Emma Field Book I - coming of age in the changing times of the mid-19th century

Chapter II - Finding Colour

The snow was smacking like little kisses against the choolhouse window. It was sticking, melting, then running in tiny rivulets down the outside of the wavy glass above Emma's bench. She forced her pencil across the slate board, looked up at the rivers, sighed heavily, and copied yet another line.

The girl eased sideways on the bench. The snow was falling heavily now. Emma calculated the angle of its path...180 degrees was even with the horizon, 90 degrees was straight up, 45 degrees was half of that. 40, it was close to 40 degrees. Emma wondered what made it fall like that. How could something as light as a snowflake fall with such purpose and speed?

The fire in the wood stove behind Emma snapped. She glanced furtively at Jane, sitting beside her, scratching on her slate board with the diligence of a dog after a lone flea. Emma sighed again and rested her mouth on the inside of her wrist.

The village in the distance was dusted from view by the snow. Emma followed the angle of the snowflakes to the top of the window and imagined flying directly into them, her face stinging. Then she would turn and soar above this patch of earth cleared out of the wilderness of Canada West. She saw what a hawk would see: vast expanses of charcoal grey deciduous woods, patches of smooth white fields, and patches of worn, dark cedar bush. The woods looked like her father's beard, and the fields all pale and sickly white like the skin of Mr. Brown, who was languishing on the teacher's chair at the front of the classroom. Emma had never seen a man with skin as white as Mr. Brown's.

Her father had once told her there were people who had skin the colour of cocoa working the fields of their white masters in southern United States. He had said the coloureds were becoming restless and nothing but chaos, confusion and the ruination of the cotton industry could come from it. Emma tugged on the waist of her faded cotton dress. It pulled tightly against her breasts. She glanced at the darker band of fabric used to let out the seams this past summer. Her eyes gently closed, she felt the sodden humidity of summer, heard the whine of cicadas, and tasted the tangy fleshiness of raspberries. She leaned her mouth into her knuckles and looked out the window. It was hard to imagine, she mused as she watched the snow falling, that all that lay beyond the window could change to the colours and sounds of summer. That would take time...time or imagination... imagination...was that what was causing the brown people to think that they could be anything but slaves? Women were almost slaves – well, Mrs. Henderson wasn't – she had her own dressmaking business in the village. And there was a woman in Picton with her own school. And Emma supposed that Jane's mother wasn't almost a slave – she had servants of her own – but she was still the property of Mr. Morgan.

A knot tightened in Emma's stomach as she thought about being the property of someone other than her father. One hand dropped to her belly; the other clutched the slate pencil as though it were a lifeline. Emma had begged her father to let her do more of what a tenant farmer's wife would do around the cabin and barn. She didn't need to attend school – no one did at her age. But he had remained firm: Emma must become a woman schoolmaster - schoolmistress - though she had never heard of such a thing. That way she wouldn't have to be someone's property.

A chair slammed against the wooden platform at the front of the class.

"Uh!" said a wakening Mr. Brown in a loud, startled voice. "Yes. Wipe off your slates now. The Bible reading...George, fetch me the Bible!"

Emma stared at the whitewashed logs of the side wall.

"Turn around, everyone. Now!"

She wheeled in unison with Jane and the other girls to face the boys who were against the far wall.

•

The snow had stopped when Emma and Jane stepped into the deepening grey of the November afternoon. Emma stared past her cabin to the south.