September 1853
On my first day of school at the Richmond Female Institute, I was so terrified I refused to get out of bed. Tessie had to yank the covers off my head, pry my fingers from the sheets, and drag me out of it. She kept up a steady stream of chatter as she wrestled me into my new uniform, telling me how much I would like the new school, how many new friends I was going to make, and a lot of other foolish things like that.
“But I’m scared!” I wept. “Don’t make me go, Tessie. I’m scared!”
She finally stopped coaxing, and a frown creased her smooth brow. Even when she was angry, Tessie was one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen. Her figure didn’t need a corset to give it a perfect hourglass shape, and she wore her faded, homespun dresses with the grace and elegance of a fine lady in silks. Tessie’s face was perfectly proportioned, too, with a delicately flattened nose, thick, full lips, and slanted, almond-shaped eyes. Daddy had purchased her as my mammy a month before I was born, when Tessie was just fourteen.
She gave my shoulders a gentle shake. “Stop you fussing, Missy. Why you want to be shaming you daddy thisa way? Don’t you know he one of the richest men in this city? How you think he feel if his only child scared to leave her own house? You want people laugh behind his back?”
I stuck out my lower lip, defiant. “Mother never leaves the house.”
“Humph!” Tessie grunted. “And don’t all of Richmond know that, too? You be strong, now, like you daddy. Else you be growing up all strange-acting, like you mama—lying around in bed all day, crying all the time, swallowing them pills.”
I stared at Tessie, too shocked to speak. Never in my life had I heard any of the servants speak so disrespectfully about my mother. I wanted to slap Tessie for saying such things—even if they were true. My daddy would probably whip her good if I ever told him what she’d said. But I knew it was because Tessie still blamed my mother for selling Grady to another owner.
The day after they’d taken Grady away, I had awakened to find Tessie throwing open my window shutters, just like she always did, and saying, “Time to get up, sleepyhead.” I’d waited until she sat down on my bed, then I’d wrapped my arms around her and hugged her for a long, long time. I could tell by the way she hugged me back that she had missed me, too. I remembered what Esther said and didn’t ask Tessie any questions about Grady. Tessie never once mentioned her son, either. Everything seemed the same—except Grady was gone, and Tessie no longer sang or hummed to herself.
Now Tessie took advantage of my shock after her bitter words about my mother to finish buttoning me into my uniform bodice. Her words had hit their mark, though. I did want my daddy to be proud of me. And I didn’t want to stay in my room most of the time like my mother did.
Tessie brushed my hair, then steered me over to the bedroom table where a plate of ham and biscuits with redeye gravy awaited me. My stomach rolled sickeningly at the smell, even though I usually loved Esther’s ham and biscuits.
“I can’t eat. . . .”
“Yes, you can, baby,” Tessie said gently. “Come on, now.” She crouched down beside me and began spoon-feeding me small bites, as if I were two years old instead of twelve. When she saw that I’d reached my limit, she helped me to my feet again. “You daddy wants to see you before he leave for work. He in the library.”
I descended the gracefully curved stairs with dragging feet. Daddy sat behind his desk reading the Richmond Enquirer while he ate his breakfast. He folded the paper and laid it aside when he saw me.
“Well, now. Aren’t you quite the young lady in your new uniform?” I wanted to beg him not to make me go, but my mouth was so dry I couldn’t talk. “You’ll be the prettiest girl in school— and the smartest one, too. You mark my words.”
Before I could reply, Esther shuffled into the room. “You wanting more coffee, Massa Fletcher?”
“No, I’ll be on my way shortly. I was just waiting to see Caroline off on her first day of school.”
“That gal looking mighty sickly, if you ask me,” Esther mumbled as she turned to leave. “Strong wind blow her clear to Washington, D.C.”
Daddy stood. “I know you’re nervous on your first day, Sugar. It’s only natural. But I want you to be a brave girl for me, all right? Make me proud of you.”
I remembered Tessie’s words and mumbled, “I-I’ll try.”
I followed him into the front hallway where Gilbert waited with Daddy’s hat. Outside, our carriage stood at the curb.
“Can Eli drive me to school?” I begged. I had always been a little afraid of Gilbert with his slightly pompous ways, but I loved gentle Eli. I spent more time with him than with any other person except Tessie.
“Well . . . all right.”
This was the first good news I’d heard all morning. With Eli beside me I wouldn’t feel so alone. “Can he walk all the way inside the school with me, too? Please, Daddy?”
He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “All right, but tell him he has to wear livery, not his dirty old stable clothes.” He said this loudly enough for Tessie to hear as she waited in the hallway behind us.
“Yes, sir,” she replied. “I tell him.”
I was sick to my stomach before leaving, losing the small amount of food I’d eaten for breakfast. Tessie hugged me goodbye and hustled me into the carriage, heedless of my tears and pallid face. Eli snapped the reins, and we quickly drove off. But as soon as we’d rounded the corner, out of sight of the house, we stopped again. Eli hopped down from the driver’s seat and, to my utter amazement, climbed into the back of the carriage and sat down beside me. I quickly scrambled into the safety of his arms, burying my face in his broad chest.
“I’m scared, Eli! I don’t want to go.” It felt different to hug him in his scratchy uniform, and he didn’t smell like the same old Eli I loved. At least his deep, gentle voice was the same.
“I know, Missy. I know you scared.”
“Please, take me back home . . . or . . . or let’s just drive around all day.”
“Now, you know I can’t do that. Massa Fletcher have my hide if I don’t do exactly what he say. But why all this fussing? You forget all them stories I tell you and Grady? You forget how Massa Jesus always with you, taking good care you?”
“Tell me again,” I begged.
I loved listening to Eli talk about Massa Jesus. It seemed like ages since I’d sat with Eli in the carriage house, Grady on one of his knees and me on the other, listening as he told us what the Good Book said. I was pretty sure that Eli’s Jesus was the same person who the minister preached about every Sunday in church, but the stories sounded better when Eli told them. They sounded as though they might have really happened.
“It ain’t doing no good to tell you again,” he warned, “if you not hiding them words in you heart.”
He tapped his chest with his forefinger, and I remembered how Grady, solemn-eyed, would tap his own chest in imitation and say, “They in there, Eli. They all hiding right down in there.”
I pointed to my heart. “I’ll remember. I promise.”
“All right, then.” Eli settled back against the carriage seat and I leaned against him, gripping his burly arm. “In olden times,” he began, “there a great big giant man name Goliath. Everybody scared of him. Grown men run and hide when he come out, waving his shiny sword all around in the air. ‘Who gonna fight me?’ Goliath ask every day. And I shamed to tell you that all them soldiers in God’s army so scared they turn tail and run.
“Then one day little David come along. He bringing some ham and sweet potatoes to his brothers in the army. Now, David hardly believing the way them grown men running scared. So little David say, ‘I fight him! I fight Goliath ’cause I ain’t afraid! I got God on my side.’
“Then David tell the king how one time he and God kill theirselves a lion, and how they kill a bear another time. And David, he just as sure as can be that he and God can lick old Goliath, too. So the king say, ‘All right, son. You go ahead, now. You go kill that giant.’
“Goliath like to laugh hisself silly when he see little David stepping out to fight him. Goliath say, ‘What you think I am? A dog? Why you send a boy out here to fight a giant man?’
“But David say, ‘No sir! You fight with a big old sword and a fancy spear, but I fight in the name of the Lord God Almighty! And He gonna help me lick you!’
“Goliath got all riled up when David say that. But David still not scared. He drop a stone in his slingshot, and he twirl it round and round, and when he let go, the Lord sent that stone a-flying straight into Goliath’s head. Knock him right to the ground, dead as a doorknob.”
I felt the same thrill I’d always felt at the end of Eli’s stories. He spoke so confidently about God, convinced of His strength and power.
“Now then,” Eli said, giving my shoulder a gentle squeeze, “what you gonna hide away in you heart?”
“That . . . um . . . that if God is with me . . . I don’t have to be afraid of giants?”
He grinned. “Not giants or anything else what stands in you way. And you know why that is?”
“Because God will help me fight them?”
“That’s not a question, Little Missy, that’s the truth! The Lord always by you side if you ask Him to be. He fight all you battles. He gonna walk beside you into that old school today and you don’t have to be scared of nothing.”
I gulped, trying to feel brave. “Will . . . will you come inside with me?”
“What you need me for, Missy? Massa Jesus is with you!”
“I-I know, but . . . will you come inside anyway?”
He shook his head as if he was disappointed in me, but I saw a glint of laughter in his dark eyes. He broke into a gentle grin. “Sure thing, Missy Caroline. I go with you just as far as they let me go.”
The carriage rocked as he jumped down from his place beside me, then swayed again as he climbed into the driver’s seat. The motion made my stomach roll. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine the Lord sitting on one side of me and the boy David on the other side, slingshot in hand. In my mind, David looked a lot like Grady.
Eli whistled and snapped the reins. The carriage lurched forward. We turned onto Franklin Street, and a few minutes later we were hurtling down Church Hill. I could see the city and the capitol building up ahead, perched on the next hill we would have to climb. Traffic slowed when we reached the bottom, then came to a halt near Fourteenth Street to allow a gang of Negroes to cross in front of us. Some wore chains on their legs. I watched them enter a fortress-like building where black faces peered from behind barred windows.
I scrambled over to the opposite seat to kneel behind Eli, hanging on to his broad shoulders to keep from falling. “Is this where they brought Grady?” I asked in a hushed voice.
“I reckon so. This where they hold the slave auction.”
“Wait!” I cried as the carriage began slowly moving forward again. “Can’t we go look for him? Maybe we can find him and bring him back home.” I began scanning the dark, somber faces, but when I glanced at Eli he was staring at the reins in his hands, shaking his head.
“Ain’t no use, Missy. Nice boy like our Grady be long gone by now.”
“But where? Where did he go?”
“Only the Good Lord know that.”
I knew from the globe in my daddy’s library that the world was a very huge place. The thought of my friend Grady all alone out there gave me a lost, helpless feeling. I glanced over my shoulder at all the harsh white faces in the crowd, then at the dark, bent heads, and I knew that wherever Grady was, he must be terrified. I suddenly felt guilty for being frightened just to go to school. I settled back on the carriage seat again and drew a deep breath, determined to be brave.
We arrived at the Richmond Female Institute, a three-story brick row house with white pillars by the front steps and neat black shutters on the windows. Eli gave my hand a reassuring squeeze as he helped me down from the carriage.
“You all right, Miss Caroline?” he asked. I nodded, knowing somehow that I would be. But I couldn’t help wondering, as I walked through the open front door for the first time, why God hadn’t helped Grady defeat his enemies the same way He’d helped David.
I was still sick every morning for several weeks, even with Eli and Massa Jesus by my side. Sometimes I had nosebleeds, which the doctor said were caused by fright. I once overheard my teachers whispering about my mother’s “condition,” but they seemed to take pity on me, declaring me a “sensitive” child. They never made me read or recite aloud.
While I can’t say I enjoyed school, I did learn to tolerate it. The best part was the long carriage ride with Eli twice a day. He drove a different route to school after that first day—one that wouldn’t take us past the slave market again. And at the end of each day I’d find him waiting for me outside the school, smiling as though he hadn’t seen me in a hundred years. He sat high on the driver’s seat as we rode up and down the hills, looking stiff in his fancy topcoat and hat, and mumbling under his breath all the way to the school each morning and all the way home again in the afternoon.
“Who are you talking to, Eli?” I finally asked him one morning.
“Sometime I talking to Massa Jesus, but today I talking to these here horses.”
“To the horses? Can they understand what you say?”
“Sure can, Missy.”
“And do the horses talk back to you, too?”
“Sure do.”
“What do they say?”
“Well, for one thing they say, ‘We sure glad our Missy a little thing. We glad we not toting that big old Missus Greeley up these hills all day long.’ ” I giggled. Mrs. Greeley, my very stout headmistress, was even bigger around than Esther.
“What else do the horses say?”
It became a game for us after that. Every day I would ask Eli what the horses were talking about, and every day he would tell me something different. “Today they say ‘I wonder when this rain ever gonna stop? We be up to our hocks in mud.’ ”
Or, “Today them horses say ‘Why you cracking that whip over our head, Mr. Eli? Don’t you know Little Missy ain’t in no hurry to get to that old school?’ ”
I laughed with delight at all his horse conversations. Before long, my nosebleeds stopped. Gradually my fear subsided, too.
One Saturday morning, when I didn’t have to go to school, I heard Eli mumbling to himself as he raked the leaves outside in our yard. “Who are you talking to now?” I asked. “The horses can’t hear you—they’re in the carriage house.”
“I know, Little Missy. I talking to Massa Jesus.”
I was dying to ask the question that had been bothering me for some time. “Is He the same Jesus the minister talks to when we pray in church?”
“He the same. There only one Jesus I know about.”
I couldn’t imagine how Eli could talk to Him while raking leaves in the backyard. “Don’t you have to be in church or kneeling down to talk to Jesus?”
“Nope. If He your friend, you can talk to Him anytime, anywhere.” He piled the leaves beside the curb and bent to light a match to them. I inhaled the wonderful fragrance of burning leaves, even though the smoke burned my eyes when the wind shifted my way.
“What do you talk to Jesus about?” I asked, swinging back and forth on the open gate while I watched him work.
He stood, leaning against the rake for a moment. “Well . . . I tell Him all the things I worried about.”
His answer perplexed me. Why would Eli have any worries? He certainly didn’t have ships to fret about, like Daddy did. “What kind of things?” I finally asked.
“Oh, like whether Little Missy be getting along all right in that school of hers, and whether Grady feeling homesick wherever he at. Whether he scared or missing his mama.”
I knew how badly I missed Grady, but it had never occurred to me that Grady might be missing all of us, too.
“And sometimes I talk to Jesus about my own son,” Eli continued. “I ask Him take good care him for me.”
I recalled what Esther had said that terrible morning, how their son had been sold to Hilltop, my grandfather’s plantation. “Do you miss your son, Eli?”
“Sure do, Missy. He born right here in this house, grew up here. Then he had to leave us and go on out to Hilltop.”
“What’s his name?”
“Josiah.” I heard the love in his voice as he spoke his son’s name. “Sometimes I recollect how he use to curl up on my lap like you and Grady, and my heart about breaks for missing him. That’s when I start praying to Jesus and asking Him take good care my boy. Make sure Josiah minds his massa so the overseer not beating him, and such like.”
“Does Jesus answer you, too . . . like the horses do?”
“I ain’t hearing Him in my ears, Missy, but I know He listening. And I know He gonna do something about what I asking.”
“How do you know that?”
Eli paused, poking at the fire with his rake. “Because after I finish talking to Massa Jesus, my heart empty of worry . . . and I feel better. It’s just like when I get to worrying about one of the horses that may be limping a little bit, or worry about something else belonging to Massa. If I take my worry to Massa Fletcher and tell him all I thinking about, he say, ‘Okay, I take care of it.’ And Massa Fletcher good as his word. He find out what ails that horse and see it gets taken care of. Now, if I just worry and don’t say nothing, horse still be limping. But if I turn everything over to the massa—all the things too big for me—I know he take care of them. They his horses, you see. He care about them even more than I do.”
I was confused, failing to see the connection. “What does that have to do with Jesus?”
“That’s what I about to tell you. Massa Jesus same way. This is His world. You and Josiah and Grady be His children. Anything I can’t fix, I take to Jesus. Then I don’t have to worry no more. Massa Jesus take care of it in His own time, His own way.”
I hopped down from the gate and kicked at the leaves with my toe. I longed to talk to him about Grady but I was afraid to. Then I remembered that Eli had mentioned Grady first, and I finally summoned my courage.
“Can I tell you something?”
“Sure, Missy Caroline.”
“Daddy said I need to forget about Grady. Esther said so, too. But I can’t forget him, Eli. I miss him so much.”
“Me too. He like a son to me.”
I looked up at Eli in surprise. “But . . . but Grady is your son, isn’t he?”
“No, I’m married to Esther, not Tessie.”
“Then who’s Grady’s daddy? Is it Gilbert?”
Eli’s thick gray brows met in the middle as he frowned. “This not a fit subject for Little Missy to be asking. That’s Tessie’s business, not you and mine.”
“But . . . but Grady has to have a father, doesn’t he? Everyone has to have a mother and a father.”
Eli turned away and resumed his raking. He looked more distressed than I’d ever seen him. I couldn’t understand why he was so afraid to answer a simple question. Grady and I had asked him much harder ones than this. “Why won’t you answer me, Eli?”
He stopped raking, his head bowed as he stared down at his feet. “Little Missy, you and me we talk about a lot of things. I always do my best by you, try and answer all your questions. But this here . . . this time . . . I ain’t having this conversation.”
“But why not?”
He looked frightened, desperate, glancing around in all directions as if someone might overhear us. “Never ask a slave who fathered her children,” he said in a harsh whisper. “They kill a gal if she tell.”
I didn’t believe him. It seemed preposterous. “Kill her? Why would they do that?” But Eli had turned away. He continued raking, as if he hadn’t heard my question.
A moment later Gilbert came outside through the rear door. I watched him walk toward us in his light, gliding step—like an empty ship sailing upriver. I wondered how old he was. Younger than Eli, certainly, but at least ten years older than Tessie. He saw me watching him and quickly looked down at the ground.
“Afternoon, Missy.” He tipped his hat in greeting, his eyes carefully averted. I wished he would smile so I could see if his grin resembled Grady’s—Grady almost always had a smile on his face. But I realized as Gilbert disappeared into the carriage house that I had never seen Daddy’s servant smile.
“You go on in the house now,” Eli said. “Before your hair and clothes be smelling like smoke and Tessie chews me out.”
“But—”
“Go on! Get!” It was the only time in my life that Eli had ever spoken harshly to me. He turned his back and moved away, raking in the opposite direction as if his life depended on it.