Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All

by Allan Gurganus

  She rest, surrounded by many packets of store-bought shiny things, round boxes and paper wrappings piled. Seem her couldn’t stay propt upright wivout store stuff’s help. From under one these bumbles, two white dogs popped, yibbing-barking seeing us. White fluff piles not no bigger than a coconut apiece, they faces act stuck-up, even while they teeth stay bared. She try hushing dogs while holding a new hat. It so fine she afraid to crush it in some shipping box. That hat proving the day’s breeze, twelve egrets’ worth of whitest feathers, shifting. Spying us, her of a sudden gone still. She mighty white. Scared, she let feathers hide her face’s bottom part but them blue eyes of yours just stared so hard and cold, two metal linchpins fixed right at us.

  That day, the sash round you white dress’s middle were blood red, the color what’d got us into this.

  Our King, on another wagon, clatter right by us then. His hands looked clamped again. And King been stuck into the ugliest checkedy shirt I ever seed since. Liver-colored, yellow, red, and green—shirt seem nearbout harder-going on he dignity than them chains did. King appeared headed in a whole direction other from us ones’. Me, my Queen Momma, one semi-prince, and two old cousins hunkered here—we was all fussed at by that clean child turbaned up. Someway, trusting Reba yet, we figured the King and us all bound on one tour. Maybe we going by different paths but bound a selfsame place, the spot where they’d have Reba lifted high, all brown/black/blue/gray/silver, and at they very center, axting useful answers out of her.

  You know, Mistress mine, even while seeing each other being droven off in all forked scattering directions, even when King’s wagon round a turn, even losing sight of one the other’s face for permanent-ever, us didn’t even know enough to think hard, “Notice. Notice this.”

  MRS., I still scrubbing. Happy? See how I clumped them silly little gilded chairs all in one corner. Moved them easy as you shifted us from Africa to Charleston, then upriver to here. Simple as you pushing us into the kitchen, out to fieldwork, back again. You the person stuck my Momma Queen in this Big-House scullery, scrubbing pots. Her one revenge been never learning English right. They’d bring her great stacks dishes dirty from you sit-down dinner parties for fifty. Momma known only to point, she say, “I these? I these?” The Queen! Do you wonder that she tried and steal away?

  You forever let your overseer, Marse Winch, take care “discipline.” A certain lady one time say, “I’ll trust you to do whatever’s necessary for maintaining ‘slave morale,’ my dear Winch. I offer you complete authority on one condition: that you never trouble me with the details.” You recollect saying that, woman? I heared you. It cost me Momma. The redheaded sweet-faced Winch, a good and faithful servant like Castalia, he never onct troubled you over how he troubled us. Oh, he really do his job.

  Lady? You got so much to answer for.

  One day, eleven years into our being owned, my momma got sent to kitchen garden for picking supper okra. Sun was setting. Momma took the colander nearer sun. Sun looked ripe, promising and ready. Like for to pick. She walk to the garden, in the garden. Sun there. Through the garden. Sun yet there. Go to the Marsden property line. Closer sun. Next thing, she been you personal property but off you personal property. Without no excuse nor wrote-down pass. Uh-oh. She come to herself in a woods six miles from here. Momma decided in African, “My my. I late. Supper bout over. No okra. They out hunting me, sure. I lost. But, no, I now gone do this instead of dishes.” She look around, breathing like when you seriously know you breathing. “I this,” Momma say. “Now, I Queenly free.”

  She were bout thirty-five years old. Didn’t look one bit like the beauty what been brought over young. Her shape missed Africa so much, it’d swoled, changed, dropped on her. Which left the Queen being somebody else, somebody heavy but less. Sent out to fetch okra, sent barefoot, she had no smart plan for leaving. (Other runaways been known to first steal atlas maps from out the Master’s study room.) This woman just walk when walking feel right. This woman only understood you two thousand acres. How could she plan ahead when the one thing she known best was what she most hoped to forget?

  Momma yet carried the big house’s best colander. It were blue and white made to look like marble. Later, when they caught her, she still had holt that thing. Momma felt the Law might go easier on her if—while trying and free herself—she didn’t lose nothing rightfully blonging to you. She slept in ditches, up trees, hid nights in haylofts on bandoned farms. Even with no food, she got clear cross Nash County, then on to Edgecombe.

  A lady over in Tarboro put a fresh-baked cherry pie on her kitchen sill for cooling. If Momma had took the pie and its pan, she could of got away free, sure. Instead she stood out there in plain view, shaking from she hunger and the jitters. Queen tried and dump hot crust and scalding cherries into her borrowed colander. See, Momma wanted not to steal nothing but her freedom plus the food she needed. Queen’s mistake been trying and stay out of worse trouble than she been in already. Her mistake was trying and stay out of worse trouble than Freedom its own self is.

  They brung her back in ropes. The colander rested pretty on the wagon seat beside her. Colander looked boastful like it’d turned her in. Seeing us lined beside the farm road, Queen smiled but shy. Maybe she was troubled over how she’d failed at getting free. Maybe how—leaving—she hadn’t said bye to any one of us. Not even wiry Princess Me.

  Without no food past blackberries, acorns, and the smell of white folks’ cooking—she’d still walked eighty mile in three days. Good form. Hearing, we all felt proud. Didn’t own no compass. Turned out, all along, Momma been headed south, not north. Winch nounced this at the lashing.

  “And where did our wandering minstrel here go when she slipped free as the balmy breeze? Towards Georgia. Hopped out of the frying pan and into the fire, she did.” Then Marse Winch, just a boy hisself, personally peelt off Momma’s clothes. I don’t likes to trouble you with the details, ma’am. I know how delicate you system is. Winch, he made example of Momma. Made red hash out she back. He offern Momma a stripe for every mile she’d got nearer free. Standing, watching but not watching, hearing while listening only at the blood in my own ears, I wondered: Was Momma trying to keep sane during punishment by picturing every one them sweet-snitched miles? Ma’am, do eighty sound like a small number to you?

  My Momma Queen got tossed into the root cellar. Is a favorite slave prison here, or did you know? Yeah, it far enough off from this room of yours. Screams get lost halfway up you perfeck three-acre lawn. Momma had no skin left for to be she back. Had just a front she got to hold up, like a dress all dangling unfastened behind. Headmen chain-bolted the cellar’s storm doors shut. Men left her (three weeks, no food, no drink). Cellar means a dark hole twenty feet long, six deep, meant to hold potatoes only. First, bosses had us take out every nourishing one.

  Winch hired a white boy from Falls. Boy come out to live in a tent pitched right beside the padlocked cellar doors. Boy been there to keep us slaves from slipping Momma any food, any word of kindness.

  Down in dark, woman must of stayn on her stomach. Did that to spare dirt’s working into a back cut so wide open. She crawl/dragged round a trench of busted crockery thrown there to help to drain things right. Momma found, buried mong old bricks, a busted Wedgwood teacup. With it, the Queen commenced her tunnel north. This time she figured the right way out. Nobody come down to check on her for ten days, twelve. Rest of us aboveground, we made the Queen our own example. For us, she been the one that nearbout got away, good form even in the wrong direction. That don’t matter—it the trying counts.

  On ground level, every night in the quarter, we stood round her corn-husk mattress, we turned down her flour-sacking coverlet. We saved her place by talking to a bed like the Queen were yet in it. Us’d tell her a day’s worth of work news, gossip, anything the least bit funny. Silly hurtful bossy little things you done that day, you.

  Underground, by touch, she found your cellar’s dampest corner, she pressed Wedgwood down there long enough
for scooping up mud droplets to drink. Enough. Gouging with the cup, Momma come upon a few dried potatoes—seasons old—locked brown and blind in dirt as her.

  She kept a strength sufficient for getting that tunnel five foot long. Then eight. Eight and a half. White guard boy, he lounged up top reading penny dreadfuls, carving branches, catching up on naps, whistling. He was a boy innocent of everything but what he’d been axted to do. They a lot of boys like that. I chanced bribing him with a fine stole pudding. But Winch kept that child fed too good to care for seconds. Still, little fellow didn’t turn me in for hoping and get stuff down to her. “She my mother,” I say. “Bet you’d do the same for yourn.”

  “I would, but mine’s not down there. Lucky.” Then he go, “Sorry. I’ve been paid. She’s alive, all right. Some days I hear her, some days I get so bored out here, I talk mostly in her direction.” Leaving, I screamed from forty feet, “Momma! It Cassie. We up here, Queen, we ready for you!” Boy chased me off a short ways. Never planned to catch me. He just had to do like that. I couldn’t blame him. We all slaves to something.

  Quiet in she un-light, Momma cut away. Steady—she prove herself to be Reba-tough, be proud as my own missing poppa. Down she went, deep enough so’s nobody’d hear her chipping at red clay. She work clean under the farm’s main road. Her thin cup got used with oh such care. She hack through tree roots a few fibers at a time, frayed herself toward free. (Be like you said, ma’am, that Wedgwood’s right good stuff. It wedge the wood!) Momma swervt round rocks too big for one raw shoulder’s budging. September rains come on. Her digging got easier/spongy. The boy guard hid in his tent: practiced fancying his whistling, practiced his cussing.

  A hayrick heavy with harvested pumpkins, with slave children fooling round, getting a free ride, pushing at each other, having fun (me and my weight too), it wobbled along the road. Not knowing, hay wain crosst her secret under-tunnel.

  Four days later, Queen’s example time finally been done. Men unbolted double doors. They found her gone. Winch blieved she had excaped thanks to African magic. First he grabbed the guard boy by the front he shirt. Then somebody noticed a tiny northbound hole. With potato roots, she’d mostly closed it up behind her, modest-like. Didn’t seem big enough for no full human person to fit into. Aboveground, seeking the buckle and turn of it, men followed on foot.

  They couldn’t figure where it finally push up into daylight. Fellows went back in the cellar. Their shovels trailed one teacup’s forward progress north. They bugled open that burrow-tube. Took one morning and three men to try and trace the cave. Bosses hoped to find Momma still hacking at the front and freest end. Tunnel wound twenty-seven feet. It curve then straightened, bent then evened out, you seen it learning its way north. The longer white ones dug, the quieter they grown. Respect or interest, dread, they superstitiousness? What? Us slaves been hiding in the woods—we watching, we seasick from hoping’s up and downs. Tunnel headed right towards the Reba-seeded peanut field. Tunnel started to go shallower. Tunnel been coming up for plain good gulping air. Men done dug a full canal across the farm road. There they hit a spot where the great wagon had passed. Been like a huge shoe sole stomped hard on one mole’s dug path. A bit nearer free they found her. From above, shovels let light in on somebody face-down. Queen’s grimy back was yet unhealed. Queen’s arms been drawn up close to make sheself a smaller fit, not axting much, even of space in the world.

  Momma wore dried potatoes on they vines, a braided necklace so she wouldn’t ever have to come back for more Marsden food. Held before her one brown-smudged Wedgwood cup. Was a sky-colored thing. Had white gods porcelained into it—talking lords, they ladies park-benched playing lyres under heaven’s own willows. Chalk royals been standing blank all round the blue, too little to do at some paradise party.

  Winch, he ordered Momma buried the usual four feet deep in the slaves’ boneyard. It out near your livestock pens. You ever gone there for a sentimental visit? I ain’t ever seen you. That night, all us ones stole forth. We scared, but yeah we dug her up. And then us laid her back so Momma’s head be turned due north. Us pressed that busted Wedgwood teacup back into she hands. Us give Momma a decent chance at getting out right next time. Come Judgment Day, she wouldn’t rise looking skywards (what help do sky gods be?). Our Queen were now aimed north, she cocked and ready.

  I believes Judgment Day gone be your fancy Coming-Out at last. Everybody bound to be there, the living and the dead, the owned and free, all watching you.—See me clean the crystal on this fine French clock? Ooh, its big hand do be headed north most quick. Yankee hoofbeat clicking closer wiv each tock.

  Madam? Madam, get you answers ready.

  3

  I NEVER could learn the story of what happen to my Daddy King nor any other blood kin. None except the ones you bought to work here at The Lilacs. And they story, being mostly mine, I knows too good.—If only I done leastway heared bout my poppa’s life, the tale of where they sent him, how he getting on, do he be dead, did they make him to sire another family, do anybody at the new home know bout he famous highborn history on a river?

  Might sound strange to you, you what’s traced the legend bloodlines of everybody on you either side since England backwards—but, Lady mine, if I knowed even two such lately facts bout my King now, I wouldn’t mind so much not seeing him again. Cheated out of my own poppa, it strange, but I’d of settled for the history of a poppa, any history but specially he story.

  Remember when I begged you to please look up the record of my King’s sale? You said you would, you said you would, ma’am.

  You know what might be you worst deed yet? Ain’t the gravy boat you lashed me for. Ain’t even what you-all done done to Momma. Maybe you biggest crime is: how you took me out the story of myself! You stole Castalia’s true life-tale. You left her here to find the puzzle pieces’ odds and ends, to make up all this stuff as best Cas might and then to feel she should apologize for just inventing a history, for not getting a good one assigned to her, like you.

  So, every new slave what got shipped in here, I’d quiz them steady bout where they been before, I done described a king and missing court. “Won’t no king anyplace I been,” them said. “Leastways, not a black one.”

  But the person I forever fretted bout and axted after the most be a old catfish-face woman what trained us up with such fine hopes. She taught us to try taming the mist men and ice ladies what brung us over here to help and thaw and heal them (whether or no they seen our true purpose at the time).

  But, to end up, to mop round the back of my housecleaning life: See? Whites—using Red for bait—done tricked us Blacks on board. They coaxened us out the Green and Brown with Red. That one slip-up in colors be why come I standing here, already up to fifteen Carolina years but still carrying a headful (like milk heared slopping safe in home coconuts) of missing Mamma Africa.

  —And now, to make a body truly water-sick on colors—Blue be fighting Gray for young Black me. Red brung Black over here, now Blue’s about to spring Black up to the White Riveredge City I been ready for so long. Ripe so long, Castalia nearbout rotten. The Blues is just one farm away, less. (I reckon I bout scared of them as you. Seem like I keeps on getting kidnapped. I just hope this go-round it be by the forces of right.)

  Yeah, Woman What’s Named “Lady,” I fell from a right high station in life. Done dropped clear down to this cooking/dusting, this being-barter stuff. Odd, if my people hadn’t been the King and Queen type family, why I’d yet live over yonder. I know I’d be fifteen there, too. Only, it’d mean something different. My name wouldn’t be Castalia. And I would not be wearing no more than a body needs in a riverland where it stay so hot so much—wearing nothing much past a good disposition, new parrot-feather anklets, and one orchid/weed pinned behind a ear (for luck). I’d yet eat for free and anytime I likes. Dressing up for the dances, then getting over the afterwards palm-wine headaches—that’d be Castalia’s major princess pastime. Oh, I’d probly be silly as you! But I ain’t, I a
in’t there, so that ain’t me. I right here and still be yours under the law, ma’am. But, with all due respeck, not for long, Mrs. Test the Tops of Furniture with Her Villain Little White Glove.

  Any second now (where is they when you needs them?) the Blues gone clomp over the highroad’s red Chinese bridge. Then I can finally end up starting my own true journey. I bout to hike off on a trip that Reba seen so long ago in visions milked from scars. I finally heading towards the Great White City Great-aunt expected just a few tribulations too soon. It there that my people gone finally get treated right. That tribe is the true nest where Justice live, where every house turn out to be something between a school, a all-night dance, a Kingly court.

  The North, I talking. My linking Canaan is shining there, map-upwards of this South, cross the River of Jordan and the Mason of Dixon. For freedom, I bout overdue. New York City, the new place Reba seen dancing—pure and perfeck welcome—in she ugly head. I hear it’s got rivers on all sides, bound to make my river kin feel most welcomed in. City’s streets (some passing runaways done tolt me) is just strewed with beaten gold, roads running full of coconut milk, guttered with free honey. Lady? In my Auntie’s house be many mansions.

  And you youself? Please brace for a fall. You bout to learn the pain of being the cleverest person alive in a language don’t one soul speak. You gone see that nobody much cares what you been princess of if that place ain’t around no more.