As the ferry neared their shore, Jehu cast a casual eye for travelers who could displace them but didn’t say anything to Ruth, and, though Ruth checked herself, she didn’t say anything either. The ferryman bit Jehu’s silver two-bit piece before ushering them aboard behind the preacher, the farmer, and his shoats. The breeze was light, and the boat drifted a good while before its triangular sail popped and filled.
Jehu stayed in the stern with the ragged coloreds. The older man cackled at something Jehu said. The preacher and the woman conversed. A shoat snuffled and grunted. The young colored steered while the elder wrapped his arms around his knees and dozed. The western shore flattened into a line while the eastern acquired detail.
The sun was a yellow band when their wagon squeaked onto dry land. “You in Carolina now,” Jehu said.
“Same like Georgia,” Ruth said. Same palmettos, same live oaks, same sandy soil, same drooping moss.
Atop a low rise, candles gleamed in windows of the Shellpoint Inn. The preacher turned over his rig to a colored boy and escorted the woman inside. The farmer and shoats trudged up the road. Jehu went around back, where Cook said they could sleep in the barn for a dime plus a half dime for fodder. Two cent for a bowl of ham and beans. They set the bowl between them and shared, one spoonful at a time. Jehu made sure Ruth scraped up the last bite.
A nighthawk swooped through the lamplight when Cook opened the kitchen door. Clatter of cook pots. Somebody sayin’ something in there.
Jehu unhitched their mule and hobbled him where he could reach hay and water. Dim light peeped through unchinked logs. The mule snorted his muzzle into his water pail.
There was no sign coloreds had slept here before, but that didn’t mean anything. Coloreds don’t own anything to leave behind. Jehu carried his tools and toolbox into a horse stall. He laid their blanket atop hay tumbling out of a manger. He peeled off his shirt. In the faint light his skin gleamed like wet steel.
Jehu looked at Ruth. “You mine now. I does anything I wants with you.”
She stepped into his broad smile.
She said, “Oh, Master. Don’t you do it to me! I never knowed no man afore.”
She said, “Oh no, Master,” when his fine hands freed her breasts.
She said, “Yes, Master,” when he entered her.
* * *
Charleston was like Savannah but richer, busier, and blacker. The city sprawled athwart the narrow peninsula where the Ashley and Cooper Rivers met, and ships docked, undocked, raised sails, made bow waves, and did all those things big and little ships are supposed to. Charleston’s town houses were larger than Savannah’s, but, excepting White Point, Charleston had no beneficial public parks or squares. The principal avenues were north to south, and White Point on the tip of the peninsula was almost the only place in Charleston where, since coloreds were forbidden, there were more whites than coloreds. Charleston’s white masters were more arrogant than Savannah’s and quicker to use a cane or bullwhip.
Sensitive white masters could send disobedient servants to the workhouse to be whipped. Since the workhouse had previously been a sugar warehouse, they were sent “to get a little sugar.”
Jehu sold his lumber, wagon, and mule and rented a two-room shed behind a rice factor’s warehouse off Anson Street. In each room a window without glass or shutters let breezes through, and the roof was in shadow during the hottest hours of the day. Ruth made Jehu remove his shoes outside the wood floor she scrubbed until it was glass smooth and bleached white. She painted the doorframe and windowsills blue so spirits couldn’t pass and hung oakmoss, yellow dock, and mayapple to flavor the air (and keep Jehu’s mind fixed on the woman it ought to be). At sunset, when the breeze came off the river, they ate rice and beans or fried greens, sometimes with a scrap of salt pork. Jehu likely took a drink of whiskey then, only one, but Ruth never did. It was their chance to talk, but they didn’t say much.
Jehu had more work than he could do. His staircases and cabinetwork had won him a reputation, though his customers boasted Jehu was “the Englishman’s apprentice.”
Jehu had spent most of his Capital buying Ruth. Sometimes he wondered if he should have offered less.
“What I worth to you?”
“I didn’t mean nothin’ by it. Money make money if you use it proper.”
“I ain’t never seen money do nothin’. This ten-cent piece, it just lay there. ‘Dime, you gets up and sweeps my floor. You can’t? You can’t?’ I reckon I gots to sweep myownself.”
“Capital,” Jehu lectured, “make a man free. Got enough Capital we eat meat every night. Was Capital rented you this place.”
Giggling, she climbed into his lap. “Here I is.”
Ruth found work at a market stall selling produce. She’d forgotten her childhood languages but not how to drive a bargain.
When she turned over her small earnings to him, Jehu said, “We pretend you Jehu’s slave but we know whose slave is whose, don’t we, girl?”
Most of Charleston’s light-skinned free coloreds worshiped with whites at St. Philip’s Episcopal. Their Brown Society initiation fee was fifty dollars, and they paid dues too. Some owned slaves; a few wealthy Browns owned a dozen slaves.
Like most coloreds, Jehu and Ruth attended the African Methodist Episcopalian church on Cow Alley in the north end. It was a big new building, whitewashed inside and out; you didn’t want to rub your Sunday best against any wall because green lumber was still leaking pine pitch through the whitewash. The benches were backless and the pulpit unornamented, but Jehu Glen had made the front door of best cherrywood which the preacher, Rev. Morris Brown, locked and unlocked with a big iron key.
Reverend Brown had been a free-colored bootmaker before he heeded the Lord’s call and went north to Philadelphia to be instructed and ordained. Brown’s thriving church married, buried, and blessed as well as offering Bible studies for servants who couldn’t read the Book themselves and Sunday school for their children.
Founded by free coloreds, well-known craftsmen, the African church was clear proof that Negroes could advance in this world and be equal in the next.
The African church was the only place in the Low Country where coloreds could gather without whites present, the only door they could lock. The Brown Society and the Cow Alley church were the poles of colored society in the thriving port city of twenty-three thousand.
Ruth’s church friend Pearl joked, “You gots what you s’posed to have and most I s’posed to have too.” There was some truth to that. Pearl’s small face lurked under her kerchief, and she was straight up and down flat, like a boy. She’d been born on the Ravanel plantation, “back when they was plantin’ indigo. Before the rice come, you know,” and the daughter of a house servant became a house servant herself. “Missus Ravanel, she don’t favor town,” Pearl told Ruth. “But Colonel Ravanel do. So we town mostly. Colonel Ravanel famous for he horses!”
Mrs. Ravanel needed a Mammy for her young Penny but didn’t want to buy one. “What if Mammy no good? Ain’t like good Mammy come to slave market every day. What if Mistress buys Mammy what says she do arything but can’t do nothin’, what Mistress do then? Got to sell her on, and, in the meantime, what about Miss Penny?”
“Why ain’t you Mammy?”
“’Count I don’t like childrens. Childrens botheration!”
“Why you tellin’ me?”
“’Count Missus Ravanel, she lookin’ to hire a Mammy. She can fire ary Mammy don’t work out, which ain’t near the trouble of sellin’ one. Wasn’t you a Mammy once?”
Ruth laughed. “I Mammy Ruth afore I be Missus Glen.”
“You ain’t Missus Glen yet.” Pearl giggled. “You livin’ in sin.”
“For now,” Ruth corrected.
Frances Ravanel hired Ruth on Pearl’s recommendation. Penelope (Penny) Ravanel was two years old a
nd “troublesome,” but Ruth took to the child. “You and me ain’t so different, honey. We ain’t listen to nobody ’cept our ownself,” Ruth told her. Which, while not strictly true about Ruth, was certainly true about Miss Penny.
Jehu wasn’t altogether pleased by Ruth’s new employment. “You a servant again!”
“You makin’ two dollar every day you work. Missus Ravanel pay me fifty cent. We keep eatin’ like we been eatin’ and pays our rent and don’t buy no whiskey nor tobacco . . .” She paused.
“Go on.”
“We can live on my salary and yours can be Capital.”
“What about the church?”
“Half dime for the collection every Sunday.”
“I thinks about it.”
Ruth knew what thinking was needed had been done.
Colonel Ravanel had fought under Andrew Jackson at the Battle of Horseshoe Bend, and, though Colonel Jack never hid his light under a bushel he never boasted about that. Most Low Country planters had evaded the war, and, as one of the few Low Country heroes, Jack had been invited to stand for the legislature.
He laughed it off. “You don’t want a senator who knows as much about horses as I do. He might gallop off.”
When Governor Bennett himself made a plea, Colonel Jack told him, “We slaughtered those Indians like hogs in a shambles. I don’t reckon slaughterin’ qualifies me to make laws.”
Since Jack’s wife, Frances, often tempered the colonel’s moods and tongue, James Petigru said, “Too bad Frances can’t stand for the legislature in Jack’s place,” a remark which made the rounds.
Jack’s refusal and contempt for “the shambles” eroded what goodwill his heroism had brought, and he was never asked to stand for office again.
Jack didn’t care. He was happiest when riding or training or betting on or buying or racing horses, and some said, “The only human Jack Ravanel ever liked was his wife,” adding, “Lucky for Jack his wife is Frances.”
Frances was one of those fortunates who could don dignity or discard it as easily as she changed hats. Her perfect deportment at St. Philip’s or the Bay Street promenade dissolved into girlish laughter at her husband’s rude, fond jokes, and she allowed Jack’s sly caresses when she thought the servants weren’t looking.
After feeding Jehu his two eggs, oatmeal, and the heel of yesterday’s bread, Ruth walked to the Ravanel town house to dress and feed little Miss Penny. At noon, while the child napped, Ruth brought Jehu his dinner bucket. Amid aromatic shavings and the pungency of hoof glue, John ate his cheese and apple while Ruth wondered how Le Bon Dieu could have blessed her so.
One day, as Jehu wiped his mouth and picked up his tools, Ruth told him she wanted to be a married woman when the baby came.
“Why . . .” Jehu said. “I . . . Baby?” He lifted Ruth to her feet and embraced her, just her torso, leaning away from her precious belly.
Jehu asked Denmark Vesey to stand up for them at the wedding. Decades ago, Denmark had been Captain Vesey’s cabin boy (some whispered the handsome boy was more than that), but Vesey sold him to a Saint-Domingue planter. Upon arrival at the plantation, the boy exploded into the Falling Sickness: thrashing about, raving, frothing, spitting, and biting so vigorously the disgusted planter returned him to the ship for full refund.
Despite that inauspicious interlude, the boy recaptured the captain’s trust, learned to read, and eventually became captain’s clerk. When the captain retired from the sea to establish a ship chandlery on East Bay, Denmark Vesey performed the duties a white manager might have. “1884,” Jehu enthused. “1884 was the lottery number God say Denmark play. Girl, you know how much Denmark win?”
Ruth, who’d heard this story before dutifully asked, “How much he win?”
“Fifteen hundred dollars.”
“So much as that?”
“Denmark buy himself free. Nobody ’mancipate Denmark Vesey. Denmark Vesey make heownself free.”
“Vesey wife, Susan, she free? His childrens?”
“Denmark could live anywhere,” Jehu said. “Anywhere in the world. Go to Liberia or Haiti or Canada . . . could quit the Low Country, go Philadelphia. Ain’t no slaves in Philadelphia.”
“He wife and childrens go too?”
“No, they don’t. Denmark ain’t goin’ ’count he won’t, and they ain’t goin’ ’count they can’t !”
The sixty-year-old, very big, very black carpenter taught Bible studies in his home Tuesday and Friday evenings.
Reverend Morris Brown, Cow Alley church’s ordained preacher, was brown like Jehu. What hair Brown had jutted behind his bald pate braced against the wind even when there was none. Brown was slightly deaf, and sometimes, despite his polite nods, he didn’t understand what was said. Brown’s gentle Christian eyes focused on the newer, loving Testament while Vesey, Brown’s unofficial counterpart, rarely strayed far from the harsher, older one.
Masters, even conservative Masters who distrusted any Negro gatherings, found no harm in Brown and as Christians hoped to meet the preacher and their other servants in Paradise, where they might need them.
The beaming Reverend Brown married Mr. and Mrs. Jehu Glen before his congregation and asked God to bless their union. Ruth had never thought she could be so happy. She floated light as a feather.
Ruth’s blue shift was worn loose so her belly didn’t get married before she did, and Jehu was very much the Master Stair Builder in Colonel Jack’s cast-off frock coat and the top hat a horse had mashed. Ruth had bought Jehu’s white linen cravat with the wedding pennies Mrs. Ravanel gave her.
Beside her at the altar, Pearl clutched the wedding ring Jehu had hammered from a Spanish silver coin. Denmark Vesey loomed over Jehu like Goliath. After Pearl passed Jehu the ring and Jehu put it on Ruth’s finger (it was so heavy!), Preacher Brown said they were wed and Jehu could kiss her, which Jehu did while Denmark Vesey spoke up: “This here man and this wife, they be one and God wants they stay one. No man, whether colored or free colored or Master, can tear them asunder.”
Preacher Brown wasn’t the only grown man who gave Denmark Vesey space. The man’s gray hair was clipped short, but his size and full gray beard made him look like Abraham or King Saul or some other Bible ruler. When Vesey approached, some whites crossed the street rather than step aside for him.
As Mr. and Mrs. Glen came down the aisle Gullah Jack, the voudou man, clapped hands and danced around them, crying, “God has made them one. Spirits blessin’ this union. Spirits pourin’ down love!”
The couple paused while Gullah Jack rattled his gourd rattle. He shook it at Ruth, and his eyes popped. “Who you, woman? Who is you belong to?”
Ruth clasped Jehu’s arm. “I his now. Ain’t you heard?”
As if Ruth had answered a question he hadn’t posed, Gullah Jack held his stare until folks got restless and Preacher Brown said, “Jack! That’s enough!”
Jack blurted, “Woman, you knows what I talkin’ ’bout! You ’n’ the spirits knows,” and whirled away.
Jehu squeezed Ruth’s hand to bring her home.
Vesey murmured for their ears alone, “Gullah Jack, he got Power but ain’t got good sense.”
Jehu and Ruth smiled. Vesey clapped Jehu on the shoulder and confided so the whole congregation could hear, “You got you a good man. Jehu, he brown enough for the Brown Society, but Jehu, he is black as me.”
His eyes skipped over his listeners. “Browns, they got too much to lose.”
Ruth said, “Denmark, why you carryin’ on, on my wedding day?”
He laughed a big man’s laugh but didn’t leave it be. “Browns hopin’ to fade into white men. Put on white man’s habits, white man’s business, go to church at St. Philip’s with the whites. They up there in the garret—all the coloreds is—but goodness me, why make a fuss ’bout that! Why ob-ject they can�
��t walk down the aisle and testify they love for Jesus. Don’t ob-ject ownin’ a few coloreds neither. Course them they owns, they Black colored, not Brown colored. Brown coloreds fade till one day they ain’t got no more black and they white as snow.”
Jehu was agreein’ with everything the man said, so Ruth jabbed him sharp in the ribs to remind him why they’d come. Out of the corner of her eye Ruth saw Preacher Brown depart almost like he was slipping away.
So she pulled away from her husband and his friends to her woman friend Pearl, who hugged her (carefully) and said Ruth was the most beautiful bride ever been, and Ruth smiled because she knew it was true.
Pearl introduced Ruth to Thomas Bonneau, whose face and hands had been roughened by sea salt and weather. His smile gleamed.
“I seen you at the market afore. You that fisherman!”
“Oysterman mostly, but I do know where flatfish like to hide. I sees you too, Miss Ruth. Hard not see girl like you.”
“Thomas!” Pearl warned, then giggled. “He pretend he wild, but Thomas tame as tame.”
“You the onliest one ever tamed me,” Thomas testified.
Pearl said, “Look at you: ‘Mrs. Glen.’ That who you be.”
“I been Ruth long time. Don’t remember who I been afore.”
* * *
Wispy clouds decorated the indifferent sky above coloreds taking refreshment in the yard outside the Cow Alley church. Mr. and Mrs. Glen sat on the stoop beside Thomas Bonneau and Pearl.
“Jehu,” Ruth whispered. “I feel so important. Like I a queen or something.”
“Thomas, ain’t you gonna introduce me?”
The brash boy was a year or so younger than Ruth. He was brown and beautiful.
“This boy Hercules. Boy fancy heself a horseman.”
“‘Fancy myself,’ fisherman?” Incredulous eyebrows and a flashing grin. “One day I win the Jockey Club stakes. You can bet on it!”
Ruth’s Journey Page 13