Diann Ducharme (37 page)

“I’m sorry that I lied to you, Mama. I haven’t quite been myself this summer. And so much has happened to me, I don’t think I’ll ever be myself again.”

She nodded slowly. “Yes” was all she said. She didn’t seem angry at me in the least.

We both stood knee-deep in the ocean, staring at its vastness, lost in our troubled thoughts. After a while, she said, “I’d like to see this school. Will you take me there tomorrow?”

“What?” I gasped. “I don’t think the students would like to see me. They know that I’m … associated with Daddy.”

“Abigail, you have an obligation to explain yourself to these people. You were their teacher.”

Cold fear swept powerfully over me, putting this warm, sloshing water to shame. “You’ll come with me?”

“Yes, although they may not take kindly to me, either.”

But I couldn’t feature her going anywhere in her condition. She hadn’t been anywhere except the hotel all summer long. “Are you feeling … up to it?”

She looked down at her body, gently rounded now. She nodded. “I am. I feel better, somehow.”

We struggled back up to the cottage in our wet nightdresses. Then, while standing on the porch steps, we squeezed the remnants of ocean out of the cloth. The water dripped and puddled into the thirsty sand below, returning home.

Early the next morning, I arranged for Hannah to stay with the children and to keep an eye on Daddy, whom I had heard clamber up the stairs late in the night. Over a quick breakfast Mama told me that he was still passed out cold and wouldn’t likely awake until the afternoon.

Justus hitched Mungo to the cart, and Mama and I rode over to the hotel docks. The desk man there helped us to procure a boat to the island. And together we sailed across Roanoke Sound with our guide, a red-faced old man who still seemed half asleep.

The sun was rising over the east, and the morning was still a bit cool. I never in my wildest dreams thought that I would be sailing in a boat with Mama like this, but she seemed as natural as you please, with her bonnet tied in a perfect bow under her chin and her white parasol fluttering in the wind.

We docked at the old Union port on the western side of the island and strolled side by side to the school through the dusty roads of the colony. Mama walked slowly, as if she had recently recovered from a long illness. She gazed about her curiously at the simple cabins, at the old barracks, but I was sweating with nerves. All I could see were the burning books, the cross bearing Elijah’s abused body. And I felt eyes watching us from the windows of the buildings.

As we neared the schoolhouse, my feet trudged as if through the stickiest of mud. Tears collected in my eyes, and I grabbed Mama’s gloved hand. “I can’t,” I whispered. “I can’t go in.”

But she pulled me forward with a surprising amount of strength. “Yes, you can. You must.”

Mama pulled back the screen door and we stepped into the school. It looked the way that we had left it that night, with the books and slates I had given the students strewn all over the boxes and barrels. Bits of chalk and broken lanterns lay crushed on the dusty floor.

My heart started to pound too quickly, and I feared I might faint. I stumbled out the door and forced myself to breathe the fresh air. I walked slowly around the grassy yard behind the schoolhouse, remembering the day that Ben and I first met Elijah. It had been oppressively hot, but Elijah’s teaching had quickly made me forget it.

As I turned to go back to the schoolhouse, I noticed several bunches of purple wildflowers and blue hydrangeas over a fresh mound of dirt, somewhat hidden beneath a grove of dogwood trees.

I closed my eyes for a few moments, listening to the flow of the Croatan Sound a few hundred yards away, and then walked closer to peer at the dirt. There, beneath some of the flowers, was a small, rough-hewn cross. On the horizontal branch were the words
REVEREND ELIJAH AFRICA, FREEDOM IN HEAVEN
.

I covered my face with my hands. The students had buried him near the school, instead of in the freedmen’s cemetery near the
church. I nodded; it was a good decision. I tried to imagine the students singing a mournful hymn and reading a Bible passage, or a bit of a book, before placing him in the ground.

I untied my bonnet and removed it, to feel the breeze in my ears. Suddenly Mama was in front of me. I stared at her numbly. I couldn’t remember why we had come here in the first place.

She put her hands on my cheeks and said, with a twinge of awkwardness, “It’s all right, Abigail. I’m here now.”

I began to sob, my tears running directly onto her gloves. “He’s dead, Mama. Elijah is dead.”

“But the school is still here. Think of that.” She looked at me with something like pride in her eyes.

We walked back into the schoolhouse, and I sat down on a barrel. Mama walked around the room, picking up chalk and flipping through the books, likely recognizing the supplies that came from home.

After a while I heard the screen door open and saw Luella and her mother, Ruth, step through the door. Luella ran over to me and buried her head in my lap.

Surprised, I put my hands on her curly hair and said tenderly, “I’m so happy to see you, Luella. Have you been well?”

She nodded solemnly. “I’m okay, Miz Abigail. Just sad is all. Where you been? You didn’t come to the funeral for Mr. Africa.”

I looked to Ruth, my tears still wet on my face. “I wasn’t sure I was welcome here.”

Ruth smiled kindly and said, “Oh, please, Miz Abigail. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”

Luella said sternly, “You is still our teacher. We wanted you to read from
Uncle Tom’s Cabin
at the funeral. You was the only person who could make it sound right.”

“How was the funeral, then?” I whispered, my belly in a knot.

Ruth twisted her hands in her skirt and replied, “It went well as could be expected, I s’pose. It’s been quiet since then. Nary a lawman has ventured out to see about all this. Like it never done happened.”

I nodded, my face burning with humiliation, and glanced over at Mama, who had sat down unobtrusively on a barrel. But I felt her eyes watching me.

Ruth went on. “It’s a real shame. I never
heard
so many good things spoke of a man at a funeral service before.” To Mama, she said, “He tried hard to help us, you see.”

Mama just nodded.

Luella exclaimed, “Oh, I saw Mr. Benjamin at the funeral. He was hiding in the trees, but I saw him with my eagle eyes. I waved over to him, but he just put his finger to his mouth like ‘Shhh!’ He was gone when it was all over with.”

Just then, a few more students stepped into the classroom, and then a few more, and a few more. My mind swam in apprehension as I greeted them, but still the squeaky door kept opening, closing, opening, closing, as more and more freedmen, women, and children came into the room. Soon I saw Asha and Pearl Jefferson in the crowd.

Everyone smiled at me as if it were my birthday party. “I can’t believe this,” I choked. “You’re all here.”

Asha came over and hugged me fiercely to her taut body. “Don’t no one forget what you did for us this summer, Miz Abby.”

I smiled, speaking over the lump lodged firmly in my throat. “I’ll be returning to Edenton soon, but I want you all to know that I’m going to find a good teacher for this school. I promise you.”

Asha said, “We’ll be here waitin’.” Everyone voiced their agreement.

Tears were pouring from my eyes, but I hardly noticed. They
forgave
me. They were strong enough to look beyond my history, strong enough to stay on such an uncertain island, even after the threats. Perhaps this colony would survive after all.

I took my time moving from student to student, squeezing their hands and exclaiming over the many things they had learned.

At long last, I walked over to Mama, still watching us from a barrel. “This is my mama, Mrs. Ingrid Sinclair. She wanted to see this special schoolhouse before we go back to Edenton.”

I saw their eyes take in Mama. I knew what they were thinking, that she was married to a terrible man, a murderer, that she had been a part of the slave-owning system. I half expected them to push her out of the schoolhouse and put her on a boat directly.

But Golaga Grant surprised me, murmurring, “You sure is fine-looking, Mrs. Sinclair.”

Some of the students gasped in embarrassment, and some reached over to swat him over the head and shoulders. But Mama just said,

“Thank you. And what is your name?”

He said shyly, “My name is Golaga Grant.”

“Golaga. Is that an African name?”

“Yes’m.”

Mama nodded and breathed in deeply. Then she slowly stood up and took Asha’s strong, callused hands in her white-gloved ones. Her pale face had become splotched in purples and reds, and her voice was tight. “I’m … sorry. So very sorry. Tell me your name again. I’ve forgotten, after all these years.”

Asha smiled her big toothy grin. She whispered, “It’s Asha. Just Asha. Thank you, Miz Sinclair.”

Mama shook her head, but didn’t speak. Asha laughed, with tears pooled in her brown eyes. “I’m a-coming to see the baby, now. I’ll see you all in about six months. You tell Master Charlie and Miz Martha
I’ll see them again when they’s the big brother and sister, and not to worry.”

Luella came over then and grabbed my hand. “Miz Abigail, what do you think of calling this school ‘The Elijah Africa Freedmen School’? I done thought of it myself, and I think it’s right good.”

Before I could say anything, though, Mama said, “I’ll have a placard made up.” We all followed Mama outside, where she examined the blank space above the door. “How about here?”

The students nodded their agreement. It was a perfect place for a placard, and with strong nails and quality wood, it would last a long time, even on this island.

And when I looked at Mama’s face, at her red nose and at her bloodshot eyes, gazing at the schoolhouse, I saw what Golaga Grant had seen.

Soon after a dinner shared with some of the students at the home of Pearl Jefferson, Mama turned a nasty shade of green and expressed her desire to get back to Nags Head.

A quiet thirty-year-old student named Leopold volunteered to row us back across the sound, so we all rode in a borrowed buggy to the docks on the eastern side of the island. Leo helped us out of the cart, and as we walked down the planks I saw Benjamin, lit by the afternoon sun and instructing two freedmen in the raising of a sail.

My heart flipped inside my chest, suddenly alert. Like it was yesterday, I remembered kissing him on these very docks. I could still recall the grassy saltiness of his lips. We watched him unnoticed for a while as he went over the rules of the waterways. And of course, he was a very good teacher.

Finally he looked up, surprise in his blue eyes. “Well, if it ain’t the Sinclair women.”

I smiled at him tentatively.

He blinked at us in utter confusion, standing there on the docks with our parasols. “You all out for some sightseeing today?” he asked, fiddling with the sail again.

I stammered, “M-Mama wanted to see the school today. We saw the students while we were there. I told them good-bye.”

He stopped messing with the sail and stared from me to Mama, taking it all in. After a few moments he said, “You’re leaving soon, I reckon.”

“Yes, in two days.”

He stood up straight then and spoke to Mama. “I want to say thank you, Mrs. Sinclair, for making it possible for Abby here to teach me this summer. She is one heck of a natural-born teacher. You should be real proud of her.”

But Mama just nodded, perspiration droplets along her upper lip.

Ben said, “You doing all right, Mrs. Sinclair? You look like you need to get out of the sun, if you don’t mind me saying.”

“We’re heading back to the cottage. Mama isn’t feeling well.”

Just as I said that, Mama swayed and reached out for my arm. Leo jumped out of the little rowboat and grabbed Mama’s other arm, and together we helped her into the boat.

“We have to go,” I said reluctantly. I bit the insides of my cheeks, unsaid words ricocheting inside my mouth. “It was nice to see you again.”

I saw him swallow before he said, “Yeah, and you, too. Take care of your mama, now.”