8
Carrie covered for me with Margaret Weylin. She wanted me to know that when she caught me heading back upstairs. Actually, I don't know why I was heading upstairs, except that I didn't want to see Rufus again for a while, and there was nowhere else to go.
Carrie stopped me on the stairs, looked at me critically, then took my arm and led me back down and out to her cabin. I didn't know or care what she had in mind, but I did understand when she told me through gestures that she had told Margaret Weylin I was sick. Then she circled her neck with the thumbs and forefingers of both hands and looked at me.
"I saw," I said. "Tess and two others." I drew a ragged breath. "I thought that was over on this plantation. I thought it died with Tom Weylin."
Carrie shrugged.
"I wish I had left Rufus lying in the mud," I said. "To think I saved him so he could do something like this …!"
Carrie caught my wrist and shook her head vigorously.
"What do you mean, no? He's no good. He's all grown up now, and part of the system. He could feel for us a little when his father was running things—when he wasn't entirely free himself. But now, he's in charge. And I guess he had to do something right away, to prove it."
Carrie clasped her hands around her neck again. Then she drew closer to me and clasped them around my neck. Finally, she went over to the crib that her youngest child had recently outgrown and there, symbolically, clasped her hands again, leaving enough of an open circle for a small neck.
She straightened and looked at me.
"Everybody?" I asked.
She nodded, gestured widely with her arms as though gathering a group around her. Then, once again, her hands around her neck.
I nodded. She was almost surely right. Margaret Weylin could not run the plantation. Both the land and the people would be sold. And if Tom Weylin was any example, the people would be sold without regard for family ties.
Carrie stood looking down at the crib as though she had read my thought.
"I was beginning to feel like a traitor," I said. "Guilty for saving him. Now … I don't know what to feel. Somehow, I always seem to forgive him for what he does to me. I can't hate him the way I should until I see him doing things to other people." I shook my head. "I guess I can see why there are those here who think I'm more white than black."
Carrie made quick waving-aside gestures, her expression annoyed. She came over to me and wiped one side of my face with her fingers—wiped hard. I drew back, and she held her fingers in front of me, showed me both sides. But for once, I didn't understand.
Frustrated, she took me by the hand and led me out to where Nigel was chopping firewood. There, before him, she repeated the face-rubbing gesture, and he nodded.
"She means it doesn't come off, Dana," he said quietly. "The black. She means the devil with people who say you're anything but what you are."
I hugged her and got away from her quickly so that she wouldn't see that I was close to tears. I went up to Margaret Weylin and she'd just had her laudanum. Being with her at such times was like being alone. And being alone was just what I needed.