The Wedding Gift (13 page)

“Then they came to get Billie. She tried not to go with them, said she wanted to stay with me. They said, ‘Come with us nice and quiet. You’ll be all right.’ They took Billie and…I never seen her again. They put me in another cabin that was in the slave quarters. I was by myself and I didn’t see nobody at night. I didn’t want to go out even though I could hear other people outside. At first, they put me in the fields working on the trash gang. It was real hot out there in the sun, and one of the other field hands told me to get a hat from the overseer.

“I was on the trash gang for about three months when my monthly bleeding stopped three months in a row. I started feeling sick, and one day I fainted right there on the field. They took me to my cabin and got the midwife. She asked me if I had missed my monthly. I said no, that I just finished it the day before. She said maybe I wasn’t eating right. She asked the overseer to give me more food and to let me rest one day. She said she was going to come see me again, but I should send for her if I felt worse.”

“Why didn’t you tell her that you had missed your monthly?”

“I was trying to remember what plants Mama told me can bring your bleeding down. That night after I talked to the midwife, I went to the garden but I couldn’t find none. And Mama told me never to talk about those herbs to nobody because we’re not supposed to know about them, so I couldn’t ask the midwife. They let me rest one day, and then I went back to the trash gang for two weeks. Then it was harvest time and they made me pick cotton. They had me and the other hands at the fields at five thirty in the morning. The driver gave me a sack with a strap to put over my shoulder and pins to put up my skirt so the hem wouldn’t be on the dirt. Even though here we have to do it when we wash and polish floors, I didn’t want to pin up my skirt because it showed my legs, but I was afraid of getting hit by the overseer if I didn’t do like he say.

“Sarah, I hope you never know what it’s like to pick cotton. The bristles on the plants was sharp like knives, so I kept getting cut. My back hurt because I had to bend over to pick the cotton from the bolls and then put it in the sack. But the cotton kept getting stuck in the opening of the sack, so I had to shake the sack to make the cotton go down. Of course, the more cotton you put in the sack, the heavier it get. They let us stop for twenty minutes to eat a biscuit and bacon or ham at about noon. They had a boy coming round with water for the pickers. Then we went back to work until seven thirty at night.

“One day, I got dizzy and fell again. They took me to the cabin and they had the midwife look at me. She said that I was having a baby. She gave me herbs to make tea. I ask her if she knew what happened to the two girls who went with me there and if she knew anybody at Allen Estates.

‘“No, baby. I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened to them girls, and Allen Estates is a long way from here. They don’t hire me out that far. This is three years now that master let his son do that. Don’t talk about this to nobody. Master Reynolds’ youngest son go to a college up north, I hear, and his friends come down to visit. The last two years two friends come down and Master Reynolds tell the overseers to get girls, the best-looking ones, so young master and his friends have a good time before they have to go back to school. This year only one friend come down. But this time, hurting you all like that, I bet it’s going to stop.’

“From that day, they started treating me better. A driver gave me a hen for eggs and chicks to raise, and they gave me more food than I was getting before. They said I only had to pick cotton from five thirty in the morning to five in the afternoon. That was my life, until Mama got Mr. Allen to buy me back.”

“Belle, you and Mama keep telling me that I shouldn’t talk about running away, so this is the last time I’m going to say this. I will not only get back at Mr. Allen for what he did to you and those girls, and for everything he has done to all of us, but I’m going to get us out of here. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to find a way.”

Belle shook her head, but this time she said nothing in response.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THEODORA ALLEN

THE YEARS AFTER WE RETURNED FROM NEW YORK were marked by the births of my three children: Paul, Robert, and Clarissa. Clarissa’s was difficult, and I almost did not survive; but the Lord provided me Mary, the slaves’ midwife, and Emmeline to safely deliver my baby girl. I never used a physician for any of my pregnancies after the miscarriage. I was weak after Clarissa was born and remained bedridden for three months. Emmeline nursed Clarissa and her own daughter, who was a few months older than mine, until they were weaned. I instructed Davis, the Hall overseer, to make a room available in the servants’ quarters in the Hall for Emmeline and her two daughters in order that she would be close to me and Clarissa. I also directed him to get additional servants to relieve Emmeline of most of her duties.

I began tutoring my sons when each was six years old, but when Paul was twelve and Robert ten, my husband, over my objection, sent them to Wilton’s Academy for Young Gentlemen in Georgia. They attended university at Athens after Wilton’s. Paul married a Georgia beauty, and he stayed in that state, working as a banker. Two years later, Robert married a young lady from Charleston, and he moved there, also to work in banking. I taught Clarissa from the age of eight until she was thirteen, when we retained a tutor for her from Montgomery.

I learned that Emmeline was expecting one morning when I went to the kitchen to discuss supper with her and saw her belly. As was the custom among the servants, she did not look at me when I spoke to her.

“Emmeline, you must be so happy to be expecting.”

There was silence in the kitchen for several seconds.

“Yes, ma’am.”

I departed after we made arrangements, embarrassed by everyone’s discomfort. I did not see Sarah until she was about five months old, when Emmeline was working in her herbal garden. Sarah, who had golden curly hair, was strapped on her mother’s back. When Emmeline noticed that I was there, she stood and bowed her head.

“Good morning, Mrs. Allen. Anything I can do for you, ma’am?”

“Yes, we will have two more guests for supper this evening.”

After speaking with her, I went to my husband, who was working in his office with a bookkeeper.

“Yes, Theodora. How may I assist you?”

“May I speak with you privately?”

“Is it a pressing matter? We are rather preoccupied, as you can see.”

“Yes, it is.”

He dismissed Clark.

“I thought that you were no longer with Emmeline.”

He stared at me and tapped his pen on the paper, splattering ink and obscuring the numbers on the page. “Theodora, you misrepresented your reason for being here. You said that it was an urgent matter.”

“I just learned today that you fathered a child with a servant. How is that not a pressing concern?”

“I have shipments to account for that are going to Europe and the Northeast, I have an entire plantation to manage, and you think that women’s concerns are important? And really, you have known about Emmeline for…how many years? And I never told you that I was no longer with her. Enough. Kindly depart and tell Clark to return. Did you not hear me? You are dismissed.”

We had twelve guests that evening, including Mr. and Mrs. Tutwiler. Mrs. Tutwiler was my dearest friend by this time, and she and Mr. Tutwiler sometimes stayed with me whenever my husband traveled. I told her, when we had a moment alone in my garden, that my husband had fathered a child with Emmeline.

“My dear, these men are such rascals, and I fear that their decadence will be the ruin of us all. But what can we do? We can ask them to change their ways for the sake of their immortal souls, and we may appeal to their sense of familial duty, but do you not believe that the male is innately a different being than the fair sex? We do not have their uncontrollable urges, after all. We are most interested in pursuing what is beautiful and ethereal, not what is physical and coarse. Dear Theo, your husband isn’t the only one; Mr. Tutwiler, by my count, has at least eight children, with field hands, no less. But if you add eight to the balance sheet at the prices they fetch at auction, when you reflect upon it, it is a benefit to us, is it not?”

“I suppose I do have a rather romantic view of marriage and that it should be between one man and one woman. But I suppose those unions exist only between the pages of fanciful novels written by ladies.”

“Theodora, don’t dwell on these matters. Your daughter is your companion. Teach her all you know so that she becomes a young lady of virtue and grace.”

I accepted Mrs. Tutwiler’s advice and devoted myself to my daughter. Bessie selected a girl to help me care for her. Clarissa was a sensitive child, and I found that, from infancy, she was happy if Sarah was with her. I told Emmeline to allow Sarah to play in the nursery. When the girls began walking, I permitted them to run on the grass in my garden and Emmeline let them play in the yard outside the kitchen. When Clarissa was weaned at the age of two, we spent almost all our time together and I stopped traveling with my husband.

The girl who minded the children taught them the same games that my cousin Eliza and I played when we were children: hide-and-seek, stealing bases, and jumping rope. At Christmas, my husband and I gave special gifts to all the house servants in addition to the annual gifts of bolts of cloth, shoes, pork, sacks of rice, sugar, and other foods. We gave Sarah new toys every year because Clarissa enjoyed dressing her dolls with her little companion.

I taught Clarissa to care for those less fortunate. When she was six years old, I took her along when I delivered food and other necessities to the families of the overseers who worked on our plantation. She accompanied my husband and me to the slave quarters at Christmas when we gave the field hands their new clothing and shoes and hams. I thought that she would be frightened of going there, but she helped us hand out sweets to the children. When Clarissa and Sarah turned eight, I told Bessie to begin teaching Sarah to be Clarissa’s maid, and I began giving lessons to Clarissa.

The first week, she repeatedly complained that Sarah was not with her and we made no progress. We spent only three hours a day on lessons, and yet Clarissa fidgeted until I dismissed her. She found Sarah wherever she was helping her mother or Bessie and took her to the yard or to Clarissa’s room to play. My husband asked me at supper how Clarissa was doing in her learning.

“Not well at all, I’m afraid. She does not pay attention and prefers to play with her maid.”