The Kitchen House (20 page)

Mama tried without much success to befriend Ben’s wife. I knew even then how foreign and privileged our lives must have been in contrast to her own. On Christmas Day Lucy came to Mama’s house with Ben, but she stood shyly at the door, refusing a seat. Ben grew frustrated and spoke angrily to her, and with that, she ran back to their shed. Ben silently ate his meal before he went back with Christmas dinner Mama sent for his wife.

Mama Mae said Lucy had always been shy. Mama knew Lucy’s background and told us how, at Sukey’s tender age, Lucy had been taken from her mother and brought to this plantation. She was given to the old woman who cared for the many children of the quarters. The old woman was not unkind, Mama said, but she had too many children to properly care for them.

“Lucy get took from her mama too soon,” Mama Mae said. “You don’t take animals away that young.”

“Give her time,” Papa said, “she come ’round.”

F
OR THE REST OF THAT
winter, the captain’s health remained unstable. As soon as he made progress, he pushed himself to exhaustion that sent him back to bed. Then, in spite of Mama’s protests, the doctor came again to bleed and purge his patient. During those bouts, the captain was irritable and demanding, but Belle, with her nightly visits, and Fanny, with her cheerful wit, were the two who settled him.

For the most part, Miss Martha remained in her bedroom. Once, though, Uncle Jacob found her wandering at night, trying to unlock the gun case. She told Uncle Jacob that she was going to shoot the whore, but Uncle convinced her to return to her bed. From then on, Beattie slept in the blue room.

T
HE SPRING OF 1794 WAS
cold and wet. Some of the workers from the quarters were ill with cough and fever, but Rankin insisted they were well enough to set out tobacco plants. Papa George said they were sick because they were close to starving. When our family sat down to the evening meal, it was difficult to enjoy the simple but plentiful food, knowing of the hunger such a short distance away.

There was a cold steady drizzle the morning Ida ran up from the quarters to pound on the kitchen door. She stayed outside, shaking, unable to speak until Belle pulled her in from the rain and threw a blanket around her trembling shoulders. When Ida finally spoke, it was difficult to understand her through her chattering teeth.

During a storm the night before, her oldest boy, Jimmy, and his younger brother, Eddy, had broken into the smokehouse for food. “Just a scrap,” she said, “for the lil ones.” They waited for a flash of lightning to see the nails, then pried off the boards while thunder buffered the noise. After taking only one small piece of fatback, they reversed their entry and worked again with nature to replace the smokehouse boards.

They thought that Rankin was sleeping, but he smelled the boiling meat. When he burst into their cabin, he pulled Jimmy out and tied him to a stake in the yard. Rankin beat him until Jimmy finally admitted that he had taken the meat. Rankin was jubilant, certain that Ben was also involved in the theft, but Jimmy insisted that he had acted alone. Rankin, in an effort to have Jimmy name Ben, continued to hit him. Ida said, “I go to stop him, but he say he start with the lil ones if I don’t stay back. Even though they his babies, he say they just lil nigras and they nothin’ to him.” In her terrible impotence, Ida pounded at her own legs. “He beatin’ my Jimmy now!”

Belle moved fast. “I’m going up to the big house, Ida. You stay here,” she instructed, but Ida left again for the quarters as soon as Belle left. I don’t know what Belle said, but I do know that the captain dressed and had Ben and Papa George accompany him down to the quarters.

Jimmy, still tied to the stake, was dead. Ida sat next to him, holding his head out of the mud and talking to her son as though he were still alive. Men and women from the quarters circled the mother, afraid to untie the young man’s body.

Rankin, drunk, was in his cabin. The captain, enraged, had him removed and thrown onto his horse. He was told that he would be jailed should he return. Then the captain sent Ben to fetch Will Stephens.

T
HE CAPTAIN OFFERED
W
ILL STEPHENS
a proposal. To the best of Fanny’s understanding (she was the only one of us present at the
meeting), Will Stephens was to act as the sole overseer for a period of five years. Each year he would earn fifty acres, and at the end of the agreed-upon time, he would be given his choice of four Negroes, two female, two male, to begin his own tobacco farm. Will Stephens accepted the offer, and because of it, we lived peacefully for the next two years.

1796

Belle

E
VERY TIME WE THINK THE
cap’n’s getting better, he gets sick all over again. He goes up and down like this for almost two years. When the cap’n first tells me that the shoe man’s gone from yellow fever, I want to jump up and dance, but I say real nice, “Do I still have to go to Philadelphia?”

“Yes. When I am well,” the cap’n says. But in all this time, in the two years of him sick, he don’t bring it up, and for sure I don’t say nothing about it.

When Campbell don’t come back, Lavinia takes over with Sukey like she’s her own. You never see one without the other. One day Lavinia tells me to ask the cap’n about her brother, Cardigan, so I do. The cap’n don’t know what happened to the boy after he sold him away, but he’s thinking that maybe Cardigan got took up north.

He did remember that when Cardigan went off with the man, Lavinia screamed so bad that she hurt his ears. When I tell this to Lavinia, she starts to cry, so I tell her not to worry, that I’m always gonna take care of her. I say I know what it’s like to be on your own.

T
HE ONLY PROBLEM
I
GOT
is Ben’s woman, Lucy, who don’t like me. She’s a big girl, shy with everybody, but always giving me the up and down. She knows that Ben still has his eye on me, and she knows that I got my eye on him. Truth is, I’m still wanting him like nobody else, but he jumped the broom with Lucy, and that be that. Least most days that’s what I tell myself.

Will Stephens is running this place real good, and everybody’s happy the way things are going. When Will Stephens looks at me, I know he likes what he sees. Me, too. He’s a good-looking man. Not like Benny, oh no, but he’s all man just the same. We talk, laugh, and sometimes with Mama and Papa, we sit out at night. When I’m talking and laughing with Will, it makes Ben real mad. One day Ben shows up when I’m feeding the chickens. “What you doin’ with that man?” he asks.

“What you doing with Lucy?” I say. Ben’s eyes get so hot I laugh, then walk away, moving slow so he can see what he’s missing.

Two years we go on this way. The thing is, the more time goes on, the better it is for me. I’m already twenty-three years old, and soon I’ll be getting too old for the captain to find me a husband.

1796

Lavinia

I
N
M
AY 1796 THE TWINS
and I celebrated our twelfth birthday. We were given an afternoon free of chores and skipped away with glee, carrying between us the picnic basket that Belle had prepared. We chattered nonstop along the way until we reached the woods, where Fanny determined we would eat. She was the tallest of us and always famished. Quick-witted, Fanny was as plain-looking as she was plain-speaking, and she often needed reminding to attend to her appearance. Of a sharp nature, she observed out loud what most dared not think, and there were times her unsolicited remarks caused shocked silence, only to be followed by uproarious laughter.

Unlike her twin, Beattie seemed destined to be a beauty. She was soft-spoken and kind, and when she smiled, her deep facial dimples appeared as though to punctuate her easy disposition. Beattie was clean and careful in her dress, and she loved pretty things. Sewing and embroidery were her passions, and her clothes always had adornment. Nothing excited Beattie more than taking the scraps of discarded fabric Mama brought from the big house and fashioning the colorful cloth onto her clothing as collars and pockets.

I stood between the twins in size. I was slight and thin but not as tall as Fanny. I suspected I was rather plain, although no one told me so. My fire-red hair was darkening to auburn, and I wore it in long braids. Fanny teased me about the freckles spattered across my nose until Mama put a stop to that.

With the security of the past two years, I had become more sure of myself and was certainly more outgoing. Yet an underlying anxiety always stayed with me. As a result, I was careful to please and quick to obey.

Our days were filled with chores. Fanny helped out with the captain, while Beattie and I either worked with Belle in the kitchen or helped Mama up in the big house.

My chores in the early morning included helping Mama with Miss Martha’s personal care. Since Philadelphia, Miss Martha did not live in reality, but doses of laudanam kept her subdued, and I no longer feared her as I had on her return. In fact, I welcomed the times I sat with her to read aloud or card wool as she rested. In the late afternoon, if Miss Martha’s mood suited, I brought Sukey for a visit, for she elicited a vivid response. Miss Martha always brightened when she saw the child. As Sukey cuddled close, the woman would read to her from a child’s picture book. In an odd singsong voice, she repeated the verses over and over until they both slept.

One afternoon Mama Mae glanced in to see them both asleep. “That the only good rest that woman get,” Mama whispered to me, “but you never leave them alone together.”

The captain couldn’t seem to recover his health. In earlier days he had been able to walk outdoors, but those excursions ceased as an increasing lethargy overtook him. Fanny and Uncle Jacob continued to care for him, but Fanny was his bright spot. The captain taught her to play card games, and on her winning days, she was rewarded with coins that she proudly gave to her mother for safekeeping.

I can only imagine how Belle’s nightly visits cheered her father. She took books from the big-house library and read to him, often late into the night. I awoke one such night to hear Belle’s voice coming up from the kitchen. Careful not to disturb Sukey, I crept downstairs to find Belle at the table, studying opened books in the dim lamplight. She explained how she was going over the following night’s reading. Unfamiliar with some of the words, she found them in a two-volume dictionary, then sounded them out to
herself as her grandmother had taught her to do. After that, on my request, she included me, and together we furthered our reading skills.

T
HAT DAY IN
M
AY, DURING
our twelfth birthday picnic, Fanny’s and Beattie’s and my talk turned to the church event on the upcoming weekend. A sacrament service was planned, which meant a whole day away from home, where attention would be given not only to prayer and sermon but to food and socializing. The three of us spoke glowingly of Will Stephens, whom we had to thank for all this.

By making some humane changes, Will Stephens had won the goodwill of the people in the quarters. Under his supervision, the plantation not only thrived but had exceeded production of past years. Food allowances were increased, and salt was added as a staple. Saturday afternoons and Sundays became free time: a time for people in the quarters to work in their gardens, hunt or fish, wash clothes, and visit. They also were given the choice of going to church on Sunday.

Will Stephens had been raised to go to church, and every Sunday he hitched up a wagon inviting as many to ride as could, while others walked the hour’s distance. I was beyond envy the first Sunday when I discovered that Beattie and Fanny, accompanied by Ben and Lucy, had been given permission to go with the group from the quarters.

“But why,” I cried to Belle, “why can’t I go?”

“You don’t belong with them,” Belle tried to explain.