The Letter Writer by Ann Rinaldi

Author:Ann Rinaldi [Rinaldi, Ann]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Fourteen

There is a grapevine of communication the negroes have that runs from plantation to plantation around here so that they know everything, sometimes before the white people know it.

The word started going around two days after the Gerard slave was burned to death. You could see it in the faces of the negroes, both outside the house and inside.

Usually there were good feelings between me and most of the negroes on the place. If not downright friendly, they always gave me a smile when we passed each other, or tipped a hat or nodded a head and acknowledged my presence.

This day, there was none of that. This day, they lowered their eyes or looked the other way.

I felt left out of the circle of their trust. I felt as if they were avoiding me. Violet, recovered now only so she could present a good face to do her chores and grateful to me for helping her recover, came over to me after breakfast when everyone was finding their place to hide themselves for the day.

Mother Whitehead retired to her space in the corner on the veranda where the clematis and the passion-flower climbed and made a sweet-smelling curtain for her pleasure.

Pleasant went to her reading room to prepare lessons for me. Little William went for a walk with Owen. Margaret, who had come home out of fear and with Richard's blessing, and Emilie left to gather some flowers to make a bouquet. And Richard rode over to the Williams place, about five miles north of us, because Mrs. Williams was ailing and had asked for his prayers and comfort.

"Harriet, I must talk to you," Violet whispered.

"About what?"

"It's a secret. Don't speak so loud."

I lowered my voice. "Is it the same secret all the servants know about?"

"You know it, then?"

"No, but I know they have one. I can tell because they are all agitated. And because they won't look at me, as if looking at me will give it away."

She was pulling me toward the kitchen, where the morning dishes were being washed and dried, where preparations were already being made for lunch, potatoes being peeled, fruit arranged in a bowl, cake being mixed.

Usually when I walked through the kitchen, Winefred the cook would take a piece of whatever she was cooking and give it to me. And I would take it as if it were a sacrament and put it in my mouth. Because it was sort of a sacrament, a sign of friendship and love between black and white.

This day she was slicing leftover turkey. She turned her back to me.

Connie was scraping batter for cake into a pan. At this juncture she would always hand me the spoon and allow me to pause and lick the bowl.

This time she did not.

We did not hesitate, Violet and I. She pulled me through the kitchen and outside.

The sky was blue on this hot August morning and there was already a hint of September in the air. In the distance the pond glistened and ducks swam innocently.

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