Mind Of A Slave

Mama's Secrets

24.

"WHY DIDN'T SHE tell me?"

"She got a real good reason for not ever tellin' you, you know."

"What? She tell me everythin'!"

"She were wantin' to protect you. If you knows, you's scared, see? An' she were 'fraid somethin' were gone happen to you if you were knowin' she were a spy."

"Like what? What coulda happen?"

Beckey looks at me without speaking, without blinking.

"They've take her away, ain't they?" I ask, my voice so quiet I wonder if it disintegrates before it meets her ears. "The police. People who works for the South soldiers. They've catch her an' made her go missing."

She nods slowly.

"Then we gotta go fin' her, Beckey. We gotta rescue her."

"Cass, it ain't gone make a difference. She ain't comin' back. I'm sorry."

She glances at me as if she is waiting for a reaction, like she's anticipating me to start crying, or screaming.

But I am so angry that at first I don't understand the truth in Beckey's words, and I'm unaffected by her lamenting expression. I feel no emotion at all.

I notice that the flame has nearly burnt out so I gather some dry craps of wood around me and place them over the blackened bark, to create a small fire.

Then I sit there, under the tree, with Beckey beside me and the black sky rolling above me, because maybe the longer I stay still, the easier it will be to accept the truth.

The truth that Mama isn't returning. People have caught her and taken her away and she isn't coming home. They've killed her. I know they've killed her because I can see the sorrow in Beckey's eyes.

My Mama is dead.

She sacrificed her life gaining knowledge and writing letters to send back to the Union. She was brave and loyal, and now she is dead.

"I'm sorry, so sorry, Cass."

I keel over and my side hits the ground with a thud.

In the distance, Beckey is calling my name, but I don't react.

The fire flickers before my eyes.

Deep down inside me, hurt and anger are fighting to overpower each other. I feel as though I will never function again without Mama in my life, yet I feel so angry at the fact that she never told me who she was. She didn't trust me. My own Mama, a spy, and I never knew it until now.

I suppose there were clues along the way, clues I was somehow unable to pick up on.

It would explain why she was so well educated.

It would explain the information that she was going to reveal that one night, the night I saw Patrick dead, but that she never had the chance to tell me.

It would explain the time she returned to the cabin late, and it would explain the meeting with the strange man in the woods.

It would explain the gunshots, and how they were for her and not to do with the war. It would explain why she knew so much about the war, things she would not tell anyone unless she was certain about them.

"How does you know?" I ask Beckey.

"I guessed, I s'ppose, an' I've ask her. I heard 'bout spies an' she were jus' what I thinks a spy'd be like. An' so I ask her an' she tell me an' I've keep her secret 'till now."