A Light to My Path (16 page)

Grady nodded, staring straight ahead at the whitewashed wall. He would not cry. But it upset him to realize that the memory of his mother’s face seemed faded and blurred after all this time, and he could no longer recall it clearly. But he did remember her gentle hands, and how she would hold him tightly in her arms. He hunched his shoulders and folded his arms across his chest, shivering as if he was cold. But the coldness he felt was deep inside him, not in the stifling cabin.

Delia rested her hand on his arm, startling him. When he looked at her he saw tears in her eyes. “It’s a hard thing for a boy as young as you to be leaving his mama, especially to go and live with a soul trader.”

“Yes, ma’am.” He swallowed.

“We’re all alone, Grady,” she said softly. “No one’s gonna see you cry.” She opened her arms to him.

Grady went to her and she pulled him close, holding him tightly, rocking him. How long had it been since anyone had held him this way? Esther had been the last person to hug him—on that last terrible morning. He’d been pushed and jammed into slave pens and ships’ holds, poked and prodded and beaten, but never held. The warmth of Delia’s body, the softness of her, slowly melted the hard lump of hatred in his chest. And as it melted into grief, he began to cry.

“You go ahead and cry for all the times you couldn’t, honey,” she said.

Grady wept for the terror, for the pain and unfairness of the beatings. He cried for all the anguish he’d seen, the families who’d been cruelly torn apart, as he’d been torn from his family. He cried for the memory of green grass beneath his bare feet back home in Richmond; for his friend Caroline, with skin as white as the blossoms on the magnolia tree they’d climbed. He cried for the cold rain that had soaked him on the day he’d been snatched away, and for the coldness in Massa Fletcher’s face as he’d watched him go. Most of all, Grady cried for his mother, the beloved face he could no longer clearly recall.

“No one’s ever gonna know about this but you and me, Grady,” Delia murmured. She rubbed his back to soothe him. He remembered his mama doing the same thing, and he sobbed.

A long time later, Grady’s tears were finally spent. He realized that he was sitting on the rope bed beside Delia, her warm arms still wrapped tightly around him. “Tell me about your home, Grady. Tell me what you remember.”

He began to talk, and a flood of memories poured out—haltingly at first, then with the words tumbling all over each other. “I use to live in the kitchen behind the Big House with Esther and Eli and the others. I never been inside the Big House, but Mama was always staying there and taking care of Missy Caroline because Missy’s mama was sick all the time. Mama love me more than Missy Caroline, but she can’t let Missy know that or Missy be feeling bad. Mama said I had beautiful brown skin, but Missy’s skin’s ugly, with no color in it at all, so we have to be extra nice to her to make up for it. Esther and Eli and all the others was taking good care of me when Mama can’t. They’re always working hard, but Eli says he don’t mind because he’s serving the Lord. And Massa Fletcher’s never yelling or beating anybody… .” He swallowed hard, remembering Massa Coop.

“Missy Caroline was my best friend. We use to play in the yard every day and climb that old magnolia tree and talk to Eli while he’s working. Missy do her lessons every morning and I do my chores, but then we played when we was all finished. Sometimes we use to sit on Eli’s lap and he’d tell stories about Massa Jesus—”

Grady stopped abruptly, the memory sharp and painful. Eli had said that Jesus was always with him, taking good care of him, but it wasn’t true.

“Bless you, child,” Delia murmured, “you didn’t know what slavery’s all about, did you?” She sighed, then added, “I reckon you know now.”

“Massa Fletcher sold me for no reason!” His mother’s face may have faded, but Grady clearly recalled Massa Fletcher’s face and the way he stood in the rain with his arms folded. “He sold me for no reason at all!”

“There’s a reason, honey. There’s always a reason—just something you ain’t knowing about.”

Grady drew a shuddering breath. “The wagon carry me to the auction house and Amos say to forget about home. He say I ain’t never going back again, never gonna see my mama.”

“It’s the truth, Grady. I know it’s hard, but it’s the truth. You’re a long, long way from Virginia. Once folks is sold, ain’t no way back.”

Grady’s tears began falling again. Delia had made him relive that terrible day, and now he relived the loss, as well, the feeling of being all alone in a world that was so large, so uncaring.

“Was Eli your daddy, Grady?” she asked softly.

The question surprised him. “No … Eli is Esther’s husband.”

“Did you know your daddy?”

“I don’t have one. I asked Mama one time why Caroline has a daddy and I don’t. She say slaves don’t have daddies.”

“Now, you know that can’t be true,” Delia said. “The only baby born on this earth without a flesh-and-bone daddy was the Lord Jesus—and you sure ain’t Him.”

Grady stiffened at the name. Eli had told him that Jesus had God for His daddy instead of having a daddy here on earth. But Grady didn’t want to think about Massa Jesus anymore.

“What color skin did your mama have?” Delia asked. “Dark as mine or light as yours?”

“Like yours.” He remembered now. Mama’s skin was a rich, warm brown, as dark and smooth as the molasses cookies Esther used to bake.

He was struggling to bring his mother’s face into focus when Delia said, “Your daddy’s a white man.”

The words stunned Grady like a slap in the face. He twisted out of her arms shouting, “That’s a lie!”

He hated white men—all of them. They had carried him away and locked him in a filthy cell and made him stand on the auction block without his clothes. Massa Coop was a white man, and he had beaten Grady unmercifully. White men bought and sold Negroes, stealing them from their homes and their families without an ounce of compassion for them. The only white man he’d known back home in Richmond was Massa Fletcher, and Grady hated him most of all. He was
not
his father!

“Maybe Gilbert’s my daddy or … or somebody else,” he said with cold fury, “but he sure ain’t no white man!”

“It happens all the time,” Delia said matter-of-factly. “Truth is, most black gals are a whole lot prettier than white women. Massa sees a beautiful Negro gal and he can’t resist. He don’t have to. She’s his slave, so he can do whatever he wants.”

Grady knew that his mama was beautiful, more beautiful than the slave women Coop used to sell to the brothels in New Orleans. Grady had learned what brothels were. He knew very well what Delia was saying. He felt heat rush to his face, but he was too angry, too outraged to speak.

“I may not look it now,” Delia continued, “but I used to be pretty, long time ago. Plantation had a white overseer and he decide he can use me that way anytime he wants. I had me a little girl baby from that white man. She’s as light-skinned as you are, honey. Could pass for white if you didn’t hear her calling me Mama. Massa Fuller was just a baby himself, back then, so they brought me up to the Big House and I nursed him alongside my own baby. The two of them just as white as each other. Couldn’t tell no difference.”

Grady didn’t want to hear this, didn’t want to think about this. He glanced around the tiny cabin but saw only one bed. “Your daughter living here with you?” he asked.

“No, she’s gone now,” Delia said sadly. “Her grave is up in the cemetery with all the other slaves who’ve gone to be with Jesus. My little girl only five years old when she left me. I see you climbing down from that carriage today, and you’re reminding me of her. Her skin’s just as light as yours.”

“That don’t mean I had a white daddy,” he said angrily.

“Ain’t nothing to be ashamed of.”

“But it ain’t true!” Only one white man lived in that house in Richmond. Mama had cried and pleaded with him as they’d dragged Grady away, and he hadn’t even cared.

Delia tried to pull Grady into her arms again, but he twisted away. He stood, fists clenched, his body rigid with hatred. She touched his arm. “Listen, Grady—”

“I ain’t got nothing to do with no white man!” he yelled. “Don’t you ever say that to me again!”

Chapter Nine

Fuller Plantation, South Carolina 1860

Delia stood in the tiny cabin behind Grady, watching him preen in front of the mirror. “You the vainest man I ever did meet,” she told him. “Handsomest one, too. But I suppose you already know that.”

He grinned at her in the mirror as their eyes met, but she didn’t distract him from his primping for very long. He took his time washing, shaving, brushing his neatly trimmed hair. During the three years Delia had known him, Grady had grown into a tall, well-built young man, muscular and solid from his hard work in the stables with Jesse. Dressed in livery and sitting high atop the driver’s seat of Massa’s carriage, Grady was a sight to behold. That was his job now—coachman for Massa Fuller.

Delia still felt a stab of grief when she recalled the morning Grady had come running up to the Big House to fetch her, his face pale with shock. “Better come quick, Delia. Jesse fell down, and I can’t get him on his feet.”

She and the butler, Martin, had both hurried down to the stable where they found the old coachman lying in an awkward heap.

Massa Fuller had sent for a doctor, but there wasn’t anything he could do. Jesse had broken his hip, and his old bones were just too brittle to mend properly. Grady had grown very close to Jesse in the years they had worked together, and he took the news harder than any of them did.

“They can’t just let him lay here and die, like he’s worn out and useless!” Grady had shouted. “He’s a human being!”

Delia had tried to soothe him. “Honey, there ain’t nothing the doctor can do.”

“There has to be!”

“Jesse’s going home to be with the Lord. Can’t you see he ain’t afraid?”

“Lot of good believing in the Lord ever done him,” Grady said as he stomped out of the carriage house.

Delia had let him go. Grady never would listen to a single word about God. She’d tried and tried for the last three years, talking to him at night in the cabin they shared, inviting him to the slaves’ worship services—but he refused to listen. She knew from what he’d told her about his family in Richmond that he’d been raised to know the Lord. But everything that had happened to him in the years since had turned him bitter. As soon as Delia mentioned God, Grady would light out of there like the paddyrollers were after him.

He had helped Delia take care of Jesse as tenderly as a son with his father, but the poor old soul never did recover. Two days before Jesse died, Massa Fuller came out to the carriage house to ask him which of the stable hands should replace him as coachman.

Grady had spoken up before Jesse had a chance to reply.

“I can do it, Massa Fuller. Tell him, Jesse. Tell him I can handle them horses and drive his coach better than anybody.”

Jesse nodded. “He’s young but he knows how to handle a team of horses. And he works harder than all them other stable hands put together, even if he is the youngest.”

“He knows how to act around white folk, too,” Delia added. Grady had a lot of natural dignity and poise for one so young. Besides, he was nice-looking and very light-skinned—qualities that the white folk wanted in slaves who were seen in public. Massa Fuller had made Grady his coachman.

They’d buried Jesse in the slave cemetery, right beside Delia’s daughter’s grave. Grady’s grief was so great that he barely spoke a word for days. Delia had tried to console him with the promise of heaven, but he hadn’t wanted to hear it. Now, in the months since Jesse’s funeral, Grady had worked hard and had quickly earned Massa Fuller’s trust as his driver.

“Where you off to tonight?” Delia asked as Grady put away his shaving things. “I didn’t think Massa Fuller was going anywhere tonight.”

“He ain’t. But he give me the night off. I’m going over to the Emerson place to see a gal I know over there.”

Delia’s smile faded. She shook her head. “I’m starting to hear stories about you, through the grapevine. I ain’t liking what I hear.”

“What’d you hear?”

“That while Massa Fuller’s been looking for a wife, you been playing around with all the slave gals everywhere you’re driving him.”

She hated to scold, but Delia worried about him. He was running from the Lord, no doubt about it, and heading down the wrong path. Hard things happened when you tried to run from God. She had loved Grady since the first day he’d arrived—a gift from the Lord, she knew. God had taken one child from her, and now He’d given her another one. She prayed for Grady every morning and every night—and in between times, too, when he needed it. Now she was very worried about him.

“I hear that while Massa Fuller’s courting some lady inside the Big House,” she continued, “you’re taking your time, rubbing down his horses out in the stable yard where everyone can watch you. Pretty soon all the kitchen gals and parlormaids start finding excuses to sashay out and see if you want a drink of water or maybe a bite of corn bread. You lean against the hitching post and smile as you dish out your sweet talk, and the gals soak it up like rain on dry ground. Folks say that when you come driving up, it’s like setting a dish of honey out on the table and waiting for the flies to come buzzing.”

Grady tried to suppress a grin but couldn’t. “Nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“I hear you got a gal on every plantation, and half a dozen

more in Beaufort that’s all in love with you. Problem is, they’re all thinking you’re in love with them.”

“That ain’t my fault,” he said with a shrug. “I ain’t making any promises.”

“You’re taking advantage of them, honey, and that’s wrong. The Bible says—”

“Hold it.” Grady held up both hands to silence her. “None of your God-talk, Delia. You know how I feel about that.”

But Delia knew that Grady’s soul was at stake. She stood in the doorway, blocking the only way out of the cabin. “I know you don’t want to hear it, honey, but tonight I’m gonna tell you anyway. A man ain’t supposed to be with a gal that way unless they’s married. If you ain’t, then all your fooling around is a sin in the Lord’s eyes.”