The Lost Quilter Read online

  “But he don’t know that.” No one outside the slave quarter knew Joanna and Titus had jumped the broom three months before, on New Year’s Eve, and no one but Tavia and Auntie Bess knew they were expecting a child by autumn. “Tavia’s right. We have to do it this way so he don’t marry us to no one else.”

  He nodded, but his mutinous look remained. Joanna hoped he would remember to mask it before Aaron or the Chesters saw and beat it off him.

  Joanna longed to run to Tavia and share their good news, but after one last, hasty kiss, Titus had to leave for the stable and Joanna for Miss Evangeline’s bedroom. Dove must have guessed from her shining eyes what Marse Chester had decided, but she knew better than to ask in front of the young mistress. Instead Dove offered a small smile of congratulations when Miss Evangeline wasn’t looking.

  “What did my father want?” asked Miss Evangeline as Joanna gathered up the blue silk gown and packed her sewing basket.

  “Titus ask permission to marry me, and Marse Chester said yes.”

  “The coachman?” Miss Evangeline’s blue eyes widened in wounded surprise. “Why, Joanna, you never said you fancied him. If you wanted to marry, you should have come to me. I would have sorted it out with Daddy.”

  “I couldn’t,” Joanna blurted without thinking.

  “Why ever not?”

  “Because—because I didn’t know if he fancied me.”

  “Oh. Of course.” Miss Evangeline nodding knowingly and donned her riding cap. “Sometimes it’s difficult to understand a man’s intentions. But all’s well that ends well. Congratulations, Joanna. I hope you’ll be happy.”

  She didn’t add that she also hoped to announce her own engagement soon, because white marriage was so unlike slave marriage that it could not be mentioned in the same breath. Belying her good wishes, the tight set of her mouth made her annoyance plain. Unless Miss Evangeline married soon, a simple slave would accomplish what she had not. That was why Joanna never would have asked Miss Evangeline to intercede on their behalf with her father. She had seen Miss Evangeline ruin the marriage plans of a onetime friend by spreading tales about the young woman’s unspecified “indiscretions,” not because she wanted the man for herself, but because she was offended that he had not asked her first. If that was what she did to another white girl, Joanna could imagine how she might crush a slave.

  Joanna didn’t understand Miss Evangeline’s determination to rush headlong into something that seemed unlikely to bring her any happiness. Miss Evangeline adored her father and wept whenever he left on an extended journey, and Joanna had often heard her declare that Oak Grove was the loveliest place on earth. After she married and moved away, she would rarely see father and home again. She loved flirting and dancing but took no interest in managing the household, preferring to leave such dreary tasks to her stepmother except when Mrs. Chester’s decisions thwarted her pleasures. Although she craved the admiration of the young men who visited Oak Grove and vied for her attention, she didn’t seem to love any one of them in particular. Auntie Bess had said Miss Evangeline would go where her father wanted to put her, which he would do as soon as he found where the greatest profit could be made. No one would dare say Miss Evangeline was going to be sold off to the highest bidder, but that’s how it sounded to Joanna. If Miss Evangeline were not so demanding, so apt to strike out with quick flashes of temper when displeased, Joanna might have felt sorry for her.

  A few days later, Joanna was putting away clean clothes in the younger boys’ bedroom when she heard the master and mistress talking in the foyer below. “What’s this I hear about your coachman marrying my laundress?” asked Mrs. Chester, in a voice that managed to be both direct and deferential.

  The silence could have been a nod, or just as easily a frown. “Titus sought my permission and I granted it. It’s true that I had planned to breed her with another buck, but Titus is strong and healthy, and he’ll do just as well.”

  Joanna shivered at the thought of their narrow escape. Holding her breath, she drew closer to the door.

  The mistress lowered her voice. “I wonder if it’s wise to reward that runaway. She hasn’t been with us long and I’m still not certain we can trust her. If she believes we are too lenient, she might try to run again.”

  “On the contrary, a marriage she and Titus both desire will settle her down,” replied Master Chester, with none of his wife’s fear of eavesdroppers. “Especially after children arrive. She won’t want to leave her husband, and she can’t run away with a baby on her hip.”

  “If she does, you’ll have to buy me a new laundress,” said the mistress lightly. “Speaking of expenditures—”

  “Martha, dear, if this is going to be another reproach about finery for my daughter—”

  “Not a reproach, but a caution. Last season’s harvest was your most profitable in years, but we can’t expect such abundance every year. If the harvest is less than what you expect, or, God forbid, there should be a drought this summer—”

  “Now, Martha, don’t worry.” Joanna heard a noise like a dry kiss on a soft cheek. “Dresses and hair ribbons and amusements for Evangeline and her young friends are an investment, one that should pay off soon.”

  “I understand, dear, but prudence—”

  “Martha.” With a word, he commanded her silence. “Don’t worry. Our creditors have been paid, the new crop will be put in soon, and if I need to raise cash, I can sell a slave. All the more reason to encourage Titus to marry your laundress, eh? The more affectionate they are, the more they’ll increase our wealth.”

  The mistress murmured a reply, and from below came the sound of footsteps as master and mistress parted. Joanna finished putting away the clothes, a cold knot in her throat. Master Chester was wrong. Marriage would not settle her down, force her to thrust roots into mounded-up furrows of earth and push out children the way cotton plants offered up their long, silky fibers. She had run with a baby in her belly once; she could run with one in her arms. How could she not? Marriage would not protect Joanna or Titus from being sold off, nor would it protect their child.

  Titus often vowed that he would not die a slave. Joanna was determined that their son or daughter would not live as one, nor would their family be parted on another man’s whim.

  In the evenings Joanna pieced Birds in the Air blocks until her water-wrinkled, pinpricked fingers shook and her neck ached. She cut shimmering blue silk and blue-and-brown plaid wool and faded calico into triangles, paired them off to form squares split diagonally into dark and light halves, and gathered them into blocks. One large dark triangle pointed the way north; three smaller dark triangles followed behind. She sewed until the light failed her, until exhaustion overcame her. While she sewed, she fixed the landmarks in her mind, blocking out the curious sidelong glances and the muttered remarks about the runaway who had lost her mind, who sewed all day for the master and all night for herself.

  Fixing her mind on the journey north, she blocked out gnawing pangs of hunger that never seemed to leave her. Dove slipped her extra food whenever she dared risk it, but Joanna hid whatever would not spoil and brought it back to Tavia’s cabin to share with the family. Whatever she ate seemed to vanish somewhere between her mouth and her stomach, for she never felt full, never felt her hunger ease. She began to wonder if she were not pregnant after all, if instead her monthly blood had stopped because she was starving. She had seen it happen to others, at Greenfields and in the Georgia traders’ wagon. Until she felt the child stir in her womb, she did not know for certain. After that, she imagined each movement as a death throe, not the testing and stretching of growing limbs but the desperate thrashing of a starving child.

  Piecing the quilt set her mind adrift from the anchor of fear that threatened to hold her down on Oak Grove, forever afraid, forever without hope, forever a slave.

  Joanna wasn’t in the cotton rows to witness the terrible scene unfold, but Tavia and Pearl saw everything.

  Late winter and early spring me
ant sowing cotton for harvest later that summer. Earlier the fields had been laid off in rows three feet apart and striped with ridges formed by two furrows of the turning plow. Slaves walked the lines with a shovel plow to put a trench down the center of each ridge, and into it other slaves tossed the seeds saved from the last season. Last of all came the mule pulling the board that gently scraped the top of the ridges, covering the seeds with a thin layer of soil.

  Miss Evangeline was out riding with Robert Harper, an army officer and distant relation from Charleston visiting Oak Grove on the pretense of determining the advantages of cultivating Sea Island cotton versus hirsute varieties. Joanna had heard the truth from Miss Evangeline while fitting her new riding dress: His family had made its fortune from rice, and since Colonel Harper was a military man, neither he nor his brothers stood to benefit from his study of cotton. He had come on an entirely different errand—to see if Miss Evangeline’s beauty was equal to its descriptions and to win the esteem of her father. As far as Joanna could tell, no one had made much of an effort to conceal his real purpose from Miss Evangeline. “Charleston would be a lovely place to live,” she said to her reflection as Joanna slipped pins into the hem of her dress. “It’s fashionable, and not too far from home, and Aunt Lucretia knows everyone who matters.”

  Miss Evangeline and her unacknowledged suitor were riding the cotton rows just ahead of the sowers when Colonel Harper noted the slave women’s physical prowess. “They’re as vigorous as some of my soldiers,” he remarked, with the authority of a man ten years the pretty belle’s senior. “Note the musculature, designed for brute strength rather than grace, endurance rather than beauty. In physical form, they more closely resemble the male of their own race rather than the female European.”

  Miss Evangeline nodded, in perfect agreement. “Underneath, as well, as I’m sure you know.”

  “Underneath?” said the colonel. “You mean, in the heart? In the seat of the soul?”

  “No, silly.” When he peered at her, uncomprehending, she tossed her head and laughed. “Oh, you’re incorrigible. You won’t be satisfied until I say it aloud, will you? You know perfectly well that I mean underneath their skirts.”

  “Miss Evangeline!”

  She gave his forearm a playful swat. “Don’t pretend to be shocked, Colonel, and don’t pretend you don’t know for my sake. I’m not a fragile magnolia blossom, and you’re a man of the world. Your family owns many slaves. I’m sure you’ve dallied.”

  “Never,” he said, then added, “Never with a negress.”

  She put her blond head to one side and studied him. “I do believe you’re telling the truth. You’re like my father in that regard. Well, then, I am embarrassed that I ever spoke of it.”

  When she pulled the reins to lead her horse away, the colonel stopped her. “You can’t leave it at that. Surely you don’t expect me to believe that colored women—”

  “Possess a pistil as well as a stamen? Why do you think it so impossible? You can find such examples throughout God’s creation. Look upon this very cotton field in a few months’ time and you will see thousands of plants possessing both the male and female parts of reproduction.”

  Joanna had seen the young mistress weave similar tales and could imagine how guileless and innocent Miss Evangeline’s blue eyes had been as she had cast her net of words around her prey. Even so, the colonel was not so easily taken in. “You’re mocking me, Miss Evangeline. I have never called a lady a liar before, and I won’t do it now, but I do not, I cannot believe you.”

  “You force me to prove it to you.” Miss Evangeline singled out Leah from among the sowers. “You, there. Come here.”

  With a glance at Aaron, the overseer, who was busy chastising the slave leading the mule for not keeping a steady pace, Leah adjusted her seed bag on her shoulder and left the line. She stopped a few yards away from the horses and looked up at Miss Evangeline, expressionless.

  “This isn’t necessary,” said the colonel.

  “Indeed it is. If you won’t take my word, I must show you the proof.” Miss Evangeline gestured impatiently to Leah. “Go on, then. Lift your dress.”

  Leah stared balefully back at her and did not move.

  Miss Evangeline’s rosebud mouth turned in a frown. “I’ve seen you in the yard and I know you’re not deaf and dumb. Show the gentleman what you carry beneath your skirt.”

  Leah’s steady gaze grew stonier, but still she did not move, not even to shake her head in refusal.

  “Your field hand is either very disobedient or very well trained,” the colonel remarked. “I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that you’ve rehearsed this entire scene. She can’t raise her skirt, or she’ll expose your lie. Well done, Miss Evangeline.”

  “I assure you, this is no act.” The young woman’s usually velvet voice was like ice. “You. Field hand. Raise your skirt or I will have it torn off.”

  Leah’s fists tightened around the seed bag slung over her shoulder. “I never raise my skirt for no buckra man, and I won’t raise it for no buckra woman either.”

  “You watch your tongue,” the colonel barked, all mirth vanished. “You’ll address your mistress with respect.”

  Leah waved a buzzing insect away from her ear and shot him a look of poorly veiled contempt. She didn’t work for him, the look said.

  The colonel, who was accustomed to seeing his orders carried out without question, climbed down from his horse. Aaron looked up from cuffing the mule driver and started down the cotton rows toward them, his hand on the whip coiled at his belt. The other slaves kept putting seeds in the furrow trenches, watching from the corners of their eyes, concealing their worry or fear or outrage behind impassive masks, pretending to see and hear nothing.

  Aaron held one of Leah’s arms while the colonel held the other. The colonel tore off her skirt, ripped off her thin muslin shift, spread her legs, and inspected her. He found only the same parts every buckra woman had, below a thin belly soft from carrying two children for the man she loved and four more for the man the master had bred her with.

  “You’re right,” the colonel said, releasing Leah so suddenly that she tumbled backwards upon the overturned earth, spilling seeds. “She’s more man than woman, more beast than man. She belongs in the stable with that mule.”

  “Papa wouldn’t want to distress the mule,” said Miss Evangeline, managing a tight smile. They wheeled their horses around and trotted off between the furrows.

  When Joanna left the big house that evening, not yet knowing what had happened in the cotton fields, she froze at the sight of Leah in the yard—naked, squatting on the ground where the children gathered chestnuts, wrists bound together in front of her shins, a long stick thrust behind her knees and in front of her elbows. The stick and the ropes held her in the squat, digging her feet into the mud for balance while Aaron uncoiled his whip. Leah’s first, terrible scream jolted Joanna from her paralysis. Trembling, she forced herself to place one foot in front of the other, the hairs standing up on the back of her neck, ears filling with Leah’s screams.

  The quarter was not far away. Joanna kept her eyes fixed on the last cabin in the row so that she would not see Aaron’s strong copper arm draw back, so she would not see the welts and blood on Leah’s back. Aaron’s whip was seven feet of cowhide with a sturdy oak handle at one end and a small lead weight on the other, the better to bruise and scar the flesh. Joanna had never felt his whip on her own skin, but she had kissed the marks it had left on Titus. Another scream; she gasped and kept walking.

  Evening came. Voices were subdued in the slave quarter as hungry workers prepared meals or were fed. No one could remember Aaron ever beating his favorite. Going to the stream for water, Joanna passed Leah’s cabin and overheard sobbing and low, soothing voices within. Leah’s was not among them. Aaron had looped ropes around her neck and staked them to the ground, holding her in her squat between the chestnut trees. If she fell asleep, the jerk of the rope would wake her; if she fainted, she
would strangle herself.

  “Maybe that’s what they want,” said Pearl. “They could say she killed herself. Then her death won’t stain their pure Christian souls.”

  “Don’t say such things,” Tavia said, scraping the last bits of rice from the pot onto the children’s plates. “Aaron’s arm isn’t so worn out that he won’t give you a beating, too.”

  “She’ll need tobacco leaves for her back.” Joanna watched the fire without seeing it, remembering Honor’s ministrations. “Fresh picked is best. It’ll help the healing and ease the pain.”

  But not much. Joanna would never forget the throbbing, stinging pain, the humiliation, the slow healing as reopened wounds brushed against rough homespun. Instead of a lead sinker, the driver at Greenfields had a piece of hooked wire at the end of his whip to cut and tear the flesh. She did not want to find out which felt worse.

  “No one here has tobacco leaves,” said Titus quietly. “Just dried tobacco for a pipe.”

  “I don’t think that work the same way.” Even if it did, Joanna doubted they could barter for enough to mix into a salve. She rose, wrapped a cornmeal dumpling in a scrap of cloth, and picked up one of the tightly woven sweetgrass baskets they used for water.

  “Where you going?” Tavia asked. “You can’t go to her when she’s in the buck. Aaron will be watching.”

  Joanna stepped through the cabin doorway. “I can’t leave her there.”

  “Titus, go after her,” she heard Tavia say, and Titus said something in reply, but he did not pursue her. Night had fallen, and those not kept awake by the sound of Leah’s children sobbing had already dropped off into an exhausted sleep that would end too soon with the ringing of the work bell in the morning. If Leah fell asleep that night, she would not see another sunrise.