Freedom's Pen

by Wendy Lawton

  “Phillis, how did you do this?” Mrs. Wheatley put down the poem and reached out to take both of Phillis’s hands in hers.

  Phillis didn’t know to explain. How did one stand in a parlor in Boston and explain African talking drums, griots, a song for a dead gazelle, and the longing to create her own praise songs? “I took my pen and tried to capture the narrative in images like Alexander Pope would have done. I used his closed couplets.”

  She knew it was more than that, but she had no way to explain. How could she explain that she drew from experiences during her time on the pitching, rolling deck of a slave ship? Mary and Mrs. Wheatley seemed to think her life began on that pier in Boston.

  “This poem will be published.”

  “Mother, how can you promise that? Especially with the Stamp Act in effect—the print world is in an uproar.”

  “I will see to it. It may take some money, and I may have to make calls on influential persons, but it will be published.”

  She stood up and rang the bell for Lucy. When the girl came in, Mrs. Wheatley began giving instructions like a general. “Tell Prince I want him to go to the stationers. I need him to buy paper, vellum, ink, and some fine-nib quills. When you are done with that, bring extra candles and firewood up to Phillis’s room. I need it warm in case the muses visit her in the night.”

  Lucy narrowed her eyes at Phillis as she left the room.

  Phillis continued to write poetry. Now when guests came to dinner, she recited poetry. Most believed that a Negro had never before written poetry. Phillis didn’t know about that, but she did know that in Africa much of the history was related through song and meter.

  At one dinner party, shortly after the ridiculous Butter Rebellion at Harvard—where the men walked out of school, protesting the quality of the butter they were served—Phillis shared a poem she wrote to the men who studied there.

  To you Bright youths! He points the heights of heav’n

  To you, the knowledge of the depths profound

  As she read all the verses, those at the table broke into smiles. As Mary pointed out, what a delightful irony for a thirteen-year-old slave to be admonishing Harvard men to embrace the opportunity for an education.

  “It seems to make no sense for those students to be consumed with their own comfort when the colonies are laboring under the Stamp Act.” Mr. Wheatley’s businesses had suffered under the unfair taxation.

  Phillis shuddered. She remembered the riots that broke out to protest the Stamp Act. They destroyed the Stamp Building and smashed out the windows of the stamp master’s house. The yelling, the torches, the anger—it was all frightening.

  “Did you not hear the news?” One of Mr. Wheatley’s business associates put his hands on the table to raise himself to a standing position. “Let me announce it here, then: The Stamp Act was repealed as of March 18th.”

  “Hear, hear!” several men jumped up and shouted. For once Mrs. Wheatley did not admonish them.

  That night, in her room, Phillis wrote a poem to King George, lauding him for repealing the Stamp Act. She poured out her hopes for an end to the troubles between England and her colonies and thanked him for his favors:

  Midst the remembrance of thy favours past,

  The meanest peasants most admire the last.

  The last favor, of course, was the repeal of the Stamp Act.

  The Wheatley mansion had been festooned with holly and ivy in preparation for Christmas. Nathaniel would be home and Mary’s fiancé, John Lathrop, would be visiting. Sadie had been cooking for days, and the house smelled rich with spices.

  Phillis had just finished dressing for the day when someone knocked on her door. Since Lucy had already delivered her breakfast tray, she opened the door, rather than call out her customary, “Come in.”

  Mary stood at the door with lips pressed together.

  “Is everything all right, Mary?”

  “Yes, but Mother needs you downstairs immediately.”

  “Immediately? Are you sure everything is all right?”

  Mary didn’t answer. She just pressed her lips together more tightly.

  Phillis followed her downstairs, trying to guess what could be the matter. She ran through everything she could think of: illness, political trouble, financial trouble. None of those could be described as “all right.”

  Mary led her into the parlor where the whole family had assembled.

  “I have something you need to see.” Mrs. Wheatley had her hands behind her back like a schoolgirl.

  Phillis couldn’t imagine what it was. An early Christmas gift?

  “Look. You are a published poet.” She held out a copy of the Newport Mercury, dated December 21, 1767. Printed right on the page of the newspaper was her poem about the near-shipwreck of Messrs. Hussey and Coffin.

  Phillis took the paper in her shaking hands and let Mary help her sit down. “How did—When did you—” She fell silent. “Thank you, Mrs. Wheatley. I know this is entirely your doing.”

  “It is not entirely my doing. I helped get it to the right people, but had not the quality been there, nothing could have been done to get it published.”

  “I’m having trouble taking this in,” Phillis confessed. She remembered the day she asked her mother if a woman could ever become a griot.

  It was as if Mrs. Wheatley had heard her thoughts. “Phillis, you will be remembered forever as the first Negro poetess in America and one of the first women to be published in these colonies.”

  Phillis remembered the last line of the praise song she made for the gazelle all those years ago: “I hold the memory of you forever.”

  I was Mercy

  Boston, 1768

  Phillis, would you kindly read your newest poem for our guests?” Mrs. Wheatley motioned to Lucy to pull out Phillis’s chair.

  As Phillis stood to read, she could hear the faint cluck of the tongue from Lucy that told of her disgust. Phillis had been part of the Wheatley household for almost seven years now, and though Sadie had warmed up to her and accepted her strange position in the family, Lucy never had.

  Phillis had tried many times to befriend Lucy, but the housekeeper had turned a cold shoulder. Phillis had overheard too many comments over the years to hold any hope of a truce. Things like: “She don’t know if she be white or black.” Or “She’s gettin’ too big for her britches. ‘Cept when she came, if I recollect, she didn’t have so much as a pair of britches to cover her skinny self.”

  Sadie would always shush her, but the words burned like acid and kept burning long afterward.

  Phillis spent many hours praying about the problem. How was she to do the work she loved, connect with the people Mrs. Wheatley wanted her to connect with, and still be one of the servants?

  She knew she was a slave, just like Prince, Sadie, Lucy, and the others. Sometimes it smoldered in her. When she read the Bible and felt the hunger of Moses for his people and for freedom, she burned with the same hunger. She read about the state of slaves in the colonies. She knew she had it easy and the other servants in the Wheatley house had it far better than most, but one thing was missing—freedom.

  Her job now, though, was to help show the world that Negroes could be educated, could do any job a white person could do, including being published. She battled this every day. After all, she was not only a slave but she was a girl. Women didn’t have the opportunity to have the same education as men, and the words women wrote certainly weren’t considered for publication. Every time she thought about it, she realized it wasn’t so different than it had been in her village. She remembered her mother’s silence when she asked if a girl could ever become a griot.

  Sometimes she thought if she could just explain to Lucy what was at stake, perhaps she would understand.

  Probably not.

  But she never forgot that her most important task was to help the colonists see that Negroes had a need for salvation—for Jesus. So many honestly believed that people from Africa did not have souls. How many ti
mes had she heard men say, “They were made for work. We need to take care of them. Without their masters they’d starve.”

  How she wished she could see those men fending for themselves in Africa. Her people would probably say the same thing about them.

  But since she’d found faith—a true and living, breathing faith—she needed to bring along her brothers and sisters. Colonists must understand that in God’s eyes they were all alike.

  “Child, are you going to read, or are you going to stand there woolgathering?”

  She didn’t know how long she’d been standing. Dear Lord, she prayed silently, help my poem open eyes.

  ‘Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,

  Taught my benighted soul to understand

  That there’s a God, that there ‘s a Saviour too:

  Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.

  Some view our sable race with scornful eye, “

  Their colour is a diabolic die.”

  Remember, Christians, Negros, black as Cain,

  May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic train.

  Mrs. Wheatley wiped her eyes as Phillis finished reading. Everyone around the table clapped, some vigorously, some politely. Phillis knew these words were hard for some to swallow, but it was truth. God sent His Son to the slaves as well as to all the well-dressed businessmen at this table.

  “Phillis, please leave your poem here on the table so that we may study and discuss it.” Mrs. Wheatley smiled at her. “And will you go into the kitchen and tell Sadie to hold dessert for a little while?”

  Phillis took her leave quietly, knowing Mrs. Wheatley would press them to consider the things Phillis wrote. In a way, I’m a missionary to the influential people of Boston on behalf of my people. She caught herself and laughed at the thought. Maybe at fifteen she was not quite a missionary, but she knew that her whole life she’d longed to tell stories and create the poems she used to call songs. Now she was doing it.

  As she approached the kitchen she could hear Lucy talking. “She called us a ‘sable race’ and said our color is a ‘diabolic dye.’ That means from the devil, doesn’t it?”

  “Um humh,” Sadie said. “It does, but surely she didn’t mean it like that.”

  “I tell you, she did. She said ‘’twas mercy’ that took her from her ‘pagan land.’” Lucy’s voice became even more strident. “’Pagan land,’ she said.”

  “Are you sure?” Sadie sounded doubtful.

  “As sure as I’m standing here. She’s gone and sold us down the river again. She’s no different from the Africans what sold their own brothers.”

  Phillis felt her chest tighten. Lucy had it all wrong. The poem was about mercy and salvation. Phillis would never forget the horrors she endured—being ripped from the heart of her parents, the beatings and, worse, the stench of the slave ship—but what if she had never come and met Jesus?

  How could they not understand? She felt the breath being squeezed from her lungs as she sank to the floor with a thud.

  She opened her eyes to see Sadie kneeling beside her. “Relax, child. Relax.” The cook propped her up to a sitting position. “Lucy, don’t stand there gaping. Run and get the Missus.”

  Phillis had been in bed for almost a fortnight. She had never had a bout of the asthma last so long or develop into such congestion. Either Sadie or Mary brought her meals to her room. Much of the time she’d slept, but she was finally beginning to gain some strength.

  She longed to have someone to talk to. How she wished Obour lived near. She had been thinking of her friend for days. As she slept, she often dreamed they sat under a baobab tree. Once she had a far-too-real dream of the time they spent together on the deck of the slave ship, sitting between the crates.

  Maybe, since she couldn’t be with Obour, she could write to her instead. She eased herself to a sitting position. She felt like a newborn gazelle—weak and wobbly. She inched her way to the side of the bed. The dizziness and shortness of breath did not come, so she walked the three steps to her desk and sat at her chair. It felt so good.

  A sheet of paper lay on the desktop. It must have been there, waiting for words, since before she fell ill. She took her pen, dipped it in the inkwell, and began to write, shaky at first.

  Dear Obour,

  I have been ill these past weeks but have longed to talk to you. I have no one to whom I can unburden my heart.

  Just before I fell ill, I overheard talk in the kitchen. Lucy condemned me with great fervor. It did not catch me by surprise, but it wounded more than I would have thought.

  I am not ignorant of the state of things.

  To the whites I am a curiosity—an amusement. I am not white enough to have my work held up against the standard for all poetry. To the slaves I am not Negro enough—I am kept from their culture and community. Forget that I came on the same cruel slave ship. And to the Africans I am not African enough, even though I may have been born in their very village.

  Do I sound peevish?

  Well, praise God, I do not have to be Christian enough to be loved and accepted by my heavenly Father. I humbly write the words that flow from my heart, through my quill and onto my paper—words that almost seem to be breathed by the Holy Spirit.

  So my words are accepted by the only critic I long to please.

  Say we will see each other soon.

  Your friend and your sister,

  Phillis

  She folded the letter. Where had her strength gone? She felt so drained she could barely stumble back to bed.

  Sadie came in with a tray. “How are you, child?” she asked, coming to lay a hand on Phillis’s cheek.

  “Sadie, why are you coming all the way up here to bring my food?” Sadie wasn’t young. To reach Phillis’s bedroom she had to walk up the grand staircase and then up the attic steps carrying a tray of food.

  Sadie set down the tray and rubbed her back. “Um, um, um. Are you saying I’m not a spring chicken?”

  Phillis smiled but didn’t answer.

  “I’m so glad you’re awake today and more like yourself. I been wanting to talk.” Sadie sat on the chair by the bed. “I reckoned you heard what Lucy said the night you fell ill. It made you so troubled that your breath caught in your chest, didn’t it?” She pulled the cover up and helped Phillis sit up. “I’ve been coming to tend you ‘cause I don’t need to have Lucy upsetting you no more.”

  Phillis didn’t have enough strength to say much. “I heard her words, but she didn’t understand. And I found I didn’t have breath to explain myself.”

  “I know, child. Mrs. Wheatley been talking ‘bout what an impression you made on her guests.” Sadie spread a napkin across Phillis’s stomach. “One of those guests was a preacher-friend of the Missus, and I hear he been preachin’ up a storm. Miss Mary says that storm sounds mighty similar to the words you brewed in your poem.”

  Phillis smiled but didn’t say anything. If her poem had wounded her own people—if they didn’t understand what she meant—then she wished she could take it all back.

  “That Lucy, she just says what she thinks without thinking ‘bout anybody else.” Sadie dipped a spoon into the porridge, and Phillis stopped her.

  “I can feed myself now.”

  “That’s good. It’s ‘bout time you start perkin’ up.” She stepped back and put a hand on her hip. “Now I don’t want you paying Lucy no mind. She just speaks out, that one.”

  Phillis put down her spoon. “Will she ever like me, Sadie? I never meant to live high and mighty, like she says. I’m only trying to set my hand to the work God’s set before me.”

  “I don’t have an answer for that, child. I do know that if someone bears a grudge against you, the best thing a body can do is start in to praying for them.”

  “I should be praying for her?” Phillis thought for a minute. Why didn’t she think of that? She knew how powerful prayer could be. During the time she’d known Lucy there had been so many things she could have prayed for her. Like when s
he married and then, just a few months ago, when she had her little baby boy.

  She should have been praying for her instead of harboring a hurt feeling that Lucy hadn’t shared any of those events with her. She hadn’t even seen the baby yet. “Sadie, thank you,” Phillis said, as she reached for the spoon. “’Tis what I’ll do. I’ll pray for Lucy.”

  After she’d finished eating and Sadie had cleared away the tray, she got up again and went to her desk. She read the letter she’d written Obour one more time and then folded it in half and ripped it into tiny pieces.

  Instead of complaining, I’m going to start praying.

  Freedom’s Cause

  Boston, 1770

  There’s a mob out there, I tell you. An angry mob.” Nathaniel had run into the house without even brushing the snow off his greatcoat. “Where’s Father?”

  “He’s in the library,” Phillis said as she went to the door to look out.

  “Oh no you don’t.” Nathaniel put his hand on the closed door. “This crowd is worked up, and even if they weren’t, it’s bitter cold with snow deep on the ground. With your lungs, you’d be in bed for a fortnight.”

  “But I heard the yelling from my room and came down to investigate. What is it about?”

  “I can guess what it’s about without any explanation.” Mr. Wheatley had overheard Nathaniel and come into the vestibule.

  “It’s some kind of altercation between the redcoats and the citizens.” Nathaniel took off his coat and hat, hanging them on the hall tree.

  “Nathaniel!” His mother joined them. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him on the cheek. “How very nice to see you.”

  The noise out on the street got even louder.

  “What’s that commotion?” Mrs. Wheatley asked.

  “It’s some kind of riot out there, and I’ll tell you one thing. This unrest is not good for business.” Mr. Wheatley began to pace. “Where is this going to end?”

  Phillis had wondered the same thing. She wasn’t as worried about business as she was about this country of hers. King George didn’t understand the colonists—of that she was sure. Instead of allowing these Americans some leeway, he kept tightening down his rule. He was strangling the colonies. Did it surprise anyone that the independent colonists would push back?