The Freedom Maze Read Online Free

answering “I took off my stockings because I was hot” would lead to a speech about disobedience and ingratitude, followed by a freezing silence until Mama got over her disappointment. But then, so would any other answer.
    “Sophia!” Mama’s voice sharpened. “Do you hear me?”
    Sudden, furious tears blurred the sunlight into an unbearable glare. “I hear you.” Sophie knew she should stop right there, but she couldn’t. “I know you work like a slave to buy me stockings and things, and then I don’t appreciate them. I slouch and I mumble and my hair is a disgrace and I don’t have any manners and you’re very, very disappointed in me.”
    Mama’s dark amber eyes opened wide with shock. “I’m surprised at you, Sophia Martineau, speaking to me in that tone of voice. How many times must I tell you that irony is not attractive in a young lady?”
    “I guess I’m not a young lady,” Sophie said thickly and stumbled out of the room with her mother’s voice following her, calling her to come back, right this minute, before she was sorry.
    There were three doors at the end of the back gallery. The first one she tried led into a bathroom, the second was locked. Sophie jerked open the third door, slammed it behind her, sat down on the floor, and cried.
    It didn’t last long. Sophie never cried long — there wasn’t any use in it. “Go on, honey, and have a nice cry now,” Lily always said when Sophie brought home a disappointing report card. “It’ll do you the world of good.” But the report card never changed, no matter how many tears she shed over it, and neither would Mama.
    Sophie wiped her face and glasses on her skirt. She couldn’t see in the gloom, and the air smelled damp and slightly sour, like musty paper. Sophie pulled off the torturous pumps, padded over to a window, folded back the shutters, raised the sash, and turned to see where she’d be sleeping all summer.
    It could have been worse. Next to Grandmama’s room, the furniture was downright sparse — just a rocker and an armoire and a writing-desk and a bookcase stuffed with old books. The walls were papered with faded cabbage roses, and the bed was white iron, with a mint green chenille spread. Beside it, a rickety nightstand held a painted tin lamp, a book, and an electric alarm clock. One of the windows had a seat built into it, just exactly the right size and shape for reading in.
    It was like a room from a book, and very much the kind of room Sophie had always dreamed of having. It was the crowning misery of a miserable day that she was too unhappy to appreciate it. Leaving the seersucker suit in a wrinkled pile on the floor, she put on an old skirt and blouse, opened the suitcase with the books, picked up Edward Eager’s
The Time Garden,
carried it to the window seat, and pulled back the curtain, revealing a scene like a watercolor illustration in an old book.
    Sophie knelt on the faded chintz cushion and looked out. The watercolor effect came from the glass, she realized, which was old and wavy. She looked down into a neat garden shaded by a big live oak. Under the oak, a flowering vine draped a cabin with scarlet trumpets. In the field beyond, she saw a big, dark bushy blob, too low to be a grove and too big to be a hedge.
    What she didn’t see was any sign of the famous brick Big House.
    Sophie opened
The Time Garden
and read until she heard Aunt Enid shouting up the back stairs that supper was ready.

Mama was still not speaking to Sophie at supper time. By breakfast,
she’d thawed enough to ask for the salt, but it was clear she was still in a state. When Aunt Enid realized nobody was going to eat the fried eggs and grits she’d made, she got up and cleared the table. Sophie watched her stack the dirty dishes in the sink and run hot water over them.
    Mama folded her unused napkin neatly. “I know Ofelia doesn’t come in on weekends. Would you like me to help you with the dishes?”
    “I thought I’d let them soak.