Jo didn’t know what to do with herself all day in this strangely altered world the war had created. It was dangerous to go outside with refugees and Negroes and soldiers from both sides wandering the roads, trying to get home. She hardly dared to leave the house. But she had grown bored with reading, bored with talking to Mary—and her sister was likely bored with her. It seemed a waste of time to embroider things for her hope chest. She had no talent for drawing or watercolors, and besides, there was no money to buy more paint once she used up her colors. Jo had attempted to practice the piano, but without a teacher it was difficult to make progress. All told, there was very little to do all day except wander around the echoing house—and even that disheartened her.
Everywhere Josephine looked she saw gaping holes. The Yankees had stolen their beautiful Turkish carpets, leaving behind ghostly images on the floors where the sun had faded the wood. But the biggest hole was the one left by her daddy. Jo still hadn’t gotten used to the fact that he was gone forever. Whenever she walked past his study and saw his favorite chair, it seemed wrong that he wasn’t sitting there writing in his ledger book or playing chess, filling the room with fragrant cigar smoke.
Her brother Samuel was gone, too. He’d been a constant fixture at Daddy’s side and would have taken over the plantation one day, just as Daddy had taken Granddaddy’s place. Proud mothers used to come calling with their daughters, hoping the handsome Samuel Weatherly would show an interest in them. Where would all those girls find husbands now that Sam and so many of his friends were dead?
Josephine kept watch from her bedroom window, hoping her brother Daniel would return home soon and get the plantation going again. Before the war, he had been away at college for so much of the school year that Jo was used to the hole he’d left behind. Still, the mothers used to come calling when Daniel was home, hoping to make a match with him, too. No one had made social calls since Jo and her family had returned from Richmond, which was fine with her. There was no tea or coffee to serve them and no slaves to wait on them. All but a few of White Oak’s slaves were gone.
The plantation seemed unnaturally quiet. No bell clanging in the morning to wake the slaves, no haunting songs as the workers made their way to and from the cotton fields. The fields were empty of everything but weeds, the barn empty of animals. Fragrant aromas from the kitchen were things of the past. Everywhere Jo looked she saw emptiness, and silence followed her everywhere she went. She missed music most of all, the laughter and gaiety of the parties Mother used to hold. Would there ever be music and laughter in their lives again?
Josephine moved to a different bedroom window for a different view and saw Lizzie, one of the house slaves, shuffle out of the kitchen and pick up a hoe to work in the vegetable garden. The slaves had planted it before they’d been set free, and Lizzie was the only one left to tend it. The day looked so fresh and hopeful that Jo’s longing to escape this stuffy, claustrophobic house suddenly overwhelmed her. She tied a straw bonnet on her head and hurried downstairs and out through the front door.
She drew a deep breath, then sighed. The air smelled of spring and woodsmoke from the kitchen. She took her time walking around the house to the back, noticing the overgrown bushes and weed-filled flower beds. The grounds around the house had fallen into ruin now that the slaves who did all the gardening had left. It hadn’t rained in days and the ground was rock hard and dusty beneath her feet.
When she reached the kitchen garden, Josephine opened the gate to the enclosed plot of land and went inside, shutting it behind her again. Lizzie seemed to snap to attention. “You needing something, Missy Josephine?”
“No . . . well, yes. I need to get out of the house for a while, and it looks like such a beautiful morning.”
“Yes, ma’am.” Lizzie bent to her task again, the hoe rasping against the hard earth.
“Are you going to leave White Oak, too, Lizzie? Like all the others?”
“No, ma’am. We decided to stay for now. But Lord knows I can’t do all this work by myself. Neither can Otis.”
Otis. That was the name of the field slave who had driven their carriage to Richmond and back. Jo had grown up with these slaves, yet she knew very little about them. “Is Otis your husband?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Jo watched her work for a few minutes, inhaling the fresh spring air. “Do you enjoy working in the garden?”
“Like it or not, it’s got to be done, Missy Jo, or nobody’s gonna eat around here.”
Josephine wondered if she should help. Of course it was a scandalous idea. But everything else in Jo’s life had changed, and if she wanted to eat, as Lizzie said, then someone had to help her. Besides, Jo had nothing else to fill the long, empty hours. “Would you like my help?” she asked.
Lizzie stared at her before catching herself and looking away. “Miz Eugenia’s never gonna let her daughter do slave work. No, ma’am.” Jo heard the outrage in her voice.
“Everything is different now, Lizzie. I think I should learn how to grow our own food in case you decide to leave us, too.” As the idea took shape, Josephine realized how much she liked the thought of making something happen for once, instead of waiting for things to happen to her. She could decide her own fate and work to grow food herself instead of slowly starving. “Will you show me what to do, Lizzie?”
“No, ma’am. You gonna get me in a mess of trouble, Missy Jo.”
“I promise you won’t get into trouble.” She took the hoe from Lizzie’s hand. It was heavier than she’d imagined, the wooden handle rough and splintery. “Show me what to do.”
Lizzie looked frightened as she took a step back. It occurred to Josephine that all these changes must be hard for her, too. Their circumstances had reversed: Lizzie had been set free, and now Josephine was the one enslaved in a world of poverty and uncertainty. Since neither God nor her daddy was taking care of her anymore, Jo would have to take care of herself—beginning with growing her own food. She turned her back on Lizzie and started chopping at the dirt so Lizzie wouldn’t see her sudden tears. “Like this?” she asked, trying to mimic Lizzie’s actions.
“Wait! Let me get another hoe, Missy Jo, and I’ll show you the right way.” Lizzie fetched the hoe leaning against the garden fence, then bent to ruffle her fingers through a row of tiny plants, like delicate green lace. “These here are carrot plants, Missy Jo. The rest—like this here—are weeds. I’m chopping out the weeds so the plants have a chance to grow. But I need to be careful not to be chopping the plants or there’ll be nothing to eat. I use the pointy part of the hoe, see? Like this.”
“Is this right?” Jo asked, trying to imitate her.
“Yes, ma’am.” They continued down the rows, working side by side. It felt wonderful to Josephine to be doing something useful. But she could tell that Lizzie was nervous, glancing up at the house as if to see if Mother was watching them. Jo decided to make small-talk—one of the feminine arts that Mother had tried to instill in her daughters and something that Josephine had never been good at doing, especially with young men. Of course, she was never supposed to talk to the slaves at all except to issue orders.
“Why is there a fence all around the garden, Lizzie?”
“You don’t want rabbits getting in here, Missy Jo.”
“We have rabbits around here? So close to the house?”
“Yes, ma’am. More than ever. Massa Philip’s hound dogs liked to chase them off in the old days, but . . .” She paused, glancing up at Josephine as if she might have said the wrong thing. “Otis sets snares around the fence and sometimes catches us a rabbit for dinner,” Lizzie said.
The thought of eating rabbit meat repulsed Jo, but Lizzie was finally relaxing a bit, so Jo kept quiet about that. “What’s that wooden cross for?” she asked instead, pointing to a pair of branches tied together. Rags fluttered from it in the breeze. Was it part of a slave superstition?
“You mean that?” Lizzie smiled. “It’s a scarecrow, Missy Jo. Or at least it’s
supposed to be. It needs fixing up just like everything else around here, or it won’t scare nothing away. Them crows are supposed to think it’s a person so they’ll stay away from our garden.”
“What about those bunches of sticks that look like Indian teepees?”
“Them are for the pole beans to climb on when the plants get a little bigger.”
“There’s so much I don’t know,” Jo said with a sigh. “I’ve lived here at White Oak all my life and the food simply arrived at my table. I’m sorry to say I never thought much about where it came from or about the whole process of guarding it from birds and rabbits and weeds while it was growing.”
Maybe there had been holes and empty places in her old life, too, and she had just never noticed. Holes in her practical knowledge of how her food was grown and gaps in her usefulness, as well. How had knowing how to play the piano or paint with watercolors or engage in polite conversation helped her or her family through the bitter years of war? And how would those skills help anyone now?
Josephine reached the end of the row and looked back at her work. It didn’t look nearly as straight and neat as Lizzie’s row, and Lizzie had reached the end much faster and had started down the next row. Jo gripped the hoe with renewed determination. “When will these carrots be ready to pick?”
“Not for a long, long time, Missy Jo.” She managed a brief smile. “In another week or so we’ll have to thin them out so the carrots can get nice and fat.”
“How do you do that?”
“Pull out some of the plants and leave the rest.”
“That seems a shame. Especially if the plants take so long to grow.” And yet the changes in Jo’s life had seemed to come just as mercilessly, with people she loved snatched away from her. Samuel and Daddy had been alive and running the plantation one day, and quicker than carrots or beans could sprout, they were gone. Last fall, dozens of slaves had worked in the fields, but now both the cotton and the slaves were gone. “What made you decide to stay, Lizzie?”
She paused, leaning against her hoe. “Me and Otis got three kids to think about. Can’t let them go hungry.”
Lizzie was a mother? That was something else Josephine hadn’t known. “What are your children’s names?”
“Roselle, Rufus, and Jack.”
“Wait. Roselle is your daughter? But you don’t look nearly old enough to be her mother!”
Lizzie looked away, lowering her head as if embarrassed. Jo was sorry for speaking without thinking—something Mother would chide her for doing. But Lizzie looked so young, certainly no more than thirty. Which meant that she must have been fifteen or sixteen—the same age as Mary—when Roselle had been born. Why had Lizzie chosen to marry and have children at such a young age?
Before the war, finding a suitable husband had occupied most of Josephine’s life, dictating her activities and social engagements. She’d had to learn to make herself attractive and poised so her charms would outshine the other girls’ and catch a man’s interest. Marriage had been the prize at the end of the contest. Jo thought of the long lists of names that the minister had read in his solemn voice every Sunday throughout the war, men fallen in battle like her brother Samuel, young men she had once socialized with. Gone—all of them. How could any of their lives ever be the same?
“I’m glad you decided to stay and work for us,” Jo finally said to break the long silence. “And I’m grateful that you’re teaching me to—”
“Josephine!”
She looked up, startled. Mother stood by the back door with her hands on her hips. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. What in heaven’s name are you doing?”
“Working in the garden.”
“Come inside this instant!” The door slammed shut behind her as she returned inside.
Josephine saw the look of fear on Lizzie’s face and smiled to reassure her. “Don’t worry. I’m the one who’s in trouble, not you.” She removed her straw hat as she slowly walked up to the house, wiping the sweat off her forehead with her sleeve. Mother was waiting inside the door, arms crossed.
“What in the world were you doing? We have not yet sunk so low that you are forced to work outside in the hot sun like a field hand. What will people think of us? Do you want your skin to turn brown and your hands to get all blistered like a slave’s?”
“I’m bored, Mother. There’s nothing else to do and I thought I should learn how to put food on our table in case Lizzie decides to leave, too. Besides, it felt good to work outside. And the work isn’t hard. . . .” Jo could tell that Mother wasn’t listening.
“There has never been a Weatherly who had to work like a Negro, and so help me God, there never will be.”
But that’s just it, Jo wanted to say. God isn’t helping us.
“Did you know that Otis is Lizzie’s husband?” Jo asked. Mother looked at her as if she had lost her mind. “And Roselle is Lizzie’s daughter. They have two other children, too.”
“What in the world is wrong with you? As if it isn’t bad enough that you’re working with slaves, now you’ve decided to converse with them, too? Really, Josephine!”
“They aren’t our slaves anymore. They’re people. We shouldn’t treat them like slaves.”
“I believe the hot sun has addled your brain. Go splash some cold water on your face and tidy your hair.” Mother turned and strode away. Jo followed her down the hall and into the foyer.
“But we have to change the way we do things, Mother. Nothing is the same as it used to be.”
“Well, so help me God, I’m going to change everything back.”
Josephine let her mother walk away this time while she remained in the front foyer alone, gazing at the empty holes again—the dusty space where the hall clock had stood, the darker patch of wood on the floor where the rug had been. And if she looked to her right into Daddy’s study, she knew she would see his empty chair.
No, God wasn’t going to help any of them. And it would be impossible to change anything back to the way it had been.
5
APRIL 28, 1865
Eugenia didn’t recognize her son at first. The stranger walking up the lane toward her house looked like a beggar, his mismatched clothing no longer resembling a Confederate uniform, his shoes something only a slave would wear. She saw him approaching and guessed him to be a refugee or a vagabond coming to beg or to steal from her. Eugenia groped in her skirt pocket for the pistol she carried everywhere, then went out to the porch to order the man off her property. But the stranger was Daniel.
Before Eugenia could move or speak, he saw her in the doorway and ran the rest of the way up the road toward her, bounding up the front steps to pull Eugenia into his arms. Daniel! Daniel was home! She tried to say his name but couldn’t speak, her throat choked with tears. Daniel’s entire body trembled, and she realized he was sobbing. He had been barely twenty years old when he’d gone off to war, filled with swagger and bravado. “We’ll lick the Yanks in no time, and I’ll be home in time to return to college in the fall.” Instead, five years had passed.
Daniel was Eugenia’s golden boy, blond and handsome and full of life, the jokester in the family, able to make everyone laugh. Now joy and sorrow overwhelmed her as she held him in her arms. He was so thin, so ragged, so timeworn. But then all of them were.
“Oh, Daniel!” she murmured. “You’re home at last.” He couldn’t stop sobbing, a broken man. She pulled away and reached up to brush his sandy hair off his forehead. “No more tears now,” she said. “No tears. You’re home.”
He seemed taller than before but so much thinner. He had grown a beard and mustache, and they made him look shaggy and unkempt. But the biggest difference was his eyes. Eugenia saw so much sadness there, as if they had seen things he wished he could forget. Daniel had aged much more than five years.
“I’m so proud of you,” she said. “You fought so hard.”
“The Yanks might have outnumbered us,” he said, drying his eyes on his sleeve, “but they didn??
?t outfight us.”
“I know. I know.” Eugenia caressed her son’s shoulder as she watched him survey the yard and the fields from the porch steps. “I’m sorry everything is so run-down. We only returned home from Richmond a week ago.” Surely he could see how much had changed since he’d been away, how their lovely plantation had fallen into disrepair, how empty the cotton fields were.
“Did all our slaves run off?” he asked. “We saw hundreds of Negroes wandering on the roads.”
“All but three are gone, I’m afraid. We have one field hand and two house slaves left.”
“That’s not enough to run a plantation.”
“I know. I’m told that some Negroes are living out in the woods between here and the village, though I’m not certain if any of them are ours. Good thing you arrived in daylight. No one feels safe here after dark anymore.”
She heard footsteps thundering down the stairs inside the house, and a moment later Mary and Josephine ran out to greet their brother. Eugenia felt a stab of sorrow as she watched her children embrace one another. Their father and older brother deserved a hero’s homecoming, too, but they would never get it.
“Grab your bag and come inside, Daniel,” Eugenia said, leading the way. “What you need is a nice long rest and some good hot food to get your strength back.” Although how he could regain his strength on the meager diet they were forced to eat, Eugenia didn’t know. “We’ve been expecting you ever since we heard all of our soldiers had been paroled. I told Lizzie to make sure your room was ready.”
“It’s been a while since I slept in a bed. My friends used to joke that the best thing about getting wounded was having a clean bed to sleep in and a pretty nurse to feed you dinner.” Mary smiled at her brother’s humor, but neither Josephine nor Eugenia did.
“You heard that Harrison Blake lost his leg, didn’t you?” Eugenia asked.