All Things New by Lynn Austin
“I know. But what could we do?” Mother asked. “We were three women, here all alone. We had to flee to Richmond.”
Mother picked up the little silver servants’ bell and gave it an impatient ring, as if expecting a host of slave girls to pour into the dining room to wait on them. But all the house slaves had quit except Lizzie and Roselle, and they not only had to serve the food but cook it, too. A minute passed, and when no one responded, Mother rang the bell a second time. Lizzie finally shuffled in, drying her hands on her apron. Mother gave an aggrieved sigh.
“Did you not hear me ringing? Shall I buy a louder bell?”
“I heard it, ma’am. But I was busy putting wood on the fire. Next time I’ll be sure and drop what I’m doing right away.”
Josephine held her breath. She saw the fury in her mother’s lovely face—her pinched lips and arched brows, her glittering eyes. Slaves were supposed to reply, “Yes, ma’am” or “No, ma’am” or “I’m sorry, ma’am.” They certainly weren’t supposed to offer excuses for their failings. But Lizzie wasn’t a slave anymore. It must have galled Mother to hold back the angry response she would have given in the past. “Where is Roselle?” she asked. “Is she too busy to wait on us, as well?” Each word pricked the quiet room, as sharp and pointed as a tack, but Lizzie seemed immune to the prodding.
“She’s in school today, ma’am. My Roselle’s going to that new school for colored children now. Both my boys are going there, too.” Lizzie’s gaze should have reached no higher than the floor when speaking to a white woman, but her chin lifted with pride.
A sliver of tension as thin as a knife blade slit the room. Mother made Lizzie wait before making her next move, the way Daddy sometimes paused to study each piece on the chessboard when playing the game. In a battle of wills, no one could beat Eugenia Weatherly. Yet if Lizzie quit like all the others had, the family would be helpless—and everyone in the dining room knew it. The balance of power had shifted ever so slightly from master to servant since the war ended, but to a proud woman like Josephine’s mother, the world must have shifted on its axis.
“We’re finished eating,” Mother said at last. “You may clear the table now.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Josephine found the interchange embarrassing. She was sick of all the pointless maneuvering as Mother tried in vain to run their household by the old rules. The war had changed all the rules. Life would never be the same, and the sooner Mother stopped looking back and got used to the way things were now, the better off they all would be. But as Lizzie silently made her way around the table gathering dishes, Mother tried to reassert her authority by daring to do what she had done all her life, speaking in front of Lizzie as if she were stone deaf or didn’t understand English. “What in the world do Negro children need with a school?” she asked.
“It’s a lot of foolishness, if you ask me,” Daniel replied. “Someone needs to put a stop to it.”
Josephine was desperate to cut the tightening strands of tension. “Do you have plans for today, Mother?” she asked.
“Yes, dear. We’re going to go calling.”
Josephine stifled a groan. Social calls were another useless relic of the antebellum years. There was so much work to be done if their household hoped to survive, work that Lizzie and her husband, Otis, couldn’t possibly accomplish by themselves. But Mother refused to accept the truth, much less go out to the kitchen or the garden and tackle some of the work. “I would like both of you girls to get dressed and accompany me,” she said.
Mary made a face. “I don’t have anything to wear. It’s embarrassing to be seen in the same old dress all the time.”
“What difference does it make?” Josephine asked. “No one else has new clothes to wear, either.”
“Besides, all of my gowns hang on me like old rags, without petticoats,” Mary continued. “We’re no better dressed than Lizzie and Roselle. Can’t we please coax Ida May to come back and sew for us again?”
“We’ll see,” Mother murmured.
Josephine rolled her eyes at such an impossibility. When Ida May had been their slave, Mother used to find fault with the smallest things and make poor Ida May tear out all her tiny stitches and sew them over again. No, she could never be coaxed back. As a free seamstress, she could choose her own customers now.
“We used to have wardrobes full of clothes before the war,” Mary said, gesturing as if the dining room had been filled with them, too. “Now we have nothing!”
“You’re hardly naked,” Josephine mumbled, but no one seemed to hear her. Jo had been seventeen before the war began, and Mary eleven, but now they had both outgrown their clothes. Ida May had done her best to remake their dresses to fit, but the worn fabric had been turned and resewn so many times during the past five years that the cloth was nearly threadbare.
“How will Jo and I ever find respectable husbands dressed in these rags?”
Josephine shook her head, holding back her thoughts. At least her sister would have a husband one day, since the boys Mary’s age had been too young to fight in the war. Josephine was likely to die an old maid now that so many of the partners she waltzed with before the war had perished. With such a shortage, the men who had returned home could choose a bride who was much prettier than her.
“Now, remember,” Mother said, “the quality of the lace on your gowns isn’t what makes you beautiful. Beauty and charm come from within. A pretty smile and kind words can make up for a dozen petticoats and yards and yards of frills. A sweet demeanor and good manners are much more important than the clothes you’re wearing.”
Daniel lowered his newspaper again. “Did Lizzie say her boys weren’t here?”
“They went to school!” Mary said. She rolled her eyes as if the idea were as absurd as teaching a hound dog to read. Josephine winced, watching Lizzie’s reaction as she continued to make trips back and forth to clear the dishes. But the servant’s face might have been carved from the same mahogany as the table.
“I suppose that means they’ll be gone all day,” Daniel said. The paper rustled as he folded it angrily and set it down in front of him. “What’s the use of paying for our Negroes’ upkeep if they aren’t here to help when we need them?”
“We simply must find more workers,” Mother said. “I saw Willy, our old carriage driver, the other day—just standing on the street corner in the village, watching the people go by, lazy as can be.”
“That’s why we need to pass a vagrancy law,” Daniel said. “Negroes will have to prove they are gainfully employed or go to jail.”
“But Willy has rheumatism,” Josephine said. “You wouldn’t send a crippled man to jail, would you? Why not ask him to come back and work for us?”
“Because it’s not worth the bother of feeding him until we get more horses,” Daniel replied. “I don’t know how we’re supposed to get anywhere without decent carriage horses. And how do they expect us to plow our fields without mules?”
Josephine listened to her brother’s complaints and knew that what he missed the most was his leisurely life. Since Samuel had been destined to inherit the plantation, Daniel never had to worry about planting crops or overseeing slaves or mending the roof when it leaked. He had attended college in Williamsburg, free of responsibility as he’d sported with his friends. But Daniel would have responsibilities now—not the least of which was taking care of his mother and two sisters, making sure they had necessities like food and clothing and a roof that didn’t leak. It seemed to Josephine that the war had changed him into an altogether different person. His lazy grin had disappeared behind the sandy mustache and beard he’d grown while he was away, and his eyes had changed from the color of sunny skies to a shade of gray that reminded her of thunderclouds.
Josephine wanted to stomp her foot and say, Stop it, all of you! I am so tired of your complaints! How did it help to look back at what they’d lost? Life wasn’t easy for any of them, but the incessant whining made it worse.
But of
“Must I go calling with you today, Mother?” she asked.
“Of course, Josephine. You know Priscilla Blake is expecting us.”
“But we just visited her last week,” Mary said.
“I know. But Harrison is doing so poorly. I promised Priscilla we would stop by as often as we could and help lift his spirits.”
“He barely spoke a word to us the last time,” Mary said, “and he seemed just as miserable when we left as when we arrived.”
Harrison Blake had turned out to be the bitterest complainer of all, a man whose anger over the Confederacy’s losses knew no bounds. He was eight years older than Josephine and had been wounded in battle near Petersburg. The last time they visited him, he cursed the surgeons who had saved his life but not his leg, and let everyone know he wished he had died. Listening to him, Jo had longed to say, Oh, go ahead and die, then, and put all of us out of your misery! Nobody had been surprised when his fiancée finally broke their engagement. And nobody blamed her.
“Captain Blake is a war hero,” Mother said, “and we will treat him with the respect he deserves. His mother is my dearest friend. You girls are coming with me and that’s that.”
“May I be excused, please?” Josephine asked. She was already on her feet before Mother replied, and quietly left the house through the back door before anyone seemed to notice. She had no idea where she was going at first, but as she hurried past the vegetable garden and the stables, she remembered the huge live oak tree where she used to find refuge as a girl. Her brothers had built a tree house in its branches, and Josephine had often climbed up the crude board ladder in a very unladylike way when she wanted to hide from everyone.
She hurried to the graceful old tree now, planning to climb up to her old refuge. But she was disappointed to find that most of the ladder boards had rotted away, leaving her no choice but to remain on the ground. She paced beneath the branches until her anger finally boiled over and everything she had longed to say came spewing out.
“I’m so sick of this!” she yelled at the top of her voice, causing a flock of birds to take flight. “Everyone is so angry and bitter all the time! When do we get to be happy again? Why can’t we forget the past and start new lives? If I have to listen to one more complaint about what we’ve lost, I’ll scream!”
Her face became flushed from the effort, but it felt so good to finally speak up that she drew a deep breath and continued. “They gripe about stupid things like bacon and petticoats and carriage drivers, and meanwhile the weeds are growing in the cotton fields, and there’s nothing left to eat in the root cellar, and no work is getting done anywhere! But what does Mother want to do? Go visiting. Visiting! Harrison Blake is a bitter, crippled old grouch and I can’t be nice to him for one more minute! I can’t and I won’t!”
Josephine finally ran out of steam. She sank down at the base of the tree, covered her face, and sobbed. During the war, she had been forced to be brave and courageous, even when she was terrified, and she had learned never to show fear or sorrow. “That’s our way of fighting back,” Mother had insisted. “We must never let the enemy think that we’re weak.” But Josephine was tired of pretending. She was tired of it all. And so she wept.
Suddenly a chunk of rotted board fell from above, barely missing her head, landing beside her. She looked up to see where the board had come from and saw a man’s boot. Someone was up in the tree house!
Josephine leaped up to run home, but after only a few steps one of her worn-out shoes finally ripped apart and she tripped on the flapping sole. She stumbled and fell, landing painfully on her hands and knees.
“Are you hurt, miss?” She looked up at the man peering over the side of the tree house. He was young, about Daniel’s age, with a narrow face and straight brown hair. He was clean-shaven except for the fuzzy whiskers he wore on the sides of his face like bushy sideburns. “You don’t need to run away, miss. I don’t mean you any harm, I assure you.” He was a Yankee. She could tell by his accent. “I would gladly come down and help you,” he continued, “but I think you’d feel safer if I stayed up here. Am I right?”
“Stay away from me!” she said in her fiercest voice. She struggled to her feet, brushing dirt from her palms and her skirt while keeping an eye on him. The man held up his hands in surrender.
“Yes, ma’am. I will, I will.”
Had he been up there all this time, listening to her angry rant? The thought turned her fear into anger, and she planted her hands on her hips, glaring up at him. “Who are you, and what are you doing on our property?”
“My name is Alexander Chandler . . . and I’m very sorry if I’ve frightened you.”
“It takes more than a treed Yankee to frighten me. Why were you eavesdropping on me?”
“I never intended to eavesdrop, miss . . . but I was here first, if you see what I mean. When you came along, I didn’t want to startle you by calling out or suddenly climbing down. I figured you would leave eventually. But I sat still for such a long time that my foot fell asleep, and when I tried to move it . . . well, that’s when that board fell off and startled you.”
“You have no right to be up there in the first place!”
“I know, I know . . . and I’m sorry. I was out for an early morning walk, you see, and when I happened upon your tree house it reminded me so much of the one I had back home in Pennsylvania that I simply had to climb up. Then you came along and—”
“Don’t you know that Yankees aren’t welcome here? Go back to Pennsylvania! Haven’t you done enough damage already?”
“Now, miss, I just heard you saying how tired you were of angry, bitter people and how you wanted to forget the past and be happy again. . . . Well, excuse me for saying so, but you sound pretty angry and bitter yourself right now.”
“How dare you!”
“I’m only trying to help. That’s the reason I came down here to work at the bureau in the first place—”
“What bureau?”
“I’m an agent with the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands. I’ve been assigned to set up an office in Fairmont to help people rebuild their lives now that the war is over. Isn’t that what you just said you wanted to do? Start over?”
“Are you the one who started the school for the Negro children?”
“Well, yes, but not all by myself.” He had the nerve to grin, as if he was proud of his accomplishment. “I contacted the American Missionary Association and they sent us a teacher.”
“You must know that you and all your Yankee friends aren’t welcome here, and neither is your school.”
“Oh yes, miss, I do know it. I’ve been running into a lot of brick walls, built out of the same things you’re talking about—resentment and bitterness. The government started the Freedmen’s Bureau to help sew up all the wounds so planters and former slaves can get on with their lives like you’re wanting to do, but—”
“You Yankees have a lot of nerve! First you destroy everything and now you come back claiming you want to help us rebuild? The best way to help us is to go home and leave us alone.”
“See? I hear bitterness again, and I was sure I just heard you say you were sick of it. How can you expect everyone else to change their ways and be happy again if you’re not willing to change?”
“How dare you!”
He hung his head for a moment before looking at her again. “I do apologize. I’ve been told that I h
“I’m leaving now. Kindly get out of our tree and off our property.”
“I will, I will. But if I may be so bold . . . I would like to offer a word of advice, if I may, for your situation.”
“My situation?”
“Yes. You mentioned that you wanted to be happy again, and I have found that one of the keys to lasting happiness is gratitude. When I take the time to be grateful for all the little things around me like blue skies and green grass and . . . and this fine tree house, then pretty soon all those little joys add up and I’m happy.”
Josephine was about to say, How dare you! but then realized she had said it twice before. The best way to end this unwelcome conversation was to walk away. “Good-bye, Mr. . . .” She had already forgotten his name.
“Chandler. Alexander Chandler. And good day to you, too, miss. I hope the next time we meet, it will be under happier circumstances.”
“I hope I never see you again.”
She turned toward the house, wishing she could stride away with her head held high and her pride intact, but she had to pick her way carefully, watching her footing because of her ruined shoe. The sound of his Yankee accent, the fact of him here on her family’s land, infuriated her. But what angered Josephine the most was that he was right. She was as bitter and angry as everyone else.
8
Eugenia had finished eating her insubstantial breakfast half an hour ago, but she sat alone at the dining room table, gazing into space, trying to summon the energy to move. She shouldn’t feel this weary so early in the day, but lately she felt tired all the time. In the old days before the war, Ida May or Cissy or one of Eugenia’s other house slaves would have followed her upstairs to her bedroom to help her lace up her corset and slip her petticoats and hoop skirts over her head, and pin up her hair. But Ida May and Cissy were gone now, and so were the petticoats. All of the servants were gone except for Lizzie, and she was nothing but a field hand who had somehow connived her way up from the cotton fields and into the manor house. Until the other slaves returned and things could get back to normal, Eugenia had to do everything herself. Surely the Negroes would come to their senses soon, wouldn’t they? Philip had always treated them fairly. Couldn’t they see they’d had a decent life here as part of her household?