by Lois Leveen
When the clerk laid a pair in my size on the counter, I understood for the very first time how Papa must have felt when he bought a just-because. The things Bet gave me were nice enough, and it seemed like I had a rich wardrobe compared to Ducky and Mrs. Upshaw. But these shoes were more than rich and pretty. They were the very first things I ever bought myself, picked out just because they pleased me and paid from my own purse, albeit with funds Bet had pressed on me.
I decided to celebrate my purchase by riding the omnibus down Chestnut Street. These large, horse-drawn contraptions filled with rows of seats fascinated me. I supposed them terribly expensive, as Hattie never suggested we take them, even when I hinted about the dreadful heat on our long walks home from school. But emboldened by my successful shopping adventure, I was all too eager to spend a bit more of Bet’s money, for the fun of such a ride.
I walked two full blocks in the opposite direction to ensure I’d have a goodly length omnibus trip back to Fourth Street. A stout white man paced back and forth along the corner, pausing every few minutes to pull out his watch, mutter to himself, and shake his head. When the omnibus arrived, he waved it to a stop, stepped on, and paid his fare. Smiling, I stepped up behind him and offered the collector my money.
“Step down, please,” the collector said.
“But I have the fare.” I jingled the coins in my hand.
“You cannot ride this conveyance. Please step down.”
As I glanced about the half-full car, the man who had just boarded caught sight of me. He turned red as a beet and shouted at the conductor, “Some of us are in a great hurry. If you won’t throw the nigger off, my Jesus, I will.”
The fare collector moved toward me. As I backed away, my heel snagged on the step. The driver whipped the horses forward, sending me stumbling to the ground. Passengers looked out through the windows as the omnibus pulled past, some glaring and some pitying. People walking by stopped to point and whisper.
I ducked into a narrow passageway between two buildings. Shame shook my legs so, I had to lean against one of the walls, the heat from the bricks seeping through my dress.
The stout man’s words echoed in my head, nigger and Jesus both falling from his mouth. Nigger made me think of Virginia. I wondered how a place so different as brotherly love Philadelphia could make me feel the same—worse even—than that Old Dominion of slaveholding. And Jesus made me think of Mama. I missed her so. Missed her when Philadelphia was a source of wonder and delight, but especially when it caught me in its strangeness, its loneliness, or its downright meanness. Mama would know how to turn from that man to the Jesus whose name he took in vain.
“Do You really have a plan for me?” I spoke aloud, in a low voice, talking to Jesus just like Mama would. “Walking on cobbled streets while whites ride in an omnibus, buying shoes at a clothier’s store rather than from a shoemaker—what’s all that got to do with my being special, like Mama and Papa and even Bet say I am?”
Back when Mistress Van Lew got it into her head to have the whole household vaccinated against smallpox, Mama asked Jesus whether she and I should take the shots. The very next day, a whole brood of shad making their way down the James River ended up in the Westham canal just above Richmond. No one could guess how the fish got there, and they died by the hundreds, trapped in the basin. Mama took this as a certain answer that we should receive the vaccination. When I asked how she knew that was what those belly-up shad were supposed to mean, she told me it was between her and Jesus, and people too young to read His signs shouldn’t be bothering grown-ups with so many pesky questions.
Now I searched for some sign I could read myself. To my left, people and carriages hurried purposeful as ever along Chestnut Street. To my right, the passageway was darker. I walked in that direction until it widened into an alley ten feet across.
Though bright sunshine lit the boulevard, the alley lay in shadow. A dozen or so shacks hewn of shabby wooden boards crowded together, doors open to the stink from the lone outhouse that served the mass of inhabitants. Two goats and a handful of chickens added to the noise and mess. A mob of children—mostly white, though I made out a few mulatto and black faces among them—played in the muck between their makeshift homes.
One tow-headed child scrambled over and pulled on my skirts. Its face was so dirty and its clothing so tattered I couldn’t tell if it was a girl or a boy, even as it asked, “Spare something?”
I still held the unused omnibus fare. The coins seemed to burn with all my mortification at being cast from the public conveyance, and I gladly dropped them into the grimy hand.
The creature let out a whoop. Instantly, the other children swarmed around me. They tugged and yanked and pleaded so, I fished the rest of the coins from my purse and pitched them as far back in the alley as I could. While the ragamuffins scrambled after the money, I fled back the way I came.
I emerged into the bright light and bustle of Chestnut Street and began the hot walk back to Gaskill, the smells of the alley still clinging to my mangled skirts.
When I found my way to Hattie’s father’s lot on Sixth Street the next morning, I was reassured to see that the undertaking business was in a separate building, set between a small stable and the brick residence. The house hummed with voices. Hattie had five sisters, every sister had a husband, and most had children as well. “Daddy always says, easiest to meet everyone in order,” she said as she led me upstairs to introduce me to her father. “Start at the oldest and work on down.”
Alexander Jones rose from the horsehair armchair in the front parlor, where he was debating with his many sons-in-law, to extend his hand in greeting. Hattie took after her father so strongly, I felt like his face was already familiar. The air of scrutiny suggested by Hattie’s raised eyebrow seemed even more forceful when coupled with his gray hair and deep voice. I would have thought he doubted my very being, save for the warm words with which he welcomed me.
Hattie’s sisters were scattered about, preparing the meal and tending their various broods, so there was much tramping through the house to find them in order, with Hattie returning me to the parlor to introduce each husband just after I met his wife. That did help me keep everyone’s names in order. Charlotte, Diana, Emily, Fanny, and Gertie all looked alike, none of them resembling Hattie or their father a whit. They were all quite beautiful—I felt like I was a traitor to Hattie to notice that—and their husbands were all fine-looking gentlemen. This was a source of especial pride to Gertie, whose husband was the handsomest of the lot.
“Mary Van Lew, the youngest of my elder sisters, Gertie Overton.” Hattie’s introduction made her sister frown.
“Mrs. John Overton,” she corrected. “My baby sister ought to know the proper way to introduce a married lady.”
I always thought my older friend so world-wise. Hearing her own sister call her a baby, I couldn’t imagine what Gertie might make of me. Diana laughed and said, “Please excuse Mrs. John Overton. She’s only been married three months and remains quite taken with her newly elevated station.”
“And quite convinced it’s suddenly made her much more mature than a certain person who used to be her playmate not so long ago,” Hattie said.
“Hattie, a child in your state simply cannot understand how matrimony transforms a lady. And Diana, well, you’ve been married for ages, and have forgotten it all, I am sure.” Gertie turned back to chopping parsnips with such a pout that Hattie consoled her by suggesting she come up to the parlor to introduce me to the handsome Mr. John Overton herself.
Once all the introductions were done, I had a proper tour of the house, nine whole rooms in all. The bottom floor contained the dining room, the kitchen, and a washroom complete with a running-water bath tub. Not even the Van Lews had such a thing. “We got the yellow fever to thank for that,” Charlotte explained. “Hit Philadelphia so hard, the civic high-a-mucks put in a city-wide water system back when other places didn’t even imagine it could be done.” The middle story contained the fr
ont and back parlors, and a door Hattie didn’t open for me, which led to her father’s bedroom. And the top floor was all Hattie’s.
I was amazed. “I’ve never so much as had my own room, and you’ve got three.”
“These three held six of us, once. Then five, then four, then three—that’s when we each had our own room for the first time. Then for the longest while there were still two of us, till Gertie abandoned me for Mr. John Overton.”
Small wooden boxes, all different sizes but none bigger than nine inches per side, were placed all over Hattie’s rooms. I picked one up from the dressing table. “What are these?”
“My daddy’s scraps.”
“Scraps?”
“From the coffins.” I hastily put the box back down. Hattie smiled. “Don’t worry, I don’t keep any teeny-tiny dead folks stored away. Go on, open it.”
I drew off the lid. Inside was a small scene, constructed out of moss and seashells and dried flower petals. I lifted the cover from another box, and another. One scene was made up of pebbles and pinecones, another of honeycombs and robin’s eggs. Each was beautiful.
“Where do these come from? I’ve never seen anything like them.”
“I made them.”
“All of them?”
“Oh yes. Daddy always says every young lady needs a talent. Charlotte is the best voice in our church. Diana is brilliant on the pianoforte. Emily draws, Fanny paints, Gertie crochets. There wasn’t hardly anything left by the time I came along, so I sort of made this up myself. Gathering materials gave me my first excuse to explore the city.”
I’d hardly looked into a quarter of the pine boxes before a bell rang, calling us to dinner. The meal was worth coming for, too. Whoever said too many cooks spoil the soup ought to sample a meal prepared by a kitchenful of Hattie’s sisters. And the conversation across the dinner table was even more savorous. Whenever I sat through Mrs. Upshaw’s mealtime prattle, accompanied by Ducky’s grunts of discontent, I longed to eat in silence. But really I missed the mealtime gossiping of the Van Lew slaves, or the teasing and conferring when Mama and Papa took meals together. At Hattie’s, the conversation was more serious, but every bit as enthralling. The menfolk chewed over every political issue of the day, and the sisters chimed in just as adamantly, when they weren’t called from the table to tend the howls of the children, who’d already been fed their porridges.
I didn’t follow much of what was said, the names of white politicians and colored ministers all running together in my mind, until Mr. Jones turned his attention to me. “Tell us, what do you miss about Virginia?”
Gertie cut in before I could respond. “What’s there to miss about slavery?”
“I do believe I asked about Virginia, and not about slavery. And I believe I asked Mary, and not anyone else.” Mr. Jones kept his eyes on me.
I set my fork and knife down, to show I was giving his question my full consideration. “I miss my mama and my papa, very much. Lots of other people, too. And the food.” I blushed a moment, looking at Hattie’s sisters. “Not that this meal isn’t delicious, but in Richmond, every meal I ate was this good, even if the food wasn’t so fancy. I miss living on the Hill, smelling the flowers and fruit in the garden and looking out to see the James and all the trees across the other side of the river. I miss walking right on the earth instead of pavement, and having space between the buildings. I miss the soft way people speak.”
I hadn’t even thought some of those things to myself, and here I was saying them out loud to folks I just met. “I miss an awful lot, I guess.”
Gertie sniffed. “I don’t hear anyone saying they miss slavery.”
“Who could miss slavery? Only, at least in Richmond slavery’s the reason for why we’re treated so bad. What’s the reason here? Just pure hate is all I can figure. And in Richmond, I knew all the rules. But here, each time I want to try something new, I don’t know whether I’ll be allowed.”
Mr. Jones’s imperious eyebrow shot up a little farther, and he nodded at me to say more.
I hadn’t meant to tell them what happened with the omnibus, but the next thing I knew, the story was spilling out of me.
“Some of the conductors will wink and let you stay,” Charlotte said quietly. “But those aren’t the kind of men you want to be beholden to, if you know what I mean.” Her husband swallowed hard at the thought.
“Sometimes when an omnibus passes by, I imagine the horses rearing up and tossing the car over, smashing everyone on board,” Hattie said.
Emily, the most delicate of the sisters, frowned. “Hattie, don’t talk so.”
“Might as well talk that way, if I think that way.”
“Better not to do either,” Mr. Jones said. “If we wallow around hating, we’re not going to end up any better off. I always say, if negroes mean to be treated differently, we must organize and act rather than just fume and hate.”
I expected Hattie to resent the reprimand, but instead she beamed at her daddy as he launched into more talk about which politicians opposed the Fugitive Slave Act, and which were for returning the franchise to colored men. I hadn’t realized negroes could ever cast a ballot, until he explained how they lost their voting rights in Pennsylvania only a decade before.
Above Mr. Jones hung a painting of an eagle, its wings outstretched and its talons clutching a stars-and-stripes emblazoned shield. He nearly resembled that proud bird, he seemed so serious, even formidable. Not a bit like Papa, who teased and funned us through our hardships. Mr. Jones gave the impression he didn’t have time for joviality, he was so busy planning for the rights of the colored people. Papa couldn’t do any more than joke, when all his planning hit up against the brick-and-mortar fact that he was the property of another man. I wondered what Papa would be like, Mama, too, if they’d grown up free like Hattie’s daddy.
But free didn’t mean all we’d imagined back in Virginia. That was clear from how my story about the omnibus started everyone commenting on the various injustices colored people faced in Philadelphia. Higher rents, fewer jobs, being turned out of a store or chased down an alley. Mobs gathering from time to time, to harass negroes right out of their own homes.
The way Hattie’s family talked, I could tell they’d learned to live with these things, just the way my family lived with the Van Lews and Master Mahon, avoiding what they could, comforting each other over what they couldn’t. It was better than slavery, I could see that from looking around a home crowded with a whole big family gathered together. But still it wasn’t what freedom ought to be.
As soon as the dinner things were cleared, Mr. Jones eased himself from the table and consulted his pocket watch. “I must go to the shop. I am expecting a delivery from Chambersburg, which I must take to Bucks County.”
Hattie’s arched eyebrow curled down in disappointment. “But, Daddy,” she said. “It’s Sunday. And I—we—have a guest.”
“And this body has a family, waiting for it to arrive.” He smiled at me. “This business isn’t like the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, where they schedule regular arrivals and departures. I always say—”
Diana finished for him, “when the wind blows from the South, nothing you say or do can stop it.”
“And if you face it and spit,” Fanny added, “you’re just gonna end up covered with your own slobber.”
We all laughed at that, even Hattie. I thought it a grand joke, though it’d be years before I understood what they were saying.
Bet remained in Philadelphia for a month and a half, visiting with relatives. Before returning to Richmond, she took care to entrust her cousin-in-law attorney with a copy of my free papers, the originals of which I carried with me at all times. Though Bet wouldn’t say it herself, we both knew that if I were accosted by someone claiming me as an escaped slave, my own testimony and papers held in my possession would mean nothing in a courtroom without a white person’s word of guarantee. Every so often during my time in Philadelphia, there’d be a big ruckus about some
free negro seized by slave-catchers. I always wondered how many were taken quietly, folks who were free but had no white person to raise a fuss for them.
As Bet and I rode home from meeting with the attorney, she told me about the farewell supper her great-aunt was hosting for her the next evening.
“I have spoken so highly of your promise as a scholar, I am sure they are all eager to meet you. The gathering will be a very intimate affair, only family and a few close friends, so it will give everyone a great chance to know you.”
Though I couldn’t refuse the invitation, I didn’t relish the idea of being the only colored person among a crowd of whites. Or not the only colored person, I corrected myself, the only colored person besides the servants—even worse. I dawdled all the way home from school the following afternoon, and when I arrived at the Upshaws’, the carriage was already at the curb. Bet was pacing the walk, red-faced.
“I apologize for keeping you waiting, Miss Bet. I didn’t expect you for half an hour yet.”
She waved away my words. “It is I who must apologize to you. There has been a great misunderstanding. No, not a misunderstanding, a mistake. You see, I was mistaken to assume, to believe, that you, or rather I should say that I, or that Great-aunt Priscilla—”
“She won’t have me in her home.”
I think I was as surprised as Bet at the way I broke in on her. Such outspokenness would have earned me a reprimand or worse, back in Virginia. But now it brought some relief to Bet’s agitated face.
“I’m so sorry, Mary. It never occurred to me that my family here would harbor such race prejudice, as bad as our neighbors on Church Hill. When Great-aunt Priscilla declared that she would cancel the supper before she would invite a negro into her home, I told her to do just that. I could not be guest of honor at such a gathering.”
We in the house always fixed Bet as fractious, a spoiled child who’d grown into a woman without the respect or decorum to obey either her mother or social conventions. Part of me wanted to think only of how thoughtless she was to invite me before consulting her great-aunt, how inconsiderate she was to detail the old woman’s antipathy toward me.