To do justice to Mrs. Lisle, she had intended to have sold both Kizzie
and her son to the same buyer. As she herself said, she was always
having trouble with Kizzie. There were times when she was positively
afraid of her. Just before the proposed sale she had had a serious
difficulty with her. Mistress and servant regarded each other as two
enraged tigers might do, whenever they met. Mrs. Lisle made up her mind
she would have Kizzie taken to the Court House and sold. Court was to be
holden in a week or so; at such a time more or less slaves were put up
at auction.
Kizzie was not sorry when informed of the proposed plan; though she
shared, with others of her class, a horror of being "sold South," she
had come to think she could not possibly fall into more cruel hands.
Besides, in that region so terrible to the imagination of the slaves,
she might come across one or all of her lost sons! At any rate, she
would be beneath the same sky, and the dear hope of meeting them would
be a continual comfort.
A whole day was consumed by Tippy--her real name was Xantippe--in
plucking out Aunt Kizzie's grey hairs, and in fixing her up to appear to
the best advantage for youth and sprightliness. She was only sixty, but
hard labor and severe usage had told upon her heavily.
Aunt Kizzie, in her new linsey-woolsey and shining bandana as a turban,
started off in great glee for the Court House. That she might appear
there fresh, brisk, and pert, she was not suffered to walk, but
Washington, the coachman, was ordered to drive her in the ark of the
plantation wagon. Joe, smart, smiling, and newly-equipped in clothes,
sat by her side, scarcely knowing whether he had best share in his
mother's uncommon gaiety, or yield to his own anxious misgiving.
Another thing contributed to Aunt Kizzie's happiness. All the way to the
Court House she was at perfect liberty to caress her nosegay of pinks
and camomile. Kizzie had two grand passions; one was for her children,
the other for her fragrant pinks. If she was allowed a garden patch the
size of a hat-crown, it was devoted to her favorite flowers. She was
wont to have her loom festooned with them; she drank in their perfume as
did her web its woof; by night she had them scattered over her pillow,
that, even in sleep, she might not lose their presence.
"I should think pinks would grow out of her nose," the servants were in
the habit of remarking. It really often looked like they did, for,
morning and evening, at her milking, her nose, instead of her hand,
served as bouquet-holder.
Over the rough roads then, from Thornton Hall to the Court House, her
attention was devoted to Joe and her pinks. She was to be sold--that was
true--but then she had left a hated mistress. She had with her all she
loved, her immense nosegay, her baby Joe, and, in her small bundle, her
one pair of ruffled pillow-slips. She was starting out in the world
again, and the world looked to her unaccountably new and beautiful.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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