Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  The Nelson farm was a station on the Underground Railroad. Knowing the depth of their feeling for the Abolitionist cause, I was not surprised by this revelation, but I was astounded that Dorothea had managed to conceal the truth so well, and, I will admit, somewhat hurt that she had not confided in me. Upon further reflection, however, I realized that because of the inherent danger to both runaway and stationmaster, she could not have entrusted the truth to even the closest friend. The less others knew, the less they could reveal through accident or under duress. Even Mr. Frederick Douglass himself had faulted some stationmasters for concealing their activities so poorly that they allowed slave owners and slave catchers to discover their methods, thus helping to perpetuate the very institution they sought to undermine. Dorothea and Thomas would never allow themselves to be included in their number.

  One deduction quickly led to another: Dorothea would know the next destination in Joanna’s flight north. By the time Joanna was prepared to continue her journey, I intended to tease that information from my friend without revealing why I sought it, for I needed to maintain secrecy just as the Nelsons did.

  Days passed, and as Joanna recovered from her illness, our expectation that the slave catchers would arrive at any moment began to ebb. Or so it was with Hans and me; Anneke seemed never to forget her anxieties. She took little consolation in knowing Hans had devised an ingenious hiding place in her sewing room, nor in his repeated assurances that no ill would befall our family.

  “Hans does not wish to alarm us, but I know the truth,” confided Anneke to me when we were alone. “Mr. Pearson says anyone assisting fugitive slaves will be prosecuted under the law. We may be fined, or even sent to prison.”

  “We will face no punishment,” said I, “because we will not be detected.”

  Anneke looked doubtful, and my own heart was full of misgivings when I wondered how that particular subject had come up in a conversation with Mr. Pearson.

  Joanna’s care fell almost entirely to me, as Anneke was burdened by her duties for Mrs. Engle as well as the fatigue of her condition. Even when she did assist me, however, she shied away from Joanna, avoiding her gaze and speaking to her through me, if at all. I can only guess why Joanna made Anneke so uncomfortable: perhaps because she knew few colored people, perhaps because of the danger her presence put us all in, perhaps because her dialect, which I have but poorly reproduced in these pages, was difficult for Anneke to comprehend.

  “She want me gone,” said Joanna to me, unexpectedly, after Anneke stopped by the room on some errand and left as quickly as it was completed, with scarcely a word for either of us.

  “She wants you safe in the North” was all I would concede. “As do we all.” And then, as a way of making her seem more sympathetic, to show that the women shared a common experience, I added, “She, too, is in a condition. You know what it is to worry for the fate of your child.”

  “I don’t know nothing about that.”

  “Of course you must,” said I, confused. “Or am I mistaken? Are you not . . . expecting?”

  From the shock and emotion that came into her eyes then, I first thought she had not surmised her condition, and then I knew she had indeed suspected it but had not allowed herself to believe it.

  “You must be well into your fifth month, at least,” said I, gently.

  Her voice was dull. “Sixth, more likely.”

  I nodded, mute, for although Anneke was only a few weeks further along, her condition was significantly more apparent, for she had never lacked sufficient nourishment. “Your child will be born in a Free State, and you will raise him in freedom.” I expected that to cheer her, but it did not, and I thought I understood the reason why. “His father, I assume, is still in the South?”

  She snorted. “That where he likely be, all right.”

  I placed my hand upon hers, and said consolingly, “Do not despair. Perhaps someday your husband will follow you North to freedom.”

  She jerked her hand away. “I ain’t got no husband.”

  “Well . . .” I hesitated. “Your man, then.”

  “No man of mine gave me this baby.” Her voice stung with contempt. She rolled over on her side on the bed, putting her back to me. “I don’t care if it live or die, so long as I get my freedom.”

  Shocked, at first I could only gape at her. “Be that as it may,” said I, when I found my voice. “You should remain with us until after your time, when you and the baby are strong enough to travel again. For your sake, if not for your child’s.”

  She said nothing, and with nothing more to say myself, I left her alone.

  As Joanna gradually regained strength, she began to grow restless. She was still too weak to take any exercise but for slow walks the length of my room, but she could sit up in bed well enough. When she told me of her desire for something to occupy her time and distract her from her worries, in my thoughtless way, I offered her one of my books.

  “I can’t read,” said Joanna. “Massa don’t allow it.”

  My cheeks flamed, and I busied myself with the sock I was darning. “Oh. Of course.”

  “Don’t matter none.”

  It matters a great deal, I almost replied, but instead said, “Perhaps I could read to you.”

  She shrugged, dubious, but said, “That be nice.”

  I set my mending aside, went to my room, and scanned the titles on the bookcase Jonathan had made for me. When my gaze lit on a certain volume, I pulled it from the shelf. “Here’s one,” said I, returning to my chair by Joanna’s bed. “It was written by a man who was once himself a slave, but acquired his freedom, and has fought to win the same right for others.”

  At that, her interest was piqued, and thus I commenced reading the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

  I had almost finished William Lloyd Garrison’s preface when Anneke entered, made curious by the sound of my voice. Not quickly enough, I set the book aside and snatched up the sock and needle, for I had promised Anneke to help with the darning and had long put off the task. When Anneke said, in a teasing manner, that she could always count on me to shirk my household duties, Joanna spoke up: “I can do the darning.”

  Anneke and I exchanged a stricken glance. “Anneke is only teasing me,” said I. “You are our guest. We don’t expect you to work for us.”

  “It ain’t for you, it for me,” said Joanna. “I go out of my head sitting here in bed all day and all night, nothing to do but listen for the slave catchers’ dogs. You read, and I’ll darn.”

  She insisted, so reluctantly I agreed, but I was greatly disturbed that this woman, so recently near death, and so recently forced to work for white people, now found herself darning white people’s socks. I cannot commit to paper why this troubled me so; it simply felt wrong. But unable to articulate an objection, I wordlessly handed her the pile of stockings.

  Joanna asked for her bundle, and Anneke, who was nearest, retrieved it from the corner, not quite able to conceal her distaste. Joanna untied the coarse blanket of homespun, upon which every mile of her hazardous journey had apparently left its mark in sweat and grime, and withdrew two shining objects. Anneke gasped, and I nearly did, too, so markedly did the elegant silver needle case and thimble contrast with the bundle that had carried them.

  “You are the woman from the handbill,” exclaimed Anneke. “You stole those things from Josiah Chester.”

  A dangerous glint appeared in Joanna’s eye. “I didn’t take nothing that wasn’t owed me.”

  “Be reasonable, Anneke,” said I, hurriedly. “The trifles are a poor recompense for the lifetime of suffering she endured at his hands.”

  “I didn’t mean to steal nothing,” said Joanna to me. “I was in the sewing room—I was a house slave. The missus have me do all her laundry and sewing and quilting. Massa Chester come after me when I alone there. He always come after me, but this time—that time I just couldn’t. I hold the scissors, cutting silk for a dress, and when he grab at me, I po
int those scissors at him and tell him to leave me be, or I tell the missus he be coming to my cabin when he tell her he going riding. He bring his fist down on my hand, and I drop the scissors, and then he grab me and put his hand over my mouth and push me against the wall. I try to get free, and my hand touch something—I don’t know what, but it hard, so I grab it and hit him with it. It scratch his face, his scalp, and draw blood. The blood run all down his face, down into his mouth, and he stand there screaming at me, the blood and spit flying. I try to crawl away, but he take the flat-iron off the fire, and then he do this.”

  Her hand went to her scarred cheek.

  “I be too hurt to fight him no more. I don’t remember when he finish and go. My mind just went out my body, and when it came back, he was gone, and I still be on the floor. I didn’t think about it, I didn’t plan nothing, I just got up and left. Middle of the day yet, and me with no idea where I going. I just up and left. I pass other slaves working in the fields, I even walk right by Missy Lizabeth, the massa’s daughter, on the road, but no one stop me. They all think I do an errand for the missus. She always have me going here and there, sewing for her friends.

  “I walk all day. Only when night come and it get too dark to see do I stop. That when I realize what I done, run off, and how it too late to go back, unless I want a beating that like to kill me. So I hide in a haystack.”

  She looked down at the gleaming silver objects in her hand. “Before I fall asleep, I open my fist and find Mrs. Chester’s needle case, with a little bit of blood on the corner. That what I grab without looking, that what I hit Massa Chester with.” She looked at Anneke, unflinching. “So you see, I didn’t mean to steal nothing. It just happen.”

  Anneke, white as a sheet, made no reply. Joanna calmly slipped the thimble onto her finger and began darning one of Hans’s socks. Anneke watched her for a moment, then turned on her heel and left the room.

  I wanted desperately to apologize for my sister-in-law, or to at least explain her way of thinking, but her condemnation of Joanna’s thievery shamed me, especially when I compared it to her tolerance for Mrs. Engle’s posting of the handbill. So instead I cleared my throat and resumed reading Douglass’s Narrative.

  Whether out of anger with me, or fear that she might reveal our secret, Anneke chose not to attend the next meeting of the Certain Faction. We met irregularly during wintertime, as the weather would permit, and thus I had spent two impatient, anxious weeks since Joanna’s arrival longing to speak with Dorothea.

  I was the first to reach the Nelson home, for I knew once the others arrived, I would have little opportunity to speak with Dorothea alone. As we set up her quilting frame, she shared the latest news from her household, and I bided my time until I could casually remind her of the handbill. She smiled and said, “Dear Gerda, are you still plotting some dire revenge against Mrs. Engle?”

  “I cannot forgive her as easily as you, but no, I am not,” said I. “I was merely wondering about the unfortunate runaway. She might have been driven from her intended path by the storms, or was forced to change direction when the slave catchers passed through town. They must have, don’t you agree?”

  “I suppose they must have,” said Dorothea, “if only to deliver their handbills. We can only pray she was able to elude them.”

  I learned more from my friend’s expression and the mournful note in her voice than she had intended to tell me: After seeing the handbill, Dorothea had anticipated the runaway would soon appear at her door, and when she had not, Dorothea had given her up for lost. Perhaps she thought Joanna had wandered the Pennsylvania countryside until she froze to death, or had been recaptured, or had suffered another equally dire fate, and perhaps Dorothea wrongly blamed herself.

  My heart went out to her as I imagined her anguish. “I’m certain she did elude them,” said I, ignoring, for the moment, the need for secrecy. “But perhaps circumstances forced her to seek an alternate refuge.”

  Dorothea’s eyes darted to mine. “I suppose that might have been necessary.”

  I busied myself with smoothing the back layer of a new quilt in the frame, and said in a careless manner, “I do hope that isn’t the case, however.”

  “Why not?”

  “Her new protectors would hardly know where to send her next, would they? They could point north and say, ‘Head in that direction and mind you don’t stumble over any slave catchers on the way,’ but that’s not very helpful, is it?”

  Dorothea gave me a long, searching glance and, after a long moment, finally said, “You’re right. They would not know about others who would help the fugitive. There are many others, but more are always needed.”

  And then, in elliptical language that suggested more than it explicitly stated, Dorothea told me how Joanna would know the next safe house on her journey north. Our conversation was oddly restrained for two close confidantes, but necessarily so, for neither knew what one might someday be required to say under oath about the other.

  Reader, you will forgive me, I hope, if I do not record those identifying details in these pages. That family’s role in the Underground Railroad is their story, not mine, to share with their own descendants or not, as they see fit.

  I told neither Hans nor Anneke what Dorothea had revealed to me, only that I knew where Joanna should go when she departed Elm Creek Farm. They did not press me for details, Hans because he was aware that as few people should know the route as possible, Anneke because she was relieved to be spared the burden of yet another secret.

  Her relief was to be short-lived, I knew, for Dorothea’s words lingered in my thoughts: There are many others, she had said, but more are always needed. One fugitive had found shelter within our home. If others happened to pass our way, I would not deny them our hospitality.

  Naturally I could not proceed without Hans’s consent, for although I was the elder sibling, he was master of Elm Creek Farm. It took some impassioned pleading on my part, and heart-felt appeals to the best parts of his nature, but eventually he agreed. He did not agree because knowing Joanna had influenced his opinion of the dispute between Slave State and Free; he persisted in the belief that what did not directly affect him did not concern him. What he did acknowledge was that as beneficiaries of America’s promise of freedom and opportunity for all, we Bergstroms would be remiss if we did not assist others who braved unimaginable dangers and risked their very lives in the struggle to achieve what we now took for granted.

  When he made up his mind, he told Anneke his decision. She shot me one accusing look, then returned her gaze to her husband and gave him a wordless nod of acceptance. I wished he had asked her for her consent rather than merely telling her how things would be, but it could not be undone, and I allowed myself to believe the result would have been the same regardless.

  From that day forward, whenever we did not anticipate visitors, whenever the winter weather was such that a clothesline strung outdoors would not raise suspicions, we hung Anneke’s Underground Railroad quilt and waited for a knock on the door in the night.

  Joanna had been with us a month when the knock finally came.

  It was shortly before dawn. I started at the sound, instantly awake with a pounding heart, and leapt from my bed. I threw on my dressing gown and hurried downstairs, pausing only to rap upon Joanna’s door and warn her to hasten to the hiding place. Hans was not a second behind me as I opened the outside door to discover two figures shivering in the cold.

  We beckoned them inside, and as I stoked the fire and prepared a meal for them, Hans took his rifle and went to search for pursuers. By the time he returned, Anneke had come down-stairs to help me to tend to the newcomers, and Joanna, assured by the lack of uproar that it was safe to leave her hiding place, had joined us—but rather than take a place by the fire with the other guests, she began to help me with the cooking, without a word and as naturally as if she had been doing so for years.

  The arrivals were two men, escaped from the same tobacco plantation in South Carol
ina. After they were warmed and fed, they told us something of their lives in captivity, and though I think they spared us the most gruesome details, their brief accounts were horrific enough to convince me that no risk was too great to help them toward freedom. Anneke’s bleak silence, and the courteous manner in which she addressed the fugitives, so different from the skittishness she had first displayed toward Joanna, told me she agreed.

  But something else also occupied Anneke’s thoughts. “They think she’s white,” murmured Anneke when the others could not overhear, nodding toward the two men, and to Joanna, who wore my dress and worked alongside us as one of the family.

  Taken aback, I studied the men surreptitiously and soon concurred with Anneke’s observation. Perhaps because her skin was indeed quite light, or perhaps because the ugly scar on her face drew attention away from her features, the two newcomers did not see a fellow runaway in Joanna. Perhaps they did not look upon her long enough to discern her true heritage; upon her first appearance, each man had glanced at her scar, then quickly diverted his gaze as if he did not wish to appear rude. Once Joanna’s dialect exposed her, however, there was a subtle shift in the men’s address—mild surprise, which they well concealed, was followed by a new warmth, a familiarity, that did not enter into their voices when they spoke to Anneke or me.

  Throughout that day, as the men slept in the beds we made up for them in the nursery, I pondered Joanna’s inadvertent duplicity and wondered if we might not somehow use it to help her elude capture when she resumed her journey north.

  The men left shortly after dusk, clad in some of Hans’s stout winter clothing and carrying bread and cheese enough to sustain them until the next station. Joanna watched them go, her longing to accompany them plain upon her face. Then her hand absently went to her gently swelling abdomen, and she turned away from the window.

  Not a week later, another knock woke us in the night; two days after that fugitive’s departure, another arrived to take his place. With each escaped slave who found shelter beneath our roof, our confidence grew, and the Underground Railroad quilt appeared more frequently on our clothesline.