Come August, Come Freedom (7 page)

“What if she doesn’t love me back?” Gabriel said after a while.

Jupiter stopped. He draped his arms around Gabriel. “Nanny will love you; you’re Gabriel. We all love you, my brother.”

Once Gabriel had made his peace with Jupiter, he started his courtship of Nanny. Every Saturday afternoon, after he closed up Prosser’s blacksmith shop, Gabriel went down to Young’s spring, hoping to see her. He took his fishing pole or he carried Ma’s wash. Some days, he walked there with his friends, but he went only to find the girl who could look into his smile and see the deep and secret life inside him. He went to the creek for Nanny to make him right.

GABRIEL ASKED
after Nanny each Saturday that arrived without her at the spring. To the women from Wilkinson’s — the older ones especially — he’d say, “Nanny coming down tonight? How’s Nanny been this week? Expect I’ll see my Nanny soon?”

Each Saturday the women answered the same: Nanny had too much work under orders of Wilkinson’s man, or her work was done but because he could, the man kept her back. Each passing Saturday, Gabriel sent the women back to Nanny with a gift from the forge — a slotted spoon, a soup ladle, a brand-new hoe.

By the time Nanny showed back up at the spring, the women had predicted that Gabriel would be waiting, and he was. From then on, whenever they could, the two met under the apple tree. They fished and worshipped and danced, always together — Gabriel and Nanny.

“Dolly’s boy, Joseph, got sent off to Richmond,” Nanny told Gabriel one night. “A six-year-old boy! I held on to Dolly, and we watched the cart haul her son away. I couldn’t let her run after him, could I? She has a baby girl still on the breast. If I’d have let Dolly follow after Joseph the way she wanted to do — screamin’ and carryin’ on — the old colonel’s man might have put her in the cart, too.”

Gabriel clenched his mouth.
What could Nanny have done?
he asked himself.
What could I have done? Nothing. Nothing any of us can ever do.
He picked up a twig from around the tree. “Then what happened, Nan?”

“I wrapped my arms around her,” Nanny told him. “I dragged Dolly off, away to my house, so she wouldn’t see. She thrashed all about. I just held on to her, let her dig into me. Look here.” Nanny loosened her blouse and showed Gabriel the scratches and cuts along her neck.

He ran his fingers across Nanny’s collarbone. Gabriel wondered, if he kissed the marks over and over, might the wounds all disappear? If he held her tight enough, might she forget? “There’ll be a scar here,” he said.

“I know.” Nanny brought her hand to her throat. “I don’t mind. Dolly could have clawed all the way to my heart, and I would not have let go of her.” Her gaze settled far away, across the meadow to someplace Gabriel could not see.

“The missus stood over us, tellin’ Dolly, ‘Calm down. Joseph’s going to a fine home in South Carolina.’ Even the little master cried out, ‘Where is Joseph going? Why can’t Joseph stay here with me, Mother? Who will play with me now?’”

Nanny rested the bridge of her nose between the braided muscles of Gabriel’s arms. She sighed, and he wished he could relieve her suffering.

Sitting there, holding Nanny, Gabriel’s boyhood days washed over him, and he let the truth rise up.
I should have seen the lie long before I did,
he thought.
Before Thomas Henry changed. Before Thomas Henry struck me with the man’s board, I was like Joseph. A plaything, but a plaything.

A memory passed through Gabriel’s mind. In early childhood, he ate breakfast with Thomas Henry in the great house on many a morning. He slept on the floor in Thomas Henry’s bedroom on many a night, too. One morning when Gabriel and Thomas Henry got caught at the kitchen table with a plate full of cake crumbs, yet no cake before them, Kissey tore into the boys. They had eaten Mr. Prosser’s birthday cake — not just one piece between them, not just a piece for each of them, but the entire pound cake.

“What in tarnation happened here?” Kissey had asked. “And before you go tellin’ me a lie, Thomas Henry, wipe that sugar from off your chin!” Then Kissey wagged her finger at Gabriel and clucked her tongue. “You ought know better. That’s
all
I have to say to
you.
” She yanked both children by a hand and dragged them before Mrs. Prosser.

When Kissey told the missus, Ann Prosser licked her thumb and cleaned all evidence from Gabriel’s face. First, she addressed Kissey: “Are you not feeding him quite enough?” Then she spoke to Gabriel. “Child, were you very hungry? Is that why you ate the pound cake?”

Gabriel had only followed Thomas Henry, but to Mrs. Prosser he just shrugged. He felt Thomas Henry staring at his back.

Mrs. Prosser squeezed Gabriel’s hands. “Today is Mr. Prosser’s birthday. Did you know that Kissey fixed that cake up special for your master? I asked her especially to make Mary Randolph’s pound cake, and she worked very hard to do so. What do you say for yourself, Gabriel?”

He looked over at the cook. “I liked your cake, Miss Kissey. Would you please make me one for my birthday?”

Mrs. Prosser pretended to scold him. “Now, listen to me, Mister Gabriel: if Kissey baked for everyone at Brookfield, she would hardly have time for anything else. Besides, not everyone here has a birthday. Mr. Prosser wrote yours down in his book, Gabriel, but I’m afraid none of us knows Kissey’s, because she was born someplace far away from Brookfield.” Mrs. Prosser looked at Kissey. “Do you know your own birthday?” she asked.

“No, missus,” Kissey answered, and raised her eyebrows at Gabriel, warning him to keep his mouth quiet.

“See there?” Mrs. Prosser stroked Gabriel’s cheek. “No, love, cakes are just for the family.” She gently pushed Gabriel away and nodded for Kissey to take him. “I think you and Thomas Henry have had enough playtime today. Why don’t you run out to the south field now? They might need you to bring water; it’s unmercifully hot this afternoon.”

That evening, after Mr. Prosser’s birthday dinner, Kissey fetched Gabriel from the quarter. “Young master askin’ for Gabriel. He’s scared to sleep by hisself, again,” Kissey said.

Gabriel felt relieved that Thomas Henry still wanted to be with him.

When Gabriel reached the great house and saw Thomas Henry sitting and waiting on the top porch step, he waved and ran up the stairs, glad in a way that he would sleep in the house, away from the bugs and away from Dog, who would most likely come home to the quarter with muddy legs, stinking of the marsh from her late-night hunt. But, most of all, he was glad things were good again with Thomas Henry.
We are like brothers. Everyone says so.

He had a new song to teach Thomas Henry and decided to teach his friend that night.
We’ll sing in the dark, like always,
he had thought.

Yet Thomas Henry had run into the house without a word for Gabriel.

Inside, Kissey put both boys in crisp linen sleeping shirts. To keep the mosquitoes at bay, she draped Thomas Henry’s bed with netting that hung from the ceiling.

For Gabriel, she made a pallet on the floor.

Gabriel loved Kissey’s pallets, and this one felt extra plump. When Kissey bent down to tuck the sheet under Gabriel’s chin, he put his hands on her round moon face and pulled her ear close to his mouth. “You can have my birthday, Miss Kissey,” he whispered. “We can share.”

Kissey swiped at Gabriel’s nose. She pushed the tip of her thumb out between her fingers. “Thumbkin got your sniffer.” Kissey wagged the tip of her peeking-out thumb, and this made Gabriel giggle.

“Take your leave now, Kissey,” Thomas Henry said.

Kissey pecked Gabriel’s forehead, and once she closed the door, he snuggled down deep into the pallet to hide away from the bright-white light from the window, imposing itself on the darkness. The moon pierced through his closed eyes, so he pulled the sheet up over his head. He let the night hold him, and the night returned him to his own natural breath.

He set his hands on his belly and felt his clasped fingers open wide apart when he inhaled and come back, touching, when he let his breath go. His even and steady breath drew him into the invisible world inside, where he was always just Gabriel.

When he had about reached the tunnel that would take him through sleep, to the place where he could be his whole and true self, Thomas Henry jolted him back awake and aware of the hard floor.

“After she sent you off to the field, Mother wore my tail out today, Gabriel, for eating Father’s cake. This is your fault, and you should have spoken up for me.” Thomas Henry rolled back over and leaned down to Gabriel. “You’re Mother’s pet. Haven’t you noticed?”

Gabriel poked his head out from under the sheet. “I’m no one’s pet. I’m Gabriel.”

“Mother should have whipped you worse than she whipped me. Of course you’re her pet. Who else would teach you to read?”

Gabriel burrowed deep in the covers so that he couldn’t see Thomas Henry anymore. He could still smell Kissey’s kitchen scent from where she had tucked the bedclothes under his chin. The lingering of grease and flour and corn, mixed with Kissey’s skin, made Gabriel wish Kissey would come and take him back to Ma in the quarter. Even from the great house, he could hear Dog baying in the forest, and he wondered if Old Major had gotten a squirrel or a rabbit or a nasty opossum.

Thomas Henry turned his back to Gabriel. He said over his shoulder, “You just remember this: Mother likes you so well because I like you, and if I didn’t, I might tell her all sorts of stories about the trouble you cause; then do you know what she’d do?”

“No.” Gabriel’s stomach turned queasy.

“She would tell Father to sell you, and you’d be sent away from Brookfield, just on her word. You’d never again see your mother or your brothers or Kissey or me. One day, Gabriel, I will be the master of Brookfield. I do whatever I want; just remember that.”

This is my home, too,
Gabriel thought at the time, and he rose up from his place on the floor. He went to find Kissey so she could console him.

Now, all these years later, it was Gabriel doing the consoling. He put his arms around Nanny, who wept over Joseph and Dolly. He recalled how Thomas Henry had tossed around in his downy bed after the threat. Then he understood; Thomas Henry had only ever loved him in the way that privileged people love their possessions.

The conviction that had been growing in his heart for some years, which burned only stronger since he’d come back from Jacob’s forge, formed clearly in him now:
I am my own master. Gabriel belongs only to Gabriel.

A MONTH
, a year, then two years, passed. People came and went, were bought and sold, from Young’s, from Wilkinson’s, and from Brookfield. In every season, Gabriel let Nanny cry for a child, for a mother, for herself. One Sunday, Nanny’s tears stopped.

“What happens if I’ve used up all the sorrow God gave me?” Nanny asked Gabriel. She lamented the wall enclosing her heart. “I’d hardly remember the looks of my own sisters if I didn’t see my own face in the creek.” She leaned against Gabriel’s strong arms.

He held her close enough to him so that her heart could keep its mournful beat with his. “It’s all right to look at your own hurting, Nan. You’re safe with me,” he said. His face burned.
Makin’ a fool of myself.