San Antone. V. J. Banis
their cook, Lucretia, asked to talk to her. She wanted to know if Joanna had found a driver yet for the slaves’ wagon.
“No,” Joanna admitted. “William could, I’m sure—it can’t be that much different—but convincing him....”
“I can get around that William,” Lucretia said confidently. “That man does anything I asks.” She paused, glancing sideways, and then back again directly at Joanna. “Far as that goes, I expect I could learn to drive a wagon easy enough. Don’t look to me like there’s anything to it.”
Joanna stared at her in surprise. Her efforts to locate a driver had been directed primarily at the men among the slaves. It hadn’t really occurred to her to approach the women. The caste system among the slaves was as rigid as anything known in the East. House slaves simply did not put their hands to outside work—they would have considered it demeaning—and as head cook at Eaton Hall, Lucretia had reigned pretty much as the queen bee among the household slaves. Lucretia was the last person she would have thought to turn to for a solution to her problem.
“I have a feeling,” she said, “that you’re preparing to negotiate a deal.”
“I don’t know about no negotiating.” Lucretia’s sly glance belied her innocence.
“But there is something you want?”
“Mr. Harte, he says a slave is entitled to what he gets, and that’s all.”
“Which I suppose, is why you came to me and not Mr. Harte.”
Lucretia took a while answering, and when she did, it was to make a seemingly unrelated remark. “Folks say...the slaves, they been saying, this here Mr. Lincoln, he’s going to be freeing everyone one of these days soon.”
“He says that he means to, yes,” Joanna agreed, more puzzled than ever.
“What do you suppose is going to happen, to us, I mean, to the colored folk, when they is all freed? Who’s going to take care of us if we don’t belong to nobody?”
“Why, I don’t know. I suppose....” But she had no ready answer; it was a question she simply had never considered. People talked about what would happen to the South, to the great plantations, to the whites—and she had been as selfish as anyone in that respect, hadn’t she? Even when secretly, silently, she’d agreed with Mr. Lincoln that men ought to be free, she hadn’t really thought about how the freed slaves were to fend for themselves in a society that could no longer afford them.
“Reason I ask,” Lucretia said, indicating that she, at least, had been giving thought to the question, “is, Papa John, he been saying when he gets to this San Antone...”—she put the accent on the first syllable, giving the city an exotic, foreign sound—“...he says, from talk he hears, we’ll be owning half of this here Texas.”
“I don’t think it’s quite that much,” Joanna said, smiling. “But it is a large piece of land, certainly, more than I can even imagine, to tell you the truth. But I still don’t—”
“I been thinking,” Lucretia went on with what sounded now like a well-rehearsed speech. “If we had just a small piece, William and me, just a little land of our own—I don’t mean a garden plot like we had at Eaton Hall, I mean our own place—why, we wouldn’t have to worry about what was going to happen to us, do you see? I mean, if this Mr. Lincoln, say, he was to free us, why, William and me, we could just get married like we been wanting to do, and the two of us, we could just look after ourselves. And our children, too. And besides, we’d be right there, wouldn’t we? There’s nothing to say we couldn’t go right on taking care of you folks, too, at the same time. It seems to me, anyway.”
She stopped and took a long breath, watching her mistress with a look both hopeful and wary, lest she’d gone too far. It was difficult to know, even with Mrs. Harte, who was different from the rest, who’d gone so far as to allow education for some of her slaves. Even with her, Lucretia made a point of pretending that the education hadn’t “taken,” talked a pidgin English intended to reassure that her intelligence was no threat.
Joanna, too, was thinking, indirectly, of Lucretia—of her intelligence, of her education. She had known the woman all her life; they were somewhere near the same age, though she didn’t know Lucretia’s exactly. And why don’t I? she wondered.
Lucretia had worked in the kitchen of Eaton Hall when Joanna married. Joanna wasn’t even sure now whose idea it had been to include Lucretia in her own rudimentary lessons, but she had taken pride in the fact that Lucretia could read and write, accomplishments unmastered by most southern white women.
Yet, she realized she didn’t know her cook at all, not as a human being. She’d had no idea of Lucretia’s dreams, her longings, her aspirations; hadn’t even known of her involvement with William.
Why, I’m as bad as the rest of them, she thought. These people are invisible to me, as if they were nothing more than household furnishings. A chair you might know was handsome, or valuable, you might even notice that it needed dusting, but otherwise it was something you took for granted, used for your convenience and comfort, kicked when you were angry—threw away, perhaps, when it no longer suited.
Like Lucretia, standing here, holding herself empty. She realized how often they did that—you looked at their eyes, not into them, as if there were nothing behind the surfaces; your voice echoed through them, the way it did when you spoke in a cave. Only there was someone in there, someone listening, holding her breath, waiting for the bear to move on, or at least settle down to sleep.
For a moment, on the heels of this self-discovery, depression threatened her. I’m not nearly so mature as I thought, nor so bright, she berated herself.
But self-abasement was simply another excuse, wasn’t it? It’s all right to do this, so long as I whip myself for it periodically. I shall punish myself for them, and feel justified in my sins.
No, I shall have to do better, she told herself, and smiled at the apprehensive woman before her. “Yes, I do see,” she said. “I can’t promise you, you know, what we’ll find when we get to this San Antonio, but certainly there will be land, and plenty of that. And I can promise you, some of it will be yours, yours and William’s, to do with as you wish.”
Lucretia stared, her eyes searching; she gave the impression of someone looking out for a trick, some catchphrase that would take all the good from what she had just heard.
Then a great, wide smile burst upon her face, and in her eyes, too, like sunlight splashing on the surface of a pool.
“That would be mighty nice,” she said, and Joanna had just the faintest inkling that something had changed in Lucretia’s speech, a discovery that came and went too quickly for her to seize upon it. “I’d best get William started with that team,” Lucretia said, “if I’m going to learn to handle it by the time we start out.”
“Whenever that may be,” Joanna said ruefully; but at least one problem was solved, in a way that she could feel good about.
* * * *
Then, as if it were overnight, their time in Galveston had vanished, the frozen days melting into a pool of yesterdays. They would be going soon—any day now—tomorrow....
And now, Joanna found herself longing for some of that time that had so recently hung on her hands. Every moment seemed short of its appointed duration; the hours sped by. She heard conversations in broken fragments that barely penetrated her consciousness; her days were kaleidoscopes of fleeting impressions:
“...Not a damned darky fit to.... Have your things moved tomorrow for loading, this is.... Doña Sebastiano, how nice to know.... I’ve been invited to ride with.... William Horse, Lieutenant Price says we...were part of the Haisini Confederacy, and besides that.... Dammit, I know they were fourteen trunks, Joanna, are you trying to say...? Mr. Hansen owns a general store in San Antone...has an average rainfall of...plenty of room, and I don’t want to travel from...sunup, or before, we can get several miles ahead of the...sunbonnet? But it’s