The Abduction of Smith and Smith

by Rashad Harrison

  Jupiter reached into his pocket and retrieved one of the posters. “Here, see for yourself.”

  He took it and squinted at it. “Can’t read, but that sure looks like her.”

  “Look, what’s your name?”

  “Morris.”

  “Morris, my name’s Jupiter. I am just trying to find my wife. It’s clear that Titus lied to me and sent me over here to cause trouble. You tell me where he stays and I’ll handle it myself.”

  Morris looked at the other men. Henry looked away, but said, “Go on and tell him.”

  “He stay over in Millbrae,” said Henry. “Just past Miller’s Dry Goods.”

  “Millbrae,” said Jupiter. “Thank you. Thank you kindly, and sorry about that jaw, Henry.”

  Morris handed over the poster. “Good luck to you—”

  Henry snatched the poster away. “I can read, and this here says something about a reward.”

  “Does it, now?” said Morris as the three of them encircled Jupiter.

  • • •

  On the road to Millbrae his knuckles bled, but he did not feel the pain. He saw Miller’s Dry Goods first, and then he spotted the boarding house that welcomed Negroes. A black man walked out and Jupiter approached him. “Do you know a man called Titus? Big fella. Dark.”

  The man almost answered Jupiter, but when he saw those bloody knuckles, he shook his head and walked away.

  “Just tell me if you know him!” Jupiter yelled.

  The man picked up his pace and never looked back.

  Jupiter looked in empty doorways and darkened windows, and watched the faces in the street. “Titus. Does anyone know Titus?” People gave him strange looks.

  “Hey, you lookin’ for Titus?” asked a voice from above. Jupiter looked up to the second floor of the boarding house. An old black man, thin with wisps of gray on his mostly bald head, peered out of the window.

  “Yes,” said Jupiter. “Is he in there?” He made a fist at his side.

  “No, I ain’t seen him around much lately. Think he got a girl in San Francisco or something. Damn fool left food in his room for weeks. Had rats all through the place. I never saw one rat as a slave. As a free man, I’ve seen more rats than free men.”

  “When did you last see him?” asked Jupiter.

  “I don’t know. Been a while— Now that I think about it, I used to see him with this little boy. A colored woman—well-to-do—weren’t ever no slave—she teach colored children out her house. Towns. No, Tinsley. Her place is right up the road.”

  • • •

  Jupiter found the Tinsley School for Colored Children. The streets were crowded; some fraternity for professional men of color had just let out. They hobnobbed and strolled leisurely. Jupiter plowed through them, but where was he headed? There were so many people. Something entered his field of vision, and Jupiter stopped. A boy, lifted by large hands, rose above the crowd, and was placed in a horse-drawn wagon. Once the boy was secure, Titus followed him inside. They were only a few yards ahead. The horse picked up its pace, and so did Jupiter, getting close enough to see the boy’s features. He looked all too familiar, even though Jupiter had never seen him before. Just looking at him Jupiter knew that his own blood flowed through the boy’s veins.

  He ran faster, pushing aside anyone who got in his way. He picked up speed, feeling weightless as he gained ground, but then the boy turned around and looked at him. Jupiter became aware of his pounding heart, his lungs struggled for air, his legs felt like hot lead weights. The boy continued to stare. As the distance between them grew, Jupiter felt raw and naked, weak and powerless. He stopped in the road, panting and watching until he could no longer see them.

  10

  “. . . and did Grayson say anything about when his leg of the railroad would be finished?” Miss Ellen rocked slowly in her chair.

  “He said sometime within the next six months.” Sonya leaned forward a bit. “He thinks that’s two months ahead of his rivals.” Miss Ellen did not seem pleased with that information. Sonya thought hard. “He also said something about the stock.”

  Miss Ellen stopped rocking. She brought her head into the light, revealing her wrinkles and the hints of red-brown in her mostly white hair. “What did he say, child? Think carefully.”

  Sonya tried to remember the details; she wanted to be specific. She wished she had Jupiter’s memory, or even Jacob’s, but all she could remember was how confused she was by Grayson’s jargon. She parroted the words linked to that feeling, unsure if they were right, unsure if they mattered. “He said that once everyone hears about the completion date, he’ll be able to sell his shares.”

  Miss Ellen’s eyes narrowed. “Child, are you sure?”

  Now Sonya was certain, even recalling what color shirt Grayson wore on the day.

  Miss Ellen looked down for a moment, then sucked her teeth and smiled. “That rascal’s spreading lies to get his stock price up so he can get out unscathed . . . and then buy the rival’s stock when it falls. That track of his probably won’t be finished until Jesus himself returns. Oh he’s a slippery one. He and Dalmore fooled me once—but never again. Good child. Good . . .”

  Proud that she had done the old woman some good, Sonya smiled.

  • • •

  Of the letters she sent him, all but one remained unopened. There were six of them, one for each month she was gone. She read the letter, recalling the frame of mind she was in when she put pen to paper, sending them off to her little boy, pleading with him as if he were the governor and she the convict begging for a pardon.

  Please do not be angry with your mother. I know being separated is hard. It is ever so hard for me as well. But know that I am doing this for the both of us, so that we can have a chance at a better life . . .

  She folded the letter and placed it back amongst his things. She wanted to, but it was hard to feel guilty. Mr. Grayson had offered a generous sum to be the traveling maid for Mrs. Grayson. He was a businessman who traveled often to Chicago and New York.

  The things she had seen. She could not help but to smile. Each city—large, mysterious, sometimes indifferent or unwelcoming, but, more often than not, enticing. They hinted at just how big the world is, how little she had seen of it, and how much she wanted to share it with her son.

  She got the job through Miss Ellen, the richest colored woman she had ever met—in fact the only rich colored woman she had ever heard of. No one was certain how she made her fortune, but that was less important than how she kept it. Miss Ellen did favors for the powerful: politicians, bankers, and businessmen, they all asked her for loans to avoid ruin when a bubble burst, a campaign failed, or a venture went belly-up. There was even a rumor that she had funded John Brown’s raid. She kept her power by pretending not to have any, never allowing a white man to be embarrassed for asking her for help—that and strategically placing the right woman in his orbit. Any service job for a wealthy family or establishment went through her. She helped countless newly emancipated women like Sonya, immigrants, and destitute women find employment. Her only requirement was that the women kept their ears open. She decided where you were to be placed, and you repaid her with information—that was a secret one would take to their grave. The San Francisco elite never suspected that they were being spied upon by their women from the margins.

  She remembered the first time she met the woman. Sonya arrived at the big house on Octavia Street. She went to the back and knocked on the door of the servants’ entrance. An old, brown-skinned black woman wearing an apron answered the door. Obviously the head housekeeper, Sonya thought. The woman offered no greeting.

  “Hello, ma’am. My name is Sonya. I understand that there is an opening for a maid position.”

  The woman looked Sonya over and nodded in what seemed to be approval. “Follow me,” she said. They went through the large kitchen and into an even larger study. T
he woman took a seat while Sonya stood.

  “Tell me about yourself, child.”

  “Well, ma’am, I’ve worked as a laundress and domestic at various places around the city. I can provide references, if necessary.”

  “References.” The old woman laughed. “I’m sure you can . . . and they will all be glowing.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Well, that’s not too impressive, is it? To have so many references from people who were supposedly so satisfied with your performance but are very eager to see you move on.”

  Sonya swallowed hard. “Ma’am, I left all of my employers on good terms.”

  “Oh, I am sure you did, but how aggressive were they in keeping you on?”

  “Well . . . a Mrs. Dunleavy fell on some hard times—not to spread her business—but she was no longer able to afford a large staff. Mrs. Carmichael wanted to bring on a cook . . . specializing in cuisine I was not familiar with.”

  The woman nodded and held up her hand. “Mr. Dunleavy is a foolish man who thinks things get cheaper when you have less money. His staff are my people. You don’t pay my people what they’re worth, then I tell my people to move on. As for Mr. Carmichael . . . well, he’s got a weakness for pretty young Negresses. Mrs. Carmichael can look the other way only for so long. Tell me, child, if I’ve said anything untrue.”

  Sonya stared hard and stayed silent.

  “Good. You know how to hold your tongue,” Ellen said. “You were a slave before the war?”

  Sonya nodded. “On the Smith plantation in Georgia.”

  “I bet you had a hard time with the Colonel chasing you around the place.”

  Who was this woman? “You know everything about me, don’t you?”

  Ellen smiled. “Just everything you’ve chosen to tell.”

  A tall white man—obviously of means, likely the owner of the house, Sonya thought—entered the room. “Excuse me, Miss Ellen . . .” He looked over at Sonya. She bowed her head ever so slightly.

  Miss Ellen’s demeanor did not change. “What is it, Thomas?”

  Sonya’s lips parted. No sound came. Call a white man by his first name and no repercussions—who was this woman?

  “There is a matter,” said Thomas. His eyes skirted to Sonya, then back to Miss Ellen.

  “What kind of matter?”

  Thomas raised his chin a bit and added some rigidity to his posture. “Some gentlemen from the bank . . .”

  “I am having a conversation with this woman. I’ll be with you shortly.”

  Thomas lingered a bit too long.

  “Tell them to wait, Thomas. That will be all.”

  He left. Miss Ellen looked at Sonya. The slyest smile formed on ­Ellen’s face. Sonya couldn’t help herself. She smiled too.

  • • •

  The Graysons needed a maid and they needed a cook. She got that job as well. The money was good, an amount that she could never refuse. They had refined taste. Back on the plantation, the Colonel had nurtured refined tastes as well. He’d developed a liking for French cuisine and had the cook of one of his guests train Sonya in how to prepare the rich Parisian dishes.

  Mr. Grayson’s palate appreciated the training given to Sonya by her former master, although he abhorred slavery.

  She had resented making those meals for the Colonel, just as she had resented the Colonel. In fact, she was full of resentment and, even though it pained her to admit, it was the boy that conjured up a good portion of that resentment. He made her think of Jupiter.

  • • •

  Supposedly this was a new country after the war. She was not hopeful about its chances. As far as the way they treated the Negro, it seemed nothing had changed. San Francisco was to be a new beginning, but the hatred toward the Chinese did not beacon anything new; it was something old, something angry, something familiar. And now Miss Ellen, the most powerful woman—of any color—she had known, was worried. Maybe it was time to leave. More than a few respectable colored people were going to places like Canada, Africa, and even Mexico. Africa—at least Liberia—always had a certain mystical allure. Her cousin had gone there per the conditions of her manumission. She still had the letters Mary sent to her from the new country—close to ten years ago. She read them when times were hard. To her, they were totems of faith and optimism, a fairy tale of a captive princess freed by the death of her oppressor and whisked away to a magical land where she lived happily ever after. Titus would tell her it was childish to harbor such fantasies, but he always had an issue with her as of late. Her arrangement with Miss Ellen, her desire to better herself by improving her reading and writing skills—it all seemed to irritate him. But she didn’t care.

  His anger had started to scare her, and she made him leave. He got a room at a boarding house in Millbrae near Jacob’s school. He apologized, said he’d change, and was just starting to work his way back into her life.

  Maybe it was the way she didn’t take his new name, Freeman, and held on to her slave name, Smith. Titus said it was because of Jupiter, and he was right, partly. All the people she knew and loved were called Smith. Most of them she would never see again. Yes, she was no longer in bondage, but she did not want that chain to be broken. And she liked that when she thought of Smith work came to mind—work on a higher plane than the toils of slavery. Work that was respected: there was skill and craft, heat and hammer in it. She considered playing with the spelling: maybe a silent “e” at the end, something to distinguish her from all the other unrelated Smiths. For all of Titus’s symbolic name changing, she thought it tragically ironic that he would call himself Freeman in a country where he still was not truly free.

  Titus had been a valuable asset to a woman alone in that savage country, this wild city. His size thwarted most of the direct threats, but they were still susceptible to the same perils and dangers as other Negroes. This was the first time in her life that she felt protected. It was a new feeling for her. So much so that she didn’t even know how to put a word to the feeling that she had never felt before.

  Her mind raced. She alternated between slicing potatoes—­almost cut herself, twice—and tending to the laundry, soiling the clean clothes with her dirty hands. She looked at Titus’s pants; big and wide like a carnival tent. He wasn’t wiry and muscular like Jupiter—she did remember that about him—more like big and brawny. Yet it had been so long since she had last seen Jupiter. She could not even remember what she loved or missed most about him—she did not have the kind of memory that Jacob had. Jupiter had been on her mind so much lately—especially with Jacob’s fascination with memory games. It made her think about those years just before the war when the savage institution of slavery was losing its thin veneer of civility, yet Jupiter and Archer continued to challenge each other with quotes from Shakespeare or some Greek play she had never heard of while the Colonel watched approvingly.

  • • •

  Titus came in with Jacob.

  “Well, you two are here a lot sooner than I expected.” She reached for the boy and he walked past her.

  Titus seemed out of breath. “There was a wagon for let. Seemed like a good idea. Been working all day. . . . The boy seemed to like it.”

  This is when a woman should kiss a man, greet him with love and affection. The urge should have been there, but it wasn’t—it rarely was.

  She went back to the laundry. There was something in the pocket. It was like a flower that had yet to open. She let its square petals bloom. She unfolded the piece of paper. She almost fainted when she saw her own face staring back at her.

  “Titus, what’s this?” she asked him. “Titus?” She held up the poster.

  He was silent.

  “Say something.” She pointed to the black letters.

  “You read better than me,” Titus said.

  Jacob came over to eye the poster. “It says J. Smith, mamma. ­J.
Smith. ‘Have you seen this woman?’ ” the boy read. “ ‘Looking for Sonya Smith. Please contact J. Smith at the O’Connell boarding house. Mamma, why is J. Smith looking for you?”

  She jerked her head at Titus.

  He looked away.

  “Titus, is this Jupiter looking for us?”

  He nodded.

  “How do you know? Titus? Have you seen him?”

  “Saw him not too long ago. Been putting up posters all over town. I took down every one I could find.”

  “You mean to tell me Jupiter’s not dead?”

  “Wish it were so, but he ain’t.”

  “And what’d you tell him? Titus, what’d you tell him? Did you tell him about Jacob?”

  “No. He don’t know about the boy.”

  Sonya balled up the poster. Hit his chest. Slapped him as hard as she could. The hits were more like the flutter of butterfly wings to Titus. He grabbed her hands. “How could you do this to me? You knew I thought he was dead. Knew how I felt about him.”

  Titus threw her hands back at her. “Yeah, I know how you feel. Yet I still took care of you and your boy like he was my own. And I been looking after you. Making sure you were safe. All while you held on to some dream, some ghost.”

  She turned away.

  “Yeah, he still a ghost, even though he come up. Half of him is in this world, the other half’s in another. Yet you long for him like he’s some sort of perfect man.”

  “You don’t understand, Titus,” she said. “It ain’t as easy as that.”

  “So now I ain’t smart enough to understand? Look here, you want to run off and chase that nigger, then go ahead.”

  “What’d he say? Where’d he go?”

  “Well, I told him you run off to Africa. Liberia.”

  She fell to her knees. Jacob comforted her.

  “Sonya,” said Titus. “I love you. I didn’t mean what I said before. I did all that sacrificing ’cause I love you. I know what kind of man I am, what kind of man I can be. I’m sorry I lied to you. I just want to take the best out of this world, however much it will let me, and give it to you. But Jupiter ain’t gonna promise you that. Go ahead and see him. You’ll see the man he’s trying to become, and the man I already am. If you got any sense, you’ll stay right here with me.”