Sarny (11 page)

Went on all night.

People just didn’t want to leave. One of the women—tall woman, all legs but older than Lucy by a good ten years—sat at the piano just before dawn and started singing sad songs about the war. ’Bout boys that weren’t coming home and laying buried in far fields, ’bout women dying of broken hearts. Everybody got quiet and then started in to crying and leaning on each other.

Still drinking. Never stopped drinking until, finally, when the sun was coming in the windows by the piano, finally somebody came to me for his coat and they started leaving. Sniffling, laughing, hugging Miss Laura and thanking her for the party, they came for their coats and left and each of them gave me a coin when I got their clothes.

“For your trouble,” they’d say.

Every one of the men handed me money
and I put it in the pocket of my uniform dress and thanked them.

At last they were gone. Miss Laura she had some hair loose but I swear didn’t look any the worse for it. Lucy she was sitting in a chair by the table sound asleep. Straight up and sound asleep. I was afraid to sit down for fear the same thing would happen to me.

“Well,” Miss Laura said. “Wasn’t that a party?”

“And I got my babies back.”

“Yes. You got them back. Oh, Chivington wasn’t as bad as we thought. He was passing the yard in his carriage and saw them in the pens and knew the war was moving south. He said he bought them to get them out before something bad could happen to them.”

“Didn’t try to find their mother, though, did he?”

“No. He didn’t come looking for you. Still, he said he didn’t hurt them and meant to raise them after a fashion. He’s very rich and never married and wants to leave his money to somebody; or perhaps he was just bored. No matter, I believe in his way he would take good care of Tyler Two … if you agree.” She looked around the room and sighed. “Quite a night!”

“I’ll get to cleaning here in a minute.”

“You’ll do no such thing. We’re all going to
sleep before we do another thing—ahh, Bartlett, how thoughtful.”

Bartlett he had come out of the kitchen with another bottle and a tray with four glasses. It was some of that cordial and he poured each glass half full and handed them to us. Woke Lucy up and handed her one too but she set it down and went back to sleep.

“To the end of the war,” Miss Laura said, “and the end of slavery but mostly to Sarny’s babies coming home.”

Drank to that and then went into my room and laid down next to little Delie and Tyler and closed my eyes.

Happiest day of my life.

Settled in.

Pretty soon it was like I’d always been there. Before long I was marketing as good as Bartlett—or near as good—and had learned to cook all the fancy things and knew what Miss Laura she liked for different times.

Same breakfast every morning. One egg, boiled soft on the inside, white part hard, two pieces of toast and thick black coffee with chicory in it when she got up. Though she didn’t get up sometimes until middle of the day, ’specially had she been entertaining.

Sometimes a second meal in the afternoon. Little fruit and cheese with vegetable. Usually a dinner—I called it supper—did she have company in the evening. Some of those dinners would break the table. Leg of lamb, whole suckling pig, ten-pound beef roast, pheasants or ducks, sweet potatoes, turnips, bowls of candy. Sometimes be just two of them and they’d only eat a speck and then we’d
have leftovers for days. I never ate so well in my life before or after as picking up from Miss Laura’s dinners.

And the guests sometimes handed me a dollar, when I got their coats. Miss Laura she said these were tips. I always shared the money with Lucy and Bartlett but even so it come near doubling my wage.

Forty dollars a month and nothing to spend it on. I put it all in a sock in my room and slept with it under my head. Just in case, I thought—felt good having that money there. Knew did it all stop I had enough to get off somewhere and start over.

The children they came along better than I could hope. Miss Laura she had one more room which she gave to Lucy for her own self and that left me my room with the children. I found two small beds for three dollars at the market and made them up for little Delie and Tyler and set them to learning right away. Tyler Two he moved to Chivington’s.

I started in to learning right off my own self. Miss Laura she gave me some of her own books and she found some books for children called primers and I used them for Tyler and little Delie and before too many weeks had passed I had them reading at a good rate. Tyler he was some slower than little Delie and he’d frown and make the words sound out
loud sometimes when he read but he started getting it and pretty soon read without even moving his lips.

My own self I couldn’t believe how much there was to learn. Thought just in living I’d learned such a load my head couldn’t hold it all. Miss Laura she alone taught me so much I was near to bursting with it, and Bartlett, and guests who came and sometimes talked when I could hear them—I just kept learning. But when I got inside the books she brought me! Oh my, oh my Lord.

Started learning on the world. It went everywhere, went on forever. Read about other places, other times, other people. Read things made me laugh and some made me cry. Read on great men and some so downright bad they made Waller look good. Read every night when I could, when I didn’t have to work, sitting by the milk-glass lamp with the book while my babies slept. Sometimes read sitting in the bathtub and thought once God, not swearing but praying, God if you could just let Delie see me now sitting in bubbles and hot water reading.

One day Miss Laura she gave me a book by a man named Shakespeare. Book was a play, called
Hamlet
, and I set to reading it. Hard at first, kind of music I couldn’t make in my head right off but then I pushed at it and one
night it all went into my brain and I started to see it. Couldn’t believe it. Sitting alone with the lamp and my babies sleeping, reading this man Miss Laura said had been dead hundreds of years. I couldn’t believe it was just him. He was so good, made words so good I thought it must have come from God in some way. Couldn’t be a man write like that just his own self. Had to come from God and I started in to reading the Bible while I read on
Hamlet
, trying to see was it all in the Bible some place, was it all in God’s word but it wasn’t. It was Shakespeare.

Thought, thank you. Sitting there just thought thank you. To Nightjohn for bringing me reading, for Miss Laura for bringing me the book and mostly to Shakespeare for writing such a thing.

More to it. Few days later I was talking on Shakespeare to Miss Laura and she told me he had written other plays, many plays, and she would get them for me and when she did I found they were all like that first one. All good. All so good they must have come from more than a man.

Read after that all the time. Sometimes carried a book with me to the market. Miss Laura she gave us one day a week off and I’d take the children down by the river and sit in the grass in the sun with them and read Shakespeare
out loud to them while they watched the big paddle wheelers going by on their way up the river.

Later Tyler he told me, later when he was a man and doing man things, studying on being a doctor, later than that when he was married and giving me grandchildren, that later he told me once he thought the finest thing that ever happened to him was sitting by the river having me read Shakespeare on a summer day.

Finest thing.

Lucy got to be more colty every day and there came a time when Miss Laura she saw one of the guests looking at Lucy the wrong way. Lucy she just couldn’t help it. You could have put her in gunnysacks and Lucy she would have shown through some way. In her eyes, her smile.

“We have got to get her married,” Miss Laura said one morning when I brought her breakfast. “Soon.”

“Yes ma’am.” She’d have me bring two cups and sit and have coffee while she ate breakfast and we planned the day. Loved that coffee in the morning. Would put two spoons of sugar in it and thick cream and it just made my whole day. Can still smell the chicory in it. Get Lucy married. “I thought that back on
the plantation and on the road coming here—she pulls them in like flies to honey.”

“Well, we’re not without resources.” She took a bite of toast. Chewed it with small bites. For such a big woman in her mind, she was dainty in her manner. “I will look for a suitable husband for her.”

Only time I saw Miss Laura fail.

Oh, she found a husband. Found a dozen of them. She put the word out that she was shopping for Lucy and we had to beat them off with sticks. Some were bad, some were good and some were better than good. One man he wore a twenty-dollar suit and had a derby and two houses and his own carriage. Plus didn’t you look too close at his teeth he was fair to good looking.

But Lucy she had met a man in the market. Boy, really, not much older than her but she fell in love with him, or what she thought to be love, and she brought him home to meet us. Meet the family.

Carl. Had a last name—Jefferson. Carl Jefferson. Had been a slave and when freedom came he went to work carrying loads at the grain booth in the market. My own self I’d been spending some extra time at the market talking to Stanley. Just talking, mind, ’cept Stanley he wanted it to go some further. But I was all for just talk for a time. Wasn’t going to
hurry into anything until I saw how he was with Delie and Tyler, and besides, it wasn’t like Martin. Didn’t feel that same feeling when I saw him. Something nice but not the same. Didn’t make my stomach flop.

Carl Jefferson. Nice boy. But just about as dumb as a field stone. I swear did his brain not do it for him he’d forget to take a breath.

So naturally Lucy she falls in love with this Carl. Don’t even look at all the prospects Miss Laura found for her. Looks right past them to this Carl and they find a minister for a dollar who marries them and they take off. Clean away. Lucy she came and said to Miss Laura, “Carl and I are leaving.”

I stood with my mouth open.

“Leaving?” Miss Laura was holding a glass of cordial and she set it down on the table carefully. “You’re actually going away?”

“Yes ma’am. We’re going up North to find work.”

And blamed if they didn’t. Left that day and ’bout two months later I got a letter from Lucy. They had found work at a meat-packing place in Chicago and Lucy she was with child and said she couldn’t be happier. Funny edge to the letter though. Short sentences like she’d thought on them too much before writing them and I found later it wasn’t all true. She was with child all right and Carl he had a
job at the meat-packing place but he had found whiskey and liked it and was hitting her now and again. It went bad to worse and he beat her solid once and she left him and married again. This time got a good one name of Buddy and had a good life after that. Three children and they all grew and lived and she wrote to me every Christmas until one day her heart it quit, when she was about sixty, and that was the last I heard of her family. Too short to live, sixty. You don’t really learn much on life until then and it’s a shame not to get to use it.

Then one day Stanley and me we were down by the river sitting and he asked me to marry him. He’d asked before, maybe half a dozen times, and I put him off. Thought on it now though and nodded. “All right. But I want to talk to Miss Laura first.”

Did it at breakfast while we were sitting drinking coffee planning the day.

“Miss Laura, Stanley he asked me to marry him and I’m going to do it.”

She put her coffee down. Same as when Lucy had told her. “Does this mean you’re leaving too?”

“No ma’am. I couldn’t leave you even if I wanted to and I don’t want to. I just don’t want to do it unless you think I should.”

“You would have to move in with Stanley. He wouldn’t want to live here.”

“Yes ma’am. I thought we would rent a small house down there by the river. I’d come here every morning and make breakfast and work late when you had a guest. Same as now. It ain’t but a ten-minute walk to the river.”

“I think”—she took a breath and smiled—“it’s a wonderful idea. Do you want a big wedding?”

“No ma’am. I was married before and I don’t want a fuss.”

“Very well, but I’m very good at things like this.”

“I know, ma’am. But I still want to keep it small. We’ll just go to a preacher.”

Miss Laura she nodded but she wouldn’t let it go and when Stanley and I we married up she took the children and sent us by boat north up the river and back for five days by way of a honeymoon.

Never saw anything like that boat. We had to stay in the colored section but we had a room, our own, and I saw the other parts of the boat. There was a salon room as pretty as Miss Laura’s, and just about as big. Lot of rich white men sitting there playing cards for stacks of money.

We just watched the river go by and had
meals cooked by a woman who worked on the back end of the boat just cooking for passengers. Grits and pork and cornmeal and honey and coffee in the morning so thick a spoon would ’bout stand in it. Made me think of being a little girl—some of the nice parts. Delie, praying and laughing all the time. Soft mornings with Martin. Stanley he made me think of Martin but they were different, both good in their way, and by the end of the boat ride it was like we’d been married forever.

We got back to find Miss Laura she had bought us a small house down on the river as a wedding present. Had two little bedrooms, one for us and one for the children and a small kitchen and a little parlor. Sweet little house. I painted the bedrooms soft white and the parlor a gentle tan and the kitchen white as clouds. There was some furniture there and we found more in a booth at the market and I had me a home.

Hadn’t been a year and a half since I was a slave and I had me a home for my own self and hadn’t it turned so sour it might have been my best memory.

The years seemed to blink past and for a long time things just got better.

Miss Laura she gave me a raise. Doubled me to forty dollars a month and Stanley he made close to thirty at the market and we didn’t have anything to spend it on but lamp oil and the children. Didn’t have to buy food because of what I brought home from Miss Laura’s when she entertained.