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And then, on April 4, Elizabeth Keckley came around and confused me more.

She came in the fancy barouche that the White House let her use, with the matched black horses. And with Jehu, the White House coachman.... She'd sent him around to take us to the inauguration in March. But Mama was too sick to go. So I went alone. It was raining. The streets were full of mud, but Jehu took me to the exact spot of the grandstand where Mrs. Keckley's "girls" who worked for her, sat.

Now she came bearing gifts: canned sardines and oysters, slabs of cheese, pickles, honeyed ham, bread. She was angry about the freedmen she'd just visited for her Relief Society.

"Living in shacks!" She drew off her kid gloves. I took her lavender cape and hung it on a peg in the hall. "They huddle together talking of the good old times on the plantation."

It wasn't as if she'd never seen them before. She visited them all the time on Murder Bay, on the lower stretches of the Washington Canal.

Mama said she was Mrs. Lincoln's confidante. She never left the woman's side when little Willie Lincoln died.

I took the foodstuffs into the kitchen. Elizabeth Keckley followed. "You shouldn't have brought food," I protested. But I was glad for it. Now I wouldn't have to dip into the twenty gold pieces Johnny had given me for a while.

"It's left from last evening's reception. Such a waste, all that lavish entertaining. The president eats nothing. Apples on occasion. He's wasting away. I take the leftovers to Murder Bay when I can. But this morning I thought of you and your mama. How is she?"

"No better."

"My best seamstress." She sighed.

My best mother, I thought.

"The dress she was working on is finished," I assured her. "I stayed up late doing the hem. And I'll finish the flounces on the other Mama was doing if you want."

"Wonderful! You're getting to be a regular little dressmaker. Would you like to be in my employ when your mama passes on?"

I pulled out a chair for her and set down two cups. The water was boiling for tea. I fetched it. I poured carefully and spoke the same way. "I never thought to become a dressmaker."

"What did you think to become?"

"Nothing yet. I'm only fourteen."

"When I was fourteen, I was sent from home to live with my master's eldest son and his wife. I was their only servant. I did the work of three."

But you had no choice, I wanted to say, you were a slave. I didn't say it.

Elizabeth Keckley was nigra. But not like Ella May. There were two kinds of nigras in Washington. The contrabands, who came expecting forty acres and a mule. They were trained only "to the hoe," as people said. At first the white people welcomed them. But now there was a lot of bad feeling. There were never enough rations for them. In winter many died in their shacks. Nobody knew what to do. We fought the war for this? You could see it on people's faces.

Then there were the regular people of color who had been in Washington for years. Many of them now resented the contrabands, because they disturbed the order of things. And because the whites were beginning to mark no difference between the contrabands and the nigras who had education and jobs, like Elizabeth Keckley.

We learned about the problem in school. "Who will bear the increased taxes for schooling the contrabands?" Mrs. McQuade asked us. "When the war ends, who will get the jobs? Who will have a place in the new order of things? Think, girls, think!"

Girls who attended Miss Winefred Martin's School for Young Ladies were supposed to think. Mama said Daddy had always wanted me in a school like that and had set aside money for my schooling. "I honored his wishes," she'd said. "I just want you to know that."

Elizabeth Keckley was awaiting my answer. "Do you mean for me to come and work for you right away?" I asked.

"I fill my openings right away. I must. I have other important clients besides Mrs. Lincoln. And with the war ending—well, next fall will be a brilliant season."

"I have to finish school. My