. "You stay with your own job," she said to Grace.

"I only wanted to help the boy," Grace said as she fought back tears.

"Don't make no matter what you wanted," Honeysuckle said. "White folks gets to make mistakes. Darkies doesn't. Just do your job right and let other folks do their job any way they can."

That evening, Pace and Eva Williamson sat down to dinner with their yellow-haired children, Timothy and Angel.The young ones had long since outgrown the pony on which they had posed for the picture in the parlor. Now fourteen, Angel was two years younger than her brother. Honeysuckle lit the candles Eva had carefully arranged at the center of the table.

"Beeswax candles, they be," Honeysuckle excitedly reported to the others. "Eight of them all burnin' at once! And in fine brass candlesticks, too. How much money does you s'pose the massa has? Enough to burn up, that's for sure."

"I wants to serve the plates tonight," Phiba said.

"No!" Melly insisted. "You will trip and fall, and spill everythin'."

"I wants to see the table all lit up with eight beeswax candles," Phiba begged.

But it was Grace who was honored to witness that amazing extravagance of beeswax. The mistress herself requested that Grace serve the family their dinner.

"This one time only," Eva told Timothy in private. "I will not let your father know it was your request. And, please, do not ask for Grace again."

All morning Grace worked in the private chambers of Mistress Angel. Her bedclothes were a jumble, and all the girl's fine frocks lay on the floor in front of her wardrobe, heaped together with her shoes and stockings and petticoats.

Honeysuckle was most impatient with the girl. "A woman what acts like a spoiled child," the slave said. "That's all that girl be!"

Yet when Mistress Eva had told the head slave that Angel's chambers were a shambles and in need of a good cleaning, Honeysuckle smiled contentedly and said in her most cheerful voice, "Yes'm. Most certainly, ma'am."

Immediately she had dispatched Grace to do the job.

Actually, Grace didn't find the job so odious. Except for the fact that Angel's skin was white instead of bronze, and her hair yellow instead of dark brown with a blush of auburn, and except that Angel lived in America instead of Africa, there wasn't so great a difference between her and Grace when she was fourteen. Grace, too, had had a wardrobe filled with lovely dresses. And she, too, had cared little for them. She had often left them piled on the floor for her family's slave to pick up.It was true that Angel thought only of herself, but Grace had been much the same at her age.

Oh, how things had changed!

Grace straightened Angel's bed, and she folded up each of her pretty dresses. Then she dusted away the grit that had settled on everything, and washed the floor, and polished the furniture to a high shine.

In her mind, Grace was back in Africa. Back on the savanna in the summer's heat with the wind blowing through her hair. In her mind she was back with Cabeto in the village of thatched-roof huts.