Candle in the Darkness - Lynn N. Austin [23]
He had just concluded his sermon with a prayer when an elderly Negro woman, as tiny and wiry as my grandmother, stood up in the back. “Preacher,” she called out, “you say if I believe in Jesus I go to heaven? That right?”
“Yes, that’s right.” He glanced around nervously, as if unused to having his church services disrupted.
“I still be a slave in heaven?” she asked.
“Well . . .” He cleared his throat. “No one has ever returned from heaven, you see, to tell us what it’s like. We have no way of knowing for sure—”
“But the Bible say heaven be paradise, ain’t that right?”
He hesitated. “Well, yes. . . .”
“It ain’t paradise for me if I still a slave.”
I heard titters of laughter behind me from the other slaves. The preacher smiled weakly. “Well . . . now. . .”
“And I know it ain’t paradise for white folks if y’all have to set down and eat that Marriage Supper of the Lamb beside us colored folk.”
The slaves laughed out loud at her words. Several of my relatives squirmed in their seats. Jonathan’s father stood, motioning for two of his house servants to remove the woman.
“Perhaps there’s a white folks’ heaven and black folks’ heaven,” my uncle said. “Then we’ll all be happy.”
Two Negroes had begun to lead the old woman away when she suddenly turned around and asked, “Then which heaven will all them little black children with white daddies be in?”
One of my aunts gasped. The gathering fell so silent I could almost hear the grass growing. Finally the preacher cleared his throat. He nodded to Aunt Abigail at the piano.
“My dear, the Doxology, please.”
“What was that old woman talking about?” I whispered to Jonathan as the congregation sang “Praise God From Whom All Blessings Flow.”
I don’t know if Jonathan heard me or not. He didn’t answer.
“Come for a walk in the woods with me,” Jonathan said when we finished eating our Sunday dinner. His invitation sounded much better than an afternoon nap.
Of all the places to explore on the plantation, I grew to love the woods the best—the soft path of pine needles beneath my feet, the lush green vegetation, the fragrant scent of mulch and pine, the buzz and rattle of insects in the summer heat. Jonathan took my hand as we jumped from stone to stone to cross a small creek, and we walked that way, hand in hand, down the winding path. I felt very brave and adventurous. When we reached a small pond, a half-dozen frogs that had been sunning themselves along the muddy shoreline leaped into the water at our approach. We sat down to rest, side by side on the grassy bank, and counted seven box turtles perched on floating logs. Jonathan tossed acorns at the closest ones, trying to scare them into the water.
“I would have brought my pole and taught you how to fish if it hadn’t been the Sabbath,” he said after a while.
I tried to picture myself fishing and couldn’t. “I don’t think proper young ladies are supposed to go fishing—even when it’s not the Sabbath.”
“Who says?”
“The teachers at my school in Richmond. They would think it was scandalous for me to go hiking in the woods with you, much less go fishing. They’re always trying to teach us what’s proper and what isn’t. Above all, we’re supposed to remember that we’re delicate young ladies.”
“Doesn’t sound like much fun at all,” he said, laughing.
“It isn’t. Where do you go to school?”
“Me? Right here on the plantation. Father hired a tutor to teach my brothers and me. He’s away now for the summer.”
We rose after a while and continued our lazy hike. Jonathan pointed out many of the trees we passed—sassafras, willow oak, hackberry, sweet gum, Virginia pine, red cedar.
“Did your tutor teach you all those names?” I asked.
“No. Grandfather taught me.”
I wondered if Grandfather had once taught my daddy the names of all the trees. And if he still remembered them.
Suddenly Jonathan stopped. He turned to me with a very serious look on his face.