The Lost Quilter (21 page)

1860
Charleston, South Carolina

I
don’t want her sulking all the way to Charleston,” declared Miss Evangeline as her husband, resplendent in his uniform, helped her into the coach.

“She’s merely frightened,” Colonel Harper consoled her. “She’ll be fine once she gets used to her new surroundings.”

“Do you truly think so?
I
think she’s still angry about that baby.”

“Negroes don’t feel love or sadness the way we do. They may give the appearance of true feeling, but they understand these sensations only in a brute, rudimentary way, such as a dog or horse might. What you see now is fear and stubbornness, as simple as that.” As the colonel closed the carriage door, the last Joanna heard from her seat beside the driver was, “However, if her manner doesn’t improve, I’ll beat the sulkiness out of her.”

Joanna heard but did not care. What more could they do to hurt her? They had already done their worst. They had ripped out her heart.

Miss Evangeline had tried to explain that her father had given
her Joanna as a wedding gift—not Titus, not Julia—and she was a hard-won gift at that. When Miss Evangeline had first suggested the idea to her father, her stepmother had protested that she could not do without her only laundress, nor did she wish to lose such an accomplished seamstress. But with time, charm, and well-reasoned arguments, Miss Evangeline convinced her father that another strong, young girl could be trained to wash clothes, and she herself needed a seamstress much more than her stepmother did. An officer’s wife in the city must be an accomplished hostess so that her husband might impress his superiors and win promotions, and she must have the clothes to play the part. Her stepmother, on the other hand, rarely needed finery so far out on the plantation, and in any event, she preferred plainer attire, dresses she could easily fashion herself. Miss Evangeline could not bear to think that as a new bride in a new city, she would drive her husband into debt purchasing expensive dresses to keep the gossips at bay.

The twin pillars of money and pride supported her argument solidly enough to convince Marse Chester. It would reflect badly upon the entire Chester family if Miss Evangeline were perceived as inferior to the other young wives of Charleston. Thus Mrs. Chester lost her laundress, and Joanna lost her family.

“You must have known you would be coming with me,” Miss Evangeline had said, astounded by Joanna’s lack of enthusiasm. “What need do they have of a fine seamstress here after I go? Why would my stepmother have you train up a new laundress if you were to remain behind?”

Joanna’s heart ached. So this wretched decision had been made months ago, with Joanna none the wiser. She understood Chester logic, understood why they believed she must go and Titus must stay, but she had heard nothing to justify leaving
Ruthie behind. It would be years before Ruthie could perform any useful work around Oak Grove. Ruthie meant no more to the Chesters than twenty dollars in a ledger, but she was everything to Joanna. Titus would understand why she had to take their daughter away with her.

“Miss Evangeline—Mrs. Harper,” Joanna said, quietly desperate. “Please let me bring Julia with me. She such a good baby, such a sweet child, so quiet you hardly know she’s there. She won’t be no trouble to you or the colonel. I’ll work so hard for you, Miss Evangeline, you never seen someone work so hard as I will—”

“You’ll work hard in any case.” Miss Evangeline’s cheeks were flushed, her mouth tight with displeasure. “You forget I know how easily distracted you are by that child.”

“Please, miss, I won’t be distracted—”

“Enough.” Miss Evangeline shook her head, astounded by Joanna’s impudence. “I can’t expect an ignorant girl like you to understand what a great privilege it is to be permitted to accompany me to my new household, but I do expect obedience. Pack my trunks, and tonight, gather your own things and say your farewells. We’re leaving in the morning.”

Instead of obeying, Joanna had fled to the stable. “We’ll run,” Titus said, holding her as she choked out the terrible news. “We’ll run tonight. You, me, Ruthie, anyone else who wants to go. I’ll have the horses ready by nightfall.”

But Joanna’s flight from Miss Evangeline’s bedchamber had aroused her suspicions, and she convinced her father to take back Titus’s key to the stable. She also ordered Joanna to sleep in the big house, on the floor of the closet where she stored her mending basket. Pleas to be permitted one last night with her husband and child were met with a slap across the face and threats of a more
severe beating if Joanna did not stop ruining Miss Evangeline’s last night at home.

Auntie Bess brought Ruthie to see Joanna off; Titus was there, assisting Colonel Harper’s groom. Joanna clung to him, with Ruthie sheltered between them in the cradle of their arms, until Miss Evangeline impatiently ordered her to climb up onto the seat beside the driver.

“I’ll see you soon,” Titus said, reluctantly releasing her.

She hoped he was right; surely Marse Chester would want to visit his daughter before long. But Joanna knew Titus would not be permitted to bring Ruthie with him.

Then Titus pulled her close and spoke in her ear. “If you get the chance, run. Don’t worry about us. Just run.”

Run. How could she run from Charleston, not knowing the way? If she fled from Colonel Harper, where could she go but back to her husband and daughter?

“The marse colonel’s not so bad,” Colonel Harper’s groom said kindly after she had sat beside him in silence for the better part of an hour. They were retracing the same route she had traveled with the Georgia traders more than a year before, but nothing looked familiar. Even if she finished her Birds in the Air quilt, how would it ever lead her to freedom?

“We always have enough to eat,” Abner went on when she said nothing, “and the colonel don’t whip no one unless you lie or steal. Charleston’s a fine place. Don’t be scared.”

“I’m not scared,” Joanna said. She felt cold and numb, still disbelieving. There was no room for fear or anticipation or hope. Least of all hope.

Ruthie will forget me, she thought. Joanna would become
nothing more than a vague memory, fading as Joanna’s own mother had to her.

After a while, Abner gave up trying to engage Joanna in conversation and left her to brood. Eventually they came to the city, which Joanna had last seen through the bars of a cage. The streets bustled with gentlemen, planters, tradesmen, and slaves going about their masters’ business; horses pulled carts; slave women in headscarves carried baskets to and from the markets. The sights and smells and noises drew Joanna from her dark reverie; sensing the slight shift in her mood, Abner began describing the sights they passed. Another slave market, similar in appearance to the one Joanna had seen before. The church the colonel and all his household attended, slave as well as free, where colored folk stood along the walls at the back and listened to the same gospel as their buckra masters. The best places to buy fish and poultry, should the new mistress send her on such errands. Abner promised her she would learn her way around the streets quickly if the new mistress let her go out and about, but it all seemed a tangled muddle to Joanna, accustomed to few strangers and narrow paths within fixed borders.

The colonel lived on Meeting Street in a three-story red brick building with white stone trim and curved balconies on the second and third floors above the front door. As they passed through the wrought iron gates to the carriage house, Joanna glimpsed shady, white-pillared piazzas overlooking gardens behind the house. Surrounding the entire property was a solid wrought iron fence whose decorative flourishes could not disguise the sharp, menacing spikes at the top of each bar.

“Marse Colonel sure afraid his slaves gonna run off,” said Joanna. He couldn’t be that amiable a master if he needed to turn his yard into a pretty barracoon.

“Hmm?” Abner followed her line of sight to the barricades as the carriage rumbled over cobblestones. “You mean the fence? That ain’t meant to keep people in but to keep them out. Must’ve been forty years ago they put that up because of the slave uprising.”

“What?”

“I wasn’t even born yet myself so all I know is the stories folks tell. Denmark Vesey, he was the leader. He bought his freedom with money won in a lottery and open a carpentry shop. He swore he wouldn’t rest until all his people were free. In secret he got thousands, thousands of slaves from all over Charleston and on plantations near the city to join him, and they were gonna revolt. They were gonna kill the masters and set everybody free. But rumors got around and the white folks panicked, and Denmark and some others got rounded up before they could strike a single blow.”

“What happened to them?” Joanna asked.

Abner shrugged and steered the horse around the broad circular drive in front of the house. “What you think? They all got hanged. Even some buckra who took Vesey’s part.” He pulled the horses to a halt, frowned slightly, and said, “Listen here. You best not ask about those times. The colonel don’t like that kind of talk. The Charleston buckra never been so scared as in those days, and they know there more of us in this city than them. Anyone who even seems like he might be the next Denmark Vesey, he gets shut up real quick.”

Abner fell silent as a footman in a dark blue coat hurried down the front steps to open the carriage door. Joanna nodded to show she would heed Abner’s warnings; only a fool would not. Buckra lived in constant worry that their slaves might rebel. When Joanna was hired out to Mrs. Robinson back in Virginia,
the white-haired mistress often complained that the soup tasted bitter and would warn the others at the table not to eat it for fear of poison. Joanna herself had struck Josiah Chester before she ran off, but only from instinct, and only to save her own life. After she was recaptured, no buckra judge would have punished him if he had killed her outright, rather than only nearly killing her with a beating. Almost always, fighting back against a master meant death. Everybody knew that.

Denmark Vesey had been a free man, and yet he had fought back, though he’d had everything to lose. As for Joanna, everything she cherished most had been snatched from her. A few worldly possessions—her Birds in the Air quilt top, a wad of poor-quality cotton swept up from the floor of the gin house, her sewing basket, the tin cornboiler, the clothes she wore, the dress stolen from Mrs. Chester—were all that remained to her, and they were a cold comfort.

In a fog of sorrow and disbelief, Joanna settled Miss Evangeline into her new home, wondering if she would ever feel anything but unsettled, uprooted herself. Upon the newlyweds’ arrival, Colonel Harper’s slaves quickly gathered in the front hall to meet their new mistress. They were better dressed than the slaves at Oak Grove, Joanna thought, and they seemed better fed—Sally, the cook; Asa, the colonel’s man; Minnie, the housekeeper; George, the blue-coated footman who had run outside to meet the newlyweds’ carriage; a young boy named Tommy who, Joanna later learned, raked the yard and kept flies off the food at mealtime; and Hannah, a girl a year or two older than Tommy, who emptied pots from the necessary chairs into the privies outdoors, scrubbed floors, swept fireplaces, and jumped, wide-eyed, to any
other task she was ordered to do. Joanna never heard her speak and wasn’t sure she could.

Miss Evangeline’s aunt had come to stay until her niece became accustomed to her new home. Aunt Lucretia’s maid, Dora, slept on the floor of her mistress’s bedchamber for the duration of her visit. Abner and the stable boys slept in the carriage house. There were no field hands, of course, since the Harper family rice plantation was across the river on James Island. Minnie explained that the colonel often traveled to the home plantation when he wasn’t busy at the South Carolina Military Academy, but even when he was away, his household must remain ever vigilant, for he often returned home unannounced. The colonel boasted that as a master horseman he could travel more swiftly than any messenger sent ahead, but Sally scoffed at this. “He don’t send no messenger,” she told Joanna, scathingly. “He hope to catch us unawares. He think it so funny to watch us scramble to please him.” Sally had reason to grumble, for she was expected to have a hot meal ready for the marse colonel whenever he might unexpectedly appear.

The other slaves, who did not have to worry about food spoiling and accidentally poisoning the master, needed only concern themselves with tending to the master’s estate and possessions during his frequent absences. The grounds enclosed within the wrought iron barricade seemed small and cramped to Joanna, who had lived all her life on plantations, but the gardens surrounding the house were lush and verdant, and the workyard just beyond them seemed well maintained and sufficient for the needs of a small household. The dependencies included a two-story structure that housed the kitchen and laundry, the carriage house and stable, two privies, and another building whose purpose Joanna couldn’t guess at first glance.

Though the grounds were less impressive than Marse Chester’s, the residence itself was larger and more opulent than the big house at Oak Grove. Joanna had never seen so many windows, some curved at the top and some boasting colored glass, or ceilings more than twice her own height, or so many fancy plaster moldings and carvings framing the top of each room. The front entrance had a white marble floor laced with gray marble threads, and a curved staircase with ornate whitewashed spindles that rose gracefully to the second floor. Slaves were not permitted to use the stairs except to sweep the steps or dust the banister, Minnie warned as she led Joanna past the staircase to the back of the house, where a door concealed the servants’ stairs, narrow and steep, with a landing and a turn every four steps.

It was while unpacking Miss Evangeline’s things that Joanna discovered she was not only to be the seamstress and laundress; she was also to be Miss Evangeline’s personal maid. “I don’t know nothing about dressing hair,” said Joanna, almost dropping the trunk lid on her fingers in her surprise.