Blessing

by Lyn Cote

  “I am getting married soon,” Joanna said, not looking at her.

  “Asher?” Blessing named the young man who’d been courting her friend. She kept her tone light, but her tension increased. What she’d dreaded was coming true.

  “Yes. He can finally support a wife, and he wants me with him.”

  “I understand.” Leaden sadness weighed down Blessing’s heart. “I’ll miss having thee here every day.”

  “That’s not all.”

  Blessing waited, wondering, her heart skipping.

  “We’re moving to Canada.”

  The words struck Blessing, a heart blow. “Canada?” she murmured, thoughts racing.

  “Yes. Asher wants our children safe from kidnappers and catchers, so they can grow up in a place where their freedom isn’t always in question. He’s saved enough to buy us land and already has his team and plow. He’s decided we shouldn’t wait. We plan to marry next week and then go to Canada before winter and get settled. After we arrive, we’ll hire out and find land to buy before spring planting time.”

  “That is a good plan.” This unwelcome change ruffled through Blessing like the wind through the pages of an open book. “It’s just so sudden.”

  “I know. I thought we’d wait till next year, but the riot . . . Asher is ready to leave and I must follow.”

  Blessing couldn’t argue with that. She didn’t blame Asher for wanting to protect his future family. “I will miss thee.”

  “I know. I missed you when you married.” The sadness in Joanna’s tone distressed Blessing.

  She rested a hand on Joanna’s arm, sorting through what she should say, what words she wanted to speak. She should just be honest, she knew. Her mother always quoted Shakespeare at times like this: “Truth will out.” She drew in a breath. “Joanna, I missed thee too.”

  “I wasn’t much welcome in your house when your husband lived. I’ve always wondered why. Will you tell me now?” Joanna met her gaze.

  Blessing closed her eyes against the past.

  “I’ve carried a hurt over that ever since,” Joanna continued. “I want to clear it up before we part, maybe for the rest of our lives. Will you tell me, please?”

  Blessing quieted her nerves as much as she could. Just recalling one of the occasions Joanna had come to visit her and Richard was enough to shake her. The entire time, she’d been afraid Joanna might guess that Richard was upstairs sleeping off another drunken night.

  “Joanna, there was a reason I kept my distance from thee and my family back then.” She mustered her courage. “My marriage was not a happy one.”

  Sounds expanded around them: people walking past the garden fence, two squirrels chirruping in an argument over acorns, the clopping of horse hooves.

  “You didn’t act happy,” Joanna agreed. “We all knew something was wrong. But you pushed us away.”

  The old hurt and suffering swirled inside Blessing, an ache that could still rob her peace. “I’d wed him against the counsel of my parents and had gone against the elders, been put out of the meeting. Too soon I realized I’d made a disastrous choice, but I had already married. I couldn’t change that. I had promised to stay for better or worse.” That awful feeling of being trapped in a box with no exit washed over her.

  “You could have come home,” Joanna said.

  “No, I couldn’t. Richard was my husband. It was a complicated situation.” She saw before her eyes Richard’s recurring bouts of remorse and repentance. No doubt it was during one of these that out of guilt he’d willed his property to her and unwittingly given her the wherewithal to do God’s will in helping others. The personal pain and self-recrimination still held, though. Why had she always believed he would change? “I loved him.” At first. But then . . .

  “I’ve wanted to talk to you about this many times, but you have ever held back about your marriage.”

  Blessing faced Joanna. She wanted to deny this but paused before speaking. “Hiding the truth about my marriage,” she said slowly, “became a habit. But my affection for thee has never faltered, even when we were distant. We were raised together. Joanna, I understand thy desire to leave this place, where thy skin color always stands against thee—”

  “Asher and I know we’ll face prejudice in Canada too, but . . .”

  Blessing nodded her sympathy. “But I have been so happy to have thee here at the orphanage with me.” She took Joanna’s hand. “Thank thee.”

  “I have loved working with the children and with you—being a part of this good place.” Joanna gripped Blessing’s hand in return. “But it’s time for me to have my own children. Asher and I have waited long enough.”

  Blessing nodded, at first unable to speak. Joanna’s words brought to mind the special bond she felt with her latest orphan. “I must tell thee before thee leaves—I am going to adopt Daniel Lucas.”

  “Why do you always talk like you won’t ever marry again? You’re still young.”

  Blessing shook her head. “I’ll not marry a second time.” Memories of her husband crowded around her, as menacing as the mob that had gathered at her gate. She stood. “Tell me about thy wedding plans.” She led Joanna to the house, holding the past at bay.

  NOVEMBER 10, 1848

  Gerard entered the familiar Lane Seminary auditorium, alight with lamps and candles against the early autumn darkness, and as before, he walked beside Blessing Brightman. Again, the audience, composed of both genders, caused him an odd feeling of displacement. But he’d come because Blessing had invited him and because his attendance at the James Bradley lecture had made the Cincinnati papers from which his father kept tabs on him. He recalled how incensed his father had been over Gerard’s merely being seen in Seneca Falls last July and found himself suppressing a smile. However, at the back of his mind niggled the thought that such a motive smacked of immaturity. I’ve also come tonight because I want to hear what’s said.

  This evening even more people than before turned to watch them enter. Gerard was struck by the startling realization that he almost wished the gossip about himself and Blessing were true.

  Blessing halted and exchanged a few words with an older woman. As always, his lovely companion stood out as an oddity in the room. Dressed plainly but expensively, she was a dove among crows.

  As the two women conversed, once more Gerard wondered about Smith’s mistress—where she was now. He didn’t believe for a moment that the woman was still at “number three.” On a few occasions, he’d been tempted to visit that house and see what he could find out there. But caution held him back. He would do nothing to endanger that poor woman or Blessing.

  The older woman embraced Blessing and went to sit farther ahead.

  Blessing turned and dazzled Gerard with a genuine smile. “Ohio has been chosen to host the second women’s rights convention in 1850. I will be working along with several of the women here to arrange everything.”

  Gerard tried not to react. Another women’s rights convention? Wasn’t one enough? “I see,” he said.

  His cautious tone set her chuckling. She swept into the next aisle and sat down.

  He followed, shaking his head.

  “Is that why thee comes with me?” she asked. “Because I am so different, so radical?”

  Gerard drew in breath and again shook his head at her. Indeed that wasn’t the reason. He accompanied her in spite of this. She was becoming sunlight to him. He craved her presence. She had made his stale life interesting. He couldn’t countenance marriage for himself, but they had become . . . friends. Mentally he took a step back. This was still alien territory for him. A man and woman becoming friends—unheard of.

  He was saved from replying more fully to her question by the introduction of the first speakers. Two men addressed the gathering briefly—neither of them as inflammatory as Gerard had expected. But when the main speaker walked out onto the platform, Gerard’s mouth opened involuntarily.

  “Our main speaker tonight is Sojourner Truth.” The man intr
oduced her with a gesture. “I hope you will give your attention to her.”

  He was about to be addressed by a female Negro suffragist. Dumbfounded, he sensed the chair beneath him dropping as if an earthquake had shaken the foundation.

  Then he felt Blessing’s gloved index finger gently lift his chin, closing his telltale open mouth.

  He sent her a glance that asked why she hadn’t warned him. Being addressed publicly by a female was radical, shocking enough, but by a black woman? Were there no boundaries of decorum at these meetings?

  Blessing smiled teasingly and faced forward.

  On the platform, the tall, older woman dressed simply in black began her address. “I am speaking to you tonight about the rights of women. Some people say women don’t need rights; they just need good men to take care of them.” She paused for a wry grin that deepened the wrinkles on her face.

  Her saucy words brought Gerard back to earth, his chair on solid ground again. Yet something unlooked for had caught his attention. The woman’s inflection was not the Southern accent he’d expected. Rather, she spoke in a singsong pattern that he identified as New York Dutch. Some elderly New Yorkers who’d been born into Dutch families there still retained the distinctive speech pattern. Why would a black woman—no doubt a former slave—speak with a Dutch accent?

  “Many of you are taken aback that I, a woman, a Negro woman, would speak in public. But I’ve been through many changes in my life and I have much to say. I was born a slave in the state of New York. That should prove to all how much our nation has changed within our lifetimes. So is a black woman speaking out about the rights of all women really so unusual?”

  Gerard wanted to stand up and declare, “Yes, it is unusual.”

  But the woman continued. “I am always amazed how little men understand how the world looks to a woman or a slave or a slave who is a woman. Would any man wish to live completely under the will of another?”

  For a moment Gerard considered his father with his will of iron and how he had tried to control Gerard with his purse strings. No, Gerard had refused to be controlled. So why am I here? Under my own will I would never have come. And something about this woman captured his attention. He tried to let go of his preconceptions and just listen to this bold woman.

  Sojourner Truth continued, facing them with her arms outstretched. “I am standing here before you because of Jesus. But I knew little of Jesus when I was a slave. All I knew of God was the Lord’s Prayer my mother taught me in Dutch as a small child before . . . before I was taken from her.” The woman paused, letting the impact of that simple yet devastating sentence roll through him, through them all.

  Another unwelcome memory returned: watching his mother weep as she was driven away from him to go to a spa for her health. He’d come home on summer holiday looking forward to spending it with her. There had been no reason for his father to choose that moment to send her away. She’d been in poor health for as long as Gerard could remember, but his father had insisted. And he and his mother had been powerless to change that. He’d hated his father from that day.

  The speaker sighed loudly. “That prayer was all I knew of God as I grew up. Yet somehow all I longed for was to please God, be acceptable to him. I made up my mind every morning to obey him, but every day I failed.” She stared at them and, it seemed, peered straight into Gerard’s eyes. “I could not please God on my own.”

  Gerard had never thought of pleasing God. God didn’t enter into his life.

  Sojourner Truth continued, gripping the podium with one hand as if for support. “So I was in despair. One night I fled from my master’s house into the woods and prayed to God. How could I reach him? He, high up and holy; me, sinful and lowly. Then a radiant figure appeared before my eyes. I did not know who he was, but he said, ‘I am Jesus. I will be your go-between to God.’ I had not even known the name Jesus!”

  The stunned silence all around pressed in on Gerard, and he could barely draw breath. Nobody talked like this, did they?

  “Soon I ran away and found a Quaker meeting in New York City. I began learning who Christ Jesus is and of his light. My life changed. That vision has given me power, Christ’s power—” she raised her fist—“to proclaim freedom, pursue freedom. How many people live in darkness? In bondage? Jesus wants us to be free—white and black, slave and free, male and female. Why should that be so strange?”

  Gerard felt electrified. Freedom. Wasn’t that what he wanted? Didn’t everyone seek it?

  On the way home, Gerard found himself unable to make small talk with Blessing. After Sojourner Truth’s speech, others had risen to speak, but his gaze had been riveted on the dark, wrinkled face of the woman who claimed to have seen God. She’d stirred his mind, not just his heart. New thoughts sprang up, challenging him. What must it be like to be a slave, to be a woman?

  The carriage slowed in front of his boardinghouse. He still could not speak. He opened the door, but before he stepped out, in the darkness he searched for and found Blessing’s hand.

  In that moment he fully recognized the power of this woman’s influence. His resistance to the new world of radical ideas she was opening to him was waning. The freedom it proclaimed beckoned him. Moved, he lifted Blessing’s hand to his lips, kissed the soft kid glove, and pressed it to his forehead. “Good night, Widow Brightman.”

  “Good night, Gerard Ramsay.” Her voice sounded subdued, thick with emotion, as if she sensed his turmoil.

  Gerard stepped down and shut the door, then watched the carriage roll away. He realized that though he’d attended church most of his life, he knew little of what Sojourner Truth had spoken of regarding her vision. Had God used a unique means of communication to speak to this unusual woman? However, he understood some of what she’d expressed. He’d met Blessing Brightman, and nothing would ever seem the same in his life either.

  DECEMBER 13, 1848

  The day had come for Tippy’s wedding. Dressed in her best blue-gray silk dress and holding a bouquet of pink-and-white hothouse roses, Blessing stood in front of the Fosters’ parlor fireplace, a step behind the bride. Tippy glowed with joy, and Stoddard’s expression was so revealing that Blessing felt as if she were intruding on the couple in a private moment.

  Ramsay stood to her left, just behind his cousin. She forced herself to focus on the minister, who was leading Stoddard and Tippy through their vows—not letting her gaze roam to the gentleman from Boston.

  In the weeks since she and Ramsay had attended Sojourner Truth’s lecture, they had met only in passing or when involved in the planning of this wedding. And she’d been grateful. She still felt the kiss he’d pressed onto her hand at the end of that evening at Lane. How could such a slight touch cause such chaos? Again her wayward eyes sought him.

  Intruding into Blessing’s thoughts, Tippy’s voice trembled as she said, “I, Xantippe Elaine, take thee, Stoddard Albert, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward; for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth.”

  As Blessing listened, she recalled Joanna’s recent wedding and heard Joanna’s lower and richer voice overlaying Tippy’s. Joanna’s wedding had taken place in Bucktown, a free black settlement near their hometown of Sharpesburg. Afterward Blessing’s parents had hosted the wedding dinner at their place. Their large barn, decorated for the occasion, had been filled with the wedding guests from Bucktown and Cincinnati. The next day Joanna and Asher had loaded their wagon and left for Canada. Remembering the last glimpse of her lifelong friend peeled back a layer of Blessing’s composure. She felt defenseless here.

  Now Stoddard received the ring from Ramsay and slipped the gold band onto Tippy’s finger. “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

  Blessing’s un
ruly gaze wandered once more toward Ramsay, who stood very straight and stiff. Did he still think his cousin was making a mistake? Blessing had finally accepted that Stoddard was likely what he appeared: an honest man with a good heart. She hadn’t found substantial reason to doubt it, in any case. This conclusion eased Blessing’s concern in one way and caused her distress of another kind that she couldn’t or wouldn’t analyze.

  The brief ceremony drew to a close, and the minister presented the new couple: “Mr. and Mrs. Stoddard Henry.” The sound of the final words sent a pang through Blessing. When a woman married, she placed all her trust in her husband because she legally became invisible from that point onward. Even a good man was rarely worthy of such a sacrifice.

  Blessing wondered if Stoddard realized the gift he’d just received and the responsibility he had assumed. Bitter memories of her own powerless state after she’d married Richard stirred, but she turned from them, scanning the small gathering.

  Since Tippy had been unwilling to wait months for her wedding, the affair was a small one—just family and close friends. Blessing knew most everyone here at least by sight.

  But two people were new to her. Stoddard’s mother, Frances Henry, and his uncle Saul Ramsay—Gerard’s father—had traveled from Boston for the occasion. As Blessing stood in the short receiving line with the bride and groom, greeting their guests and thanking them for their good wishes, she watched these two strangers, very aware of Ramsay at her side.

  From all appearances, Stoddard’s mother seemed happy about the match yet a bit uncertain of herself among the cluster of strangers. Saul Ramsay looked as if he had descended from Mount Olympus and didn’t like rubbing shoulders with lowly humans. She listened curiously for what he would say to the happy couple.

  “Congratulations, Stoddard,” Saul Ramsay said formally, shaking the groom’s hand. “Best wishes to your lady.” That was all—the polite phrases and nothing more.