A Light to My Path (27 page)

“Hey, now. What’s the hug for?” he asked.

“I missed you, Grady.” Delia had told her that making a baby wasn’t wrong if she was married. She and Grady were.

He turned and pulled her close, wrapping her tightly in his arms, laying his cheek against her hair. She felt the strength in his arms and shoulders, and knew she was safe.

“Anna …” he whispered.

She savored his embrace for a long moment, then lifted her face for his kiss. She saw the longing in his eyes, but he pried her arms from around his waist and stepped back.

“Don’t,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because I want you … and I won’t be able to stop with one kiss.”

“I don’t want you to stop,” she said, embracing him again. “We’re married, Grady. We love each other. It’s okay.”

He pulled her close again and kissed her. At first he was gentle and tender with her. But Kitty felt his growing passion, and a glow of warmth spread through her like candle wax melting beneath a flame. It was the most wonderful feeling she ever had. She never wanted his kisses to end.

But they did. Grady stopped suddenly. She felt a shiver pass all the way through him. He pushed her away again.

“I need to go.”

He turned his back on her and rummaged quickly through his belongings, as if eager to flee. Kitty felt a terrible loss. She had made up her mind to entice him tonight because she was afraid of Missy’s punishment, but everything had changed once he’d started kissing her. She loved him. And she wanted desperately for him to love her in return. He was only a few feet away from her, but as he hurried toward the door, she never felt more alone in her life. Kitty covered her face and wept.

Grady paused in the doorway. “Anna, please don’t cry. I’m sorry … I wish things could be different. But they can’t.”

Kitty cried harder still. She hadn’t wept this way since the day she’d learned about her parents. She couldn’t make herself stop.

Grady came back and held her gently. She could feel him restraining the desire he’d shown a moment ago, as if trying to halt a galloping horse. “Don’t cry … please.”

“I don’t understand,” she sobbed. “We’re man and wife. We’ve been married for four months. I want to be with you, Grady.”

“I know, Anna, but we can’t. I’m sorry … I need to go.” He released her and turned to leave.

Kitty felt a wave of panic as she remembered Missy’s threats. She and Grady were going to be torn apart forever, just like her parents had been.

“Grady, wait! Missy’s gonna separate us if we don’t have a baby!”

He froze in the doorway, then slowly turned to face her. “Is that what this is all about?”

“Missy found out she’s gonna have a baby, and she said she’s gonna send me back to Great Oak Plantation if we don’t have one, too.”

He closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Kitty saw shock and sorrow and anger all mingled together on his face. “You started this tonight because
she’s
wanting you to?” he asked.

“Grady, listen—”

“I guess that makes me a pretty big fool. I thought you really cared.”

“I do care! I love you, Grady.”

“No, Anna. First you have to love yourself. Then you’ll be able to love somebody else.”

“What do you mean? What makes you think I don’t?”

“Because if you had any self-respect at all, you wouldn’t be wanting to do everything Missy Claire’s telling you to do.”

“But she’s gonna send me away!”

“Maybe that ain’t such a bad thing. Maybe if you got away from her, you’d start seeing things more clearly.”

“Don’t you love me, Grady?”

The surprise and sadness faded from his eyes. The only thing left was anger. “Can’t nobody love you, girl, until you learn to love yourself. You obey that white woman like you were her dog—like you’re dirt under her feet and she can walk all over you. Think a man can love dirt? Think a man wants a dog for his woman?”

“Grady, wait! Come back!” But he slammed the door on his way out, and his footsteps thundered down the stairs. A moment later the stable door slammed, too. Kitty lay down on the bed and sobbed.

A long while later she heard the stairs creaking as someone slowly ascended them. She looked up, hoping to see Grady coming back to apologize, but when the door opened, it was Delia.

“Grady asked me to come,” she said. “He told me what happened.” “I love him, Delia.”

She sat down on the bed where Kitty lay and gently stroked her hair. “Are you sure, honey? Because Grady told me you was worried about Missy Claire being mad at you.”

“She’s gonna send me back to Great Oak Plantation if I don’t have a baby.”

“No, she won’t. She might be needing to find another slave for a wet nurse, but she won’t be sending you away. She depends on you. You said it yourself, time and time again—Missy’s acting mad but she don’t really mean it. She’s feeling poorly right now, that’s all.”

“But I do love Grady. I think about him all the time when he’s away. And when he kisses me I … I don’t ever want him to stop. You said it wasn’t wrong to make a baby if we’re married and if I loved him. I do love him, Delia. And I can tell by the way he kisses me that he loves me, too.”

“Honey, you need to forget about loving Grady.”

“But he’s my husband. Why are you telling me to forget him?”

“The only thing you’re gonna get from Grady is your heart broke. I love that boy like he was my own, but he can’t love anybody back.”

“What do you mean? Why not?”

“He got his own heart broken when he was a little boy, snatched away from a mama who loved him. He traveled with that soul trader for four years and saw folks ripped away from their loved ones every day, bought and sold like cattle. Now he’s scared to love you, scared he might lose you, too—and he’s got a right to be scared. Slaves are getting torn apart from their husbands and wives all the time.”

That was exactly what Missy had threatened to do. Kitty remembered her own parents again and shivered.

“Besides, Grady’s heart is too filled with hate to make any room for love,” Delia continued. “He’s gonna have to get rid of it all, first. But the way things been going—him getting whipped by those paddyrollers and all—the hate just keeps getting worse and worse.”

“How can I help him?”

“The only one who can help him is Jesus, and right now Grady’s mad at Him, too.”

“Why’s he mad at Jesus?”

“People are always thinking they can use the Lord to get their own way—all they have to do is pray and God’s gonna take away all their suffering and give them whatever they ask for. But it don’t work that way. God’s doing His business, and it’s up to us to be serving Him, not the other way around.”

“Then why do people pray at all? My papa asked Jesus to help him escape with me when I was just a little girl. But Jesus didn’t help us.”

“Praying ain’t about asking for your own way. It’s all about talking things over with God, just like you and me are talking things over. In the end, you have to be trusting the Lord to do what’s best.”

“So the Lord thought it was best that my papa died and my mama was sold?”

Delia slowly shook her head. “I don’t know, honey. I just don’t know. The hardest thing of all to understand is why a loving God keeps letting us suffer. That’s what Grady’s always wrestling with, too. I don’t know what to tell him because I don’t know all the answers myself. I seen my share of suffering, believe me. But there’s two things I do know for sure. One is that God loves us—you, me, Grady, and even the white folks. And the second thing is that God’s always in control of everything that happens. When bad things come our way and it starts looking like He don’t love us, all I can say is that maybe we ain’t knowing everything He knows.”

Kitty’s tears started falling again. “I still don’t understand.”

“Remember what you told me about the fighting up in Charleston? How you was standing on that porch, not able to see what’s going on? This here’s the same thing. We’re standing in the smoke, hearing the noise all around us, and we don’t know what God’s doing because we can’t see things as clearly as He sees them. But He’s gonna make everything turn out okay when the smoke clears. When it does, God’s gonna be the winner and all our suffering here on earth is gonna finally make sense. We’re gonna look in Jesus’ face and say, ‘O Lord, it was worth it all.’”

“What should I do about Missy Claire? She’s real mad at me, Delia. I can tell.”

“She’ll get over it. Sooner or later she’ll figure out that she can’t be snapping her fingers and making somebody have a baby just because she wants them to.”

“And what about Grady?”

“Don’t be tempting that poor boy no more, honey. He’s already carrying around a load that’s much too big for his shoulders.”

Kitty began to cry again as soon as she was alone. If only Grady were here to hold her in the darkness. If only they could have a baby like Missy wanted them to. Maybe then this terrible dread Kitty felt would finally go away.

Chapter Fourteen

Beaufort, South Carolina
November 1861

The fall Sunday had started out so perfectly, Kitty thought. The weather was sunny and clear, Massa Fuller and Grady were home after being gone for a week, and Missy Claire’s morning sickness had finally passed—and with it, her threats and crabby moods. Kitty helped Missy get dressed in one of her newly altered dresses, and she and Massa Fuller went to church together to pray with the other white folks about the war. Kitty sat outside on the carriage seat beside Grady, listening to the distant organ music and sketching the pretty white church with its graceful steeple. As Grady watched her, they talked quietly, the way they used to talk in Charleston. Kitty felt happier than she had in many months.

Then the white folks began streaming from the church, their faces grim, their voices grave and subdued. The seed of fear that had first taken root in Kitty’s stomach at the battle for Fort Sumter sprouted anew. She could tell by the way the white folks acted that things were about to change again. The war must have worsened. The happiness she felt was about to vanish.

“Pay attention to what they say at lunch,” Grady whispered to her on the drive home. He’d been trying to follow the war’s progress, eavesdropping on Massa’s conversations as he drove him around Beaufort or out to the fort. He wanted Delia and Kitty to do the same, to remember every detail they heard about the battles that had been fought and who had won them.

“It’s important that the Union wins,” Grady had told them at breakfast this morning.

“But that means that Massa Fuller and his sons have to lose,” Delia replied.

“Yes,” Grady said, “but if they lose, there’s a chance we’ll all go free.”

Delia shook her head. “Much as I want to be free,” she said sadly, “you know I been raising Massa and his boys since they was tiny babies. I don’t want to see any of them hurt.”

“They started this war,” Grady said stubbornly. “They knew what they were getting into.”

Massa Fuller invited another soldier home for dinner after church, so Kitty had a chance to hear some of the news. They ate in the big dining room, even though there were only three people at the huge table. Kitty helped Martin serve the food, then stood aside, listening.

“Tell us what you know for certain, Lawrence,” Massa Fuller said as he cut into a slice of ham. “We’ve heard all the rumors.”

“For certain? The Union armada sailed from Hampton Roads with more than sixty vessels,” he said.

“Sixty,” Massa repeated. “Warships, I presume?”

“Yes, and troop ships.” He reached for another biscuit. “We don’t know which city they plan to attack, of course. Charleston … Savannah … perhaps even Beaufort. So we must all remain on the alert.”

Massa Fuller nodded. “They announced in church this morning that we should be prepared to evacuate the town on a moment’s notice, if necessary.”

Kitty wondered how they could sit here eating so calmly as they discussed the possibility of an enemy attack. Sixty warships sounded like a lot to her. She must remember the number so she could tell Grady later.

“Reverend Walker said they would ring the church bells tomorrow at noon,” Missy added. “He told us that with Union troops approaching, we need to gather in our homes for prayer.”

“I hate having my family so scattered,” Massa said.

“Where are your two boys, Roger? They’re not old enough to fight yet, are they?”

“My older son, Ellis, is. He joined a South Carolina regiment and was sent north to Virginia. He fought in the Battle of Manassas last July, in fact, and now he’s part of our defense forces up there.

My other son, John, is still a cadet at the Citadel in Charleston.”

“You’re from Charleston aren’t you, Mrs. Fuller?” Lawrence asked.

“My father has a town house there, but also a plantation on the Edisto River.”

“I assume you’ll go to Charleston if you have to evacuate?”

“I don’t think it will be necessary for her to go that far,” Massa Fuller said before Missy could answer. “Not in her delicate condition. I thought perhaps you could go to my plantation for a few days, dear,” he said, turning to Missy. “I’m sure it won’t be for long—a week at the most.”

“Then why go away at all?” she asked.

Massa exchanged a quick, worried glance with his guest. “Well, we’re quite certain that the forts will remain secure,” Lawrence explained, “but one of our fears is that a warship might slip past them and sail up the Beaufort River to bombard the town from offshore.”

Kitty recalled the horrific bombing of Fort Sumter, and the thought of all those flaming shells falling from the sky onto Beaufort made her want to pack up and run right now. From the expression she saw on Missy’s face, she knew her mistress felt the same way.

“The evacuation is only a safety precaution,” Massa said. “Everyone expects to return once the Yankees are chased away.”

Missy smiled uncertainly. “I’m not sure what to pack, in that case.” “Not much, dear,” Fuller said. “Some personal belongings and any small valuables. The furniture and silver and so forth can remain here. Jim and Minnie and the others will look after things.”

“Unfortunately, our most valuable resources can’t be moved out of harm’s way,” Lawrence said, “our land, our field slaves, our crops. And since they can’t be moved, our way of life depends on protecting them at all costs.”