He is a good man, she thought, but this time she didn’t mean good of character. He was indeed that, but now she meant good to be with. For the first
time the question “Why couldn’t he be white?” worked its way consciously into
her mind.
Olivia went to check on the bread. The crust looked nice and brown, but
when she turned it out of the kettle and tried to slice it, the middle was all dough.
There was nothing but a plate of crusts for their supper. Now she would have to
prepare something else. The beans wouldn’t do for today; they hadn’t been
soaking nearly long enough to cook them. She only kept herself from crying by
repeating, Just one more thing today. Just one more.
She fed the fire, shoveled a pile of bright embers onto the hearth, and set the
long-handled frying pan in them. Then she quickly mixed up flour, water, and salt for flapjacks, adding two thinly sliced apples to the batter. When Mourning
returned from cleaning up, she greeted him with a plate of thick flapjacks,
surrounded by pieces of bread crust smeared with blackberry jam.
“Sorry about the bread,” she said. “I failed the test.”
“Take a while to get the hang of it,” he said as he took his plate. “And tonight
I gonna eat anything you give me. My stomach been hollerin’ for me to put
somethin’ in it.”
They went out to the stump chairs and sat in the dusk, eating hungrily. Olivia
balanced her plate on her knees and cut ladylike pieces. Mourning found a good
use for his fork – he stabbed it into the center of a flapjack and held it up so he
could chomp around the edge. Olivia was tempted to do the same, but
remembered reading in Godey’s Lady’s Book that it was the responsibility of the
gentler sex to bring civilization to the frontier. She continued her struggle for proper table manners, but her only reward was a jam stain on her clean dress.
When they were nearly finished she once again broached the subject of her
mother.
“Mourning, we’re going to be here together for a long time and I’m not going
to stop asking, so you might as well tell me and get it over with. What you did
you mean about my father finding my mother?”
He concentrated on his food, as if he hadn’t heard her. After he swallowed his
last bite, he set the plate down, raised his eyes to meet her gaze, and shook his
head.
“I shudna said nothin’. I thought you knew. That you hadda know.”
“Knew what?”
“About how your mamma died.”
“How did she die?”
“What they tell you?”
She shook her head. “You tell me what happened. Everything you know.
Everything.”
“All right.” He took another deep breath and said it quickly. “Your daddy
come home and found her in the storeroom by your kitchen, only it ain’t been no
