“Do you think there’ll be war, Miss Rose?” He’s opened his eyes again and his fingers now tap on the scarred surface of the table. A song of some sort. She remembers one that he taught her when she was a little girl:

They put John on an island

Hallelujah

They put him there to starve him

Hallelujah

But the angels came and fed him

Hallelujah

They fed him on the bread of heaven

Hallelujah

“No. I don’t think there’ll be war,” Rosalie answers. She doesn’t explain herself, but the truth is that she can easily imagine white men who will fight and die to keep their slaves. She knows these men. Joe Hall knows them, too. They live all around the farm in Bel Air. They went to school with John. John is one of them.

But she can’t think of a single white man she knows who would fight and die to free the slaves. The ones who believe in slavery have so much more conviction than the ones who don’t.

“We surely miss our girl, our boy. They can’t come home; we can’t get there. Change is hard,” says Joe. “But change is life.”

And death, Rosalie thinks. Death is a mighty big change, too.

x

Rosalie has suffered a shock. She’s come to her bedroom and closed the door, hoping to be given some privacy. She’s combing through her wet and tangled hair with more vigor and less care than usual. It’s as if she wants it to hurt.

Moments ago, she and Mother and Asia were all in the kitchen together, washing their hair. They use rainwater, which they collect in basins and save for the weeks between washings. It’s a major undertaking and the boys, if any are around, are shooed from the house for the duration so the women can proceed in their undergarments. Today is warm and the upstairs bedroom actually hot. Rosalie is in no hurry to put her skirts back on and she wants the tangles gone from her hair before it dries.

Asia was talking, as usual, not even stopping when Mother poured a pitcher of water over her head. Rosalie was toweling the ends of her own hair when she heard Asia say something that began, “When we’re all in Philadelphia . . .”

All, she had said. We all. All of us. Rosalie was so surprised she missed the rest of the sentence.

“Are we all going to Philadelphia?” she’d asked.

Mother rubbed the rainwater through Asia’s hair. “We wouldn’t keep this big house just for the two of us. The boys are hardly here now and when Asia goes . . .”