Black, White, Other

by Joan Steinau Lester

  “Uh-uh.” I shake my head.

  “And you have a suitcase,” he observes.

  “Hmm,” I say noncommittally.

  He looks intently at the round stained glass window above us. “Stunning, isn’t it? I never tire of God’s magnificence.” I nod, wondering what he wants. “How can I help you, my child?”

  Child! “I’m okay.”

  “Anything you’d like to share with me? In confidence. Maybe some trouble with your parents? Or your friends?” His face beams as he leans toward me. “This is a safe space.”

  How did he know? He’s so kind I’m tempted to talk, but can I count on him not to tell? Isn’t there some law that grown-ups have to let the authorities know if they find a runaway kid? Even Sarah didn’t dare tell anybody she was leaving. If she could keep that all in, so can I. I grit my teeth. “Everything’s fine.”

  “Why are you here?” he probes gently. “What solace do you hope to find?”

  “I don’t know,” I shrug. “It was just so …” I stumble. “So beautiful. I wanted to come in.”

  “Into the house of God.” When I don’t answer, there’s a long silence, until he says, “Let’s pray, shall we?”

  I nod.

  He closes his eyes, I shut mine, and I hear him murmuring softly. I’m lulled by his soothing voice. When I tune in again he’s whispering, “We pray for divine guidance for Nina, for her to choose the right path, for her safety wherever her journey may lead, and we pray for Nina to find her way home. Pray for guidance …”

  He continues but I’m stopped by that phrase. Those are exactly the same words Yasmine said to Sarah when she was forced into the wagon, sold south. Is this what Dad is telling me to do, pray for guidance? Or is Yasmine telling me? Or Father Jorge? Or even God? I’m hearing the words from all these voices overlaying each other, coming from every direction. But I don’t hear my own inner voice calling me.

  “Pray for guidance,” I mouth the words softly, adding to the river of sound.

  “…the highest and best for Nina. I give thanks and release my prayer, knowing it cannot return to me void. Amen.” After Father Jorge finishes he sits quietly for another five or ten minutes.

  “Is there anything else I can offer you?” he finally asks.

  “No.” I shake my head, but my heart feels a little lighter.

  “You might want to walk the labyrinth,” he says with the sweetest, deep voice. “There’s one in back. And another outside by the Interfaith Meditation Garden.” He pauses and stares at me. Is he’s wondering what religion I am? “It’s a divine imprint, very ancient, found in spiritual traditions all over the world, from Crete to Rome to India. The labyrinths here are replicas of the one at Chartres.”

  I must have raised my eyebrows, because he adds, “The medieval cathedral in France. You should try walking one here. It’s quite an experience. The labyrinth has only one path. It winds around, and as we take each step we feel different. The path becomes a mirror for where we are in our lives.” He’s speaking gently, almost in a trance. “Walk it with an open mind and an open heart. And see what happens. See if it doesn’t give you guidance. Stay in the center as long as you like. That’s the point of illumination, of prayer. Receive whatever is there for you to receive.”

  “Thank you.” I smile back at him. “Thank you so much.”

  “And on the way out, release whatever you need to release. May the hand of God be upon you.” He touches my head lightly, and then with another smile and a slight bow of the head he’s gone, gliding up to the redwood gates below the altar where he joins a knot of women in wheelchairs.

  I leave my suitcase outside the labyrinth and take a few tentative steps at the beginning of the path, marveling at the fine stonework. How did people know to create this same intricate design all over the world, for thousands of years? Is there really only one mind, the eternal mind of God? As I walk slowly, twisting round and round, I will my mind to quiet. “Pray for guidance …”

  Becoming less conscious of my surroundings, I move more and more slowly, hardly aware of my thoughts until a heavyset man brushes past. He’s rewinding his own path, going in the opposite direction, but he startles me from my reflection. Once my reverie is broken, I notice my rumbling stomach. How long have I been here? What time is it? I force myself to focus again on the path until I reach the center petals and stand in the circle, waiting for inspiration. How can I bridge the gap between my black and white friends—or should I say my former friends? Slowly, I present my problems one at a time, “surrendering” them in the way a small placard next to the labyrinth advises. And I wait, seeking to recover the peace I felt with Father Jorge. I begin to feel a calmness, but the divine message I’d hoped for doesn’t come.

  After several people step around me, I begin to feel silly rooted to the center spot, and, feeling as unenlightened as when I began, slowly retrace my footsteps back to the beginning. Disappointed, I take hold of my green suitcase’s handle, push out through the Gates of Paradise, and bump down the stone steps. As I head off across the plaza, the outdoor labyrinth catches my eye. Like the one inside, gray and white paving stones mark a winding path to the center. A long, gray stone bench surrounds three sides of the gigantic labyrinth, with a flowering border on the other side, and a few trees. This must be the interfaith garden.

  Wearily, I nestle into one corner of the bench; only one other person, a woman pushing a baby carriage, is strolling across the plaza. I close my eyes. What just happened inside the cathedral? Why didn’t I get any answers from walking the labyrinth? Is it because I’m not good enough? Because I acted out to my parents, because I doubted God? Father Jorge’s gentle face appears in my mind. He was so kind; he prayed with me, he didn’t turn me in. If he only knew how bad I was, running away, he might not have been so nice. Confused, with too many questions swirling through me, I shake my head so hard my hair flies into my teeth. I’m starving too, but I don’t feel right eating in the meditation garden.

  Stumbling back downhill to Market Street, I find myself once again perched on the ledge in front of a bank. Ravenous, I unwrap my second cheese sandwich and gobble it up, wishing I had a quart of milk to wash it down. And a chocolate bar.

  Somewhat calmed after I eat, I pull out my ace in the hole: Dad’s folder. I’ll read another chapter of MISS SARAH ARMSTRONG here on the ledge, if it’s not too windy. That way I won’t have to notice where I am for another half hour, I won’t have to think about whether I’m bad or good, or where to hang out until the bus leaves tomorrow morning. I won’t have to care about not having any friends or think about Dad and Mom being mad. Or worry about Jimi. How is he going to stay safe without me: from burning down the house by cooking alone, or from Tyrone Jackson and who knows what else?

  I escape into the pages. Sarah, Sarah, tell me what to do.

  A Taste of Freedom

  After Sarah resolved to use what the bird man had given her as soon as she had a chance, fortune smiled upon her. As she left her cabin, expecting another painful, hot day in the fields, she spotted ol’ miss walking toward the slave cabins. But instead of the expected lashings or cruel insults, the woman approached and said in a curt tone she’d come looking for “girls to help me in the spinning house.” Sarah’s mind flashed back to the hours Aunt Suzy had spent teaching her young hands to master needle and thread. Her apprenticeship would now be her reward. Soon she and Ruth started working with two other women to make the clothes for everyone on the plantation.

  Within a week, it seemed as though the heavens opened and God’s big black hand poured her out a blessing. A small factory in town had a rush order and needed extra seamstresses. The factory manager sent word by messenger to every plantation in his side of the county saying he was willing to hire slave help—with the cut-rate pay going directly to the owners.

  Old Armstrong, eager for cash, called Sarah and Ruth onto the broad porch where Sarah’s parents had married, jumping the broom fifteen years before. “I’m sending you int
o town to do needlework. Be on the job by the time the first cock crows.” Sarah and Ruth, he explained, were to walk into town with seven Armstrong tobacco workers—who tied the tobacco into bundles at the manufactory—and two woodworkers he’d also leased out.

  Sarah’s first trip into the world seemed unreal. Lagging behind the others as she walked the three miles to the brick factory, with only her slave pass for company, reminded her of the feeling she’d had in her dream. Except then she didn’t carry a pass that said, “This is an Armstrong slave. Anybody that bothers her got to answer to Mister Jake Armstrong.” Sarah moved down the dirt road, her eyes big. Am I under a spell? she wondered.

  At the small plant, she worked as if in a trance, rarely turning to talk to others, racing through her needlework tasks. Soon she became the quickest sewer. “I’m going to ask if you can work Sundays too,” the redheaded manager told her one Saturday afternoon.

  Armstrong agreed, and Sarah had to suppress her joy. Master Armstrong pocketed all Sarah’s wages, except for occasional evening pay: the “overwork” money. Sundays, however, would be different. In this part of Virginia, captives had won the right to be “Sunday Freemen”; Sarah would be able to keep half her Sunday wages.

  Going to town alone for the first time, Sarah had the chance to rub elbows with those outside her circumscribed world. She asked questions of everyone, trying to find out about their lives: how they lived on other plantations, what they ate, who’d been sold, and how strict their masters and mistresses were.

  Evenings, Sarah got to spend a few minutes outside the tobacco factory, where she met up with the hired-out Armstrong people before they all plodded back to quarters. One evening, Sarah struck up a conversation with Henry Brown, a hired-out man who wasn’t from the Armstrong place. He worked up tobacco full-time. But, he told her, he’d negotiated an unusual arrangement with his master. “With overtime pay I saved, I hired my wife, Betsy, from her owner and set up house in town.”

  Sarah’s eyes grew wide. She had never known a black person living off in a house on his own. And in town.

  “Yes, I live with her and our children.” Henry Brown patted his stomach. He looked like a satisfied man. Betsy, he explained, was a laundress; she supported them. “My main wages,” he said, “go directly to my owner …” Here he twisted up his small, dark face. “And I have to give my overtime pay to Betsy’s owner for her ‘work’ for me.” The wiry little man gave a bitter laugh. Maybe he wasn’t so satisfied after all.

  Sarah, fascinated, nevertheless had to rush back home. But on many evenings after that she spoke to Henry Brown, always inquiring after Betsy and the children.

  One Saturday that spring, only weeks after Sarah began her needlepoint work, news flew among the small group trudging back to the plantation. “Betsy Brown’s been sold south. Heard someone say she’s already gone.”

  “No!” Sarah screamed. Memories of her own family’s sales flooded her, and the ground underneath rocked and swayed.

  “We don’t know where she is,” the man walking next to her said furiously. “Not even what state she’s going to.”

  “No, no, no …” Sarah said. Ruth, who was walking on her other side, held her up when her body started to sag. “Where’s Henry?” Sarah managed to ask.

  “He was at the factory today. He says he’s going to die. Or kill her master. And his too.”

  Sarah gripped Ruth’s arm so tightly that the next day she saw dark bruises there in the shape of her fingers.

  The following Monday evening, Sarah found Henry outside the factory after work. She approached him and put her hand on his elbow.

  “I can’t live without them,” he said, his voice trembling.

  “I know.” She thought how often she’d felt the same way. “You can escape and find your family,” Sarah said. “Or go north. Run, earn money, and buy their freedom.”

  “I can’t live …” Henry repeated, staring vacantly.

  “You have to,” Sarah urged.

  “Yes,” Ruth, who’d appeared at Sarah’s elbow, agreed. “You have to. Otherwise, who will save them?”

  By the end of the week Henry shared the news that he’d begun to plan an escape. After talking to friends, and coming up with one desperate plan after another, he’d spoken to Samuel, a wizened white shoemaker who’d rented Henry and his wife their cramped dwelling. Samuel agreed to help, for a fee. Henry had to pay the man his entire meager savings, but Henry was so distraught, he was willing to do anything. He’d also enlisted Bacchus, a young black carpenter outraged by the abrupt sale of the family. In fact, the bizarre idea the three finally settled on was Bacchus’s idea.

  “They’re going to mail me to Philadelphia,” Henry told Sarah, a wild look in his eyes.

  “What?” Sarah froze.

  “In a wooden box. Bacchus will build it. He can take wood from the factory, and Samuel will mail it.” Henry’s small face contorted with an odd glee, while he scuffed the dirt outside the factory with his foot. He waved his arms with a grand gesture. “Samuel knows an abolitionist in Philadelphia he’ll mail me to.”

  “In a box?” Sarah then noticed her friend’s frayed shoes under his dirty pants. Listening to Henry rant, she understood that the loss of his family had driven him mad.

  “Yes, and I need your help.” Tears brimmed in his eyes.

  She agreed to do whatever she could, though the plot was insane. There was no way he could be mailed, let alone make it alive, to Philadelphia. Surely a station master would discover the man inside the box and turn him over to pattyrollers or, at best, have him jailed.

  Yet Sarah knew that Bacchus crept over to the shoemaker’s house each evening and, using stolen wood, worked for a scant half hour before racing back to the Armstrong plantation. During that brief time he frantically constructed a two-and-a-half-by-three-foot box, the largest allowed on railroad cars.

  “Hurry, man, hurry,” Henry pushed Bacchus. “I’ve got to go. Before I kill somebody. Or myself.”

  In eight days Bacchus finished the box. Sarah lined it with soft baize and Bacchus drilled three holes for air.

  On an overcast morning while Sarah was confined at work, Henry squeezed into the tiny space. Sarah heard later it was barely big enough for him to crouch, and he’d taken only a pig’s bladder filled with water and a few hard biscuits.

  She also learned from some of the hired men that Samuel and an accomplice tied the box with hickory hoops and carefully labeled it “This Side Up With Care” so Henry could stay on his feet. Together they carried the heavy parcel to the post office, where Samuel signed the slip and mailed Henry to Philadelphia.

  From the moment Henry’s box left the station, everyone who was in on the plot waited.

  One day passed, with no word.

  Another.

  Each evening Sarah lingered as long as she could after work, desperate to hear what had happened. Samuel promised he’d send a runner to the tobacco workers with news.

  Finally, after two weeks, a detailed letter arrived.

  The box had traveled to Philadelphia. On the way, most baggage handlers hadn’t bothered to read the instructions on the label. At Richmond station the handlers had turned the crate upside down, leaving Henry on his head. Since he was so cramped, he couldn’t turn over. The pressure was unbearable. His eyeballs popped out of his head and he thought he was dying, until another baggage handler, looking for a place to sit, turned the box right side up; that way it made a better seat.

  Later, while baggage people switched Henry from one train to another, they threw the crate so roughly that when it landed—again upside down—Henry heard a cracking noise in his neck and passed out. When he came to, he was on his side.

  But after twenty-six agonizing hours, the postal service delivered the large box to the home of an Underground Railroad agent, where the man waited with friends.

  “Hold on! You’re here,” they hollered to Henry.

  According to the letter, since he couldn’t see who was speak
ing, he didn’t answer, wanting to make sure he was safe before he acknowledged himself as human cargo.

  They rapped their knuckles against the wood. “Is all right within? You’re among friends.”

  Silence again.

  They tapped frantically.

  “Yes.” He croaked out the answer. “I’m alive.”

  As fast as they could, the small group cut the hickory hoops and pried open the lid. Henry untwisted himself and climbed out, hobbling around the room, weeping and shouting, “Praise the Lord!” He smelled, he hurt, he was hungry. Before he fainted, though, he screamed, “I’m free!”

  Through the mutterings around town, it became clear to Sarah that news of the daring escape had traveled the country like fire. According to Samuel, “Box” Brown, as people began to call him, had even become a cause célèbre in the North. He went on tour, mesmerizing audiences with the horrors of slavery and his own reckless flight, and raising money to track down and buy his family.

  But six months later, police entered town, asking after Samuel. Sarah later discovered they’d traced the box through the post office in Richmond, where it was mailed, to the old shoemaker. Though he’d listed a false name, officials identified Samuel as the sender. At his lengthy trial, the prosecutor urged the judge to “make an example of this man, lest we have abolitionists mailing valuable contraband to every northern port in the country!”

  Samuel got word to the Armstrong place through a janitor who swept up at the penitentiary. “Tell them to run,” his message said. “Right away. I can’t hold out any longer. Go now.”

  Aiding an escape, especially a successful one, was sedition. Sarah had heard the word whispered and seen it in newspapers. She’d read that the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, passed three years before, meant runaways could be captured in any state. The law affirmed that enslaved people were not citizens, no matter where they were.

  When Sarah heard that Samuel was going to confess, she knew she had to go. Immediately. Her first thought was that she and Bacchus could escape together.