Chasing Freedom (4 page)

Six

T
HE DOOR AT BEULAH'S HUT STOOD AJAR. LYDIA AND
Sarah stood on the wobbly step of the crumbling shack, while Lydia bowed her head in prayer.

Fibby, Birchtown's midwife, sat at the table cutting out coloured squares from old rags for her quilt making. Her face was drawn and thin. Her short black braids pointed in every direction like the spines of a sea urchin. “She's resting now, waiting on her time,” Fibby said, pointing to a narrow wooden bunk in the corner of the room.

“And Prince? How is Prince?”

Fibby pulled Lydia aside. “Hush, Lydia,” she whispered, putting a finger to her mouth. “Beulah is taking it hard. Quiet now. Best not to excite her again. It will be two days. No one came by to take you word that Prince passed on. Come, I'll show you the pile.”

Lydia followed Fibby quietly to the rear of the hut. Sarah trailed behind. There they saw a pile of rocks just barely covering a body. Lydia knelt beside the pile. She covered her face with her hands and sought comfort in weeping. Sarah knelt beside her and put her arms around her grandmother. Then followed the long moans and praying. And when all the suffering subsided, she and Sarah quietly went about gathering rocks to deepen the pile, making it so neat and high it looked like a tomb.

Back inside, Lydia let out a long, disturbing sigh and patted her chest several times as though she was preparing for a huge event and wanted to be ready.

Lydia looked at Beulah, who was sitting up now, and said softly, “You're carrying low. That is a good sign. Oh my, it will not be long.” The old woman's fat fingers rolled around the mountainous belly. Her voice was gentle. “Everything will be alright,” she cooed. “Yes it will.” She continued rubbing Beulah's belly, staring, trance-like, far off, in a different world …
A stout wench, broad and strong, good breeding stock
, the auctioneer had said.

She turned her face to Beulah and spoke in a low murmur, “I have to go now. I got to stop at Cecil's and then go down to Roseway this morning.” She patted the belly once more saying, “I asked the good Lord to keep His eyes on you. He hears ol' Lydia.” Then in a tender voice that was thin and not so matter-of-fact, she said, “This baby has a special calling, Beulah. It will be the first one in this family to be born free. Imagine that. Born free. A miracle, that's what.”

“It's true, Mother Redmond. But it's not right that the child won't have a papa.” Beulah pushed her tangled hair back. A tiny smile unfolded as she said, “Prince and I got married as soon as we got here. We had plans. We dared to dream. This place was going to be a new beginning. We planned to raise our children … like proper folks.” The soreness of her loss made her lips quiver. “Why did the Lord have to take Prince after getting free … after all we came through?” The tears streamed down her face leaving long salty stains on her brown skin. “I keep trying, but I don't know how much more I can take.” Beulah swallowed hard and her misery forced her to sob, and then more pain, and more sobs.

No one spoke. They waited for Fibby to get up and get some rags and the washbasin of warm water. But no, she sat tight and Beulah kept sobbing until Lydia broke in saying, “Fibby, best get things ready. This must be her time.”

“Not yet, Lydia,” Fibby said. “I know the birthing pain. Those wails are not about the baby. They come from a dark place. She's heartsick, always thinking on Prince.”

Lydia stroked Beulah's face. “Hush now. It will not be long before you are holding your child. There is joy in that.” She was silent for a minute and then she said, “We made it this far. We got through the first winter. This family is growing.” She looked at Sarah and smiled, “There will soon be four. We must always give thanks for that.”

She placed her hand gently on Beulah's hair, patting it with her cupped palm as gently as a mother bear. “Don't you be worrying. This family sticks together. You won't have to raise your child alone, no Lord.” She cradled Beulah's head in her lap and wiped her wet face with her coat sleeve. “Oh yes, Beulah, everything is going to be alright. You will see. God is good.” The strains of old spirituals drifted from her lips.

Beulah dabbed away the tears with the edge of the blanket. She was ashen and pale and kept rolling the coarse blanket in her fingers as she rocked back and forth. The old woman squeezed her tightly, with joy hiding somewhere in the creases of her mouth, but her happiness did not last. For a second, she caught a strange look in Sarah's eyes. The girl was studying her intensely with a look of loathing. She knew the reason and felt guilty for withholding such tenderness from the young one. She knew it was another custom, a slave's way of avoiding attachment. She shrugged off Sarah's venom with a smile, for deep down she knew the girl could never hate her.

She turned back to Beulah and as much as she wanted to stay, she said, “Oh my, Beulah, we got to be on our way. The longer we stay the further Roseway gets.”

“You're leaving?” Beulah asked.

“We will stop on the way back. You just might be a mama 'tween now and then. I guess that child is taking its good old time, but it cannot stay back forever. The Lord is good. Put your faith in Him to see this through.”

Beulah's eyes strayed to the corner of the room. She turned to one side. Her face became mean and she said, “There's no God, Lydia. They made God up to keep folks like us from having our rightful place on this earth.”

The old woman's eyes stretched three times their size and she said, “You rest, Beulah. You need more rest.”

Beulah continued to stare away. “Your God makes no sense to me. Why would God allow so many folks to have so little and all this suffering? Why should we believe that we have to wait until we get to heaven when everything for our joy is right here? All this religion, it was the master's way of controlling the slaves, but who controlled the master?” Her eyes lit up like a firefly. “We were sent here to die, to rot in this hell.” Beulah's head fell on her chest. “Say what you like, this place is going to be the death of us all.” Her voice was sharp and angry. “You can have your God, Mother Redmond.”

Fibby spoke up. “She gets this way. Oh my, ever since Prince passed she has been ranting and cursing God. The dear soul even curses me. I don't know how much more I can take, but after that baby comes, Old Fibby will be gone. I will see that the baby comes into the world, but after that, she is going to need someone to come and stay and help with the child.”

Lydia was stunned. “Cursing God?” Her hands shook as she raised them up to heaven. “Sweet Lord,” she said, “Pay her no mind. She is tired and angry, Lord. You got to be patient with this one. Amen.”

Beulah's sudden change frightened Lydia. Maybe she was scared. Giving birth was a worrying thing. She thought about losing children, about Dahlia. How on one jet-black night she had awoke from a deep sleep to horrible screams. Screams so loud they could crack bones. A horrible birth, the worst see had seen. She saw Dahlia's newborn briefly, before the midwife declared the tiny bundle was off to Glory. She recalled that it was One Eye and Soldier who took Sarah's mother and the child away in a rickety cart. All the slaves in the quarter gathered in the yard and wept hard until the cart disappeared into the night.

Lydia turned to Fibby. “You do your best for her. She's not herself and needs your patience. This is her first.”

On the trail, Lydia lagged behind, struggling with her thoughts. The sun was brighter now and the autumn leaves glistened. She looked through the trees up at the patch of blue sky and gave her fears and aching heart to the Lord, for the pain was too severe for her alone to bear.

Seven

T
HEY WERE MAKING GOOD TIME. STREAMS OF BLACK
smoke from the hundreds of crooked shacks streaked the sky. The busy sounds of wood-chopping, hammering and sawing hung in the air as they neared the Roseway Road. They waded through a stream where the women and children usually filled buckets, but this morning there was a line of men that stretched beyond to a nearby hut. “The water brigade,” Grandmother said. Sure enough, within minutes, they could see wild flames shooting through the roof and walls of one of the shacks. It was devoured even as the men tried to dose it with water.

“I don't know why they bother trying to save these shacks,” Sarah said. “They go up like pieces of paper, a couple every week. You never know the cause with so much hatred goin' on. I hope no one was inside.”

“Not likely at this hour. Whoever it was has probably left for Roseway.”

“Mrs. Atkins was saying last week that in Roseway someone started a grass fire during high winds and burned down two homes.”

“Oh Sweet Lord, where are the people's senses?”

As they strolled through the centre of Birchtown, Sarah pointed to the men working on a large structure. “The new meeting house is going there. Everyone gets charged up on Sundays at Reverend Ringwood's camp meetings and then pours out the spirit during the week in their singing. Finally, there'll be a place for worship.”

The old woman grunted. “Singing to the Lord to cover their sins.”

“Still, maybe we could go to a camp meeting and get some of that spirit.”

“My religion is between Lydia and the Lord. That's all I got to say on that.”

Sarah held her tongue. She was accustomed to Grandmother's thick demeanour — a wall of bricks, tightly cemented without a crack. To Lydia, people were either God fearing or godless. The Birchtowners disliked her attitude and so they kept their distance, acting formal in their greetings, but always polite, respecting but not embracing her. They held their dances and drinking parties on the other side of Birchtown. “Sinning,” Grandmother called it. A strange thought came to Sarah. She wondered if Grandmother had ever sinned. Sarah blurted out, “A good sermon could cheer you up. The Lord wants us to be happy.”

“Don't you worry about Ol' Lydia. She knows the Lord better than any Christian.” Her chins wobbled as she held her head back and let go a turkey chuckle. All the while, the empty clay pipe held steady on her lip as she sucked the stem like an old man sitting on a porch veranda in Charles Town.

Sarah's face brightened and broke into a wide grin. She laughed at the crazy sounds coming from the old woman. Grandmother had her own way of appreciating the Lord. She called upon Him when things got rough and she called him out when He went against her grain.

The sun suddenly drifted behind a span of dark clouds. From the top of a high knoll, Cecil MacLeod's store stood in full view. He was a respectable Roseway Associate now and proud of the new store he built shortly after arriving.

Lydia lowered the vegetables from her head. She put her hands on her hips and straightened her back. “I want you to stay out here with these vegetables and laundry, Girlie, 'til I tell you to come inside. Whatever you might see or hear between me and Mr. MacLeod, you keep it to yourself.”

Sarah did not trust Mr. MacLeod, even now. She hated the very sight of him. A grubby squat man, balding with sparse grey hair and a cruel smile that cradled a bully's sneer. And his eyes. Oh, those narrow, cold eyes that peered through puffy pockets of fat.

The air felt magically warm. She unbuttoned her coat and breathed deeply, delighting in the strange aromas drifting outside from the store. Through the open shutters, she saw kegs of West Indian rum and molasses, barrels of corn meal, flour, beans and wooden containers of loose tea and coarse salt. There were tools, guns, dishes and cloth. On the counter were blocks of dark brown chewing tobacco. She could see Papa ripping chunks from the hard plug with his teeth, see the yellow drool as he spit the big mouthfuls of tobacco juice far out into the yard. “A farmer's gold. Good stuff for killing Boll weevils,” he would laugh. “It keeps the little critters from chompin' down the cotton.”

A large scale hung above the counter. Grandmother moved about, stopping beside the vegetable bin. Her grumbling was deliberate. “The vegetables are past their time, Mr. MacLeod.” She looked over the shrivelled cabbages, turnips and soft potatoes with sprouts a foot long. Shaking her head, she laid her rag purse on the counter, and picked up a handful of crinkled carrots, then put them back. “How old are they?”

“They are from the storehouse.” Cecil had an eerie look to him—with one tooth sparkling on the edge of his lip, dirty hands and a crumpled shirt from weeks of wear.

Lydia snickered. “Well, Mr. MacLeod, I have fresh vegetables I got in exchange for a little house work at Missy Dawkins. Can we do a trade today?”

Cecil's brow tightened and his approach changed. He smiled his arrogant smile. “That Mrs. Dawkins has good luck with this thin soil. Yes. Yes. Fresh vegetables will fetch a good price.”

Lydia ignored his chatter. She walked to the door and caught Sarah's attention. “Bring those vegetables in now, Girlie.”

Sarah put her baskets on the counter.

“Help yourself to some sweetmeats,” Cecil said.

She reached into a glass jar and scooped up some nuts and dried fruit. Lydia replaced the vegetables in the basket with a small sack of corn meal and a pound of Navy beans.

Leaning forward over the counter, Cecil winked at Lydia. “A little something extra for your troubles.” He added a small sack of flour to the pile of goods. “Half the cost.”

“All right, I'll take it. Is it okay to leave these things until I get back from Roseway?”

“No trouble, Lydia. No trouble.”

“Good. I'll add a chuck of that salt pork when I return.”

Lydia focused now on a shelf lined with bolts of cotton. The sign under the bolts said two shillings a yard. “How much is the cotton, Mr. MacLeod?”

“For you, Lydia, three shillings a yard.” He grinned inwardly, knowing Lydia could not read. Never hurt to make a little extra off the Negroes, he thought.

“Could you add a yard to my parcel?”

“You are paying for the cloth, right? That's not covered by the vegetables.”

“I will be paying for it,” she said bluntly.

Lydia quickly shoved her goods far back under the counter, as though she thought Cecil might change his mind and take them back.

Cecil, who had been watching Sarah, strolled over to her. “I'd like to speak to Lydia alone. Go outside now and wait.” He shooed her with his hands, then turned to Lydia, “I have been waiting for you for weeks.” His eyes sparkled like fool's gold.

“Yes sir.” Lydia kept her head down, avoiding his eyes.

Sarah positioned herself beside a long window to the right of the door. She could see the back wall and Mr. MacLeod talking to Grandmother. His voice was low and she had to press her ear to the shutter to hear.

“You should come by more often, Lydia. You seem to make yourself scarce. I give you good deals, allow a little trade or credit if you need it. I treat you right. It seems you are forgetting how things were between us. Nothing has changed.”

“You have been good, Sir. But you know I have the child.”

“My soul, she's a woman now. She can do for herself.”

“Not yet, Mr. MacLeod. We have some unfinished business. No disrespect, but there's something I been meaning to ask.”

“What is it?”

She drew a deep breath and waited for her courage to come into full bloom.

“After Master Redmond bought me, you took it upon yourself to go behind his back and breed me, knowing he did not approve. You took the light-skinned children from me. There are two that I am anxious to find.”

“I have no idea what you are talking about.”

“The children, what did you do with my children, Mr. MacLeod?” She raised her head and looked him straight in the face, eye to eye. Her anger swelled her up like never before and she wrestled to get comfortable with it, yet at the same time, it was filling her with courage. It allowed her to say, “Master Redmond put you in charge of the buying and selling of slaves, not the breeding, but when you saw that the light-skinned slaves fetched more money, you bred me on the sly, then took my light babies to sell. I need to know what happened to my children. You took three of them. I know where one of my children is and I am not concerned about her. But what of the other girl, the one Master Redmond kept awhile then sold … do you know where she is?”

She paused to catch her breath. She stared at Cecil for a long time and tried to read his thoughts. His face was blank. “And the fair-skinned boy, you took him as well. I see a man here who might be my child.” She was studying Cecil hard now, her eyes swollen and red. The release made her feel strong and her voice grew louder, “Do you know if he is here, Mr. MacLeod?”

Cecil leaned in close to her. He was puffed up and his eyes were empty and cold. His voice was stern. “Never raise your voice to me again. Remember that.” Then his tone changed. “There's no need to stir up trouble, Lydia. No need to be digging up yesterdays.”

“They are our children, Mr. MacLeod,” Lydia continued. “Master Redmond loved one like his own, and treated the other well until he sold her, but you …” She kept pushing. “Are you so heartless … not to care about them, to keep a child from its mother?”

“Don't be a fool. They were not born out of caring. The slave children were all bastards. Never mention this damn mess again. Let it go. If this gets out, it will bring disgrace to both of us.” He touched her arm. “Well then, that's enough of that. You are not on a plantation now, so you just remember to keep your place.” He moved from behind the counter and glanced around the store, then pressed himself in against the old woman. His thin hand went inside the big brown coat.

Lydia jumped back. “No sir. I am not an animal,” she stammered. “It's time you done right by me.”

“You have been my girl since our days in the south. I do not expect that to change.” His arrogance inflated and his face tensed. “Let it be, Lydia. Do you understand?”

“Yes sir. I understand.” She caught his eyes and held them. “I understand how it was back then. Yes sir, I do. Breeding slaves to get free workers or for your pleasure was common. You could take a slave and do what you liked and the law protected you. You treated me like an animal because I did not have any rights. That is all behind me. I got my papers now.” Her anger blasted through her words. “You can take your hands off me. The law might still protect you from your evil ways, but I will spread the word about you. Oh, Lord, I'll let the people know all about Cecil MacLeod.”

“What's gotten into you, Lydia?” Little beads of sweat clustered on Cecil's forehead. “You were just a slave. You better stop and think before you do something foolish. This is just between me and you. We must protect ourselves. No one needs to know about our past.”

“I need to know what happened to my children.”

Sarah stepped back from the window, numb. There was no doubt about the past always stirring up the present. To her surprise, the old woman was speaking her truth, standing firm against Cecil. Papa was right. All that hatred and pain was just waiting to spill out. Sarah steadied herself against the wall. Had Grandmother forgotten her own words about speaking with caution? Had she forgotten who Cecil was, a fearless and vicious killer? Without warning, her mother's words came to her: “After the red tide comes, you let the men have their way with you. You are their property, their girl. You have no choice in the matter.”

Sarah inhaled deeply. Here was the truth at last. There were other children, Cecil and Grandmother's children. She was not shocked. She was terrified. Cecil was a bully. If he could not whip the skin off your hide, he would torment your soul. He would keep the whereabouts of the children to himself. And Grandmother could count on him striking back. After another breath, she eased along the wall away from the window, mumbling as she went, her heart racing like a raging river. She could not bring herself to listen further.

Inside, the old woman turned her back to Cecil and with her eyes squashed together tried hard to quell the jitters that were making her hands shake. Cecil worked to regain his composure as well. When he spied Lydia's rag purse on the counter, he thought about the papers … former slaves were never without their papers. He reached for the purse while her back was turned and quickly rooted inside. So much trash. He felt a small pouch. In seconds, he unfolded one of the certificates. “Yes, yes,” he snorted and stuffed the pouch inside a large pot on a shelf behind the counter.

Lydia turned. Her words came fast. “I will pick up my things when I get back.” She snatched her purse from the counter.

“No problem, Lydia. They will be waiting for you.”

Cecil swelled with anticipated victory. Things were not as bad as they appeared. Lydia would pay for her brazenness. She would soon learn her place.