“You have to make a white man keep his promises. I was on him every day about my babies. I told him it was a sin keeping people in chains, profiting off their blood and labor. He’d go to hell if he didn’t atone. Never let him forget that.
“Don’t think he listened until he started getting sick. Probably even saw the gates of hell opening up to greet him because fast as you please, he had a lawyer in the house settling matters.”
“Did he—did he . . .” I hardly knew what to ask. “。 . . keep his promise?”
She sniffed. “Yeah, in that lopsided way that white folks do. They give you what you want from one hand while stealing from you with the other. But I made do.” She leaned back, crossed her arms, and looked me up and down. “Now, what we gonna do about you?”
She was crazy. Must be crazy. I surveyed the distance between us and the door, but like she had read my mind, she grabbed me by the wrist. I cried out softly.
“You’ve done crossed a line, child. I don’t fault you for it—you didn’t know a line was there. I ain’t got nothing against you. Just remember that.”
I raised my free arm to defend myself, but just as quickly she let me go. She pushed herself up from the bed and lowered herself to the floor. She walked stiffly, like her joints were sore. I wondered how long she’d been sitting there while I slept. And had she stolen my dreams, drawing them out of me with a magnet or some other item full of voodoo and ill wishes? I got up and looked over my dress and veil. The veil seemed wrong, like it had been handled and replaced, but not in the way I had left it. I had a sense that Founder had done this, perhaps even cursed the veil. I wouldn’t wear it.
I rushed to my door and opened it. I wanted to run to Mr. Colchester. I wanted to tell him how Founder had frightened me and how I needed him to tell me again that we would be married. I went five, maybe six steps down the hall before I stopped. The first rays of the morning sun were washing over the gallery. Standing there in the light must have brought me back to my right mind, because I looked down at my bare feet and at my plain calico nightgown. What would he say to see me running through Fortitude like that?
Founder’s words had hurt like she had reached inside me, grabbed pieces of my soul, and scattered them across the bedroom floor. I needed to gather the pieces, to gather myself again so I could think properly. I withdrew into my room, turned the key in the door’s lock, and sank to my knees.
“The wedding is today,” I told myself. “The wedding is today. The wedding is today. The wedding is today.”
I said the words as a reminder and a comfort. As long as Christian and I married today, nothing Founder had said would matter. He would show her to be wrong, so simply and utterly wrong. If we spoke of it at all, we would do it after the wedding, when Christian would make me laugh about it and probably make me promise never to doubt his love or his intentions ever again.
I was so eager to get to that moment. I poured water from my pitcher, and after I had washed, I felt better. I dressed carefully. Instead of the veil I fastened in my hair a white lily, taken from the vase of blooms on my bedside table.
I couldn’t eat. I didn’t want to sit with Missus Livingston. I only wanted to get to the church, so I stayed in the hall and waited for Mr. Colchester. I heard a carriage outside and opened the door to find Poney ready to take us to the church. He waved and smiled at me. For the first time that day I felt hopeful.
Then I heard her voice—Founder’s voice, weighty and heated, raining down words on someone’s recalcitrant head. It could only be Mr. Colchester’s. They were in the library.
I ran to the door and berated myself for not going to him sooner. If I had, we would have been standing together against her onslaught. We would have been together. Instead I found him alone in front of her, his arms crossed and his head bowed. He looked, for all his height above Founder, like a small boy being scolded.
A small boy.
Suddenly it was like a bolt of lightning struck the room, filling it with clarity and danger all at once. Mr. Colchester saw me, and his head sank lower, again like a boy. Founder came at me full of bluster like a storm. She grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him. She sounded like . . . she sounded like . . .
A mother.
“I don’t care how many thousands of acres her daddy owned—she ain’t got none of that now. And in the eyes of the law you won’t be legal. We’ve come too far for you to mess this up now.”
I wanted to ask him what she was saying, but there were too many layers I didn’t understand. I could only stare at Founder’s mouth moving so fast, and her eyes creased tiny with her anger.
“She may talk nice, and she may be educated, but she’s still colored. And the world knows it.” She looked at me and shook a finger in my face. “You don’t get to have him. My son was meant for something better.”
“Your son?”
“Yeah.” She clapped her hands hard, twice. “MY SON. Stupid gal, he ain’t white! No more than you!”
She dropped my arm, and by the grace of God, I didn’t fall. I grasped the folds of my skirt in front of me so I could hold on to myself. I had nothing else.
“What is this?” I couldn’t get the words out. I stared at Christian until he finally had to look at me.
“Promises,” he said. “It’s about promises I didn’t make.”
“Promises I worked hard to get! For you! For everyone!” Founder shook a fist in my face. “Like I told you, I held that man to the fire—wouldn’t let him get out of it.” She turned to Christian again. “And where would we all be if I hadn’t done it! Now you standing there whining like you done had to sacrifice something. You who’ve never done a lick of fieldwork in your life.”
“But we are here!” he protested. “Safe! And I got us here! Why can’t I have my own life now?”
“You know why!”
“Christian,” I said. “Your father?”
“My father,” he said. “He put restrictions on my inheritance. Remember, I told you that.”
“Yes.”
“From the moment he was born, I told him!” Founder was sparking, leaning on one foot and the other, dancing with the energy. “‘My baby can pass for white! You’ve got to claim him! You’ve got to!’” She stomped her foot. “‘I will curse you, Louis Colchester!’ That’s what I said. ‘I will curse you to my dying day if you don’t do right by our boy.’”
“Jeannette, he raised me as white,” Christian said. “Founder looked after me, but . . .”
“He didn’t know I was his mama. Not right off. His daddy wouldn’t let me, but I didn’t argue that. He was right. Wasn’t safe, not when you was young. And you went to school, got educated, wore good clothes.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“The old weasel got sick and died—that’s what he did. Had the nerve to leave a will with conditions. His conditions.”
Christian faced Founder, but he spoke to me. “I could only inherit the estate if I keep living as white.”
“But how could he do that?”