The Book of Negroes

by Lawrence Hill

  "I'm glad you're alive, sister," he said. "Nobody knew where you were."

  I pulled Daddy Moses to his own cabin. The door was gone, a wall had been bashed in and the roof looked like it would cave.

  "Were you there when they attacked your house?" I asked.

  "Sitting on the front step, waiting for them. I heard them drinking and laughing and carrying on, so I looked straight in their direction as they came my way. I told them, 'If the Lord wants me, the Lord will come get me. So go ahead and shoot an old blind man, if killing is in your blood.' Somebody hit me with a gun butt. Another man kicked at my ribs. 'I can't see you,' I told them, 'but I know you. I know each of your voices, and when I meet your Maker, I'm going to tell Him of your carnage. Shoot me if you are so brave.' But they didn't. Cowards, all of them. 'Blind man,' somebody called out to me, 'tell your people to keep out of Shelburne. Stay in your place and there won't be no more trouble.'"

  In my own cabin, someone had kicked the door off its hinges and thrown all my things to the floor. I thought of the men who had surrounded Ben Henson, and shuddered to imagine them tearing apart my home. Outside the cabin, Daddy Moses and I met with a group from his chapel. We agreed to first fix up the houses that had been least damaged. People who needed their cabins mostly or completely rebuilt moved in with others.

  I spent that day and night in Birchtown and much of the next morning, working with a group of ten people to fix up two other cabins and mine. I helped move Daddy Moses into a spare bed in my front room, and at noon, promising to return before dark with my daughter, I headed back to Shelburne.

  I passed the burned remains of the chapel, crossed over the bridge and set out on the path back to town. It was a long way to be walking alone. The wind whipped through the trees to my left, and out on the bay to my right, whitecaps lifted and crashed over and over. Up ahead around a bend in the trail, I heard the loud voices of men. I ran into the forest, and moved quietly forward until I saw saw five men with knives, guns, rope and liquor walking toward Birchtown. There was no point in going back, because they would find me there. But it was dangerous to go on, because they might hear me thrashing through the woods. So I climbed high into a pine tree, pulling myself up onto one sticky branch after another. Then I sat perfectly still. My heart pounded in my chest. My fast breathing, at least, was drowned out by the shouting and laughter of the men.

  They were talking about "shack busting in Nigger Town," when Jason rounded the curve in the trail and found himself surrounded.

  "Where you going, boy?" one of the white men said.

  "I am going to Shelburne."

  "Birchtown where you belong."

  "My mama is in Shelburne. I am going to fetch her."

  "Why is your mama in Shelburne?"

  "Taking in laundry."

  "Taking a white person's job, is she?"

  "She is just washing clothes."

  Another man smacked Jason in the head with a rifle butt.

  "You've gone and spoiled my fun," said the first man.

  "What fun?"

  "I was gonna play with him a little. Teach him a lesson. Kill him slow. Now you gone and knocked him clean out and spoilt my fun."

  "Let's tie him up and have our fun with him later."

  The men dragged Jason off the path, tied him up to a tree close to mine and continued on the path to Birchtown.

  I waited a few minutes to see if anybody else was coming. Jason slowly came to and started moaning. I climbed down, ran to him and hurried to loosen the knots binding his wrists to the tree.

  "Are you okay?"

  "Yes. Good thing you're here," he said.

  "So you're going to see your mama?"

  "Mama died in the riots. She just up and died, without anybody even beating on her."

  As he got up from the ground, I gave him a hug. "That's awful news," I said. "Is there anybody else at home?"

  "No. It was just Mama and me."

  "Why are you going to Shelburne?"

  "Need food. Need work. Need a place to sleep. My mama's dead and gone and our shack's too tore up for living."

  "Those men will kill you if you go back to Birchtown. Come along with me and see what you can find in town."

  We began walking together to Shelburne.

  "All the time we been in Birchtown, you never talked about writing me up in the Book of Negroes."

  "Heavens," I said. "Did I write you up too? I'm sorry, Jason—I worked on so many ships and wrote down so many names that I've just forgotten some of them."

  "I was in an all-day lineup on that ship, and all the coloured folks knew who you were. Little bitty pint-sized fast-talking African woman writing down the names of half the Negroes in Manhattan. You didn't know all of us, but we all loved you."

  "You did?"

  "Because you were taking care of us."

  "And you say I wrote you up in the Book of Negroes?"

  "You did, missus."

  "What did I write?"

  "Don't know, missus. Couldn't read then and still can't now."

  "Why didn't you come to my reading classes in Shelburne?"

  "I'm already nineteen," he said. "It's too late now."

  "It's never too late," I said.

  When we got into Shelburne, I noticed that the ship had left. Jason went to look for a man who had hired him before, and I turned up Charlotte Street.

  I knocked on the Witherspoons' door. Nothing. I knocked again. I tried the door. It didn't budge. I wandered from window to window, to the wood shed, to the well, to the back door, but saw no signs of activity or people inside. I pounded again on the front door, until the woman in the nearest house opened hers and asked me what in tarnation I thought I was doing.

  "I want my daughter, but nobody's home," I shouted.

  "Would you calm down?" the woman whispered. "Hasn't there been enough trouble lately?"

  "The Witherspoons have my daughter, but nobody is home. Do you know where they are?"

  "Goodness, woman, stop all that racket."

  I tried to contain myself. Perhaps if I could control my breathing, the woman would tell me what she knew. "Where," I sobbed, "is my daughter? She's three. This high. Named May."

  "That little thing is yours?"

  I crossed the street and brought my face within inches of the woman's. In my terror and anger, I wanted in the same instant to throttle her and to get down on my knees and beg for help.

  "Where is May?"

  The woman stepped back and cleared her throat. "The Witherspoons left on a ship. You and that girl are none of my business."

  She closed the door in my face. I heard the bolt sliding.

  I crossed the street again, found a rock, and smashed open the shutters covering a window of the Witherspoons' house. I crawled inside. Every room was empty. The tables, dressers and beds were all gone.

  "May!" I screamed over and over again. But no one answered.

  I stumbled down to Water Street. A number of white workers moved about the docks. I marched up to them.

  "I'm looking for my daughter. Three years old. Named May. Have you seen a little Negro girl? Perhaps with some white people?"

  One of the labourers spat near my feet. Others kept working.

  "Please. I just want my daughter. Can anyone say if they've seen a little Negro girl?"

  None of them would speak to me. I wandered out on the pier toward a young man working with rope.

  "Please," I said. "I am looking for my daughter. A little girl. Three years old."

  "I haven't seen any Negro girl," he said.

  "Have you seen the Witherspoons? A man and a woman, who lived on Charlotte Street?"

  "I don't know any of those rich people," he said. "But some sailed out this morning, on the ship. There were three or four families on it. That's all I know."

  I ran off the pier and burst into Theo McArdle's shop. McArdle looked up from his printer.

  "Meena!"

  "Where is my daughter?"

  "D
id anyone see you come in? It isn't safe for you here."

  "I can't find my daughter. The Witherspoons are gone."

  "If anyone thinks I am paying you, they—"

  I picked up one of his newspapers and threw it at him. I grabbed a bundle of papers, opened the door and hurled them out into the street. "What happened to my daughter?"

  McArdle rushed past me to bolt the door and lower the curtain. He brought me a chair and motioned for me to sit, which I did, and he stood with his back to the door.

  "The Witherspoons were preparing to leave for some time," he said. "I thought you knew. And as soon as the riots ended, they decided to get out."

  "But where is my daughter?"

  "When the disturbances settled down, they hired twenty porters to carry their things to the water. Within an hour or two they were gone."

  "White porters, or black?" I asked. Negroes, at least, would be able to tell me something about May.

  "White."

  "Was May with the Witherspoons?"

  He could not speak, but nodded slowly.

  "Tell me," I screamed. "Tell me with words. Did my daughter go on that ship?"

  He turned away and looked to the floor. "Yes."

  "Where did they go?" I whispered. He did not hear me, so I repeated the question.

  "Boston."

  "And you did not stop them."

  "I tried," he said.

  "What happened?" I said. "Tell me!"

  "I left the store and followed them down to the docks."

  "My daughter, was she crying?"

  "No."

  "Was Mrs. Witherspoon talking to her?"

  "Yes, she was saying that you'd be along soon. I tried to speak to Mr. Witherspoon."

  "What did you say?"

  "I asked if it wouldn't be better to leave the child with me. Until you could come back to get her. There were guards on the docks, because of all the riots. Mr. Witherspoon told them I was causing a disturbance. I backed away then, Meena. I shouldn't have done it, I should have complained louder. But I backed off the pier when the guards came my way, and the Witherspoons left with your daughter."

  "Were there any Negroes by the docks? Any people who could speak to me?"

  "No," he said.

  "And my daughter all this time?"

  "In Mrs. Witherspoon's arms."

  "Not crying or upset?"

  "No. She had a tiny abacus—just a toy—and was pushing all the pieces."

  I could think of no more questions, and Theo McArdle had no more to say.

  "I have barely eaten in days," I said, "and I have friends in Birchtown with nowhere to live. Give me some food and I will leave you in peace."

  "I don't have much."

  "Give me something to eat, Mr. McArdle. You let them take my daughter, and I need something to eat."

  From the back of his shop, McArdle brought me a two-pound bag of rice, a ham hock, a bag of peas and a loaf of bread. I took the food and left.

  JASON WAS WAITING FOR ME at the edge of town. He had no food, but he did have a cut on his face. There was no work in town for him and no place to stay. Nobody but disbanded soldiers with guns ready, fists clenched, boots for kicking. Jason asked where my daughter was. I couldn't answer. He didn't ask again.

  We trudged through the mud back to Birchtown. The woods were eerily silent, and free of marauding men.

  "I have lost my daughter," I whispered finally. "My last child."

  "Never say last," Jason said. "Don't say that, Missus Dee."

  "She was my last, Jason, and I am saying it because it is true. Don't look for me to keep you alive again when we set foot in Birchtown. Because I am in the mood for dying."

  Jason slipped the load off my shoulder and hoisted up my sacks of peas and rice. I didn't even think to protest, and I don't know where the next thirty minutes went, except to disappear into a fog of despair. When we arrived we saw that more homes had been destroyed in Birchtown, but at least the white raiders were gone. Daddy Moses was sitting outside my cabin on a fallen log, waiting for me. Jason raised the old man up and we went back to my shack. Miraculously, it was still standing. The shack had more strength than I did.

  For the next few weeks I was in such agony that I could barely speak. I tolerated Jason and Daddy Moses staying in my shack until they had their own place built, but I couldn't think of teaching the Birchtown children, or catching any babies, or working again for Theo McArdle, or doing anything at all. I feared that if I expressed my feelings, so much pain would erupt from within that I'd lash out and kill somebody. I had no money to pay for a trip to Boston, and when I finally asked McArdle or any other whites in town about going there, they insisted that I could be arrested— and possibly enslaved—if I showed up in that city with no money and no person to stand up for me.

  "We don't know that they stayed in Boston," McArdle said. "They could have gone to Philadelphia, New York or Savannah. They could have gone to Jamaica, Barbados, St. Domingue or England."

  With McArdle's help, I placed newspaper advertisements in Boston, Philadelphia and New York, offering a small reward for any information about the whereabouts of the Witherspoons, formerly of Shelburne, Nova Scotia. I asked every white person who would speak to me in town, but not one of them had any details about what had become of the Witherspoons. I even wrote to Sam Fraunces, care of President George Washington, Mount Vernon, Virginia. After six months, I got a friendly letter back, but Sam Fraunces hadn't been able to find out anything, either.

  My children were like phantom limbs, lost but still attached to me, gone but still painful. I stopped cooking, working and eating. For the first time in my life, I had no desire to read. I even stopped thinking about Chekura. Perhaps Daddy Moses was right. If Chekura had meant to come back, he would have returned long ago.

  Daddy Moses asked if I was ready to let Jesus into my heart. I told him that I had had a faith when I was a young girl, that I had had to give it up, and that I wasn't thirsting for another God in my life. He took my hands and turned to me as if he could see deep into my eyes. "But you are good, Meena. So many people love you." Perhaps that was true, but I couldn't see it and couldn't feel it. All I knew was that the people I had loved more than anything else in life had all been torn from me.

  I started attending Daddy Moses's services again. I can't say that they changed a great deal. People were kind, bringing me food, sitting to eat with me when they noticed that I would never eat alone, bringing by fresh lumber and branches and nails, when they could, to help fix up my little place. Jason and Daddy Moses dropped in on me every day. When they set up a class for me, I resumed teaching, and even though I didn't really feel it, I tried to act like I loved the children I was showing how to read.

  Eventually Theo McArdle persuaded me to come back to work for him, and I tried to be interested in the copy I wrote. When I was alone, I read whatever books McArdle could get for me. He found me a map of Africa, but in the interior there were only sketches of hills, lions, elephants and monkeys.

  About a year after I lost May, I got a little lamp and a gallon of whale oil in exchange for catching a white woman's baby in Shelburne. It was the first baby I had caught since losing my own. The pain of my losses never really went away. The limbs had been severed, and they would forever after be missing. But I kept going. Somehow, I just kept going.

  Elephants for want of towns

  OVER THE NEXT FOUR YEARS, I could find no information about May. I believed that she was alive, but had no more idea about where she or the Witherspoons had gone than I did about the whereabouts of Chekura. Shelburne's heyday had come and gone, and many Loyalists closed their businesses and returned to the United States. The blacks of Birchtown stayed, however, and I stayed with them.

  Nearing what I assumed was my forty-fifth year, I had no objection to the silver threads slowly taking over my hair, and wasn't embarrassed to be seen using spectacles with blue-tinted glass that I now needed to read newspapers and books. Theo McArdle had help
ed me order the spectacles from England, after explaining that they were double-hinged and contrived to press neither upon the nose nor upon the temples. The spectacles cost me two months of savings, but I had little else to do with extra money. I had no husband, no children, and no home other than the cabin in Birchtown that I fortified each summer against the coming winter. Twice I had the opportunity to visit other churches in Nova Scotia with Daddy Moses and members of the congregation, but each time I refused. I lived in hope that my daughter and my husband would return, and did not want to be away on the day that they came looking for me.

  In the spring of 1790, the Methodists crammed into Daddy Moses' chapel to listen to a visitor from Annapolis Royal. He was a short, stocky fellow who looked a little older than me, and he spoke in a tone so flat that some parishioners fell asleep. But he seemed to have something urgent to say, so I slipped into the first pew to hear him better.

  "My name is Thomas Peters," he said. "Fourteen years ago I ran from the man who owned me in North Carolina. During the war I served the British in the Black Pioneers, and anybody who doesn't believe me can come on up here and see my regimental papers. I'm just the same as the rest of you: I came to Nova Scotia seven years ago and I'm still waiting for my land. But now I'm tired of waiting and I'm going to do something about it."

  Thomas Peters said he was taking up a collection to travel to England. There, he said, he hoped to speak to members of the British Parliament about the landless Black Loyalists and the perpetuation of slavery in Nova Scotia. None of us imagined that anything would come of it, but contributed what we could. I admired Peters' determination, and gave him ten shillings. After the meeting, I helped him write the conclusion to what he called his Memorial. "The poor friendless Slaves have no more Protection by the Laws of the Colony . . . than the mere Cattel or brute Beasts . . . and . . . the oppressive Cruelty and Brutality of their Bondage is particularly shocking, irritating and obnoxious to . . . the free People of Colour who cannot conceive that it is really the Intention of the British Government to favour Injustice, or tolerate Slavery in Nova Scotia."