heart got the better of his common sense, and he, despite all appearances to
the contrary, liked Queen, and had admired the logic behind her outburst, if
not the way she had done it.
Edgar Cherry's position had always been something of a paradox, even to
himself. Raised in the South, he had owned slaves, and they had helped him
make his fortune, but he had enjoyed a lib~ral education in the North, and
despised the practice. He could not understand why any human being could
believe others inferior simply because of their race, or the color of their
skin. He was good to his slaves, and gave several their freedom, but
believed that only wealth and influence could bring about change, and the
slaves were the key to his fortune. Like Queen and so many others, he
puzzled constantly
A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 739
that it only took one tiny drop of black blood to set someone apart from
their peers, and Queen's claim that she was actually as much Irish as
black had amused him greatly. He had became a devout abolitionist, working
to subvert the system from within, to bring his fellow Southerners to an
understanding of the terrible injustice they were inflicting on the black
race, but made little headway against the pervasive, ruling system. The
war gave him the chance to put his ideals into action. He welcomed the
Union troops, allowed his house to be used by their officers, and sent
some of his slaves behind Rebel lines, to act as spies. He freed his
slaves with the announcement of the Emancipation Act, and it pleased him
that many chose to stay with their former Massa. It depressed him that the
attitude of most whites had not been changed by the war, but while he
applauded Queen, he could not tolerate her rudeness, for he believed that
such behavior encouraged intolerance, not diminished it.
Queen sat in her room, shaking with tangled emotions, and rocking Abner,
who sensed his mother's distress, and cried. His distress only added to
her own, for he would not be comforted, and Queen could find no way to
alleviate her own distress. Her life was following its usual pattern, and
she believed it was only a matter of days before she would be dismissed
and on the road again. To heaven knows where.
What distressed her most was that she did not want to go. Somewhere deep
inside herself she understood that this job, this house, and this place
represented the best chance for some small security in her life. The
possibility of that chance being snatched away from her, largely by her
own intemperate actions, caused her mind to cringe in fear for the
future. But she did not understand that she could change that future, for
she did not know how to change herself.
She stared at the empty fireplace, and suddenly flames exploded in it,
and burst into life, flames of the torches of relentless pursuers, and
flames of a burning barn, and flames engulfing the body of the man she
had loved, who was father to her son.
86
Dora had her say the following morning, when she took Queen into town to
shop. As usual, Queen brought Abner with her, and her obsessive refusal to
be parted from the boy began to annoy Dora. He would have been quite happy
back at the mansion, in the care of one of the gardeners, but when she
mentioned it, Queen became sullen again. Expertly driving the small gig,
Dora flicked her whip at the horse to relieve the frustration she felt with
this obstinate woman.
"Gwine have to let go of the boy some day," she said, and saw Queen's face
redden. "He cain't go through life thinkin' his mammy is his only home."
"I'm all he's got. I'm the only one who loves him," Queen muttered.
Dora saw her chance, and turned on Queen.
"Now you may not know who you are, missy," she said, "black, white, yalla,
or sky-blue pink, and it don't matter a hoot the color of yo' skin, because
I know what you are. If'n you think you c'n keep that boy in a glass case
the rest of his life, then you are a fool, girl. The biggest dang fool on
this earth, that's what you are."
Queen was equally angry. "Abner the only one who love me," she cried. "No
one going to take that away from me."
"It's high time you worked out who your friends are, missy," Dora snapped,
her frustration with Queen flooding out. "Massa Cherry's a good man, who's
been kind enough to give you a job and a home. Well, home is where you are
loved, and there's folk here would love you, if'n you gave them a chance.
So it's high time you let go the pain that's eatin' you. It's time you let
someone love you."
She brought the gig to a halt outside the butcher's shop and the boy came
running out to hold the horse's head.
740
A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 741
"You wait here," Dora said to Queen. "Y'ain't good company today." She
heaved her vast self out of the gig, and turned back to Queen for a
parting shot.
"Y'ain't good company too many days," she said, and went inside.
Queen sat in the gig and pulled Abner closer to her. If everyone was
going to be angry with her all the time, it might be better to leave the
job now, of her own volition. But she didn't want to do that. If she had
to go, she'd rather be sacked, for that would feed her resentment and her
pain. But, oh, she wanted to be rid of the pain.
She glanced at the boy holding the horse's head. He was very
light-skinned, and could have passed for white, but Queen guessed that
he was not. Two middle-aged women passing by didn't have such good
eyesight.
"I'll never get used to it," one said to the other. "White boys holding
horses, and white girls working as mammies to pickaninnies. "
It was said loudly enough for Queen and the boy to hear, and it was meant
to hurt. But it had the opposite effect. The butcher's boy glanced at
Queen and smiled, for he knew her blood was similar to his own. She
smiled back at him, as if they both shared a great secret. Then both of
them started to giggle, and to laugh.
Dora, waiting for the butcher to select his choicest cuts, glanced out
of the shop window and saw the happy Queen.
"Lord a' mercy," Dora said to no one. "She almost pretty when she laugh."
She told Alec about that laughter when he called in for his usual Saturday
visit. He was tired. Keeping house without Little Bit was only marginally
more difficult than keeping house with Little Bit, but he needed someone,
and couldn't find anyone to take her place.
"You need a wife," Dora said. "Yo' chillun needs a mammy."
She'd said it before, a thousand times, and would go on saying it until
he did something about it.
"The silly thing is," she added, as if the idea had only just occurred
to her, "I know a Fil boy that needs a pappy. An' a woman that needs a
man."
742 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
Alec started at her. She couldn't mean Queen, that meantempered, moody,
> no-account critter who wouldn't give him the time of day. But he knew she
did, and for all Queen's faults, the idea was not completely alien to him.
"I ain't in the market, I tol' you," he said, apparently dismissing the
subject, but actually wondering what Queen looked like when she smiled.
He didn't convince Dora. - Uh-huh," she groaned. "You tol' me a thousand
times, an' I still don't believe you."
Alec lost his temper. "She don't even give me the time of day!
"P'raps you ain't asked her right." Dora was very smug. She'd only thought
of the possibility of a union between Alec and Queen as a bolt from the
blue, but having had the idea it made absolute sense to her. "Lovey-dovey
stuff ain't gwine get to her. She needs someone as mean-tempered as she
is."
She looked at her friend with enormous affection. She thought of him as a
gentle grizzly bear.
"An' Lord knows, you can be the meanest-tempered man in this county."
Alec snorted in derision, and then smiled, because he knew he could be
irascible. Even if he dismissed the idea of Queen as a potential wife, she
might make an excellent housekeeper, especially if a small part of the love
she directed so completely at Abner could be at least partly shared with a
few other children. His children. He had no idea how this could be
achieved.
Abner solved the problem for him. It was a warrn day, and Queen had put him
in the garden, on the rug. She thought him safe, for even if he could toddle
to the garden gate, he couldn't unlatch it, so she went back in the house to
finish some chores. She did not intend to be gone for very long, but she was
gone for long enough.
Alec walked through the garden on his way home, and Abner saw the nice man
that he liked, and toddled after him. Alec opened the gate and told Abner
to go home to his mammy, but Abner wouldn't be told. He took Alec's hand
and walked with him through the gate. Alec looked at the house, in two
minds what to do. He knew that Abner's absence would make Queen even
angrier than usual, but there would
A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 743
be nothing unusual in temper. He believed that the boy needed to get away
from his mother's apron strings, and Abner seemed to be of the same
opinion. And if Abner was absent for a while, and then was found, it might
persuade Queen that other people could be trusted to look after him. On
balance, and with a lot of rationalization, he decided that no harm could
come from it, and perhaps a little good. He would send Minnie to tell
Queen, or Dora, where the boy was. Still, he left the decision to Abner.
He began walking slowly down the track, and Abner stayed with him,
chattering to himself in a language that only he could understand.
But a mile is a long way for a toddling boy, especially when there are
so many interesting things to see, and a nice man to talk to. He
inspected every tree and looked at every flower, and after a little while
he got tired, so Alec picked him up and carried him the rest of the way
home.
Queen came out of the house and saw that Abner wasn't on his rug.
Immediately, her heart beat a little faster, and she went searching for
him through the garden, calling out his name. When she couldn't find him,
she went back to the house and burst into the kitchen, calling for Abner.
Dora had not seen the boy, and was concerned on his, and Queen's, behalf.
"Cain't be too far away," she said, and went out with Queen into the
garden to continue the search. Queen ran through the property crying out
his name, and begging him not to play games with his mammy. When she saw
that the back gate was unlatched, her heart almost stopped, for the path
beyond the gate led to the river. She saw the gardener coming up the
path, and called out to him, but he scratched his head; he hadn't seen
the boy. Queen was sure that something untoward had happened to Abner.
If he'd wandered down to the river, he might have fallen in, and he was
only little, he couldn't swim.
"Oh, sweet Lord, no," she begged, and ran down the path to the river.
There was no sign of Abner anywhere. She saw George helping passengers
onto the ferry, and called out to him and them.
"My little boy's lost!" she cried. "Has anybody seen him? "
744 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
George and the passengers shook their heads, and fell into a discussion
about what might have happened to the child, and everyone looked at the
river. Queen was becoming frantic; she ran up and down the shore calling
his name, and passengers tried to help her and calm her. They promised to
organize a search.
Then Minnie appeared at the top of the hill, and George asked her if she
had seen Abner.
"I see'd him," Minnie confirmed, and Queen ran to her, grabbed at her, and
begged where.
"At my pappy's place," Minnie said, surprised at the commotion. Abner had
come home with her pappy, and was perfectly all right. She'd been sent to
tell Queen and Dora where the boy was.
With the news that Abner was safe, Queen's emotion changed. She became
immediately suspicious.
"What's he doin' there?" she asked, but Minnie was slightly frightened by
the fuss, and shook her head.
"Don't rightly know, m'm," she said. "But he there, safe as can be."
Abner was indeed safe and happy and having the best time. He was sitting on
the nice man's knee, on a chair that rocked backward and forward, and the
nice man was telling him a story. Abner didn't understand what the story was
all about; he didn't know what a tortoise was, nor a hare, but it was fun.
Alec had given him lemonade, and played with him, and then settled to tell
him fables. He was at the end of the one about the tortoise and the hare
when he heard a furious yelling of Abner's name in the distance, and Queen
appeared, running down the track.
Queen hardly paused when she saw Abner, but ran to him, and grabbed him
from Alec's lap.
"Jus' tellin' him stories," Alec said calmly.
But Queen didn't want him to tell Abner stories; she wanted him to keep
away from her boy, and demanded to know how he had got here. He couldn't
have toddled all this way on his own.
"He's here, ain't he?" Alec said, filling his pipe with tobacco. His
resolute calm in the face of what had been, to
A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 745
Queen, a considerable crisis, infuriated her. She lost her temper, said
she was sick of the whole world knowing what was better for her child than
she did; she was sick of this place, and as soon as she had enough money
saved, she would be on her way. With Abner. With that, feeling she'd had
the satisfactory final word, she stomped away.
"How much do you need?" Alec asked quietly, and that made her madder
still. She rounded on him, because she'd told him before that she didn't
want charity, and if he was still worried about the nickel she owed him
> for the ferry ride, he'd get it back with interest. This riled Alec, but
he did not forget his purpose.
"We'll all be right glad to see the back o' yo' bad temper," he snapped.
"An' if'n it'll get you on your way a little quicker, I need someone to
work for me."
Queen laughed in derision. She wouldn't work for him if he was the last
man on earth, but what did it involve? Alec shrugged that he needed a
part-time housekeeper for his children.
"Tho' why I'd wish yo' mean ol' ways on them, I surely don't know."
Queen had stopped walking away, but she wasn't sure why. She didn't want
to stay in Savannah, but she didn't want to leave. She was suspicious of
Alec, but she didn't know why. She was sure there was more to Abner's
disappearance than he was telling her, but he had been kind to her, and
found her the job with Massa Cherry. She had no intention of working for
him, because she didn't need a job, she had one. But she still cherished
the fantasy that as soon as she was back on her financial feet she could
move on, and a few hours part-time work would speed that day. And she
wasn't sure how long she would keep her job with Massa Cherry, for she
knew she was on trial with him. She was doing her best to be pleasant to
him, but she wasn't sure how long she could keep that up.
"How much?" she asked cautiously. They negotiated in anger, and settled
on a figure that was sufficient but not large, and agreed on a starting
time, which was now. Queen had a few conditions of her own.
"But I don't want to talk to you, 'cept when I have to," she insisted.
"An' you keep away from my boy."
746 ALEX HALEY'S QUEEN
"Suits me fine," Alec agreed.
Queen looked at him for a moment, deciding if he could be trusted, and
reached a positive conclusion. She went into the house, and had things
summed up in a trice. She put little Julie in charge of Abner, and when
Minnie came home, somewhat nervously, Queen put her in charge of Julie and
Abner.
Alec sat rocking on the porch, puffing on his pipe, wondering what he had
got himself into.
87
Within days, Alec's children adored her. She was careful and cautious with
them, but firm and kind. It was an enormous relief to Minnie and Julie to
have a woman to talk to, and they almost swamped her with an accumulation of
love, and adored Abner, and played mother to him. George accepted her
happily and willingly, for she represented a longed-for maternal figure in
his life, and only Freeland resisted her presence, but not for long.
Dora was pleased by the new arrangement, and gave it her blessing, provided
it did not interfere with Queen's duties at the mansion. Queen assured her
it would not; she would work evenings and Saturday afternoons for Alec, and
work doubly hard to make sure her duties at the mansion were attended to.
Mr. Cherry was a mildly dissenting voice, worried that Queen would not be
able to do the two jobs, and that she would not have any time to herself,
but the almost immediate change in Queen's attitude persuaded him not to
interfere.
- Good Lord," he said to Dora. "She's almost pretty when she smiles. " Dora
nodded smugly.
Her relationship with Alec took longer to improve. She kept her word, and
spoke to him only when she had to, and he kept his part of the bargain,
except at night, when she left the shack to go home, and he always spoke to
her first.
He sat on the porch every night, puffing on his pipe and
A WIFE AND MOTHER, LOVED 747
rocking in his chair. Queen came out of the house, and he thought she
looked tired.
"Take the weight off yo' feet," he said, indicating the other rocking
chair. Tennie's chair.
Queen was very tired and very tempted, but she wasn't ready to relax with
him, and refused.
"Jus' askin' you to sit!" he grumbled. He wasn't going to bite her; he
was just asking her to sit for a while. Or was she too scared of him to