Jacob's Ladder (2 page)

The old woman's sigh emitted no more air than a bird's. “My doctor tells me I shan't survive much longer and I'm not certain I wish to. We've had a death in the family.”

“Oh, I'm sorry.”

“Yes.” The old woman's milky eyes were blank. “Most unexpected.” The birds sang their self-involved tunes. The woman's voice strengthened. “My family lives on the other coast and can no longer be hurt by the truth. When I read of your project, after due consideration, I wrote the Senator and asked to be included.” She cleared her throat. “Would you ask Kizzy to bring me a glass of water? The other homes on this street are on municipal water, but we have always had our own well.”

As they waited the old woman remarked, “Although we have many negro depositors, our bank is not known as a negro bank. Virginia's negro banks failed to reopen after President Roosevelt's bank holiday, did you know that?”

“No, ma'am.”

“Insufficient capital, too many small loans.” She drank the water and dismissed Kizzy, who seemed inclined to linger. She rubbed her high forehead. She said, “I became a woman the year of Cox's snow. I don't know how old I was, twelve or thirteen, I suppose, and when I had my first effusion, I mentioned it to no one. The whites believed that we primitives matured younger than white girls, and their theory was of economic benefit to them, since a negress's greatest value was her ability to bear children. We were bred as early and frequently as could be managed within the decencies of Christian convention. . . .”

A chill raised goose bumps down the girl's neck and arms. She was suddenly nauseated. “Excuse me,” the girl whispered. “Do I understand you correctly . . . ?”

The old woman looked into her cool, orderly garden. “My mother was light-skinned, and of course my father, the Reverend Mitchell, was white. It is curious, is it not, that the lighter-skinned we are, the more anxious the dominant race is to mate with us. Those first white men to sleep with the dark-skinned daughters of Africa were such bold pioneers!” She raised her invisible eyebrows mockingly. “I suppose it is more agreeable to make love with creatures that closely resemble oneself. Narcissism is one of the South's notable frailties.”

The girl wanted to leave this place. Surely she could leave.

The old woman sipped, then swallowed, her throat clenching painfully. “The city wishes me to cap my well and accept their water, which, I believe, they pump from the James. I tell them I have lived beside the James for too many years to have any great desire to drink of it.

“That January it started snowing on Thursday afternoon and continued through Sunday—the winter had been uncommonly mild and we had no reason to anticipate harsher weather. As I have told you, I had recently become a woman but was determined to conceal my new circumstances. I was a house servant, Mistress Abigail's personal servant, and intended to retain my position at any hazard. Mistress Abigail's children were grown, her daughter, Leona, married with two children of her own. Her son, Duncan, was her husband's confidant and favored companion, and I expect Miss Abigail was lonely. I was a clever child and unusually confident. I thought I was ‘the cat's pajamas.' ” The old woman paused. “You young people still employ that expression, do you not?”

The girl felt trapped. “I don't know.”

“My grandson William was annoyingly fond of it. He owned a Stutz roadster. I haven't seen a Stutz in some time. Do they still manufacture them?”

“I don't believe so, no.”

“My grandson was fond of his.”

“You . . . you are a negress?”

“When I was young, as I have said, I was unusually self-possessed. I had a gift for mimicry and could imitate the nuances of my employers' speech as well as my fellow servants' patois. I could read—a little—and later, Jesse Burns taught me sums. I was good at sums. My education”—she gestured at the periodicals—“has been irregular. Bits and scraps.” She paused. “I suppose I know as much about those days as anyone. Mr. Freeman is forever after me to write something for the Historical Society, though he would be astonished, I imagine, at what I might say.” She struck the edge of the coffee table with her tiny soundless hand. “Think of what I might have become given a fair chance at life!” She looked around the sunny room with angry satisfaction. “Still, I have made the best of whatever opportunities presented themselves. I did nothing to benefit myself. Nothing.” Her age-spotted hand waved away that possibility. “Are you a Christian, my dear?”

The girl stuttered that she was an Episcopalian . . . St. Paul's . . . she attended St. Paul's.

“Not exactly what I meant. President Davis learned Richmond must fall while attending services at St. Paul's. Did you know that?”

The girl said she had never asked questions about the War. Staunchly she added, “General Lee told my grandfather that the War was over and we must rebuild the South. That we should no longer discuss the War. In my family, we haven't.”

“Oh? The reticence of Virginia's gentlefolk never fails to astound me.” She held the cool water glass against her cheek. “As Miss Abigail's personal servant I slept in the loft over the kitchen house, beside the cook. In the cold months I banked my bed against the warm bricks of the kitchen chimney and slept snug as a dream. When the other coloreds went out into the fields for wheat harvest or cutting corn or the January threshing I remained indoors with Miss Abigail, Master Samuel's spinster sister, Kate, and Grandmother Gatewood, who retained great influence with her son. Her husband, Thomas Gatewood, died under a cloud, and mother and son spent their life overcoming the scandal. Lord, how the Gatewoods yearned to be ordinary!

“I used the same necessary the white folks used, though I had to finish before they rose up in the morning. Oh, I was full of myself. Some afternoons, while Miss Abigail was taking her nap, I'd stand before her pier glass: I looked like white folks. I was learning to talk like white folks, and I was smarter than most white folks. From this I concluded that I was just like white folks, an error which later caused me much pain.

“Miss Abigail loved me as her own. Her first infant, Leona, had been followed by a stillborn baby. Then infant Samuel, who died before his second birthday. Duncan was next, and fourteen years later Miss Abigail had the twins. The twins were born dead, and the midwife said it was a miracle Miss Abigail didn't die from blood evil. She was desperately ill, and it was to care for her that I was brought up to the main house. The midwife said Miss Abigail's twin boys had been dead for days. Miss Abigail insisted on holding a boy—she may have been unconvinced of his death—and the skin slipped off his body like skin off a dead rabbit. They buried the twins in a single coffin, foot to foot, in the cemetery on the hill back of Stratford House. The colored burying place was behind the Quarters.

“I spent my hours with Miss Abigail. Grandmother Gatewood prayed all day and Sister Kate did her level best to keep out of everybody's way, which was no simple task, since she shared a bedroom with Grandmother. It was no life of ease. Not for me. Not for any of them. Sister Kate watched over the servant babies when their mothers were out in the fields, Mistress Abigail sewed and knitted. When Grandmother Gatewood wasn't praying she was at the wheel or loom. Although she could buy ready-made cloth she swore by homespun for the servants. Miss Abigail's daughter, Leona, had made a good marriage to Catesby Byrd, a promising lawyer in Warm Springs, the county seat.

“Catesby Byrd had an agreeable disposition, but was fond of cardplaying, a vice viewed more seriously then than it is today, when every grandmother sits down for her afternoon canasta. The courthouse cardplayers were not of the better class, and I believe Byrd failed to get an anticipated judgeship because of his associations. Though Stratford Plantation was a three-hour ride from Warm Springs, Catesby Byrd visited regularly and closeted himself with Samuel Gatewood.

“In those days, at the peak of his strength, Gatewood was an impressive man, and his son, Duncan, followed him like a dog. Summer evenings the two would carry chairs out onto the porch roof and sit side by side while the father pointed at this or that and determined what work was to be accomplished on the morrow, the boy drinking in every word. Duncan wasn't clever, but he was one of those fortunate lads whose cleverness doesn't matter. He could shoot well enough, speak well enough, wrestle well enough, and he was brave. Virginia was filled with boys like him, but most were killed in the war.

“Everything came so easily to Duncan he was puzzled by those who had to work for what they got. His perfect ears hid under his auburn curls like seashells. He was such a beautiful boy. Unblemished by life or sorrow or thought, he was so smooth it made you want to touch him.” She cackled a dry cackle. “Certainly it made me want to touch him.” Her smile was reminiscent. “His only evident knack was for horses. When he climbed onto the back of his mare, Gypsy, he and animal were transformed into a centaur. That ability to be one with animals is one sort of intelligence, I suppose.

“Cox's snow began falling, as I was saying, on a Thursday. I was in Miss Abigail's first-floor bedroom when the first flakes drifted past the windows. The snow was driving from the east instead of the customary west, and I expect I said something about it to Miss Abigail. From the start, it was a most unnatural storm.”

She stared out into her summer garden, her old eyes focused on the swirling snowflakes of years ago. “They called me Midge in those days. . . .”

S
TRATFORD
P
LANTATION
, V
IRGINIA
J
ANUARY
22, 1857

The snow obscured the summit of Snowy Mountain and whitened the Jackson River Valley. It sifted into the village of SunRise, dusting the chapel and MacIver's forge. It swirled westward, softening the ruts in the stage road, enveloping Uther Botkin's modest homestead.

The Botkin place was as neat as a poor man's homestead can be. Although the hames dangling in the horse barn were worn, they were recently oiled and each hung in its proper place. The dirt path from the house to the milking barn was neatly lined with stones, the interior of the springhouse freshly whitewashed. The house was small when Uther inherited it—one large room—but since he contained so much space within his own mind, he had not thought to enlarge his domicile. Thirteen years before, when Uther received news of his legacy, he was a sixty-five-year-old itinerant schoolmaster whose wealth consisted of a one-volume edition of Shakespeare, works of Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Paine, saddlebags to protect these books, and a mule which transported him and his capacious understanding to rural communities seeking to improve their young. Uther hadn't seen his Uncle William since childhood. Uncle William, a Presbyterian elder at SunRise Chapel, had his only son caught up in the “Businessman's Revival,” which was subsequent to and only slightly less influential than the “Great Awakening” earlier in the century. These revivals emptied established congregations in favor of the Baptists, and Uncle William's son was among those who repented and was duly immersed. In their infrequent, dutiful correspondence, Uther and Uncle William had never touched upon religion. Doubtless Uncle William would have found his nephew's Deism as offensive as his son's vigorous evangelical Baptism, but Uncle William never thought to inquire. If a schoolmaster wasn't Presbyterian, what was he? Therefore, in his last will and testament, Uncle William bypassed his own issue in favor of his nephew, Uther.

Uther Botkin's legacy was eighty acres of limestone ledge and shallow topsoil bordering Stratford Plantation. The property was conveyed with three milk cows, a team of horses, half a dozen sheep, and twice that many hogs. Chickens and guinea hens scratched in the dirt and roosted in trees. The barn's feed room contained basket beehives, scythes, wheat cradles, hay forks, and those small tools necessary to a plantation of modest size. Uther Botkin also inherited a servant: Jesse Burns. Jesse was ten years of age, already unusually strong.

Uther Botkin had been a thoroughgoing schoolmaster, instructing his charges in arithmetic, geometry, spelling, rhetoric, and his special pleasure, history. The rapid changes sweeping the South greatly affected Uther's students. Sequential generations were invigorated by religious revivals, frightened by Nat Turner's uprising, and engrossed by the arguments of the Nullifiers. They admired John Calhoun over the nation's founders, Washington, Jefferson, and Adams.

“Calhoun would destroy the country,” Uther once complained.

One of his pupils, a planter's son, retorted with a citation from that senator: “Duty is ours. Events belong to God.”

The old schoolmaster sighed.

Upon the news of his unexpected legacy, Uther resigned his post, proposed marriage, and with his new wife perched on the mule he walked beside, made his way toward distant blue-tinged mountains.

Had Uther Botkin more practical experience of the world, he might have wondered why his bride's family was so willing to match an eighteen-year-old maiden of good character with a man so much older whose prospects were entirely an attorney's letter promising a legacy of unknown value. A more experienced man than Uther might have noticed Martha's pallor, her frail arms, the telltale crimson spots of the consumptive in her cheeks, but Uther was a mental virgin as surely as he was a physical one, and in this instance, ignorance was bliss. The unlikely couple fell deeply in love. If either noticed the shabby condition of the one-room cabin where they spent their first nights of connubial joy before the fire, neither ever remarked on it.