The Lost Quilter

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  When Joanna reached the house, she found the stout cook outside at the pump, panting heavily as she worked the handle with one thick arm and held a large pot beneath the spout with the other. “You there,” she said, spotting Joanna. “Come help me.”

  Joanna quickly complied, holding the pot beneath the cool, gushing water while the cook threw her weight against the stubborn, creaking pump handle. “Would it kill Marse Chester to let me oil this thing?” she grumbled, pausing to catch her breath and wipe her brow with the back of her hand. Then she beckoned impatiently to Joanna. “Don’t just stand there, girl. Bring it to the kitchen.”

  “I’m Joanna,” she said, following the cook inside.

  “I know.” The cook gestured to the cookstove. “Leave it there.”

  “Do you know where I can find Sophie?” asked Joanna, hefting the heavy pot onto the stove and shaking water droplets from her apron.

  “She usually in the kitchen.” Then the cook sighed and added grudgingly, “All right. I’m Sophie.”

  “Oh.” Joanna watched hungrily as Sophie brought out a jar of sourdough starter and a sack of flour. “I’m living with Tavia now, and since they didn’t get any rations for me, I thought maybe—”

  “You living with Tavia?” Sophie interrupted. “Augustus say Mistress put you with Leah.”

  “Leah…didn’t have enough room.”

  Sophie harrumphed. “Oh, but Tavia, she got lots of room.” Shaking her head, she reached into a cupboard for a mixing bowl. “Leah already took your ration. You want it, you got to get it from her.”

  “When did Leah come for my ration?”

  “This morning before sunup.”

  “And you just let her take it?”

  Sophie shot Joanna a warning look. “She your head of household, as far as anyone tell me.”

  “How am I supposed to get it back?” Joanna asked. “She’s not likely to give it to me if I ask nicely. What am I supposed to do? Steal it from her cabin while she in the fields?”

  “Not unless you a lot stronger than you look,” retorted Sophie. “Your ration gone, girl, but since you Tavia’s friend, I’ll see what I can find for you. No sense in them children going hungry on your account.”

  Joanna knew it was the most she could hope for. “Thank you.”

  “You best get on. Mistress’ll want you ready for work before breakfast even if she don’t give you nothing to do. Wait out back for the housekeeper.”

  Joanna nodded and hurried off to the back door of the big house. The housekeeper, neatly attired in a calico dress, starched white apron, and white cap, opened the door as quickly as if she had been watching through the window for her. She led Joanna to a parlor and admonished her to stand and wait for the mistress.

  Alone, Joanna waited, rocking from her heels to her toes when her feet grew tired. A clock chimed on the mantelpiece; from another room came the clinking of china as someone set a table. Overhead, floorboards creaked, followed by the sound of voices and footsteps on the stairs. Joanna stood alone in the parlor while the Chesters ate their breakfast and was standing yet when a young woman with clear blue eyes and long blond curls piled on top of her head swept into the parlor.

  “You must be the new seamstress,” she said, then raised a hand to her throat as her gaze lit upon Joanna’s scarred cheek. “Good heavens. What happened to your face?”

  “Burn scar, miss.”

  “Is it a brand? I’ve heard they sometimes brand runaways.” She waved a hand dismissively to indicate she didn’t require an answer. “No matter. You’ve come just in time. I’m spending most of the spring and summer with my aunt in Charleston to avoid the malaria season, and Daddy’s bought me some delicious fabrics for my wardrobe. No matter what Mrs. Chester says, don’t let her talk you into finishing her dour old dress before starting my new gown. Understood?”

  “Yes, miss,” said Joanna, ducking her head. What did the young lady expect her to do if the mistress wanted her dress completed right away? Should she sew the dress with one hand and the gown with the other?

  The young woman’s eyebrows arched. “You agreed so quickly that you must not be aware of the risks involved.” She lowered her voice and drew closer. “Don’t let my stepmother know that you’ve set her dress aside in favor of mine. Her first two husbands died under mysterious circumstances.”

  “I won’t, miss,” Joanna replied shakily. Mrs. Chester didn’t look old enough to have already gone through two husbands, but she would heed the young woman’s warning—and finish her stepmother’s dress first. Why risk upsetting a murderess?

  “Good.” The young woman, who appeared to be sixteen or seventeen, looked her over speculatively. “How long do you intend to stand there idle—what was your name?”

  “Joanna, miss. Until the mistress come, miss.”

  “That will do, Evangeline,” said Mrs. Chester, appearing in the doorway. “You have reading to attend to.”

  Evangeline pursed her lips, inclined her head gracefully to her stepmother, and glided from the room with a soft rustling of rose silk. Mrs. Chester sighed quietly and turned her attention to Joanna. In sharp contrast to her stepdaughter, she wore a dress of somber brown, her hair parted in the middle and pulled back into a smooth knot at the nape of her neck. Her round spectacles caught the light as she led Joanna to a small closet off the kitchen where a sewing basket and pile of mending as high as her knee awaited.

  “Attend to your master’s clothes before the children’s. When you’ve completed the mending, I want you to finish my dress.” The mistress gestured for Joanna, who stood a head taller, to take a bundle of blue-and-brown plaid wool down from an upper shelf. Joanna unfolded it to find pieces cut for a dress—a skirt basted to a bodice, two sleeves with white cuffs pinned in place, a collar creased from folding. Joanna quickly saw that whoever had begun the dress fashioned garments much differently than she did. Although the dress was nearly half-finished, it would take Joanna at least as much time to redo poorly sewn seams and properly align the bodice than if she had started from scratch.

  She hid her dismay from the mistress, who continued, “You may work in here if you like, or outside in the yard where the light is better. If my stepdaughter badgers you about her new gown, you have my permission to remind her that if she does not finish her Greek translations to my satisfaction, there will be no visit to her aunt in Charleston, and no need for a new gown. Her father may indulge her vanity, but not I. Her constitution is no more delicate than her younger brothers’, or my own. I daresay that if we can brave the risk of yellow fever and malaria, so can she.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Joanna, though she wouldn’t dare say any such thing to Miss Evangeline. Just as she had feared, she had found herself exactly where everyone had warned her not to tread—caught between the demands of two mistresses. The Bible said a man could not serve two masters, but Joanna thought serving two masters would be easy compared to serving two jealous mistresses.

  She sewed all morning beneath the shade of a live oak not far from the big house, mending torn trousers and popped seams. She guessed the ages of the three younger children from the size of their clothes—two boys and a girl, of whom the youngest was about four. As she sewed a button on a young boy’s Sunday suit, she imagined her own son wearing it proudly as he rode in the carriage Hans Bergstrom had arranged to carry them to Canada, and then she gasped aloud as shock struck her with the force of cold water.

  She could not remember her son’s face.

  Squeezing her eyes shut, she frantically searched her memory. She could feel his mouth on her nipple, his curly head against her unscarred cheek, his soft baby smell, but her mind’s eye glimpsed nothing, not even the faintest image of his sweet face. He had a perfect, broad nose, she reminded herself. Round, full cheeks like her mother’s. Clear, wide, guileless eyes. Bit by bit, she pieced together her memory of individual features she had once gazed upon so lovingly, so carelessly, but it was all a patchwork of glimpses that she doubted resem
bled her child at all. How would she recognize him if she ever found her freedom? What horror to think she might pass her own son on a crowded street in Canada and not know him!

  “Joanna,” came a distant shout. “You all right?”

  Startled, Joanna shaded her eyes and spotted Sophie outside the kitchen. “Yes,” she called back. “Just got sun in my eyes.”

  Sophie frowned, bemused, but did not question her. “Marse’s family done eating. Come on inside and have yours before it’s gone.”

  Joanna did not need to be asked twice. Gathering the mending and the sweetgrass sewing basket, she hurried to the kitchen, where the house slaves were already eating bowls of rice, beans, and okra, on foot or sitting on the floor, quickly, so they might fill their empty bellies before the Chesters summoned them back to work. Sophie twice filled a bowl for Joanna, who barely tasted the unfamiliar spices and textures in her hunger, and cut her a thick slab of cornbread. Without shame she picked the crumbs from her apron and ate those too, and if Sophie had not already ordered the kitchen girl to scrub the pot, Joanna might have begged to lick it clean first.

  She sewed for the rest of the afternoon, but she was unable to finish all the mending and was thus spared choosing between Mrs. Chester’s dress and Miss Evangeline’s gown. “Mistress want you in the study,” the housekeeper informed her as she separated the mended clothes from those unfinished in the small closet off the kitchen. Through the window Joanna spotted the field hands trooping slowly from the white-flecked cotton fields and she knew Tavia would soon begin supper. Hoping the mistress intended to give her her ration, even a half ration, she hurried to the study.

  As before, the mistress sat at the secretary writing on creamy ivory paper. Joanna waited for her to speak, forcing herself not to fidget, her thoughts fixed on Tavia’s hearth and Uncle Titus’s hunting. She could almost smell roasting rabbit.

  “I understand that you disobeyed my instructions,” the mistress said suddenly, dipping her pen in a bottle of indigo ink and signing her name to the bottom of the page.

  “No, ma’am,” said Joanna, surprised.

  “I told you to share Leah’s cabin.” She set down her pen, lifted the sheet, and blew gently on the rows of small, elegant script. “Instead it has come to my attention that you are living with Octavia and her family. Were you somehow confused by such simple instructions?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  The mistress set down the paper and regarded her sternly. “Did Leah forbid you to enter her cabin?”

  “I did go into her cabin, ma’am,” said Joanna, with perfect honesty. “Tavia had more room and she ask me to stay with them. I help Pearl fetch firewood this morning so she and Tavia could get to the cotton fields sooner.”

  The mistress pondered this and did not seem displeased. “Did Leah give you your rations?”

  “Not yet, ma’am.” Nor would she ever, but Joanna would endure a whipping before she carried tales to the white folks about a slave, even one as mean as Leah. “There wasn’t no time. I haven’t seen her since yesterday.”

  “See that you collect it. The next drawing isn’t until Saturday. You may stay with Octavia’s family, but I must warn you that in the future, you must ask Aaron before you make any changes to your living arrangements. There’s no need to make his job more difficult than it already is.”

  Joanna hoped to avoid meeting Aaron as long as possible. “Yes, ma’am. Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Did you finish the mending?”

  “About halfway done, ma’am.”

  The mistress’s eyebrows rose. “Only halfway? It seems my sister-in-law overpraised your sewing skills. Be here all the earlier tomorrow morning. It’s washing day.”

  Shaking her head as if she should have known Joanna would disappoint, the mistress turned back to her letter. Joanna made a quick curtsy and returned to the kitchen, where Sophie was nearly finished preparing the Chesters’ supper. “Take that when you go,” she said, jabbing a spoon in the direction of a sweetgrass basket with two woven handles. “Bring the basket back in the morning.”

  Murmuring her thanks, Joanna snatched up the basket and hurried outside before Sophie could change her mind. Glancing into the basket as she left the big house, she glimpsed a sack that probably held cornmeal, a tin of molasses, and a slab of salted pork. It wasn’t much to sustain her for three days, but it was more than she was likely to get from Leah, and it would make her less of a burden to Tavia.

  Auntie Bess and the children must have collected more firewood during the day, for when Joanna reached the cabin, a fire already crackled in the fireplace. “We’ll have sweet potatoes with our rabbit,” Auntie Bess announced, poking a stick into the ashes where four large sweet potatoes roasted.

  “Uncle Titus caught one?” said Joanna, setting Sophie’s basket on the floor and snatching up the one Pearl had used to fetch water.

  “He and Tavia are skinning it now. If you pass them on your way to the creek, tell them to hurry. Pearl’s getting the children and I bet they all about to faint from hunger.”

  Joanna promised she would. She had only taken a few steps from the cabin when she saw Tavia coming up the dirt path, smiling as she talked with a tall, broad-shouldered man carrying a skinned rabbit. She stopped short at the sight of him, he looked up, and a smile spread across his face.

  He was the coachman who had filled her tin cornboiler with water and passed it to her through the bars of the cage.

  “You Uncle Titus?” she said. It seemed impossible he should be Tavia’s brother. Tavia was all goodness, while Titus had mocked her in her thirst.

  He shrugged. “I suppose I am to some, but you don’t got to call me uncle.”

  Tavia slapped him lightly on the arm, but her eyes shone with pride. “Don’t tease.” To Joanna she added, “Hurry back with the water, won’t you? Sooner we eat, sooner we can turn in.”

  As Joanna nodded, Titus said, “You need your rest. Washing day tomorrow.”

  Joanna made a tight smile and hurried off to fetch the water. He was mocking her again, pointing out how Joanna’s worst day in the big house was better than his sister’s easiest day in the fields. Of course it was true, but the same could be said for him. The coachman’s job was one of the most prized on the plantation, or at least that was how it had been in Virginia. And wasn’t Titus allowed to hunt with the master’s own rifle? Most field hands suspected that house slaves were spies and shills for the white folks, but Titus was no field hand, and from the sound of things he was more privileged by far than Joanna. He had no call to mock her.

  She almost forgave him after that first bite of rabbit, meat so tender it fell off the bone. The younger children were more spirited than she had ever seen them, begging their uncle to tell them stories while they licked meat juices from their fingertips, scrambling for the best seats on the ground beside him. Then, when she had almost taken a liking to him, Titus spoiled it by eyeing her curiously as she tried to drink water from the lid to a jar that Pearl said had once held pickled cucumbers. “What happened to that fine tin cup with the lid and handle you brought from Virginia?” he asked. “You lose it already?”

  “I didn’t lose it,” she said shortly, swallowing her last bite of sweet potato and carrying her makeshift cup into the cabin. She heard voices murmuring outside, and she supposed Tavia, Pearl, and Auntie Bess were telling him about her losses and her disagreement with Leah. She didn’t care, except it would give him one more thing to laugh about.

  She was in the washhouse putting the master’s trousers through the mangle when she next saw Titus. How long he had stood in the doorway watching her before knocking his boot against the frame to catch her attention, she did not know. She glanced up, locked eyes with him, and frowned to hide her sudden stir of embarrassment and anger, emotions he seemed to inspire in her without trying. She didn’t pause in her work, but she had never been good at hiding her feelings, and she wasn’t sure she had succeeded this time either.

  As he approach
ed, she saw from the corner of her eye that he carried a bundle of calico under his arm. “So at Oak Grave the coachman carries dirty laundry for the mistress?” she said, trying to put enough contempt in her voice to carry over the cranking complaints of the mangle.

  “I can’t see the new mistress wearing this,” he said, lifting a faded sleeve and letting it fall. “It’d drag on the ground unless she stood on a chair.”

  Joanna released the winch and turned to face him, hesitating at the sight of her old dress. Carefully Titus unfolded the sleeves, unrolled the skirt, and revealed her lost tin cornboiler.

  “Where did you find them?” She knew he was not the thief.

  “It don’t matter. What matters is you got them back.”

  “It matter to me.”

  “It wasn’t Leah. Or Lizzie.” Titus draped the dress over her shoulders like a shawl and closed her hands around the cornboiler, all without a trace of mockery. “The thief won’t trouble you no more.”

  She knew she would have to be content with that. “Thank you.” The cornboiler was cool and smooth in her hands, but already beads of condensation were forming on the rounded sides. She was suddenly conscious of her flushed face, her hair frizzed and kinked into a wild, dark halo from the humidity. She turned away and draped the dress over the flatiron board and set the cornboiler upon it.

  As she took hold of the winch again, Titus gestured to her scar. “Your old marse do that to you?”

  Joanna nodded and inhaled sharply, remembering the smell of her own seared flesh. “Flatiron, right out the fire.”

  “How far you get?”

  “What?”

  “When you run away, how far you get?”

  “Pennsylvania. A town called Creek’s Crossing.”

  “That near Philadelphia?” said Titus. “The new mistress from there. Don’t expect you’d find a lot of buckra kind to runaways in Pennsylvania.”

  “Buckra?”