Douglass’ Women

by Jewell Parker Rhodes

  For my fourteenth birthday, Mama gave me an ink drawing of America. How I laughed! Germany could fit inside New York. America had grown acres and acres—a living, vital thing, pushing farther into the vast wilderness. Right up to the Mississippi River. Amazing.

  I painted landscapes. Me, inside America: atop the Appalachians, peering out the window of a Delaware train, or paddling the Erie Canal in a canoe. Sometimes I was in an elegant city parlor—New York, Philadelphia, Boston—expounding on the nature of freedom.

  Like Columbus crossing the sea, I never doubted I’d find myself in America. Not Jew, half-breed. Nor German. Just Ottilie. Me. My best self.

  How naïve I was!

  One afternoon, when Papa should’ve been seeing patients, he burst into the parlor, surprising me and Mama. “Don’t apologize for who you are. Never apologize.” He was red-faced, furious.

  Mama shooed me from the room. I could hear Papa ranting first about Rabbi Shel. “What does it matter if Jesus is a Jewish prophet or a martyred Christian? European faith can hold both. We live in Germany, not Palestine.” Next, he ranted about the politicians. “Bourgeois bureaucrats. Idiots. Fools. Aryans were not the first to settle Germany!”

  Mama soothed Papa’s storm. She took him upstairs, closed the bedroom door. This was the pattern. No matter the time of day. A closed bedroom and hours later, Papa would emerge optimistic, elated. When Ludmilla and I were young, Nanny pulled us away to play with blocks and dolls. Later, I painted or read in the library. I learned to accept there’d always be hours when Mama and Papa were both inaccessible. So close. Behind a slight, wooden door, never to be disturbed. No matter the sounds: the shouts, the creaking springs, weeping, or thundering silences. The maid would leave dinner outside their door. Sometimes breakfast too.

  Mama tried to explain love to me.

  “Passion is fierce sometimes. You desperately want, need each other.”

  “Why do you cry? I hear you crying.”

  She shrugged like a lost bird. “Sometimes feelings are too much.”

  For Mama, the best literature was all about love eternal. Mrs. Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese enthralled her: How do I love thee? Let me count the ways….

  “Paint emotion instead of America, Ottilie, and the world would be at your feet.”

  I’d reply, “Yes, Mama,” and she’d scribble new poems in her journal. She raved about Dante’s Vita Nuovo, his “new life” inspired by his unrequited passion for Beatrice.

  “Your Mama is a romantic,” Papa would tease.

  “No more than you,” she answered. “Marrying a Christian. Believing in true love.”

  “I’ll be like you, Mama. An artist. A governess.”

  “We shall see,” said Mama, teaching me mathematics and geography as if I were a boy. But declaring, “You’ll have a dowry fine enough for any man.”

  Except no man would take me. The men, so pompous, so assured of their superiority, preferred me docile, silent. Slow and dull like a milk cow.

  I called each one of them pigs. Swore I’d never fall in love, never marry.

  Alas, childhood gave way to more complicated learning—Jean Baptiste Basion.

  He was the persona of Mama’s poetry. On stage, with a glance, he could make audiences weep. Speak eloquently in meter. And when he dueled, my heart raced at even the thought of a pretend hurt. Seventeen, how could I not have become infatuated?

  Mama took us backstage to meet him. Everyone in Hamburg, it seemed, was crowding in! But I was proud, for it was Mama he hailed. “Rosa Maria, Rosa Maria.” Jean Baptiste flourished a bow. Mama blushed as lovely as an angel.

  “These are my daughters, Ottilie. Ludmilla.” He offered us roses. Red for Ludmilla, yellow for me; then, he hesitated, picking white instead. “An uncommon color for an uncommon beauty.”

  Giddy, I inhaled the roses’ perfume.

  All summer, I painted Jean Baptiste instead of America’s horizons. In love with an actor? How scandalous, my grandparents, our neighbors thought! But Mama and Papa approved. “Independent thinking. Independent heart.”

  Jean Baptiste Basion. A made-up name for a selfmade man. He told parlor stories, making light of his childhood poverty, the drunken father who beat him. He made us laugh with his tale of being abandoned to Jesuits. “Bad food. Straw beds. Jesuits loved me. To them, I was Original Sin.” Years, he endured their catechisms, their repressive scorn. “Until I could read and write well enough to run away. An actor’s life for me. If I’d been a priest, I would’ve missed the pleasures of the Assings.” Then, he winked at me.

  Imagine, an artist’s soul locked in a cleric’s robe! The thought of his suffering made me cry. Ludmilla was exasperated with me. Mama murmured, “Awakening love.” Papa accorded me respect.

  All summer, I fed my passion with poetry and romances.

  Only once, in the garden, with pine yielding its lush scent, did Jean Baptiste kiss me. Light. The touch of a butterfly.

  I wrapped my arms about his neck. “Marry me.”

  He laughed.

  “Please.” (Such young earnestness I had.)

  “I thank you for the honor.”

  If he’d said nothing more, all would’ve been well. A noble knight deflecting praise.

  “But you are an indulged, spoiled girl. Whatever would we have in common?”

  “I’m going to do great things,” I insisted.

  “Beyond bearing a dozen children?”

  I hit him. Hard. In his chest.

  He laughed, gripping my hands. “A farce? How sentimental. I’ve misjudged my part. Forgive me, Fräulein.”

  “I am going to do great things. Travel to America. Become a great artist. A painter. Essayist. Journalist.”

  “Why not free the slaves, too?”

  “I will.”

  Jean Baptiste laughed. He was still laughing when he skipped up the steps, into the house, and bid my parents farewell. Still laughing as his carriage clip-clopped down the road. What a tale he’d tell! He’d dine on it for months. Amused by the Assing girl.

  All night I cried, curled beside Mama (the only time Papa had the bedroom door closed to him). By dawn, my face was puffy, swollen from tears. Mama promised me, “You will be loved beyond reason. Like Isolde, you’ll want to die for this true, great love.”

  How prophetic it all seems!

  Yet, by dawn, I hurt not so much from Jean’s rejection. Rather, I ached that he’d found fault with my America. Slaves were servants, weren’t they? Indentured bondsmen? But from one’s station, one could rise. Egalitarianism would rule. Jean Baptiste was proof of that.

  I was on the edge of a precipice: How could Americans not be free?

  Winter 1839, Mama collapsed. Papa called in a consulting doctor. But neither man knew what made Mama take to her bed, wither, and fade. Her belly swelled. “Love’s fruit,” Mama said, convinced she was pregnant, that true love and the seeds of passion had defied age.

  Next, her arms, legs, and ankles swelled. Tumors rested against her veins. Mama wailed: “How can I be dying?”

  Hard, rocky masses choked off color (turning her skin yellow, then blue). Choked off breath. Mama accepted her fate. In her journal, she wrote:

  Hail to me, the happy one! I call out in joy at the end of my life,

  For I have not lived in vain, for I have known love!

  Brave Mama! Her last entry:

  You, Amor, I served always.

  Of all the gods you reigned supreme.

  For Mama, dying was another art. She quit life with more grace and peace than I’ve yet to know. How I’ve missed her!

  Mama was buried in a Christian plot with priests and hymns.

  “Why have You forsaken me?” Papa cried over and over again when dirt was thrown atop the casket. Papa fancied himself as Job. But no one thought to ask Papa which God. The resurrected Christ or the Old Testament Jehovah?

  I didn’t cry for Mama. Papa was furious. But how could I mourn the beauty of her life and passing?
>
  Papa mourned. Weeping, flailing. Sick like a girl. Only Ludmilla could care for him. Ludmilla, the good girl, like Rachel in the Bible. Or was it Rebecca?

  Papa acted as if he were the one whom God had lain waste.

  He repented. He ordered Ludmilla and me to cook, cover our heads, and sit in the women’s corner. He mourned his firstborn. The son who would’ve become a great physician. Become the ideal who could move fluidly throughout society, valued as both German and Jew.

  Useless daughters should be banished to conformity!

  Worst of all, Papa counseled me to set aside my paints. He said there was no art to be made that hadn’t already been made.

  Suffering had made Papa bitter.

  He became gaunt, then skeletal. A slight cough, a cold in Papa’s lungs. Nothing from which he couldn’t recover. But he stopped eating. Only Ludmilla could get him to swallow broth. Then, that no longer.

  I wept outside the door. Ludmilla said Papa refused to see me. I reminded him of Mama.

  How I begged to comfort Papa. Pleaded. But those last days, Ludmilla insisted I stay beyond the door. When I became adamant, she locked it.

  I heard Papa draw his last breath. I heard one wild burst of energy and passion: “Rosa Maria. Rosa Maria.”

  Poor Papa. Dead within a year of Mama’s death.

  Nothing held me. Even Ludmilla was eager to see me go: “You’re no longer the favorite, Ottilie. There’s no one here to show off to.”

  So I left. Within a month, I was sitting on deck, feeling wind whirling my hair, snapping my dress about my ankles and my knees. I was on ship, completely in awe of the miles of deep, blue sea with white-tipped waves.

  Nothing seemed impossible to me.

  Like Mama, I’d rejoice in living. But I’d love a man who was his own anchor. Someone who wouldn’t end his life sad and torn. And I did love such a man—and I found out just how difficult it was to hold him.

  Atlantic Crossing

  I remember, vividly, believing my journey across the sea would be all pleasantness. An honorable adventure. I tried hard to be good. The proper heroine.

  On the third night, the Captain invited his first-class passengers to dinner. I felt guilty knowing others were less well fed. It wasn’t polite to know our ship, the Indian Queen, carried people in its belly. Immigrants. Poor people following dreams. Stowed in warrens meant for rats.

  I digress. I agreed to dine at the Captain’s table. But I shocked everyone. A young woman traveling alone. They thought me wanton but dared not say so. But how to explain my best companion, my Mama, was dead?

  Five gentlemen rose: plump Herr Leider, a banker with interests in American cotton; Rolfe Stangelberger, a student, with his leering tutor, Herr Schmidt (I suspected he terrorized house maids); Herr and Frau Mueller, she was a mouse, and he, a petulant bear, an owner of a factory that made sturdy shoes for German schoolchildren. (His wife was upset because he’d risen for me. Silly woman.) Lastly was Mr. Newcombe, a planter, from America. “Vir-gin-nee-yah,” he says. A lovely word.

  I was delighted to meet Mr. Newcombe, believing all Americans must be courageous and of good sense. Divine Providence, was it not? Would not the best and brightest of humanity—men and women with dreams, visions—be called upon to tame a new land?

  “How do, Ma’am?” His tones were sweet, dulcet in comparison with my awkward English.

  “Good. I am good.”

  His eyes twinkled and I could not help that my heart raced. So dignified, so handsome, Mr. Newcombe. No more than thirty. Young for a man. For the first time, I thought, perhaps without my background haunting me, I might find love in America.

  “Miss Assing,” the Captain said, “I would be honored if you sit here, on my right.”

  “If Mr. Newcombe sits to my right.”

  Frau Mueller squealed, fluttering her fat hands. The men, decorously, glanced away. Herr Schmidt coughed into his hand. I couldn’t resist. Only one American and I wanted to know everything about him and my soon-to-be-adopted land. I didn’t want to be squeezed between two disapproving Germans.

  The Captain, his color heightened, clicked his heels. “As you wish.”

  Mr. Newcombe pulled out my chair. “I like rebels,” he whispered, so soft, I could barely hear. Then, loudly, “Miss Assing, you delight me.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Dinner began with blood-red borscht. Were it not for Mr. Newcombe’s stories, dinner would’ve been interminable. Instead, he delighted us with tales.

  “My family built a plantation as rich and as civilized as any could claim in a wild land. My Papa and his Papa before worked sunup to sundown to make paths, roads, sheds, barns, and houses. We made our own paradise.”

  “What about the women?” I asked.

  “They worked hard, too—”

  I liked that answer.

  “—worked until we were successful enough that they need not work. Southern beauties, belles, we call them. The pride of Virginia.”

  “Do they get bored?”

  “My, no. There are dances, teas, weddings, church socials. A host of things.”

  “What about education?”

  “They oversee the domestic arts, of course. The raising of children. But we encourage them to take advantage of all social graces.”

  I became sadly disappointed in Virginia. How cruel to encourage women to work, then end up prizing leisure.

  After dinner, I gathered my gloves, fan. I curtsied and went on deck. The sea calmed me. There isn’t anything more beautiful than a night sea. Water, black as velvet. Overhead, a sky filled with bright, glittering stars.

  “Have I offended you?”

  I swung around, startled. “No, Mr. Newcombe. But your stories became less interesting as the women became more dull. God gave women minds to use.”

  “Not all women are unhappy with their lot. Whereas you … ?” His fingers grazed mine.

  “You think I’m wealthy?”

  “Wealth makes you all the more beautiful. Virginia could still use a woman like you.”

  “Scoundrel.”

  “A charming word from your lips.”

  He meant to kiss me. But as his hands gripped my shoulders, I turned aside.

  “Forgive me. I’ve acted less the gentleman.”

  “I learned long ago that the words ‘gentle’ and ‘man’ do not usually go together.”

  “So harsh, Miss Assing.”

  “Merely a realist.”

  Mr. Newcombe guided me toward the bow. Sailors were watching us with interest.

  “I would like to issue an invitation. Please say you’ll come to my home. You remind me of my mother. Nothing diminished her strength. Until her death, she carried on as well as my father. Tilling, laying seed, strangling hens when needed.

  “True, my sisters are soft. And my nieces are as silly and delightful as sugarplums. But what is civilization without softness? Without kindness and good-hearted women? A woman’s duty is to lend charm, pleasantness to the household.”

  “Then, I wonder how you ever could’ve loved your mother? If she was indeed as strong as you say.”

  Mr. Newcombe flushed.

  “Forgive my manners.” I clutched the railing and stared at the moon’s watery trail. I was indeed becoming too bold.

  “No, do not apologize. It ruins the effect. I’m almost tempted to offer you tobacco.” Mr. Newcombe chuckled and sauntered away.

  I was left blushing.

  Sailors guffawed. Mr. Newcombe had neatly put me in my place.

  Chagrined, I felt vulnerable. Childish and seventeen again.

  I do not know what awakened me. I tremble as I write this, for it was indeed too terrible, what I heard and what I saw.

  At first I thought it was the wind howling, shrieking like a banshee of ghosts. There were sounds, too, of a weight being thrown or dropped, then, yawning silence. The noises as much as the unnatural quiet made me want to investigate. How I wish I had not.

  I threw on my wrap
, not caring that my hair was unbound, and flung open my cabin’s door. The wind was fierce and, for a moment, I thought how it would knock me overboard. Calm seas had turned restless. My resolve lessened and I thought to return to my cabin. The sounds were probably the wind lashing the sails, the wood straining under pressure, the ship creaking, shuddering at its rough progress.

  But a scream—a woman’s scream—held me.

  There were women, I knew—thin, pale women down below—who were only allowed on deck between the hours of eight and ten and four and six. In first class, there was only myself and Frau Mueller. No honest woman would be out in this early morning with the moon still high, the wet spray stinging, and darkness shielding. The scream, more piteous, echoed again. I stepped gingerly, clutching the rail.

  Just around the bend, I saw Mr. Newcombe, no longer neat, elegant. His hair, wind-swept, his shirt wrinkled, open at the neck, his pants hastily drawn over bare feet. He looked distraught, wild-eyed.

  I looked to where he was looking. One leg over the rail, was a woman, stark naked. So black she almost blended into the velvet night. Had she kept still, I might not have seen her. Or else thought she was a mirage come out of the ocean’s depths to haunt. Or, perhaps, some forlorn spirit invisibly riding the Arctic wind. But the cold sent tremors through her body; her entire body contracted to provide less surface for the wind’s kiss. And were that not enough, the silver chains about her wrists glinted almost like diamonds and proved this was no apparition. How I wished that it wasn’t so.

  Our eyes met. Hers, brimming, luminous with tears; mine, mirroring hers.

  “You are my slave, Hessie,” Mr. Newcombe shouted. “You’ll do as I say.”

  The black woman answered. Her words were foreign, but her meaning clear. “No more. No more,” she seemed to say. “I will take no more.”

  The Captain, Herr Schmidt, the quarterdeck master, and rough sailors maneuvered forward, enclosing her, trapping her body against the sea.

  “Let me help,” I pleaded. “Let me help.”