Wild, Beautiful, and Free(91)

I wiped my eyes, and Calista caressed my face. “Dorinda and I were so happy when we found out you were alive and free. You should have seen her face. Nothing in heaven or hell was going to keep her from going to see you. She said you had to know that we hadn’t forgotten about you.”

“Yes,” I said. “It was the best thing in the world, seeing her again.”

My fingers dug into the earth, and as best as I could, I dug a small hole in front of the marker. I took the stone from Calista, dropped it into the dirt, and covered it over. I kissed the ground.

“Thank you, Dorinda,” I whispered. “Thank you.”

It turned out I had not slept through a night. It was the evening of the day I had returned. Calista had food brought to us in her room, and we sat in our nightgowns on the bed and ate and talked. She couldn’t stop looking at me.

“Goodness, you were a girl, just a little girl when I saw you last,” she said. “But I’d know this face anywhere.”

“We were both girls.” I bit into a buttered biscuit and drank wine from a cup.

“I’m sorry everything’s not finer,” said Calista. “We should be having a feast to celebrate. But everything has to be simpler now because of the fighting. I try to be careful so that everyone has enough to eat.”

I crossed my legs underneath me on the bed. “That’s wise. You don’t know how many people I’ve seen starving. The people of Vicksburg, Confederate soldiers—so awful. I thank God for any food that’s put in front of me.”

Calista reached out and ran a finger along the scar on my arm. I could see the questions on her mind. I took hold of her fingers.

“Go ahead,” I told her. “You can ask.”

“Jeannette,” she said slowly. “Where did you go when that man took you away? Can you talk about it?”

I sighed and looked out the window. The flames of our candles were reflected in the dark glass. I nodded. I sipped the wine again.

“Talk? That was the first thing. He hit me.” I paused as the sting of that first blow came back to me. It was shocking how the pain could be so alive. I bowed my head. “He said I couldn’t talk, could never talk where he was taking me. He was scared they wouldn’t take a slave who sounded like she might be able to read. I had to pretend to be dumb. I couldn’t do anything about it.”

“Oh, Jeannette.” Tears formed in Calista’s eyes. I reached out and grasped her hand.

“He took me to Mississippi,” I went on. “A plantation owned by a family called Holloway.”

“I should have stopped Mama,” Calista said.

“How? We were girls. What could you have done?”

She touched my arm again and ran her fingers along the long scar, still visible, from Missus Everett’s whipping. “And this?”

I extended my arm on my lap so she could see it better.

“From a drunk woman,” I said. “She was like Madame, angry that the girl I lived with was having her husband’s baby. I was trying to get her out of the room, and she dragged me out into the yard and tried to whip me. But the worst of it was the girl, my friend, died.” I began to weep again. “Her baby too. She was the only thing keeping me going every day. We were cold sometimes and hungry sometimes and tired all the time. But we were together. And she talked to me a lot about God.” I stopped.

Calista crawled over and wrapped her arms around me. “Go on,” she said. “I’m here.”

I sighed and leaned against my sister. “When she died, all I wanted to do was run away. But an older woman helped me like Dorinda did. Made nice clothes for me because we figured if I could look right and get away and pretend to be white, no one would catch us.”

“Us?”

“Yes, I left with another slave. I dressed as a white man, and he pretended to be my slave. We traveled all the way to Richmond. Abolitionists helped us after that. Sent me to a school in New York.”

I looked around the room. I didn’t want to think about Lower Knoll and Mr. Colchester yet. “I’ll tell you the rest another time,” I said. “It’s just . . .”

“It’s all right; you don’t have to. I understand.”

“Can I stay in here, with you?” I was afraid to wake up in the morning alone. Everything so far had felt too much like a dream. Would I be back in the field hospital when I awoke again? That thought seemed more real than Calista’s arms around me.

She kissed me on my temple. “Of course. As long as you like.”

Together we blew out the candles and settled under the covers. I fell asleep with my sister holding my hand.





Chapter 20


I spent the next day, at Calista’s insistence, in bed. She worried I might get sick if I didn’t rest fully after my long journey home. But I think she enjoyed looking after me, babying me. It was nice, though, to not have to get up for a day. I listened to the sounds of the house and tried to understand its rhythms, how it ran. The heavy shoes of the soldiers rapped on the floorboards downstairs as they came and went. But there was little upstairs activity—no one changing bedding or filling pitchers. I figured it was because there wasn’t anyone but Calista and Madame in these rooms. The girl Annie brought me what I needed. I found myself, to my surprise, trying to hear Madame’s voice. But I didn’t ask about her. I wasn’t ready to see her or even think about her properly just yet. Before I did, I needed to find that feeling I’d had back in Lower Knoll, of understanding her anger and despair. I would need that if I was going to approach Madame with my hands open, without a grudge.