Trouble the Water_A Novel

by Jacqueline Friedland

  “Oh no, Grace Cunningham,” Cora Rae scathed. “Don’t you go turning your back on me. I hold your whole future in the palm of my hand. I can snatch Harrison’s interest off you so fast you wouldn’t know what hit you. I think it’s best you start showing me some respect.” Cora Rae stopped and looked at Gracie for a moment before adding, “You know, you’re actually not a useless person, even though you act all meek, such a victim. I know you’ve got grit in there.” Cora Rae twirled an amber lock gracefully around her finger. Sighing, she concluded, “If you could manage to be helpful with this, this one thing, we might actually start to be friends again, you and I.” Cora Rae raised her eyebrows at Gracie before flouncing back into the house. As she was about to disappear from view, she called back over her shoulder, suddenly sounding cheery, “Just make it happen, and we can be finished with this ugliness, tout de suite.”

  Gracie wanted to scream. Finished with this ugliness? Cora Rae would never be finished bringing ugliness into people’s lives. Wasn’t Gracie the good one, the ethical, well-behaved, and loving daughter? But somehow Cora Rae, shrewd, crafty, Cora Rae, was the apple of her parents’ eye.

  It made her fingers itch the way Cora Rae always got exactly what she wanted. And now she was forcing Gracie to betray a friend. For what, really? To ensnare a man who cared nothing for her. Gracie wondered if she should simply inform Cora Rae that she would not participate in the scheme. That Cora Rae could seduce Harrison Blount however she chose, and it wouldn’t matter to Gracie. But, oh it would matter. She felt ill every time she imagined Harrison mooning over Cora Rae. She couldn’t let that happen. So instead she would continue to act as her sister’s agent. She would just have to do her best to prevent Abby from getting hurt in the process.

  AT THE SOUND OF RAISED VOICES ON THE VERANDAH above them, Clover immediately ceased her whispering and looked at Thelma, the family cook, in alarm.

  “Ain’t nothing,” Thelma assured Clover in a whisper. “Just them girls fighting again. We’ll wait them out.”

  Clover nodded at Thelma, feeling a tug at her heart. Clover had been relying on Thelma for as long as she could remember, following her instruction, attaching to her. But here she was now, figuring out how to leave the woman behind. They were meeting for the second time this month, plotting behind the lattice underneath the back verandah, like their own little army, a brigade of the discontented.

  The oldest in the group was Abel, who’d been working the house alongside Clover since she was a pickaninny. He was always running his toothless mouth about rushing north, but never acting. Clover figured he was too old or just too scared, and she didn’t blame him either. Not after the way slave folk were always hearing about recaptured runaways, the ones who got covered in tar or beaten so badly they never woke up. Even Massa Cunningham, who didn’t do beatings, made clear that an attempted escape would be punished in the harshest ways possible. Abel was living by proxy through her, Clover figured, trying to help her achieve something he had concluded would never be possible for himself.

  And then there was Dicky, only sixteen and raised up on the Cunninghams’ plantation since birth. He planned to escort her partway as her guardian, he said. He kept promising he’d get back to the Cunninghams’ before anyone noticed him missing. Now Dicky wasn’t the father of that baby growing in Clover’s belly, and Clover hadn’t told anyone who was, but everybody knew just the same. None of the slave men ever came calling on Clover because she belonged to the massa specially, since before she was old enough to understand. That was why she needed to get away so desperately. Otherwise her child would be sold off, right away, before the missus might discern the resemblance of the babe to her husband.

  Thelma kept telling her it was a rattlebrained idea, trying to get North, that most runaways never made it. They just got brought home, Thelma said, where they got beaten, where they got dead. But Clover said she and Dicky were going, whether Thelma liked it or not. So here they were, organizing behind the balustrade. They knew these meetings must be sharp and infrequent. Otherwise someone would begin to suspect. Other slaves were the worst risk of all. All so eager to gain favor with the massa or missus, they’d squeal on one another just as soon as there was reason to raise an eyebrow. Some slave folk took a wicked pleasure from watching a runaway writhe and scream at the whipping post. She begged the Lord not to let that happen to her, nor to that babe who was kicking so much in her belly. She hadn’t any idea where her own mother was now, but she was going to find a place to be with her baby, where they would not be separated.

  Clover aimed to leave as soon as possible. She and Dicky planned to steal down to Charleston Harbor, where Clover would burrow aboard a northbound boat. They were trying to collect the money for her journey, without any sense of how much she needed. They figured maybe the time would come when she had to pay for part of her passage, rather than sneaking aboard, skulking below decks and such. Or she likely might need to buy some victuals along the channels. Abel suggested that she secrete extra notes, too, to bribe any troublemakers. The money was hard to come by, but Clover and Thelma had been using the little spare time they found, staying up nights making baskets to bring to town when Thelma was out on pass doing the marketing for the big house. She sold what she could, but they still counted only a few coins between them. They would keep at it, trying to gather enough money to carry Clover all the way to Canada.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, Clover knew, foolhardy even, but better than staying put, losing her baby, and ending up with the massa right back on top of her. Thelma was still talking about finding some Underground in South Carolina to help, telling Clover to wait a little longer. But that babe inside her wasn’t going to wait forever, and so she would have to get moving soon.

  Clover had long ago heard tell about a code. There was a system local slave folk used to help runaways get on along to where they were going. Signals, like if there was a yellow quilt on the clothesline, it meant “go this way,” or if there was a gourd near the door, it meant “not now; come back later.” Something like that. When Clover started planning her escape, Thelma had begun asking around quietly, carefully, about the code and any people who could help. As it was, she knew that word of her inquiries would spread among certain black folk, like the oozing of too-old jam. What Thelma found was that most people knew nothing. And everybody was too afraid to talk anyway, averting their dark eyes and shushing her. Until she thought to ask Delilah, who was courting with that freeman, Demmet. He was a comely fellow with a ready smile, quiet, but like he was always thinking on something. Delilah said Demett might know something of the Underground. It would be difficult finding a person to dip a hand in with them, she warned Thelma. Still, she pledged that her man would try for Clover, and they would send word soon.

  At the sudden quiet on the above verandah, Dicky made as if to start speaking, but Clover held up her hand. She was certain she had heard only one pair of slippered feet leave the porch. By the sound of it, that had been Miss Cora, losing her patience with Miss Gracie again, fed up with her younger sister always being miserable. Clover couldn’t fathom why Thelma favored Miss Gracie so, not when it was the oldest sister who defended the slaves to her mama, who passed old dresses to Clover now and again for fabric.

  As they waited for the second Miss Cunningham to take her leave, Clover looked from Thelma to Abel and Dicky. Lordy, Lordy. They were a motley bunch of black folk. Unless they got themselves joined to the right people, well, she could hardly bear to finish the thought. After a few more moments, they heard a groan full of aggravation from above, and then a second set of troubled feet scampering off.

  “Now then,” Thelma whispered as she took up the purpose of the meeting again, “before y’all go running off to get snared and killed, I’m telling you, you best wait a few more weeks. Three weeks at the most. My girl Delilah gone come through for us on this. Meantime, you just stay put and keep to planning and working so y’all are ready when the Underground come calling. Dicky, you figure y
et which path you plan on taking down to the river?”

  “Well, I was gone scout it out some when I get my next pass, but then I thought it was reckless. If we be doing practice runs, it only be more opportunity for the massa to discover us. And then maybe this Underground, they be telling Clover to do it different anyway. . . .” Dicky trailed off as he looked from Clover to Thelma for guidance.

  “You out of your mind, boy?” Thelma scolded. “You ain’t even gone make it as far as that property line if you don’t get yourself a better plan. Just because white folks around here is mean, it don’t mean they stupid. You can’t go running off on hope alone, nothing but ragweed and wind. Why you think more folks don’t make it North? They all think they can just start moving their feet and God gone take them the rest the way. Well let me tell you, child, it’s man that brought us into bondage, and only man gone get anyone out.”

  “Thelma, watch your voice now,” Abel warned as she grew louder in her passion. Abel’s words drew Thelma up short, and she paused in her tirade. She looked about at her compatriots, swatted at a spider’s web that hung on the underside of the verandah, not far from her head, and squinted her eyes like she was trying to think where to begin again. Clover felt a stinging behind her own eyes, so she inhaled deeply through her nose, the way Thelma always told her. Never show him you’re crying, Thelma would tell her about the massa. Just breathe in hard through your nose. But she couldn’t stop herself today, first with the sniffling and then quietly rocking in grief, in dread, silently weeping.

  “Oh no, honey. What’s this?” Thelma asked, still pulling the stubborn web from her hand.

  “I’m just so scared. What if we get snatched? What’ll they do to my baby?” Clover raised her dark eyes to Thelma and shuddered. “How do you want me to wait three more weeks when this babe is near out my belly already? If I don’t go soon, I ain’t never gone make it.”

  “Tsk, tsk.” Thelma put her thick arm around Clover’s shoulders, squeezing too tightly, as if to smother her own foreboding.

  “Come, child. You got to pull yourself together. There ain’t no crying on the path to freedom, now. We’re gone find them Underground people, and they gone get you out of here. You and the babe both. Just have patience. Three weeks ain’t too much more. When you spent your whole life in bondage, why three weeks ain’t nothing but a day of picking cotton when it rain. You just wait, and we gone get the help you need.” Thelma used her starched apron to wipe Clover’s tears.

  “We best be getting back afore we be missed.” Thelma directed. “Not like the other day when Miss Gracie come right into the kitchen and none of us is there.” Thelma shook her head. “We’ll find a way to meet again in a few days’ time. In the meanwhile, Dicky, I expect you to scout out your route. It ain’t never gone work otherwise. And I’ll have to report you to the Missus just to save your fool hide.”

  “Yes’m,” Dicky nodded, not meeting Thelma’s eyes.

  Dicky and the others knew that Thelma would never betray them to the Missus, but they also knew better than to say so. “Now remember,” Thelma repeated in a low whisper as she looked into the eyes of each member of the group, “not a word to anyone. No matter how much they seem to be your friend.”

  They each exited the hiding place individually, hastily scurrying back to their daily tasks—Abel to the shed where he had been repairing a carriage, Dicky around back to the horses, Thelma returned to the kitchen, where she had been glazing a ham. Clover stopped into the smokehouse, hoping to invent a feasible reason why she had been gone from the house. She stepped back out from the smokehouse with a side of beef in her hand and raised her eyes skyward. “Please, Lord,” she whispered, “let us find the Underground.”

  15

  CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA

  1846

  Douglas climbed the grand staircase two risers at a time, charging upward as though he was being pushed by an invisible force. He had left his harborside offices after less than half a day’s work, something he seemed to be doing with surprising frequency these days. Ever since deciding a few days earlier that he would devote himself to Abby’s healing, mitigating whatever damage had been done to her in Lancashire, he’d felt an astounding change begin to bleed into him, altering the colors of his moods. Abby’s presence in his home was now affecting him like fresh paint spilled, seeping boldly across a tired canvas. He turned left down the wide corridor and knocked tentatively on Abby’s bedroom door.

  “Come in!” she called brightly from within. This was a surprise, as she generally needed some handling before warming up. Even then, it seemed any kindness he elicited from her was nearly involuntary.

  As Douglas nudged the door open, he saw Abby sitting cross-legged in the center of the bed. She was covered by a modest dressing gown and had her hair plaited into a long rope at the base of her neck. It was not the first time she had received him in bedclothes. Following her accident, standard rules of propriety seemed to matter even less than usual in this household. At the sight of her braid, he noticed again the luster of her hair, something that surely hadn’t been present when she first arrived in Charleston.

  Abby looked up and grinned back at Douglas so broadly that he almost gasped in surprise at the marked change in her behavior. She held up a piece of paper like a hard-won prize, punching it into the air.

  “I’ve had a letter from my da!”

  Ah. So it was her da, not he, who was the cause of her elation. He was startled to feel bereft at the realization. He wondered whether this was the first letter she had received since her arrival. He hadn’t noticed any posts coming or going, but then, he’d not thought to look.

  “Splendid.” He tried to answer with equal cheer, but he couldn’t stop himself before asking, “Is it the first you’ve heard from him?”

  “Oh,” Abby’s smile faltered as she refolded the paper in her hand. “I suppose you don’t know how it is for them.” She spoke kindly, gently almost, perhaps softened by thoughts of her family. “Even sheets of paper are so dear. And they are strained always, my parents.” She then added more quietly, “I haven’t written myself, which I suppose has been unfair of me.”

  Douglas didn’t answer but walked into the room and seated himself in the chair near her bed. The room smelled of flowers and fresh tea. As he contemplated his best response, Abby seemed anxious to fill the silence.

  “He’s gotten a promotion at the mill. A spinner. That’s near the highest job you can want at a mill, apart from foreman. He’ll be doing twisting, or warping I suppose; he didn’t say.” She looked down at the folded letter and made a quiet sound, somewhere between a chirp and a sigh. “Da thought he’d be a piecer forever. Picking up yarn and doing a child’s job. Carrying cans of yarn slivers from the carder to the drawing frame, naught much else. But it’s really happening for him. Maybe there will finally be some money to save, to put toward getting out, back to Liverpool.”

  She glanced back up at him and suddenly flushed red in her cheeks.

  “I’m sorry,” she blurted, as she began hastily stuffing the letter back into its torn envelope, her fingers suddenly clumsy. “I’m, well . . .” she struggled to recover from her lapse in restraint.

  Douglas hadn’t realized before this conversation quite how far Samuel had fallen, though he couldn’t say he was astonished. To have sent off his daughter, surely circumstances had been dire. Even so, he was pleased that Abby finally saw fit to tell him anything at all about herself, or her family. Prior to this moment, she’d not confessed so much as a favorite food, keeping everything always contained, as though sharing information about herself would somehow weaken her. Douglas could not help her overcome the damage of her past if she wouldn’t let him get to know her. He would need to encourage her, show her that she had been right to offer him a glimmer of her memories.

  “You know, when I was a young boy, your father looked after me almost every afternoon. His father and mine were always so busy teaching and doing their research. Perhaps your
father told you, my father was a professor at Oxford alongside your grandfather.” He watched Abby, trying to gauge her response, determine if this was an acceptable direction for their conversation. They’d never spoken of their families before. She held tightly to the letter in her hands, a flush still upon her cheeks as she regarded him. Douglas could only assume she was waiting for him to say more.

  “Your granddad took my father under his wing and was, I’m most certain, the driving force behind my father’s many professional successes. My father was quite young, compared to your granddad, and he had some rather unpopular views, especially for a man at Oxford.”

  Abby ran her hand absentmindedly over the edge of the envelope in her lap, watching Douglas with an ambiguous look in her eyes.

  “Your granddad was a brilliant physician. I always thought that at least one of his sons would follow in his footsteps.” Douglas shrugged. “It was a curiosity that both sons thought to pursue livelihoods in business rather than medicine.”

  “You think my da made a bad choice?” Abby’s chin rose. “All this mess with the weaving mills and the impossible wages could have been avoided if he’d gone on to Oxford instead of chasing his art?”

  “No, no, that’s not what I’m saying at all,” Douglas hedged. “It’s just that often a son will follow in his father’s footsteps. Your father is more skilled with woodworking than any man I’ve met. How could he have chosen anything other than opening a furniture shop? And besides, it’s not as though I became a doctor either, to my father’s great chagrin, I might add.”