Miss Katie's Rosewood (37 page)

W
hat are we going to call this place?” asked Uncle Ward once the decision had been made.

“Why don't we call it New Rosewood?” suggested Katie.

We all looked around at each other.

“I think New Rosewood it is!” laughed Papa.

Papa and Uncle Ward rode over to the old Daniels farm every day and immediately began making plans. It was still an area where lots of Quaker people lived. They knew that they would spend the rest of their lives on the Daniels homestead, and I'd never seen them both so content and at peace with their lives.

They began working on it before Katie and Rob were even back from Baltimore.

Mr. Evans and Papa and Uncle Ward hit it off so well that before the final papers were signed, Mr. Evans wanted us to move in so that we would be all settled in before winter. We had arrived about the third week of October and the weather was slowly beginning to turn. So after a few days of getting settled, Katie and I shared a room together, Papa and Uncle Ward shared another room. The house had five bedrooms, a nice
sitting room, a kitchen not quite as big as Rosewood's, but adequate for us. It had an inside washroom with both a clothes washtub and a bathing tub with a water pump and separate wood stove to heat the water, with drains to the outside. We all thought that was about the most wonderful thing we had ever seen.

Jeremiah moved in with Rob at the boardinghouse in town where Rob had been living since coming to Hanover with Sheriff Heyes. Since it was just temporary, the lady let Jeremiah stay in Rob's room with him and pay a little extra for meals.

Henry and Josepha stayed up in the small house that Mr. Evans had built, thinking that he and his wife would retire there when his son took over the farm and would raise his family in the main house. It had been empty for a long time.

Most suppers we ate together. It was almost like being at Rosewood again, except that the terrain and weather and sounds and the look and feel of everything was different. That took some getting used to. But it didn't take long before we settled into our old routines and got to work on the new place. Hard work is the best thing in the world to drive out sadness, and we were all hard workers. Even though the Evans place was in wonderful condition, we found plenty to keep us busy and there were so many new things we wanted to do. Papa and Uncle Ward were talking about fields and woods they wanted to clear and roads they wanted to build and areas they wanted to fence, and Mr. Evans was as excited about the proposed changes as they were.

The three men rode over to the old homestead every day and got to cleaning and repairing and furnishing the upstairs to make it livable. Some of the time Josepha and Katie and I went with them to help, sometimes
we stayed at Mr. Evans' place because there was a lot to do there too. It was hard to get used to a new house with new things in it—different chairs and beds and wardrobes that had belonged to someone else's family. The house wasn't as spacious as Rosewood, but it was much closer to town, which was a great benefit. People were so welcoming and nice that we began to make new friends almost immediately. Katie and I and Josepha got dressed up and walked through town almost every day looking in the shops and meeting people. Within days we were greeted with, “Oh, you must be the people buying the Evans place!” And not once did Josepha or I feel anyone looking at us resentfully because of the color of our skin.

One day when we were at the old farm, Josepha and Katie and I were out shoveling and hoeing at the old garden to get the soil softened and ready for the next spring. There hadn't been a garden planted there in years. The three men were banging and sawing away in the old house. It was a nice day in mid-November. The leaves on the trees were almost past their color and mostly brown, but it was still warm enough to work outside and enjoy it.

We looked up and saw a young black girl of sixteen or seventeen walking toward us holding what looked like a loaf of bread. It is funny to say it, but she looked young to me. Yet such a short time ago Katie and I had been younger than that, struggling together to keep Rosewood going.

So much had happened in our lives!

“Thou must be our new neighbors,” said the girl in an odd speech that mingled old and new. Her voice was black but her speech was white—an old-fashioned white that reminded me of the Quaker Brannons. “We have been wondering who moved into the old place. It
has been empty for as long as I have been alive, and they say much longer than that.”

“We're not really moved in,” said Katie. “But we're working on it. We are still living in the main house over there.”

“Mr. Evans' house?”

“Yes. We are buying it from him. Do you know him?”

“He is our friend.”

“How nice. I am Katie Clairborne. And this is Josepha and this is Mayme.”

“I am pleased to make your acquaintance,” said the girl, shaking each of our hands. “My name is Calebia Eaton. I live with my father and mother over there.”

She pointed in the distance.

Josepha squinted in the direction she was pointing.

“Dat be a horse in dat weather vane on da barn?” she asked. Now that she pointed it out, I saw it too. I hadn't noticed it before.

“That is the wind in the horse's head,” said the girl. “That is why we are here—my mother followed the wind in the horse's head from the South. Her name is Lucindy. She came here on the Underground Railroad. She and my father used to be slaves. But they escaped and came here. But there are no slaves here. I have never been a slave. You see that man in the field there—”

Again she pointed.

“That's my brother Broan. He shall be over to meet you when he is done with his work too. So will my mother. But she is doing Mrs. Mueller's wash today—they are the people my mother and father work for. She could not come just now. She wanted me to bring you this and welcome you to Hanover.”

She handed us the loaf of bread.

“It is still warm,” said Katie.

“Yes, ma'am. I just baked it this morning.”

“Thank you very much,” said Katie. “This is very kind of you. Give our regards to your mother.”

“I shall. Good day to you. God be with thee.”

A
ll the arrangements were completed by the end of the year. Mr. Evans moved north in time to be with his son's family for Christmas.

By the following spring of 1871, we were pretty much settled. Henry and Josepha were still living in the smaller of Mr. Evans' houses, though they planned to buy a few acres of the property from the rest of us and build a new house on it. The rest of us were still in the larger house, though the old homestead was just about ready, and Papa and Uncle Ward planned to move there.

Rob and Katie and Jeremiah and I were married that May. We were married outside on the old Daniels farm. Several families from Hanover came, including the Muellers and Eatons. I invited the Brannons and Davidsons from Virginia, and they both came too.

Mrs. Hammond, Mr. Thurston, and Mr. Watson took the train north together from Greens Crossing to attend. And Mr. Evans returned from New York.

Rob's father performed the ceremony, and quite a few of Rob's relatives and friends came from in and around Baltimore. And, of course, Sheriff John Heyes,
who had become one of Rob's best friends, was there with us as well.

The day was sunny and warm and the country all around us was fragrant and alive and growing.

Katie and I got ready inside the house called New Rosewood, which by then was as nice and modern a house as you could imagine after all the work the men had done on it.

Josepha and Aunt Nelda and Mrs. Hammond and Lucindy Eaton helped us get dressed and fix our hair. Aunt Nelda helped us make our wedding dresses. We had taken several trips to Philadelphia over the winter for fittings with a seamstress friend of hers. Both dresses were white, though of completely different designs. Katie's dress had lots of lace and ruffles. She wanted to wear something frilly like she and her mother had worn before the war. My dress was more practical, I suppose you'd say. I wanted something I could keep wearing later. That's what I thought my mother would have done too, before the war. My, how things had changed! The women fixed up Katie's long blond hair and my black hair with curls and flowers and little braids. Katie was so beautiful! She said I was too, and maybe we both were.

Outside we heard carriages and horses arriving for almost an hour. When we finally walked outside, it was shocking to see how many people had actually come. Here we were in a new place and we already had more friends than we ever did in Greens Crossing! Katie and I had worked so hard in those early years to hide and not be seen and to have people not notice us . . . now here we were the center of attention!

We asked Josepha to sing an old wedding spiritual as we walked forward through the people to where Rob and Jeremiah and the minister, Rob's father, stood
waiting for us. You might say that we were each other's maids of honor, and Rob and Jeremiah were each other's best men. As Josepha began to sing in a low quiet tone, a hush descended over the whole place. It was like nothing I'd ever felt in my life. Her voice and the melancholy tune so captured the feel of what it meant to be black at that time in our country's history. Nobody but someone who had been a slave all those years like Josepha had could sing with the feeling she gave that song on that day . . . about dreaming of freedom, and then finally finding the freedom of new life in a new land, and then finding the love that only a man and woman can share. It was a song about dreaming of freedom and dreaming of love . . . and finally finding them. It was as if Josepha was singing about her life as well as setting the perfect tone for our marriages too.

It was almost like listening to a history of slavery itself, and then realizing that slavery really and truly was over and done with.

As Katie walked slowly forward on Uncle Ward's arm, and as Papa and I walked beside them, for those few minutes all the beaming happiness that we felt inside, and all the smiles that we'd seen on everyone's faces as we walked out of the house, all those expressions became thoughtful and serious. As Josepha sang, a feeling of sad yet victorious grandeur filled us with a sense of the majesty of the struggle for freedom and what it meant to so many people. It was as if Katie and I were symbolic of the past our country was leaving behind, and the triumph and hope of the future.

I looked over the people, some sitting, some standing. They were all so dear to me!

Of course, Katie hadn't been a slave like I had. But she had joined the struggle with me and had fought for me in her own way. Our fight to save Rosewood had
ended up here, many miles away, where part of our family had started out when they first came to this country. It had been a long journey, just as Josepha was singing about. Katie and I were now walking toward a bright new future that neither of us could yet see . . . where our dreams of freedom and dreams of love maybe would come true after all. We had been sisters, cousins, and friends together.

Now we were about to become wives!

Slowly Josepha's voice came to the end and faded high and soft into the hush of the tiny breeze blowing across the southern Pennsylvanian countryside. Everyone stood another few seconds in almost numbed silence at the power of the old spiritual and all it meant in so many lives.

Then the spell was broken. In front of us stood Rob and Jeremiah, both dressed in their finest. Out came the smiles again!

At last Reverend Paxton's voice broke the silence.

“Dearly beloved,” he said, “we are gathered here today to unite not one, but two men and two women. All who know the story of these two remarkable young ladies know why it is only fitting that they be married together in this manner.”

He now looked at each of the four of us.

“You can imagine what a happy occasion this is for me,” he went on, “as a father to send my own son along on his future. But greater than that is the celebration on this day of many lives, and of Christ's work of renewal in the face of heartache. All four of these young people before me have faced the tragedy of the loss of loved ones, close family members. You two young women, Kathleen and Mary Ann, lost your entire families to the cruelties and inhumanities of a dreadful war and its aftermath. Jeremiah, you lost your mother to
the evil institution of slavery. And Robert, you and all of our family suffered the loss of your dear sister, my own daughter, to a tragic murder in which I was the intended victim.

“So you each stand before me today having suffered. The loved ones you have lost can only share this day with you from heaven, but they cannot be beside you in the flesh. Yet in spite of this, we all rejoice to be here, as we in faith believe that they rejoice with us at God's side. We rejoice because God is a God, not of perfect lives but of new life and restoration. Out of tragedy He is always able to renew life. Each of you is a testimony of that renewal. Your story is a story of goodness emerging out of defeat, of hope flowing out of loss, of joy growing out of sorrow, and love blossoming out of despair. As my son is ever reminding me, there is indeed no limit to the extent of this renewing work that is in God's heart to accomplish in His creation.

“I do not promise that after this day you will be without sorrow or that happiness will follow you every day of your lives. We live in too imperfect a world for that. But I think I can promise you that God's life will continue to grow within you if you will let it, and that your lives together will therefore always be good. We rejoice with you that you have found one another, that you have discovered love together, and that you have all become strong in that process of growth and discovery. What better foundation for marriage can there be than that!”

He paused, then looked up with a smile.

“Who gives these women to be united to these men?”

Papa and Uncle Ward glanced at each other, then at Katie and me.

“We do,” they said together. Then they turned and
sat down beside Aunt Nelda.

Reverend Paxton looked at each of the four of us again, his gaze settling on his son.

“Do you, Robert Paxton,” he began, “take this woman to be your wedded wife, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part, according to God's holy ordinance?”

“Yes, sir—I do,” said Rob.

“Do you, Kathleen Clairborne,” he said, now turning to Katie, “take this man to be your wedded husband, to have and to hold . . .”

Things can run so quickly through your brain. I was trying so hard to concentrate. But as Reverend Paxton spoke to Katie, so many images suddenly flitted through my memory.

Like the first time Katie and I saw each other after our families had been killed . . .

S
LOWLY
I
WALKED
into what I took to be the kitchen. Suddenly I stopped dead in my tracks. In the middle of the doorway stood a girl a year or so younger than me. She was staring straight at me through big eyes that looked even more afraid than mine.

She wore a long pink nightgown and furry slippers that had bloodstains on them. Her face was whiter than was natural even for a white person.

I was too numb to be surprised. I looked at her, and she looked at me. We just stood—two silent statues staring at each other, one white, the other colored.

Then I saw her blink. But we kept standing there staring, neither of us knowing what to think. Still less knowing what to say.

“My . . . my mother is dead,” she whimpered.

I stood there another few seconds in a trance. But
somehow the sound of a human voice finally broke me out of it.

Slowly I found myself walking toward her. She stood there as I approached, watching me with those huge blue helpless eyes.

Then suddenly we were in each other's arms.

And the night Katie thought up her daring scheme . . .

I
N THE MIDDLE
of the night, I woke up suddenly.

Katie was yelling and calling my name.

“Mayme . . . Mayme!”

I jumped out of bed terrified and hurried out into the hallway. Before I could reach her room, Katie nearly knocked me over.

“Mayme . . . Mayme!” she cried, running out of her room. “I've had the most wonderful idea! Come into my room and I'll tell you.”

I followed her, not knowing what to make of it.

“You said it yourself, Mayme,” she said after a bit. “We're in trouble if anyone finds us alone. So that's what made me realize what we need to do—we've just got to make sure no one finds out we're here alone—we'll pretend we're
not
alone! We'll pretend like my mama and papa are still here! We'll make it so believable that no one will ever find out! Not my uncles or anyone in town . . . or anyone!”

And the day when my papa, before I knew he was my father, discovered that his sister's family was dead . . .

T
IRED AND WORN
though he looked, the man seemed like a dandy in my eyes. His white shirt had ruffles and bright buttons down the front.

I came and stood in the open door and waited. Katie
just stood there in front of her uncle staring at the floor. He glanced around the place and seemed to think it didn't look right. He looked over at me, and this time held my face in his gaze a few seconds. A puzzled look seemed to flit through his eyes. But then he looked back at Katie and gradually a serious expression came over his face.

“Kathleen,” he said, “I think it's time you stop stalling. There's something you're not telling me. I know Rosalind's not on a trip—she wouldn't leave you alone or have left the place like this. I want to know what's going on here.”

I could see Katie starting to tremble.

“Oh, Uncle Templeton,” Katie suddenly cried, “—she's dead! They're all dead!”

She burst into the most mournful wail and began to sob, like a dam that had been held back all these months was bursting inside her. At the word
dead,
her uncle's face went ashen.

He sat there stunned, his eyes wide, his face white. Katie now walked toward him, put her arms around him, leaned her head down on his neck where he sat, and continued to sob.

A few minutes later Katie and her uncle walked outside. Katie had her hand in his and led him away from the house in the direction of where she and I had buried her family.

Katie took him to the spot, then stopped. They just stood there looking down at the graves, not saying a word. Slowly her uncle stretched one of his arms around Katie's shoulders and pulled her to his side. She leaned her head against his chest and again began to cry.

I heard Reverend Paxton's voice again. He was just finishing what he had been saying to Katie.

I glanced over at her. The Katie of my rapid recollections
was now a beautiful grown-up bride!

“—from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do you part, according to God's holy ordinance?”

“I do,” said Katie softly.

Reverend Paxton turned to Jeremiah.

“Do you, Jeremiah Patterson,” he said, “take this woman to be your wedded wife . . .”

I couldn't help my mind straying again, this time to the first moment I set eyes on Jeremiah . . .

“M
O'NIN' TO YOU
, Miz Kathleen,” called out a friendly voice.

I turned to see a tall, lanky black man on the side of the street tipping his hat and smiling broadly.

“Hello, Henry,” said Katie, pulling back on the reins, then stopping the horses.