by Joyce Hansen
Obi nodded. This white man surprised him. Walking so deep inside a colored village. “Hello, sir.”
“You think your master let you give me a couple of months? Where is he?” Richards eyes darted nervously. “I’ll pay you twenty-five dollars a month.” He lowered his voice. “I’ll tell your master I’m paying you less. You can keep something extra for yourself.” His eyes swept the yard again. “So, where is Mr. Booker?”
Obi stared at him. Unsmiling. Silent. He sensed that Mr. Richards was uneasy and suspicious despite his bold trek into New Canaan by himself. “He’s not here. What do you need to see him for?”
He looked annoyed. “I like to meet the people I do business with.”
“You’re doing business with me.”
“Who are you?”
“Mr. Booker.”
The man turned several shades of red before he spoke. “What?”
“I said, I am Mr. Booker. Obidiah Booker.”
“How dare you make a fool out of me?” he thundered. “I knew something wasn’t right about you.”
“I didn’t make a fool out of you. You was ready to throw me out as soon as I entered your yard, sir! I did good work, and you only pay a helper’s salary.”
“You misrepresented yourself to me. You lied.”
“It was business. I’m a artisan. You ain’t finding no one ’round here better than me. You got a lot of work for a little bit of money. And you know it.”
Richards, red and angry, turned around as though he were walking away, then stopped and faced Obi again. “You are an arrogant scoundrel.”
“I was a slave. Had good teachers,” Obi snapped. This man know he still want me to do the work.“What you want done, sir?”
“This puts things in a different light. I thought you were the helper.”
“I ain’t do nothing to you but give you good and proper labor. And I want to be paid by the job, not by the month.”
Richards took his watch out of his pocket. “I have to think about this again. I can’t trust you.”
Obi walked back toward the rack of wood. “Write me at the general store when you make up your mind. Good day, sir.”
Obi didn’t go to the Republican Club in the evening. He didn’t want to miss a moment with Easter. As he sat in Rose’s cabin, watching Easter set the table, Obi felt complete. He told her about Richards.
“Wish I was there to see his face,” Easter chuckled. “You think he’ll hire you?”
“I know he will, because he likes my work. Figures he can pay me less than he would a white carpenter. I have to charge him less, just to get the work, but not much less.”
She handed him a spoon and sat next to him on the bench. “You should charge more for the beautiful work you do.”
Easter glanced at Grace sitting in the rocker and staring, as always. But the blanket was neatly folded on her lap instead of buried in her face. Easter wondered whether there was some meaning in that. “Grace, give Aunt Rose a cup of tea. Then we’ll eat.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Grace said.
When Grace left the room, Easter stopped setting out the plates and sat across from Obi at the table. She lowered her voice. “I have a message for you from Miss Fortune, Obi. She said that Grace could be sent to the Boston School for the Blind, and there is an opening at the Orphan House in Boston for her brother.”
“They would be separated.”
“I know. I told her that you wanted them to stay together. She said that both schools are excellent and they are in the same city.”
“I think they should be in the same school and the same home. And Grace ain’t blind.”
“I know that too. But maybe something is wrong, and her vision comes and goes. Miss Fortune said she’ll speak to you tomorrow when she comes to visit Rose.” She paused a moment. “I almost forgot to tell you. Julius left a message for you today.”
“Julius know where I was. He could bring me the message himself.”
“He also wanted to find out how Rose was.”
“And how you was,” he mumbled.
She rolled her eyes at him. “You’re jealous of Julius? What’s wrong with you, Obi? We all been knowing one another since we ragtail children.”
“What’s the message?”
“The Land Commission is selling land around here for a dollar twenty-five an acre to heads of households.”
Obi sucked his teeth. “That man know I ain’t no head of no household. So what’s he coming to me with a message like that for? Just want to slip in here and see you.”
Grace walked back in the room.
Easter quickly got up from the bench. “What happened, Grace? Rose finished her tea so soon?”
“Ma’am, she say she want some real food. She hungry.”
Easter hugged her. “Oh, Grace. Aunt Rose is getting better,” she said excitedly and dashed into the bedroom.
Instead of sitting in the rocker, Grace asked, “Mr. Obi, want me to finish setting the table?”
“Yes, that’s good.”
“Is Aunt Rose getting better?” she asked, echoing Easter.
“I hope so, Grace.”
Obi sent Simon for Dr. Emmy.
Chapter 24
I take my way down [the] street and stop at
every house, giving medicine.
—LETTERS AND DIARY OF LAURA M. TOWNE
“I think that the disease has run its course,” Dr. Emmy said, touching Rose’s forehead. “Don’t you try to do too much, your body is in a weakened state.”
“That’s what I tell her, doctor,” Obi said. “She always try to do too much.”
“You all worry me too much. I want to see my son and Scipio too.”
Easter brushed back Rose’s matted hair with her hand.
“We’ll bring them home tomorrow,” Easter assured her.
Rose ate a small bowl of grits and two biscuits and kept all of it down. After they’d all eaten and Rose was sleeping comfortably, Easter and Grace cleaned the plates while Obi helped Simon chop firewood. As Easter hung the skillet over the fireplace, she watched Grace sweeping the floor. When will this little girl recover? She wondered.
Easter walked over to her, gently took the broom out of her hands, and leaned it against the wall. “Grace, do you know how to write your name?” she asked, remembering the magic and power she had felt when Rayford taught her how to write her name.
Grace shook her head.
“Let me show you then.”
While Easter took her writing supplies out of her carpetbag, Obi and Simon returned to the cabin with armloads of firewood. Obi was surprised to see Grace sitting at the table instead of in the rocking chair.
Easter winked at him as he sat on the bench opposite Grace. “Well, Miss Easter, what’re you doing now?” he asked.
“You’ll see,” she said, sliding next to Grace on the bench. She wrote Grace’s name on a piece of paper. “That’s how your name looks, Grace. Can you see your name?”
She nodded.
“Let’s write another name. How about Araba’s name?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Now, this is your brother’s name,” Easter said. “Scipio.”
“Ma’am, how you write Miss Emma, Mr. George, and—”
Obi interrupted. “Grace, stop that. I told you to forget all that.”
Easter hushed him. “She can’t forget. They’re locked inside of her.” She turned her attention to Grace again. “We’ll write those names too. You tell me what they are.”
As Grace called the names, Easter patiently wrote them down—all twenty-three people who had been hanged. For the rest of the evening, Grace and Easter were absorbed in names.
Easter stood up. “You better rest now, Grace. Tomorrow is another day. I’ll show you how to write the letters.” Grace walked into the bedroom. She left Araba’s blanket folded neatly on the chair.
Easter sat down next to Obi on the bench. She lowered her voice, and he could hardly hear her over Simon’s
snoring. He’d passed out on Easter’s pallet. “That little girl isn’t blind or mad. It’s the thing she witnessed. Perhaps writing those names down help get the evil of what she saw out of her. I’ve seen children like her in the orphanage.”
“I didn’t think she was blind,” Obi said. “Just don’t want to see.” He took Easter’s hands in his. “Well, when you leaving us, Easter? Rose getting well now.”
“She still needs help.”
“Maybe Grace getting well too. She ain’t blind. Could be a big help to Rose.”
“I’ll leave when Rose can do everything she use to do, Obi. We talked about this already. And when I finish my work in Philadelphia, I coming back.”
He smiled to himself. Whenever she was upset she lapsed into their island dialect. Forget she Yankee talk now.
“That little girl needs to be in school. Miss Fortune told me the boy is one of the brightest children she’s ever taught. I believe Grace is the same. I wager I could teach her to read in a month or two.”
“You staying that long?”
“I’ll write to Philadelphia after Rose regains her strength. She’s all skin and bones now.”
He kissed her hands, and while he held them near his lips, his usually somber eyes gleamed playfully. “You can leave tomorrow, Easter. Between me and Grace and Simon and the rest of the village, we can take care of Rosie.”
She pulled her hands away from him. “Obi, this no time for jokes. Rose is still not herself.”
He gave her a long good-night kiss. “Girl, I think your feet sticking in this sandy soil.”
When Obi stepped out of his cabin the following morning, the jasmine bushes colored the fields gold. It seemed as though they had blossomed overnight. He noticed for the first time a cluster of bushes covered with white blossoms behind the cabin. As he started to go back inside to wake Simon, he saw Miss Fortune, holding a parasol over her head, stepping lightly down the narrow footpath. She appeared as bright and pretty as the morning.
“Good morning, Miss Fortune.”
“Mr. Obi, I’m sorry to disturb you so early like this, but I had to tell you the good news before I left for Beaufort this morning.”
Obi looked a little embarrassed as he gazed around the yard. He couldn’t have her sit on a log or on the floor of the cabin as he and Easter did. “Ma’am, I’m sorry I don’t have a speck of furniture in that cabin to invite you inside.”
She smiled and waved her hand. “Oh, Mr. Booker, that’s quite all right. I can’t stay long. But I wanted to tell you this since I will be away all of next week. Easter told me that you didn’t want to separate the children. I understand that. There is a school for orphan colored children in New York that will take both children. If Grace is blind, she’ll get help there, for they have a school for the blind as well.”
She smiled and caught her breath. “Now, that’s one choice, Mr. Booker. The other choice is a childless couple who have just bought land on Pleasant Point. They will take in both children. The husband is a printer and will apprentice the boy. And Grace, well, the wife can train her in the domestic arts.”
“Where this couple from?”
“They’re from Boston and have moved down here.”
“Are they colored, ma’am?”
“Why, Mr. Booker, what difference does that make? Do you want these children to have a decent home? These people come from one of the finest northern abolitionist families.”
Obi was fascinated at the way Miss Fortune was almost turning red. He didn’t realize that some colored people turned red when they were angry too.
“Mr. Booker, do you want these children to have a decent home or not?”
“New York is too far away. And the white people up there already burn down a home for colored orphans. And as for the Boston people, I don’t think Grace would like to live with a white family. I think she be too afraid of white people because of what happen to her.”
“Mr. Booker, it’s been my experience that children do not see color. They love whoever loves them.” She stared at him for a moment. “I don’t think you’ll find any home good enough for your children.”
Obi shifted his weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other. He didn’t want her to think that he was ungrateful. “Miss Fortune, I appreciate everything you done. I’ll think about it, and then let you know soon as you get back from Beaufort.”
“As you wish, Mr. Booker. But remember, it’s not easy to find a good situation for children nowadays. I’ll call on Easter and Miss Rose, and then I’ll be on my way.”
“Thank you, Miss Fortune, for all of your kindness.” He appreciated her help, but he was not letting them go unless the situation was fit and proper.
Scipio and Little Ray returned home that evening. Ray looked shyly at his mother at first, taking tentative steps toward her when he entered her room. Rose, sitting up in bed, smiled and said, “Come on, baby.” He recognized her voice and her smile and ran to her.
Scipio stood quietly in the corner until Rose called him to her as well. “You well now, Aunt Rose?” he asked.
“Much better, baby.”
Scipio showed off for Easter, letting her see how well he could read. Grace reviewed the names Easter had written the night before. Easter knew that Grace wasn’t truly reading. The names were already deeply embedded in her mind. But after reciting her sad litany of names, Grace asked, “Miss Easter, how you write Naomi?”
“Who is Naomi?”
“My ma. I want to see how her name look.”
“I’ll show you. Yes, you should know your mother’s name,” Easter said as she carefully wrote and recited the letters. Obi wasn’t sure, but he thought it was good that she was thinking about names other than the people she’d seen lynched.
Little Ray sat next to Scipio at first, looking wide-eyed at Scipio’s book and Easter’s sweet face, and then falling asleep on Scipio’s shoulders. And Simon, snoring loudly, stretched out on Easter’s pallet. Obi wished this time would last forever.
When Obi left that night, Easter stepped outside of the cabin with him. The bright stars reminded her of the time she’d run away alone from the Confederate camp. They had been just as bright. “I want to tell you something, Obi.”
“Easter, you know I want to say something to you too. I been troubled all evening. Since you leaving, it’s best not let those children get too used to you.”
She folded her arms across her chest and tilted her head to one side. “You let them grow accustomed to you. That little boy thinks his last name be Booker.”
“You mean is Booker,” he corrected her.
“Don’t correct me. I know what I’m saying.” She lowered her voice. “I have some talk for you, Mr. Obi. Miss Fortune told me you’re fussy about who gets the children. Why don’t you keep them? Then you’d be head of household and could buy that land cheap.”
“I’m not keeping them children just to get land. I’m surprised at you, Easter, for thinking such a thing.” He stared at her as though he were watching a stranger. “That’s what you learn up in the North? How to make use of people?”
“But you ain’t letting them go, so you may as well make use of them. They already made use of you.” She smiled as though she knew something that Obi didn’t. “Grace’s little spirit is healing. She’s safe and someday she may even be happy. Obi, you know I’m not telling you to take those children just to get some land. “
His temples throbbed. “You know, Easter, I’m tired of all of this. I should’ve just gone with my friends out West. Maybe they was right.” He pointed his finger in her face. “You’re leaving me and now telling me what to do about them children.”
“They love you, Obi,” she said calmly and quietly.
He held her by the shoulders and shouted, “Do you love me?”
“Why you wake the whole neighborhood?” She folded her arms again. “I would have liked to return to Philadelphia and finish school and work at the orphanage a spell longer. I don’t ever want to d
o field work, unless I’m starving. And that cabin, Obi, does seem small after the house I lived in up North.”
“I know it all the time. Why you wait till now to tell me that? Why you even come back here?” His voice was rising again. “Rose get better without—”
She covered his angry mouth with her soft hand and continued.
“And I had a hard time getting accustomed to sleeping on a floor again. But freedom would be bitter without you, Obi. And we do have an orphanage here already, don’t we?”
“What’re you saying?”
“Don’t you un—”
He waved her away. “I’m tired of all of this.”
Easter looked exasperated. “Would you listen to me? I am saying that I will not go back to Philadelphia. I will stay here and marry you, and we will raise Grace and Scipio and open our own orphanage. You could build another cabin and a schoolhouse. Rose could be the cook for the orphanage. You could teach the boys the carpentry trade, and the bigger children could farm for the orphanage to earn their keep. We could take in children whose parents have to work on other islands, and charge them a fee. Buy the land that’s being sold. If we get more land, then we could rent some of it for income and have the big boys and girls work the rest of it for food. Those are some of the things we did in Pennsylvania.” She stopped to catch her breath. “Some of the northern missionary societies could help us too.”
Obi stared at her, his mouth slightly open, not knowing how to easily move from anger to understanding.
Her eyes curled into a smile. “Obi, you know you can’t send those children away. And there’s more children on this island who need help. We need an orphanage right here. We will call it the Jennings-Booker Home for Colored Orphans. We’ll even have enough room to keep that space for Jason.”
He struggled through her torrent of words and tried to get to the point. “Easter, you staying here and marrying me?”
Her slender arms encircled his waist. “Obi, the work is here, and my heart is here with you.”
Chapter 25
The very oaks are greener clad,
The waters brighter smile;
