Freeman, page 14
“We would like to buy a small sack of rice,” said Prudence.
He nodded toward a far wall. “Right there behind you,” he said, in the same terse voice.
Bonnie was nearest, so she reached for it. And then she stopped. A delegation of women had entered the store. There were four of them, four matrons who lined themselves up expectantly, hands folded before them. You could read the hardship of the war in the fraying of their dresses, the thinness of the fabric, the stony grimness of their eyes. But their proud bearing suggested these had once been women of means.
Seeing Bonnie pause, Prudence turned. Bonnie noted with alarm that a crowd had gathered around the door. They were trapped here. She glanced at Paul. His face had turned to stone.
“I’ve wanted to meet you,” said one of the women. “You are the Yankee teacher?”
“I am Prudence Cafferty Kent,” said Prudence. “I am headmistress of the Cafferty School.” Automatically, she extended her hand. The other woman did not deign to see it.
“Why are you doing this?” she demanded. “That’s what we want to know.”
Prudence drew back her hand. “Because we are out of rice,” she said. Bonnie winced.
The woman’s mouth shrank until it was only a thin, bloodless line. “Don’t toy with me, dear. I assure you, I’m not some beardless boy you can cower. You know very well what I am asking. We are beaten. We all know that. What we can’t understand is why you all seek to rub our noses in it. Are all Yankees so petty and cruel?”
Prudence’s back stiffened. “I can assure you: we do not seek to rub your noses in anything, madam.”
“You are trying to raise the niggers above us,” said the woman. “What do you call that?”
At that, a whoop went up from the crowd outside. “You tell her, Millie!” cried a man’s voice. People slapped at the window in their approval. “Hey, now, get away from there!” yelled Socrates.
A second woman spoke up. “Do you think we gon’ just stand around while y’all try to raise the niggers up?”
The third woman cut spiteful eyes toward Bonnie as she spoke. “You may believe in treatin’ ’em as equals, sweetie, but that don’t mean the rest of us cotton to it. That may be how you all do things up North, but you ain’t up North no more.”
The fourth woman said, “You all need to go on back where you come from and let us deal with our niggers as we see fit. We know how to handle ’em. You all don’t.”
“I am here to teach! That is my only interest.” Prudence’s voice was raised and she bit off each syllable into its own separate little chip of ice.
The third woman laughed. It was a nasty sound. “Honey, you can’t teach ’em!” she shrilled, as though Prudence had said something unforgivably naïve. “They’re niggers!”
Prudence faced her, her features placid in that icy calm that sometimes overtook her when she was seething. “In that case,” she said, “you have nothing to worry about, do you? In that case, I am wasting only my own time and money, neither of which should be of any concern to you.”
The woman colored. The first woman, the one someone had called Millie, spoke up. “We dislike the precedent,” she said. “We dislike people such as you putting ideas in their woolly heads. That does nothing but ruin them and leave them unfit for performing their natural function.”
“That function is to serve their white superiors,” said Prudence. It was not a question.
The women all nodded. “Well of course,” said the first woman, Millie.
Bonnie had time to realize what would come next, time to mourn the passing of a lovely afternoon when they had walked to the store just for the pleasure of doing so. Prudence faced the woman squarely. “You truly disgust me,” she said, the syllables again bitten off in slivers of ice.
The woman’s color drained. The entire room seemed to gasp. “I beg your pardon?” she said.
“I believe I spoke clearly,” Prudence replied. “You disgust me, all you lords and ladies of the benighted South, in all your delusions of your own superiority. If you truly were superior, we would not be having this conversation.” Bonnie grabbed Prudence’s elbow. Prudence jerked her arm away, her eyes never once leaving Millie’s.
“You are not superior,” she said. “To the contrary, were I ever given to choose, I should prefer an afternoon spent playing checkers over a cracker barrel with the meanest, most unlettered Negro tramp to a high tea in the company of any one of you.”
A huge moan went up from the crowd outside as if a great blow had been struck in a boxing match. As, thought Bonnie, perhaps one had. Millie’s hand flew to her chest and she glared at Prudence. People banged harder on the glass.
“You all need to get,” the shopkeeper told them. He was, Bonnie saw, frightened for his window.
“How we s’posed to get?” asked Paul, his eyes on the mob massed in front of the store.
“We shall not leave without what we came to buy,” announced Prudence, whipping around. “They will not chase us off.”
Her right hand, Bonnie saw, was inside the dress pocket where the little derringer resided. How quickly this day had turned. She was relieved to see the Union soldiers just then, moving toward the crowd. “What’s going on here?” she heard one of them demand.
“You lot move along,” ordered another.
As the soldiers waded into the crowd to disperse it, the shopkeeper stared at Prudence with eyes that judged her to be mad. Then he came around the counter, brushed past the three of them, stabbed his hand out and grabbed the rice Bonnie had been reaching for. He shoved it in Prudence’s arms. “Get out,” he said, retreating once again behind his counter.
“What is our bill?” asked Prudence, setting the sack on the counter and reaching for a little coin purse.
“Nothing,” he said. “Take it, and get out of here. And don’t come back. Tell Ginny if she needs something from now on, she can come get it. Or she can send one of these niggers. But”—a quivering index finger aimed at Prudence’s face—“you are not to come into my establishment ever again.”
He pushed the sack at her. Prudence didn’t move. Finally, Paul stepped forward and took it. Still Prudence didn’t move. She stared at the shopkeeper and for a moment, Bonnie feared what her sister would say. But Prudence only looked, only let him see that she was not cowed—not by him, not by these women, not by the whole rebel army if it should encamp right outside this door. When she was satisfied he understood that, she wheeled around to go, her steps so brisk Millie had to dodge out of her path.
The soldiers had succeeded in clearing much of the crowd away from the door. The rest simply scrambled from her path as quickly as they could. Bonnie didn’t blame them. Prudence’s eyes were a cold fire. She walked as if she might walk through you. Bonnie and Paul found themselves rushing to keep up.
Already she could hear the buzz of conversation building behind them. Bonnie looked back. White people clotted the street, eyes following them back toward the Negro district. But nobody chased after them. They had had enough of Prudence to last them awhile.
Bonnie trotted up on Prudence’s right. “Slow down, sister,” she said.
Prudence looked at her, sighed, then slackened her pace. “The nerve of them,” she said. “The absolute nerve of them. They believe they have a right to interrogate us? To intimidate us? Because we are opening a school? Never in my life have I seen such prideful, infuriating, ignorant people.”
“I told you, did I not? I have been telling you all along. But you were too stubborn to listen.”
“I listened,” protested Prudence.
“No,” said Bonnie. “You say you listen, you always say you listen. But then, in the end, you always do exactly as you please.”
“That was a right foolish thing to do,” said Paul. He had come up on her left.
Prudence stopped. They all stopped. “I beg your pardon?”
He swallowed, but held his ground. “I said it was foolish, Miss Prudence. You catch more flies with honey, my ol’ mammy use to say.”
“Mr. Cousins, what in the world are you talking about?”
“I’se just sayin’, with them kind of folks, you got to know how to jolly ’em. You got to go along to get along. Can’t always say what you want to say, especially when they got all the power on they side and they’s more of them than they is of you.”
And even though she felt the same way, even though she had just said as much to Prudence herself, something about Paul’s words vexed Bonnie Cafferty. “Is that what we are supposed to do?” she demanded. “Smile at them as they insult us and belittle us? Nod our heads and shuffle our feet as they threaten and try to intimidate us? I am sorry, Paul. Maybe you find that easy to do, but I fear we do not.”
The hurt that crumpled his face made her sorry she had said it. Almost. She looked at Prudence and found eyes she could not read. “Come,” Prudence said, “Miss Ginny will be waiting for us.”
They walked the rest of the way in silence, the street changing in reverse, livery stables and dry goods stores becoming two-story houses with white children playing in the yards, becoming little shotgun houses crammed with colored. At the end of the block, at the very end of the town, towered the warehouse. And what they saw as they approached it made them bypass Miss Ginny’s and go to stand out in front under the sign that said “Cafferty School For Freedmen.”
The big splash of whitewash staining the wall was fresh, still dripping. The splatter was stark against the near-black wood of the old building. It obliterated the sign.
They stood there a moment, watching streaks of paint race once another to the ground. Nobody spoke. Finally, Prudence stepped forward to test the lock on the big doors. It was sound. She went to the side of the building and checked that lock as well. Apparently satisfied, she came back around to where Bonnie stood, fighting back frustration tears, and where Paul kept shaking his head.
She looked at them. “We shall require a new sign,” she said. “Mr. Cousins, please see to it.”
Sam and Ben sat together as they had for hours, in a long line on a long bench in a long and darkened hallway. They were just outside a tall wooden door upon which was painted in flaking gold letters the words “Mayor’s Office.” But it was not the mayor’s office and had not been ever since the federals seized the town. Now it was the office of the provost marshal and the entrance was flanked by two soldiers, one of whom stood aside as the door opened and an old colored man shuffled out. He was sucking at toothless gums in apparent dissatisfaction with the justice he had received inside.
“Next,” said the soldier, and a young colored man next to Sam sprang to his feet, hat in hand, and went inside.
“’Bout time,” said Ben.
They had lost the better part of a day in this valley town in the extreme southwestern tip of Virginia and he was not happy about it.
“We need to tell someone in authority what we saw,” said Sam. He said it patiently. He had been saying it for days.
“Been pert’ near a week ago,” said Ben. “You think it still matters?”
Sam shrugged. “I am sure it matters to Sister. I am sure it matters to those children. ‘I slept, and dreamed that life was Beauty; I woke, and found that life was Duty.’ That was written by a woman named Ellen Sturgis Hooper. It means we have duties in this life, Ben, obligations to more than just ourselves and our interests.”
Ben stared at him a long moment. Finally, he growled frustration, crossed his arms over his chest, found something at the far end of the hall to look at. A man came up the stairs opposite them. He groaned when he saw the length of the line. Then he took a seat at the end.
Sam drew his right foot up to massage the agony that now lived there. It was another reason, if he were honest about it, that he didn’t mind spending most of the day waiting to see the man in charge of this district of Virginia: it meant that he could rest. He had caught a thorn in the ball of his right foot days before, and even though he had pulled it, the foot was now swollen and discolored, the wound oozing white pus that had turned to mud on his dirty skin. The foot throbbed like a tooth.
“That foot don’t look like it gettin’ any better,” said Ben, watching him.
“I know,” said Sam.
Somewhere near the end of the line, a baby bawled, screeching out its frustration with life. A woman in the middle of the line coughed a thick, wet cough, then leaned her head back against the wall, eyes closed, tears leaking. There were about 30 of them in all waiting there, and except for a few murmured conversations, they waited in silence. To glance down the line was to stare into unrelieved negritude, wide, solemn brown eyes in dark faces, looking out upon a world gone suddenly, abruptly, unknown. What in all their lives had ever been more frightening or unsettling than freedom?
Up the stairs came a colored woman dressed in rags—a head wrap and a thin old dress covered with patches, all of them in different colors, as though stitched together by a magpie. Her hopeful smile revealed teeth that were discolored and few. Her eyes, shiny with rheum, lit on Sam. She approached him without hesitation and for an instant, he wondered absurdly if he knew her. But there was no recognition in those eyes. Just something eager and heartrending.
She spoke without preamble. “I’se looking for my daughter,” she said, in a voice rough like burlap. She took Sam’s hands in her own and lifted them. Hers were bony and cool. The nails were jagged.
“I beg your pardon?” said Sam.
“I’se looking for my little girl,” she said. “Is you seen her?”
Sam was confused. “Ma’am, how would I know if I have seen her or not? I do not know your daughter.”
She shook her head, smiling her wet smile to assure him. “Oh, you’d know her if you saw her,” she promised. “She was such a pretty little thing, prettiest baby you ever did see, I expect.”
Sam felt something cold flow through him, as though his blood had become ice water. He was aware of Ben, staring. “Baby?” he said.
She was still smiling, but now some irreducible mourning crept in from the edges of her gaze. “Marse sold her from me, pert’ near 20 years ago, I reckon.”
“Do you know who he sold her to? Do you know where she is?”
The woman shook her head vigorously. Then she grinned. “But I’se bound to find her. Yes, sir, I is.”
It struck Sam that the war had left the slaves a nation of mad women and men, rootless, homeless, wandering about, looking for wives, looking for children, trying to get back that which could never be retrieved, put back what once was, and never mind that you knew (though you would never admit it even to yourself) that this was not possible. You tried anyway and sometimes, as now with this wretched woman, the trying left you broken. A loathing climbed through him like rising water for white men and all their cruelty and arrogance. Look what it had done. To him, to her, to this line of negritude stretching to the end of the bench, the end of this broken country.
He was surprised to feel tears forming in his eyes. The woman watched him quizzically. There was something delicate and birdlike in the way she cocked her head to regard him from different angles with her merry eyes. Sam coughed to steady his voice. He spoke gently. “I shall look for your baby girl,” he said. “If I see her, I will tell you.”
Her face brightened. “You promise me?”
Sam gave the bony fingers a soft squeeze. “I do promise,” he said.
She nodded. Then she was standing in front of Ben and lifting his hand. “I’se looking for my little girl,” she began.
“I heard,” said Ben. “I’ll let you know if I see her.”
And on she went to the next person in the line. “Poor old woman,” said Ben when she was out of earshot. “Feel sorry for her. I surely do.”
“Are we so different?” asked Sam. This earned him a sharp look. He shrugged. “You and I are out here just as she is, searching for what we will probably never find.”
“Speak for yourself. I got enough sense to know my daughter ain’t no baby no more. Got to be near ’bout seven, eight year old by now. And I know where she is, too, or where I left her, anyway. She in Tennessee with her mama.”
“Yes,” said Sam, “but what I mean is, even if you find her, even if I find Tilda, it is not going to be as we remember it. Time does not stand still. They have changed, we have changed. You cannot return to what used to be.”
“You sayin’ you ready to give up then? Go on back up North and forget all about it?” The question was a challenge.
“No,” said Sam, “of course not.”
“Then hush up about it. Don’t nobody need to hear that kind of thing.” His words were hard, but his voice was not. His voice was imploring, the voice of a man who desperately does not want to hear his fears spoken aloud.
Sam said, “Perhaps you are right.” He went back to massaging his foot.
Moments later, the door opened and the young colored man came out, his expression grim with satisfaction. Sam had time to glance at Ben. Then the young soldier said, “Next,” and they stood together and walked into what had once been the office of the mayor.
The provost was an Army colonel, a big man with a drooping moustache and the black stump of a dead cigar in his teeth. He sat writing at a table in the middle of a vast room illuminated by light from a pair of tall windows. At the sound of their entrance, he flicked them with a glance, then went back to his writing. “And what is it I can do for you boys?” he asked. His words were light, but his voice was leaden with tedium.
Sam and Ben exchanged another glance. Then Sam said, “We saw a killing.”
This brought his head up, narrowed his gray eyes. “You saw what?” he asked around the dead cigar.
“We saw a killing,” said Sam.
“Who is it you’re saying was killed?” He produced a fresh sheet of paper and began writing.
“He called himself Brother. His name was Eli.”
“White? Colored?”
“He was colored. The man who shot him was white. We saw them, but they did not see us.”
