“Let us through. Let us through.”
Everybody looked at me, at Mister Quincy pulling me along. My palms sweat and my skin began to itch like I’d fallen into an ivy patch.
Freddy smiled at me, then his smile froze, for I looked a mess. Looked ready to run.
“This is my wife,” Freddy said, loud. His hand on my back lent me support. But then he took it away to shake hands with a man shouting, “Fine words. Fine words,” and grinning like Christmas had come.
My turn next. I shook this man’s hand. His grip nearly broke every bone. But he be looking past me, back at Freddy. I breathed deep, trying to calm myself.
“Wonderful speech.” A matron, finely dressed, sang Freddy’s praises. Her husband slapped Freddy on the shoulder, “Good show,” and I could feel Freddy getting taller, bigger beside me. These people be giving Freddy new air.
“Charmed,” the woman said to me, but I knew she wasn’t. I was getting heavier, sweatier by the minute.
Too many faces, hands. Too many strangers. I didn’t know my place. Mam said, “Do your work and leave white folks alone.”
I wanted to laugh crazy. What would Mam say now?
I kept my eyes low. I couldn’t look in these folks’ eyes. I was afraid to speak. Afraid they’d hear my stupid tongue. But what I feared most, I already felt—their judgment. Their judgment that I was not the wife for Frederick Doug-lass—too awkward, too old and fat.
Freddy stood beside me, dignified. He say, “How do you do?” “Thank you.” “Thank you kindly.”
Another white man bowed, saying, “Mrs. Douglass. You must be proud of your husband.”
I stared at his hand. Rough, one finger missing, I did not want to touch it. This hand frightened me. It might grip me and haul me and Freddy both into slavery. This might be the hand that punishes.
I saw down the line more hands. Hairy, thick, thin, rough, soft, big, and small. And I was supposed to press their flesh. Smile and say words of sense. The hand still hung in midair. It scared me awful. I wanted to run, crying out, “Can’t stay. Can’t stay.”
Flee, rush headlong out the door, into the chill night air where there’d be less noise, more peace. Instead, I inhaled. This be a new world for me. But I’m a Murray and a Douglass and I’ll make my family—make myself, as best I can—proud.
I clasped the hand. Did my duty.
This be Freddy’s last speech. I could live with that.
We stood for hours. Hand sore, feet numb. I heard church bells strike ten. I wanted to go home but if I took the blacksmith’s wagon we borrowed, Freddy would have to walk.
I waited but I was fearsome tired.
Everybody was pretty much gone. Any minute, Freddy would clutch my hand and say, “Home. Let us go home.” I felt a lightening of spirit. I’d survived. Hadn’t brung shame.
“Frederick, I’d like you to meet Miss Assing.”
Freddy’s breath caught. Like he’d been startled, surprised anew. His smile be joyful. He bowed before the tall, golden-haired woman, dressed in blue silk. A pretty picture. Fine, straight nose; wide, blue eyes and dark brows that sweep and arch. Truly lovely.
Freddy and this woman speak but I couldn’t hear.
Someone threw open the door. Cold rushed in. Time stilled. I be outside the warm, bright circle Freddy and this woman have made. He’d forgotten me. Me, standing beside him. Only colored woman in a white dress. In a big, nearly empty hall. How could he not see me? Feel my love? Feel me?
“Anna.” He didn’t even glance at me. “Let me introduce Miss Assing.”
“A fine man, your Frederick.” Her tongue sounded funny. Clipped and strong.
“Miss Assing is from Germany.”
I heard the wonder in Freddy’s voice. I knew he’d like to go to this place called “Germany.”
Curious, Miz Assing’s head tilted like a baby bird. She be surprised by me. She smiled and I felt her charm like sun, lifting shadows. “I care very much for the abolitionist cause.”
I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t even nod or smile. I was stone, lacked all grace. Only recently was I “Miz Douglass.” Most my life I’d been “Lil’ Bit,” “Hey, colored gal,” or “Baldwins’ maid.”
This woman had already stopped looking at me. She admired Freddy. She looked at him like he be special. And so Freddy be. A man unbowed. Reborn.
Miz Assing looked at Freddy a bit like I looked at him. Eyes soft, she leaned slightly toward him. Like she would gladly take his arm.
I saw with my heart that this woman might harm my happiness. I didn’t know how I knew this, but I did. Maybe it was my new Delilah’s heart, my marriage passion which helped me see. This woman, except for her voice, be soft where I was hard, lean where I was too round. Her lips be thin and rosy, mine be thick and plum. She be at ease like Freddy. Like the two of them fit in a world of stages, speeches, and glory.
“We should go, Miss Assing.”
I was happy to hear Garrison’s voice.
Miz Assing offered her hand. “I look forward to hearing you speak again, Mr. Douglass. Your eloquence will surely hasten the end of slavery.”
Freddy bowed deep. His lips almost touched her hand. “I am honored.”
I watched Freddy watch her leave. Her silk rustled. Fur be wrapped warmly about her shoulders. She smiled at something Mr. Garrison said. Then, she looked back, over her shoulder. “Auf Wiedersehen, Herr Douglass.”
Freddy bowed again. He swallowed, looked down at me, his eyes bright. His face filled with rapture.
“Let us go, Anna. It has been an important night.”
I crossed my hands over my belly. I felt dizzy, sicker than I had all night. Love be true.
Somehow Freddy wasn’t. Somehow his look denied me. Made me small, “little” in an unkindly way.
I tried to speak on the ride home. The moon hid behind clouds. Trees and ground be frozen. No owl be calling. Like every spirit be dead. Horses just clip-clopped. Clip-clopped.
My eyes filled with water. Freddy’s not looking at me. He be looking past the horse’s head, far down the road. Beyond where the moon made our path glow.
I heard him murmuring, repeating words from his speech. I thought he was seeing the crowd again, hearing the clapping, hearing the good, kind words from all those good, kind men. Those good, kind women. ’Specially women. Or be it woman?
Freddy needn’t tell me. He’d give more speeches. These abolitionists have a big and growing church. I could feel it. See it. Freddy’s ready to speak to the world. Never mind every word risked capture. Auld might snatch him back. This wouldn’t stop Freddy. He’d found his voice.
I’d found fear.
My mistake. I didn’t imagine Freddy big enough when I met him. I remembered seeing him like a ship’s captain, standing on the prow of a half-built ship, handsome, bold, even though he a slave. But that’s all I really wanted. Him, standing proud. I didn’t imagine he’d set sail. Rejoice in the wide, wide world.
Bedroom, garden, parlor, kitchen be all I needed. And when I strolled I wanted to smell the sea, see and feel shells, surf, and imagine my bones stirring on the sandy bottom.
Marrying Freddy, journeying to New Bedford was all the adventure I’d ever need. Babies would be my fruit, and the joy of settling, making a house a home.
But now I also knew something new. Freddy, with no head bowed, no shuffling, could look straight at a pretty, white woman. Eight years younger than me, I knew he might look at pretty women from time to time. Colored women might look back. I just hadn’t counted on a white woman too.
Still, there be fight in me. I be carrying his child. I be the best wife, mother. I be the harbor, the safe home for when he grew tired of glory.
Him and me. Always. Love still true.
Diary of
Ottilie Assing
Beloved of Frederick Douglass
1820–1884
“As in all things, love should be color-blind.”
—FREDERICK DOUGLASS,
IN
A LETTER, 1863
“Why did I suppose love wouldn’t hurt?”
—OTTILIE ASSING,
PRIOR TO HER
DEATH, 1884
Paris
August 21, 1884
I didn’t expect my life to end this way. Me, fiftyeight, sitting like a moonling wrapped in furs, trying to stave off chills. The thought of America makes my heart cold. It didn’t always.
I am the Snow Queen. Love’s betrayal has frozen my heart, sliver by sliver. Except for one small piece, my heart is ice.
Frederick Bailey Douglass. Dearest Douglass. Do I dare say, “You did this to me?” Or was the blame mine all along? I, Ottilie Assing. So smart. Not smart enough.
I’d best hurry. Scribble these words before time disappears, love disappears. Before I’m so cold, so solid, I cannot move except to cross the ocean from which there is no return, no renewal. No gliding across the great Atlantic. No recrossing of seas. Only stillness and death.
Always, I’d wanted to sail to America. “Land of High Purpose and Dreams.” Think of it—a bold experiment—to have one’s customs, one’s culture begin anew. To be reborn! To carve from the landscape a new world. Not a nightmare world but a realm of magical dreams—a land so vast and wide, anything can happen. A land—not chained or closed tight and small like Germany.
I hadn’t counted on love’s treachery. I’m dying. In Paris. The City of Light. Except there isn’t any light.
Douglass isn’t here.
Once upon a time …
Mama and Papa created an oasis. A house overflowing with much love, books, music, and painting. My parents, elegant and refined, presided over artistic, intellectual salons. Of course, Mama was far more gay and lively. But, on Sunday afternoons, when it seemed all of smart, creative Hamburg was in our parlor, even Papa, less dour, hugged me close. I delighted in smelling his tobacco, feeling the itch of his beard.
At two, I sat on Feodor Wehl’s knee. Herr Steinheim introduced me to chess. And Fräulein Orff commented on my early paintings of bold suns floating in purple skies. “Lots of color but little technique.” But, at five, it didn’t much matter. Both Mama and Papa exclaimed “how smart,” “how beautiful” I was! And even when my sister was born, their attentions, rather than lessening, redoubled.
What pleasures of childhood! Two enlightened parents who didn’t believe a girl was only fit for sewing and bearing babies. Two parents who thought love was worth all sacrifice. Indeed, worth any scorn. Papa, the gifted physician; Mama, ex-governess, now painter. Both poets celebrating their passion. Creating a cocoon for their daughters to fly!
Outside our home, there was far less light. Like a Grimm’s tale, a world dulled by a witch’s spell. Odors were less of sweet bread and more the rank of hard toil. Sunlight rarely pierced the maze of brick. Linen, drying on clotheslines, collected the air’s dust.
Hamburg’s Jews were well-educated, prosperous. Nonetheless, prejudice had blunted opportunities like unleavened bread. Dark men in prayer shawls whisked silently through lanes; little boys and girls wrapped in thin cloaks, played, kicking cans. Mothers bartered in the market for coal and candles to shelter against the long, winter nights. Of course, because they were Jews, some found it even harder. Women whose husbands and sons had gone missing. Orphans who’d lost entire families. Strange disappearances afflicted the ghetto like plague.
Once I gave my gloves to the butcher’s daughter, a little girl who was shivering in a shop with no warmth other than a black kettle-stove which instead of being steaming hot, was warm enough for me to touch. Mama was buying a roast hen. Our maid was sick, and I’d pleaded with Mama to let me help with chores. For me, it was a grand adventure.
The little girl’s black eyes seemed to sink inside her head. Blue veins were visible on her forehead and wrists. Her dark hair reminded me of my sister and it might have been merely that resemblance that encouraged me to move toward her. I couldn’t have been more than seven. Mama was supervising the weighing and plucking of the hen. The girl was as tall as me. But she looked like a scrawny chick in her shift and shawl, whereas I was plump and warm in my coat with fur cuffs and collar. She sniffed, wiping her nose with her palm. I offered her a handkerchief, embroidered with my initials: O.A.
“Are you a princess?”
I giggled.
Butcher Stein spoke sharply in Yiddish. In secret, my grandparents taught me Yiddish. Butcher Stein told his daughter not to bother me, to leave me alone. He told her I had no heart. I was no more a princess than the dead hen in his hand. Then, he looked at me, a fierce, intent stare, and I felt shame. Mama sensed it, too. Some shift in the sawdust, the blood-scented air. “Let us go. Deliver the hen.” She motioned for me to go. Impulsively, I pulled off my gloves, stuffed them into a little ball into the girl’s hands. “Auf Wiedersehen.”
The girl, her nose running, stared at the floor.
“Stubborn people,” Mama kept repeating all the way home. “Stubborn people.”
I looked at Mama, her cheeks red from the cold, her blond curls wild beneath her hat. In the coach glass, I could see both our images. We did indeed look like a queen and princess from a fairy tale—all golden and prosperous. But, even as a child, I knew from dreams that darkness overtook the beautiful.
“No enlightenment without suffering,” Papa would say.
That afternoon, going up my house’s steps, I realized keenly the differences between outside, inside. I stepped into the vestibule and Nanny was immediately upon me, clucking about the cold, asking where I’d lost my gloves. Even when she’d hung my coat, I felt, compared to the butcher shop, our home was an oven. I smelled sauerkraut and sausages.
Inside was a riot of colors: red, gold, blue, not just weathered wood, black caulking, and dulled brick. Portraits of our family hung on the wall in gilt frames. And Papa was at home that late afternoon, for I remember him playing his favorite melody—Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No. 14 in C-sharp minor. (Herr Rellstab renamed it “Moonlight Sonata” because it reminded him of moonlight over Lake Lucerne. But I always thought of it as Papa’s song. Sad and dreamy.) Mama rushed forward, kissing Papa, and he kissed her all about the face while Nanny took me upstairs to biscuits and tea.
Jews lived outside. Christians, like us, lived inside. Surrounded by Jews. Yet, my grandparents were Jewish; Mama’s and Papa’s friends were Jews. “I converted to Christianity to marry Mama,” explained Papa. “But I refuse to pass.” He was Jewish by culture; Christian, in religion. “But none of this really matters, little one. Individualism is beyond culture.”
I didn’t understand him then. I don’t understand him now. Even the choices that I thought were all about me—were they? Or were they merely reflections of sweeping social change, of my own self-delusions, of Frederick? Abolitionist. Suffragette. Shadow wife.
I do remember the next morning, packing my clothes, my books, my favorite doll. I wanted to give them to the butcher’s girl. Mama hugged me and Papa called me his dear little girl.
Mama consented to a few clothes but took away the books. “The child can’t read.”
I was shocked. All afternoon I cried. Not reading stories was great poverty to me.
At ten, I asked directly, forthrightly: “Why don’t people like Jews?”
It was Mama who kissed my fingertips in turn. “Religious differences. Belief in an Aryan superiority. Nationalism without compassion. If each German could love one neighbor as I love your father, there’d be no room for hate.” Then, she pretended to bite my thumb. I laughed and squeezed her tight.
1830. Pogroms had begun.
Only inside our house could you escape violence. But sometimes it’d come right up to our door.
Of the four of us, Papa and Ludmilla looked the most Jewish. Ashkenazi heritage. Both tall, dark, thin. Ludmilla would sometimes have eggs splattered on her. Papa would come home, suit torn, hat missing. Bruises on his face and arms. Mother and I could roam unmolested throughout Germany. Only our Jewish neighbors knew us, and many
would mutter “half-breed,” as I passed by. This was nothing compared to Papa’s and Sister’s trials. Ludmilla felt resentful. Sometimes, she’d pinch me. Or cut my best gown. I never told.
“Germany is a great nation,” Papa believed fervently. “In time, it will give up these cultural prejudices and realize Jews are as patriotic as anyone.”
1835. Pogroms again. For weeks, months, dark clouds would consume Papa. He’d barely eat or sleep. Even pretty Mama, whom he loved more than anything, couldn’t cajole him with her kisses.
“You children are our experiment,” Papa said. “Our proof that enlightenment is a moral, not cultural choice. Everyone is equal.” But even as he said the words, a stain of sadness would rest upon his face and mouth. He’d drink another glass of schnapps.
It was Papa’s choice to convert for Mama. Papa’s choice to change our name from Assur to Assing. Papa’s choice to live in a Jewish community. Yet, as I grew older, I wondered what choices Papa would’ve made if he looked blond and blue-eyed like me? I dared not speak these thoughts aloud.
Just as Ludmilla and I dared not go to school and endure endless taunts. Mama taught us things no conservative German would condone: “Life is for the senses”; “Passion over propriety”; “Great literature instead of morality tales”; “Nature is the heart of a woman.”
Summers, we traveled abroad. We met George Sand (how I adored her). Visited Keats’s grave in Italy. Weeping, Mama made us recite The Eve of St. Agnes:
Awake! arise! my love, and fearless be
For o’er the southern moors I have a home for thee.
Traveling abroad, we were always happy. No questions about identity, religion, or morality. All of us equally free to follow our hearts’ desire.
Douglass’ Women Page 8