by Jodi Daynard
In another two minutes, a healthy boy slipped into my hands. He was black as night.
30
THE BLACKNESS OF which I speak lay more in my mind’s eye than in the babe itself. For though I knew him to be a Negro (mulatto) child at once, the color of his skin was actually quite fair, almost akin to an almond.
“It’s a boy!” I cried.
He was large and lusty and cried at once. I cleaned him quickly and gave him directly to his mother. He found her breast and began to suck. I delivered her placenta, checked its wholeness, and sewed up her slight tear. Martha moved as my third and fourth hands. We shared one mind at such times, and I had no need for words as she did those tasks that were quickly needed, one upon the other.
“Shall it live?” Eliza asked me.
“That’s in our Maker’s hands,” I replied. “But a healthier newborn I have never laid eyes upon.”
“Then I shall name him now. John, after his father. He is a well-loved man.” At these words, she wept.
Think not that I was so advanced of my day and age as not to be shocked by little John’s entry into the world. I was—thoroughly. But as his conception was an accomplished fact, and, as the mother clearly knew her own child’s origins, there was little need for me to utter such inanities as, “By God, it’s a Negro!” That would have been tactless indeed. I held my tongue, as did Martha, knowing Eliza would tell all in her own time.
Martha and I gave Eliza fresh linens and made her comfortable. I felt a pang of regret that she had no women around her. Usually I had to swat them away like flies. But Eliza had only the two of us.
“Is there anyone you wish me to send for? Your mother, perhaps?” I asked, though I knew the answer.
She smiled. “My mother has no wish to see us.”
“Perhaps her feelings will change in time, for he is her grandson, bar all else. Do you have a friend you might call upon?”
“All my so-called friends left my side long ago. Only Thomas Miller remains. He is so good.” She smiled up at me, and I thought it a kindness to say nothing, for I knew not a single man or woman to call a Tory “good,” except another one.
“Well, then, you have three friends.”
“And my slaves, of course,” Eliza added thoughtfully.
“Cassie, you mean?”
“Oh, no. The others. The Whipple slaves. They’re not my slaves—I mean they’re my friends. They are most dear to me. Most good.”
I knew not to whom or what Eliza referred; her words made little sense to me.
“Speak no more now,” I said. “You must rest.”
I took the babe, who was sleeping, from his mother. His little hands started out as I lifted him. We had carried a drawer from my chest of drawers down the narrow stairs. Martha swathed him in soft cotton, and we put him in there, warm and cozy.
Once mother and child were safely asleep, I washed myself and collapsed in my own bed, where Martha soon lay as well. It was now nearly three o’clock in the morning, and we were both delirious with exhaustion. We would need to be up in an hour’s time.
“What think you of it, honestly?” Martha whispered to me.
“I cannot think. Tomorrow she will tell us. Or we can bribe it out of her, if necessary.”
“I wonder what will become of the poor little fellow. Will she keep him, do you think?”
“I know not. My eyes close, Martha . . .”
Martha fell silent at last, and I fell asleep.
We woke to the beautiful sound of a baby crying. But upon descending the stairs, I was horrified to discover Eliza out of bed and reaching to pick up her child.
“Back in bed at once!” I commanded. She did as she was told, but not without her baby. She clutched him to her breast even as she nearly fell back upon the bed.
I watched my charges carefully for the next few days. Making as if to sew or card, I counted Eliza’s breaths, watched the rise and fall of her chest. At one point, I thought her cheeks looked flushed, and I moved to feel her forehead with my own face. But it was flushed from the fire, not fever. Twice a day, I checked Johnny, too—I could not relax until a week had passed and all remained well. In the week since his birth, Johnny had darkened in color to that of a roasted chestnut, though there were bits of gold in his thick head of hair.
“You watch me carefully, Lizzie,” Eliza said, suckling Johnny one afternoon.
“You’ve noticed,” I replied.
“It is very obvious.”
Martha added, “She thinks she is so sly, but one reads her easily, I find. Does one not?”
“Indeed one does.” Eliza smiled.
“I’m glad to provide amusement for you both.”
The two women laughed amiably at me.
Abigail called that same afternoon to find a most shocking scene. I had not told her about Eliza, and so she was to come upon a messy home with a woman and babe in the parlor bed, surrounded by linen, cloths, and powder! Eliza was out of danger now and was sitting up when Martha and I greeted Abigail at the door.
“Good God!” Abigail cried. “It’s more close and crowded in here than Dr. Wales’s pox hospital. And the two of you look bruised about the eyes.” She turned to me and whispered, “Who is that?”
“My sister-in-law, Eliza Boylston. I safe delivered her of a little boy one week ago tomorrow. The child . . .” I took my friend out of doors into the chilly autumn air and finished in a low voice, “The child has no father. Or none she will as yet willingly name.”
“Poor thing,” Abigail said.
“The news is worse,” I whispered. “For the child is of mixed race.”
“A Negro?”
“Indeed.”
“Was it a case of ravishment?”
“No. She loved him—still does, I believe. The situation could hardly be worse. Her father is dying.”
Abigail passed a hand wearily across her head. “And I came to tell you of pleasant, easy news. So pleasant and easy, it allowed me to forget, for a few hours, what impossible, treacherous times we live in.”
“It is good to forget once in a while, if you can. I don’t begrudge you your good news.”
At that moment, I think I actually would have fallen face forward in my dooryard had Abigail not steadied me and led me inside.
As I leaned on her, Abigail scolded, “You deliver others safely but will have no man of your own. You look down your nose at the feminine badinage of our quilting ladies, though it would save you many hours’ work. And who, Mrs. Boylston, do you allow to care for you? No one. You are most irksome.”
“You care for me,” I objected. But I found my strength had entirely left me, even that with which to defend myself against her.
When I had eaten something, my limbs grew heavy, and I fell asleep in the good parlor chair. I awoke an indeterminate time later to find Abigail next to me, holding little John.
Eliza was still in bed but looked animated and happy, a happiness doubled by Abigail’s loving treatment of Johnny.
“There. You needed that rest, Lizzie. You must take care not to let yourself sink so low.”
“It’s my fault,” Eliza added. “Lizzie has been an angel. She and Martha, I mean.” Eliza glanced at the girl, who stood in the kitchen door, having deftly allowed Eliza and Abigail their private conversation.
“No, you’re mistaken. They’re no angels. That one”—Abigail glanced my way—“is a thorn in my side. And the little one”—she glanced at Martha—“well, still waters run deep. She could perform a successful amputation upon you, though she appears hardly strong enough to carry a bucket.”
At this, Martha’s eyes flashed at Abigail.
“No,” Abigail concluded, snuggling the babe and smiling at him, “this is the angel. Such a gentle, good soul I have never encountered in a babe, and I have had five. Five born alive,” she corr
ected herself.
“Yes. That’s his father in him,” Eliza said.
We all nearly cried then. The truth was, we had, in a week’s time, fallen in love with Johnny. His mother had little to give, yet he complained so little and suckled so well, we thought him blessed. Indeed, we had gone so far, late in our sleepless nights, to resolve to keep him should the mother die.
“Excuse me a moment, Miss Boylston, for it was on some business that I came, and I must now address Lizzie before returning to my own children. My Nabby is gone, and the boys are no doubt getting into mischief.” She stood and gently handed the babe to Eliza.
I stood, too, a bit dizzy, and accompanied Abigail into the yard to bid her good-bye. There was no carriage, and I soon realized she’d come the near two miles on foot.
“It grows cold,” I said. “Do you wish to take Star?”
“What, and sit astride like you? Heavens, no.”
“It’s a good deal more comfortable that way,” I offered.
“We women were not made for comfort,” Abigail said with asperity. “But to the matter at hand. As you may know, the French fleet has been in town these few weeks, and I have had the honor to meet and dine with Admiral d’Estaing aboard La Sensible.”
Abigail gazed out toward the iron-gray sky over the ocean.
I looked beyond the dunes to where Abigail was gazing and saw a large, elegant schooner. In my preoccupation with Eliza, I had not noticed it before.
“What polite and sober men.” She smiled at the recollection. “Lizzie, if you could see them, it would lift you up. How far our own lawless, greedy citizens have sunk by comparison! These French seamen are the noblest men I ever beheld.”
I waited silently for her to come to her point, for to hear about noble men after the week we had passed was like hearing about men on Mars.
It was growing cool. The wind was picking up, and I wished to return to my patient.
“But then, you must wonder why I prattle on. I come to the point: Wednesday next, I’m invited to dine with the Admiral d’Estaing at the colonel’s. I want you to come with me.”
“Abigail, by all means I will accompany you if all be well with Eliza. But I am greatly afraid, for I was cautioned by one who counts himself a friend of the enemy.”
“You speak of Martha’s brother, no doubt. Thomas Miller.” Her eyes were bright and unreadable. “Yes, he’s a well-known sympathizer.”
“A sympathizer, perhaps, but he loves his sister, and he has come to have a true regard, I believe, for us.”
“For you, you mean,” she said.
I blushed, ashamed of my feelings, especially before the wife of our great patriot. “My point is this,” I said with an effort. “He has most emphatically warned against assembly at the colonel’s. He says it is a danger to all involved, including the colonel himself.”
Abigail was silent, and I thought she was considering the import of my words, but she took my hands and said, “Think of it, Lizzie. What victory for them if we allowed them to instill such fear in us that we cease all assembly with one another! If they wish to divide and conquer, they shall not do it on Braintree soil. No”—she shook her head—“I may lose my life, but I won’t have the history books say that the wife of John Adams, who daily risked life and limb, cowered in her boots.”
And that was all that she ever said upon the matter. Then she placed a little hand on my arm. “But, Lizzie, you may make free to decline the offer if you wish. I speak only for myself.”
“And I speak for myself when I say I would as soon let you go alone as walk a favorite lamb into a lion’s den. No, I shall go, too.”
Abigail embraced me warmly in the chilly air. She felt tiny and insubstantial in my arms. I marveled at how such an indomitable spirit could live within so childlike a body. She began to walk down the path, then turned suddenly. “Oh, but Lizzie! I have entirely forgotten! Eliza told me all about the father of little John.”
She began to walk away, but I ran after her. “She told you?”
“Oh, yes. She spoke quite freely about him.” Abigail gave me a small, wicked smile.
Oh, she knew full well my tendency toward envy! Abigail had achieved in one hour what I had failed to accomplish in a week’s time.
“Who is it?”
“You must ask her yourself. She will tell you now, I am certain.”
“But how did you wrest it from her?”
“I needed not wrest anything,” she objected. “To gain a confidence, one must simply give one.”
She left me to ponder that simple equation, and I went inside to warm myself and to discover who had fathered little John.
31
WE HAD WAITED until that week to make a true fire, scraping by with bits of coal and ash. But it had grown so chill that I feared for mother and child. It was now cozy within; at what cost to us later I neither knew nor fully cared. I sat myself in the kitchen with the strong intent of doing nothing for five minutes together. Watching Eliza nurse John, I wondered what confidence Abigail had shared to get her to name a man she had kept silent about for nine months or more.
When Eliza had finished nursing, she passed the besotted infant to Martha. Eliza had a devilish look on her face as she now reached into her pocket.
“What have you there?” I asked her.
“It’s a gift. I waited to see if I liked you well enough to give it to you.”
“And?”
“And it seems I do, for it is yours.”
She handed me the small object. It was smooth and round. I opened my fingers and looked down. It was the portrait of Jeb.
“Oh, Eliza.”
“It is yours, Lizzie. It always has been. My mother—but let’s not even discuss it.”
“No, let us not. Martha, look! Come look at my Jeb!”
Martha came by and peered over my shoulder at the portrait. Being nearsighted, she grabbed my hand and pushed it to her nose. I felt such emotion being able to show a likeness of my husband to Martha. Oh, Lord forgive me, the pride I felt! I had been so long without a man’s company and had so envied Martha that to claim this handsome lad as mine, once—
“He is handsome indeed, Lizzie. I see now how very poor a replacement I am.”
“Nonsense,” I said, my moment of pride instantly vanishing. “Where shall I put it? Oh, in my chamber, of course.” I raced upstairs to safely store my treasure.
I had forgiven Eliza upon the birth of her son and can date the growth of my affection from her apology. But the gift of the portrait began our true friendship. We held hands, laughed, and passed Johnny around. Some time later that afternoon, Eliza told us all about her man—as dead to her, she believed, as Jeb was to me.
His name was John Watkins. He was a slave owned by her uncle Robert Chase, a wealthy merchant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, to whom they had fled at the start of the Troubles. Apparently, this uncle had twice refused Watkins’s appeal for freedom, although, by this time, many other slaveholders in Portsmouth had liberated their slaves, or allowed them to purchase their freedom.
Robert Chase, however, made good money off of Watkins, who worked as a shipwright building our warships for a man named Colonel John Langdon. Mr. Chase had no motive to liberate Watkins.
“Does he know of his son?” I asked.
“Oh, yes. We are able to write letters through—others.”
Eliza further told me that Watkins’s own father was the former royal governor Benning Wentworth, uncle of the governor who fled Portsmouth in 1775.
“He’s uncommonly handsome,” Eliza shared, blushing. “He has light-brown skin, blue-green eyes, and wavy, dark-brown hair. But it is his character that continues to move me.”
I had thought Eliza a spoiled, resentful creature. But, hearing her stories, I began to wonder whether I had been somewhat mistaken. Eliza went on to tell us of the sh
ips Watkins had built for a war he himself was not allowed to fight. And she told us of the boar he had caught for them, only to be whipped in the square for his efforts.
“Yes,” Eliza concluded sadly. “I know God loves us all, but I believe John to be a favorite son.”
Favorite son? Were Watkins such a favorite of God, why did God see fit to perpetrate his misery? Why did he remain a slave? I listened to Eliza’s description of John Watkins with growing rage.
“But surely something can be done?” I inquired.
“Lizzie, you are such an idealist, despite all that has happened to you. I have no such illusion.”
“I shall think upon it when I am not so distracted by—by other events.”
Eliza smiled at this. “Think upon it all you like,” she said. “If you could let my parents know I have survived, it would be gift enough. To me, if not to them.”
Indeed, I had heard nothing in reply to the message I had sent to her mother the previous week, that her daughter had been delivered of a healthy boy. If it had been my own dear mother, I knew that no illegitimate child—however green, black, or yellow—would have kept her from my side. In my heart, I condemned that mother who had not the courage to love her own daughter despite the pain or loss of status it might cause herself.
Had Mr. Boylston not been so ill, I knew he would have risen from his bed to see his daughter.
The following day, however, we received the very sad news that Mr. Boylston had departed this life.
Eliza was deeply grieved, though not shocked. “I am alone in the world now,” she said. “Except for him.” She nodded to the boy, who lay sleeping in his drawer, blissfully unaware of our troubles.
“It is grievous indeed you could not be with him at the end,” said Martha.
Getting up as if to dress herself, Eliza replied, “I shall be with him now, however. My stays, Martha.”
“Your stays? Are you joking? Surely you have no idea of going abroad?”