Necessary Sins

by Elizabeth Bell

  “But it was a Priest who started the National Institute for Deaf-Mutes.”

  “The schools and the hospitals the Church has established—absolutely commendable. I’m not saying it’s entirely bad. But neither is the Church all good.”

  Joseph had planned to argue, but a noise in the woods up ahead distracted him. Faint but distinct, it sounded like a bell—not a church or plantation bell, but the kind put on animals. No human voice accompanied it. Their mare lifted her head and turned an ear toward the bell too. Joseph hoped it wasn’t attached to a bull or anything dangerous. “Papa, do you hear that?”

  He pulled back on the horse’s reins, making her slow to a walk. The jangling continued, sounding faster now, almost frantic, but they couldn’t see its source through the trees. “A loose sheep, probably.” Papa raised the reins to urge the mare back into a trot—and then the cracking of a branch and a human groan came from the woods.

  “Is someone hurt?” Papa called, stopping their horse.

  No response from the trees.

  “I’m a doctor,” Papa explained. When the stranger still didn’t answer, he added: “I keep my patients’ secrets.”

  The silence continued till Joseph was certain the groan had been some trick of the wind. Then a deep voice replied, almost too quiet to carry across the distance: “You know how to set bones?”

  “I do.” Papa handed Joseph the reins and jumped out of the chaise.

  The voice inquired, “You alone?”

  “My son is with me.” Papa led their mare to one of the pines nearby, where he tied her. “He can keep a secret too.”

  Joseph frowned at his father as he leaned in to retrieve his medical satchel.

  “Would you prefer to stay here?” Papa asked.

  Joseph shook his head and accepted Papa’s hand to help him down from the carriage.

  “I ain’t close to the road, understand.”

  “We’ll come to you,” Papa replied. “If you think something is broken, try not to move.”

  “It’s my arm,” the man explained, the slow clang of the bell punctuating his words. “I gots to move a little, so as you can hear me, I reckon.”

  Papa chuckled. “Just keep talking. We’re on our way.”

  The man did not offer his name. They picked their way through the trees for several long minutes before Joseph saw the bells—two of them, suspended from a pair of arched iron bars that resembled horns. The bells were brass perhaps, round with slits at the bottom and swaying slightly, but Joseph could hear only one ball rattling. His eyes followed the horns downward. They sprouted from the shoulders of a young, bushy-haired, dark-skinned negro, from either side of the iron collar around his neck. He sat on the fallen trunk of a dead tree, cradling his bloody right arm in his lap.

  Joseph stopped. He felt a little sick. Much as he admired Papa, Joseph knew he could never be a doctor himself.

  The negro glanced up at the bells. “I was tryin’ to be careful, but one of ’em caught on somethin’, and I fell wrong.”

  On the dead tree, next to this wild negro, Papa set down his medical satchel as calmly as if they were in a Charleston bedchamber. Joseph kept his distance while Papa peered at his patient’s arm and the raw flesh of his palm. “What I need to do will hurt before it helps.” He offered the negro a leather strap from his bag. “You might want to bite down on this.”

  “I don’t suppose your regular patients would appreciate that much.” The negro accepted the strap but only gripped it in his good fist.

  “My ‘regular patients’ come in all shades,” Papa informed him, blotting at the wound with loose cotton and something from a bottle. “Joseph, would you find me a splint, please? If you need tools, my surgery set is in the bottom of the satchel.”

  Joseph was glad to keep away. As he hunted for a suitable piece of wood, he did not hear the next few questions Papa asked or the negro’s answers. But every time he moved, or even breathed, one of the bells above him clanged. The negro was a runaway—he had to be. This must be his second attempt, or his master would never have resorted to such punishment.

  “Do you have to sleep in that thing?” Papa asked.

  “Haven’t slept for weeks now,” the negro muttered.

  Joseph crouched over an old, fallen trunk that the weather had mostly split for him. He decided he’d still need a tool and began to pick his way back to Papa’s satchel.

  “My sister, she stuffs the bells at night to keep ’em quiet.” With a grimace, the negro watched Papa pushing a needle through his skin. “She stuffed ’em ’fore I left, but it’s worked out-a that right one.”

  Joseph paused to gape at the boldness of his disobedience.

  The negro glanced at him; he must have sensed Joseph’s reproof. “I’m not running away, not permanent. I’m going to see my wife, is all.”

  Joseph dug in the medical satchel. “Can’t you do that on Sundays?” He hadn’t meant to say the words aloud, but he wasn’t sorry. No master made his slaves work on Sundays.

  “Not anymore. My wife, she near Orangeburg now. Last time, took me two days just to get to her.”

  Then he should ask for a pass. If he couldn’t get one as often as he liked—well, he must learn to be content. Suffering was part of God’s plan. It taught you virtues like humility and patience. Joseph selected the largest amputation knife and returned to the promising trunk. “Servants, obey in all things your masters,” he murmured, remembering the verse he’d heard many times.

  “As you would that men should do to you, do you also to them,” Papa called loud enough that Joseph could hear him over the wood splitting. “You’re quoting Saint Paul. I’m quoting God.”

  The negro chuckled, which made his bells wobble.

  Joseph returned with the splint and handed it to Papa without meeting his eyes.

  “Perfect! Thank you, son.”

  Joseph turned his back while Papa set the negro’s arm. He was nearly through wrapping the splint when a new voice shouted from the direction of the road. “Halloo!”

  Joseph heard the negro suck in a breath and hold it, which of course the bell marked.

  Someone must have come upon their chaise and horse. “Are you in any trouble there?” the man inquired. Was it a slave patrol? Papa might be imprisoned for helping a runaway!

  “No trouble!” Papa called back. “My son’s dog took off after a rabbit, is all.” It was appalling how easily he broke the Eighth Commandment. Perhaps Papa thought the bell would be more difficult to lie away; he caught it with one hand to keep it silent.

  “Do you need help with your search?”

  “No, thank you. We’ve got her in hand now.”

  There was a moment’s pause. At last, the man answered: “All right, then—good day to you!”

  “Good day!”

  Joseph thought he heard hoof beats on the road. The negro released his breath, and slowly Papa let go of the bell, which rattled in protest.

  “I can’t reach ’em up there myself.” The negro glanced at the bell, then down to the bloody cotton Papa had discarded. “D’you think—you could take some of that and…”

  “I have a better idea.” Papa finished the splint and turned to his surgery set. He extracted the bone saw. “Do you trust me?”

  “You just proved I could.” Still the negro looked dubious.

  Papa took back the leather strap and walked around behind his patient. He fed the strap between the negro’s neck and his collar, where one of the rivets held it closed. Then Papa sawed carefully till iron shavings began falling.

  For a while, Joseph watched, frowning. Papa spoke to the negro about how his arm would heal, not about the crime he was committing. He kept sawing for what seemed like ages. Joseph poked an anthill with a long stick, and the tiny creatures swarmed around the disturbance. He retreated a safe distance and sat down to wait.

  At last Papa broke through. He folded open the two halves with their horns. The negro helped him, and together they dumped the broken col
lar on the forest floor. The right bell clanged its warning a few moments more.

  The negro stared down at the collar as if he didn’t believe it was gone, though it had left behind raw marks all around his neck and shoulders. He looked up at Papa with the same kind of disbelief, as if he were seeing him for the first time. “You some kind of foreigner?”

  Papa cased his bone saw and smiled. “Just a doctor.”

  “Well, I’m much obliged to you, Doctor.” The negro stood up from the dead tree, holding his splinted arm against his chest. “You a good and decent man. I hope your son there takes after you inside as well as out.”

  Joseph watched the dark form disappear into the trees, while Papa snapped shut his satchel. Joseph knew what he was feeling was another sin, that if he spoke up, he would be breaking the Fourth Commandment. But if your father criticized the Church, couldn’t you criticize him? “You had no right to do that.”

  “No right to treat a wounded man?”

  “I mean about—” Joseph glanced down at the slave collar, but found he couldn’t name it, so he only pointed. What Papa had done was like theft. How would he feel if someone stole one of their negroes? “He wasn’t yours to free.”

  Papa sighed. “He only wants to see his wife.”

  “He was probably lying.”

  Papa made a noise that was more like a snort than a laugh. “Because all negroes lie.” He said the words in a way that mocked them. “Does Henry lie? Does May?”

  “Jemmy did.”

  Papa sat on the dead tree and stared down at the iron collar for a long time. When he spoke, his voice had changed somehow. “Pick it up.”

  Joseph blinked at him, puzzled.

  “Pick it up,” Papa repeated more harshly, glaring at him. When Joseph only looked at the collar, his father barked: “Do as you’re told, boy!”

  Fear gripped Joseph’s throat. This wasn’t Papa. Papa didn’t speak like this, not even to their slaves.

  “NOW!” he bellowed.

  Joseph jumped and moved to obey. He didn’t have a choice. He stooped over the great iron contraption and gripped it below each bell. The right one rattled as he tried to lift the collar, and it was even heavier than he’d thought. Too heavy. He could barely get it off the ground. Surely that was all Papa expected him—

  “Don’t let go until I tell you to!” commanded the man who had been his father. “Not even if you think your arms are going to break!”

  Joseph couldn’t breathe, and he certainly couldn’t look up. Hot tears pricked beneath his eyelids, and every one of his muscles burned. The collar would drag him into the earth.

  His tormenter knelt beside him, his voice suddenly Papa’s again. “Can you imagine what it is like, Joseph, to have your body, your entire life, and all the people you love ruled by someone else’s whims?” He took the collar away and caught Joseph by the shoulders, or he would have fallen. “Can you understand why the negroes are tired, why they are angry?” Papa cradled Joseph’s head in his hands, knocking off his straw hat. “Are you all right?”

  Joseph nodded numbly, his eyes averted.

  “I’m sorry, Joseph. But do you understand?”

  Joseph kept nodding, though he did not think he understood anything, least of all his own father. Papa wrapped his arms around him, but Joseph remained stiff.

  “I love you. You know that,” Papa breathed against his ear. “But please, Joseph, open your eyes. Don’t believe everything people tell you, or what books tell you. Look for yourself. You are so good with your mother and your sisters—even our slaves. You know what’s right.” Papa pulled back to gaze earnestly into his face. “You are the wisest, kindest boy I know. Don’t hide that light under anyone else’s bushel. Trust yourself.”

  They walked back to the road in silence. Their mare was still waiting with the chaise. It seemed they had left her weeks ago. When Papa helped him into the carriage, Joseph’s arms ached.

  Eventually, he and Papa reached a great tract of land filled with ordered rows of bushes and trees, many of them in bloom. There were hothouses and sunken beds too. Papa directed their mare to a trough and tied her up. He led Joseph toward the two figures in the nearest field. One was a tall man with grey hair, an aquiline nose, and a kind face. He was walking slowly between rows and pointing out plants to a boy a little younger than Joseph. The man was white, but the boy was mulatto.

  They turned as Joseph and Papa approached, and the man’s face melted into a smile. “René! It’s so good to see you again!” he called in French.

  “And you, Philippe.” Papa and the man exchanged a quick embrace and half-kissed each other’s cheeks. Then Papa addressed the young mulatto: “How are you today, Louis?”

  “Fine, sir,” the mulatto smiled, looking Papa in the eyes as if they knew each other too. His French was good, and his clothes were fine. Joseph wondered what he was doing here.

  “Is this Joseph?” the man asked, delighted. How peculiar, to hear his name from a stranger’s lips as if the man knew all about him.

  Papa nodded and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Joseph, this is Philippe Noisette. He lived on Saint-Domingue too. But we met in Charleston only a few years ago, while he was director of the Medical Society’s garden.”

  “Noisette, like our roses?” Joseph maintained the French.

  “Exactement!” the man smiled. “Noisette roses were named after my brother Louis Claude and myself. I sent him one, and he made it famous in France.” Monsieur Noisette gestured to the young mulatto. “Allow me to introduce my son, Pierre Louis.”

  Joseph’s eyes went wide. He’d thought this day could not become any stranger. Monsieur Noisette looked like a pure-blooded Frenchman. If this boy was his son, that meant he had— With a negress!

  Joseph saw mulattos every day in the streets. But until this morning, he had not really understood how they happened. And no one he knew had openly admitted to causing them. This man felt no shame for what he’d done. Noisette seemed proud of his colored son.

  The boy had extended his nut-brown hand.

  “Joseph!” Papa hissed in English. “Have you forgotten your manners?” He acted as if this situation were perfectly normal, as if conventional etiquette applied. Joseph was beginning to think he did not know his father at all.

  Joseph couldn’t move. He couldn’t even look at them. At the edge of his vision, he watched the mulatto drop his hand.

  Noisette cleared his throat and turned back to his flowers. “I was just testing Louis to see how many of these plantings he could name by genus and species. How’s your Latin coming, Joseph?”

  “Bene,” he muttered at the ground.

  “Do you know that all plants have Latin names? For example, Digitalis purpurea is foxglove—your father is familiar with that one. The Latin names are important, because they allow botanists in different countries to communicate with each other. Even in the same language, a common name can refer to different plants, or many common names can refer to the same plant. Linnaeus was a doctor too, but he wasn’t thinking of medicinal uses when he designed his classification system. Do you know why he grouped plants the way he did? What criteria Linnaeus used?”

  Joseph shook his head.

  Noisette grinned and dropped his voice as if he were telling a secret. “Very meticulously, one by one, he counted the plants’ sexual organs.”

  Joseph gaped at him, afraid to look down. “Plants have…”

  Noisette nodded, still grinning. “Usually several!”

  Joseph swallowed. Did Mama know this?

  Papa chuckled. “I think you’ve scandalized the poor boy, Philippe.”

  “If a flower has both male and female parts,” Noisette continued, “what do we call it, Louis?”

  “A ‘perfect’ flower,” the mulatto answered.

  “Très bien! Let me show you one.” Noisette took them over to a cluster of white lilies. “This is called the pistil.” He touched the bulbous tip of a stalk that was darker than the petals and jutted o
ut from their center. “Would you say this part is male or female, Joseph?”

  He knew he was blushing. Wasn’t it obvious?

  “It’s female!” Noisette declared. “These stamina with the pollen, they’re the male organs.”

  Joseph averted his eyes. Lilies were obscene. Lilies! In paintings and statues of the Blessed Virgin and Saint Joseph, white lilies often accompanied them. Mama had explained that lilies symbolized the purity of Christ’s human parents, how they had never corrupted their bodies by lying together. Mama and those artists certainly did not know about this.

  Papa asked Noisette about their spotted rose leaves. He talked to the mulatto as if he were any other boy. Finally, he led Joseph back to their chaise.

  After they’d climbed inside, Papa sat staring at the reins. “That’s twice today you’ve disappointed me, son. But before I lived in Paris, when I was your age, I saw the world the way you do: black and white, so to speak.” Papa looked over the field to the distant figures. “In some things you’re so mature, I forget how young you really are, and that all you’ve ever known is one small corner of Charleston. I should have introduced you to the Noisettes years ago.” Joseph felt Papa’s eyes on him, but he didn’t raise his own. “Have you noticed them at Mass?”

  Joseph shook his head. He always kept his attention on the Missal or the Priest.

  “That’s because the Noisettes sit in the gallery. The colored members of our congregation also receive Communion last. In the so-called Catholic Church! At the cathedral, Dr. England’s solution is to offer a separate Mass. If you truly want to serve God, Joseph, remember: ‘never do to another what you would hate to have done to you by another.’ I’ve seen inside white and black bodies, son. They aren’t any different.”

  “If you really believe that,” Joseph asked quietly, “why haven’t you freed our slaves?”

  Papa’s sigh was almost a groan. “Because South Carolina has made it impossible! Since the Act of 1820, the state legislature has to approve every petition, and they’ve shown time and again they’ll free slaves only for ‘heroic deeds’—only for exposing revolts like Denmark Vesey’s. Why didn’t I free Henry and May before 1820, when manumission was merely difficult? Why don’t I submit a petition now on principle?” Papa’s voice became a mutter, as if he were talking to himself. “Because of what your mother and her parents would think. Because I’m a hypocritical coward.”