Sarny (8 page)

“I ain’t your girl and you ain’t
about
to be giving me no orders!” Lucy she wasn’t smiling but it didn’t matter because the old lady she didn’t want to hear her.

“Excuse me.” Miss Laura she stepped down from the carriage, one small foot on the metal step below the door, other on the ground, floated down, Bartlett holding his hand for her to brace on. Didn’t I know how much power she had I wouldn’t have believed it was the same woman.

“We need to rest our horses and rub them down. Would you have a room or cottage for us to spend the night in?”

“Of course, my dear. Of course. I’ll have the servants show your darkies where to put the horses.”

And she turned and disappeared back into the house. Left us standing. No servants came—weren’t any servants. Wasn’t anybody but the old lady and soon as she turned she seemed to forget we were there.

“Well.” Miss Laura she shook her head and put her hands on her hips. “I guess this means we’ll take care of ourselves. So much for Southern courtesy.” She looked around. Wasn’t much to see. Couple of old sheds, hog
barn, old quarters—nothing on
earth
could get me to sleep in there and I ’spect Lucy she felt the same—and a carriage house.

“There, Bartlett. Over the carriage house there seems to be a room. You unharness the horses and put them in the paddock in back of the shed. I don’t suppose there is anything like grain on the place, but they’ll be fine on green grass. We’ll stay in the room over the carriage house. It probably leaks, but it doesn’t look like rain.”

Bartlett stood off to the side and had the team pull the carriage over near the carriage house, then went to unhooking them, and we went inside and up some steps to the room.

Dirty, dusty with old rat pellets everywhere but it looked dry. Way better than under an oak with rain dripping down your neck, I thought. Miss Laura she found a broom in a corner and handed it to Lucy. “Lucy, you sweep it down while we carry in some food and social comforts. Tyler Two can help you.” She smiled. “And it’s
not
an order.”

Lucy she laughed and took the broom and soon there was a cloud of dust so thick you couldn’t see through it.

We lugged and carried. Miss Laura she pulled as much as I did and when Bartlett he was done with the horses he helped us and before tight dark we had a couple of candles
lighting the place and a blanket for each person on the floor. Almost seemed like a home.

“I don’t see any lights at the house.” Miss Laura she looked out a small window. “I suspect the old woman has gone to bed, which is all to the good. I didn’t relish the thought of calling on her. She’s a dragon.”

She dug in a carpet bag Bartlett had brought up and came out with four plates, spoons and knives and forks, and had Lucy spread them on a blanket on the floor. “Now we’re set. I’m sorry I don’t have one for Tyler Two, but he’s asleep anyway. Lucy, you did a splendid job cleaning—my compliments.”

Lucy she smiled that light-up smile of hers and rearranged the plates like she’d been doing it all her life and hadn’t been eating in quarters.

“Bartlett, I think this calls for a jar of preserves and some bread and cheese and a little ham, don’t you?”

“Whatever you say, Miss Laura.” He left and went down to the carriage and came back in a minute with a sack and we soon were eating cheese and ham and bread with apple preserves off of plates.

“No, no, Lucy, you hold the fork like this.” Miss Laura she helped Lucy and I copied. Never used a fork before, only a spoon and the tip of a sticking knife. Never saw plates
like these before. Held one up and you could almost see through them. Flowers painted all over them so pretty you could almost smell them. I was so hungry my jaw ached and I was chewing and started crying. Dumb. Seemed to be crying
all
the time. Couldn’t help it. Miss Laura she saw it.

“Why, Sarny—what makes you cry?”

“Nothing …”

“Come now. Something is bothering you. What is it?”

“Just thinking on how it’s always been like this for some people. All the time Delie and the rest of us were in the quarters having to live hard somebody was sitting eating with forks on plates with flowers on them. Just thinking on it made me sad for all of them before. That’s all. Just thinking on it made me wet up. Don’t mean anything much.”

Miss Laura she leaned across the blanket and touched me on the arm. “We each live in our own time.” Her voice was soft. Like she was talking to a little girl. Soft with love. “And we must do the best we can with our time. Those who came before weren’t as lucky as us and we aren’t as lucky as some who may come later. We must still live in our own time and do the best we can.”

Lucy she was sitting still, listening, catching every word. Every word. And she raised up,
put her fork down. “What do you mean us? You’re talking like you’re like we are—like you’ve had to live in a quarters.”

“We all have our own quarters,” Miss Laura said, voice still soft.

“Yes, but you’re not colored.”

Miss Laura she didn’t say anything for a second but she looked at me, quick look, and then away. “Be that as it may, we all have our quarters.”

She served us each a sweet preserved peach from a jar and we ate it with our forks, holding them the way she showed us, cutting small pieces and chewing them, tasting the sugar in them.

Bartlett he left to check the horses and came back in a minute. “They’re fidgeting. I’m going to sleep in the paddock in case something comes to bother them.”

He took his blanket and left and Miss Laura she stood up. “Well, let’s get some sleep. I think we should be moving before daybreak, don’t you?”

Lucy and me we just had our shifts, which we slept in. But Miss Laura she had to take off her dress and then one petticoat after another. Lord, I haven’t ever
seen
so many petticoats. When she got down to a satin slip she spread a comforter on her blanket, took a pillow from a bag Bartlett had brought up and
tucked herself in. Just before I blew the candles out I saw her reach in her handbag and take out a small pistol.

She saw me look at it. “One hates surprises,” she said. “Especially when one is sleeping.”

I blew out the light and laid there for a long time, not sleeping, thinking on all she had said and how we had to live and I thought, fine. I’ll live in my own time. Long as I have my children to live with me.

Suits me fine.

New Orleans it wasn’t much. Like a lot of things the way we ’spected it to be didn’t happen. I had in my mind towers rising to the sky. Don’t know why. Nobody ever said it was that way but in my brain I had it pictured like that.

The war it ended three days after we spent the night at the old lady’s. We were traveling down the road and suddenly the soldiers around us set to whooping and hollering. We had a new escort. Miss Laura she had another letter from another general. Lucy she said without thinking, “You must know ’bout every general there is.”

“And many who aren’t generals,” Miss Laura said, smiling. “Yet.”

The officer in charge of the escort stopped and talked to the soldiers who were hollering and then came back to the carriage.

“Great days,” he said. “The war is over. They’ve signed a peace at Appomattox.”

“Who won?” Miss Laura asked.

“Why, we did, of course.” The officer smiled. “It was a foregone conclusion, wasn’t it?”

“Of course.” Miss Laura smiled up at him. “Of course it was—how could you be beaten? I was just joking.”

And I thought she’d have said the same thing was she talking to a Southern officer and they had won but I didn’t say anything. Woman knew how to live in her own time and make the best of it.

The travel went better after that and we made twice as much in a day and in two more days we came to New Orleans.

Wasn’t so much. By the time we got to New Orleans we’d been through so many towns I couldn’t remember their names. Big ones and little ones. Some of them Miss Laura she would keep the curtains closed on the carriage and sometimes we went through two towns in a day. Most of them were smoking and broken with people trying to pick up the pieces.

Finally we came around a bend in the road and Bartlett tapped on the side of the carriage top and said, “There’s home.”

Miss Laura she opened the curtains and pointed ahead. “There’s New Orleans.”

So I looked but didn’t see much but another town on a good-sized river. River kind of
curved around from the side and the town tucked in down to the edge and I was some excited but not by the town.

Thought on little Delie and Tyler. They were here. Turned to Miss Laura. “When can I get my children?”

She nodded. “Ahh yes. I had forgotten Mr. Chivington and your babies. Let me see—it’s late afternoon now and will be evening before we get there. Chivington needs to be handled delicately—he’s a fussy man, as I remember him.”

“Doesn’t he give me my children I’ll kill him where he stands.”

Miss Laura smiled. Small, tight. Nodded. “Yes. I understand. But it’s possible that he doesn’t have your children. He may have given them to somebody else or sold them or sent them off for one reason or another.”

“He can’t sell them. Slavery is against the law now. Done.”

She sighed. “Yes. Slavery is illegal now. You’re right, Sarny. But I’m afraid it isn’t necessarily finished. There will always be slavery in some part of the world and always be men willing to buy and sell people.”

Like a cold blade through my heart. All the fighting, the battles we saw to stop it and she says slavery will still be there. Sell my babies. No. He couldn’t do that.

“Don’t worry just yet. He hadn’t had the children long, and the war just ended three days ago. It’s simply that we must handle it carefully so we don’t alarm him. If he feels threatened, he might never tell us where they are. We have to be nice.” She stopped smiling. “At least at first …” She thought on it for a time, looking out the window. “I’ll throw a welcome-home party for myself day after tomorrow and invite him along with others. It’s short notice, but I think we can succeed. Once we get him relaxed and happy, we’ll go to work on him. Can you wait two more days?”

“Have to.” She was smart, smartest person I’d ever seen and trying to help me and I’d do anything she said but it cut bad, deep, having to wait.

Town was all noise, crowded with people, but there wasn’t a sign of war. I found later there wasn’t much fighting going on here. Bartlett he had to pull the carriage down to a slow walk and it took us near a half hour to work through the streets until he stopped the horses and Miss Laura she opened the carriage door and stepped down. “Home.”

I climbed out holding Tyler Two and Lucy she jumped down from the top.

“Ain’t this something?” she said, eyes wide, smiling at all the people walking past us. “Did you ever even
think
on a place like this?”

And I had to admit it was more than the other towns. It just kept moving. People all hurrying one way or the other. On one corner there was a man cranking a box that made tinny music and he had a tiny spit of dog on a string dancing on its back legs to the music.

Stupid, I thought. Dancing dog. What’s it good for? But the man had a tin cup and people dropped pennies in it when they walked past. I wouldn’t have done it. Pay a penny to see a dog dance. But some did and the man’d smile and crank harder.

All sorts of people. Black people, white people. Some in rags, both black and white, some dressed in fine clothes, both black and white, some pretty and some fence ugly, both black and white. For a breath I watched it, thought on it, marveled on it, and then I saw a small black head and thought on Tyler, almost called his name before I saw it couldn’t be him. Too tall and I looked away, saw another black child and then another boy dancing to an old black man playing a fiddle for more people to drop money in a box on the ground.

Children everywhere and every one I looked at made me think on Tyler or little Delie and I had to hold myself to keep from running after them.

“Are you going to stand all day?” Lucy she
was back on top of the carriage holding a hat-box down to me. “We have work to do.”

I shook my head. “Was thinking on Tyler and little Delie.” I looked and was surprised to see Miss Laura she had gone. Big building with three floors, open place in the middle with black iron gate like bars, only made into pretty shapes. The gate was open and led into the open place full of green plants and vines that climbed the walls and a stairway up the side.

“Take some boxes. Bartlett and Miss Laura they went up those stairs on the side and down to a door. “Get to carrying.”

I took an armload and headed up the steps, down a balcony to an open door and stepped in. For a bit I couldn’t see much because of the boxes but Bartlett he was there and he took them from me and I looked around.

“Oh my …”

It was like a … a … I don’t know what. I didn’t know on castles then, hadn’t learned on them, but that’s what it was like. I was in a big room with high ceilings and paintings all over the walls and flowered wallpaper so real you could smell the flowers and tall windows with drapes made of cloth that caught the light coming in and seemed to glow inside. In the middle of the room was a large dark wood table, all polished and shined ’cept it had
some dust on it. Over against the wall was a tall wooden box thing that I found later was a piano. It all took my breath away. “Oh my …”

Miss Laura she was standing there, holding Tyler Two by the hand to keep him in one place. “You like my little home?”

“
You live here
?”

She nodded.

“In
all
the rooms?” There were doors off to the side of the big room on both sides. Eight of them. Doors so tall I couldn’t have reached the top standing on my toes.

She laughed. “Well, yes. Of course, you and Lucy will live in one, and Bartlett lives in one, and there is a kitchen in one, and two are for baths, and there are two other rooms for … other reasons.”

“Bath?”

“A place to make water and clean up. I have two of them. One for you and Lucy and Bartlett and one for myself.”