“You believe that?” Cora asked. From the teacher’s face, she didn’t know what to make of her.
Four months had passed since that first class. The harvest was done. Fresh arrivals to the Valentine farm made it so Cora was no longer the greenhorn, bumbling about. Two men Cora’s age joined the lessons in the meeting house, eager runaways more ignorant than she was. They ran their fingers over the books as if the things were goofered, hopping with magic. Cora knew her way around. When to prepare her own meal because today’s cook would muddle the soup, when to bring a shawl because Indiana nights were a shiver, colder than she’d ever known. The quiet places of shade to be alone.
Cora sat in the front of the class nowadays, and when Georgina corrected her—on her penmanship or arithmetic or speech—she no longer smarted. They were friends. Georgina was such a dedicated gossip that the lessons provided a reprieve from her constant reports on the farm’s goings-on. That strapping man from Virginia has a mischievous look, don’t you think? Patricia ate all the pig’s feet when we turned our backs. Delaware women liked to flap their gums, that was another thing.
This particular afternoon, Cora walked out with Molly once the bell sounded. She shared a cabin with the girl and her mother. Molly was ten years old, almond-eyed and reserved, careful with her affections. She had many friends but preferred to stand just outside the circle. The girl kept a green jar in her room for her treasures—marbles, arrowheads, a locket without a face—and got more pleasure from spreading them on the cabin floor, feeling the cool of blue quartz on her cheek, than playing outside.
Which was why their routine of late delighted Cora. Cora had started braiding the girl’s hair on the mornings when her mother left for work early, and the last few days Molly had reached for her hand when school ended. A new thing between them. Molly tugged her along, squeezing hard, and Cora enjoyed being led. She hadn’t been chosen by one of the little ones since Chester.
There was no noon meal on account of that night’s big Saturday supper, the smell of which impelled the students to the barbecue pits. The barbecue men had been cooking the hogs since midnight, casting a spell property-wide. More than one of the residents had dreamed of gorging on a magnificent banquet, only to wake up devastated. Hours to go. Cora and Molly joined the hungry spectators.
Over the smoky greenwood coals, long sticks splayed out the two hogs. Jimmy was the pit master. His father had grown up in Jamaica and had passed down the fire secrets of the Maroons. Jimmy poked the roasting meat with his fingers and nudged the coals, prowling around the fire as if sizing up a grappling partner. He was one of the more wizened residents on the farm, late from North Carolina and the massacres, and preferred his meat melting soft. He only had two teeth.
One of his apprentices shook a jug of vinegar and pepper. He motioned to a little girl at the edge of the fire and guided her hands to mop the insides of the hog with the mixture. The drippings popped on the coals in the trenches. White plumes of smoke sent the crowd back and the girl squealed. It would be a fine meal.
—
CORA and Molly had an appointment at home. It was a short walk. Like most of the farm’s work buildings, the older log cabins bunched on the eastern edge, put up in a hurry before they knew how big the community would become. Folks came from all over, plantations that had favored this or that arrangement of quarters, so the cabins came in various shapes. The newer ones—the latest additions the men put up now that the corn was picked—followed an identical style, with more spacious rooms, and were distributed on the property with more care.
Since Harriet had married and moved out, Cora, Molly, and Sybil were the only inhabitants of their cabin, sleeping in the two rooms off the main living area. In general, three families lived in each house. Newcomers and visitors shared Cora’s room from time to time, but for the most part the other two beds were empty.
Her own room. Another unlikely gift from the Valentine farm after all her prisons.
Sybil and her daughter were proud of their house. They’d whitewashed the exterior with quicklime, tinted it pink. Yellow paint with white trim made the front room hum in the sunlight. Decorated with wildflowers in the warm season, the room remained pleasant in the autumn with wreaths of red and gold leaves. Purple curtains bunched in the windows. Two carpenters who lived on the farm lugged in furniture now and again—they were sweet on Sybil and kept their hands busy to distract from her indifference. Sybil had dyed some burlap sacks to make a carpet, which Cora laid on when she got one of her headaches. The front room had a nice breeze that took the bite out of the attacks.
Molly called after her mother when they reached the porch. Sarsaparilla boiled for one of Sybil’s tonics, overpowering the aroma of the roasting meat. Cora headed straight to the rocking chair, which she’d claimed as hers on her first day. Molly and Sybil didn’t mind. It creaked extravagantly, the handiwork of Sybil’s less talented suitor. Sybil was of the mind that he’d made it loud on purpose, to remind her of his devotion.
Sybil emerged from the back, wringing her hands on her apron. “Jimmy working hard out there,” she said, shaking her head in hunger.
“I can’t wait,” Molly said. The girl opened the pine chest by the hearth and removed their quilting. She was steadfast on finishing her latest project by supper.
They got to it. Cora hadn’t picked up a needle apart from simple mending since Mabel left. Some of the Hob women tried to teach her to no avail. As she did in the classroom, Cora kept looking over at her companions for guidance. She cut out a bird, a cardinal; it came out looking like something dogs had fought over. Sybil and Molly encouraged her—they had badgered her into their pastime—but the quilt was botched. Fleas had found the batting, she insisted. The seams puckered, her corners unjoined. The quilt betrayed a crookedness in her thinking: run it up a pole as the flag of her wild country. She wanted to set it aside but Sybil forbid her. “You start something else when this one finished,” Sybil said. “But this ain’t finished yet.”
Cora needed no advice on the virtues of perseverance. But she picked up the creature in her lap and picked at where she’d left off.
Sybil was twelve years her senior. Her dresses made her look slightly built, but Cora knew that it was merely her time away from the plantation working on the woman in the best way: Her new life required a different sort of strength. She was meticulous in her posture, a walking spear, in the manner of those who’d been made to bend and will bend no more. Her master had been a terror, Sybil told Cora, a tobacco man who competed with the neighboring planters every year over the biggest crop. His poor showing stirred him to malice. “He work us hard,” she’d say, her thoughts lighting out to old miseries. Molly would come over from wherever she was and sit on her lap, nuzzling.