The Loom (4 page)

Lydia had never witnessed any of it. Abram was old when she was born and set aside by the time she was of age. She wanted to, needed to believe in the power that raised spirits, that lifted heads, but all she knew was the shriveled man who nodded and offered few of the many words he had once spoken.

Even the greatest withered away.

It hurt. This ending to his life. Nothing could be easy about losing awe, the admiration of ones who believed in a life set apart only to discover that it would dry out as deeply as it had flourished. When the healing faded, it burned, but when the seekers ceased to come and he was thrown away in The Room to die, it seared. A leader reduced to a weaver of cloth like all who could no longer serve in the fields. It was the fate of the old, the disabled, and it had fallen just as surely in Abram’s lap as it had the rest.

It hurt. Lydia knew. She saw it in his misty eyes quick to turn away when they met hers. She heard it in the quiver of her father’s voice when the elder’s name was spoken. She felt it in her heart when she tried to catch her breath within the walls of her people’s purgatory.

“Lydia…” His wife Odessa nodded her crown of gray hair. Her fingers intertwined with Abram’s free hand like knotted tree limbs. Of the three, she was the one who looked the oldest, who spoke the slowest, who broke the easiest. Often tears slid down the sandy-brown grooves etched around her eyes, down her cheeks, beside her mouth like every treacherous road she had traveled, like tracks through a hard ground that couldn’t bring forth life if it wanted to.

A nervousness moved through her, darted her eyes like flies in a web of wrinkles, quivered her lip, nodded her head even when she said no. But “no” was rare, hardly ever spoken by the oppressed, even less by the time he or she entered The Room.

Lydia walked to Ruth and squeezed her shoulder.

“How’s our girl today?”

“Fine. Just fine.” Grazing the back of her mentor, Lydia watched the miracle of weaving hands, the gathering and threading of slivers that would create a world as soft and warm as the arms of love. She stood for several minutes before sitting next to the leader of the loom, the blind woman with blue eyes.

The first time she saw Ruth, she ran.

Lydia had been a girl, not quite as old as Cora, charged by Beatrice to carry food to the loomers. It was a big task for a young one to deliver anything, so she did it proudly, happy to have been asked.

With her fingers gripping the handle of the woven straw basket, she held the rations with taut arms as she tiptoed across the cornfield, sweat slipping down the front of her stifling burlap dress.

It was scary even then. The Room. It was fuller in those days. A room of eight or nine old folk she had never seen before.

Foreign faces of life long past, gaping at her, staring through her. Bony wrists grabbing for the cobs of corn she had no idea how they would chew with empty, wide mouths beneath sunken cheeks. And it smelled, not of chamber pots, for the children of the aged prided themselves in keeping them emptied and clean. No, this stench was a humming still, dry musk like the clawed dead that hung from the ceilings in the smokehouse.

There was only one in the corner Lydia hadn’t served, a woman sitting on a bench at the loom. Even from behind, she was different from the others. Her back straight, her body agile with only thin slivers of shiny silver through dark locks bound by the bandanna tied at the back of her head, stretched against the top of her ears.

“Ma’am, would you like something?”

When she turned, Lydia gasped. Still blue skies captured in the face of the darkest night. She dropped the basket of food and stumbled over bare feet, bent knees, and wounded legs struggling to move out of her path, the sound of cracking joints and her apologies ringing in her ear as she ran out.

It took several weeks before the patience of the eldest house slave ran dry and Lydia gained the courage to return. In time, she sat under Ruth, a profound teacher without sight who taught her to see designs as intricate as they were beautiful before they were ever formed at her fingertips.

“You ready, baby?” Ruth asked, removing her foot from the pedal and sliding off the bench to a wooden chair she felt her way into. “I am.”

Lydia sat inside the loom with her stomach pressed against the front beam. She stretched out her legs until her foot reached the heavy pedal of gourd and pressed down, flexing and pointing her toe. Two pairs of shafts, she decided. When she threaded the white weave pattern 1-1-1-1-2-2-2-2 with four threads in each heddle, she smiled. The black she threaded in a plain weave with single threads, passing each one through both pairs of heddles, creating an equal amount of warp and weft—a balanced weave.

She was always ready for the loom. A time to sit at the massive wooden machine of posts and beams that filled most of the space of the small shack was her pleasure. It was peaceful, a journeying away, a chance to dream. Often she sat for hours, unaware of the time passing or the light sounds of sleep from the three nearby. All she heard, all she saw, all she felt was the newness. A new creation, a new design that would thread a new experience that could fashion a new life. She weaved a world of possibility each week until her lashes tapped against her lower lids and her head bobbed, her foot stopping and starting against the pedal.

By nightfall, she completed the shawls. When she released her foot, her pulse raced. One more task. Just one more and she could escape to another world.

As secret as it was kept, Lydia was a lady.

In her quarters, she glanced at the gown Lizzy had worn at breakfast, ruffled on top of her bed. Her gown.

From the light of the kerosene lamp, she was surrounded by the shadows of her bed covered in old linens, a cedar stool, a rough-hewn chair, a wobbly, three-legged wooden table much like the one in The Room, and a large mirror, a treasured gift from Lizzy.She moved to the stool with the satin dress in hand, her lips jiggling a stick pin in the corner of her mouth. Fastening the yellow knob buttons in place, she threaded the needle and whipped it in and out of the fabric with skill until twenty buttons, one on top of the other, adorned the gown she spread across her lap. It was ready.

She was ready. Lydia looked around, felt her heart thump as it did each time. Now, all these years later, she couldn’t remember the first time she had done it. All she knew was she couldn’t stop. She wouldn’t.

She let her fingers dance over the slippery fabric of yellow and caressed it against her cheek. She thought of Lizzy dancing in the gown, spinning and twirling carefree in the kitchen. And tomorrow night with a gentleman. The sweet dance of love. What it would be like to spin and twirl in a gown like this for John.

Tonight she would dance for him.

Each article of clothing she made for Lizzy and the missus she wore first. Every dress, every chemise, every shawl, every cloak first slipped over her shoulders, slid against her thighs. She saw herself in each piece first. So though it seemed she obtained their old attire, they in fact acquired hers. She was the first lady of the house, even if only in her mind or in the few minutes she stood before the antique mirror.

Lydia rose and dragged the stool behind her. Quickly, she looked out the door and, when she saw no one, creaked it shut, pushing the seat against the wooden frame.

She and Lizzy were the same size, both thin, petite girls, though her friend was slightly taller.

She shrugged out of her worn slip of a dress and stepped into the gown. As she brought the satin up over her knees, her thighs, she lifted the bodice over her breasts and slipped her arms through. Holding the back of the neckline together, she inched to the mirror.

Though she had tried it on before, she was now certain this one was better on Lizzy. If it were hers, she’d need to raise the hemline and tighten the waist some. She tugged the dress down over her shoulder and glanced up at her reflection. She closed her eyes. Darkness and dimples.

She was a lady.

Oh, Lizzy. It’s perfect.” Outside on the steps of the Kelly manor, Lydia studied her friend from head to toe.

She was sunshine in darkness. Her blond hair, the pearls against her throat, and the yellow dress shined, but they were no match for the joy that made her face glow in the moonlight.

“Thank you, Lydia,” she gushed, grazing the strand of pearls. “I sure wish you could come.”

Why’d she say such things? Why? Lydia looked down. Her faded blue dress trimmed in thick white lace was still pretty though she wore it often. Not pretty enough for a ball. But it was more than a dress that would keep her away. “It’s all right, Lizzy. I’m going to see my daddy tonight.”

“Elizabeth!” Mrs. Kelly called from the carriage. “Come now.”

“Bye, Lydia.” Lizzy paused before she smiled, squeezed her hand, and walked down the steps to her mother, wrapping her shawl around her.

Lydia rubbed her arms against the breeze. A shawl would do her good tonight. She would grab it quickly and head to the slave quarters. Though the days of late summer were warm, the nights were still cool enough for covering.

She turned, stumbling into Dr. Kelly, a tall, burly man with deep-set brown eyes, tonight dressed in formal black attire.

“Lydia…” He twisted an unruly strand of his moustache, rubbed his beard. His wild curly hair desperately needed a trim, but she had to admit, the look fit him just fine. Loose and untamed. Where women curved, he bulked rough and rigid to their softness, straight and simple to their complexity, downright masculinity in body and breath.

“Dr. Kelly.” She dropped her head in respect.

“How are you this evening?”

When she looked up at his smile, her heart fluttered.

“Fine, sir.” She glanced at the carriage and wondered if Mrs. Kelly and Lizzy could see him. She swallowed. And if they could?

“Where’s Cora?”

“Already down at the cabins, sir.”

“I see.” His voice was lower, gritty. “Looking nice tonight.”

She rubbed the back of her neck, could feel his eyes on her. Folding her arms, she looked at the ground, the narrow toe of his black leather shoe tap, tap, tapping.

“Thank you, sir.”

He nodded and skipped down the steps to the carriage. A chill came over her she couldn’t shake, not even after she had retrieved her shawl.

Passing a dozen slave quarters behind a wooden fence, Lydia walked until music and laughter floated through the air. Field slaves.

The style, the rhythm, the texture and tones made it clear these were her people. Her grandmother, her father. Ten years in the Big House hadn’t kept her from being one of them, the only people bold enough, bright enough to loose themselves from iron shackles at least some of the time. She walked toward the sound, felt her feet moving as quickly as the strumming beat.

Right in the middle of an open field, more than fifty bondservants gathered in a half circle around a fire, some standing, some sitting, others clapping and singing a song Lydia had never heard. In the corner sat a reverent, white-haired fiddle player in suspenders, tapping his foot to the music he plucked with care. A bearded bald man swung and dipped a woman whose hair stood full and wide around her like a halo. A small peanut of a child clucked around, his elbows flapping faster at the growing attention.

Brown skin in bland clothing created the most colorful scene of the night.

On the perimeter, cotton-white men stood near, planted by the master to guard their safety against the uprising of a Moses and a people eager to plot the exodus of a lifetime.

Suddenly, Lydia felt breath on the nape of her neck. She spun around and stumbled. Strong arms steadied her.

“Sorry. With the music, I didn’t think you’d hear me.”

“John.”

A glowing smile of white teeth greeted her in the most handsome face she’d ever seen. Had he grown more beautiful in a day?

“Lydia.”

“I was looking for my father.”

“He’s here. I saw him earlier.”

Lydia followed his gaze over the crowd. She spotted Cora near the banjo player giggling into cupped hands with two other girls her age. Her father stood several feet away, drinking from a tin cup. He waved when he saw her, made his way over.