Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt

by Jennifer Chiaverini

  We grew confident—perhaps overconfident. Thus one late night when a man and a boy of about eight years pounded frantically on the door, we were rudely restored to our senses. As we beckoned them inside, the man told us through labored breathing that the slave catchers were not far behind.

  I stood stock-still for a moment, and so it was Anneke who sprung into action. “This way,” said she briskly, guiding them upstairs. I quickly looked over the first floor for any sign of Joanna or the new arrivals, and followed the others upstairs. Anneke and I helped the fugitives into the hiding place, then returned to our bedrooms, to feign sleep.

  Perhaps a half hour passed before the baying of dogs and a second pounding interrupted the quiet night. I prayed God would make me a good liar as I followed Hans and Anneke downstairs. My brother pulled open the door, and to my dismay and astonishment, we found ourselves facing the same two slave catchers who had disturbed us during our first autumn at Elm Creek Farm. This time, each held a yelping bloodhound by the collar.

  Without waiting for us to ask their purpose, the first man demanded entry to our home. “We’re in pursuit of two runaway n——s, a man and a boy,” said he. “We know they came this way.”

  Annoyed, Hans said, “That’s why you woke my family in the middle of the night? I thought the devil himself was after you.”

  “Let us in, g—d—it,” snarled the other. The dogs barked and panted, and would have leapt past Hans and inside if they had not been restrained.

  “Did you check the barn?” inquired Anneke, her eyes wide and innocent. “Last time, you said sometimes runaways hide in the barn.” She turned to Hans, stroking her abdomen as if comforting the child within her womb. “These runaways won’t hurt us, will they?”

  Hans put his arm around her protectively. “Don’t you worry, dearest.” Then he glared at the men as if to shame them for frightening a poor defenseless woman.

  But they were not deceived. “Yes, we surely did check your barn, and we checked L.’s cabin, too,” said the first man. “And that is where we discovered this.”

  He held out a worn shawl of linsey-woolsey, filthy and torn. “That’s mine,” said I, and took the slave cloth from him. “My goodness, when I think of how long and hard I searched for this—”

  “We found footprints, too,” interrupted the second.

  “Of course you did,” said Hans, with perfect bemusement. “We used to live there.”

  “Likely we left many other things behind, besides,” said I.

  The first man addressed Hans. “If you don’t allow us to search your house, I’ll come back with the law, and we’ll force our way in.”

  “Not with those filthy curs, you will not,” I declared. “I will not have them tracking mud all over my clean floors.”

  “Surely they wouldn’t bring the dogs inside, would they?” Anneke shrank back, putting Hans between herself and the door. “Hans, please say they won’t.”

  “As you can see, my wife is as terrified of dogs as my sister is of a dirty floor,” remarked Hans dryly. “I suppose I could let you in if it will get rid of you, but the dogs stay outside.”

  The second man fumed. “See there?” said he to his companion. “They’re afraid. They know what the dogs will find.”

  “Oh, come now,” said I. “Be reasonable. Would your own wives allow those muddy paws in their homes? Surely our house isn’t large enough to conceal someone from two experienced slave catchers, dogs or no dogs.”

  I do not know if my caustic remark injured their pride or if they thought of their own wives and decided my obsession with a clean floor was quite typical for my sex, but, muttering complaints and curses just loud enough to be heard, they tied the hounds’ leashes to a post. Hans opened the door and waved the men in, and they wasted no time searching through the first level as we Bergstroms sat in the front room and pretended we feared nothing more than the loss of a few hours’ sleep. “Don’t track dirt into the baby’s room,” called Anneke after the two men as they trooped upstairs. Then we all fell silent.

  We listened to their boots on the floorboards as they moved from room to room above us. We knew the precise moment they entered the sewing room. I could scarcely breathe, silently willing the fugitives to be as still as stone, waiting for a triumphant shout of discovery that would announce our undoing.

  But the shout did not come.

  The footfalls moved from room to room a second time, and then, after what seemed an eternity, we heard them coming slowly, reluctantly, down the stairs. Hans shrugged at the men as if to say he had tried to prevent them from wasting their time, but the two men were unmollified. So great was the first man’s fury that he could scarcely strangle out a vow that he would be watching us, and that one day he would catch us helping runaways and see us hanged for it.

  “Threaten my family again and I’ll kill you,” said Hans.

  He said it as easily as if he had made killing men his life’s work. The two slave catchers frowned, but they did not look as if Hans’s threat troubled them. Still, they left our home in great haste, and soon even the sound of their horses’ hooves on the road faded into the distance.

  “Fools,” said Hans. “They don’t hang a man for helping slaves.”

  Anneke gave me a look that suggested she found little consolation in that fact, and she set herself down heavily in the nearest chair.

  “Joanna,” said I, remembering with a jolt her own condition, and how three fugitives were sharing a refuge meant for one.

  I raced upstairs to the sewing room to find it in a shambles, as if two slave catchers had spitefully strewn fabric and quilts about when their search turned up nothing amiss. Picking my way through the mess, I went to Anneke’s sewing machine and pulled it away from the wall, revealing a minuscule crack in the new plaster behind it. I slipped my fingernails into the crack and tugged, and away came the makeshift door. “They’re gone,” said I. “It’s safe to come out.”

  Joanna was the first to emerge, looking faint. I helped her back to bed as the man exited, but upon my return, I found him sitting beside the hole in the false wall, earnestly appealing to the young boy to come out. The boy refused, and I cannot say I blamed him. In the end, we agreed to allow him to remain inside as long as he wished; we left the wood-and-plaster covering off, but nearby, where it could quickly be replaced if need be.

  “I apologize for the cramped accommodations,” said I as I made up a bed for the man on the floor beside the opening, where he wished to remain, to comfort the boy. “That space was once a closet, but even then it was little more than a nook. Hans plastered over the door remarkably well, but he had no way to enlarge the space.”

  “We hide out in worse places than that,” said he. “Once we hide in a pigsty, another time an outhouse. Slave catchers be low types, but even they don’t like that stink.”

  “Imagine that,” said I, dryly. “I would have thought them perfectly suited for such a stench. Their souls reek of the filth of their occupation.”

  He chuckled grimly in agreement, and I felt my fear lifting, replaced by a relief so complete I felt light-headed. Our secret alcove had passed its first test, and I was greatly reassured that the fugitives who sought shelter with us would be safe within our walls.

  But as I drifted off to sleep, I thought of the young boy who feared capture too much to quit the hiding place. If not for an inexplicable quirk of fate or the unfathomable caprice of God, he could have been born in the North and free. He could have been Anneke’s child, and Anneke’s child could have been born into slavery.

  When I read over these lines they seem no more than ramblings, although at the time I felt I had touched on something profound. I cannot trace the path my thoughts traveled that night, but in my fatigue and my fear, I saw quite plainly a sameness linking all of us entangled in this great conflict, so that I felt at once both guardian and fugitive, both slave and freeborn. Slavery made slaves of us all, it seemed to me, imprisoning those with dark skin in the iron shack
les of injustice, those who owned slaves in chains of sin, and those of us complacent in our freedom with the heavy yoke of obligation to help our enslaved brethren.

  But while the events of that night brought me increased confidence and insight, they brought Anneke greater fear.

  I did not know how she felt until later. If I detected anything unusual in her demeanor, any reluctance to help the fugitives or desire to forgo displaying the Underground Railroad quilt on the clothesline, I must have ascribed it to her condition. If she seemed fearful of our safety, I must have assumed hers was the ordinary preoccupation of a new mother nearing her time. Our days and nights were such a whirlwind of activity that I do not recall what I thought, or if, in fact, Anneke gave any noticeable sign of her increasing apprehension.

  A certain occasion I do remember clearly: One afternoon, when I retrieved Anneke from Mrs. Engle’s shop, she greeted me in a distracted fashion and responded with little more than monosyllables and shrugs to my attempts at conversation. I attributed her mood to disappointment, as Mrs. Engle had recently begun urging Anneke to rest at home rather than come in for more sewing work, but suddenly Anneke said, “Does it not trouble you that we are breaking the law?”

  “It is wrong to obey an unjust law,” said I. “Sometimes submitting to God’s law means we must disobey those created by man.”

  “Yes, of course, but ...” She hesitated. “Is it not possible that slavery is also the will of God?”

  “Anneke,” said I, astounded.

  “I know what you and Dorothea say, but tell me, is it not possible? Slavery surfaces so often in the Bible—”

  “So does sin, so does evil, but we are not meant to perpetuate them.”

  “But there are directives given for how one is to treat a slave. Why would such things appear in holy scripture if there were not some divine purpose for them? Mr. Pearson says that the African races are the descendants of Ham, condemned by Noah to live in bondage to his brothers. If this is true—”

  “It is not true. It is utter nonsense.” I hardly knew what to say, so bewildered was I by Anneke’s questioning of obvious truths. “I do not think it is wise for you to discuss such issues with Mr. Pearson. You know his views. He is a rigid, blind rule follower with neither the sense nor the judiciousness to decide matters for himself. He would turn his own mother in to the authorities if he thought her in violation of some law.”

  “He might,” countered Anneke, “if he thought it was for her own good. In any event, you needn’t worry about me conversing with Mr. Pearson in the near future, for today Mrs. Engle told me quite firmly not to return until after my confinement.”

  And thus, I thought, the true reason for her contrariness was revealed. I abandoned our argument in lieu of consoling her, reassuring her that she would return to her sewing work in no time, and mocking Mrs. Engle for her silly notions that a pregnant belly was an abominable sight best kept locked indoors where it could not cause offense. Ordinarily Anneke sprang to her employer’s defense, but that day, she was understandably receptive to my criticism, and to my great pleasure, she even joined in with a few pointed barbs of her own.

  If Anneke conversed as often as I did with Joanna, she would not have entertained even for a moment the ludicrous idea that God intended any of His children to own another. The horrors Joanna described were beyond anything I could have imagined, and I marveled that she, that anyone, had been able to endure it. I yearned to ask Mr. Pearson if he had considered such brutality when concluding that slavery had been ordained by God.

  As our intimacy grew, Joanna made it plain that, as I had surmised, her master was the father of her unborn child. Little wonder, I thought, that she displayed such indifference to it. Joanna had been taken by force more times than she could remember, the first when she was but a young girl. Her circumstances so differed from Anneke’s, who carried a child conceived in love and awaited with eager joy, that I could not fault her for her feelings.

  And yet, over time, I began to notice a subtle shift in her temperament. She began to respond to Anneke’s tentative overtures to discuss the condition they shared; she asked for scraps to piece a baby quilt, which I gladly gave her. And as she sewed, if I had completed my chores or desired a respite from them, I would read to her.

  I knew something had changed in her sentiments toward her child when she asked me to read again a passage from Douglass’s Narrative, which we had completed several weeks before, wherein Mr. Douglass describes how he was separated from his mother in infancy, and saw her but a handful of times before her death, and how slave owners conspired to destroy the natural affection a mother feels for her child and the child for his mother.

  She sat in silence after I finished, her silver needle darting swiftly through the fabric scraps in her hands. “If I didn’t run off, they likely take my baby away,” said she. “Sell him off farther South, maybe. The missus don’t like seeing her husband’s babies from other women.”

  “It’s hardly the fault of the women,” said I, indignant. Joanna regarded me with amusement. “Don’t you hear nothing I tell you about that place? You think it matter that we don’t want him? It easy to blame us. She can’t get rid of her husband, so she sell us farther South and get rid of the problem. Until the massa take a liking to another.”

  “This will not happen to you,” said I. “You have escaped that fate. Your child will know you and love you, and your affection will make him thrive.”

  “Freedom make him thrive,” corrected Joanna, but she allowed a smile.

  Then she asked me to read a later, lengthier excerpt, the story of how Mr. Douglass learned to read and write. As I read his words aloud, I stole glances at Joanna. First she stopped sewing, then a faraway look came into her eye. When I concluded, she briskly took up the quilt pieces again. “This Frederick Douglass a clever man.”

  “Ingenious,” said I. “There is perhaps no more powerful voice championing the Abolitionist cause than Mr. Douglass.”

  “Maybe it’s true what he said, that learning to read spoil a slave, because it make him discontent and unhappy,” said she, “but I plenty discontent and unhappy already, and I can’t read.”

  “You could learn. I could teach you.”

  “Maybe a house slave don’t need to read, but a free woman in Canada probably do.” She placed a hand on her abdomen. “I’ll want to read to my baby, read him the Bible and Mr. Douglass’s book, so he know where he came from, and where he can go.”

  My heart swelled with admiration and affection, and we began our lessons that very day.

  So Elm Creek Farm passed from winter into spring, with furtive activity in the night, growing anticipation for the two children who would soon be born, and danger always present, always lingering on the frontiers of our thoughts.

  Only later did I realize our greatest threat lay much nearer, that it had crossed our threshold and lay curled up by the hearth, watching us unnoticed, and biding its time.

  10

  Sylvia’s sense of vindication that Elm Creek Manor had been a haven for slaves was tempered by the knowledge that her family had only unwittingly become stationmasters.

  “But they did,” said Sarah. “That’s what matters. When Joanna knocked on the door, they sheltered her. They just as easily could have sent her away.”

  “I suppose so,” admitted Sylvia. And even if they had felt they had no choice but to assist Joanna once she stumbled upon them, they had actively sought to help the later runaways. Sylvia ought to be glad for that, and that this newest revelation did not contradict any of the family stories passed down through the generations. The stories said only that the Bergstroms had run a station on the Underground Railroad, not how they had begun it.

  “They continued even after that scare with the slave catchers,” said Sarah.

  “Yes, indeed. They certainly could think on their feet, couldn’t they? Even Anneke. I must say that pleased me. From the way Gerda described her, I feared she would fall apart and blurt out
the secret the moment those two slave catchers arrived.”

  Sarah laughed but added, “In her defense, remember we’re only seeing Gerda’s interpretation of Anneke, not the real person.”

  Sylvia cast her gaze to heaven. “Our friend Gwen, the college professor, already gave me the lecture on ‘reliable narrators.’ Well, I for one believe Gerda is reliable, and I’m confident her portrayal of Anneke is accurate.” She paused. “At least, accurate within a modest margin of error.”

  “I wonder,” mused Sarah. “Where was this hiding place she wrote about?”

  “I have no idea.” Sylvia wasn’t sure which room had been Anneke’s sewing room. For that matter, Gerda had not even specified which room had been her own.

  “Maybe she assumed her reader would be a more recent descendant, someone who would know whose rooms were whose.”

  Sylvia shrugged. “Perhaps.” But if Gerda’s preface was any indication, she had intended her words to be read long after the principal participants in her memoir had passed on.

  Sarah gave Sylvia her hand. “Come on. Let’s go find it.”

  “Now?” Sylvia allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. “Don’t you think our campers will mind having their privacy invaded?”

  “Are you kidding? They’ll probably be delighted to be in on the mystery.”

  Sylvia conceded the point, and so she accompanied Sarah upstairs to the second floor, trying not to allow her hopes to rise too high. The manor had undergone so many changes since Gerda’s time, from the addition of the south wing to the extensive remodeling after the fire that occurred in her father’s day to the modernizations her sister, Claudia, had added a generation later. Not only might Anneke’s sewing room be unrecognizable, it might be gone entirely, its place usurped by the hallway linking the original wing with the new.