The Secret Life of Lula Darling

by Alex Dean

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and the theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting

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  Copyright © 2017 by Alex Dean

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  Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  From The Author

  Sneak Peek: A Life’s Purpose

  Also by Alex Dean

  Readers Guide

  Introduction to The Secret Life of Lula Darling

  A Conversation with Alex Dean

  Questions for Discussion

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  We were called Negroes back then.

  Or worse, depending on whom you were talking to.

  I was born a slave in the deep countryside of the antebellum South. Adams County to be exact. My journey is probably unlike any you’ve ever heard of, or maybe anything you could imagine. But I assure you, everything that you’re about to read on the following pages is remarkably true. And in my relatively short time here on this earth, I’ve learned that absolutely no one, no man, woman, or child, should think of themselves so presumptuous, as to put his or her own limitations on what almighty God is capable of doing. So as improbable as it may seem . . . this is my story.

  Chapter 1

  Natchez, Mississippi 1854

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  ON ONE OF THE HOTTEST days as far back as I could remember, I watched helplessly as a field hand collapsed and fell under the sweltering summer heat. The other slaves that had seen it happen quickly gathered around trying to revive him, frantically calling out to the overseer. “He down! Please, help him . . . he don’ fell down!”

  Only a few feet away I stood afraid, tightly gripping my mama’s hand. I stared down at his motionless body. There was no movement. No breathing. And it was the first time I’d ever seen someone so close to knocking on death’s door.

  After several minutes of wiping the glistening sweat from his brow, the overseer looked up from a small distance back but didn’t seem to care so much as to bat an eye. Tall and wiry with ghost-pale skin and narrow eyes, he walked slowly over to where the dead man lay, holding a strap of rawhide in his grip.

  “Get him up!” he ordered.

  Two big field hands managed to pull the man up, and I followed curiously, moving across the field as they carried him up the steps to the big house, only a few feet away from where I stood.

  “Back away, girl!” someone yelled.

  So I moved out of the way to the farthest end of the porch as they checked the man’s pulse. And once he’d been pronounced dead, the strongest of the field hands covered the body and took it away.

  That someone would die on a day like that didn’t entirely surprise me. It was so hot outside, about ninety-eight degrees of scorching humidity with little to no access to any shade. I went and leaned over the porch’s rail, glimpsing into the crowd that had now gathered in front of the big house. I wanted to know that Mama was okay.

  Mama had been in the field that day from morning to evening, planting and tending to cotton and sugarcane. We worked hard, my mama, brother, and me, as did all the slaves.

  My name is Lula Darling. Back then I was considered colored and was fourteen years old.

  We lived in Natchez, Mississippi, on the Mansfield Plantation, just past the Gaines’s farm. Growing up, I would spend many a precious moment staring at that farm, because over the gray rotted fenced that had separated the Mansfield’s land from theirs, were some of the most beautiful horses and flowers that I had ever laid eyes upon.

  I’d seen a lot there growing up in that place. Some of it good, but most of it not so good. The whippings and beatings. The verbal abuse. The backbreaking field work in searing heat. We just learned to deal with it all, prayed, and yearned to see a brighter day. Mama always had said that the good Lord would see to it.

  Speaking of the Lord, me and Mama had always looked forward to Saturday nights, where—along with a small group of other slaves—we sang and danced in our quarters, and had prayer meetings afterward.

  We first arrived after being sold in an auction along with my little brother. His name was Clarence. He never talked much, but he was always a very happy boy. You could tell by the way he smiled and ran playfully through the grounds, oblivious to anything happening in the real world until he was abruptly put back in his place. Mama said he seemed happier than any Negro child had a right to be, especially living in the wretched darkness that was slavery and oppression.

  Growing up I didn’t remember much about my father. They said he died around the time Clarence was born. He apparently had ran into some trouble when he and Mama had first arrived. I was told that when he was questioned and then threatened about some crops that were missing or other, that he fought back, and, of course, back then no Negro had a right to say what he was or wasn’t going to do.

  When I wasn’t in the field working, I’d sit on the huge black wooden porch of the big house, dreaming, until Mr. Mansfield or Mrs. Mansfield had eventually given me some chores to do.

  I would also help mama by keeping an eye on Clarence. He was always getting into mischief doing things he shouldn’t have been doing, like wanting to play in Mrs. Mansfield’s vegetable garden.

  Sometimes, I would actually see when other slaves had arrived at the plantation in groups, their hands and feet shackled. They were each chained to the other, like a herd of cattle being led to the slaughterhouse. I remembered their faces, the look of longing for their loved ones, and from the pain of appearing soul broken.

  Me and Mama had been on that plantation the longest from what I recall. My mother’s name is Ella Mae . . . Ella Mae Darling.

  They say my mother never met a person she didn’t like. She had gotten along with just about everybody, even Mr. Mansfield’s father, Mr. Hartley Mansfield.

  Hartley Mansfield was as mean as cat dirt whenever he came onto the premises. It had been painfully obvious how much disdain he had for coloreds. The saving grace for us was . . . that when he did come around, he was only there for a pleasingly short time.

  Mama told me stories of how he used to beat my father, and told Harland Mansfield, his son, that he should do the same. Even though he was so mean, w
e later learned of Mr. Hartley that he was a brilliant man, an inventor. They said he could invent things to make our lives better—well, perhaps he didn’t have coloreds in mind at the time, but at least he wanted to help somebody.

  A lot of things about him were kept top secret. Nobody talked about him much and we weren’t allowed to ask questions. After a period of time, he didn’t come around like he used to. None of us knew the reason. We assumed that he might have been sick or maybe was simply busy. One night during supper, they said some important-looking and well-dressed men were in town to see him.

  The Mansfields lived on one of the larger plantations in Mississippi, Mama later told me. The big house was a large white building with black shutters and a big wooden door with a large wrought-iron doorknocker. There are maids, cooks, washers, general house servants, and of course, those of us that worked out in the field tilling cash crops.

  On occasion, the Mansfields entertained guests by inviting them over for a fancy supper, where all of the house servants were expected to work in a way that made the Missus and Massa Harland happy with the outcome.

  Sometimes, when no one was watching, Cora, one of the cooks in the house, would slip Mama and the rest of the field hands leftovers from the kitchen. It was a rare treat for us to take back to our cabins, where we had mostly lived on a diet of mush, dumplings, and ash-cakes.

  Massa Harland Mansfield was not much like his father, Mr. Hartley. He was a clean-shaven, dark-haired and much younger man who considered himself to be one of the fairer slave owners in the area. He’d told Mama this whenever he wanted to remind some of us that things could be worse, relatively speaking. He met his wife Martha when the two of them were in high school, and they got married at a young age.

  Rumors swirled around Natchez that it was a shotgun wedding because she gave birth to a son not long after the ceremony. Sadly, their son later died from smallpox. The Mansfields were devastated—and had not been the same for a good stretch of time after the funeral, especially Mrs. Mansfield.

  Still, in memoriam, they kept the room meant for their deceased boy decorated and undisturbed in his memory. Since Mrs. Mansfield had always hoped for another child of her own, she had taken a particular liking to me; we’d shared a special bond ever since the day me, my parents, and my brother, Clarence, had arrived.

  Mrs. Mansfield never made her feelings too obvious, though, and had kept her feelings about me to herself, probably knowing it wouldn’t go over too well with the rest of her family, most of all her husband.

  Every Monday and Friday morning Mr. Mansfield would crusade into town to take the vegetables that his wife grew in her garden to one of a handful of grocery stores to be sold. It wasn’t about the money, I’d heard Mrs. Mansfield say, just a way the Mansfields wanted to contribute to Natchez’s local food economy and help others at the same time. One morning, just after sunrise, Mr. Mansfield left with his wagon full but had yet to return home.

  As I stood on the porch, my mind wandering, Mrs. Mansfield suddenly appeared. She was a slim woman with raven-dark hair in a bun and skin the color of porcelain. She was wearing a white polka dot and flower-patterned housedress with a white lace collar.

  “Lula, have you started your chores?” she asked.

  “No, ma’am. Was told there was none,” I said.

  “All right, well, come in the house, to my room. I’ve got something I want to share with you.”

  I walked inside, down the long white corridor and dark brown polished floors, toward the back of the house, where the Mansfields’ bedroom was. The maids and servants working in the house looked on with curiosity. No one other than the maids were ever allowed in the Mansfields’ bedroom, especially not children.

  I followed her and stood there, several feet past the entrance of the room, staring at the large mahogany bed, the curtains, and pretty flowery pillows neatly perched against the wooden headboard.

  “Am I in trouble, ma’am?”

  Mrs. Mansfield shook her head. “No, you’re not in any trouble. Have a seat,” she said as she gently patted the mattress with her hand, instructing me to sit next to her.

  “How would you like to learn how to read?” she asked.

  My eyes widened, and I smiled in astonishment at what I had heard. I was old enough at the time to know that slaves were not allowed to read. And anyone who took the chance of teaching them would be asking for serious problems, if not death.

  “You would teach me how to read?” I asked.

  “Yes, I would, but you have to promise me that you’ll keep this a secret between us. Is that a fair deal?”

  I nodded. “Yes, ma’am.”

  “All right, this is a book I have, a book originally intended for my son,” Mrs. Mansfield said as she pulled it out of the drawer. “It is an alphabet book to teach you letters, words, and some basic sentences. We’re going to practice every Monday and Friday morning at seven a.m. I want you to come to my room, and I’ll teach you the basics of how to read in English. Once we finish this book, I have another that will teach you a bit more. And once you’re proficient at reading, I’ll consider teaching you how to write. It will all come in handy to you one day. But you can’t tell anyone about this just yet, not even your mama or Clarence. ’Cause if you do, there may be dire consequences for us both. Is that understood?”

  “Yes ma’am,” I replied with a large smile that stretched across my face.

  During the next four weeks, I was totally ecstatic, realizing that the light Mama had told me about seemed to shine a little brighter each time I’d sit down with Mrs. Mansfield. We continued to go through each lesson, and Mrs. Mansfield was constantly impressed with the progress that I was making. We sat and read for at least two hours each week. And whenever anyone wondered where I was, Mrs. Mansfield would kindly tell them she had some chores for me to do.

  On one hot summer morning in the month of July, Mrs. Mansfield read sentences from a book and had me to repeat each one back. As I held the book in my hands, pronouncing each word as best I could, Charles, one of the drivers in the field, came running into the house with some disturbing news about Clarence.

  He ran frantically to the back of the house, out of breath.

  “Mrs. Mansfield, ma’am, Clarence done passed out. I don’ know what happened. They got him laid out on the porch,” he said.

  “Oh no,” Mrs. Mansfield blurted. “Tell Sophia to get someone out there to look at him.” She got up to run toward the front of the house, curious to know what had happened.

  I followed close behind without saying a word. There was a group of people standing around Clarence, fanning him and trying to keep flies off his badly sweating forehead.

  Mrs. Mansfield knelt on the porch looking at Clarence, then at Charles, and several field hands. “Anybody here know what happened to him?” she asked.

  One of the field hands shook his head and pointed. “No ma’am, he was over there playin’ in ya garden, and then he ran back over here to this here porch and collapsed. That’s when me and Earl picked him up and laid him on top of that blanket there.”

  Clarence just lay there moaning and holding his stomach. His head was slightly lifted, perched on top of some neatly folded towels put there to help comfort him. The overseer allowed Mama to come running from out in the field. She hurried up the steps and was kneeling down beside him, rubbing his head and trying to talk to him, hoping that her words of comfort would help.

  As everyone else around the house gathered on the porch to see what was going on, Massa Harland Mansfield was returning from town, anxious to see why everyone was huddled in a circle looking down.

  “What happened here?” he asked.

  “Well, suh, Clarence passed out and ain’t came to. We hopin’ he all right, and maybe jus’ the heat done got to him. He was over there playin’ in Mrs. Mansfield’s garden, splashin’ that water all over his face and drinkin’ it too.”

  Massa Mansfield then looked up at his wife. “Martha, how many times have
we told that boy to stay away from that water? It’s contaminated.”

  “He got out of sight, Harland. What do we have in there we can give him?”

  “Maybe some of that sassafras root we keep in the kitchen. It’ll cleanse his blood. That’ll help him. Okay, everybody back to work, my wife and I will handle this,” Massa Harland said as he focused his eyes on me, while I stood on the porch next to his wife.

  Then he walked over to me and leaned forward, looking me square in the face. I didn’t know what to make of it and suddenly got scared.

  “Lula, we’re going to do our very best to try to help Clarence. We don’t know why these things happen, but they do. I think it’s best for y’all to go back in the house, you and your mama, until we figure out what the hell is going on here.”

  Massa Harland walked over to his wife, who was still kneeling over Clarence. I’ll never forget the look on her face. It must’ve been a grim reminder of the pain she’d felt when her own boy became ill.

  One of the house servants brought a cup of boiling red water out onto the porch and handed it to Massa Harland. “If this sassafras root don’t work in a few minutes, get Dr. Morton out here to try and see what’s wrong with him,” he said.

  Clarence was no longer moving. To me, it looked like he was just lying still. Scared of what Dr. Morton might say, I turned toward the door as tears ran down my face. Mama held me as we both went inside and continued to look out the living room window.