The Loom by Shella Gillus Page B

heavyset man with a full mustache said, slapping the host on his back, extending his hand with the other. “Henry Sullivan,” he said, tipping his top hat to them.
    “Whoa, Henry,” Jackson laughed. “Hardly recognized you. You clean up rather nicely.”
    Beside him was a rail of a man who introduced himself as Rex, a close friend of Jackson’s. “Henry and I’ve known Jack since he was eight years old.”
    “Six. I think he was six,” Henry corrected.
    “They work for me, my overseers. Actually, Henry’s right. I was six. Timothy was eight. Well, excuse me, gentlemen, ladies, I need to tend to my other guests, but please don’t slip away.” He directed the last phrase at Lydia.

    Jackson excused himself, but even from a few feet away she could see him staring at her, stealing glances as he conversed.
    She was flattered to receive attention from a man so handsome, but her mind was on John.
    “So, nice night, isn’t it?” Andrew glanced up at the sky and nodded. He bit his bottom lip then grinned.
    He looked tenser than she felt. Lydia smiled. She wasn’t alone. By evening’s end, her nervousness drifted, sailed away with each conversation, with every encounter. She moved more and more into a world she’d only dreamed of. She didn’t even flinch when Lizzy accepted the invitation to a dinner party Jackson extended to them. She was having fun, after all. Living for the first time.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    For the first time, she felt it. Something sweeter than Grandma’s apple fritters. This was sweet that stayed long after the first taste.
    Love for a man.
    Lou sat on the porch in a grand wooden rocker Daddy had made her. “Girl gone and fell in love.” She slapped Lydia’s thigh with the rag she used to mop the sweat trickling from her scalp.
    Lydia flinched and giggled. She swatted at a fly. It was much too warm out here on the porch. Funny how it didn’t bother her as a child. She pulled the sticky front of her dress away from the circle of sweat it clung to and looked up at her grandmother.
    “You loved PaPa like that?”
    “Oh, honey, yes. I sure did. Looonggg time ago.” Her head fell back with laughter as she rocked. “Oh yes, indeed. Had all them babies ’cause of it.”
    Daddy had been the only one who hadn’t been sold off, stripped from her. Lydia couldn’t imagine how she was able to bear it.
    How her people were able to bear any of it.
    “Well, I don’t want no babies.”
    “What you say?”
    “I don’t want not one child.”
    “Why not, girl?”
    She shrugged. “I don’t know.”
    “Now don’t you sit up here and tell that lie. You know you know why.”
    “I don’t want to bring another slave in the world.”
    “Girl…”
    “Really, Grandma. Ain’t nothing good about being a slave.”
    “Something good about being alive. I know that! How you gonna deny somebody the right to be alive?”
    “I’m not denying nobody nothing. I’m just saying I’m not having no babies. If they want to come in the world they’ve got to come from between somebody else’s legs.”
    “Watch yourself, now.” Lou threw the rag at her. “Don’t be grown.”
    “You know I know about babies, Grandma. You taught me everything I know.”
    “Fine you know. You just keep your own particulars to yourself.” She smiled and shook her head. “You thought about how you gonna keep yourself from having a child? Lust and limbs got a way of deciding things for themselves.”
    “I know what to do.”
    “All right, then.” She crossed her arms and swung a good four or five swings in her rocker without a word before she leaned down close like a little girl and grinned. “So tell me. He makes you happy, don’t he?”
    She hesitated.
    “He don’t make you happy?”
    “Yes, Grandma. He does the best he can.” John loved her something good. He would do anything for her, but as wonderful as love was, she wasn’t sure it was enough.
    The moment John’s foot hit the soil, his heart raced. The warm