As she was doing this, she glanced out the window. And she almost dropped the pencil. Dobbin the horse looked back at her, flicking his ears at flies. The Kigleys’ farm wagon had just pulled up outside. Mr. Kigley was climbing out. He said something to Mrs. Kigley and then headed across the street—toward the saloon, it looked like.
Bridie watched, transfixed. She was trapped if any of them should come in here. And she couldn’t leave; they were right in front of the door.
Mrs. Kigley was hauling a bundle out of the back of the wagon—oh no. She was bringing something to trade, which meant she was going to come into the store.
“Mr. Hoskins, can I go out the back door?” said Bridie hastily.
Mrs. Kigley and Lavinia were headed right for the front door of the store.
“Why?” said Mr. Hoskins.
“Because, um—” Bridie thought wildly. The Kigleys were at the door now. Through the glass panes Bridie could see a hand-shaped purple bruise on Mrs. Kigley’s face. “Um, it embarrasses me to be seen carrying a sugar loaf.”
“Why should it? My sugar is not produced with slave labor.”
The front door opened. “Please!” said Bridie urgently.
Mr. Hoskins rolled his eyes. But he lifted a section of counter for Bridie to slide through, and he pointed her to a door at the back.
Bridie didn’t have time to thank him—she fled.
“Who’s that?” came Lavinia’s voice.
“Hired girl that works for the Stantons,” said Mr. Hoskins.
“What’s her name?” Mrs. Kigley sounded suspicious.
“Phoebe,” said Mr. Hoskins as Bridie ducked out the back door and closed it behind her.
Had Mrs. Kigley seen her? Bridie wasn’t sure. She needed to get away from here, fast. She was on the steep riverbank, and she half slid, half climbed down it. The blue paper wrapping of the sugar loaf got a bit dusty.
She cut down toward the canal and crossed the catwalk by the factories in the Flats. Even with all the houses, shops, and factories on Fall Street hiding her from the Kigleys, she still felt safer taking a roundabout route. After she’d crossed the river and the canals on the factories’ footbridges, she went around the sawmill and up the hill to the Stantons’ house.
Mrs. Stanton was at her writing desk, with heaps of letters open before her.
“Oh, how nice, here’s one from my husband.”
Bridie wasn’t sure if Mrs. Stanton was talking to her or not.
“He says he’s becoming quite the Free Soil Party lion. Thousands of people are coming to hear his speeches. Isn’t that nice? Goodness, how did you get so dirty, Phoebe?”
“From the printing press,” said Bridie. She looked down at the dust on her dress, from sliding down the riverbank. “And just…stuff.”
“Are they going to print our notice?”
“Yes, I watched them set the type myself.”
“You must have watched very closely.”
“They let me set one of the words!” Bridie burst out. “I want to be a printer.”
There was a moment in which the words hung on the air. Saying it aloud made it seem real. Preposterous, perhaps, but real.
“Well, perhaps you’ll marry one,” said Mrs. Stanton. “Then you can help him in the shop and, who knows, he might leave it to you when he dies.”
That sounded like an unnecessarily complicated way to go about learning a trade. “I don’t want a husband,” said Bridie. “I just want to be a printer.”
Mrs. Stanton gave her a long, thoughtful look. Then she said, “Well, be sure you clean up before dinner.”
She looked back at her husband’s letter. “It’s what he’s doing that’s going to be remembered, you know. The Free Soil Party. Imagine, a whole new political party, just to keep slavery from spreading to the new territories. No one will remember our little convention. But one must start somewhere.”
She shuffled through her pile of letters. “Frederick Douglass and Amy Post are both coming down from Rochester on the train, and we’ll have my sister and the Motts and…I wonder if any of them can stay at the American Hotel….Oh dear. Phoebe, I’m afraid you’ll have to give up your room.”
“They’re all staying here?” said Bridie, surprised.
“Most likely. Let me see—I’ll move the boys in with me, and then if we put you at the top of the stairs, we can put Mrs. Mott and her sister in the boys’ room, and Frederick Douglass and Mr. Mott—”
There was a sudden crack of thunder. Mrs. Stanton jumped; she did not like loud noises.
“The laundry’s outside!” said Bridie.
She and Mrs. Stanton ran outside. The sky was a menacing dark gray. Hurriedly they gathered clothes from the clothesline and bushes, while the thunder rolled and lightning flashed. A pair of drawers escaped, and Bridie had to chase them across the yard before she caught them.
Laden with still-damp clothes, Bridie and Mrs. Stanton ran inside just as the first big raindrops came splatting down.
* * *
For the next few days, Bridie and Rose were busy getting the house ready for all the visitors. Mrs. Stanton helped sometimes, but mostly she spent her time writing her declaration for the convention. Bridie saw her working on it late into the night, by the light of the camphene lamp, muttering to herself, “When in the course of human events…”
Rose was terribly excited about Frederick Douglass.
Bridie didn’t understand why. “Who is he?”
“A colored man who runs a newspaper,” said Rose.
Bridie must have looked unimpressed. Lots of men ran newspapers. Now, if a woman ran a newspaper, that would be news.
“And he wrote a book,” said Rose. “He escaped from slavery and wrote a book about it, which a whole lot of people have read, including me. And he makes speeches against slavery; he travels all over to do it, even to England and Ireland.”
Ireland.
“Like Mrs. Stanton’s husband, then,” said Bridie.
“Only a lot more so.” Rose gave up on trying to explain.
“Why’s he coming to a women’s rights meeting, then?” said Bridie.
“Because he’s for women’s rights. Just about everyone who’s coming is an abolitionist,” said Rose. “It’s human rights.”
There was that phrase again. Human rights. Bridie thought about everything that had happened in Ireland, and how the people had starved while the grain they grew was taken away from them and the houses they lived in were pulled down by the landlords.
Then she thought about Mr. Douglass’s newspaper. He must have a printing press.
Bridie and Rose were helping Nancy, the cook, make a fricassee of chicken. The day was much too hot for cooking, but there had to be something for dinner, especially with guests expected. At least they could do some of the work outside. The girls were out on the back stoop, plucking chickens, when they heard the first guests arrive.
There was a distant roll of thunder.
“I hope a storm’s not going to come and ruin Mrs. Stanton’s convention,” said Rose.
“Well, it’s inside. In the Wesleyan Chapel.”
“Yes, but people have to get there. They won’t come if it rains. Or not as many people.”
The girls looked to the north, where they could see dark storm clouds passing on the horizon.
“It must be raining on the Erie Canal,” said Rose.
“Amy! Frederick!” Mrs. Stanton’s voice came through the screen door. “How delightful that you could both come. Why, Amy, what is this?”
“A small gift made by the Rochester Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society and Sewing Circle,” said a woman’s voice.
“How lovely, what fine stitching. I’ll take it through to the kitchen—and Frederick, this is your new newspaper?”
“The Nor
th Star. Hot off the press. Possibly still a bit wet behind the ears.” The man had a deep, rolling voice and a somewhat sardonic tone.
“There can’t be many editors of color in the country,” said Mrs. Stanton.
“Four, as it happens,” said the man. “Now that I may count myself among that number.”
“I like the masthead. ‘Right is of no sex—Truth is of no color….’ Did you have any trouble on the trip down?”
“The usual difficulty,” said the man. “The train conductor labored under the misapprehension that, despite having purchased a ticket as a human, I would prefer to ride in the baggage car. I disabused him of the notion.”
“He hadn’t met Frederick before,” said the woman. “Now he has.”
Bridie and Rose had come into the too-hot kitchen to see the new arrivals, bringing a dead chicken with them.
Mrs. Stanton came in holding a pot holder and handed it to Bridie, who took it with her unchickened hand. Embroidered on the pot holder were a man and woman dancing and the words
Rose, meanwhile, had gone to the doorway and was staring into the parlor at the visitors. Bridie went and joined her. She saw a tall, impeccably dressed colored man with sharp eyes that missed nothing, and an elderly white lady with a formidable nose and a mouth that looked ready to laugh.
“These are Phoebe and Rose, who are a great help to me,” said Mrs. Stanton. “Phoebe, Rose, meet Mrs. Post and Mr. Douglass.”
Both girls curtsied, Bridie with difficulty because she was still holding the pot holder and the dead chicken.
Bridie felt a rush of pride at being called helpful in front of these clearly important people from Rochester. As for Rose, she was staring at Mr. Douglass and looking positively awestruck.
“Girls, why don’t you show—” Mrs. Stanton glanced at the dead chicken. “Rose, show Mr. Douglass and Mrs. Post to their rooms, please.”
Rose went off to lead the way upstairs, and Bridie went back to plucking the chicken while the cook chopped vegetables. The kitchen filled with a grand smell of frying onions.
* * *
Rose turned left at the top of the stairs. It was too hot upstairs, even with the windows open. You could smell the floorboards baking.
“Mrs. Post, you’re in here,” said Rose, “and there will be some other ladies coming tomorrow, um, and they’ll be in here with you and, um, I guess you probably want some water for washing which is in the well.”
This sounded dumb to Rose, and she hastily added, “And I’ll get it for you,” and wished that Mr. Davis had let her recite more often in school so that she’d be better prepared to speak on important occasions.
“That’s fine, dear; I can get it,” said Mrs. Post.
“All right, um, good.” Rose led Mr. Douglass back across the landing. Now she was really nervous. Mr. Douglass was the most famous colored man in America; quite possibly the most famous colored man in the world.
She knew he had been enslaved in Maryland, and that he had escaped by getting on a train and riding north to New York City, where he’d gotten married and changed his name twice to avoid pursuit. And he was a famous speaker against slavery, who traveled all over the place, and people paid money to hear him—white people paid money to hear a colored man.
“Um, so, um, this is your, um, room,” said Rose to the famous speaker.
Mr. Douglass sat down on one of the beds.
“And, um, Mr. Mott will be in it with you tomorrow if he gets over what’s ailing him and, um, water,” said Rose.
She was really mangling this.
Mr. Douglass smiled. “Rose: that’s almost like my daughter’s name. How old are you, Rose?”
“Eleven, sir.”
“My Rosetta is nine. And do you go to school?”
“Yes, sir. For as long as I can.”
“And your parents, they live here in Seneca Falls? What does your father do?”
“My mother’s dead and my father’s on a whaling ship.” Rose found herself talking more easily now. Mr. Douglass was only human, after all, especially now that he was sitting down. “That is, he was on a whaling ship, but now I don’t know, because I haven’t heard from him in a long time.”
Mr. Douglass winced sympathetically. He did not need any explanation of what that meant. “What is his name?”
“David Wilson.”
Mr. Douglass took a small notebook and a pencil out of his pocket and jotted something down. “I shall make inquiries. I know people in New Bedford and Nantucket, where the whaling ships dock.”
He put the notebook and pencil away, and Rose suddenly had the impression that he’d made just that same motion many times, with the same not-too-hopeful expression on his face each time.
And Rose didn’t want to hope. She’d hoped when her mother was sick, and it hadn’t helped. But she found now that she couldn’t help it.
“Thank you, sir,” she said.
“And so you live with Mrs. Stanton?”
“No, sir. I board with Mr. Ferris Moody over on State Street, and I make a living doing deliveries and errands for the factories,” said Rose. “And a bit of extra work now and then, like helping Mrs. Stanton.”
“And with all of that, you still manage your schooling? A veritable wonder!”
“I’m a little bit in ar…” Rose searched for the right word. “Arr…behind with my rent, but Mr. Moody will wait till the school term’s over.”
“Arrears?” said Mr. Douglass. “Hmm. We’ll see what we can do about that.”
Rose felt shy; she hadn’t been asking for help and she certainly hadn’t meant to beg. “I manage, sir. Do you think my father’s been kidnapped and sold?”
She blurted it out all at once and then stood twisting her hands and waiting for him to answer.
“I don’t know, Rose.” He said it like he did know. “I know that my friend Mrs. Sojourner Truth hasn’t heard from her sailor son in years, and she has similar concerns. However, while there is life there is, of course, the usual.”
“Hope,” said Rose.
“Precisely so. And if all else fails, you know, you can simply come and move in with the Douglasses. Everyone else does, and my wife is quite accustomed to it. There are plenty of schools in Rochester.”
Rose stared.
“The accommodations are not quite as commodious as this,” he added, looking around Mrs. Stanton’s spare room. “Right now we have ten fugitives sleeping on a carpet in the attic, until we can raise money to buy them boat tickets to Canada. But we all cram in somehow.”
“I help out with the Underground Railroad sometimes,” said Rose proudly.
“Do you! Excellent. And yet how I wish that our white friends did not trumpet the Railroad’s existence. Far better that the slaveholders should wonder how their so-called property keeps mysteriously disappearing northward.”
Rose felt somewhat rebuked.
“Tell me of your schooling. Does your teacher treat you just the same as the white students?” Mr. Douglass looked concerned, and Rose remembered his daughter Rosetta and thought he might be thinking about her.
“Not exactly. He never lets me recite.”
“And does he expound some reason for this?”
“Parents might complain.”
Mr. Douglass sighed. “Here in York State, so much more is expected of us. Everything we do is taken as a sign of how much colored people can or cannot do. But if we succeed too much, we are thought to be taking something from our white countrymen.”
“But Mr. Davis just ignores me!”
“No doubt he talks about you more than his other students. He probably discusses your successes and failures with his friends as a sign of what the colored race can and cannot accomplish.”
Rose found this thought extremely depressing. She was just Rose; she didn’t want to
be a sign of anything.
She told Mr. Douglass about the arithmetic.
“What! Girls not learn arithmetic! But my wife, Anna, excels at it, although she cannot even read. She is the banker of the family. She counts, adds, multiplies, and most frequently, in the nature of things, is obliged to subtract.”
Rose wished Mr. Douglass would tell Mr. Davis this.
“Not only that. I know of a young colored lady, also named Davis, who is a special student in mathematics at an academy in Massachusetts, and she intends to become a physician.”
Rose was astonished at this, and felt suddenly hopeful. “There’s a lady over in Geneva studying to be a doctor, but she’s white.”
“And just in the nick of time, both of them,” said Mr. Douglass. “For I fear our country is headed to war.”
Rose had not heard this before. “With who? Whom,” she corrected herself. Mr. Douglass was clearly the sort of person to notice whether you whoed when you should have whomed.
“With ourselves, over slavery. I used to think otherwise, but I recently spoke to a wool merchant in Massachusetts named John Brown, and he convinced me that the only way forward is through a sea of blood. America will not give up slavery without a fight.”
This was overwhelming and big. Rose didn’t know what she wanted to happen. A sea of blood sounded really bad. Then again, she thought of some of the fugitives that she’d helped, the ones who’d come through on the Underground Railroad. She thought of some of the stories they’d told. A sea of blood didn’t sound like enough.
“I’ll get you some water,” said Rose.
She went downstairs, her head full of all the large ideas that Mr. Douglass had filled it with.
And he might be able to find her father. He hadn’t sounded very confident. But he knew people he could ask.
She tried not to hope. She needed to help get dinner.
In the morning the sky was bright and clear. The storms had passed by to the north, and left Seneca Falls undrenched. There was a great fuss of getting ready for the first day of the first-ever women’s rights convention. There were books and papers to find, and sandwiches to be made and packed.
Starting from Seneca Falls Page 7