by Ann Rinaldi
"Open the door, Luli," he said. He said it roughly and she cried. Later he'd make it up to her somehow. It was the way of them. They'd fight like brother and sister. She'd sass him. She knew just how far she could go. And he knew how far he should go, and the fragile distance between destroying her and making her strong.
Then in the evening, he'd be lounging in the parlor, talking with Ma about the day's doings of the ranch and having after-supper coffee, his laced with rum, and Luli would come in and sit on the floor next to him and rest her head on his knee. Quiet for a while. Sis Goose would be floating all over that room, haunting Gabe and Luli so they'd both be in pain for what they did to her, for the great lie they told her, for the way they kept her in bondage. Now she would keep them in bondage. Forever.
But Luli has more than that to ponder. What about the great truth she didn't tell Gabe?
"I need a powder, I have a headache," Luli would say. And she'd get up, but not before sneaking a mouthful of Gabe's coffee.
"Get me one, too," he'd say.
I knew this all because I did it to them. And now I was leaving them with it. If I could only get out that front door.
Luli opened it. Smiled at me through her tears. Kissed me. "He needs a woman," she whispered to me. "Granville's promised to help me find him one."
There's a switch. Her conspiring with Granville.
Gabe nodded to me in the hall. "We're beholden to you, ma'am, for telling our story," he said. "You all come again, now."
I left them there. But at what cost? I know they will never leave me be, that I will always think of them, that they will always have some grip on me, that when I am in the middle of some task or reading a book I will hear Gabe's voice saying, "Why did you make her thirteen? Do you know what she did today?" Or, "Pa is never going to forgive me for Sis Goose."
Or from Luli: "My ma died today. You could have stayed around for that."
Yet I am more fond of them than any characters I ever created. Gabe with his haunted memories and his Southern honor that he upholds and demands so of others. That he knows he can't abandon or he will fall to pieces. Luli with her spirit still intact, though she must fight for it every day. Ma with her quick sharp orders and her own pain near her heart, which only mothers get. And her stern love for her children. And, of course, Sis Goose with her pride and longing to be free.
Thank y'all. I'm beholden.
THE LARGER question my book poses is, how did the Texas ranchers and planters keep the freedom enjoyed by slaves in the East a secret from their own people in bondage?
The "how" is a mystery, except to say that most Texas farms and ranches and plantations were worlds unto themselves, as was Texas itself. Communication from establishment to establishment was likely at a minimum, and the level of information given to slaves kept under a tight rein.
Of course the slaves knew there was a war on. They called it the freedom war. But they did not know the battles, the wins and losses, or the particulars. They sang about it, they prayed about it, they dreamed about freedom, but most never expected it in their lifetime.
As for their white owners, their biggest reason for keeping their slaves ignorant of the freedom enjoyed by their brothers and sisters in the East was the slave labor. After that it was because they feared if their slaves knew of it there would be a slave uprising.
They constantly feared a slave uprising.
During the Civil War, Texas was called "the dark corner of the Confederacy" by many, simply because Texas wanted to be left alone, to govern itself, not to be intruded upon by outsiders, and because there was so much land yet unexplored, land that went on for miles and miles, land yet occupied only by Indians.
Yet during the war, Texas was the largest producer of cotton in the Confederacy. New England textile manufacturers, running low on cotton, wanted President Lincoln to order an invasion of Texas. But Lincoln ignored them.
Indeed, though there were Federal troops in Texas during the war, there was no wholesale invasion of the state by the Union. Homes and personal properties were not destroyed and occupied as they were back east.
Some Texas army units, like Gabe's, spent all of the war in the state, assigned to defend the frontier against the Indians. Others fought with General Robert E. Lee, and still others went into battle east of the Mississippi.
There was a Federal blockade of the Texas coast in July 1861, which was a death knell for Texas commerce and for Texas cotton merchants. But soon enterprising Texas businessmen and planters (like Luli's brother Granville) discovered a loophole in the blockade by shipping cotton through Bagdad, Mexico.
The incident in the book about coyotes eating the shoes and hats of Gabe and Luli was adapted from an incident in the book Pioneering in Texas: True Stories of the Early Days by Winnie Allen, archivist, University of Texas, and Corrie Walker Allen, adjunct professor of education, University of Texas, The Southern Publishing Company, 1935. All the stories in that book were adapted from original sources. Everything else in Come Juneteenth is a product of my own imagination.
The name Sis Goose goes back to an animal tale in the style of the Brer Fox and Brer Rabbit stories of Joel Chandler Harris. Collected from the oral tradition and written down by A. W. Eddins, a San Antonio schoolteacher, the tale reads: "En so dey went to cote [court] and when dey got dere, de sheriff, he wus er fox, en de judge, he wus er fox, en all de jurymen, dey wus foxes, too. En dey tried ole Sis Goose, en dey 'victed her en dey 'scuted her, en dey picked her bones."
Reconstruction was the formal name given to the military takeover by Federal troops of Confederate states after the war was over. It lasted, in some states, from 1865 to the 1870s. General Gordon Granger came to Texas to issue the Emancipation Proclamation for Texas slaves on June 19, 1865.
In many cases, Yankees occupied Confederate plantations and ranches like they did in my book, taking over the big house, running the place, and ordering the white folk around. Actually they were there to see that the Southerners properly freed their slaves and were living up to the law of the land. Some simply took advantage of their situation, living high off the hog. Many behaved like gentleman and kept things in line but, unfortunately, too many played their roles to the hilt and made things miserable for the Southerners.
There was no specific time for them to leave. Many did not leave until the midseventies and many left the premises they had occupied in a dreadful state. But the Southerners were lucky if they did not come on strong, shooting the cattle and dogs and horses, burning the barn and houses.
Reconstruction, for many Southerners, was indeed a sad chapter in our history.
Within a short time after the slaves in Texas were freed, there was established a whole spectrum of celebration that became known as Juneteenth to celebrate that 19th of June in 1865 when the Texas slaves finally received their freedom. It is celebrated to this day.
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BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Adams, George Washington. Doctors in Blue: The Medical History of the Union Army in the Civil War. Dayton, Ohio: Morningside, 1985.
Allen, Winnie, and Allen, Corrie Walker, Pioneering in Texas: True Stories of the Early Days. Dallas, Texas: The Southern Publishing Company, 1935.
Exley, Jo Ella Powell, Editor. Texas Tears and Texas Sunshine: Voices of Frontier Women. College Station, Texas: Texas A & M University Press, 1985.
Foner, Eric. Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863–1877. New York, NY: Harper & Row, 1988.
Gallaway, B.P., Ed. Texas: The Dark Corner of the Confederacy. Lincoln, Nebraska: University of Nebraska Press, 1994.
Holley, Mary Austin. Texas. Austin, Texas: The Texas State Historical Association, 1990.
Massey, Mary Elizabeth. Ersatz in the Confederacy: Shortages and Substitutes on the Southern Homefront. Columbia, SC: University of South
Carolina, 1952.
McLeRoy, Sherrie S. Red River Women: Women of the West. Plano, Texas: Wordware Publishing Inc., 1996.
Nagel, Paul C. The Lees of Virginia: Seven Generations of an American Family. New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Pinckney, Roger. Blue Roots: African-American Folk Magic of the Gullah People. St. Paul, Minnesota: Llewellyn Publications, 1998.
Seagraves, Anne. High-Spirited Women of the West. Hayden, Idaho: Wesanne Publications, 1992.
Silverthorne, Elizabeth. Plantation Life in Texas. College Station, Texas: Texas A & M University Press, 1986.
Tyler, Ron, and Lawrence R Murphy, Eds. The Slave Narratives of Texas. Austin, Texas: The Encino Press, 1974.
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