And finally, Henry Byron, lying with her on the grass, the sound of bees all about them. Lying without her on his bed, the sores rising on his face, his hands, his neck, everywhere, everywhere, even inside his eyes.
She asks the fiddler what the tune is called. No one notices this uncommon behavior, Rosalie speaking to a strange man, because no one ever notices Rosalie. “It’s called ‘Poor Rosey,’？” he says—and the surprise of this will stop her cold. Had Nelson known that? Had he pitied her? Was he making fun of her? “Do you like it?” the fiddler will ask, and she’ll hear him, but only after she’s already walked on.
She’d liked Nelson and she’d thought he’d liked her. On rare occasions, when June and Henry Byron were busy with something else and Rosalie wasn’t, Nelson had never minded playing with just Rosalie. It hadn’t happened often, but it had happened. Had they never really been friends at all? Rosalie hasn’t had so many friends in her life that she can readily give one up, even one she will surely never see again. She needs to believe that Nelson liked her as much as she’d liked him.
Nelson’s head was periodically shaved to prevent or eradicate lice, so when he had hair, it was short. His two front teeth hadn’t come in yet, which helped his whistling and showed as a gap when he smiled. He smiled all the time.
He never wore shoes. “Course I have ’em,” he said, “just don’t like ’em,” which made Henry Byron realize he didn’t like ’em either. Rosalie’s feet weren’t tough enough to run around the forest unshod, and June chose not to, but Henry and Nelson did just that until one of the dogs made off with one of Henry’s shoes and returned it half gnawed, and Mother made him wear it anyway, because he never should have taken it off in the first place. Did he want to end up with ringworm? she asked. And then said that June and Rosalie should have known better than to permit it. Because any misbehavior in a younger child was always the fault of the older. That was how a family worked.
There was one day with June off somewhere, when Henry Byron, Rosalie, and Nelson went down to where the Hickory Road crossed the creek. The sun was seeping through the trees, landing on the water in stars and sparkles. Squirrels were chasing each other through the high branches, rabbits eating in the grass. Henry got the idea to put a dam in, make a fishing hole. If they did it right, they wouldn’t even need poles. They could just reach in and scoop the trapped fish out with their hands. “Then we build a fire,” Nelson said, a bubble of spit rising through the gap in his teeth in excitement, “and roast ’em on sticks. Steal some ’tatoes from the bins, bury them in the coals. Eat like kings!”
They scattered to gather up logs to make the dam. Rosalie made a try at helping though the plan didn’t inspire her the way it did them. She’d found a log, too heavy to pick up and it still had branches so she couldn’t roll it. She’d managed to raise it just a little bit, which sent a dozen bugs, a hundred legs—centipedes, wood lice, white-as-ghosts spiders—streaming in the direction of her feet.
“Father won’t let us kill fish,” she reminded Henry, lowering the log to the ground again. “We’ll be whupped if he finds out.” Nelson’s role was to be game for anything. Rosalie’s was not. The fish are safe from her.
At Rosalie’s suggestion, they have an egg-fry instead. She fetches three eggs from the henhouse, snatching them warm from their smelly nests, the chickens gabbling about her. By the time she returns, the boys have a fire going. Nelson has collected a pot and filled it with water. They eat the eggs hot from the shells. It’s enough like being kings to satisfy them all.
Another day: Nelson had found a large patch of moss in a forest clearing that he said was soft like a carpet, like the red Turkish rug by the fireplace in the cabin. He’d come looking for someone to show and found only Rosalie and he’d taken her to it, holding on to the branches like a gentleman so they wouldn’t whip back and lash Rosalie in the face.
Better than a carpet, Rosalie agreed. Much better. Henry Byron had arrived then and the two boys built a makeshift lean-to over the moss, a house of sticks, just large enough for the three to sit together inside, arm touching arm touching arm. Rosalie could feel the damp cold beneath her. She could smell the smoky, sweaty odor of the boys on either side.
“We be dry here even when it rains,” Nelson said, as if the sun weren’t filtering right through the roof, dappling Rosalie’s hands and his own face. Under the leaves, they made plans. The boys decided to be Indians. But Rosalie opted for the comforts of the Swiss Family Robinson. While the boys planned hunts and raids, Rosalie imagined bedrooms and ballrooms, water that dripped through hollowed logs so they could wash their hands and their dishes.
Henry Byron and Nelson were always rearranging the world—lugging in stepping-stones to make new paths across the creek to its little island, moving logs and branches to be dams and bridges, forts and teepees. They dreamt of escape, of leaving their chores and lessons, their houses and families, and moving to the woods. For Rosalie, the escape was very real, a temporary respite from Mary Ann and Elizabeth and the tedium of caring for babies. She never knew if it was also real for Nelson.
And then, Nelson stopped coming. This happened right around the time her sisters died, so she didn’t notice at first, too busy with the calamity of seeing everything she’d known collapse. Too secretly ashamed of how tired she’d been of being the oldest girl, of how often she’d chosen to slip off with the boys into the trees instead.
When she finally missed him, Rosalie worried that Nelson had also died in the cholera. She sought out Ann in the kitchen to ask. No, none of the other children had died, Ann told her. About Nelson she simply said, “Sold.”
Rosalie was relieved.
“Sixty-five dollars,” Ann said.
Rosalie was impressed. At nine years old, she was unable to imagine his life much changed. She assumed that wherever he was, Nelson was building forts, streaking his face with war-paint mud, smiling his gappy smile. If someone paid sixty-five dollars, she thought, they must love Nelson very much.
But perhaps she had doubts, because of what she’d asked next. “He’s happy, don’t you think?” she’d said and then, to prompt Ann into the right answer, added, “Nelson’s always happy.”
“Children can snatch happiness from even the darkest times,” Ann said. “That’s God’s gift, that’s how God loves children. You grow up, you can’t do that no more. You don’t have that gift. God’s taken it back.”
And, just as they would again all those years in the future, Rosalie’s losses crowded into her heart, a heavier weight than she could bear. Frederick and Elizabeth, Mary Ann and Nelson. Mother’s happiness and Father’s sanity. She was too big now for Ann’s lap, but Ann sank into one of the dining table chairs and gathered her in anyway, rocking her and humming something church-like, as if Rosalie were still a child, which she now, in her deep unhappiness, understood for the first time that she was not.
She’d lost that, too.
* * *
—
And still, even with this all everywhere about her, Rosalie had given little thought to slavery—slavery was a thing that just was—until they’d made that terrible trip to England with Hagar accompanying them. One day in school Rosalie mentioned her. Hagar, Rosalie had said, was a slave. She could feel the shock this caused. “Not our slave,” she’d clarified quickly, but the damage was done.