Golden Poppies Page 3

  Sadie’s hand touched her belly. Her monthly bleeding hadn’t come since January. A tentative and wary hope filled her, but she had little faith that this time would be any different than the others. Too many times she’d missed her bleeding, dreamed of holding a baby in her arms, only to be devastated a few days, weeks, or even months later, when bright red signaled the death of her deepest longing. Twice she’d kept hope alive long enough to see the beginning of a face in her failure.

  She no longer informed either her mother or husband of her cycles. It was too painful to disappoint them as well as herself. Diana was the only other person who knew how often her body had let them down.

  Sadie understood Heinrich’s resentment of her failure to bear him children. She shared it. Would he be able to accept her choice to leave him so that she could be with her mother on this trip? If he understood the possibility of her condition, he would absolutely forbid her from going to Chicago. Tonight she would be attentive to him to atone for adding the complication of her absence to his already-stressful work life. In the morning she would leave with her mother even if he was displeased.

  And while she was gone, she’d pray for his understanding, or at least acceptance.

  CHAPTER 3

  JORDAN

  Chicago

  May 1894

  Mama stared right at Jordan. Her clear caramel-brown eyes shone with wisdom and certainty. If Jordan looked only at Mama’s eyes, she wouldn’t believe she was lying in her deathbed. Jordan inhaled the warm and stuffy air. Mama’s comfort won out over Jordan’s desire for an open window.

  “You been tryin’ to hide it from me, but I can tell you stopped talkin’ to God. Your spirit ain’t been the same since your Booker left us last summer.”

  Jordan exhaled. She didn’t want to think about her husband’s death. She didn’t want to talk to Mama about faith. After all the hurt, she just couldn’t believe that God cared about her, so why have a conversation with Him?

  “Maybe since before, when Margaret and the baby died.” Almost too quiet to hear, Mama stirred up that pain. Jordan’s heart twisted at the mention of her daughter and grandbaby, taken by yellow fever on April 5 and April 8 in 1892. Margaret had only been twenty-one, baby Grace not yet one.

  “I’m fine,” Jordan lied, and they both knew it. “Don’t you worry about me. Just rest.”

  “A mama always worries about her babies. No matter how old they get,” Mama declared, looking intensely at Jordan.

  Jordan gave her mother a bittersweet smile.

  “You know that, don’ you?” Mama challenged. “Or no matter where a mama is.”

  Jordan nodded.

  “Even if they gone from this earth,” Mama said.

  Jordan took in a shaky breath. She had no response.

  “I’m going to get you a cup of tea.” Jordan rose to leave.

  Mama’s gnarled fingers grabbed Jordan’s hand. “Talk to the Holy Spirit, Jesus, God. You pick . . . but you gotta find your faith, Jordan, to get you through the hard times.”

  “Mama, I don’t know what I believe in anymore,” Jordan confessed.

  “You don’ have to know how or why faith work, you just got to find someone when you feeling lost,” Mama insisted.

  Jordan swallowed. “How?”

  “Start by counting your blessings, Jordan,” Mama whispered. “Never forget to count the treasures God gave you.”

  Jordan stared at the small woman in the bed. Skepticism must have poured from her eyes; she didn’t feel blessed.

  Mama scolded, “You ate the fruit of freedom from a tree you ain’t planted. You know that, don’ you?”

  Mama was referring to one of her favorite sayings: “You eat from trees you did not plant and are obliged to plant trees you will not eat from.”

  Jordan nodded.

  Mama continued, “I ain’t saying you don’ have reason to be blue. You los’ a lot—more than most—way too young and too many times. But you gonna see the ocean! Imagine that. The ocean, baby.” Wonder filled the older woman’s voice.

  Jordan jerked her shoulders up and down.

  “It ain’t nothing to shrug at!” Mama scolded. “You the first woman to see the ocean in our family since . . . well, prob’y since Africa. They was all bound up and taken to a strange land. They had enough faith in a better tomorrow to get us here. It ain’t the promised land, but you know you got it easy—so easy—compared to them. Don’ you forget it!”

  A tear slipped out of Jordan’s eye and slid down her cheek. She wiped it away.

  “You think I don’t know that, Mama?” Jordan pushed the words out through a tight throat. “Every morning and every night I tell myself that I’m blessed, but I can’t get my soul to unfurl again.” She took a shaky breath. “I have asked God to bring me peace so many times, but He’s not listening. Instead, He’s bringing me additional pain by taking you from me.”

  “God listening. He always listening. And He always loving. But He don’ always have the power to make our prayers come true. If He did, justice would be flowin’ like water. Our Lord is jus’ like a mama. He wanting what’s best for His children but not always able to make it so.” Mama patted Jordan’s hand and said in a raspy voice, “The Lord gave me a long life, a good life. I don’ need more. I can go in peace.”

  “You may be ready, Mama, but I’m not.” Jordan didn’t try to keep the bitterness out of her voice. Four deaths in three years. She could not forgive God. She didn’t even want to.

  “Jordan, when you first born, you cry and the folks around you have smiles on they faces. If you live you life right, when you die you have a smile on you face and the folks surroundin’ you have tears in they eyes.”

  Mama continued, “We been blessed to have each other on this earth. I gonna die with a smile on my face. You tears are gonna bless me on my way home. I gonna see Pops, my mama, Margaret, and baby Grace. They all gonna be welcomin’ me to heaven. And now I get to watch over you and yours—like they been watchin’ over us.”

  Jordan took her mama’s hand in hers. Filled with sorrow, her heart hurt so much that it felt ready to burst. She brought Mama’s warm, bony fingers to her cheek and kissed them tenderly. She swallowed hard.

  “I love you, Mama. And I’m gonna miss you.” Her voice cracked. “So much. Every day. Thanks for being my mama.”

  Mama patted Jordan’s cheek. “I love you, baby. Always have. Always will. In this life and the next.”

  Later that evening Jordan paused outside the door of her mother’s death chamber as Naomi sat with Mama. The tone of their voices gave Jordan pause. She hovered by the wall, just before the open doorway, to overhear the conversation between her daughter and her mother.

  “This is gonna hit her hard,” Mama whispered. “You know that, right?”

  “I agree, Grammy,” Naomi replied. “But how can I help her?”

  Jordan was the “her” they were speaking about. Her throat swelled up.

  “She need hope again,” Mama said. “In the future.”

  Naomi spoke, but Jordan could not make out the words.

  “Like a new gran’baby or gettin’ back to teachin’. Somethin’ to help her have faith in what’s to come,” Mama said. “That girl has always expected more from life than is right and then gets too disappointed by the natural course of events.”

  Anger flared in Jordan. Mama shouldn’t be telling Naomi her business. She rushed through the door.

  The two women startled, Naomi looking as if she had been caught in a lie, and Mama holding that self-righteous I know better than you expression.

  “You need to get some sleep,” Jordan barked out. “Naomi, let Grammy rest.”

  Naomi nodded, squeezed Mama’s hand, and exchanged a conspiratorial look with her grandmother.

  “Don’ blame the girl. I brought up my worry ’bout you,” Mama explained.

  “Naomi and Malcolm aren’t anywhere near ready to have babies,” Jordan reprimanded. “Don’t encourage them in that direction.
They aren’t even married.”

  Mama shook her head from side to side with a small smile. As far as she was concerned the birth of a baby was the wedding.

  “How ’bout teaching again . . . when you get to Californi’?” Mama suggested. “I think that gonna revive your spirits. It always gave you hope, planting seeds of knowledge in the little chil’ren.”

  I’m too tired, Mama, Jordan thought but didn’t say out loud. It was such a selfish sentiment, too tired. Jordan didn’t need to add disappointment and distress to her mama’s passing. Instead, she smiled with a nod and lied, “That’s a good idea.”

  After the war, when she was still young and idealistic, Jordan had taught in a freedmen’s school in Richmond, Virginia. She poured her life into the students, working for a better tomorrow for her people. Before true equality was established, the government had abandoned its commitment to the freedmen. Jordan’s devotion kept a Colored school open, but it had been a constant strain. Abandoning the school and students when her family fled to Illinois was a festering wound to her soul.

  In Chicago she had applied to be a teacher for three years before she finally secured one of the few positions for a Colored woman in the Chicago Public Schools, but that had been taken from her as well. In 1892, she was fired in the middle of the year with no explanation. But she knew why she had been dismissed. She organized for Negro representation at the Columbian Exposition and was labeled a rabble-rouser.

  She did not want to hand over her reputation and well-being to a government that had no regard for her. She’d rather clean houses than devote herself to causes that could never be won. Mama would be deeply disappointed in her if she knew the truth. But she just didn’t have her mama’s faith, or strength.

  “More?” Jordan asked, pointing to the Bible, grateful for a distraction that would be a comfort to Mama. She sat down beside her mother’s bed.

  Mama nodded, patted her arm, and closed her eyes, but before Jordan could start reading, Mama interrupted. “Promise me something, Jordan.” Her voice was quiet and firm.

  Jordan raised her eyebrows in a question, wanting to know the request before she committed to it.

  “Dig up some crocuses to bring with you across this land, okay?”

  Relieved, Jordan sighed and smiled. She replied, “Yes, Mama, I can promise you that.”

  Mama smiled. “Then you gonna know that spring is gonna come. A better day always comes after the col’ of winter . . .”

  Jordan was glad she could offer her mother this promise. She didn’t ruin Mama’s victory by reminding her that there was no winter in Oakland.

  CHAPTER 4

  SADIE

  Train to Chicago

  May 1894

  Heinrich went to his office rather than seeing them to the train. His farewell was warmer than Sadie had expected, but still held the message: I am not pleased with your choice. She left an affectionate note under his pillow and hoped he would soften when he found it.

  The station at Broadway and Seventh bustled with activity. Mounds of bright lemons, red cabbage, and green broccoli were waiting to be loaded. Eastern markets for California produce had led to the wave of westward migration. The Oakland population had grown from ten thousand to fifty thousand residents in the twenty years Sadie had lived in California. It was small compared to the three hundred thousand occupants of San Francisco, but Oakland was a real city by any measure.

  In most of the nation, these types of vegetables and fruits would not be ripe for months, or they wouldn’t grow at all. Through the modern technology of the railroads, this produce would travel thousands of miles, across the desert and lands recently covered with snow, to family tables in urban centers such as New York City and Boston. Sadie knew more than most women about the complex and fragile produce-export business because it was Heinrich’s work.

  His employer, Mr. Spreckels, had made his fortune from the sale of California goods in the East. In turns Heinrich vented or boasted about the difficulties of his industry. Try as they might, no one could accurately predict when a product would be ripe. Heinrich’s job coordinating between the farmers, the railroads, and the produce markets in Chicago, Boston, and New York was immensely stressful. Intent on dominating all markets, not only sugar, Mr. Spreckels was continually expanding his reach and used Heinrich to do so.

  Canning the produce at its peak and then sending it east in scheduled allotments was more labor-intensive, but it was an increasing part of their business. Very little produce was wasted if it was canned, and profits could be made year-round. However, it meant Heinrich had to oversee a growing number of demanding enterprises and their employees.

  Sadie and Momma walked alongside the train, past the freight cars, the second-class cars, the dining and lounge cars, until they came to the second Pullman sleeping car. A short queue had formed at the door. The conductor taking tickets looked familiar, but Sadie only got a quick glance at his face before it was blocked by other passengers. By the time they got to the front of the line and he reached out for their tickets, her suspicion was confirmed.

  “Cousin Willie?” she asked.

  The man’s light-brown eyebrows knit in confusion, and then a huge grin appeared as he recognized the pair.

  His eyes shimmered when he replied, “Is that my cousin Sadie? Aunt Lisbeth?!”

  Sadie nodded at the handsome young man she hadn’t seen in a few years.

  “Oh my!” he exclaimed. Then he opened his arms wide, embracing each one in turn.

  “What a pleasant surprise,” Momma declared.

  “How far are you traveling?” Willie asked.

  “Chicago,” Momma explained. Then her voice got soft. “To see Mattie one last time.”

  “Oh.” His face fell in sorrow. A loud sigh escaped from his body.

  Sadie heard a loud throat clear from behind her. Getting the unspoken message, she said, “We must let the others board the train and allow you to do your job.”

  “I’ll find you when I can so we can catch up,” he said.

  “I hope to visit with your mother while we’re in Chicago,” Momma said. “We came in such a rush I didn’t have time to write to Emily to inform her that we’re coming.”

  Momma rarely referred to Emily as a sister, though they’d been fathered by the same man and had grown up on the same plantation. Emily had been a house slave at Fair Oaks with no acknowledgment of her lineage, while Momma had had all the privileges that went with being the daughter of a planter in Virginia. It was hard for Sadie to reconcile the mother who raised her with the knowledge of Lisbeth’s childhood with Mattie and then Emily as her servants, her slaves.

  Momma doled out information about her childhood in measured doses, if at all. She answered most questions about that time by saying, “It was a long time ago; I hardly remember.”

  Aunt Emily, Uncle William, and Cousin Willie had been extended family to Sadie from the time they moved to Ohio when she was five until she moved to California when she was eleven.

  In the intervening twenty years, they had not once seen Aunt Emily or Uncle William, though Momma and Emily traded letters on occasion. Cousin Willie had called on them a while back when he had been temporarily assigned to the Oakland route for one trip.

  Willie’s eyes widened with concern.

  “Is Aunt Emily unwell?” Sadie asked.

  He shook his head almost imperceptibly. “Mother is fine.” He put a smile on his face, but his eyes were flat. “She will be glad to see you as well.”

  Sadie felt dismissed and left with the suspicion that he was withholding information from them, but this wasn’t the time or place to press her cousin for answers.

  Malcolm was waiting for them in the car. He was dressed in porter attire: dark pants, dark vest, and the signature round cap with a small brim and stiff sides.

  Sadie opened her arms, ready to hug him, but when she saw him pull back, she dropped them. She had a deep affection for him because he was Miss Jordan’s son, but apparently
he did not share the sentiment.

  “Welcome aboard!” Malcolm greeted them.

  “Thank you,” they chorused in unison.

  “Have you ever ridden in a Pullman car?”

  They both shook their heads.

  “You will be amazed to find it as comfortable as the finest hotel in Europe.”

  He gestured with a tilt of his head for them to follow. They walked down the right side of the wood-trimmed car, passing three pairs of seats on the left. Malcolm stopped and waved toward two wide chairs covered in a rich-green brocade that faced one another next to a large window—their home for the journey.

  “This will be your living room, dressing room, and bedroom,” he explained. He gestured to gold velvet curtains hanging by the windows. “These are for privacy, should you desire it day or night.”

  He pulled up a board nestled behind the seat. “When you are ready to sleep, this comes up to make a partition between you and your neighbors.”

  He patted the cushions and said, “This folds into the lower bunk. The upper bunk is here.” He tapped a rounded wooden cabinet that bulged in the elegant ceiling. “The water closets are at each end. The smoking car for the men is this way, and the lounge is down here.”

  Malcolm explained the route of the train, details about stops, and the etiquette for the dining car.

  “Where do you recommend we keep this?” Momma showed him the glass that held a plant with three bright poppy flowers.

  He raised his eyebrows.

  “For your grandmother,” Sadie explained.

  Malcolm broke into a wide grin. “She is going to be delighted. I wish I’d thought of it myself.”

  He took the glass and set it on the armrest by the window.

  “Will that work? I can bring twine to attach it so it won’t fall.”

  “That is perfect,” Momma replied. “Thank you.”

  “Thank you,” Malcolm replied in earnest. “Please don’t hesitate to let me know if you need anything else. I’m your guide and at your service.”