Golden Poppies Read online

  “I’m glad they’re here too,” Jordan reassured her mother.

  “I been thinkin’,” Mama said.

  Jordan chuckled. Even on her deathbed Mama was planning.

  She said, “Don’ bury my shell with me.”

  Tears filled Jordan’s eyes. She bit her lip and took a shaky breath.

  Mama put her hand to her neck, touching the shell on a string that was always tied there. Jordan had one just like it, stored away. Lisbeth too.

  According to Mama the cowrie shells had come from Africa—long ago, likely in the early 1700s as far as Jordan could account. They traveled across the Atlantic Ocean on the neck of a terrified woman in the hold of a crowded boat. Generation after generation, Jordan’s maternal grandmothers passed the shells down to subsequent daughters—whispering words of protection, strength, and freedom along with the gift from Africa.

  Mama had worn one around her neck for as long as Jordan could remember, the rest squirreled away in a treasure box. When she ran before the war, Mama left one for Lisbeth. Jordan was given hers when she stayed in Richmond. They’d yet to give one to Naomi. She didn’t know how many were left in the box. They’d be part of her inheritance soon. Too soon.

  Mama continued, “I wan’ you to take my shell with you to California—throw it in the Pacific Ocean to let the ancestors know we free now. You understan’?”

  Mama’s yellowing eyes stared at Jordan. There was no denying what was coming.

  “I will, Mama,” Jordan forced out through a constricted throat.

  Mama patted her arm.

  “Thank you, Jordan,” she said. “That jus’ feel like the right thing to do.”

  Mama closed her eyes. Her breathing grew deeper.

  Half asleep she spoke again, “Bury me in my red dress. I wanna look bright when I meet Jesus.”

  Jordan smiled and took a deep breath. “All right, Mama.”

  “And see ever’body else,” Mama added. “Don’ tell, but I’m most excited to see my mama. Only ’cause it been the longest since I seen her. An’ I have so many questions.”

  A sweet smile filled Mama’s face as she planned her family reunion in heaven. Tears streamed down Jordan’s face as she watched her mother drift away.

  CHAPTER 6

  SADIE

  Chicago

  May 1894

  “You Momma wrote to me about you angels that never made it from heaven,” Mattie said in a sweet, raspy voice.

  Sadie’s throat choked up. She looked at Momma, an unspoken request for help filling her eyes.

  “We continue to pray for a little one to join our family.” Momma patted Sadie’s hand.

  Mattie gave Sadie that look of pity she hated so much. “Losin’ an angel is hard on a spirit, ain’t it, Jordan.”

  Miss Jordan looked at Sadie, her jaw set hard, though her voice was kind. “I’m sorry, Sadie. It’s a pain that never really leaves you.”

  Sadie bit her lip and nodded.

  “We have not given up hope we’ll have the joy of a baby one day soon,” Momma said.

  Sadie nodded in agreement, as if she fully shared her mother’s faith that God wanted her to be a mother. She touched her belly. It felt more rounded, but that might simply be her hard desire bulging out.

  Mattie smiled and waved Sadie over. Sadie came close to the wise woman. Mattie reached out her dark hand, the joints of her fingers swollen, and placed it on Sadie’s belly. Tears pushed at the edges of Sadie’s eyes.

  “God gonna bless you with a baby soon. I feel it in my bones.”

  “Thank you, ma’am. I sure hope so,” Sadie said. Then she smiled. In that moment, she had faith. Mattie’s touch and words felt like they had the power to grant her singular prayer.

  “Yep.” Mattie nodded. “Real soon.” She smiled and her lids came down over her eyes. She whispered, nearly asleep, “It nice to know life gonna keep going.” Her head rolled from side to side. “Your babies gonna see things I don’ even know how to dream about.”

  “How are Samuel and Nora?” Momma asked Jordan about her brother and his wife as they prepared supper in the kitchen.

  “Good. The same,” Miss Jordan replied. “Their three children live near them in Cleveland. His oldest son considered a move to Chicago, but Otis decided to stay put now that we are planning to leave.”

  “And his grandchildren?” Momma asked. “Your holiday letter said that Otis had a fourth child.”

  A lovely smile broke across Miss Jordan’s face. “Samuel adores his grandchildren. I never see him as excited as when he talks about them.”

  “That’s nice,” Momma said. With longing in her voice, she agreed, “Babies are a blessing. Are Samuel and his family coming for . . . ?”

  Miss Jordan shook her head. “He can’t be here at the end. He doesn’t have it in him to see our mama on her way.”

  Momma nodded and said, “Not everybody can.”

  “It was the same when our father died,” Jordan said in a hushed voice. “Samuel came for a final visit and then left before Pops took his last breath. Samuel says he doesn’t want to remember our parents as anything other than strong and alive.”

  A week after their arrival, while getting ready for bed, Momma said, “Sadie, as you can see, Mattie isn’t in a hurry to leave this earth. I know you told Heinrich we would return in two weeks, but I wish to stay until the end.”

  Sadie’s stomach clenched. Her bleeding had yet to come, but it was still too early to tell Momma. She had lost more than one pregnancy after going this long. And she did not want to draw attention away from Mattie’s passing.

  Also, it was right that Heinrich learned of their blessing before anyone else. It would be one way to demonstrate that her devotion to him was equal to her attachment to her mother.

  She considered telling him in a letter but rejected the idea so she could see the joy on his face when she told him in person.

  Sadie was torn between staying with her mother and getting home before her body broadcast the news to the world.

  Momma continued, “Jordan has expressed her desire to have me stay as well. I will be fine returning on my own should you decide to leave as planned.”

  Sadie sighed. “How long do you believe it will be?”

  Momma gave her a tender smile. “Only the Lord knows. Death has its own timeline. It does not fit into our schedules, much as we might ask it to,” Momma said. “Like birth, it comes when it comes.”

  “You are very devoted to Jordan,” Sadie remarked.

  “Jordan was the first baby I ever loved,” Momma said, her voice tender and poignant.

  Sadie waited, hoping her mother would go on and have a rare moment of speaking about her childhood. Sadie nodded, while Momma looked off into the distance, lost in thought.

  “How old were you?” Sadie finally asked.

  “Hmm?” Momma thought. “I was young, ten or so, definitely not more than twelve because Mattie left soon after my birthday.” Momma looked right at her. “I remember that.” Momma shook her head and continued the story. “It was so sudden, the love,” Momma explained, wonder in her voice. “Mattie put this precious being in my arms. She trusted me with this tiny baby that was not even a day old.” She smiled, reliving the memory. “I remember the feeling like it was yesterday. I touched Jordan’s little fingers and my heart . . . changed. It opened up and suddenly Jordan was in it—inside my soul.”

  Momma laughed with a shrug. “It’s remarkable. All this time later and I can still feel it in my body.”

  “I experienced that when I held Tina for the first time,” Sadie said, remembering the birth of her niece.

  Momma smiled and nodded. “After that first day I loved to be with Jordan. I’d slip away from the house to sit with her in my lap out in the fields while Mattie picked cotton. It was hot and dirty, but nicer than being lonely in my room.”

  Sadie’s chest swelled for her mother.

  “Aunt Emily wasn’t a good companion?” Sadie asked.

  Momma pondered that. “To be honest I just don’t remember her well from that time. She was ethereal. Not kind, not cruel. She was present with what I needed—my comb, my dress, my tea—but I never shared my mind with her, and it never occurred to me to ask about her.” Momma looked up. “I’m ashamed when I think of it.”

  “You were young,” Sadie reassured.

  “I was twenty-one when I left,” Momma said. “Not so young. Older than Naomi.” Lost in her memories, Momma stared into the distance, then said, “I didn’t know she was my sister until I saw our family tree while searching for my baptismal paper.”

  Sadie nodded, though Momma wasn’t looking at her. No words of solace came to mind; the loneliness and cruelty of her mother’s childhood struck a painful chord. Fortunately, Momma had found a way to leave.

  Sadie asked, “You really proposed to Poppa?”

  Momma smiled. “I did.” She shook her head again. “Oh my, that was the most difficult and the best decision of my life.”

  “What gave you the courage to do it?”

  Momma sat back. She stared at Sadie. Her voice hard, she said, “You know what happened.”

  Sadie shook her head. “No . . . I don’t. You’ve never spoken of it.” She corrected herself. “You have mentioned ‘the incident under the willow,’ but not the specifics.”

  Momma looked puzzled. “Truly? I’ve never told you?”

  Sadie shook her head. She longed to hear her mother’s deeply held secret.

  “You know I was engaged to another man—Edward Cunningham?” Momma asked.

  Sadie nodded, then smiled. “Poppa called him ‘the best catch on the James River.’”

  Momma didn’t smile back. She took in a deep, slow breath and sighed.

  Looking pained and sounding numb, she recounted the story: “Edward’s family invited me to his garden to celebrate my twenty-first birthday. We’d been engaged for a year, and I had grown to admire his mother very much. She was elegant and confident. Everyone felt they had the best estate. I look back and wonder at the notion. In my memory it does not seem so different from the others, but there was fierce competition for Edward. And I had won . . .”

  Momma shook her head at the memory. She continued, “I remember walking through the grounds, feeling full of awe and gratitude that this would be my home soon. My mother was forced to move far when she married, while I would live near Mary, my dear friend, and my family. I was certain God had blessed me. I stepped off the path to cross under the branches of a willow tree . . .”

  Sadie’s heart sped up. The incident under the tree.

  Momma spoke in a calm voice. “I imagined being with my children under its boughs just as I had loved resting and reading with Mattie under the umbrella of our willow tree when I was young.”

  Momma stopped talking. She looked down and then up again, right at Sadie, and announced, “Under the tree I saw Edward mounted on a field hand.”

  Sadie sucked in her breath and her hand covered her heart. “Oh, I’m sorry, Momma!”

  She nodded, continuing, “I fled. Edward chased me, apologizing for ruining my birthday, assuming I would accept his actions, but I didn’t. I couldn’t dismiss what I had seen.

  “A few days later I drove a wagon to your granny and poppy’s house—back then I thought of it as the Johnsons’—to propose. Your father was a gentle boy, who’d become a kind man. He’d already bought land in a free state. Marrying Matthew seemed the only solution to my dilemma.”

  Momma paused at the memory. Her demeanor shifted entirely, and she laughed.

  Curious, Sadie wondered aloud, “What is so amusing?”

  “Oh my goodness. It took a lot of courage to ask. First I had to determine if your father had . . . with a field hand.” Momma flushed red. Sadie had never seen her so flustered. “I didn’t have any words. Relations. I finally asked if he’d had relations with a field hand.”

  “Oh, Momma.” Sadie laughed. “I can imagine Poppa being patient and . . . confused.”

  “He was.” Momma laughed. Then her voice grew tender. “I almost fled from embarrassment, but he stopped me. Showing me the kindness in his heart, after I proposed to him, Matthew got down on one knee and asked me if I would give him the honor of becoming his wife.”

  Sadie and Momma exchanged a moist-eyed smile.

  “How delightful!” Sadie gushed. “I can’t believe you have never told me this story before.”

  “It came along with such a terrible tragedy . . . it was hard to speak of.” Momma gazed off again, the levity broken. “How could I tell you about the cruelty of men forcing themselves on women? I wanted to protect you.” Momma exhaled. “I am staying until Mattie passes over. Please do whatever is best for you. I will be fine should I need to journey back without you. Malcolm will ensure my well-being.”

  Sadie weighed her decision. She did not feel good about her mother making such a trip on her own. Even with Malcolm’s attentions, it was a strenuous journey for a woman in her late fifties to make alone. Another week or even two should not make a difference. If she was calculating correctly, and she held this pregnancy, this baby would have a birthday in October, five months away.

  “I’ll write to Heinrich to gauge the strength of his feelings, and to Diana to confirm that her cousin is available to continue working,” Sadie said.

  “Thank you, Sadie,” Momma said. The relief on her face confirmed Sadie’s belief that Momma preferred company despite her proclamation that she could travel on her own.

  Dearest Heinrich,

  I miss you terribly and hope you are faring well without me and Momma. She sends her greetings.

  We are enjoying our stay in this lovely city. Downtown Chicago has a lovely river and rests upon the shore of Lake Michigan, which is so enormous it seems to be an ocean. You cannot possibly see to the other side. The architecture of the buildings is exquisite—as is the touch of the perfect breeze. The locals assure us that this weather is not common throughout the year, but only the fortune of our timing.

  We visited the Field Columbian Museum this week. It occupies one of the new buildings constructed for last year’s Columbian Exposition. You would have enjoyed the exhibits on anthropology, botany, geology, and most especially zoology. There were animals from around the world preserved as if they were still alive.

  Tomorrow we are calling on my aunt Emily. She is Momma’s half sister on her father’s side. You most likely remember her son, Willie—that Pullman conductor who called on us in 1892. We had the pleasure of his company during our eastward journey.

  Momma’s nurse, Mattie, continues to fade, though her passing is going more slowly than I anticipated. We’ve been invited to stay through the end, and Momma has accepted that request. I prefer to remain with her, but will leave that decision to you as you have already been inconvenienced. You have sacrificed your routine as well as your earnings for us to be on this journey. I will return on the next available train if you desire.

  Your loving wife,

  Sadie

  Sadie considered her language carefully. Heinrich was not comfortable with overt displays of affection. He found direct expression of the word love to be manipulative and overly sentimental, but she felt particularly tender and grateful to him and wanted him to know it. Perhaps he would welcome her affection under these circumstances.

  CHAPTER 7

  JORDAN

  Chicago

  May 1894

  “Can you accompany Lisbeth and Sadie on their call this afternoon?” Jordan asked Naomi as they were washing up the breakfast dishes.

  “They know another family in Chicago?” Naomi asked.

  “Emily Smith is Lisbeth’s half sister,” Jordan explained. “Massa Wainwright was their father.”

  “Massa. That word is repulsive.” Naomi shuddered visibly, her shoulders flinching back and her face scrunched together in disgust as she dried a plate.

  “I didn’t make up his name.” Jordan shrugged. “That’s what Mama calls him.”

  “Emily is Negro?”

  “She’s high yellow, but yes,” Jordan explained.

  Naomi pressed, “Lisbeth claims her—as a sister?”

  “I don’t know the nature of their relationship. Mama says Emily was Lisbeth’s house slave after Mama escaped. Emily stayed in Virginia through the war, and afterward moved to Richmond with Lisbeth’s parents—more likely as a servant than a daughter, from what I understand.”

  “You’ve met this Emily?” Naomi asked.

  “When I was your age, in Richmond. She and her husband and son left Virginia for Oberlin at the time I stayed in Richmond.”

  “You traded places,” Naomi said.

  Jordan smiled and nodded.

  “So Grammy lived with Emily on the plantation, and then in Oberlin?” Naomi asked.

  Jordan nodded again.

  Naomi paused in her work, the damp drying rag hanging in her hand. “I know Grammy was a slave. And you were born one too, but I can’t imagine it.”

  “There’s a lot you can’t imagine, Naomi. And I hope you never have to. There was so much ugliness toward our people.” Jordan swallowed hard. She didn’t want to revisit the harsh realities of their family’s past; preferring to ignore the pain, she changed the subject. “You take them for the visit. I’ll stay with Mama.”

  “No.” Naomi was surprisingly adamant. “I’ll take care of Grammy while you go. You haven’t been outside for days.”

  Jordan sighed. She didn’t wish to make herself presentable and visit with acquaintances she would likely never see again. She shook her head slowly from side to side.

  “Will you say yes if I go as well?” Naomi offered. “Mrs. Chance can stay with Grammy.”

  Naomi looked eager and confident she had found a solution in their neighbor. Not wanting to disappoint her daughter, Jordan gave a single nod. She forced herself to wash up and get dressed.

  Emily answered the plain wooden door. The years had not diminished her beauty. She was tall and regal, with gray hair pulled into a bun that contrasted with her light-brown skin. Her dress was a simple tan-and-white gingham she had likely sewn for herself.