by Lynn Austin
“Because Daniel and the other boys have fought so hard, for so long. Even when they were outnumbered they kept on fighting for their homes and their country. I want to make sure my son has a comfortable home to return to.”
Olivia’s eyes filled with tears. “I-I don’t know how to say this but . . . but what if White Oak is gone? What if the Yankees destroyed it?”
Eugenia released Olivia’s hand and turned to gaze through the window. The sun that had shone so warmly on the way home from town had disappeared behind a dark cloud. “I’ve lost my husband, my firstborn son, and the life I once knew,” she finally said. “If I find that my home is also gone, I don’t know how I’ll go on—but I will. The enemy can defeat us, but they can’t break our spirits unless we let them. With God’s help, I’m going to win back everything the Yankees have stolen from me.”
3
APRIL 21, 1865
Lizzie was out in the kitchen behind the Big House, scrubbing an iron kettle when she heard one of the other house slaves calling to her. “Lizzie! Lizzie, come quick! There’s a carriage coming up the lane.”
Lizzie dropped her scrub rag and ran outside, praying beneath her breath. Oh, Lord, please! Please let it be my Otis coming home. From the moment Miz Eugenia had made Otis load up her belongings last winter and drive her and the two missies to Richmond, Lizzie had been wondering if she’d ever see her husband again. She’d heard Miz Eugenia talking about needing money real bad after Massa Philip died. Suppose she decided to sell Otis? Suppose Lizzie never saw him again? Please bring him home, Lord Jesus!
Winter had turned into spring and there had been no news from the white folks in Richmond. Neither Lizzie nor any of the other slaves who’d been left behind knew a thing about what was happening. Every day Lizzie’s boys were asking her, “Where’s Papa? When’s he coming home again?” What could she say? Life on Slave Row was filled with uncertainty and suffering, and that’s all they’d ever known. Loved ones got snatched away sometimes and were never seen again.
Lizzie’s mama had warned her not to fall in love and get married. “Just get your heart broken when he’s torn away from you,” she’d said. “Hard work and suffering’s bad enough, but losing people you love is the heaviest load you’ll ever carry.”
“But I want to get married and have babies someday,” Lizzie had tried to argue. Her mother’s voice had grown sharp.
“You listen now. If you have babies, you gonna love them. Then you have to watch them grow up and be slaves just like you, living this miserable life. And nothing you can do about it. You wish they could be running around all happy like the white babies, but as much as it hurts, you got to teach your children to obey, no matter what. They belong to the white folks, not to you. Listen to me now, Lizzie. Don’t ever fall in love. Just makes this life harder than it already is.”
Lizzie had thought about her mother’s warning all winter after Otis left, unable to shake it out of her head. But it was too late. She loved Otis more than anything in the world, and nothing could change that. His children loved him, too. But each time they pestered her she’d scold them and say, “Stop thinking about him. Stop asking about him. Maybe we never see him until we get to heaven someday, so quit asking and hoping.”
Impossible to do. That burden of love was such a heavy load that sometimes Lizzie sank to her knees beneath the weight of it. She would never stop hoping or praying, asking Jesus to please bring Otis home.
She was still drying her hands on her apron as she ran to the side yard for a view of the long tree-shaded lane. Something was kicking up a big cloud of dust, so for sure there was a carriage coming. She could hear the horse’s hooves thumping in the soft dirt, the carriage springs squeaking and creaking. But she could only catch glimpses of movement between the trees.
There’d been other visitors to the plantation in the past few weeks, and each time Lizzie called herself a fool when her hopes were raised, then dashed. All kinds of strangers had wandered up the road from the village, some saying the war had ended, others saying all the slaves were free. A bunch of Massa’s field hands had left the plantation for good, but Lizzie and the others who worked in the Big House had stayed, scared to death of leaving for fear of being hunted down and whipped half to death if it turned out it ain’t true. No, Lizzie and her kids would wait right here for Otis. And now, Please, Lord, please, maybe he was coming.
Lizzie halted beside Dolly, the cook, watching to see who was going to appear out of the dust ball boiling up the lane. “If this is Miz Eugenia,” Dolly said, “just wait till she sees what them Yankees done to her house.”
“I hope she don’t blame us.”
“Of course she’s gonna blame us. You know she is.”
Lizzie held her breath as the coach rounded the gentle curve in the lane. Please, Lord! Then—was she seeing things? No, that really was her Otis sitting tall and handsome in the driver’s seat! Her knees went weak, and she sank down on the grass. She pulled her apron over her face and wept with relief. Thank you, Lord! Thank you!
“You okay, honey?” Dolly asked, rubbing her back.
“It’s Otis! My Otis is back!” Her apron muffled her voice as she tried to contain her joy.
“He sure is, honey. And that means Miz Eugenia and her girls are probably back, too.”
“Mama! Mama!” Lizzie heard her sons calling from behind her as they raced up from Slave Row. “Is he here, Mama? Is Papa here?”
She struggled to her feet, grabbing their skinny arms just in time to stop six-year-old Jack and eight-year-old Rufus from running to their papa. “Hold on. Just wait, Rufus, honey. You just wait now.” Lizzie longed to run straight into Otis’s arms herself and hold him tight, but he would have to help unload everything first. Miz Eugenia had carted a whole pile of things with her to Richmond in that carriage. Lizzie knew because she’d helped pack everything up, wrapping fancy dishes in towels and newspapers to keep them from breaking.
Miz Eugenia’s old carriage driver, Willy, limped up from the stable to help Otis as Lizzie watched from a distance, still gripping Rufus and Jack. They were as eager to run as hounds on the scent. It seemed to take forever for the men to bring in all the trunks and boxes and pictures and whatnot that Miz Eugenia had taken with her.
“We probably have to help unpack everything now,” Dolly mumbled.
“She gonna be glad she didn’t leave it here for the Yankees to take.”
“Glad? Honey, she always finds something to complain about. Won’t be any different this time, either.”
At last, the white folks and all their belongings were back in the Big House. Otis could drive the empty carriage down to the stables, where Lizzie and the boys were waiting for him. Finally, after all these months apart, after all the waiting and worrying and praying, Lizzie was in his arms again. Otis held her for a long, long time. Then he turned to their boys, who were tugging on his raggedy pants and clamoring for his attention. He lifted Rufus in one arm and Jack in the other as if they weighed nothing at all.
“You’re crying, Papa!” Rufus wiped his father’s tears with his dirty hand, leaving a smudge on Otis’s cheek. “Why you so sad?”
“I’m crying because I’m happy, not sad. Look at your mama. She’s crying, too. Sometimes folks cry when they’re happy, don’t you know that?”
No, Lizzie’s boys probably didn’t know that. Not much to be happy about in the life they lived, always working, always hungry. This was probably the happiest day of their lives. It sure was one of Lizzie’s.
“Where’s Roselle?” Otis asked, looking around. He set the boys down and turned to unhitch the horse from the carriage.
“She was working with Cissy up in the Big House before you came. Miz Eugenia’s probably giving her a hundred things to do by now.” But Lizzie knew that her daughter wasn’t here to welcome Otis home because she didn’t feel the same way about him that Rufus and Jack did. Otis was their real daddy, but he wasn’t fifteen-year-old Roselle’s father.
Lizzie watched her man fussing over the horse, removing the bridle and brushing him down real good before putting him in the stall. He was being so careful to finish the job while Lizzie’s iron pot sat waiting in the kitchen and she didn’t care one bit.
“You boys grab some rags and help me clean the dust off this carriage,” Otis said. “I been worrying over this rig since the day I drove away from here. Lord knows how much trouble I had in Richmond, keeping Massa Philip’s horse and carriage from getting stolen.” Otis was working as if Massa might come out and holler if he didn’t. Lizzie wondered why Otis bothered. Massa and all his sons were gone, and Miz Eugenia never would set foot in this old stable.
“Everyone’s saying the war is over and we ain’t slaves no more,” Lizzie said as she watched him work. “Is that true?”
“Yep, it’s true, Lizzie-girl. I heard lots of folks talking about it in Richmond. The Yankees won and the white folks have to let all us slaves go free.”
“Me too, Papa?”
“All of us, Jack.”
“We heard the same thing,” Lizzie said, “but nobody around here knows what it means. Saul and some of the others think we get to live in the Big House now, and the missus has to move out. He says we get to take over everything.” Lizzie would never dare to dream of living in the Big House even though she knew every inch of it, upstairs and down. Her cabin on Slave Row was the only home she’d known since the day she was born. Otis laughed out loud at Saul’s silly notion.
“That sure ain’t true! Everything still belongs to the white folks, except us. They don’t own us no more. We’re free to leave White Oak and go anywhere we want.”
“Anywhere? How can that be?” Lizzie sat down on an overturned barrel as she tried to take it all in. “We can leave . . . anytime we want?”
“Yes, Lizzie-girl! The door is wide open for all of us now.”
“But where would we go? We’ll be needing food and a place to sleep at night. And what would we do all day?”
“Well, first we’ll have to change the way we think about things and start thinking like free people, I guess. Start deciding for ourselves.”
“But we ain’t supposed to decide things. Never in our life, Otis. They do all the thinking for us up there.” Lizzie tilted her head in the direction of the Big House. “Every day of our lives someone tells us what to do and how to do it, and we ain’t allowed to want anything for ourselves. They treat us like we’re no better or smarter than that horse.” And in the lowest times of her life, Lizzie feared they might be right.
“Do we have to move out of our cabin, Papa?” Jack asked. It was the only home he’d known, pitiful as it was. Neither him, his brother, nor his father had ever been inside the Big House, even when the white folks were away. Lizzie didn’t ever want her boys to know what they were missing. But Roselle worked up there. She knew. Maybe that’s why she always had her head in the clouds, dreaming up something new.
“Don’t worry. We can probably keep on living here for now,” Otis said.
“Some folks already run off,” she told him. “Rest of us been too scared to leave. We been taking care of things because that’s all we know how to do. But if what you say is true, what are we supposed to do now?”
Otis didn’t answer right away. “Well . . . I been giving it a lot of thought. The war’s been hard on the white folks, and they’re as bad off as we are. People in Richmond are starving, Lizzie. I saw Miz Eugenia standing in line for her food just like we used to do with the overseer every month because she and the missies didn’t have anything left to eat. All the plantations around here are trampled and run-down, the slaves gone who knows where. This is the only home we got, and we have three children to feed. I know we have to work hard here, but Massa ain’t never been mean to us.”
“Massa’s dead.”
“I know, I know . . .”
“Are you saying we should stay? Keep working here when we could walk away and never look back?”
“Well . . . I think—”
The clanging dinner bell outside the kitchen interrupted him, and it wasn’t even close to dinnertime. Lizzie leaped up. “What should I do? Do I have to go see what she wants?”
“You better go, Lizzie. For now.” But Lizzie wrapped her arms around her husband one more time and gave him another big hug before she did.
Cissy was ringing the life out of that bell, and Lizzie had to cover her ears when she got close to it. “What’re you making all that racket for? There a fire or something?”
“Miz Eugenia’s calling all the house slaves inside. Wants to talk to us.”
Dolly emerged from the kitchen, which was a separate building behind the Big House, joined by a wooden walkway. The white folks wanted hot meals, but they didn’t want their rooms getting hot in the summertime, so they built the kitchen outside.
“Otis says it’s true—we’re free,” Lizzie whispered to the other two women as they went inside, “and we don’t have to do a thing she says no more.”
“Better see what she wants, though,” Cissy said, shaking her head.
Miz Eugenia was waiting for them in the dining room, her chin high in the air as usual. The other house slaves were all lined up in a row, waiting like soldiers, but Lizzie’s daughter, Roselle, was looking out the dining room window as if she didn’t care a thing about what Miz Eugenia was going to say. That gal was probably dreaming of fairy tales and happy endings again. Lizzie walked over to her and nudged her with her elbow. “How many times do I have to tell you to look down at the floor when the missus is talking?” she whispered. “Pay attention now.” They had better behave the way they always had until they knew for sure that they didn’t have to.
“We’re home from Richmond to stay,” Miz Eugenia began. “We brought some food supplies back with us, but they were very hard to come by, so please try to make them last.”
Lizzie remembered what Otis had said about Missus having to stand in line to get that food. Could it really be true? Miz Eugenia gestured to the dining room table. The fine, polished tabletop was scarred and pitted with cigar burns. It sure hadn’t looked like that when she left.
“What happened here? Can you tell me, Lizzie?”
“After you left, a bunch of Yankee soldiers moved in for a while. They went all through the house and the barn and the root cellar, looking for any bite of food they could find. Good thing you told us to hide all the food or they would of cleaned us out.”
“That doesn’t answer my question. What happened to my table?”
“Them Yankees moved into this room, ma’am,” Lizzie said. “They set in here with all their papers and maps and cigars and muddy boots and they used this dining room like it was their own. They were none too careful, either. They took over the whole house, in fact, and they even slept in—”
“Stop!” Miz Eugenia held up both hands. “I don’t want to know where they slept. I don’t need to have that image in my mind every time I lay in bed. Did you wash everything thoroughly after they left?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Why are so many things missing around here, like my beautiful rugs?”
“Them Yankees stole your rugs and your paintings and a lot of other things, too.”
“Did they now?”
Lizzie knew from her tone of voice and raised eyebrows that Miz Eugenia was really asking if maybe the slaves had stolen all those things instead. It made Lizzie hopping mad. Didn’t Otis say they were free now? Lizzie found a tiny seed of courage deep down inside, planted there by the good news about being free, and said, “You can go on down to our cabins and search them for yourself, ma’am, if you’re thinking we stole your things. But all we cared about after you went away was getting the kitchen garden planted so we’d have enough food to eat.”
“How long were the Yankees here?”
“Couple of days. Maybe a week or two.”
“Well, which was it?”
Lizzie’s nugget of courage grew a little larger. “Slaves don’t
keep track of time, ma’am, because every day’s exactly the same.” She dared to glance up at Miz Eugenia, and she knew by the stiff way she stood and how her skinny lips were pinched together that she was losing patience. Then there’d be trouble.
“We need to come to an agreement about work,” the missus finally said. “I suppose you know that you’re all free to go. We’re not allowed to own you anymore. But if you decide to continue living here and eating my food, then I expect you to work for me just like you did before the war. The same goes for all of my field hands, and you can tell them that for me.”
“Most of them are gone already, ma’am,” Lizzie said. Miz Eugenia ignored her.
“If you decide not to work for me, then you’ll need to move off my land. I’ll give you a week to move out—but I expect you to keep working as usual until then.”
So much for freedom. Miz Eugenia still ruled the roost and bossed everyone around, just like always. But at least the door was open now, and they could walk on out if they wanted to.
“Ida May, I could use your help unpacking my clothes,” Miz Eugenia continued. “Roselle, see if Josephine and Mary need your help upstairs. Cissy, you may start unpacking some of these boxes. Put the books back on the shelves in Master Philip’s study, and please be careful with the dishes and breakables. Dolly and Lizzy, I’m sure there’s plenty to do in the kitchen to get dinner on the table on time.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lizzie went back out to the kitchen to finish scrubbing the pot. She still didn’t feel free, but thank the good Lord at least Otis was back. And if what he said was true, then nothing and nobody could ever tear them apart again.
4
APRIL 25, 1865
Josephine looked out her bedroom window and wondered how long it would be until she felt safe from calamity, until she really believed that more bad things weren’t going to happen. Her family had returned home from Richmond four days ago, and she was glad to be back. But life at White Oak Plantation was still chaotic, with very little food to eat. Her stomach hadn’t felt full in a long time.
