Carl and Sylvia had been keeping steady company since they’d met that day on the wharf. Though there was a period when, at her mother’s urgings, she was called upon by a young man, John, more fitting of her attention, or so her mother insisted. His parents owned a prestigious school in Virginia and he was handsome in the most classic way that a black man could be and still be black with his light skin and light eyes and lightly textured hair. His touch was light, too, and initially it was a thrill for Sylvia to have him escort her to the concert hall, or a public reading, or one of the lavish affairs catered by her parents for a well-to-do’s wedding reception, or graduation celebration, or cotillion ball. Though as Sylvia’s feelings grew in intensity, she noticed John’s seem to recede. He no longer stroked the nape of her neck as they took a carriage ride, or clasped her hands as they walked along the oval. When she confided his turnaround to Nevada, Nevada said she thought Sylvia too good for him and his mulatto-loving people. That he was not the prize, Sylvia was the prize. And then she said no more, until Sylvia pressured her, and then Nevada told her that his parents were likely the cause of his faltering passions; she knew of the highfalutin school his parents ran, and that they measured the color of every child hoping to be admitted to the school against a rub of ground ginger: darker than that and the parents received an I-am-sorry-but letter.
Sylvia, with her middle-of-the road complexion that was neither light nor dark had not really suffered the impediments that she knew shackled the darkest-toned of her race. She was well-educated, cultured—and her father now was a regular lecturer at the Institute for Colored Youth on how to assess catering fees based on the services offered. Her parents owned their own home in the most affluent part of the Seventh Ward. And yet, because she was slightly darker than a rub of ground ginger, she could not pass muster. “I am sorry to hear you report that, Nevada,” Sylvia had said, defiantly. “Fuck them, fuck him”—though she’d only ever used profanity before in her head, or once or twice whispered such a word when no other living thing was in earshot, or if so only Nevada—and then she let go a profanity-laced tirade about John and his family. Said that the Negro race would never progress to its fullest potential because of people like them, who had copied the worst practices of bigoted whites. Nevada laughed, enjoying the sound of Sylvia’s cursing as she told Sylvia that Carl stood head and shoulders above John, above most men, regardless of how her mother felt.
Sylvia knew that part to be true. Carl was certainly a prince of a man. He was loyal, sweet, giving. But her heart did not pound double-time when she thought of him; her world did not spin faster when he approached; his touch was warm, soothing, but there were no explosions, no electric currents running through her at his touch. She loved him as one loves a dear, dear friend, not with a passion; though she could not even claim that she ever loved John with a passion. It was her work that she truly loved. In her most recent position as nurse at the Blockley Almshouse, she felt her whole self involved in what she did. When she was away from work, she was thinking about work, wondering how the one with the broken wrist was faring with the sling she’d fashioned, or had the ginger and garlic soup solved the other’s intestinal distress, did the slippery elm relieve the hoarseness, the lavender work for the hysteria. She’d get a rush at times when she’d conjure up a cure, often absent the doctor. She thought that marriage, keeping house, would hinder her ability to work; might curtail it completely. Though Carl seemed encouraging enough now, she feared he might have a change of heart, might insist that, once married, she not work at all. And since she thought Carl such a decent man, she believed that he deserved a woman who saw him as her primary source of passion; he should not have to play second fiddle to her vocation.
Nevada tried to convince her otherwise, “You a loon, Sylvia, if you do not know what you got in Carl. You best hold on to him, he will honor you with all his heart, and allow you your nursing duties besides.”
Sylvia wanted to believe as true what Nevada purported. So she’d tried to deny Carl without causing him to go away completely. When he’d first asked for her hand, she’d replied, “Let us delay such plans until I have completed my schooling.” When she had graduated, he asked again and she said, “I should rather secure employment first.” He was respectful, patient, and then brokenhearted when she’d begun spending time with John. And now, on this day that she was to report to duty at the Lazaretto, she sensed that he would likely propose again.
She enjoyed the grand send-off at the dock, even though Vergie cried inconsolably and Nevada fought tears, too, as she joked with Sylvia to keep an eye out should a position open up that she could fill since she could use a season’s respite from her grandmother’s craziness. Sylvia’s mother and father hugged her tightly. And then Carl, dear Carl, helped her onto the boat, his boat, as he was doing the honors of escorting her there.
The boat pushed off, and Sylvia waved her handkerchief up and down until those she was leaving appeared the size of stick figures. She settled in next to where Carl steered the boat. The sky hung low and gray; the river slurped excitedly. Carl looked straight ahead toward the seam the sky and river made, and just as she’d sensed that he would, Carl asked Sylvia again for her hand one more time, told her this would be his final ask.
Sylvia cleared her throat, and he held up his hand to stop her. “Listen to me, sweet cakes,” he said. “If it is not the response I been praying on, then please say nothing. At least I can go through the rest of my life with the knowing that although you never said yes, you also never said no. But answer me this: Is it another mister caught your eye?”
“No, no, no, I promise you it is not. It is, is, how shall I say it?”
“By just saying it.”
“It is my work, Carl. I am devoted to it, and you deserve a wife who is devoted to you in kind.”
“Your work? Not some dandy—”
“My work,” Sylvia said as she looked away and watched the river snapping by.
“Your work?” Carl asked again. “How that can be? Curing a fever? Nursing a cough? I am not intend to belittle your work, but, uh your work, Sylvia? Do your work have a beating heart and big old shoulders for you to rest your head on. Do it?”
“No, Carl,” she said and stammered for words to explain. Tried to make him understand that her work had her in situations where she stared down death, and death had won, and she had to respect its power. That through her work she had ushered in new life, and that that had never lost its thrill. But that it was larger even than life and death. “I am able to witness, more than witness, Carl; I am able to participate in the fullness of what it means to be a human being, the shadings and the textures and the variations of life. I am meeting life often at the place where body and soul converge. People at the precipice, a life’s course altered. I get lost in the experience of it.”
Carl’s brow was wrinkled, his eyes pointed, as if he were trying with his whole being to grasp exactly what she was saying.
“It is not against you, Carl, I promise you that,” Sylvia said. “You are about as perfect a man as I could wish for, but—” She stared at the river as she spoke, hypnotized by the rhythmic splashes; the push-pull of the undercurrent, the aroma of cedar and cod. “I delivered a baby once, it was my first,” she said, as the river egged her on and she was talking now as much to the river as she was to Carl. She described how the pretty, brown-skinned, petite woman was already in the early stages of labor when she’d arrived at the midwife’s that day. “She was much too far along for the services that that white lawyer who had escorted her there had requested.”
Carl was listening intently, and he sighed and shook his head. “One of those situations,” he said.
“One of those,” Sylvia repeated, as she went on to detail how excited she became when Dr. Miss directed her to sit on the stool at the foot of the cot, which meant that for the first time she would take the lead in delivering a baby, and how she’d wanted to do a holy dance as the baby turned its shoulders to come in
to this life. “Ah,” she said as she stopped to catch her breath, the telling of it had made her breathless.
“I could not see. There was just a scant light from a solitary candle. The light flickered and died completely, probably from my excited yelps that stirred the air in the room. The room went black, and in the portion of a second that it took for my eyes to adjust, the midwife had already covered the baby.”
“Well, there goes a crime: you deliver your first and you do not get to hold it.”
“Oh, but I did get to hold it. I held it to my chest. I slipped my hands under the blanket and cradled the new skin on its back, its first breaths pushed out against the crook of my neck. They were the sweetest breaths, and then the midwife whisked the baby from my hands and instructed me to tend to the mother; she was bleeding quite a bit, and afterward I met with the midwife and the lawyer and they were discussing the outcome, and he was shaken. He did not expect the result of things to be a live birth.” She went on to describe Tom Benin’s manner, his meticulous attire, his gold watch that he kept pulling out. Told Carl how at first Tom Benin seemed perfectly willing to allow the midwife to decide on the baby’s disposition. But then, just as quickly, he reversed himself. “He told us to tell the mother that her baby girl had succumbed.”
“Son of a white Satan,” Carl said, anger jumping in his voice.
“He instructed the midwife to deliver the baby immediately to his carriage. And I will be always haunted by the tiny pink hand reaching for its mother as she cried out for her baby. The poor baby wanted to answer its mother’s cry, wanted to lie against its mother’s breast, and I felt as if it was fighting with that reach, fighting to get to its mother, and I was powerless to help the baby, to help the mother. But I was present in that moment, Carl. I was there, and I did what I did, and if faced with that situation today, perhaps I would handle it differently. But every fiber of my being was engaged. I just always want to be available, to be present in that way. Always.”
“Whew,” Carl said, when she had finished. “I suppose I should take solace that just as I can’t compete with that, can’t no other man, either. That was stage drama all right, whew. But tell me this, what happened to the mother? Did you stay in touch with her? Or try to?”
“I did not, I would not. In fact, it has been the opposite. What purpose would it serve beyond opening wounds. Not as if I would be at liberty to tell her what truly happened. Besides, it would have been unprofessional to befriend the women who came to the midwife for professional services. And then there is the guilt. My guilt. But I do know that the mother of the baby was quite taken by President Lincoln,” she said, her voice lighter now.
“Name me a Negro who was not, though I must say my brother was not obliged to speak favorably of him after he was paid a lot less than the white soldiers doing the same diligence fighting for the Union. And my brother had to pay from his own purse the price to purchase his own uniform. He faulted Lincoln for not fixing up that situation straightaway as he could have done as the great commander and chief.”
“My father has said a similar thing. I suppose Mr. Lincoln was filled with contraries, as are we all. But this woman seemed almost, dare I say, to posit that she and the president shared a lineage.”
“Really? She look to have white in her?”
“Not to my eye, but if I did not know better, I would think part of her believed that Mr. Lincoln was her father. And, sadly, she gave birth to the baby the same night the president was killed.”
“For true? Two heartbreaks in one night. That hardly seems fair.”
Sylvia went into her satchel and pulled out a notebook and from it slipped a single sheet of parchment. “She gave me this,” she said, as she leaned in and showed him the sketching of Abraham Lincoln.
“Whoa,” Carl said, “who sketched that?”
“She did. Is it not quite good?”
“I’ll say. Looks like a true artist drew it.”
Sylvia laughed. “To imagine him winking as she has rendered him here, such a playful expression on his face. She served him tea once, or so she said.”
“Well, was it imaginary tea?”
“Carl, do not be naughty!” Sylvia laughed.
“I mean, she thinks Lincoln is her daddy, who she say her momma is? Queen of Sheba?”
They both laughed then. It was hearty laughter—laughter Sylvia needed that came from a deeper place. The river gurgled in time to her laughter, seagulls made merry in the sky. She laughed so hard until she cried. When she had recovered herself, Carl asked what of the baby girl?
“What of the baby?” Sylvia said, feeling her voice tighten.
“Well, what happened to her?”
“I do not know.”
“So you don’t know where the lawyer took her? Was she raised white or colored?”
“Carl, I do not know,” Sylvia said in a determined voice. She was quiet then. Most everything else had quieted, too, except for a single gull that called across the sky, its pitch going from squeals to low moans; the water’s hard splashes against the side of the boat; and the heavy thud that was the sound of Sylvia’s not-knowing dropping in the boat between them.
10
LINC AND BRAM missed Ann as much as Meda did, though in a different way. Ann had always made sure that their mats were closest to the hearth in the winter, that their stew came from the top of the pot, that their chores rarely included climbing down into the chimney to sweep it clean. She’d get in between them and the jealousy of the other boys, who’d resented Linc and Bram for their favored status, for their being able to leave the orphanage every weekend and return with the contented expressions of having eaten well, having slept in a soft bed. Of late their spats with their housemates were turning violent; when one or another boy teased them about their “nigger wench maid,” Linc and Bram joined forces, and though it was just the two of them against sometimes five or six, they won as many fights as they lost. Buddy and his gambling cohorts had taught Linc the art of boxing, which Linc in turn passed on to Bram. Though they were not quite eleven, the strength of Linc’s swing, the power in his punch, was that of a much older boy.
For the next two years, they suffered through replacement after replacement of house matrons. Each one worse than the last. The new matrons either exercised no authority and the boys ran wild, or they ruled with iron-clad dictates that let in no light. None were like Ann, who’d balanced regulations with flexibility, agitation with affection, a rear-end whacking with a kind word and a pat on the head. But bad as Ann’s replacements were, they all allowed Meda access as she continued to come in on Fridays and spend the day and help out however she could until evening came and she left with Linc and Bram in tow to spend the weekend in the Benin household.
But then a new head arrived. This one male, Robinson, who had the whitest skin, the silkiest hair, the smoothest hands. He was meticulous about his living quarters, which he expanded, so that more boys than usual were crammed on the second floor. He separated Linc and Bram who, from the time they shared the parlor as infants, had always been roommates. Now Bram’s cot was in a room on the third floor, Linc’s on the second. He also rearranged the chores Linc and Bram had always done together. Linc was now responsible for cleaning the latrines, and Bram for keeping Robinson’s quarters dust free. He reversed the long-standing policy of not indenturing boys of a certain age, as was common at larger establishments such as the Orphan Society of Philadelphia. Dictated that at thirteen, the boys would be indentured. Bram and Linc had just turned thirteen. He collected any jewelry in the boys’ possession because he said that it was unfair that some had, and some had not. For Linc and Bram that meant relinquishing the silver rings Meda had given to them the Christmas past. The rings had their first initials engraved inside, and it pained them to hand the rings over. And as if all of that had not hurt enough, they also lost their greatest privilege—time with Meda. Robinson stopped Meda’s long-standing practice of coming in on Fridays; he issued a new directive that bann
ed overnight stays away from the house, apart from exceptional circumstances that would nevertheless require his preapproval. That one had been the death knell.
On her last visit with them, Meda promised that she would speak to Benin to see what he could do to ease the situation; but Benin was overseas, traveling to Europe and then to Asia, so it would be at least several months before he would return, but she asked the boys to please be patient, to stay safe and out of trouble until Benin returned.
She had decided then that she would use Robinson’s threat of indenture against him by persuading Benin to use his influence to have the boys farmed out to the Benin mansion. The barn needed restoring, the parlor could use new floors; and Bram was so adept at the piano now that Mrs. Benin could certainly keep him busy performing at one or another of the events she organized and participated in. Meda had it all figured out. She just needed to convince Tom Benin. Ann had always maintained that Tom Benin owed her; that Meda should call in that debt whenever she needed to. Meda had, and it had gotten her a life with the boys, so far. She didn’t know how much of that debt was left to dangle. Didn’t know if she’d have to make him owe again. Decided that if she had to, she would. Whatever it took to persuade him, she was willing to do. She would invite him into her room if she must. She would wear a half-smile; let her eyes fall to half-closed; she would put on the moan-filled sounds of a cat in heat; she wouldn’t judge the rightness or wrongness of it; she had pushed past shame. For the boys, she would do what she had to do. But then they ran away before she could.
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