Chapter 11 #2
A smile slowly lifted Abigail’s lip. “Oops, Annabelle, I did. Well, what about that fat clump of green grass over there?”
“You did it again!”
My middle girl’s blunder sent the children into a loud laughing fit.
“Y’all stop being silly and come on here.” I continued forward, motioning them to follow. They obeyed, all the while quizzing Hattie. And supplying answers on her behalf. When bored of teaching, they took to hopping like jackrabbits alongside the trail.
Playful exertion left Abigail coughing. “Come on back here, little bit, and walk with me.”
She did so, bottom lip dragging with disappointment.
“Pick your lip up before you step on it.”
She grinned despite herself. “I liked teaching Baby Hattie her colors. I think she favors blue the best.”
“Really, now? What’s your favorite?”
She tilted her head, thoughtfully. “Red. No, wait. Green? No. Purple! Wait… They’re all pretty. Lemme think.” My four-year-old studied the ground as we walked before looking up at me. “I don’t think I have a favorite yet. I’ll try to get one before we get out west.”
I laughed and smoothed a hand over her head.
“Tell me a helping herb for each color you mentioned.” I’d begun teaching my girls the things Mama Ruth taught me.
The subject never held Annabelle’s interest more than a minute.
Abigail, on the other hand, showed keen curiosity and always had questions, giving me hope that she’d carry on a healing tradition.
“Ummm, red clover and purple—”
“Not so fast, Miss Ma’am. Tell me their use.”
“Whenever somebody’s throat hurts, you make ’em red clover tea.” Her voice rose steadily, excitedly. “And that time Aunt Ella had poison ivy you made a paste outta blue violets. And you did something with purple cornflowers to cure Master Jonathan’s toothache.”
“Coneflower,” I corrected, scowling not at the mispronunciation, but at Master Jonathan being but a handful of years older than my Annabelle.
And at their shared lineage. He was my children’s kin in a system of enslavement where their invisible lineage made no difference.
It offered no benefits. Being sired by the same man made offspring siblings.
Except here. Shared blood didn’t create an acknowledged connection. One was master. The other servant.
“You did well, Abigail.” I abandoned messy thoughts, pleased by her retention.
“Can I walk with the kids now?” She’d had enough of herbal recitations and hurried off when I nodded.
“Watch yourself. Don’t get winded.”
“Hooty, hoo! Hooty, woo!” My caution to Abigail had barely left my lips when a scout came down the trail, swinging a cowbell.
“Boss says no stopping for the midday meal. Gotta get everybody across the river by nightfall.” One of the many designated scouts, or messenger boys tasked with quickly getting information from one point of the vast caravan to the next, repeated his message.
It was a game of relay for these scouts positioned at various points and places from the front to the rear.
They were our conduits—our eyes, as well as our ears.
“Well, Miss Hattie, guess we’ll have to get you fed another way.” Most times we stopped at midday to let the livestock drink, graze, and rest while we did the same. After handing out the midday meal, I nursed my infant. Not today.
“I’ll have to nurse while walking.” Doing so wasn’t as easy as it was when she was less chunky.
That didn’t keep me from gripping my walking stick between my legs to free my hands and shift my baby in her sling from my back to my breasts.
I unfastened my bodice and situated her. Her suckling sounds were immediate.
“Miss Zinnie, Miss Carter says you gotta come check Miss Peterson.”
The scout’s message left me sighing as he trotted past, towards Lovie and Ella at the rear.
Miss Peterson was expectant and near the end of her pregnancy.
She’d cited innumerable, unbearable aches over the past week.
Each time I’d checked her lady parts her water sac was intact, as was her mucus button.
I could only reassure her that all was well before administering soothing teas and massaging her belly, coaxing her little one to make its appearance.
“Here we go again, little bit. Let’s go soothe this plantation woman.”
Walking stick in hand, my nursing infant cocooned in her harness, I located my medicine bundle on our oxcart and hurried towards the Peterson contingent, pausing briefly to explain my mission and give instructions to Annabelle and Abigail. “Stay with the others. Don’t dare step off this trail!”
Missouri’s grasslands spread vast and wide, providing a verdant landscape as I made my way to the Peterson contingent.
Katydids hid in the bushes, their chirping song filling the air that mild May day.
By the time I reached my destiny a mile or more from my starting place, sweat trickled down my back and beneath my arms from my vigorous pace despite a cooling breeze.
I found the Petersons’ wagon aboard an oversized ferry several yards from the water’s edge, bobbing in place with the river’s current.
Composed of split logs bound together, the transport was manned by a tall, well-built Negro whose time pulleying ferries from one side of the river to the next was evident in his muscled arms, the sweat-stained shirt straining across his barrel chest. He nodded a silent greeting as I called from the riverbank, reading in the false stoicism on his face his displeasure at this delay. “Miss Carter, ma’am, you sent for me?”
The woman who’d been my mistress long before I had children popped her gray head beyond the wagon’s covering. “Of course I did, Zinnie! This baby’s coming. Get on out here.”
“Out here” suddenly seemed like eternal yards versus twenty.
Maybe thirty. I had no way of knowing the river’s depth, its speed, or if it kept company with water moccasins.
I knew enough about swimming to avoid drowning, but after my Abigail’s experience I was hesitant.
However, I’d been given a direct order that couldn’t be disobeyed without consequence.
With the mood Old Lady Carter’s in, consequences could be violent.
“You’ll need to do something with that.” She pointed at the bundle at my breasts that was my own infant, who’d already nursed to her satisfaction and now slept. “Miss Peterson requires your undivided attention. She can’t have that if you’re fooling with your own brat.”
Hot annoyance flashed through me, but my face remained as placid as the ferryman’s. “Yes, ma’am. I can take my daughter to my sister.”
“There’s no time! Give it to one of them.
” She waved a gnarled hand towards a cluster of children from the Peterson plantation, waiting their time to cross the river.
The biggest one appeared barely as tall as Abigail, but I knew better than to argue his suitability with this querulous plantation woman.
“Child, come here.” I scooped Hattie from her harness while approaching him. “You know who my sister is?”
The wide-eyed boy nodded. “The one with the baby in her stomach?” His lisp signified his youngness.
“Yes. Here.” I positioned his arms about Hattie, showing him how to hold her correctly.
She was a solid, healthy baby and he wobbled with her added weight.
I steadied them both. “My sister’s name is Miss Lovie.
She’s near the rear.” I lowered my voice to a whisper.
“Don’t give this child to anyone but her. Can you do that?”
“Yes, ma’am.” He smiled proudly at being entrusted with such a task.
“Go on, then.” I turned him in Lovie’s direction and silenced my misgivings about this thigh-high child carrying one as big as mine, knowing I had no choice considering Miss Carter’s demands and Miss Peterson’s predicament.
I watched him go, my breath catching when he stumbled. I thanked heaven when he righted himself without incident.
“Zinnie, this baby can’t deliver itself!”
“Yes, ma’am, Miss Carter.” I made a show of removing the brogans from my feet and looping their laces about my apron strings before securing my medicine bundle atop my head when in truth I was eyeing the child carrying mine.
I cast quick glances down the long line of wagons and moving bodies coming up behind, hoping Lovie, or Ella, would miraculously appear.
Neither did. God sent Alretha instead.
A sigh of relief escaped my lips as Alretha appeared in the distance and approached the child struggling with Hattie.
They were too far for me to hear their discussion, but she looked my way when he pointed in my direction.
She waved before removing the apron about her waist to fashion a makeshift harness in which to secure my infant.
I waved in return and mouthed a silent thank you I knew she couldn’t see before launching into midwifery.
Carefully, I descended the riverbank, glad Miss Carter had retreated into the wagon and was no longer impatiently watching.
As I stepped into the water, the river rocks were smooth beneath my feet, making it necessary to take slow, cautious steps.
Keeping my medicine bundle safely atop my head became a divine balancing act as I moved beyond the riverbank.
Each step took me deeper into cold waters that rose from kissing my ankles and knees to rushing about my hips.
When it reached my waist, I had flashes of Abigail being sucked beneath a watery surface and experienced momentary panic.
Panic flashed into fear when I took another step only to find the earth had disappeared.
Nothing was beneath my feet. I was suddenly floating.
Mother Yemaya, be with me!
I called on Africa’s goddess of the sea Mama Ruth talked about in her mermaid stories.
“To the right! Move right, ma’am!”