After what seemed like forever, she heard Mrs. Bidwell move down the hallway and disappear into her room. Charlotte opened her bedroom door a crack. Already dressed in her coat and hat, she looked down the hall toward Mrs. Bidwell’s room. Light shone under the closed door and then was extinguished, leaving the hallway in darkness.
A short time later, carrying a small parcel, she slipped out the back door leaving it unlocked. From her window Mrs. Bidwell, in her nightdress, stood looking down at the street and Charlotte’s departing footsteps in the snow.
Byron was sitting at his wooden table, whiskey in hand, staring out into nothing. There was a knock at the door, followed by a familiar voice. He hesitated but let her in. Charlotte smiled at him as she removed her hat and gloves, setting the parcel down on the table.
“Did you eat? I brought you some supper.”
She hung up her coat, and began to unwrap the parcel of food. “I hope you like dumplings. And pumpkin cake. Old Biddie Bidwell would wring my neck if she knew. She’s so proper and respectable she puts stockings on her piano legs.”
She looked up at Byron’s solemn face. “She really does.”
“Charlotte, I told you not to come here again. What words can I use? How can I say this so you will understand?”
She put her fingertip close to his lips. “Don’t,” she said. “Just don’t.”
“Damn it, Charlotte. You’re like a child. You don’t know what the world is like. You don’t know the viciousness. You act as though our friendship is just an ordinary thing. It’s not. It’s dangerous. I don’t think you understand that.”
“My God, do you think I’m stupid? You’re a Negro man and I’m a white woman. I know that. To hell with what people think. The person I loved most in this world was a Negro man. He was my father. Well, like my father. He taught me everything. He used to say, ‘This one mysterious life you got, what you gonna do with it?’ I wasted a lot of years…not doing anything with it. So I figure you either put your arms around it and be free or you don’t and you live feeling like you missed something but you don’t know what it was. It’s like you’re afraid of…”
“Stop it. Stop talking gibberish, damn it. You aren’t listening to me. You really think life is that simple? You think that all you have to do is to put your arms around it and people will let you be free? The world can be cruel and wicked and ignorant.”
“I know that. I grew up with wickedness all around me in the orphanage. Children…Lee…were tied to trees with rope…beaten. I was beaten. But I also remember butterflies and Lee by my side. And when I got older, I had Jonas and the horses. I was lucky. Until I went out into the world…it wasn’t easy to be a woman on my own. Men get to have dreams. Women don’t. I couldn’t depend on anyone but myself. I know I’m rambling. What I’m trying to say is…I know you’re right. The world is harsh. I don’t understand how some people can do the things they do. But we’ve found something here. I’m not going to let go of it because it’s hard.”
Byron sat down at the table. He took a long swig of whiskey. “I want to tell you something.”
“All right.” She sat down across the table from him. “Just don’t tell me to leave.”
“Please be still, Charlotte. Just listen to me. Alright? I’ve always thought the reason people act the way they do is because way down deep most people are afraid of anything different than themselves. I saw it in the eyes of the white folk in the big house that my mama worked in. They looked at me like I was a small black animal to be petted and fed, so I could grow up strong to tend their crops. You know how I learned to read? In a tool shed. At night. My mama, because she was smart, was secretly taught to read by her missus, so she could help the white children with their studies. After working hard for sixteen hours, she would sit there with me late at night on the dirt floor of that little shed, by the light of a bit of candle she had ‘borrowed’; and when the candle burned out, the lesson was over. In Mississippi it is against the law to learn to read if you are a Negro. If they’d ever caught her, she would have been horsewhipped within an inch of her life. Or cat-hauled. You know what cat-haulin’ is? It’s a form of punishment where a tomcat is used to claw at the back of the slave. I was ten the first time I saw cat-haulin. My mama wanted her son to be free. She always said she’d rather be whipped to death than allow her son to grow up to be the property of another man. When I was twelve, she told me to run away…helped me run away. I’m one of the fortunate ones. I’m no man’s chattel. Life gave her that much. Course, she never knew it. I don’t even know what happened to her.”
Seeing the pain on his face, Charlotte didn’t know what to do. She sat there with tears in her eyes. She was so moved by this man. She would take his demons and his fears.
“I’m so sorry, Byron. I don’t know what to say. If you want me to go I will. But I want to stay here with you.”
Byron just stared into the fire. “Charlotte, I don’t want you to go, but you need to go. And don’t come back.”
Without another word, she pulled on her hat and coat and walked out. The white snow and the black sky with its tossed handful of star points glittered. She wept her way home, tears freezing on her face, her head down against the snow all stirred up by the night wind skittering around in powdery curlicues and tendrils, sifting through her clothing and down her neck.
Twenty-Nine
It was a bad surprise when Charlotte stepped up to the back kitchen door and turned the knob. The door was bolted. She tried it a second time. Surely this was just someone’s oversight. Then she noticed her packed carpetbag was lying to the side of the door. There was an envelope with her name scrawled across it in Mrs. Bidwell’s flowery script. It was pinned to the side of the bag. Her hands shaking, she tore off the envelope and read the note enclosed; “You are not welcome here anymore…Mrs. Flora S. Bidwell.”
Charlotte stood there for a long stunned moment, shivering. She was panting. Every time she took a breath, the cold hurt deep inside.
She grabbed her bag and ran out to the barn. Her nose was freezing. She tried to whistle, but her mouth was too cold. She rubbed her lips hard with her gloved hand and tried again. A sharp whistle—whit, whit, whoo. No answer. She whistled again.
Charlotte heard Lee’s whistle back. She pulled open the barn door, starting inside. Something was thrashing by lantern light under the dark blanket on Lee’s cot. There was an empty liquor bottle discarded in the hay nearby. Lee’s head poked out from under the blanket. Another fair-haired head appeared beside him. She could not make out the face. Christ, Lee was up to it again.
“Come on in Char,” Lee said. “I got room for one more. It’s been a long time.”
Embarrassed, she turned and walked out of the barn.
At Byron’s cabin it was quiet. She knocked on the door. There was no answer. She knocked again, harder, and called out his name. Eyes full of sleep, he opened the door. His face was stern but he let her in. The interior of the shack was lit by the glow of the fire. It was warm.
“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Charlotte said, her teeth chattering. “I know you told me not to come back, but I’ve been turned out. I had nowhere else to go.”
“You’re freezing. You’d better go warm yourself by the fire.”
She walked over to the fireplace and took off her gloves, rubbing her hands over the flames until warmth returned to her body.
“Well…you were right,” she said. “People are ugly.”
As she turned her head away from him, he reached out and took her hand surprising even himself. And that first deliberate touch went through both of them like lightning to the bone.
He pulled her towards him. She could feel his warm hands touching her, moving her. He covered her mouth with his, and Charlotte, who’d imagined this much, had the odd sensation of weightlessness.
Then his hands seemed to be pushing her far away for a moment; no,
he was removing her coat, sliding her blouse and her chemise off her shoulders. Her breasts swung free and he caught his breath. “God in heaven,” he whispered.
He lay her down on the mattress and brought his mouth to her breasts. What she felt then was something she had never experienced…surrender. Byron removed the rest of her clothing. Then his own. She could see his body in the firelight. Looking at Byron standing there, she almost laughed out loud. His flesh had the kind of beauty that perhaps even death might pass by.
He lowered his body over hers. Her eyes snapped open as he entered her. He moved inside her. And then there was a tearing, a ripping. He saw her pain, slowed down and restrained himself with difficulty.
“It will get better. I promise. Follow me,” he whispered.
Ignoring the pain, she let her breath, her body, follow his. She was being tap rooted to the center of the earth.
Afterwards, she lay awake, staring at the ceiling as he fell asleep beside her. She listened to him breathe until she too slept.
The next morning, she slid her bare legs from beneath the blanket, pausing for a moment when she saw a trace of her blood on the sheet. Byron’s hand reached from the covers. He closed his hand round her wrist, holding her there.
He kissed her little by little, all over her body. There were parts of her body she did not even know could be kissed. Parts that caused her to bite her lips…that made her feel helpless, insatiable. He moved her and rocked her and within the safety of his body she let herself go. She arched her body to him and felt his body answer. She felt him dive to the very pit of her, and felt the acute pleasure and wonder of it. Unexpected tears came, then laughter—his and then hers—bodies rolling and slapping together into a breathless one.
And so for a few days, Charlotte never even left his cabin. They had their time of sweetness. They had blushes and self-berating retreats. Spirited conversations on the steps of the cabin. They had some false starts and awkward hesitations. The yearning to touch, the reticence beneath. When neither felt the need to talk, so replete was the silence…gazing out at the countryside, their senses addled by each other’s presence.
Thirty
Mrs. Bidwell wasn’t the only one who had gotten wind of Charlotte and Byron’s relationship. Charlotte walked through town a few days later and the townspeople drew back from her and whispered among themselves. But she didn’t notice.
Layered upon the streets and businesses and people around her were transparent images of her rich and unspeakable nights with Byron. There he was, his body in the warm light of the fire. She watched herself. She watched him. From the front and from the back and from the side. And she watched too, over and over, the scene of their breakfasting—dining? What time had it been?—on old bread and black coffee with sweet honey, sitting knee to knee at the table. And afterwards they’d return to his mattress. When exhaustion took over their bodies, against the firelight, they made crazy shadow figures on the wall with their fingers and their toes. Who’d have thought they were such geniuses?
Charlotte went into Bronson’s General Store. She moved among the cramped, packed aisles gathering supplies. A little girl stood there watching her. Charlotte smiled at her, squeezing past as she moved out of the aisle. Another scene was opening in her brain: Byron standing behind her, bending her forward, holding her by the hip bones.
But then the image of Byron was replaced by a quick movement. The little girl’s mother had appeared.
“Filth. Garbage,” said the mother.
The attack was so unexpected that it froze Charlotte for a moment. She stood there clutching her canned goods to her chest. In a daze, she made her way toward the front of the store.
One of Mr. Bronson’s cronies was leaning against the counter talking to him as she approached. She set the canned goods among the other supplies she had piled in a neat stack on one side of the counter.
“Excuse me, Mr. Bronson,” she said. “I need three pounds of flour and a cake of yeast.”
He ignored her. As if she didn’t exist, he nodded to his shop boy, who began to pick up her goods and replace them one by one on the shelves.
“Well now,” continued the other man. “You see your Negro’s got enough problems on his own, what with insanity and idiocy by birth on account of his brain size, which God saw fit to make smaller than a white man’s. So you got your good Negro, and your uppity Negro. A good Negro don’t mate against God and the Good Book.”
Charlotte heard herself screaming. It took her a minute to realize that the voice was coming from inside her head. The voice told her that she had to walk away from this place. Now. But she could not move her feet. She could not catch her breath.
The man looked straight at her. “An uppity Negro who mates against God cannot be tolerated in a town of decent folk. Not to mention you know, amalgamation is unnatural and against the law in our good state of Rhode Island.”
Charlotte’s fear turned into rage, which saved her. Now she could move. She spat at the man’s feet and ran out of the store, letting the door slam hard behind her.
She stormed back to Byron’s and stuck her head in the door of his shop. “I’m taking the wagon and riding to Pawtucket for supplies.”
By the time he put his tools down and stepped outside, she was already hitching up the wagon.
“Charlotte. What’s the matter?”
Ignoring him, she climbed up top and took hold of the reins. He reached up to grab her wrist and saw her troubled face, figuring out what must have happened. An expression of resolve came into his eyes.
“I want to show you something, something maybe for us,” he said. “Just hold on.”
He grabbed his coat, secured the door to the shop and jumped into the wagon next to her. She handed him the reins. He gave the horses a soft slap.
Thirty-One
They sat in the wagon atop a hill, looking down. From a distance it was idyllic—a quaint, tiny farmhouse in need of paint. A picturesque, tumbled-down barn surrounded by a patchwork of snow-covered fields.
“Do you like it?” he asked. “What do you think?”
“Like it? What is this place?” she replied. “What are we doing here?”
“I have a crazy idea. I want to show it to you first.” He started the wagon down the road toward the farm.
The place seemed on the verge of collapse. Byron pushed open the front door to the farmhouse. The door creaked and sagged on its hinges. Inside, everything was dust and cobwebs. Piles of autumn leaves moldered in the corners. There was a big old rusty stove. Charlotte lifted a burner from the top. A squeal: a family of mice were living inside.
He grabbed her hand and led her back outside. He led her past a now roof-less outhouse, past an old well clogged up with years of overgrowth, and then to the barn. There was a sizable hole in the side. They gazed in; there was a rusty plow, some moldering stable gear, and a few bales of wet hay. Across the ceiling were great beams. As they looked, an enormous rat ran across. And then a disorganized army of squealing rats ran every which way across the barn floor.
Charlotte was inclined to run away from this decrepit place, but she held her tongue.
“Look Charlotte. I’ve been thinking about us. I want to be with you. But you know I think it’s a bad idea. It’s dangerous. The only way I think it could work…us being together…is if we live as far out of Providence as possible. Away from people’s eyes, away from their judgments.”
“Yes, yes. I want us to be together. But live here? In this place? What are you talking about? How? With what?”
He took her hand and walked her to an old swing that hung from the big tree in the front yard. The wooden swing was bobbing in the breeze like a lonely child waiting to play. They brushed the snow off and tested it. It held their weight.
“A good sign,” he said.
Then he spoke to her with a kind of excitement she had ne
ver seen from him.
“A Mister Wendell Phillips owns this land. He’s an abolitionist and a lawyer from Boston. His daddy was the first mayor of Boston. When I was a boy, he was the one that helped me run away through the Underground Railroad. He took me under his wing…he and his group; they helped me be a free man. We kept in touch and when I moved to Providence, he made me a job offer. He said I was a strong man and a good man and that I could fix this place up and live here. I’d be doing him a favor…no one has lived here since his grandparents passed on. The rest of the family is in Boston, but he doesn’t want to sell the land. I think he has a mind to retire here someday. I would be the caretaker. That’s what all the town folk will think. That’s what Mister Phillips said he would tell them. I didn’t take him up on it. I didn’t want to do it alone. But I’m not alone no more. And being so far out of town, people should let us be. What do you say? I know it’s a lot of work.”
By now, he was squeezing Charlotte’s hand so hard with anticipation, it almost hurt. She studied this man whose eyes she’d somehow recognized the moment they’d met.
“I think it’s—I think the farm is beautiful,” said Charlotte. Tears were welling up in her.
Byron enfolded her in a bear hug, lifting her off the ground. Already, though neither had any inkling of course—their love was that young—the cells of their child were multiplying within her.
Thirty-Two
It was late in the spring of 1848. Byron had made the deal. The farm had become theirs to watch over, theirs to call home.
He knelt on the earth, measuring a tiny seedling against his finger. The farm was beginning to blossom under their hard work and care.
Charlotte, her belly now round, moved across the field toward him carrying a covered basket of food.
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