Brotherhood

by Anne Westrick

  “I ain’t never had no formal lessons, ma’am. Only Sunday school.”

  “I haven’t ever had formal lessons.”

  “Uh, I haven’t. Ever. Had. Formal lessons.”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s better. Thank you. And certainly, Sunday school is a start. A good start.”

  Shad beamed, remembering how happy Miss Jenny had been when he recited “Blessed are the meek.” Then his face dimmed at the memory of her putting him in the corner with a dunce cap while Jeremiah and the others snickered. There was something about letters—Shad didn’t know what it was exactly. He could recite parts of the Bible, but ask him to sit down and read it, and he’d need most of a day to figure out half a page.

  “I can read some, ma’am. It’s just that I’m slow. But with proper instruction—maybe a new method—maybe I could catch on. Do you reckon Mr. Nelson might-could take me on as one of his students?”

  “Well, I don’t know, Shadrach.”

  “I’d be willing to do chores in exchange. Tailoring. Deliveries. Choppin’ wood. I’d work hard at it.”

  “I’m not sure that—”

  “A lesson just once a week, ma’am? Perhaps?”

  “Listen, Shadrach, you’re clearly not ready for Shakespeare. Now, I tutor at the intermediate level, but my slate is full, and the tuition is steeper than your family could afford. The only other option here would be with the beginners, and I can’t imagine that your mother would approve of your sitting with Rachel and the little ones. Why, I doubt Rachel would want you, anyway.”

  Sitting with Rachel? Had he heard Miss Elizabeth right? Shad stopped breathing. A white-fuzz sound filled his ears.

  “Rachel has her own school, you know.” She leaned toward him. “Did you know that?”

  13

  A Burst Bubble

  SHAD FELT SWEAT break under his arms. He’d heard about colored schools, but he couldn’t imagine that a white woman who thought herself a member of polite society would ever so much as mention them. “No, ma’am. No, I don’t know nothing ’bout no colored school.”

  Miss Elizabeth paused, looking pained. She coughed a little cough. “Why, yes, Shadrach. She and Eloise run it together, and it’s—well, they have a time of it. Her students can’t always pay. They’re the youngest ones. And sometimes they arrive hungry. I must say, we’re all grateful for support from the Freedmen’s Bureau. Those staples provide a breakfast each morning. They run their school from my shed—well, here, I’ll show you.”

  Shad stood when she did, and walked with her to the back window, opposite the river. He followed her gaze out over a green lawn that sloped away from the house and was almost entirely enclosed by a tall holly hedge. Miss Elizabeth pointed to a large, whitewashed woodshed. In relation to her fine house, Shad could see why she’d called it a shed. But to Shad, it wasn’t a shed at all. It was nearly the size of his family’s little house out Nine Mile Road.

  The shed sat beside the entrance to an icehouse or cold cellar. Along the other side of the backyard, Shad saw a vegetable garden and a hut that might have been a henhouse, and beyond that, the privy.

  “Rachel and Eloise have eight regular pupils who arrive each morning at dawn and are gone by midmorning to tend to their own household chores. Then the girls go into town for advanced lessons at the building that will soon become Richmond’s first Colored Normal School. I’m quite excited about it.”

  Shad nodded as if he understood, but truth to tell, he felt a tad dizzy. He gripped the sill to keep his balance. “I see,” he said, but he didn’t see. Rachel and Eloise—they were teachers. Like Miss Jenny. But they were coloreds. Who was it who’d told him colored folk were animals? Like mules and plow horses. Like cows you bred and traded and sold. It was illegal to teach them reading and writing—or, at least, it used to be illegal. And now—well, did Miss Elizabeth mean that Rachel might teach him something? A colored girl. Teach him? No, that wasn’t right at all.

  “Shad,” she said, “I brought Mr. Nelson here to help with the establishment of a colored school, not to tutor white children.”

  Shad felt like he might need to run to that privy. Something was wrong here, and it made his head throb like a bee sting.

  Then Shad heard the rhythm of feet skipping on wooden floorboards, and George Nelson burst into the room. He waved a fistful of papers in one hand and a large piece of slate in the other. “I found her! Got some materials right here.”

  George Nelson plopped onto the settee and it creaked from the shock. He patted the cushion beside him, motioning for Shad to sit.

  Shad told his innards to calm down. Just settle a spell, now. And he slipped from Miss Elizabeth’s side to join George Nelson on the settee.

  From the corner of Shad’s eye, he saw a weariness come over Miss Elizabeth. He heard a whoosh of air, and looked up to see her chest collapse and her shoulders round in. “Mr. Nelson, I was just explaining to Mr. Weaver that I hadn’t brought you here to teach white children.”

  “But Mrs. Perkinson, with all due respect, white or colored—they all need to learn.”

  “Well, here in Richmond, well—”

  George Nelson shoved the slate into Shad’s lap. “What shall we start with, Mr. Weaver?”

  Shad felt the strength of Miss Elizabeth’s eyes locked on George Nelson, and he wondered if he ought to get up and leave. He wanted lessons—yes, he did—but right at that particular moment, the house didn’t sit right with him. Schools for coloreds. Lordy. And besides that, Miss Elizabeth and George Nelson clearly had something to work out—something that wasn’t Shad’s business. But right then and there, his bottom was on the settee and he felt a tremendous need to keep sitting. He wanted very much to stay and calm his innards.

  Miss Elizabeth tapped a foot. “I’m not sure you heard me, Mr. Nelson.”

  “Yes, go on,” he said.

  Shad watched George Nelson finger his papers without looking up. Then Shad glanced at Miss Elizabeth and saw a shadow cross her face. She folded her arms over her chest and stood there, pondering George Nelson while he fussed with the papers.

  After a time she threw her hands in the air and said, “Oh, good heavens. Fine. Just for today, sir. Fine.”

  George Nelson waved the back of his hand absentmindedly and continued to sort through his papers while Miss Elizabeth marched from the room. Shad listened to the click-clack of her shoes all the way down the back hall.

  George Nelson leaned forward. “My apologies in advance, Mr. Weaver. When we start at the beginning, I call it an assessment. Helps a teacher know what a pupil needs. Here.” He pressed a piece of gray chalk against the slate—a flat gray rock, smooth on the top and bottom, jagged around the edges, with a ridge running crooked through the middle. He wrote a sentence. “Read that for me. Easy, right?”

  Shad shifted his bottom on the settee, feeling torn between Miss Elizabeth’s drama and Mr. Nelson’s eagerness. He squinted and tried to figure out the words. They reminded him of Sunday school. “God,” he said.

  “Yes, yes! But of course. And the rest of it?”

  “Uh. God is . . . uh, God saw that it was good.”

  Mr. Nelson frowned. “You put more words into it than I’ve got there, Shad. Okay, here. Try another one.” He wrote a new sentence.

  Shad let out all his air. The letters blurred together. “The dad—no, the bab—no, the—”

  “Fascinating!” proclaimed George Nelson. “I had another student who flipped the b’s and d’s. Here. Don’t you see how this is a b?” He wrote a letter on the slate. “And this is a d?” He took off his green jacket and rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt. Shad watched him tap the tips of his fingers in quick little pats. “Come, come, now. Try again.”

  Shad stared at the slate. He didn’t see clearly how one letter was a b and the other a d. He sighed. George Nelson reminded him why Sunday school was so hard.


  “My, my, my. All righty, let’s start somewhere else. What is this?” George Nelson wrote, W-E-A-V-E-R.

  “Well, that’s my name, sir. I know my name.”

  “Wonderful! Of course. See? Just checking. Very good.”

  When Miss Elizabeth and Rachel returned with more sweet tea, George Nelson stood, and Shad stood alongside him, towering long and lanky over them all. George Nelson announced, “A fascinating problem. I’ve encountered this once before, and I do believe he can overcome it, but it’s not routine. Not at all. You’ve started me off with a bit of a challenge.”

  “And do you like a challenge, Mr. Nelson?” Miss Elizabeth asked.

  “Oh, yes. Most definitely, ma’am.”

  “Welcome to Richmond, sir.”

  “Good, good. All good.”

  Rachel leaned toward them with the tray of sweet tea, and Shad waited for George Nelson to go first. Then Shad took a fresh glass, too. He’d already finished the first one.

  “I’ve just spoken with Rachel about this matter,” said Miss Elizabeth, “and my preference would be for you to guide her in this challenge, Mr. Nelson. She teaches the beginners while I handle intermediate-level students. I brought you here to instruct at the advanced level—to teach the teachers, as it were.”

  “Ah, I see,” said George Nelson. “Well, this sort of reading problem is rather complex, dear.”

  Rachel picked up a glass of tea and took a sip, and Shad clenched his teeth. He had never known coloreds to drink while in the same room as whites. But this Rachel girl—she up and had herself a glass of sweet tea. And Miss Elizabeth smiled. Shad felt his eyes nearly burst from his face. He blinked repeatedly to settle them down.

  “No two students exactly alike,” George Nelson was saying. “You have to figure out which letters the pupil is flipping. Find the patterns, then help the pupil see what he’s doing wrong.”

  “Rachel is quite the teacher,” said Miss Elizabeth, raising her shoulders a full inch and puffing up her chest. She walked to Rachel and patted her shoulder. “I’m sure she could handle it as long as—well, let’s talk about arrangements, shall we?”

  Miss Elizabeth turned to Shad. “Rachel and I spoke about the matter of your requesting private instruction. It would not be private. She simply doesn’t have time in her schedule for that. But if you were amenable to sitting quietly in her classroom, she would have no problem as long as your presence is not disruptive. Do you understand?”

  Him? Sitting in her classroom? That shed out back? His mouth dropped open.

  “We begin lessons at dawn, Mr. Weaver,” said Rachel. “And I would need a day to discuss the arrangement with Eloise, of course, and to prepare my students for your arrival, so you may not start tomorrow, which is, let’s see . . . Friday. No, not Friday, and not Saturday because we don’t do Saturday lessons. Monday would be fine. And of course, there’s the matter of compensation. Each of my students makes a contribution, and each is different, depending on his family’s situation. In your case—”

  She talked quickly, and Shad had trouble taking it all in. He held up a hand the way Miss Jenny had insisted that students signal a question.

  Rachel smiled. “Hard of hearing, too, are you? Allow me to slow it down.” She leaned into each word. “Having. Trouble. Imagining. The. Arrangement. Sir?”

  “I—uh, I don’t know,” said Shad.

  Rachel rolled her eyes. “Well, that makes two of us.”

  “It was my suggestion,” Miss Elizabeth explained.

  “It will only work if you’re willing to provide something for my students,” said Rachel, setting one hand on a hip. “Teach them to sew, perhaps. You learn reading and they learn tailoring. My students need skills, Mr. Weaver. Letters will expand their horizons, and tailoring will put food in their bellies.”

  George Nelson darted to the piano, shouting, “A song to celebrate the institution of education!” His fingers flew across the keyboard.

  Rachel set down her glass and clapped to the beat.

  Miss Elizabeth’s eyes twinkled.

  Shad looked from one to the other to George Nelson. He had walked into another world! He glanced down at his mismatched clothes—the fine silk shirt that belonged to Mr. Parks Randolph Perkinson, and the tattered britches of Willy Johnson’s with a rip becoming a hole over his knee. His clothes said it all. He didn’t belong in this house.

  But he liked it here. He liked funny George Nelson, and he wanted lessons. Daddy had always wanted him to master reading. But if Miss Elizabeth was saying that the only option was Rachel’s school, well—Shad couldn’t imagine how that might work. He couldn’t sit for instruction from a colored girl. But he liked how George Nelson would guide Rachel—would teach the teachers. If the lessons would be George Nelson’s, tailored for Shad, coming from Rachel, well, then, yes. That might work. The girl would deliver the lessons, was all.

  “I want to read better, yes, thank you. I do. And yes, I can teach tailoring. But I—would you—well, if it’s all right, well, I couldn’t no way tell Mama I was learning reading from no colored.”

  George Nelson abruptly stopped playing. Music hung unfinished in the air like residue from a burst soap bubble.

  Rachel’s nostrils flared.

  Miss Elizabeth closed her eyes and pinched the skin at the top of her freckled nose. She spoke slowly. “No, of course not.” She opened her eyes and walked to the front window overlooking the hill. “Richmond has such a long way to go. You know, Shadrach, in Paris people would think nothing of a highly educated Negress teaching white children. The education matters, not the color of the skin. But here in Virginia—no, I’m sorry, I struggle to understand the ways of Virginia.”

  George Nelson stood and Shad turned toward him. The little man raised his arms to the ceiling, circled them like blades of a windmill, and bowed. “I am here to right the wrongs.”

  “Well, now, Mr. Nelson,” said Rachel, and Shad marveled at the confidence in her voice, at the way she looked at Mr. Nelson sideways. “Something tells me you’re full of book learning, but you’d best be wary, or you won’t last a day in this town.”

  “Come now. Come, come, come,” he said.

  “Here at Libby Hill,” Rachel went on, “Miss Elizabeth affords us freedom from the conventions of Richmond. We study music and Shakespeare and philosophy. But on the streets of this town, well, let’s just say we ‘do as the Romans do.’ If you were to encounter me at market, Mr. Nelson, you would encounter an ignorant Negress.”

  George Nelson’s face shriveled like a raisin. “Is that really your public persona?” he asked. “Are you saying that you cannot be true to yourself?”

  “Myself,” said Rachel, laughing. “Ha! Who am I, Mr. Nelson? Those who survive in Richmond reinvent themselves as circumstances dictate.”

  “I see,” said George Nelson, frowning and stroking his chin.

  “Mr. Weaver,” said Rachel, “if you keep your mouth open like that, a bug is likely to fly right inside and set up shop.”

  14

  Yankee-Lovers

  WHEN SHAD GOT home with the measurements for Abigail’s dress, his head was still working to make sense of everything he’d witnessed. He carried a package in one arm, and his FEED AND SEED shirt in a ball under the other.

  The moment Mama saw him, she reached for the finely tailored shirt. “Miz Perkinson give you this?” She rubbed the fabric between her fingers and huffed. “Silk.”

  Shad swallowed. He wanted to kick himself for not thinking to change shirts. “Uh . . . yes’m.”

  “And you accepted it?” Mama showed the whites of her eyes. “What were you thinkin’? You want to be beholden to Miz Perkinson?”

  “Well, I told her I couldn’t take it. I said no! But she insisted, Mama. She wanted me to show Granddaddy the double stitching. See, here—look at the cuff.”

 
Mama rolled her eyes. “That lady’s always putting on airs. She’s a Yankee-lover, Shad. She tell you that?”

  “Well, no, ma’am.”

  “The only reason we do her tailoring is how good she pays. You got to keep your distance from that one.” Mama took the package and opened it, and her little brown eyes twinkled. Flour, salt, cornmeal, dried peas, sorghum molasses, and salt pork. Mama beamed from ear to ear, showing the gaps from three missing teeth—one on top, two on the bottom. “You got them measurements?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She pried the wax off the molasses jar and stuck the tip of a finger into it. Then she set the finger in her mouth and sucked like a nursing baby. Shad watched her eyes close and saw a calm come over her. The hollow in her cheeks grew deep, and wrinkles formed like needles around her lips.

  When she opened her eyes again, they were busy. “And Miz Perkinson sent along mending, I see. Awful fine payment for one dress and a little mending.”

  “Well, and I chopped some wood for her, and ran a delivery into town.”

  “Delivery?”

  Shad swallowed a lump in his throat. He coughed. “I asked for lessons, Mama. Readin’ lessons.” There, he’d said it.

  He watched Mama frown, and her mouth went so crooked, he’d have thought a fishhook was caught in one cheek. She took a big breath and let it all out. Then she tilted her head and peered at him. Sideways. She seemed to be pondering everything he’d said, and yet she seemed far, far away.

  “I know you think the world of Miss Jenny, but Mama, she ain’t learned me to read good. In her class, I memorize Bible verses, is all. And you know Miss Elizabeth does tutoring up there. So today I got up my nerve and asked. She’s willing to give me schoolin’ for extra work.”

  “Schoolin’?” A look of pity came over Mama’s face—a look she reserved for wounded animals, for horses injured so bad that a shot to the head was a blessing.

  Shad tightened. He knew that look—knew how much he hated it. He didn’t want to hear again how disappointed she was in him.