An Unlikely Friendship

by Ann Rinaldi

  For a while everything went along the same. Winter came and went and then one day when I was helping Grandma Sarry in the kitchen garden, Allie, Francine, Alma, and Joan came through the gate.

  They were all gussied up in their store-bought dresses and ruffled bonnets.

  "We came to say good-bye," Joan told us. "We're leaving."

  I noticed, beyond the fence and in the road, the Reverend's carriage. And there he stood waiting with his wife and Hal and Jupiter.

  "You're leaving?" I couldn't believe it. "Just like that?"

  "Master freed us," said Joan. "We're going with him and Mistress to meet the people who will take us to Liberia."

  "We're going on a boat!" Alma's eyes were shining.

  Free? The word went into my mind and whirled round and round, but found no place to rest. It was not understood, not welcomed. How do you get free? I wondered. "Can you be a slave one minute and free the next?" I asked.

  "Master has to free you," Joan said. "He has the important mens make out papers. Only our master can do it because he's a reverend."

  I must have looked like my spirit was on the ground because Grandma Sarry put a comforting arm around my shoulder. The girls left. I stood watching at the gate until the carriage was out of sight.

  "It's not that your massa has to be a reverend to free you," Grandma said.

  I looked up at her.

  "Any massa can do it if he takes it in his mind to," she explained.

  "Will our massa ever send us back to Africa, Grandma?"

  "Don't count on it, child. There's only one way to get free if you want it bad enough."

  "Run?"

  "That, too. Only there's too many dangers in that. A better way is to be patient, like the reverend says. Learn your sewing. Learn your book. And grow up being extra special at something. Then have Massa hire you out and get paid for your services and save some money so you can buy your own freedom."

  "Buy my own freedom?" Never had I heard such a thing.

  "Buy yourself," she said. "Your daddy is trying to do just that right now, don't think he isn't. He's got his master to agree to hire him out so he can make the hundred and twenty dollars a year he needs to buy his own freedom and come to us."

  "Oh, Grandma!" I hid my face in her skirt. "How can I do it?"

  "First you grow up," she said. "And then if'n you still want it bad enough, you'll find a way to do it." And with that she turned and went back to the garden.

  I FORGOT TO TELL HOW, when we left the plantation, Massa did two things that turned out bad for us.

  He brought along Big Red to oversee his slaves and he purchased Uncle Raymond, Mama's brother, who was at the same plantation where my daddy lived. I like to think he purchased Uncle Raymond for Mama's sake, because he couldn't purchase my daddy.

  Uncle Raymond was a man of good parts. He was gentle and he laughed a lot, and once at Hampden-Sydney he taught us chilluns to dance. He played the banjo and taught us the turkey trot and the buzzard lope and the Mary Jane.

  He taught us to hold hands and dance in a ring, to sing, "You steal my true love and I steal your'en."

  The men and women usually joined in, carrying big, fat lighted torches of kindling wood while they danced.

  In no time at all Uncle Raymond became uncle to every child on the place, nigra and white. That is, when he wasn't doing his job of making bricks.

  There was building going on at the college, and when Massa brought along Uncle Raymond he right off hired him out to the college to make bricks out of the red clay that was all around.

  He had to keep all the farm tools in order, too. Part of those tools were harnesses and plow lines.

  In spring, around about April, Uncle Raymond lost a set of harnesses. Massa gave him a new set and told him that if he lost those he would be punished real bad-like.

  All I can say is that Uncle Raymond must have known a side of Massa that the rest of us never knew about. Because of how it turned out in the end.

  EVERY MORNING WHEN Mama got up, she took a bucket and walked down to Dry Fork Creek to get some water to wash herself with.

  One morning we heard her outside, screaming. I was in the kitchen with Grandma Sarry, having breakfast.

  "That's your mama," Grandma said, and she ran out the kitchen door.

  I ran out after her. And sure enough, there was Mama running up the hill from the creek, her skirts all flapping and her hair all askew. You'd think Raw Head and Bloody Bones were chasing her.

  "Child, what is it, child?" Grandma yelled.

  "Raymond," Mama sobbed. "Oh, Mama, he's dead."

  "Dead? How? Why?"

  "What happened, Aggy?" A door slammed and Massa came out of the residence.

  "Raymond. Oh, Massa, he done kilt himself. He done hang himself on the tree down by the creek."

  ***

  UNCLE RAYMOND HAD lost the second set of harnesses. "He hanged himself rather than be punished the way Massa punishes his servants," Grandma said.

  As it turned out in the end, we found that the harness had been stolen. Big Red found the man who stole it, a nigra who was not punished for it because everybody was in an uproar over Uncle Raymond.

  Mama never again took up her bucket in the morning and went down to Dry Fork Creek to get her water. I had to do it for her. But after that I learned that there were better fears to have than Raw Head and Bloody Bones. And they were the people all around us all the time.

  THEY CUT Uncle Raymond down and washed him good and wrapped him in a winding-sheet, then laid him on a cooling board where he would stay until his coffin was made. The cooling board was like an ironing board, only it had four sturdy legs.

  They put a suit of clothes on him, what looked like an old suit of Massa's.

  After the slaves came in from the fields that night we held his funeral. They dug a grave in the slave graveyard, which was different than the regular one behind the church. Some white folks came to the funeral. We sang "Hark from the Tomb" and "Amazing Grace," and Mama cried something fierce. All the children cried.

  I heard Massa say in a low voice to Big Red, "Damn, I lost a prime nigra. Worth from three to five thousand."

  ROBERT AND SOME of his friends had gone possum hunting. Robert missed the hunting he used to do at home and so Massa let him go. Grandma Sarry said if he fetched in five or six she'd cook them up just as Robert liked them, sprinkled with butter and pepper and baked down till the gravy was thick and brown. Robert liked to gnaw the bones.

  Tonight, Grandma Sarry promised, she would make up a whole mess of possum for Robert and his friends.

  MASSA LET THEM have the dogs. Robert knew how to tote possum home: split a stick and run their tail through the crack, then carry the stick across your shoulders. That way you didn't get bit. Sacks are no good. They gnaw their way out of sacks.

  I was out in the quarters awaiting Robert's return when Mama called me into the house. I hated going inside because the June air was so soft and sweet. The baby was sleeping, so I thought I'd be free for a while.

  Mistress had had her baby, a girl named Elizabeth Margaret, in May, the sweetest little baby girl with a beautiful little mouth and nose and fingernails like a real lady's. And true to Mistress's word, I was the baby's private nurse. I would belong to her, Mistress had explained, all of my life. I was the Burwells' gift to little Elizabeth Margaret.

  Of course, that meant moving out of Mama's cabin and into the big house. I slept on a straw pallet on the floor next to the baby's cradle all night in case she cried. And cry she did, every two hours at first, and I was to run and get Ellie, the wet nurse brought up from the quarters to feed and change her. I was not to wake Mistress, and I was not to pick the baby up.

  I did my chores well that first month. All day I kept the flies off little Elizabeth Margaret's face. I sang to her when she was awake, all the slave songs I knew. And I didn't even cry, though I missed my own bed, my own Mama next to me at night. I was still just five years old.

  I W
ENT INTO the house. Sure enough little Elizabeth was crying. I went to look for Ellie, the wet nurse, but she was nowhere to be found. So I went back into the baby's room and did what I was told to do when she fussed. I rocked the cradle.

  I reckon I rocked it too much because it tipped over and little Elizabeth Margaret fell out. There she was on the floor, crying as if Raw Head and Bloody Bones were both coming to get her. Well now, I was in a fix all right. I ran out into the hall and called out. I looked over the banister, but nobody was in sight. I could hear them sure enough, from the dining room, where they were eating and laughing.

  I ran back into the baby's room. All I wanted to do was stop her from crying.

  It was then that I saw the fireplace shovel, sitting there bold as the brass it was. In a wink I knew what to do. And so I grabbed the shovel and tried to pick up little Elizabeth Margaret with it, just like I'd seen servants do with ashes. Could she be heavier than a shovelful of ashes?

  I tried and tried, but no matter. That no-count shovel wouldn't pick her up.

  "Lizzy, what are you doing?"

  Sure enough they came running then. A whole passel of them. The room was full of people of a sudden. People who had been nowhere on God's earth a few minutes ago. My mama, Ellie, the wet nurse, Mistress, even Massa.

  Someone grabbed my hand and pulled the shovel out of it. Someone else picked up Elizabeth Margaret who wouldn't stop wailing if Moses himself came into the room. Someone grabbed my arm and handed me over to Ellie. It was Mistress. "Take this child outside and have her whipped good," Mistress said.

  I was handed over from one person to another like a piece of meat on its way to the smokehouse. With each person who roughly grabbed me I grew in years. I was no longer five years old. I was every slave on Massa's plantation who'd ever been dragged to a tree to be tied up. I felt the choking fear, the numbing disbelief, the animal instinct to escape.

  I felt like a possum treed by dogs.

  I knew now why Uncle Raymond had hanged himself, even thinking such was going to happen to him. I recollect screaming, "Mama, help me. Massa, no, it's me, your little Lizzy." I screamed all their names while I felt myself thrust out the door and handed over to a grinning Big Red.

  "Finally gonna get your comeuppance, ain't you, little gal?"

  He had something to say with every action he took. Dragging me across the portico. "Think you're so special, do you?"

  Tying me around the post of the portico. "I'll show you special. Sashaying around here with your nose in the air."

  Delivering the first blow. " 'Bout time Massa decided to break you."

  I screamed until there wasn't any more voice left in me. He wasn't supposed to brand me with a hot iron, was he? Then why did it feel like a hot iron?

  I screamed all their names. "Mama!" Where was she? Where was Grandma Sarry? Massa? Robert?

  But the only one besides me who was on the place was Big Red. Even God was gone.

  I MUST HAVE FAINTED. They told me later that Big Red went easy on me because I was only five years old. I wondered what he would do if I was grown-up.

  But I was grown-up after that. Couldn't they see? I'd grown years that evening. If grown-up meant that you no longer trusted anybody. If grown-up meant that you trusted, even less, the part of you that was white. If grown-up meant knowing how stupid you'd been, thinking you were part of the family.

  And if grown-up meant you knew you had one person in the world you could believe in, at least. Yourself.

  LATER ON THAT NIGHT, sleeping on my straw pallet on the floor, I overheard Massa and Mistress arguing.

  "I won't have her watching Elizabeth Margaret anymore," Mistress said. "She's like all mixed-race women. Everybody knows they're bad breeders and bad nursemaids. They are heinous, cursed by the devil. Mulattoes are monsters. I won't have it."

  He said something to her then, but I couldn't hear, this father of mine. But she quieted down. And they kept allowing me to be Elizabeth Margaret's nursemaid, heinous as I was.

  I RECKON THEY decided I needed to see my daddy again because within two weeks' time Daddy came to Hampden-Sydney.

  Before that, nobody said anything to console me about being whipped.

  "You be a good girl from now on," was all Grandma Sarry said. But she made me some special gingerbread that was better than any cake I ever ate.

  Mama just looked at me. "You gotta learn to behave, baby, 'cause there ain't a thing I can do for you if you don't."

  "I know," I said.

  "Thank heaven your daddy wasn't here. Sure as heaven, he'd try to do something. Thank heaven he wasn't here. But Massa makin' it up to you now. He's gonna bring your daddy here."

  I wouldn't go near Massa or Mistress. Even though they gave me the baby to take care of again.

  I wouldn't look at Robert at all. He came into the kitchen and tried to talk to me. "Come on over here and sit on my lap, little one. Like you always used to do."

  I shook my head, no, surprised at how easy hate came. Surprised at how hate gave you back your dignity and made them understand that you were a person. Still, given all that, Robert was the hardest one to hate after all.

  GRANDMA SARRY PUT three chickens in a pot and made up a batch of locust beer. Locust beer was my daddy's favorite. So were Grandma's chickens.

  Mama came into the kitchen singing. She was wearing a new calico dress. "We all is gonna celebrate tonight," she said. She was beaming. I never could recollect her beaming and singing at all. She went about downcast most of the time. Now it was as if a whole sky of stars had been given to her.

  All because my daddy was coming to visit.

  "What we got to celebrate?" Grandma teased.

  Mama looked at me. "Massa gonna buy your daddy. Massa says he could use him here since Raymond died. Your daddy gonna take Raymond's place. Massa done fetched him."

  My daddy could make bricks and he knew all about farm tools, too. I was struck with fear. "No, you can't let Massa do that."

  "What's wrong with you, girl? Don't you want Daddy George here all the time with us?"

  "Suppose he loses a harness," was all I could say.

  "No, no, it ain't gonna be like that," Mama promised. "Don't you worry. Your daddy knows what he's about. He's worth his salt, don't you worry."

  She went around singing all afternoon. I wanted my daddy here, sure 'nuf. But I didn't trust any of it. Or anybody.

  "BABY." DADDY FOLDED me in his arms. "What devilment went on here? They beat you?"

  "Yes. And Mama says if you were here, it wouldn't have happened."

  He didn't answer. I waited, but no answer came. I was sorry, right off, that I'd said it. I could feel his sadness. And I knew my daddy wouldn't lie just to make me feel better.

  He stayed. But I couldn't spend nights with him and Mama in their cabin because I was needed in the big house for Elizabeth Margaret.

  And I missed a whole week of good times in the evening when work was done and they celebrated down in the quarters. It was just like corn-shucking time down there. Mama always had some good old baked meat on the fire and a pile of sweet 'taters in the ashes. There was plenty of cake and even some pulled-syrup candy. They drank locust beer and corn liquor. They danced far into the night.

  When I complained that I was missing all the fun, Grandma Sarry told me, "You got the rest of your life to be with your daddy 'cause he gonna be here all the time now."

  It was Massa who stepped in and said I should have a day off to spend with my daddy. That surprised me. And what surprised me more was how solemn he was when he said it.

  I spent the day with Daddy down at Dry Fork Creek. Grandma Sarry packed up some cold chicken and sweet 'taters and Daddy brought a jug of locust beer. We caught catfish and perch and a heap of suckers on that warm June day. And later on Grandma Sarry cooked the fish and collard greens in the kitchen of the big house just for me and Mama and Daddy.

  It was almost good. If I pretended, I could forget Massa had me whipped. And there was M
ama happier than a coon dog on a hunt because Daddy was here to stay.

  BUT IT WAS NOT TO BE. And that night, I found out why Massa had been so solemn. He came into the kitchen and read us a letter. It said that he couldn't buy Daddy because Daddy's own master was moving to Tennessee and needed him. My daddy was not for sale.

  We were all struck dumb as jackasses in the rain. Mama burst into tears and ran from the room. Daddy couldn't speak.

  "I'm sorry, George," Massa said. Then he, too, walked out.

  "Where is this Tennessee?" I asked Daddy.

  "It's south, baby."

  South was bad. All the slaves knew it. The farther south you went, the worse your lot became. They beat you regular-like and worked you till you died down South.

  Daddy knelt in front of me. He put a hand on each of my shoulders. "You listen to me, little Lizzy," he said. "The only thing that works out is what you do for yourself."

  I nodded yes.

  "And I'm doin' for myself. My massa let me hire myself out as a brickmaker. Some of the money goes to him and some I get to keep for myself. I needs one hundred and twenty dollars a year to buy myself. When I get enough I'll buy myself, all right. And I'll come back here to this Virginny and get my family. I promise."

  I said nothing.

  "You believe me, Lizzy?"

  "Yes."

  But I didn't. And I knew for sure that I'd never see him again.

  "Learn your book, Lizzy," he told me. "Get good at something. Then buy yourself. It's the only way."

  That I believed.

  DADDY GEORGE'S MASSA came to fetch him at the end of the week, and there were some blue devil minutes there when we had to tell him good-bye.