DELIA’S MEALS WERE of good quality and served to me in the kitchen, where I always ate alone, which suited me. One day when I saw the table set for three, indicating that I was to sit down with Delia and Ed, I said that I would take my meal to my room.
“Who that boy think he is?” I heard Delia ask her brother as I carried my food down the corridor. “He act high and mighty as that Robert!” she added more quietly. Curious, I stopped outside my door to listen for more.
“Now, Del, the boy white,” Ed answered. “You know they don’ eat with no colored folk.”
“Well, for sure he act white, but he hidin’ something, that much I know. He don’ say nothin’ ’bout where he come from or who his family be. He hidin’ somethin’,” she repeated.
“Del!” Ed said. “Even if that true, that his business.”
“It my business to watch out for this house, and for sure it my business to care for Mr. and Mrs. Burton. I tell you, that boy hidin’ somethin’.”
Her insight terrified me, and from then on I was especially wary when fielding her questions.
“What you got in there?” she asked one morning, making note of my leather satchel that I carried with me each day to work.
“My personal things,” I said, gripping tight my bag that contained Grandmother’s jewelry. Mr. Burton had noted it as well, but with him I was more forthcoming and told him that it held some of my grandmother’s things. He did not question me further and in fact provided me with a safe cupboard to store it in while I was at the shop.
“?‘My personal things!’?” Delia repeated, mimicking my voice, and though I wanted to hit her, I pretended not to mind.
I was grateful that her brother left me to myself as he went about his business of running the stables and seeing to the gardens, and if we shared an exchange, he always spoke to me with deference, a behavior that I was accustomed to.
But then there was Robert.
BEFORE I MET him, Delia made it clear that though he ran the household, the two of them did not see eye to eye, and from the beginning I supposed it was because she resented the authority of a white man in her kitchen. One evening some days after my arrival, I met the man when he made an unexpected appearance just as I was finishing my meal.
“Yes?” I asked, setting aside my fork and knife.
“I am Robert,” he said, speaking with a slight clipped English accent that I was to learn came as a result of his five years of butler training in London. “Might we have a word after you finish dining?”
This was Robert! He was not a white man, as I had assumed, but an impeccably dressed, carefully groomed, and well-spoken Negro. What would Grandmother have thought!
After I swallowed my surprise, I folded my napkin alongside my plate. “I am available now,” I said, taking note of his starched white shirt and the spotless white apron tied around the waist of his dark trousers.
Delia, heating water for washing dishes, shot me a satisfied glance before she looked to Robert with a slight smile. She hesitated after he suggested she go upstairs to see to Mrs. Burton, but she reluctantly did so while he waited patiently for her to leave.
“I’ll be in the pantry,” he said, speaking in a way that left no doubt he was used to issuing orders. Irritated at being directed by a servant, I took my time to follow.
I found him seated behind a desk in a room off the kitchen, working figures in an open ledger. His tall, thin frame sat erect, and his long narrow feet, bound in shoes of black leather and polished to a high luster, set flat on the brick floor. It was difficult to assess his age, though when he looked up at me, I guessed him to be perhaps in his mid-thirties.
“Please sit.” With his index finger, he indicated another chair across the table from himself. I declined to sit, stating a preference to remain standing. “As you wish,” he said.
“How may I help you?” I asked, irritated by his assuming demeanor.
“As you might know, I am butler of this house,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“You understand, then, that I am responsible to speak to you about any household issues that arise?”
I could not imagine what he was referring to. I waited until, with only silence between us, I was forced to speak. “Go on,” I said.
“I understand that you have been leaving out your coat and boots for Delia to clean.”
“I have,” I said. “That is the duty of a servant, is it not?”
“You are correct in believing that it is what one might expect from one’s servant. However, Delia is not your servant. When you live below stairs, as they say in England, you are considered one of the staff.”
“One of the staff?” I was outraged. It was true that I was lodging in servants’ quarters, but surely I wasn’t considered one of them. They were Negroes!
“Yes, one of the staff. You are expected to look out for your own outer garments and your boots. Of course, you may expect Delia to continue to do laundry for you, as she does for the rest of the household.”
“I see,” I said, and finding no rebuttal, I made a quick exit.
I found it almost impossible to settle that night. True, I was angry that this black man thought of me as a servant, but what also disturbed me was the forceful yet eloquent way he had spoken. I had never seen the like. His sophisticated conduct, educated speech, and overall deportment belied everything Grandmother had taught me about the Negro’s limited capabilities.
SUNDAY WAS A day I had to myself. On those mornings Mr. Burton attended church services, and I generally took that day to stroll about town, but one Sunday morning in November I remained in bed, feeling under the weather with a cold. I heard Ed bring around the carriage for Mr. Burton and listened as the horses clomped away. I meant to rise then, but the weather outside had turned wintry, and I decided to lay abed a while longer. I suppose I dozed, for I was startled awake by cries for help from Delia. I hesitated to respond, for it was Delia, after all, yet her call sounded so urgent that I yanked my trousers on over my nightshirt and rushed from my room.
“Upstairs!” Delia called when she saw me. “Come! Upstairs!”
Expecting a house fire or a similar emergency, I followed as she hurried up the back stairs. There, in the hallway, light from a large fan window above the oversize front door streamed onto a chair where an older woman sat. She appeared to be struggling to breathe, but when I rushed to her side, she used her lace-edged handkerchief to wave me toward the dining room door. It was then I realized that though she was struggling for air, she was also laughing.
“Come, come,” Delia called to me from the door to the dining room, and as she opened it, she pushed me through. No sooner did the door close behind me than a large white bird swooped past in a dive toward the dining room table. A feather duster slammed out from under it, further inciting the bird, and with a screech the bird dove in again. To my amazement, I saw Robert under the table, wedged in between chairs and hitting out with the duster in an attempt to protect himself.
“Throw the duster away,” I called to him.
“But I need it!” he called back.
“Throw it away,” I repeated. “The bird thinks that it’s another bird attacking him.”