“Niggers is scared of water,” Boss Johnny tole the other Bosses. “So that’s how you keep ’em in line: Say you gon’ throw ’em in the river and they’ll do whatever you tell ’em to do. They scared of the water! Don’t know why but it’s so.”
Eli was, too, but if one of the Bosses ever threw him in the river he would just keep on swimming to freedom. So, he learned how to swim by secretly watching the Bosses, how they either pinched their noses closed or took in a deep breath before jumping in the water. Then the ones who had taken in the deep breaths moved their arms back and forth and kicked their legs up and down. So, at night, Eli practiced, frightened of the water snakes but determined to learn to swim. Once he understood that the held breath kept the water out of his lungs—kept him from drowning—that’s what he practiced, for longer and longer periods of time until he could hold his breath for many minutes. Moving the arms and legs was not easy but he learned it, practicing until he could swim.
’Zekiel had stopped screaming and fighting the water and was bobbing along on top, taken by the current. What would happen when he was discovered? They will look for me, Eli thought, especially Boss Johnny, and the Boss would want to know how ’Zekiel got in the water he was so afraid of. Eli took the deepest breath he’d ever taken and jumped off the bridge from which he’d thrown his friend. He went under and stayed there, letting the current carry him along. But his pants and shirt were ballooning around him and slowing and pulling him to the surface! He undid them and swam away from them. Soon enough he heard people screaming and shouting and calling for help—Colored people—but not one of them entered the water to save ’Zekiel who probably was past saving at this point, or to investigate the floating clothes. No one knew that Eli was bobbing along naked beneath the surface. Just as he believed his lungs were about to explode, the motion of the water changed; it slowed and smoothed. Eli surfaced to find himself at a gentle bend in the river. He swam quickly to shore and climbed out. He no longer could see the plantation he belonged to and no one from there could see him.
He heard a whine and a rustle of the underbrush, and a floppy-eared hound emerged and approached slowly. “Hey, dawg.” The dog’s tail swished and she crawled on her belly to Eli. He scratched the top of her head and rubbed her back, glad that he had no real scent; the water had cleansed him. Eli liked dogs and they liked him, but the perverse Boss Johnny wouldn’t let him work in the kennels with the hunting hounds. Believing that Eli feared horses; he was sent to the stables. Eli neither disliked nor feared horses, he just didn’t know them. However, he was happy to let Boss Johnny think that stable work was punishment.
“Where you live, dawg? Can I steal me some clothes and some food and a hoss?” The dog gave him a short bark and disappeared into the brush the way she’d appeared. Eli followed. He gave no further thought to ’Zekiel or Boss Johnny but he never stopped thinking about his mother. Not yet anyway.
✴ ✴ ✴
“Where were you, Eli?”
“How did you get to Philadelphia?”
“How long did it take you to get here?”
Eli didn’t know how long it had taken or how he had managed. “I knew to go north and I knew not to get caught.”
“But where were you, Eli?” Maggie asked. “Where was the river?”
“Virginny somewhere,” Eli said, and wondered why they all looked at him wide-eyed. The boy—still a child—had made his way to Philadelphia and freedom alone, all the way from Virginia. Maggie held him tightly, hoping and praying that it felt comforting, as if it were his mother’s embrace. The others marveled at him, knowing that they never could really understand how a slave could and would risk everything for freedom, could and would even kill to attain that freedom, but knowing that they would do all in their power to end slavery, to make freedom possible, even to kill in the pursuit of that goal.
“I’ll change and go to Florence,” Abby said.
“I’ll clean the kitchen,” Maggie said, “and make a cake for later.”
“Eli and I will clean the stable and feed the animals,” Donald said.
“I need to visit my bookkeeper,” Ezra said, “and I’ll walk. I need to breathe some fresh air into my lungs and get rid of all traces of Montague Wright.”
Much later that evening Donald drove Maggie home and brought Genie back. As had become their habit the Black women lay down on the bench for the journey—this for the same reason that Eli did not transport them at night: For their safety. Genie quickly learned that she had missed important events, none more so than Eli’s account of his run to freedom. She also regretted missing the sight of Montague Wright being brought low. A man who took pleasure in humiliating others being humiliated. She told them about Robert, Josephine and Mary and how she wondered whether freedom was the correct path for them.
“But you can’t think slavery is better!” Abby said, horrified.
“Slavery, no. But I’m not sure they can live on their own. I hope I’m wrong.”
“But why couldn’t they?” Ezra asked. “If they’re free?”
“Slavery destroys . . . personhood. It destroys the self. It destroys the ability to decide to do or be. The entire self is enslaved, not just the body—the mind, the spirit, the will . . .” They could never understand. They wanted to, she knew they did, but even if she could find the words to explain what slavery did to a person, how could she make them feel what it was like?
“How long have you been free, Miss Genie?” Donald asked.
“Eight years,” Genie said. “I was sixteen when I . . . escaped.”
“You were little more than a child!” Abby exclaimed.
“I was older than Eli and Reverend Richard and Absalom,” Genie said, “and I could read and write, which saved me.”
✴ ✴ ✴
“You can’t sell her, she’s mine! My brother gave her to me!” Matilda did not look at her husband when she spoke to him.
“You don’t even know her name!” Gilbert snarled. “You don’t even know what she looks like.”
“She’s Black and ugly, like all of them,” Matilda said.
“I’ve already sold her, Matilda, and gotten a good price—”
“You can’t sell her, I told you! She’s not yours to sell!”
“She lives in my house, and she’s mine to do with as I choose. So are you, for that matter, but I couldn’t sell you because you are worthless. You have no skills or abilities.”
“And I suppose she does? What skills does she have?”
Gilbert laughed at his wife. She really was quite ridiculous, even more so than her ridiculous brother. “She’s a very fine seamstress, Matilda, worth her weight in gold in places like Charleston and New Orleans, or Philadelphia or New York, where women look and behave beautifully.”
“If anyone is going to Philadelphia it will be me,” Matilda said.
“You’re not going anywhere, but Clara is going to Washington, DC. I’m taking her there myself. We leave tomorrow.”
Now she looked at him, her eyes wide. “That Black nigger is going to Washington while I languish here in this . . . this backcountry no man’s land? That is most unacceptable, Gilbert.”
He didn’t bother to respond. He went in search of her maids, indentured Irish servants, both of whom would earn their freedom soon! He found them folding sheets in the linen closet and told them what he needed: “Get Clara ready to travel tomorrow morning, early. Carriage to Baltimore then train to Washington.”
They stared at him as if he spoke a foreign language. Finally the older one said, “How, sir? Does she have a travel bag, travel clothes? How many days will she be away? And is Mrs. Will going as well?”
“Mrs. Will is not going and Clara will not be returning. As to what she has, probably nothing of her own so you’ll have to use something of Mrs. Will’s, something she no longer uses.”
They left at dawn the next morning, Clara and Gilbert Will, Clara seated on the bench beside the driver, Gilbert inside the carriage. Clara a
nd the driver did not know each other so there was little conversation aside from his answering her question about knowing the way to the Baltimore train station—he’d driven the Master there many times. No, he did not know where Washington was. Why was she going there? After she told him why there was no further conversation between them.
The train station frightened Clara—more people and carriages than she had ever seen in one place and more Colored people than she had ever seen. But if the station frightened her the trains were terrifying: huge and black and smoky and noisy. Then she had a thought that stopped her: Did the Mistress hate trains? They were black though not ugly, Clara thought. Master followed a Colored man in a suit to the front of the train while another led Clara to the rear. She was shaking now, and crying.
“Is you ever rode a train?” The man leaned down and whispered to her.
“No sir,” she said, shaking harder.
He grabbed her shoulder and squeezed. “You gon’ be awright, girl, but you got to take hold. You cain’t let people see your fear. You unnerstan’ me?”
Clara shook her head. She did not understand anything and she certainly could not control the fear that was making her want to vomit everything she’d ever eaten. “I’m going to be sold,” she managed to say.
“Then you CAIN’T show no fear, girl! Somethin’ about fear makes people want to hurt you. Try to look mean. You know how mean niggers look? Try to look like that.” And he lifted her up into the train car because there were no steps at the rear of the train for Colored people. No seats, either—just hard wooden benches. The train whistle blew and smoke billowed, and Clara tried to call up the image of the only mean Colored person she’d ever seen, a man who tended the cows and hogs. Her granny said he was “mean as a whip snake. He done worked up under white mens so long he come to act like ’em. Mean as a snake that man is.” Clara called up his face, sweat running down like water, a scowl permanently etched into his visage. Clara tightened her face into a scowl as the train lurched forward and willed herself to keep it there. She would not show fear. She would not let anyone hurt her.
When the train stopped everyone got off, so Clara did, too. There was no one to help her so she threw her bag down and jumped, landing so hard she didn’t have to work to bring the scowl to her face. She swung around when she heard her name called.
“Come on, girl! Hurry!” Master Gilbert was waving her forward. She picked up her bag and ran toward him, then followed him past so many huge, black trains that she lost count, and into a station that made her stop and catch her breath. So many people, many more than in Baltimore! And so many Colored people! “Come on!” Master grabbed her arm and pulled her along behind him.
One of the Colored men in the suits was following, pushing Master’s things in a wagon. Master was walking very fast to a long line of carriages in front of the station. He raised his arm and the driver of one of the carriages jumped down from his seat and opened the carriage door. Master climbed in and the driver closed the door. Then the driver and the Colored man got Master’s things from the wagon and strapped them to the back of the carriage. Master threw some coins out of the carriage window at the Colored man and his wagon as the carriage driver climbed up to his seat. “Where to, sir?” he called out.
“Hotel Washington,” Master replied. Then he seemed to remember Clara. “Get up there with the driver,” he ordered.
Clara clambered up, the driver offering no assistance, and they drove away. Clara’s eyes couldn’t keep up with all there was to see. Everything was larger and grander and different from anything she’d ever seen—except in books belonging to Rebecca Tillson and Beate. How she wished they were there to explain what she was witnessing! And what would she do in a hotel?
“The porter will take her to the servants’ quarters in the basement,” she heard the desk clerk say to the Master.
“She’ll stay in my suite,” the Master said. “She can sleep on the floor in the sitting room. She’ll belong to another tomorrow.”
The hotel was huge and grand, the people inside it grand and glittering, the suite larger than the ones in their home. What would the Mistress think of this?! Clara thought. The Master ordered a large meal, eating most of it quickly, telling Clara she could eat what was left. Then he went into the bedroom and closed the door. Not knowing what else to do, Clara picked up the newspapers that were on a table and sat on the floor near the fireplace and read until her eyes burned and watered: It had grown dark and the fire had burned out. She returned the newspapers to the table just as the Master entered the sitting room, dressed to go out.
“Do you know what poker is, girl?”
“No sir.”
“It is what some call a game of chance but I call it a game of skill, and I am very skilled at it. With the money that I will win tonight, and the money I will be paid for you, I will be able to purchase all the remaining land in the county. I will own the largest plantation in Maryland. Then I will send my ridiculous wife to live with her ridiculous brother.”
He opened the door to a knock, and servants came to light the lamps and candles and to lay fires in the grates. He waited until they finished then asked Clara if she knew the duties of a lady’s maid. She shook her head. “No sir.”
“Your mistress never taught you how to ready her boudoir for sleep?”
“No sir.”
“What did she discuss with you?”
“Nothing sir.”
“She talked to you, didn’t she? What did she say to you, girl?”
“She said to get my Black, ugly, ignorant self out of her sight, that she didn’t want to look at me.”
“Her brother spoke to you. What did he say?”
“He told me not to ever look directly at him, not to speak unless spoken to, never to make noise in his presence—”
“Stop! Enough! They’re worse than I thought.” He turned back to the bedroom. “Come with me,girl. Look there—I want the bed turned down, I want my night clothes on the bed and my slippers beside the bed, I want a glass of water on the table there and the bottle of laudanum beside the glass—” He stopped speaking and looked closely at her. “Did you understand what I said?”
“Yessir.”
“Good, because though the hotel would send someone to do these things, I do not want strangers handling my belongings.”
“Yessir.
“I hope to return by midnight,” he said, and left the suite.
Clara had followed him from the bedroom into the sitting room, and watched him leave without a backward glance. She stood frozen for a moment, not knowing what to do. Then she understood that she should do what she was told so she returned to the bedroom and turned down the cover and the sheets. She lifted the suitcase onto the chair and opened it. He had said nothing about the suits and shirts. She opened a closet and saw hangers so she put the suits and shirts on them. Then she saw the night clothes which she put on the bed and the slippers, which she put beside the bed. There were several leather cases inside the suitcase. She opened one. Money. A lot of money. She closed it and opened another in which there was a razor, brush and soap. She placed the case on the stand with the wash basin. She had just opened the third case when the door opened and the Master rushed into the room. He stopped and stared at what he saw and Clara began to shake with fear.
“Calm yourself, Girl, you’ve done exactly as I asked. Even more: You’ve hung the suits and shirts. If I didn’t need the money you’ll bring I’d keep you myself and rid myself of a useless wife. But seamstresses are more valuable than maids.” Then he grabbed the case with all the money and hurried to the door. He stopped suddenly. “I’ll have some food sent up to you. When you hear a knock on the door ask who it is. If the man says it is room service you may open the door. If it is anyone else, do not open the door. Understand?”
“Yessir. Thank you, sir.”
But he was gone before she finished thanking him. She closed the door and returned to the bedroom to complete her tasks. She open
ed the last case, smaller than the others. In it were two bottles of pills and the laudanum, which she recognized because Rebecca used it every night—a miracle drug, she called it. “One or two drops soothe the pain in my joints and allow me to sleep. A drop more makes me sleep too long and everyone is awake before me and I am the lazy one! A drop more than that and—one never wakes.”
Clara put the laudanum beside the glass on the table and was about to close the suitcase when she noticed a packet of papers in the back pocket. She lifted it and saw the only thing that interested her: A map. She hurried into the sitting room with it. Rebecca and Beate had shown her maps and how to read them: North, South, East and West. She opened the map and quickly found Baltimore. She knew that Washington, DC, was north of her, and she quickly found it. How close they were, which was why the train ride was so short. Then her eyes, acting on their own, saw PHILADELPHIA. So close to Washington. As close as Baltimore. “Get to Philadelphia,” Rebecca had told her. She looked at the other papers and found the name of the hotel, found the name of the train station.
She returned the map and papers to the suitcase as she found them and closed the case and put it on the floor. She hurried to ask who was at the door when she heard the knock and opened it when the man said “room service.” He was a tall Colored man in a white jacket and black pants and he said good evening to her. She replied in kind and asked him to please put the tray on the table next to the sofa when he asked where she wanted it. She thanked him and followed him to the door. Just before he opened it she took a deep breath and asked him if the train station was too far to walk to.
He looked at her closely. “Not for a strong young girl. Walk downstairs to the servants’ quarters in the basement. Go down the hallway and out the door and turn right and keep walking. You will hear the trains.”
“Thank you, sir.”
Two Wings to Fly Away Page 23