The Abolitionist's Daughter

by Diane C. McPhail

  This is Thy grand prerogative, And none shall in the honor share,

  Emily could hear the reverberations of a few hasty departures behind her. As the hymn neared its conclusion, only the piano continued. Before the last “amen,” Emily slipped from the pew out onto the side stoop. Ben Aiken materialized around the corner. Startled, he dropped his eyes and skirted around her. Emily stepped into the churchyard. Sarah Benson and old Mrs. Claiborne approached, arm in arm. Their unabashed stare unnerved her. Men disappeared in various directions. Her old playmate Elsa Stanford nodded to Emily and stretched out a hand to detain Sarah and Mrs. Claiborne. The three lowered their heads and spoke in low voices, but Emily could not fail to notice the almost imperceptible gesture of Elsa’s shoulder raised in her direction. Why did I come? she thought.

  Emily’s horse lifted his head as she approached, then continued to graze at the bare edge of the yard. The trio of women stood between her and the buckboard. Emily inhaled, raised her narrow chin, and walked past them without turning her head. But she saw that they turned theirs. As Emily passed, she heard Sarah’s scathing platitude, “There but for the grace of God . . .” Her voice trailed off.

  Michael Lambert stepped away from the back of the church. He lifted his hat to the women without looking their way and took Emily’s arm. The buggy was only steps away, but she was grateful for his support. She did not look at Lambert until she had mounted the buggy. His smile was gentle and sad. Emily took the reins, lifted her head, and turned toward, rather than away from, the little cluster. The huddled women in their awkward hoops scurried out of the path of the oncoming horse.

  “Beware how you speak of God’s grace,” Emily said as she passed them. “You may find yourself in need of it.” She did not look their way and had no idea if they heard her. It did not matter. It only mattered that she had the courage to say it out loud.

  * * *

  Ginny watched through the window as Emily dismounted the buggy. She was already at the door when Emily came up the steps. Emily brushed past without a word and Ginny followed. She did not ask. She simply waited.

  “Ready for your dinner?” Ginny said at last.

  Emily seemed to wake from a trance and nodded. As Ginny turned to leave the room, Emily detained her. “Sit with me, Ginny.”

  “All right. Dinner can wait.”

  “No, sit with me to eat, Ginny.”

  “Miss Emily, I—”

  “Please, Ginny. Just please.”

  Ginny nodded.

  Emily played at the food with her fork as she had done as a child with carrots or broccoli. Ginny ate little herself.

  “What do you make of the church, Ginny?”

  “The church, Miss Emily? Which church?”

  Emily looked up, surprised. “Well, any church: Methodist, Baptist, Episcopal, Catholic. Any Christian Church.”

  “In the South?”

  “Well, yes, of course, Ginny.”

  “The ones always preaching obedience to us slaves?”

  Emily looked into Ginny’s dark, wide-set eyes.

  “That ain’t no Christian Church, Miss Emily.”

  “Not Christian, Ginny?”

  “Your daddy taught me to read. That’s Christian. Give me a Bible and I read it. Mostly about Jesus. You know what he say first time he speak out?” She saw that Emily had abandoned the fork. “He didn’t come to no rich white folks, Miss Emily. He come to the poor and he say, ‘I come to set the captive free.’ Now, who you think that is? That be us, Miss Emily. That be us slaves. We the captive, we the bruised reed he come to free, like Moses to the pharaoh. Now I grant they’s Christian folk amongst the rich white. Poor white, too. Plenty of good Christian folk. More than we might know for sure. And they’s good Christians who don’t cotton to the church; don’t never darken the door. But if that church was true Christian, wouldn’t be no slaves, wouldn’t be no lashings from the good Christian masters and mistresses, and there wouldn’t be no war. Wouldn’t be folks like your daddy going against the church and the law to treat us right, ’cause right would be the way of things. Like Jesus said, every little thing you do, you do to him.” Ginny picked up both plates. “I wished you hadn’t asked me that, Miss Emily. But you did and now you got your answer. Maybe not the one you wanted.” She paused to study Emily’s face. “Then again, maybe it is.”

  * * *

  In the dim autumn chill of her father’s study, Emily shivered. The Union had come out victorious at Antietam, but slavery was not yet the primary issue of Lincoln’s agenda. Pulling back the heavy green brocade of the drapes, Emily felt the warm sun on her fingers. The room was as she remembered, of course, but its dark walnut paneling wore the hush of her father’s absence. The deep-wine Persian carpet absorbed her footsteps. At the desk, Emily fingered a neat stack of papers, secured with a red glass paperweight she remembered giving her father long ago. Its surface was cool and smooth to her touch, the red fold deep in the glass inaccessible.

  The drawer was locked. After a bit of searching, she found the key in an inlaid box. Inside the drawer, as she had expected, was the embossed black ledger, with its gilt-edged pages. Tracing the lined sheets with her little finger, she found the names of every slave her father had inherited or bought, grouped in families, along with a record of births, marriages, and deaths. There were no sales.

  Beneath the ledger lay a thick envelope, bearing the judge’s seal in red wax. Cautious, so as not to tear the paper, Emily pried the closure loose with a silver letter opener, engraved with her father’s monogram. Tarnished, she noted. The wax left a red stain on the cream paper of the envelope. Inside lay a stack of documents, certificates of emancipation or of manumission, one for every slave, dated from September 2, 1859, forward, bearing her father’s signature and seal. Scanning a handful, Emily noted with irony that a few of the detailed physical descriptions no longer matched the appearance of the intended recipients, who had grown up or grown older, gained weight or lost hair. One had died, and several more had arrived since the certificates were filled out. She placed the papers on the desk and lay her forehead on the papers. When Ginny came to find her, Emily was asleep.

  Ginny withdrew and closed the door, but her momentary presence wakened Emily. She stirred and gathered herself. Using her father’s form as example and checking against his precise inventory, Emily wrote certificates of manumission for every slave for whom papers were missing. She studied the letter for the one slave who had died and placed it at the top of the pile to give to the woman’s son. He could carry her in his memory as a free woman. Emily gathered the stack of papers and went to ring the bell for the hands to come. This was her father’s long-wished heritage. Legal or not, at the end of the day, she would own no slaves. Their freedom had waited long enough. Several months would pass before Abraham Lincoln would issue the Emancipation Proclamation in January of 1863.

  CHAPTER 29

  “Mason, what brings you way out here?” Adeline pushed back her bonnet and shaded her eyes against the sun. “Come in. I’m done here.” She picked up the empty laundry basket, adjusted a clothespin or two on the line, and brushed her hand down a wet sheet that had folded back on itself in the breeze.

  “Just scouring the country round about. Keeping my eye out for skulkers. Of several varieties.”

  “And do you find them?” He caught the edge in her voice.

  “No, but I find a lot of rumors about them. Folks that are scared will believe any old tale, even if they made it up themselves.”

  Adeline smiled, a rarity in her life these days. She opened the door and motioned the sheriff in.

  “Mainly I thought I’d put your mind at ease that I delivered your ultimatum to Lucian. Where’s Thomas?” he said.

  Adeline hesitated, looking Mason in the face.

  “I expect he’s propped against a tree somewhere out back with his bottle, Sheriff,” she said. “Do you need him?”

  “No, ma’am. But I imagine you do.”

  Adeline slid the
basket onto the table, holding hard to its sides, her shoulders rising as she took in a deep breath.

  “I’m sorry, Adeline. I don’t know what took hold of me to say that. I stepped clean over the line on that one and I’m begging pardon. I reckon I better keep scouting.”

  “No, no pardon to be given, Mason. You just stepped on the truth, not the line. Have a seat. I was about to have my tea anyway. Or what passes for tea these days. You might as well join me.”

  He touched her elbow. “Adeline, there’s something I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time now.”

  Adeline hesitated before looking up. “Perhaps there is something I should tell you first, Sheriff.” She stood very still. “Belinda is getting married again. To George Gattaway.” She studied his face for reaction. “Yes, I see you know him. She wants me at the church tomorrow morning. I am loath to be there, Sheriff. The man is a snake. Ill-treats his slaves.”

  “May ill-treat her, Adeline.”

  “She chooses for herself, Sheriff. I have no sway with her at all since—” Adeline grasped at the edge of the door. “I am searching for the words here. There is something that she doesn’t say and I cannot be around her now.”

  “What are you thinking?” he asked.

  “How different,” she said. “How very different from Will.”

  “Will was a man of integrity.”

  “Yes,” she said. “His death so—” She paused, seemed to have difficulty speaking. Then, “So here is this man who bought his way out of service. Paid for young Graham to take his place. Now, that boy is dead.”

  “So is Will,” Mason said.

  “Yes, Will is dead. So are they all. All dead, Mason. And what have you done about it?”

  “I can’t go to the front and bring Jeremiah back, Adeline, hard as I want to. I can only pray the war will do my job instead.”

  A long silence ensued before Mason positioned his hat on his head and stepped from the porch.

  “Mason.”

  He stopped.

  “What was it you wanted to tell me?”

  “Nothing that won’t wait. Maybe another time.” He looked back once to see Adeline standing in the sun, her bonnet hanging down her back, her hand shading her eyes.

  * * *

  A slow drizzle commenced after dawn the next day and continued through the morning, with brief glimpses of sky that assured better, then broke their promise. Another disastrous spring seemed on its way, the weather as erratic as Belinda herself. The air was cool and barren, the ceremony brief. Adeline watched as Belinda, now Mrs. Gattaway, gathered the rose silk of her skirts and bestowed her new husband with her gloved hand and her smile. A light-skinned slave held an umbrella over the bride. Belinda did not look back, even to wave, but leaned toward George’s bald head, whispering. The couple’s laughter rolled over Adeline as the carriage pulled away.

  The rain stopped and a fine, evaporating mist swayed up into the forsythia blooming in the churchyard. Adeline gazed around. The whole empty horizon glowed in the damp air. No one was there. Adeline was struck both by its beauty and by her aloneness. By her losses: a husband drowning in drink, her two sons both horribly dead, the daughter with whom she had never connected gone into a life with no place for her and with which she disagreed—sickeningly so. And Emily, gone in ways for which she had no words, the one who had become the daughter of her soul. What had she left of her life? And then her breath came deep, her shoulders straightened. There were the children. The children were Emily’s, but the children were themselves. The children were not Emily. What had she been thinking? How had she surrendered so to Belinda’s and Emily’s power? Rosa Claire and Lonso were her grandchildren, Charles’s children. She would see them. She would enlist Ginny. These children would know her. She was their blood.

  The parson and his wife came out of the church and brushed by her, turning to murmur their farewells.

  “Is there anything I can do for you, Mrs. Slate?” the parson said. Adeline realized she could not recall his name.

  “No. No, thank you, sir.” She smiled at the wife, whose name perhaps she had never known, and extended her hand.

  “You’re all right, then. Are you sure?” the woman said.

  “Yes, thank you. I shall be quite fine. Quite.”

  Adeline mounted the wagon and turned it, standing, in the direction of Emily’s house.

  CHAPTER 30

  News of the war came spasmodically and the post was unreliable. Another letter arrived and Emily tucked it into her pocket, where it stayed until dark had descended. She lit her lamp and opened the envelope with grave reluctance.

  Near Vicksburg

  March 23, 1863

  Sister Emily,

  I have succumbed to one of the fevers that assails this hell of a camp, as you will note now returned toward Vicksburg. My remaining coat is in tatters. I am grateful for the blanket but never sure when it may be stolen from me even by one of my comrades, many of whom have forsaken their Southern honor and become no better than animals themselves.

  Since I am quite ill and appear now not much more than a skeleton wearing my skin, which I thankfully still have, who knows someone might steal that next, I thought I should reveal a small ugliness I did against you before you are in too much need of it for the spring shearing, which season must surely arrive sometime in the not too distant future. Though you may have missed it last year, the fever seems to bring it to my mind and give me no rest. On gathering things at my departure, I concealed two pair of Father’s best shears. It was petty and impulsive, but you will find them in the shed on one of the high shelves above where the axes hang.

  Perhaps you will forgive me that, if not much else.

  Your brother,

  Jeremiah Matthews

  Proprietor

  As the days progressed and the spring of 1863 wrapped its warm cloak across the farm, Emily walked out to the edge of the fields. Taking hold of her heavy petticoat, she lifted her skirts. The soft chirring of insects surrounded her. Her black dress magnetized the sun’s heat onto her shoulders. Raising her head to the sky, Emily turned in a slow circle, then faster until she spun like a child. Her skirts swirled against the high grass. Above her, the clouds whirled and blurred like spun sugar. Overwhelmed by dizziness, she tumbled to the ground, with a fleeting vision of her mother’s laughing face, the sound of it lost in the whirr of startled insects. Nausea rose at the drunken whirling of the white-flecked sky. She blinked hard to stop the reeling world and groped through the bruised grass to steady herself. She sat up. The spinning diminished.

  She stared at the edges of her apron pockets, frayed by the habit of thrusting her roughened hands into them. Her fingers were raw, and not only from work; she was chewing them again, tearing them bloody with her teeth as she had after her mother died. She remembered a bitter compound someone had put on her fingers to prevent her chewing, but she had chewed them, anyway, had chewed the bitterness and stripped the skin raw until they were infected and two nails fell off. The nails had grown back slightly crooked and remained so. Now her palms were rough and chaffed from plowing, and from other chores she was learning alongside the hands: to keep the place from falling apart, to survive the war, to slow the steady disintegration of her life.

  Lying back, Emily stared into the depths of the sky. Above her the clouds had stilled, but her stomach continued to lurch. With her fingertips, she grasped the insubstantial edges of the grass. Plucking a blade, Emily pressed it between her thumbs and blew, producing a thin, reedy screech much like the whistling she could never master, however patiently her father tried to teach her. Emily remembered his full, deep tone, but the tune somehow escaped her. Already, she was losing him, the daily reality of his presence draining out of her like the last drops of water through a sieve. Soon, he would be only her fading memory of him, with blood stuck to the edges.

  Emily struggled to her feet and ran. Below the barn, her boots slipped in the fetid muck. Stumbling, equilibrium gone, she caught her
fall with one hand, plunging into the tool shed where she spun, oblivious to the alarm her flight had generated among several servants at work nearby. Desperate, she rifled after her father’s mislaid shears. She had no way to reach the high shelves. The intensity of her anger multiplied. On the worktable lay Benjamin’s crate of carefully organized tools. Emily’s chaos rebelled against its order. She shoved the box onto the floor, scattering the hoard of nails and screws and bolts. Grasping at neatly hung hammers and files, her hand fell on an ax. She jerked it from the wall, capitulating to the horror it evoked, the memory of the warm chicken in her hands, its thudding heart, and Charles’s face as the ax came down. Reeling under its weight, she twisted, its momentum spinning her round. It slipped from her hands and flew sideways into the heavy muscle of Benjamin’s thigh. He did not make a sound, but she heard the chunk of the blade before it fell to the ground. Lucian, who had been running behind Benjamin, lurched through the door. He gathered his crumpling father in his arms and lowered him onto the dirt floor.

  “What you did, Miss Emily? What you done did?” Lucian said.

  Emily dropped onto the dirt and crawled toward them, staring as the blood soaked through Benjamin’s breeches. Lucian jerked the kerchief from his neck and tried frantically to wrap the wound. Emily’s flailing hands were in his way, the kerchief too short. Emily knelt back, caught the trailing hem of her petticoat and tried to tear.

  Breathless, Ginny appeared, Jessie and Nathan at her heels. Stepping over the two huddled men, Ginny snatched the fabric from Emily’s hands. Lengths and lengths, she ripped, throwing them toward Lucian. Emily heard the tearing, the rustle of the faded pant leg as it disappeared beneath the winding strips of petticoat. No one asked anything. No one said a word. Lucian and two other men helped Benjamin up and took him away.