modernize the old place,” he said. In his optimism, he added a nursery above the office, both connected to the house by an interior staircase. With Eli’s changes, the back of the house appears as a jumble of interconnected and interrupting blocks—kitchen, extension, a stretch of porch cut short by the office. I never liked the changes that altered it from what I knew before the war, though I never protested them. Rather, I gave Eli a cold consent and cursed him secretly for desecrating the Chapmans’ home.
On Eli’s days at home, I would stay upstairs with Henry in the nursery or the front sitting room. The colored men would line up in the garden outside the office or along the porch. They would sit on the back steps or skulk around the kitchen door. On days of bad weather, they would line the hall and the back parlor, waiting for their opportunity to see Eli to ask him for a favor or help. As the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau after the war, Eli was seen as some sort of benevolent protector. He gave out the food rations provided by the federal government—and not just to the freedmen but to the poor whites who came into Albion after the spring of ’65, starving and desperate. Eli negotiated contracts for the freedmen, too. He decided who would work and where. All with the backing of the United States Army. The motherless young colored girls, he indentured to the homes where they had been slaves a year or two before. He set the terms of the contracts for the Negro families who took twenty acres from their old masters so they could grow cotton and corn and then give away half of it as their rent. Eli would intervene on behalf of the Negro tradesmen in town who insisted the white men weren’t paying them fairly. He saw them all and profited mightily by it, skimming off the top, taking money to push through a contract here or to place the best laborers on his friends’ farms. After the bureau was shut down, he remained a man revered by the Negroes, and they kept coming, wandering about the lane and the carriage house and sitting on the benches—those, at least, who were not so impudent as to ring the front bell.
Judge takes Eli’s chair behind the desk without hesitation, his back to the door into the house. What a curious thing for him to say about the windows, but he’s right. When Eli sat at his desk, he looked at windows on three sides of him and could see the whole garden and anyone who might be lurking outside.
Judge opens the leather portfolio. There are dark wine-colored stains on the leather. “Augusta, I’m afraid I don’t have very good news for you today. I will work things out. You will never have to worry, but a prudent economy is what is required. No more of these spendthrift ways. Eli is not alive anymore.”
His tone is harsh. I study my hands. They are small and delicate and white. I have been lectured by Judge before. Does he resent me for asking his clemency the day of Eli’s funeral?
He turns the pages in the portfolio one after another. He scans them from top to bottom. I lean against the wooden slats of the chair, my hands folded over the stiff black material of my dress. Judge grimaces at me. He presses his lips together, and it ruffles his beard like a chicken’s feathers. “I’m sorry to say it. There’s a selfishness in the Sedlaws, a greed that rises up now and again. I encourage you to banish it from yourself. I saw it in your father, in his desperation to pull off any kind of trickery to win, and it is a most unbecoming trait. I don’t say you have that quality, I know you have a fine character, but I see hints of it, and I wish your Blackwood blood would overcome it.”
His chiding galls me, but what can I say? He always has to sermonize. He carries so many resentments. He has carried them a long time. I have nothing at my disposal to counteract them, least of all the pride of my father’s name.
Judge rests his hand on the papers. His eyes are ice blue and seem to
On Eli’s days at home, I would stay upstairs with Henry in the nursery or the front sitting room. The colored men would line up in the garden outside the office or along the porch. They would sit on the back steps or skulk around the kitchen door. On days of bad weather, they would line the hall and the back parlor, waiting for their opportunity to see Eli to ask him for a favor or help. As the head of the Freedmen’s Bureau after the war, Eli was seen as some sort of benevolent protector. He gave out the food rations provided by the federal government—and not just to the freedmen but to the poor whites who came into Albion after the spring of ’65, starving and desperate. Eli negotiated contracts for the freedmen, too. He decided who would work and where. All with the backing of the United States Army. The motherless young colored girls, he indentured to the homes where they had been slaves a year or two before. He set the terms of the contracts for the Negro families who took twenty acres from their old masters so they could grow cotton and corn and then give away half of it as their rent. Eli would intervene on behalf of the Negro tradesmen in town who insisted the white men weren’t paying them fairly. He saw them all and profited mightily by it, skimming off the top, taking money to push through a contract here or to place the best laborers on his friends’ farms. After the bureau was shut down, he remained a man revered by the Negroes, and they kept coming, wandering about the lane and the carriage house and sitting on the benches—those, at least, who were not so impudent as to ring the front bell.
Judge takes Eli’s chair behind the desk without hesitation, his back to the door into the house. What a curious thing for him to say about the windows, but he’s right. When Eli sat at his desk, he looked at windows on three sides of him and could see the whole garden and anyone who might be lurking outside.
Judge opens the leather portfolio. There are dark wine-colored stains on the leather. “Augusta, I’m afraid I don’t have very good news for you today. I will work things out. You will never have to worry, but a prudent economy is what is required. No more of these spendthrift ways. Eli is not alive anymore.”
His tone is harsh. I study my hands. They are small and delicate and white. I have been lectured by Judge before. Does he resent me for asking his clemency the day of Eli’s funeral?
He turns the pages in the portfolio one after another. He scans them from top to bottom. I lean against the wooden slats of the chair, my hands folded over the stiff black material of my dress. Judge grimaces at me. He presses his lips together, and it ruffles his beard like a chicken’s feathers. “I’m sorry to say it. There’s a selfishness in the Sedlaws, a greed that rises up now and again. I encourage you to banish it from yourself. I saw it in your father, in his desperation to pull off any kind of trickery to win, and it is a most unbecoming trait. I don’t say you have that quality, I know you have a fine character, but I see hints of it, and I wish your Blackwood blood would overcome it.”
His chiding galls me, but what can I say? He always has to sermonize. He carries so many resentments. He has carried them a long time. I have nothing at my disposal to counteract them, least of all the pride of my father’s name.
Judge rests his hand on the papers. His eyes are ice blue and seem to
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