Douglass’ Women

by Jewell Parker Rhodes

  Douglass had spoken on women’s behalf. Not as enthusiastically as I would have liked. He didn’t think you could argue abolition and the vote at the same time. “Once slavery is ended, then women’s concerns can be more forcibly addressed,” he said, and we argued all night. “America is not ready for both.”

  I knew, eventually, I’d change Douglass’ mind. Pride was almost a sin with him. How nice then that his daughter should set an example. How awful to think she might know little more than a few written words and domestic trivia.

  I bent, whispering. “Would you like to go to school?”

  “Couldn’t you teach me?”

  “I could. Painting. Reading. Writing. Even German, if you wish. I could teach you about all the great thoughts men have had. Some women, too. I could teach you more than many a tutor. A new world dawns, Rosetta. We need intelligent minds. Intelligent women.”

  “Start now, please.”

  I liked this girl. Sweet and beyond sweet. I could paint her. This time not the infant, but a full-grown child. I’d paint her hair a bit more gold. Her eyes, more hazel. She’d be my child with Douglass. In oil; if not in fact. I lay back, closing my eyes to hold back tears.

  “Give me a kiss,” I murmured.

  Trustingly, she put her arms about my neck and kissed my lips. Her breath smelled of strawberries. Her hands felt so comforting and delicate. I’d never played with dolls but I liked her trust in me. She curled up on the bed beside me. Lying in the space her father had so recently been.

  “Are you a good girl?” I asked.

  “A very good girl.”

  I laughed again. “My darling girl. Then we shall have to see what can be done. What we must do to make you as smart and as famous as your father.”

  Anna

  “For me, Anna? Why didn’t you try to read for

  me?”

  —FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1882

  “It ain’t all about you.”

  —ANNA DOUGLASS, 1882

  Rochester

  You can’t do this. You can’t.”

  “I can and will.”

  “Freddy, please. Rosetta’s my baby girl. I couldn’t feel joy without her. We be happy here in Rochester.”

  “So I’d best believe. But Rosetta deserves a fine education.”

  “As fine as Miz Assing’s?” I stood as tall as I could muster and dared him to look me in the eye.

  His eyes cast down, he used his big boom voice, the one he saved for speeches. “The future for the colored race lies in being as prepared as any educated white.”

  “As prepared as Miz Assing?” I demanded.

  He looked straight at me. “Yes. As fine, as prepared as Miss Assing.”

  Trembling, I moved toward the window and looked out over my garden. Freddy’s study was the nicest room in the house. He had southern light, the horizon, and a view of roses. His office was big enough to hold all his papers and books. He even had a nice fire though the day had only the slightest chill. Seeing his reflection in the glass, my heart raced. Even though my soul and body ached.

  His clothes were the finest; I laundered them with great care. Everything I did for Freddy, I did with great care. I saved the finest tea for him, cooked sweetbreads and puddings. I wove lace for his handkerchiefs and polished his boots and walking stick. When Freddy left this house, he looked as well and as well-fed as any white man.

  His watch chain caught the sunlight and glittered from his vest pocket. I pressed my lips together. I didn’t give him the pocket watch. He came back with it from England. But it was a fine piece and one day, I hoped to hold it in my fingers. Hold it and stare at the letters that I see him reading inside.

  I watched the sunlight cut across the tall sunflowers and strawberry vines. Winter would come again and all my handiwork would die. Seemed no one cared about the vegetables I grew. Bean poles, kale, cucumbers. Or the flowers I nourished alongside the food. Pale, tender azaleas. Strong-headed marigolds. More roses. The garden Frederick visited with Miz Assing was far off from the house, just a clearing with shrubs and bushes. An iron-wrought bench. I don’t know what they all did in there—staying well beyond twilight. Dark, manicured, not alive with the flow of color or of growing things. My garden had all anybody would ever need—food and beauty. It be my garden I see from the kitchen. My garden Frederick sees when he writes. When he works with Miz Assing.

  I speak softly, promising myself not to cry.

  “Frederick. Seem like this family done give you everything you want. The world, too, waits at your feet. Abolitionists be charmed by you. Why can’t you allow me Rosetta?”

  “She’s not only your daughter.”

  I moved forward, swift, slammed my fist on his desk. “She be my daughter more than yours. I birthed her. You weren’t there. You didn’t see her swimming out of my body. You didn’t see her take her first breath. You saw nothing. When she first walked, first talked, you weren’t here. I raised her. Me. You went off to England.”

  “I had to leave, Anna. You know that.”

  “Just as I know you had to take Miz Assing with you. Just as I know you had to have her in this house.”

  “I won’t discuss Miss Assing.”

  “Why not? I’m certain the two of you discuss me. Whisper, carry tales behind my back: ‘When will Anna leave?’ ‘Too bad you had to marry her.’ ‘Yes, too bad.’ ‘A young man’s mistake.’” I swallowed. “You think I’m blind, Frederick?”

  “I’ll not discuss this with you.”

  “You think I’m stupid. Stupid and blind both.”

  “You’re ignoring the subject of Rosetta’s education.”

  “I’m not. I taught her, be teaching her all the wonders Mam taught me. She can sew, cook, garden. She be doing right well.”

  “Have you taught her Plato, the text of my books, how to write a letter?” He was towering over me, making me step back, give way, inch by inch. “Have you given her anything to think about other than your small domestic arts? Have you given her wisdom and ideas to think and dream about?”

  Freddy be bullying me like my brothers used to do. pushing me back with his size and strength. If I didn’t stop, he’d roll all over me. Roll me down ’til I was flat out, smashed down to nothing. I struck his face.

  Freddy caught my wrist. But I didn’t flinch.

  “I be teaching—”

  “Be teaching? What kind of English is that?”

  “I be teaching—”

  “Who are you to teach anyone?”

  I twisted my wrist from his grasp. “I be teaching Rosetta to be a good, God-fearing woman. At seven, she be smarter than Miz Assing. At seven, she know it be wrong to lust after another woman’s husband. To commit adultery. To sin against the Bible.”

  “Shut up. Stop this talk.”

  “You think I’m too black to know anything. Like you believe the only thing good in you be white. Be having a white woman like Miz Assing. I know what goes on under my roof. I know it as I know I be carrying another of your sons in my womb. I know it as I know you, the honorable Frederick Bailey Douglass, be a liar.”

  He struck me then. His rage fierce. I wiped a trickle of blood from my mouth.

  “This be what learning gets you? Hitting a woman?”

  He slumped in his chair. “Get out of here.”

  I despised him then. “You should know better than to treat me like your slave.”

  “I didn’t mean to hit you, Anna.”

  “Naw. You be telling lies again, Freddy.” I dropped down on my knees before him. Head bowed, Freddy looked young and needy. I touched his hair, crooning as I would to Freddy Junior.

  “I still love you. I love the man in you, intent on making good. I just don’t understand how you forgot your vows to me.”

  There be silence. Then, the clock chimed loud and clear.

  “Look at you, Anna,” he said softly, his voice drawn out to a hoarse whisper. “Look at Miss Assing.”

  I clutched my belly, feeling pain rush through
me. I pounded my fists on his thighs. “Did you think I be ugly when you made this child? Or Freddy Junior? Rosetta? Did you think me ugly when I offered to buy you free? Was I ugly then? When I gave you all my money to run free?”

  “No.” He stood, glaring at me. “You looked well enough. It’s the ugliness of your mind that punished me. You’re an embarrassment, Anna. Barely more educated than when I found you.”

  “Whose fault? When you been here to teach me?”

  “You could’ve continued on your own.”

  “When? When I needed to provide food, money, and warmth for our children? When I needed to take your role as father and head? Even now you travel from home. Here, then gone. Here, then gone.”

  “It’s easier to go than stay.”

  “Go then. You should’ve let me stay in Lynn, rather than bring me to this God-forsaken Rochester.”

  “Rochester offered a new beginning.”

  “For who? Not me. I didn’t need one. Naw, ‘a new beginning’ be another lie. You wanted a place to bring Miz Assing.”

  “Rosetta will go to boarding school.”

  “Go to Miz Assing. Leave Rosetta here.”

  “She’ll go to boarding school.”

  “Book-smart mean nothing. You write books, and still don’t care you breaking God’s law.”

  “There’s more to God’s law than interpreted by man. Miss Assing is a companion of the mind and soul. If you offered more, I would gladly take it, Anna. But you don’t.”

  Both of us breathed hard. I closed my eyes, wishing I could undo what I was hearing, feeling and seeing.

  “Why’d you marry me?”

  “Loyalty.”

  “I wish you hadn’t.”

  “So do I.”

  I pulled myself up, tears running down my face like a baby. I swore this be the last time I’d cry over Frederick Bailey Douglass.

  “I found you,” I said, stopping before I closed the door.

  “What?”

  “You forget. I found you. You didn’t find me, Mr. Douglass, ex-slave man.” I closed the door softly on my dreams. Poor, woeful dreams.

  Love ain’t true.

  Rochester

  I reddy thought he won. He thought I gave in to him. I was ready, though, to fight for my baby girl. Once I birthed the new baby, I figured I’d go to Mam. Freddy owed me a trip. I’d say, “Let me take the children to Mam this one time. Then, Rosetta go to school.” How could he say no? And once I was with Mam, in Baltimore, I’d stay. Just say “no” to returning, regardless of how he frighten me. He’d have to call the law and oh, how embarrassing that would be for ex-slave man. ’Specially in the same state his old Master live.

  But I never got to win. Never got my choice.

  I took to bed for several days. Freddy called in a woman to do the work I did. I didn’t care. I was worn out, tired in spirit. This baby had me feeling poorly too. How could I let Freddy love—no, use me again? He’d have to call on Miz Assing.

  The children, bless their hearts, tiptoed softly. Tried not to shout. I laid in bed, thinking about how everything about me was slowing down. Thinking I’d die before Freddy. Knowing Mam would die before me. Eight years since I’d seen her. No more than a couple Penny-men carrying news. Sometimes I heard from brothers and sisters. But they in awe of me. Think it be all good news to be Miz Douglass. Mam would know the story from one look at me.

  My room was cold. Fire dead. Only a single candle flickered its light. Freddy didn’t come to see me, to see if I was all right. He took to sleeping in his office. I didn’t have the energy to move. Like a great big baby, I let myself, finally, cry. Not since I was Lil’ Bit did tears sting so. Nothing like a good, wallowing cry.

  “Mam,” Rosetta whispered, barefoot in her night rail. “Mam?”

  I quieted and sat up. I didn’t want her to see me crying.

  “How’s my baby girl?”

  “Fine, Mam. I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Snuggle down beside me and I’ll tell you stories about my Mam and my Mam’s Mam. Come on. Under the quilt. I don’t think your Father will mind this evening.”

  Rosetta laid warm and soft against me. No longer smelling like a new baby but like a girl on the verge of womanhood. Like a colt. All legs and all sweaty, warm, smelling like grass. I hugged her tight. I couldn’t let her go. I kissed the top of her forehead.

  “My Mam’s Mam told stories. Did I tell you that?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “She told how long, long ago, Africans could fly.”

  “Folks can’t fly.”

  “That be your Father talking. This tale Mam told me and as her Mam told her and how I’m telling you. You got to believe. Just as I believe in them slave spirits scattered in the sea. They help you. Never fear.”

  “There’s no sea in Rochester.”

  “No, there ain’t.”

  “Isn’t.”

  I wanted to fuss: that’s your Father speaking. ’Stead, I tickled her. “My word, Rosetta. Only seven and telling me how to speak proper!”

  “You don’t mind?”

  “Naw. You my bright, shining girl.”

  “I want to go to school.”

  I be glad Rosetta staring at the ceiling, not at my face. “Why you say that?”

  “’Cause I do.”

  “We can find a Pastor to teach you, like in Lynn.”

  “Miss Assing says I need the best learning. Everybody in the world knows me as Frederick Douglass’ girl.” She lifted onto her elbows, her face, sweet and beautiful. “Can I go to school?”

  I shuddered. “That what you want?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “You don’t want to help with your new baby brother?”

  “He won’t be a baby long. And I’m growing up.”

  “So you be.”

  “Can I, Mam? Can I go to school?”

  I couldn’t speak. I held her, squeezing so hard it hurt. She squirmed in my arms. But Rosetta let me hold her. Didn’t say anything when I cried and cried. But, in my fierce hug, my kisses, my caress of her back and hair, I knew she could feel my body saying what my mouth couldn’t. “Yes.”

  Go to school. Learn everything. Build your own kingdom. No matter where you go, your Mam be loving you true.

  Ottilie

  “Book learning doesn’t replace everything.

  I should’ve told Rosetta about love.”

  —OTTILIE ASSING,

  DIARY ENTRY, 1872

  “You were another kind of mother

  locked inside my head. Mam had my

  heart.”

  —ROSETTA DOUGLASS,

  IN A LETTER TO

  OTTILIE, 1883

  Rochester

  Be careful what you wish for. What you desire. I’d learned that phrase in America. But no one told me how awful it could be. How things could turn out right but still be wrong.

  I desired a child. Rosetta was my experiment. Elizabeth Stanton’s Declaration of Sentiments had circulated, declaring the “duty of women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise.” Though I wasn’t American, it was thrilling to fight for women’s equality! For abolition, I was a liability. But the right to vote movement was spreading like a wildfire and I could wholeheartedly be part of it.

  Rosetta, with her father’s charm and bright mind—how could I not rescue her? Be the mother I suspected Douglass wanted me to be.

  The summer before school began, I researched the academies. No institution preparing ladies for marriage was good enough. I wanted a curriculum with substance. As rich an approach to learning as my mother gave me. Miss Seward’s Academy in Albany seemed appropriate (though I did have my doubts about the schoolmistress even then), but Miss Seward’s was the best school to fit Douglass’ admonition that Rosetta be no more than three days’ drive from Rochester. I suspected Anna put him up to this! No fine institution in a New York City school or Quaker school in Philadelphia. Upstate New York had its limitations.r />
  “Call me Miss A.”

  “Truly?”

  “Yes. Each afternoon, I want you to meet me in the garden. We’ll do lessons. Fun things to prepare you for Miss Seward’s. Would you like that?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  I kissed her cheek. Sweet child. “We will begin now.”

  “I’ve got to ask Mam.”

  “Your father has given his approval.”

  She dug her toe at the dirt, twisting her torso back and forth. I patted the stack of books beside me. “All right. Go ask your mother.”

  She ran, fleet like a deer, her dark pigtails flapping at the back of her knees. I heard the kitchen screen door slam. Then, silence.

  I imagined Anna in her kitchen, her arms dusted white with flour, listening to a breathless Rosetta. Knowing Anna, she’d keep kneading her dough. Then, when Rosetta fell silent, she’d wipe her hands, look at her child, then cross to the window as though she could see me behind the hedges. Her eyes would cloud like they were seeing beyond to something else. She’d say “Yes.”

  I’d seen Anna reach decisions about her children before. She never failed to do what’s best. I give her that. Even when Freddy Junior had fallen and Douglass thought it wasteful to send for a doctor, she did. Douglass hadn’t ridden more than an hour before his son spiked a terrible fever. Anna would say “yes” to Rosetta. Even though it cost her her own pride. She’d say “yes.”

  How many other mistresses taught their lover’s daughter? Taught her in her mother’s garden? Taught her in daylight, midafternoon, while loving her father by moonlight, the night before?

  “Miss A. Miss A.” Rosetta was tugging my arm. “Mam says you can teach me.”

  “You mean your mother said, ‘yes.’”

  Rosetta nodded. “Long as I finish my chores.”