The Third Mrs. Galway

by Deirdre Sinnott

  “He weren’t born there?”

  “No ma’am.”

  “Him and you about the same age?”

  “He been around my whole life. Really, I ain’t never been without him. Him and me, we come up together.” Imari’s eyes shone as if she were lost in a memory of him.

  “How old are you?”

  “My momma don’t read or nothing, so I don’t know exact. But the moon was high and she counted from that. Near as I can figure, about thirty years old. I feel like a hundred.” Maggie only nodded. Imari’s nose crinkled. “Oh,” she said, “this here tea ain’t sitting right.”

  Maggie took the cup. “So, this Ruggles, he told you about Hickox?”

  “He figure that if we stay, there gonna be big trouble, for us and him too. He scrapes together his own money ’cause he don’t think he got time to wait until he can ask his friends or nothing. He puts us on a steamer up the Hudson River. So off we go. I got a veil on. Joe, he dressed like a little girl.” She smiled, her eyes happy with the memory. “He hate that,” she whispered. “Now don’t you go telling that I told you.”

  Maggie smiled too. “I bet he ain’t good as no girl.”

  “Well, we here.” They both snickered.

  “You ain’t answered me,” said Maggie, getting serious again. “Why Utica?”

  “That just how it go,” replied Imari, shrugging. “We ain’t in charge.”

  “Now,” said Maggie, leaning slightly forward, her eyes sharp, watching Imari closely, “I’m asking for God’s honest.”

  “Mr. Ruggles sent me here. That’s the truth.”

  “Now ain’t that something,” said Maggie, leaning back and crossing her arms. “I ask you direct. You gotta know that the truth is more than not lying.”

  “What do you want?” said Imari, holding her gaze.

  “It’s a big world. There’s a lot between Virginia and Utica. But here you is. So why? The whole story.”

  Moments passed with Imari quiet. She met the cook’s gaze. “You can’t say nothing to Miss Helen.”

  “I ain’t got no reason to tell nobody.”

  “Well, Missus Bea? One day she don’t feel too good, so she sends me to the kitchen to get her a little something to settle her. Master James seen me leaving her room and he got that look—you know how they get.” She glanced at Joe to make sure he was still asleep.

  Maggie nodded.

  “Like they suddenly struck with the best idea they ever had, and ain’t nothing gonna put them off. So Master James, he grabs my hand and pulls me into his room. He got one right next to Missus Bea. I guess he like to think that maybe she gonna catch him at it or something ’cause that ain’t the only time he done it to me there. Only that day we go into his office. He got a big desk and he spends a lot a time there scratching in his books.

  “Well, he gets up on me and gets to it just like he wanted, but he sweating like a slave out in the tobacco field. I catch him in the light from the window and he don’t look so good. Next thing I know, he twists up his face and moans real strange and crash down—dead.”

  Maggie gasped and crossed herself. “I ain’t gonna say he didn’t have it coming, but you musta been scared.”

  Imari looked at the ground, shaking her head. “At first I don’t understand. But he don’t move. Finally, I gotta push him into his chair to get out from under.” She put her hands together and raised them. “How can dying be so quiet?” She relaxed and again rubbed her belly. “He the biggest thing in my life, never let me alone. There ain’t almost nothing that I done, no move that I make, no decision, no pain, nothing happy that he don’t know about. Master James be that big for me. And he just leaves life? His soul there inside him and then gone? He don’t even cry out? Just like that, he ain’t nothing but empty skin?”

  “What’d you do?” asked Maggie.

  Imari shivered. “First off, I didn’t know what to do and I just sorta stood there looking at him, like someone was gonna come help me. I know I got to shake that off, so I go to the door between his room and Missus Bea. She snoring like some kinda bear. Her husband dead and she lost in a dream. Best to leave her be, poor woman.

  “I know if he gets found like he was … you know … they gonna look at me and accuse me a something. So I get him dressed proper and lean him over his desk, real peaceful like. I check and there ain’t nobody coming to look for him, so I think maybe I can find something, a little money or something. I go back and get to looking on his desk and that big book he got. This the thing he spend his life scratching in and looking at. So I open it up and there be Elymas’s name.”

  “You can read?” Maggie straightened. Imari nodded. Her voice quivering, Maggie asked, “What’d it say?”

  “It say: July 13, 1805. Bought. Male. Infant. Elymas. $75 from Thomas Galway of Utica, New York. Via Abel Hickox.”

  Maggie appeared to be sitting quietly, but a whirl of memories battered her heart. Her stomach twisted like a wrung-out towel. Over the years, there had been no real reason to suppose she would ever see her little lost baby again. Anytime hope warmed her breast she denied it, turning her mind to the present and all the tasks that awaited her. After she was officially emancipated in 1827, along with all the remaining slaves in New York State, she thought about moving out of the Galway house. But the irrational idea that little Elymas might be somewhere nearby crying out for her … looking … yearning … stopped her before she even packed a dish. If she felt the notion resurfacing, she ruthlessly shoved it down, knowing that for her life to move forward she had to give up on the baby. But had life moved on after Elymas had been stolen? She had no husband, no other children, no real intimacy. Overwhelming grief had seized her thirty years ago and everything after that stood still—except time.

  She remembered the day that frost had painted the grass sparkling white and there was still plenty of autumn left before the ground froze hard and life shrank down to fit inside four walls. Augustin had entered the kitchen from the back just as she opened the bread oven. He was a handsome young man, powerful and easy in his movements, filled with assurance that his path forward would be smooth. Cold air came in with him, rushing along the floor, moving her skirts and circling her ankles. She noticed his smile and then quickly looked away and pushed some tree bark onto the stone surface of the bread oven.

  “What’re you doing?” he had asked, grabbing a piece of kindling and holding it over the flame of the cooking fire.

  “It’s Monday,” she said, appearing disinterested. “Every Monday since you been born the bread gets baked.”

  “I know.” He looked down as if wounded somehow, then he handed her the burning stick and she brought it to the pile of bark.

  “You got no work to do?” she asked, shifting to the wood stack. She selected a sturdy log. Once in the fire, wisps of yellow-orange flames licked around the limb, dancing in each cleft, turning it black. A snapping spark flew out of the oven, bouncing off her mouth.

  “Are you burned?” Augustin asked, cupping her chin in his hand. His fingers brushed her lips. The softness of his touch erased the sting of the ember. Before she knew what was coming, he kissed her. Stunned and excited, her tongue mingled with his. The kiss seemed a natural answer to all the teasing they had engaged in over the years. He leaned on her and pinned her against the fireplace, whispering, “I love you,” again and again, as his hips pushed against her. Just as she was about to shove him away, he maneuvered her to the floor and lifted her skirts. She tried to keep them in order, but he pressed himself into her. Through her shock, she understood that trouble had come her way.

  Eight months later, Augustin’s father, Thomas, called her into the library and accused her of being with child, though he had used a much harsher term. He demanded to know who the father was, color rising on his neck until it was almost purple. When she refused to tell him, he struck her across the face. Frightened and in tears, she admitted that the perpetrator had been Augustin. He was summoned to the room.

  “Wha
t is the meaning of this?” Thomas barked at the young man. “Did you fuck this nigger of ours?” He slammed his fist on the tea table. “Because she’s carrying someone’s bastard and she says it’s yours.”

  “I … I,” started Augustin. Maggie watched him, her eyes pleading. He squared his shoulders. “I will do what’s right.”

  “Do what’s right?” the old man bellowed. “It is far too late for that.” He strode to his son and slapped him too.

  Augustin staggered, unbelieving.

  “You disgust me,” said his father. The old man paced the room. “Leave. I don’t want to see you again today.”

  Augustin slinked out.

  The elder Galway summoned the stable boy and ordered that his closed carriage be readied for a long journey. He hired two men to switch off driving them day and night, changing horses often. Maggie was imprisoned inside the darkened coach for what felt like days. She barely saw the light until they arrived at a slave market in Richmond, Virginia.

  Weak with fatigue, she was placed in a pen with other women. When her labor pains started—hurried along by the journey, she figured—she was moved to a dingy room with a single bed. A slight woman named Peg attended her, bringing water and some bread. Peg never looked into Maggie’s eyes. Over the pain-filled hours, she almost forgot where she was and that she was to be sold. Peg helped her through, staying until she placed the wet crying baby on Maggie’s stomach. The boy found her breast and began to suckle on her yellowy milk. Maggie closed her eyes and imagined that she was at home and that everything was safe. As the child took nourishment, something inside her soul had aligned.

  She woke to Peg bringing her food.

  “He got a name?” asked Peg.

  “He’s Elymas,” said Maggie. “Just like my granddaddy.” She stroked the infant’s head. “What’s gonna happen to us?”

  “Far as I know, Mr. Hickox, a dealer for a plantation up the Potomac, talking to your master.”

  “He gonna buy us both?”

  “Maybe,” said Peg, patting her hand. “I ain’t heard.” She looked away. “Just keep praying.”

  Hours passed with little Elymas suckling and sleeping and looking up at Maggie’s face so seriously that her heart soared, even in the shabby room. After three days she overheard voices outside. She sat up fearing that she was the topic.

  The conviction that she and the baby would be parted seized her. Panic set in and she began to frantically search the room for something, anything to help her. One look at an old blackened woodstove and she knew what she had to do. She pulled a small fingernail knife from the pocket of her clothing where she had secreted it during the journey south. She carefully unwrapped the tiny baby and laid him on the bed. He looked up at her, seeming amused by this new situation. His little feet waved in the air. She seized one of them and kissed it. “I’m sorry,” she said, and then as fast as she could, she carved a few lines across his sole. He screamed. Before anyone could unlock the door, she ran to the stove and swiped her finger along the soot that had built up above the opening. She managed to get back to Elymas and rub the black soot into the wounds she’d made.

  The man she would come to know as Hickox burst in.

  “She’s killing it,” he barked, pushing her aside and sweeping the baby into his arms. “Take it, Abby,” he called to a tall dark woman, who relieved the slaver of his burden.

  “Don’t take him,” Maggie begged Abby. For a moment, the two women’s eyes met. Maggie detected a pitiful look of loss. That’s me now, she thought, as the tall woman hurried from the room.

  Energized, Maggie lurched toward the door.

  Hickox stepped in and swatted her with the back of his hand. She crumpled to the floor.

  “What are you doing with my baby?” screamed Maggie, holding her face. “Who are you?” She forced herself to her feet and stumbled toward him.

  Hickox grabbed her by the throat and threw her to the bed.

  Maggie rose, still reaching for the lost babe. Hickox shut the solid wood door with a bang and turned the lock. She tried to wrench it open, her anguished cries reverberating off the walls. After pounding until her hands were bloody and bruised, she finally moved back to the bed and curled up with her emptiness. Hours passed. She slept fitfully, awakening with a terrible certainty that something was missing. The single image of Elymas’s little face as he looked up at her filled her mind. She sobbed until she again fell into unconsciousness.

  Time passed, and during her waking hours she knew that somewhere in the great big world on the other side of the wall was her baby with that man and woman. How could they know what an infant needs? She touched her aching chest. Wetness. Yellow stains marked her night shift. Her breasts swelled with milk, but she had no tiny babe to suckle. Please, God, she prayed, bring him back.

  The door opened. Filled with hope, she struggled to her feet and saw Augustin. He must have the baby with him, she thought, rushing toward him.

  “Give him to me,” she said. “I need to feed him.”

  “The infant is gone,” he said, his voice harsh, but his eyes appealing to her as if he were still a boy seeking her approval.

  “Dead?” she wept. That devil must have murdered the poor little child.

  “Forget him if you can,” said Augustin, straining to keep his voice from cracking. “It will be easier if you forget.”

  “How?” she screamed. “You think you can just forget? He’s your son too!”

  Augustin looked stricken.

  She shoved past him. “Elymas! I’m coming.”

  Augustin followed her down the hallway, finally grabbing her around the waist. She fought, arms swinging wildly. They fell to the floor. A wave of frustration pressed her down. Her strength melted away.

  “He’s gone,” said Augustin, desperately. “But you’ve been saved. Father agreed to let you come home.”

  “You did that?” sobbed Maggie, pushing herself up to her elbows. He nodded. “You stupid, stupid man. It’s all ruined. If you let me go, let me be with my baby, maybe I coulda thought kindly about you … But now?”

  “Hit me,” he said.

  Maggie didn’t move.

  “I’m sorry,” he murmured. “There was no other way for you to come home.”

  She looked at him with hard eyes. “You do that for me, or for you?”

  On the road out of Virginia, Thomas Galway did all the driving. Maggie sat alone on one bench of the carriage, Augustin across from her. She kept waiting for a chance to run and find Elymas, but her weakened body betrayed her. Sick of looking at Augustin’s contrite face, she curled up under a blanket, her head covered. He tried to talk with her, occasionally pulling down the blanket, but she only looked away, too dead inside to even fight.

  Thomas, apparently disgusted by his son’s simpering attitude, detoured to New York City. There, Augustin was instructed to “learn the banking trade,” and was left to make his way in the world.

  When she was back in Utica, she tried to forget the boy, telling herself he was dead, pushing any thought of him out of her mind. At first, she forced herself to forget the image of the tiny baby at her breast, a thousand times a day. Then, for a time, she focused on punishing Augustin’s father. As long as she felt constant pain, he would too. Sometimes she planted a thorn in his shoe or a burr in his clothing. When he complained, she rejoiced. She spent time carefully choosing river pebbles to secrete under his sheets in the exact spots where his bad hip rested. Once, when he was recovering from a nasty gash on his hand, she boiled his bandages in peppercorns, inflaming the wound. Each time she saw his reaction, her strength grew.

  Five years later, Thomas Galway finally died, not of anything she did, she was almost certain. She let herself celebrate. Anytime she felt melancholy, she summoned the vision of his gray and lifeless corpse. Augustin, now a wealthy man, returned to Utica to bury his father. With him was his beautiful new bride, Emma.

  After the pair moved into the house, it was awkward for both Maggie and Augusti
n. But they seemed to grow accustomed to seeing each other again. The little lost boy was never mentioned. Emma made a special effort to be a benevolent slaveholder and though she never knew about the child, her bright presence did much to mend the rift between Maggie and Augustin.

  Some time after that, Maggie went a full day without remembering Elymas. When had that happened, exactly? She never forgot the baby who had looked at her with such seriousness, but she rarely allowed herself to revisit that pain.

  Now back in her own bedroom, she looked at Joe—her grandson—and the woman who was carrying her second grandchild. Some part of Elymas had been returned to her. The miracle she had hardly allowed herself to pray for had come to pass. Everything had now changed. She decided to wait just a little while before she told anyone, giving the information time to settle.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  THE UNEXPECTED PASSENGER in the coach that the wealthy New York silk merchant and ardent abolitionist Lewis Tappan had hired to drive his party from Albany to Utica, was a short, powerfully built, bright man with a wide-open face and a deep indent between his brows, as if his mother had laid her thumb against him while he grew. He wore a suit, borrowed from Mr. Ruggles, who sat next to him. Though the outfit was of a handsome cut, it pulled at his shoulders and sagged at the knees. His head had been freshly shaved, his rusty hair left behind in New York City. A passerby would see a prosperous Negro with a limp and an unsightly scar at the corner of his mouth. The passenger felt a lightness of heart that had been absent from his last months. He was alive, no longer in chains, riding in a fine coach, among powerful friends, and heading for the city where, according to Mr. Ruggles, his wife and son said they would be waiting for him—if the Great Lord had allowed them to get that far.

  Elymas had last glimpsed his family from the chilly ground in the woods outside Hightstown, New Jersey. He thought back to that terrible moment. The previous few days of travel had gone well, until they arrived in Allentown, where they couldn’t find their contact. The ladies in Bordentown had said that there was supposed to be a barn with an oil lamp in the window. They passed by a number of barns in the small hamlet, but they were all dark and shut up tight. Finally, with the birds beginning their morning chatter and the sky starting to lighten, they decided to rest behind a huge gristmill. The water from the mill-stream flooded over the stones in the creek bed. The back of the building looked quiet enough.