The Lost Quilter

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  “Course I can,” Lizzie retorted. “That’s what I tell Augustus.”

  “Joanna, you best hurry,” said Sophie, ignoring the girl. “The mistress in a fury when she find the washhouse empty and no one watching the fire.”

  “The mistress came here?” Dismayed, Joanna whirled on Lizzie. “I thought you said she sent Augustus.”

  “She did! She must have come by after I went to fetch you.”

  Joanna felt a trickling between her legs and knew she had begun to bleed again, and she hoped that the rags Auntie Bess had given her would be enough to staunch the flow. Dizzy, she wished she could crawl back to Tavia’s cabin and lie down.

  “You go see the mistress,” Sophie urged, “then come back here for something to eat while I hold that baby.”

  Joanna took a deep breath and nodded, steeling herself as she made her way to the back door. The housekeeper let her in and urged her to hurry. “Marse Chester’s waiting,” Dove whispered, giving Joanna a gentle push and gesturing down the hall.

  “Marse Chester?” she whispered back. “I thought the mistress—”

  “They’re both there. Now go!”

  Heart pounding, Joanna went to the study and found Marse Chester sitting behind his desk, ledger, pen, and ink pot set out neatly before him. The mistress stood to his side, her hand resting on the back of his chair as if they were posed for a portrait.

  Head bowed, Joanna waited for them to address her.

  “Your child was born alive, I see?” said Master Chester, eyeing the weight of her sling.

  “Yes, sir,” said Joanna, fighting the urge to turn her back and shield her daughter from his view. “Two days ago, midafternoon.”

  “Very good.” He beckoned her forward. “Let’s have a look. Male or female?”

  “A girl, marse.” She opened a fold of flannel so he could examine the sleeping child. Long lashes curled on a smooth, copper cheek above a strawberry mouth.

  “Ah. Pity.” Marse Chester took up his pen and opened his ledger. “Still, she’s a pretty little thing and capable of learning, I trust.”

  “Given her breeding, I would train her up as a house servant,” the mistress suggested. “She could become a fine housemaid, or a seamstress like her mother.”

  The master nodded as if he considered that sound advice. “You’re certain, Joanna, that Titus is the father.”

  “Yes, sir,” she said, confused.

  He peered at her sharply. “It’s important that I know the truth. If you’ve dallied elsewhere—”

  “No, sir,” she said, more forcefully than was wise. “Ruthie’s my husband’s child.”

  His eyebrows rose. “Ruthie? That won’t do. Let’s say instead…Calpurnia. The wife of Caesar.” He turned to his wife. “This one must be above reproach, isn’t that so, dear?”

  The mistress smiled, so he must have made a joke, although Joanna didn’t find anything amusing. “Perhaps it’s a bit much for such a little one,” the mistress replied demurely.

  “Something simpler, then. Julianna? No. Julia.”

  Just in time, Joanna remembered not to protest. She held herself perfectly motionless while the master dipped his pen, turned the pages of his ledger, and wrote, “Julia, quadroon female. Sired on Joanna by Titus. Value twenty dollars.”

  “You may go, Joanna,” said the mistress before the ink had dried.

  The date for Miss Evangeline’s marriage to Colonel Harper was set for the first Saturday in October, after the last cotton harvest but before the weather turned too unpleasant for travel. Joanna’s hands were in constant motion—sewing, fitting, washing, mending, pinning, draping the ivory taffeta, embroidering handkerchiefs and linens with the young mistress’s new monogram—every day from the moment she set Ruthie into her sling and hurried to the big house until twilight when she made her weary way back to the quarter, for food in Tavia’s cabin and comfort in Titus’s arms. On washdays, Lizzie amused Ruthie while Joanna hauled water or when she worked close to the fire, but on every other day but Sunday, Joanna carried her daughter in the sling when she worked indoors or let her lie on her blanket on the soft grass when she sewed outside. Always, always, she kept Ruthie close, remembering not to call her by her true name if any of the Chesters were nearby.

  The sling was too cumbersome to wear while she stretched and bent and stooped to fit Miss Evangeline’s garments, so she would fashion a makeshift bed out of her mending basket and set the baby in a safe place somewhere in the room, out of the way but still near. At first Miss Evangeline indulged her, won over by the novelty of a baby in the house, but before long she declared Ruthie’s coos and soft wails “tiresome” and insisted that Joanna leave her in the housekeeper’s care during dress fittings. Dove was happy to hold a sweet baby girl, her own children having grown up, died, or been sold off, but Mrs. Chester was less amenable. “Dove has her own work to attend to,” she said, after Ruthie’s hungry cries interrupted her reading. “Surely one of the old women in the quarter can look after her.”

  From then on, Joanna left Ruthie with Auntie Bess, her breath catching in her throat as she shut her ears to her daughter’s cries and went to the big house alone, feeling strangely bare and unprotected without the comforting weight of the sling. At first, Auntie Bess carried Ruthie up to the big house several times a day to nurse, but although the thin old woman didn’t complain, Joanna knew the walk was difficult for her and doubted she would be able to keep it up as Ruthie grew. The mistress did not permit her to find out. When Ruthie was little more than a month old, Mrs. Chester told her to either wean her child or find someone else to nurse her, because “Julia” was distracting her from her duties.

  Rage flared up within Joanna, and she stifled a sudden urge to shove Mrs. Chester backwards so that her head cracked against the corner of the master’s desk and her spectacles shattered. She could not obey. She could not give her second child up to suckle at another woman’s breast. Back in Tavia’s cabin, she swore she would not do it, so to spare her a beating, Titus found a woman whose newborn had died a few days before of a fever and promised her regular meat and fish in trade for her milk. “She’ll get the comfort of a child to hold, Ruthie will have a full tummy, and you’ll be all right with the mistress,” Tavia said, gently taking the baby from Joanna’s arms. “It’s only while you up at the big house. Nights, Sundays, she’s yours alone, yours and Titus’s.”

  Joanna knew she had no other choice, but every day her milk grew thinner, and every day Ruthie minded her leaving a little less. Then came an afternoon when Ruthie wailed when Joanna took her from the other woman’s arms. Later that evening, she would not calm down until Auntie Bess cuddled her and sang a song in Gullah talk Joanna didn’t understand.

  “She won’t know me this way,” Joanna fretted as she and Pearl gathered water.

  “She’ll know you,” said Pearl. “My mama had to do the same thing when I was born, but I don’t remember that. I remember everything that came after, and the same will be true for Julia Ruth.”

  “Just Ruthie,” Joanna murmured automatically. She hoped Pearl was right and that she would have many years to remind her child who her real mother was.

  The last week before the wedding was a frenzy of preparation. Guests arrived, bringing horses that need tending and clothes that before long became soiled and needed washing. Joanna and Titus hardly saw one another for all the work that needed to be done, but Ruthie was content, and they looked forward to the two days of rest the Chesters had promised them after the wedding guests departed. In the meantime, there were too many buckra to please, too many ways to send Miss Evangeline flying into a temper. Joanna dropped into bed at night with Ruthie curled up beside her, barely waking when the baby latched onto her breast and suckled hungrily, dropping off to sleep while she nursed.

  The day came. Miss Evangeline glowed in her ivory brocade, more beautiful than any fashion plate. Joanna dressed her before the ceremony and joined the other house slaves at the back of the gallery, the fi
nest room in the big house, while the bride and groom exchanged their solemn vows before the preacher. He was a different preacher than Mrs. Chester sent to lecture the slaves on Sunday morning each month; that preacher had tufts of gray hair fringing a bald pate and smelled faintly of drink as he exhorted the slaves to go about the master’s and mistress’s business as dutifully as they would their Heavenly Father’s business. This preacher smelled of lemon water and was far jollier, almost overcome with tears of joy as he praised the married state. Joanna’s thoughts drifted to the day she and Titus had jumped the broom, how the quarter had celebrated, how they had spent their wedding night. A crash of cheers and applause brought her abruptly back to the present: Miss Evangeline was kissing the colonel, and now she was married, and soon she would be the mistress of a fine house in Charleston. Joanna would be happy to wave farewell as she drove away.

  The wedding party, family, and guests began filing outside to the piazza overlooking the garden. “What do you think about our Robert joining the family?” a jovial, red-faced man asked Joanna in passing. She bobbed a curtsy and murmured that she liked it just fine, that the marse colonel was a fine man—lies that skipped off her tongue while in her mind’s eye she saw the colonel tearing off Leah’s dress. Other guests queried other slaves on either side of her; the slaves promptly provided the only replies that were possible or expected in the situation, but the buckra grinned and nodded their heads as if pleased to have their good opinion of the match confirmed.

  After the ceremony, Joanna was sent to the kitchen to help Sophie, so she saw nothing of the celebration that followed the ceremony, although she heard the music and laughter drifting on the balmy air and sampled the dishes Sophie prepared—roasted pheasant, sweet sausage, potatoes with sage, cucumber pickles, bread with white flour, oranges—and last of all, a small square of white wedding cake, a confection so light and sweet she devoured it in two bites before it could melt on her tongue.

  The next day every house slave and a few field hands who had decent clothes and manners fit for company were put to work, some helping clean up the mess left behind after the party, others assisting the weary revelers as they rose, had breakfast, and departed. Only the next day did all the slaves truly enjoy a day of rest. Although the drawing had been delayed a day, when Augustus finally summoned the heads of households, he gave them double rations as well as coffee, tea, and sugar. “Miss Evangeline should get married every week,” Pearl remarked, sticking her finger into the folded paper and sprinkling a few white crystals on her tongue.

  The week of celebration would end with Miss Evangeline’s departure, which could not come soon enough to suit Joanna. Her hands and wrists tingled from the strain of constant sewing, and she was tired of Miss Evangeline’s fanciful stories and flashes of temper. She had a few short months to finish up before the annual clothing distribution at Christmas, and with Miss Evangeline out of the way, she just might be able to do it.

  Joanna was in the washhouse pressing Colonel Harper’s suit with the flatiron when the kitchen girl came running to announce that Miss Evangeline needed Joanna to pack her trunks. “Why me?” Joanna said without thinking.

  The kitchen girl shrugged, and Lizzie remarked, “I guess since you made all those fine things, you the only one who knows how to fold them proper.”

  “Anyone can fold a dress,” Joanna retorted, but she left Lizzie to finish up and took her time going to Miss Evangeline’s bedroom. There dresses were spread over the bed and trunks lying open on the floor; shawls and hair ornaments lay scattered about as if a great wind had swept through the room and scattered the contents of the clothespress and bureau everywhere. Joanna couldn’t help wincing at the sight of the garments she had so painstakingly made strewn about so carelessly.

  “You want all this in the trunks, Miss Evangeline?” Joanna asked, stooping over to pick up an embroidered morning coat.

  “You may call me Mrs. Harper now, Joanna,” Miss Evangeline said graciously, forgiving her error. “I must thank you for your fine work on my wedding gown. My husband, the colonel, was truly overcome as I descended the stairs. He looked as if he had glimpsed heaven itself when he beheld me.”

  “That’s nice, miss.”

  “Of course, the trick will be to keep him feeling so after we’ve been married awhile and he knows me better.” Miss Evangeline sighed and fingered a silk glove lying on the bureau, missing its partner. “I believe those fashion plates inspired you, Joanna. I can only imagine what you would contrive if you could read the patterns.”

  Joanna carefully folded a pair of stockings, head bowed so the young mistress could not read her expression. “I guess you’ll have your choice of fine dressmakers in Charleston, miss.”

  “I’m sure they think so. Even now they’re surely plotting how to extort enormous sums of money from my husband for the simplest frock. I can’t say I’m sorry that I shall disappoint them.”

  “How…do you expect to disappoint them, miss?”

  “Why, by bringing my own dressmaker with me, of course.” Miss Evangeline beamed, delighted with her surprise. “Didn’t I say you would be rewarded?”

  “Miss?” Joanna managed to say. “I’m going with you?”

  “My goodness, why do you look so alarmed? There’s nothing to fear, Joanna. I know you’re not accustomed to the bustle of the city, but you’ll adore Charleston once you’ve seen it.”

  “I seen it,” Joanna murmured, remembering the slave market, the auction block, the barracoon. She had hoped for extra food, for sewing notions, for an extra day of rest. She had expected Miss Evangeline to forget she had promised Joanna a reward altogether. Never, never had she imagined this.

  “I must say I expected a far different reaction.” Miss Evangeline’s pretty mouth turned down at the corners. “Perhaps you don’t understand how much improved your situation will be in the city. You’ll have your own bed in the dormitory above the kitchen building, and you’ll eat meals prepared by our own cook. No more sharing a pallet of blankets in the slave quarter, no more ration drawing on Sunday and mixing up porridge over a fireplace.”

  But did Colonel Harper have a woman who could nurse Ruthie while Joanna worked? It was unlikely—which meant they would have to let Joanna care for Ruthie herself. She hardly dared hope some good might come of the sudden upheaval. Tavia, Pearl, Auntie Bess—she would miss them terribly, but she would accept the loss of their company if it meant regaining her daughter. “Titus’s been to the city with Marse Chester,” she said, slowly warming to the idea. “He likes it fine.”

  “Titus isn’t coming with us,” said Miss Evangeline, shaking her head, brow furrowing. “My husband already has a groom. Even if my husband had dozens of horses and no one to tend them, I can’t imagine my father would part with Titus. My father relies upon him too dearly.”

  A sudden roaring filled Joanna’s ears. She gripped the edge of the bureau for support. “My baby,” she said. “I can bring Ruthie, right, miss?”

  Miss Evangeline fixed her with a cool, flinty stare that confirmed Joanna’s worst fears.

  Chapter Five

  1860

  Charleston, South Carolina

  I don’t want her sulking all the way to Charleston,” declared Miss Evangeline as her husband, resplendent in his uniform, helped her into the coach.

  “She’s merely frightened,” Colonel Harper consoled her. “She’ll be fine once she gets used to her new surroundings.”

  “Do you truly think so? I think she’s still angry about that baby.”

  “Negroes don’t feel love or sadness the way we do. They may give the appearance of true feeling, but they understand these sensations only in a brute, rudimentary way, such as a dog or horse might. What you see now is fear and stubbornness, as simple as that.” As the colonel closed the carriage door, the last Joanna heard from her seat beside the driver was, “However, if her manner doesn’t improve, I’ll beat the sulkiness out of her.”

  Joanna heard but did not care. What
more could they do to hurt her? They had already done their worst. They had ripped out her heart.

  Miss Evangeline had tried to explain that her father had given her Joanna as a wedding gift—not Titus, not Julia—and she was a hard-won gift at that. When Miss Evangeline had first suggested the idea to her father, her stepmother had protested that she could not do without her only laundress, nor did she wish to lose such an accomplished seamstress. But with time, charm, and well-reasoned arguments, Miss Evangeline convinced her father that another strong, young girl could be trained to wash clothes, and she herself needed a seamstress much more than her stepmother did. An officer’s wife in the city must be an accomplished hostess so that her husband might impress his superiors and win promotions, and she must have the clothes to play the part. Her stepmother, on the other hand, rarely needed finery so far out on the plantation, and in any event, she preferred plainer attire, dresses she could easily fashion herself. Miss Evangeline could not bear to think that as a new bride in a new city, she would drive her husband into debt purchasing expensive dresses to keep the gossips at bay.

  The twin pillars of money and pride supported her argument solidly enough to convince Marse Chester. It would reflect badly upon the entire Chester family if Miss Evangeline were perceived as inferior to the other young wives of Charleston. Thus Mrs. Chester lost her laundress, and Joanna lost her family.

  “You must have known you would be coming with me,” Miss Evangeline had said, astounded by Joanna’s lack of enthusiasm. “What need do they have of a fine seamstress here after I go? Why would my stepmother have you train up a new laundress if you were to remain behind?”

  Joanna’s heart ached. So this wretched decision had been made months ago, with Joanna none the wiser. She understood Chester logic, understood why they believed she must go and Titus must stay, but she had heard nothing to justify leaving Ruthie behind. It would be years before Ruthie could perform any useful work around Oak Grove. Ruthie meant no more to the Chesters than twenty dollars in a ledger, but she was everything to Joanna. Titus would understand why she had to take their daughter away with her.