Phebe

Was the truth overrated? Phebe felt his words shift and settle even as her mind's eye still pictured the tiny skeleton sheltering amongst the roots of that old pine tree. She thought it was. It was time to make peace with all of it. With what was known and what was not. With what she'd said, and not said, on her return to Morissania a year earlier.

Syphax had been blunt.

"Rachel's child you heard of? It was Johnson's. Pale, yes. But her child all the same."

His words crushed her. For years, she'd hugged onto hope that Miss Nancy's child still lived. Worse, she'd encouraged the mistress to think it too, been dispatched to Virginia to find her.

Syphax's story was this. Rachel was in the master's study, called the moment Miss Nancy's labor began. Mr. Randolph brought down the child and placed her in a basket of linens. "Rachel was gonna take her out that way, hidden, see, case Sarah Ellis saw her, or one of her girls." He rubbed his chin. "We turned our backs. Rachel starts causing trouble. Miss Nancy's child was early. Rachel was still carrying her own baby. Said where she suppose to hide this child till her time came? Twins suppose to come together. Lord knows what she"d been thinking, that they"d miraculously deliver on the same day?" He rolled his eyes. "We was whispering, hissing, not looking at the little one. Going round in circles. Mr. Randolph sayin' she must take her. Rachel asking where. Me promising to deal with Johnson. Her asking how." His hand went to his mouth. "I have children of my own now. Would do things different. We weren't thinking of the child. I swear, when I turns around and saw those sheets had tumbled on her, had done smothered her? I pulls them off, pulls her out, tries to help her. But she was gone, that little one." His voice sank to a whisper. "She was gone."

"But Mr. Randolph freed Rachel." Phebe heard her own hopelessness. The answer was clear. Rachel's freedom wasn't the price of caring for a child that was not her own. It was the price of her silence that the child had ever been born. Later that day, Syphax drove with Phebe to Bizarre. Showed her the pine tree so she could tell Miss Nancy. Disappointment made the road back to Morrisania long and wearisome.

All she could do was try to mix good news with the bad. No, her child wasn't living, but not cause of no gum guaiacum, not the mistress's fault. An accident. A costly mistake. Nothing she had done. All in the distant past. Miss Nancy's sorrow was real, but the guilt, at least, was gone.

Was it true though, Syphax's story? Was it? Phebe was upstairs that night with Miss Nancy, seeing nothing that Syphax described. She pictured it though. The master's study. The baby, placed in a basket with a weight of linen falling on her tiny face while the adults argued. Sometimes, she pictured it different. Johnson and Rachel had agreed to take a boy. Not an unwanted girl. It wasn't hard to imagine a hand. Sometimes white. Sometimes black. A hand covering a baby's face with soft, white linen. Fingers pressing as Rachel, with her back turned arguing, saw nothing amiss.

Trust Syphax. Trust me, he had said to Mr. Randolph.

Or perhaps not. Perhaps what mattered in the end wasn't what was really true. Perhaps it was only what folks chose to believe that counted. Mr. Morris and Miss Nancy believing in each other. Mr. Dick Randolph believing he'd chosen the wrong wife. Mrs. Randolph believing Mr. Theo the father of her sister's child. Mr. Jack believing the worst of everyone he knew. Cilla believing Mama was doing fine on another plantation, not able to send word. Mama believing Mae and her child had gone to a better place. Miss Nancy believing the child died by accident.

As for Phebe? For the girl who believed she'd never leave Tuckahoe? She believed she was at peace with it. She believed she was ready. Ready to go home — to Morrisania and Isaac.

The journey from Virginia was smoother this time. None of them looked back.

THE END