An Acquaintance with Darkness - Ann Rinaldi [5]
"A person goes to school to find a means of support. I am offering you that."
"Daddy said a person goes to school to learn how to think."
She stirred her tea. "I and my race have not had the luxury of that."
She'd had a hard life. Mama said she'd lost a son in the war, a half-white son, her only child. I knew, too, that she'd purchased her own freedom. That was no small accomplishment. Yet I knew she would never understand why I didn't want to become a dressmaker.
I didn't quite understand it myself. What would I do when Mama passed on? All I had were the many vague ambitions and desires that Daddy's lessons and my schooling at Miss Winefred Martin's had instilled in me. And Johnny's twenty gold pieces.
I knew there was more in life than taking up occupation with the needle. Mama had set out every day for work with no joy. And come home with less. I wanted to do something else with my life, something fine. I didn't know what it was yet, but I knew I could do it if I set my mind to it.
I felt the knowing in my bones sometimes. The surge of desire to accomplish. The opening up of possibilities. The connection to dreams. It pounded in my blood at given moments.
"You must harness those feelings," Mrs. McQuade had told me. "Focus them on your goals like you focus a telescope on a star. You must work hard and study."
"Where will you live?" Elizabeth Keckley was asking.
"I don't know yet."
Her yellow-green eyes fixed on me. Cannon from one of the many fortifications around the city would fix on you with less accuracy. "I can find you a room with the family of one of my girls, if you wish."
It would have been so easy to say yes, I'd take the job, I'd live with the family of one of her girls. I could always have got Daddy's tuition money refunded by the school. Then I'd have had that plus the money from Johnny. But then the rest of my life I'd have been unable to see beyond the seam I was working on.
"Did you notice how the sun came out just as President Lincoln got up to speak on Inauguration Day?" she asked.
I said yes, I did.
"Most people remarked on that. I saw something else. I saw the star that came out in the heavens. It was noon. It was a brilliant star. It was the noonday of his life at that inauguration. It was a sign, a summons from on high."
Now she sounded just like Ella May, who saw omens at the drop of a hat. The morning she left she'd said she was going not only because the government didn't give her two shifts but because there was a curse on the street. Bad things would soon happen here, she'd said. A curse on H Street? I'd laughed. The people here were so dull they would welcome a curse or two.
"We don't all get a star at noon," Mrs. Keckley went on. "The rest of us have to muddle through and find our summons from on high where we can. The trick is to answer it when it comes."
The trick for me right now was getting through Mama's death. I thought it a bit presumptuous that Mrs. Keckley thought her offer my star at noon.
"There is not always a star at noon, Emily. There is not always a star. But when a summons is given, we should take it."
"I appreciate the offer, ma'am. I would like time to study on it."
She set her cup down. She stood up. The broad shoulders in the black silk dress with the lace collar were straight. She was not accustomed to having her wishes disregarded, I could see that. "I hope you are not thinking of living with the Surratts," she said.
I stared at her. "I don't know yet where I shall live."
"That woman allowed her brother to take your mother's house. There is a serpent in the breasts of those people. Once serpents take up residence in a domicile, they do not vacate the premises."
I sighed. For all your accomplishments, I thought, you are still like Ella May.
"And now I will pay a short visit to your mama. Is that tea for her?"
I'd fixed a tray. "Yes."
She reached for it. I handed it over. "Don't tell Mama that Richmond has fallen," I said. "Her sister is there. It would cause her needless worry."
The yellow-green