I got all worked up because I figured it was John Stewart, the little boy who’d been my papa’s friend in Portugal. By now he’d be all grown up. He had finally come to claim my father and set him free!
But later that day, when I described the man to Papa, he said that it couldn’t have been him. Even so, he closed his eyes and took a big breath. Then his belly began to drum.
We never found out who the mulatto was, by the way. All Master Edward would tell us was the he was “some blasted troublemaker” from Georgia.
Papa gave me a letter in a sealed envelope the next morning. It was for John Stewart. He said he’d written most of it years before and had been waiting for a sign to give it to me. That sign, he told me, was the mulatto man coming to River Bend for him. I was to put the letter in a jar and bury it out in Porter’s Woods.
I said, “But, Papa, you’ll be able to give it to him yourself if he ever comes.”
“No, Morri, in case I am away from the plantation, you must have the letter in your possession. We mustn’t take a chance on his not understanding you are my daughter.”
*
On the day my father disappeared, Mistress Anne had come up to River Bend for one of her monthly visits. I remember that because when Papa didn’t return to the kitchen to help Lily with supper, she came to me in the parlor where I was polishing the silver. On her orders I looked for him everywhere in the house and in all the gardens too. I ran out to the fields, but no one had seen him. To win him time for escaping, if that’s what he’d done, I then sat myself down on a log by Christmas Creek and watched the clumping commotion of the frogs. I hope you can run after all, Papa, I kept thinking. ’Cause them patrols are going to be hungry on your track.
When I finally told Mistress Anne that Papa was nowhere in sight, she had Mr. Johnson get the dogs ready. She sent Crow with Wiggie the coachman to all the nearby towns to alert folks that River Bend had a runaway.
I counted those first hours as if a pistol were pointed toward my heart. I sat up on the piazza steps fending off the mosquitoes, praying hard for Mantis to help him. My hands were fidgeting something terrible, so I polished every infernal crevice in that scalloped punch bowl we only used on Christmas Eve. When the dawn rose in orange and red, no silver had ever shone like that before, and I was thinking maybe we had a chance.
Crow, who’d been up all night spreading the news that Papa had run away, told me there’d been no sign of him anywhere. With a dark look, he took my hand and apologized, because he had to take the carriage right away to Charleston to put an announcement in the newspaper.
The days passed with me thinking of nothing else. After a week of sunups and sundowns, I still didn’t let myself think he’d made it, in case they brought him back half-dead and roped to a horse.
A month went by, then six weeks, then seven. Each day I thought it less likely they’d catch him. I wondered what I’d do if they brought him back to whip him to death. That’s when I stole a knife from the kitchen and buried it below the piazza. They could lynch me if they wanted, but I wasn’t going to hear Papa howl without making a ghost out of Master Edward.
But I never had to use that knife, because Papa never came back. Maybe he drowned, or was bit by a cottonmouth. Maybe he died all alone.
I let myself dream sometimes that he escaped from nigger fate and made it all the way up north to the city where snow was always falling.
Crow, Lily, and the others said he probably made himself invisible with some potions he’d fixed up. They pictured him walking like a British lord to Charleston, stepping right onto a boat bound for Europe, and sailing home to the Portuguese family he’d left behind. But I knew that if my papa meant to escape, he’d have taken me with him. Though it was possible he’d decided to get out first and then come back for me.
*
Just short of three months after he was gone, that was precisely the conclusion that Master Edward came to. So one night he had some white men I’d never seen before rush into my room and bind me with ropes. They gagged me too. Then they carried me to a carriage. I thought he was going to send me for a little sugar in Charleston. They say that because the Workhouse used to be a sugar factory and they got special mechanical machines there for bruising and breaking a person. But that wasn’t what he had in mind at all. No, he had something worse hiding behind his smile.
XXXVI
A tall and slender woman was staring at me, pale surprise turning to gaunt, hollow-cheeked fear. Her eyelids were puffy and red, and her lips were dry and cracked. Stiff of posture, she wore a high-collared lilac dress with bell sleeves tightly fastened at her wrists. A white bonnet hid her hair, and a beige lace fichu was draped over her shoulders, which were thin and hunched.
But her eyes were the same jade color they’d always been.
“Good morning,” I said, taking off my hat and smiling.
“Yes … yes, good morning.” Her voice was brittle. “May I be of some … of some help?”
“Violeta, it’s me.”
“Do I know you, sir? How … how is it that you know my name?”
Before I could reply, she took a step back and brought her hands to her mouth. Smiling again to soften the shock, I said, “Yes, it’s me — it’s John. All the way from Portugal.” I found myself making Daniel’s tortoise face, which he had always made when he was feeling awkward. I had not imitated this expression in fifteen years. “Sou eu — it’s me,” I repeated in Portuguese. I expected her to rush into my arms. I’d lift her up and dance her around her house. We would crash into furniture and fall together into the depths of our gratitude.
I advanced to the top step so I might reach out to her.
She confounded my plans by receding into the shadows inside her doorway. “John, I never expected … It has … It has been a lifetime.” She spoke in English. “John, you are so … so very different.”
I was so startled by her apprehension that I felt a nervous tingling all over my body. I might have been just ten years old. “It’s just me — just me,” I pleaded in a rush, as though she hadn’t realized who I was. “Didn’t you get my letter?”
“A letter, no, I’m sure I have not.”
“I sent it … why, it must be six weeks ago now. It must still be at sea.”
I began to suspect just then that I’d misinterpreted the words of her letter. What a fool I’d been! She had written of her desire for a tile panel in her home simply to be polite.
I turned to wipe the tears betraying me, coughing to conceal my emotion. “It is plain that I have come at a bad time. I shall return this evening, and then … and then we shall talk.” So cool was her continued stare and so defensive her pose that I added, “Yes … yes, that’s … that’s what I’ll do. It’s been lovely to see you, Violeta. I shall … I …”
Unable to say a final good-bye, I put on my hat and gripped my luggage. I was careful not to retreat too quickly down her stairs, since that might have revealed the depth of my despair, and I wished to avoid making her feel badly about her own behavior.
I decided to find a room at a nearby inn and head off to Alexandria as soon as possible. I counted my steps, not caring which direction I went as long as I might get away from her. By the count of twenty, sure that I’d never see her again, I shuddered.
I heard my name called. Violeta was waving at me from her stoop. “Please, John, come back! John, do not move. Wait there….”
She disappeared inside her house. A few doors down, a woman held a small Persian rug out her window and shook it. Leaves fluttered to the ground and I picked one up, staring at its brittle veins.
Violeta returned holding a square of old, yellowing paper and handed it to me. It was one of my portraits of Fanny — sprawled on her belly, her paws wrapped around a bone, her head tilted so she might gnaw at it with greater ferocity.
If only I could have held Fanny in my arms once more … How strange the heart is — hope that Violeta would not reject me again was kindled by our shared fondness f
or the dog and by her having kept my simple drawing, without a single fold, over twenty years of separation.
“You remember her?” I asked.
Her eyes turned glassy. “Oh, John, she lived a long and contented life, I hope.”
I spoke then of her disappearance during the French occupation. My voice was clipped by my desire to keep emotion at bay, and I spoke only of facts and dates. She bit her bottom lip and struggled against tears. Handing her back the sketch, our eyes met.
There are memories that are love itself: the touch of my mother’s hands; the scent of Papa’s pipe; Midnight’s grin. And Violeta’s eyes. I realized that she was both a stranger to me and the greatest of friends.
I whispered her name twice, and it seemed to me the most secret of incantations. I wanted to speak of our dead friend, but the tower of memories in me loomed too high right now to try to climb.
She looked down at her feet, and in her distraught expression I recognized the lass who’d been trapped in a room with neither windows nor doors. Yet I was an adult now and could break down walls too strong for the child I’d been. I held out my hand to her, but she would neither take it, nor gaze up at me.
“I shall never withdraw my hand,” I declared. “I shall stand here waiting forever for you to take it if I have to.”
I am not sure what made me say the peculiar words that followed. I can only think it was all the time I had passed in the company of Benjamin and Midnight — and my fear for the Bushman in his state of bondage. “Violeta, you may think the sun and moon have set forever upon the years we shared.” I gazed out at the horizon and pointed east, toward Jerusalem. “But there they both are, sun and moon, at the very same time, over the Mount of Olives. It is impossible, yet it is true. We are both afraid to step inside the waters of the river Jordan and to touch their reflections. But what you do not know is that we are already inside. Though we are older, we have never left. To know that for sure, all you need to do is take my hand — to take it now.”
She would say nothing. Her eyes closed as though never to open again.
“You may want me to repeat the past, but I’ll not do it. I now have some small power to do as I please. And neither I, nor the Daniel that lives inside me, shall turn away from you now. If we are to part, then you must return to your home and lock your door. And even then you may expect me to keep knocking — all night long if need be. I am a man now, and I have suffered, and I can outwait even a woman who once had no choices in life.”
When she snatched my hand, she gripped it as though she’d been in danger of falling. So filled with love and admiration was the look she gave me that I whispered, “May we begin again? May we try to make up for what was unfairly taken from us both — and from Daniel?”
Tears flooded her eyes. And mine. I took her in my arms and lifted her off the ground, turning her round and round.
“John, oh, my God, John …”
“I have known much death,” I told her gently. “We’ve both been broken. But you have found me. And I have found you.”
She clutched me tightly, shaking so violently that I feared for her. “I am holding you,” I told her, “and in my arms you may finally rest.”
She laid her head on my shoulder. We breathed together till our borders were all but erased.
“Remember the day we met — the Miracle of the Birds?” I asked.
“You were beautiful,” she whispered.
“You saved my skin. If you had not spit at the birdseller he’d have yanked my head off!”
We laughed, giddy with excitement. “Just now, at my door, I was horribly rude,” Violeta said. “I’m sorry.”
I switched to Portuguese. “Estava meramente supreendida. You were just surprised. It was nothing. Everything is fine.”
“John, I hardly ever speak Portuguese. I may make errors.” She leaned down and reached for one of my bags. “Come on, let’s go back to my house.”
We had been through too much together to lie. “Aye, I’d like to stay with you, but only if you truly want me to. Violeta, I’m sure I shall be comfortable at any old inn nearby. I mean that. For the sake of all we have been through together, do not stand on ceremony with me. I confess I am far too weak from my journey and from all these emotions. I could not bear it.”
“Oh, John, you know there is no other place for you in this city.”
I’ve never lent much credence to the possibility of an afterlife, but I looked then into the sky and whispered to Father, who had chased her uncle from Porto, “She made it to New York, Papa. Your efforts have been rewarded.”
Violeta said how sorry she had been to learn of my father’s passing. I spoke of him as we walked to her door. I tried to put the events of his death into an understandable context for her but failed miserably.
“John,” she said, squeezing my arm, “you are all I ever dared to dream you’d become. And more. Your dear mother must be so proud of you. And your daughters … Tell me, are you great friends with them?”
“I think they are very fond of me — despite my oddness. But their mother, Francisca, died a year ago. It has been very hard on them. And now with me here …”
“I’d have liked to have met her. Did she love you greatly?”
“Yes, I think she did. We were the best of friends for many years.”
“That is a very good thing. And a relief to me, if you will forgive me. I always worried you’d never have your affection fully reciprocated.” She gazed down, shamed. “Because of what happened with Daniel and me.”
We studied each other. The heaviness in her eyes troubled me, and her lips were so very dry, as though she had withered through lack of love.
She covered my lips with her fingertips. “Please, John, say nothing yet.” She linked her arm in mine, and together we walked up her steps.
From her stoop, she gazed up and down her street, her head swiveling like a pendulum.
“You almost expect him too,” I observed.
She nodded and caressed my cheek. “I have lived alone for so long that I may not be a good hostess. I feel I ought to apologize beforehand.”
She would have liked to continue speaking, I was sure. But after looking down the block once more, she bit her lip instead, hard, almost drawing blood.
*
Violeta lived in a house nearly bare of furniture. I was given a room on the third floor overlooking the back garden, which was in a state of disarray. I had a bed and a washstand at my disposal, nothing more. Not even a chest or wardrobe. I suspected now that she had little money.
Violeta fetched me a pitcher of hot water so that I might wash my face. She inquired after my mother, and while she brought me towels and put new sheets on my bed, I told her about London.
“Would you consider slowing down a moment,” I begged her.
“John, we’ll talk later. You need time to rest. And I’m sure you must be famished. I’ll make some breakfast.”
“Do you still hate cooking?” I asked.
She shrugged. “A woman gets used to almost anything.”
She was still wearing her bonnet. When I asked if she’d take it off so I might see the glory of her hair, she wagged her finger at me. “That can wait till later too, young man.”
I would have liked to accompany her to the kitchen, but she wished to be alone. I had the impression all that first day that my presence had disoriented her so badly that she could simply not stand still for fear of toppling over.
Setting out my inkstand and paper on the floor, I sat on my haunches as Midnight had taught me and began a letter to my daughters, Mother, and Fiona, describing the more appalling and amusing aspects of the sea journey. Of Violeta, I said only that she was looking very well and that her house was comfortable.
As I wrote, I added tails, snouts, and paws to my letters, just as Midnight would have. I felt him staring over my shoulder and praising my penmanship as finally worthy of a Bushman.
When Violeta called me down, I found she had laid out her
oval sitting-room table with pretty blue and white porcelain — like Mother’s, with a windmill pattern.
“I shall never forget her many kindnesses to me,” she told me. She took my hand and brought it to her lips. “That is for your mother when you next see her.”
I gave her Mama’s message of love, then made quick work of a chicken pie that she had been kind enough to purchase for me at a nearby pastry shop.
We were seated at opposite ends of her table, by the windows to her garden. Her yellow curtains were closed tight. She asked questions about my sea voyage in a voice of studied calm, endeavoring to keep her own nervous nature in check.
Standing, she lifted away a corner of the curtain to gaze outside. When she turned back to me, her face was drawn and sad.
Believing I must have offended her with something I’d mentioned about my trip, I said, “Violeta, I shall stop droning on about nothings. Please forgive me. It’s just that I’m extremely agitated. I wish to know everything about you coming to America. I want to hear about your life.”
She fiddled with the lace of her fichu. “No, no,” she said with a frown, as though the very idea of talking about herself was distasteful. “I am certain it would only put you to sleep.”
“Ao contrário,” I countered. “I would love to hear the story of your travels.”
“John, why don’t we go for a walk,” she proposed in Portuguese.
“A walk? Now?”
“It sometimes helps me. Though you’d have every right to refuse me. You’re probably too tired.”
She used the formal tense of you in addressing me. It was upsetting and I was unable to read her intentions. “No, I’m fine,” I assured her, “and a hearty walk might be just the thing. Yes, let’s see a bit of the city!”
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