So Rosalie grew up with slaves all about her. As a child, she swam with the children, climbed after them into trees, joined the pack following Joe Hall, their personal Pied Piper, as he went about his business. They were some of her first playmates, but their childhoods ended while they were still children and they were returned to the estates that owned them, to work the houses and fields while their parents remained in Father’s employ.
She’d had one particular friendship, lasting nearly two years, with a little boy named Nelson. Nelson was, like Henry Byron, good at making up games and good at playing the games he’d made up. Nobody knew exactly how old he was, but probably younger than Henry and certainly younger than Rosalie. He would come into the yard some mornings after breakfast and whistle for June or Henry or Rosalie to come out—not a one-note, fingers-in-the-mouth whistle, though he could do that, too, but a whole stanza of a song Rosalie didn’t know.
Many years later, quite grown-up, Rosalie will hear this song again, hear it played on the fiddle by a man in a Baltimore park, when she is out for a Sunday stroll with her family. The others will walk on oblivious, but the tune will come for her like a fist, knocking the breath from her lungs. That tune will bring back everything. Nelson first, of course, Nelson smiling up at her from the yard, and then, the sharp, cutting memory of Mary Ann, begging to be allowed to come along when Rosalie leaves her to run off and play, and of Elizabeth, her arms outstretched, her cheeks flushed, her nose running, her light hair sparse over her baby skull.
And finally, Henry Byron, lying with her on the grass, the sound of bees all about them. Lying without her on his bed, the sores rising on his face, his hands, his neck, everywhere, everywhere, even inside his eyes.
She asks the fiddler what the tune is called. No one notices this uncommon behavior, Rosalie speaking to a strange man, because no one ever notices Rosalie. “It’s called ‘Poor Rosey,’?” he says—and the surprise of this will stop her cold. Had Nelson known that? Had he pitied her? Was he making fun of her? “Do you like it?” the fiddler will ask, and she’ll hear him, but only after she’s already walked on.
She’d liked Nelson and she’d thought he’d liked her. On rare occasions, when June and Henry Byron were busy with something else and Rosalie wasn’t, Nelson had never minded playing with just Rosalie. It hadn’t happened often, but it had happened. Had they never really been friends at all? Rosalie hasn’t had so many friends in her life that she can readily give one up, even one she will surely never see again. She needs to believe that Nelson liked her as much as she’d liked him.
Nelson’s head was periodically shaved to prevent or eradicate lice, so when he had hair, it was short. His two front teeth hadn’t come in yet, which helped his whistling and showed as a gap when he smiled. He smiled all the time.
He never wore shoes. “Course I have ’em,” he said, “just don’t like ’em,” which made Henry Byron realize he didn’t like ’em either. Rosalie’s feet weren’t tough enough to run around the forest unshod, and June chose not to, but Henry and Nelson did just that until one of the dogs made off with one of Henry’s shoes and returned it half gnawed, and Mother made him wear it anyway, because he never should have taken it off in the first place. Did he want to end up with ringworm? she asked. And then said that June and Rosalie should have known better than to permit it. Because any misbehavior in a younger child was always the fault of the older. That was how a family worked.
There was one day with June off somewhere, when Henry Byron, Rosalie, and Nelson went down to where the Hickory Road crossed the creek. The sun was seeping through the trees, landing on the water in stars and sparkles. Squirrels were chasing each other through the high branches, rabbits eating in the grass. Henry got the idea to put a dam in, make a fishing hole. If they did it right, they wouldn’t even need poles. They could just reach in and scoop the trapped fish out with their hands. “Then we build a fire,” Nelson said, a bubble of spit rising through the gap in his teeth in excitement, “and roast ’em on sticks. Steal some ’tatoes from the bins, bury them in the coals. Eat like kings!”
They scattered to gather up logs to make the dam. Rosalie made a try at helping though the plan didn’t inspire her the way it did them. She’d found a log, too heavy to pick up and it still had branches so she couldn’t roll it. She’d managed to raise it just a little bit, which sent a dozen bugs, a hundred legs—centipedes, wood lice, white-as-ghosts spiders—streaming in the direction of her feet.
“Father won’t let us kill fish,” she reminded Henry, lowering the log to the ground again. “We’ll be whupped if he finds out.” Nelson’s role was to be game for anything. Rosalie’s was not. The fish are safe from her.
At Rosalie’s suggestion, they have an egg-fry instead. She fetches three eggs from the henhouse, snatching them warm from their smelly nests, the chickens gabbling about her. By the time she returns, the boys have a fire going. Nelson has collected a pot and filled it with water. They eat the eggs hot from the shells. It’s enough like being kings to satisfy them all.
Another day: Nelson had found a large patch of moss in a forest clearing that he said was soft like a carpet, like the red Turkish rug by the fireplace in the cabin. He’d come looking for someone to show and found only Rosalie and he’d taken her to it, holding on to the branches like a gentleman so they wouldn’t whip back and lash Rosalie in the face.
Better than a carpet, Rosalie agreed. Much better. Henry Byron had arrived then and the two boys built a makeshift lean-to over the moss, a house of sticks, just large enough for the three to sit together inside, arm touching arm touching arm. Rosalie could feel the damp cold beneath her. She could smell the smoky, sweaty odor of the boys on either side.
“We be dry here even when it rains,” Nelson said, as if the sun weren’t filtering right through the roof, dappling Rosalie’s hands and his own face. Under the leaves, they made plans. The boys decided to be Indians. But Rosalie opted for the comforts of the Swiss Family Robinson. While the boys planned hunts and raids, Rosalie imagined bedrooms and ballrooms, water that dripped through hollowed logs so they could wash their hands and their dishes.
Henry Byron and Nelson were always rearranging the world—lugging in stepping-stones to make new paths across the creek to its little island, moving logs and branches to be dams and bridges, forts and teepees. They dreamt of escape, of leaving their chores and lessons, their houses and families, and moving to the woods. For Rosalie, the escape was very real, a temporary respite from Mary Ann and Elizabeth and the tedium of caring for babies. She never knew if it was also real for Nelson.