Ahab's Wife (80 page)

Dear Una,

I am home. And have been home for many a day, week, month, two years, I think. Again, I hope and long for freedom. But I am home. Did you get my first letter? Are you well?

I still have Nature, the book I borrowed. It been my grammar and my speller. I've taken the sentences all apart so that they are just a string of words. I've learned them all. Now I can put them back together to make my own meanings instead of those of Mr. Emerson, the author. I want to write my story for you, Una, up to this point, because you taught me my first letters. If I could, I would write to Mr. Emerson who has given me so many words. Thoughts, too. Now I take a back-stitch and go back a little before where I left off last time.

As I retraced my journey to the north side of the Ohio River, I prayed it might be froze again, for I doubted my ability to transcend were it not. More than froze, it was completely still and filled over with snow. At both banks, the snow curved up in drifts, so that the river seemed more like a trough of snow. A long swale. Nothing there but me and all that white snow glittering in moonlight, just a sickle moon, and starlight.

When I stepped off the bank, I sunk up to my chin, but my feet landed firm. I held up my basket, had my tin honeycomb box and the patty-pan in it, and commenced to plow across. Moses parting the snow. Going back to Egypt, though. That snow lying on the river ice was light as white feathers. I stopped in the middle and looked back at the furrow I made. Whole world was quiet, quiet. Got
to the other bank and the ice rotten. I felt my foot going through, tried to hold on but might as well try to grab a cloud. When my shoulder hit, that thin ice just crack open. I knew I was swallowed up. All alone, nobody to help me. Whole land shout, “One basket-toting, home-sick, Mam-sick, blackgirl—she nothing.” Shout, and echo, too.

I don't know how Nature did it, but she speeded time for me. When I look up through the cold water, I see the full moon. Must have been Moon didn't want Earth to swallow me up. Moon pulled me out. I brought my face up out of that ice water. I felt the freezing against my scalp soon as I came up. My feet on slippery mud underneath, but I slip and I claw, I break back ice like a loose tooth till I get to firm.
Run!
That's what my bones told me.

I knew I must run all the way to your cabin. I have to tell myself Lift knees, Push feet! Over and over. My clothes freezing. I made myself run. I drive myself like no whip in hand driver ever drove nobody. Faster, faster. Feet like cold flatirons. Lift knees, lift. Dress froze stiff on my thighs. And there it was. Smoke in the chimney. I burst in. Half dead.

Well, there wasn't any Una there, but there was Daniel, running north. He build up the fire, wrap me in warm blankets. We get acquainted, and I make a long story short. He never forced me, but one evening when he was sitting in the rocking chair, I just climbed up in his lap because I wanted to. Wasn't too many nights till we sharing the bed.

Maybe a week passed. He begged me to run back north with him, but I explained I had to go back for my mam. I see a new kind of owning, the way he look at me. Man owning woman type of owning. What I didn't know for a long time was I was carrying his child with me. I said good-bye to Daniel standing in the snow on the riverbank. Hole in the ice still marking the spot where I went under, just a little skin of clear ice over the water. We tried to fork up my basket with my tin honey box you gave me and the patty-pan the Shakers gave me, but we couldn't get it. Daniel chose a new spot, put down logs in case the ice rotten all along. Then he walked peaceful as could be over the river. Got in my old track where the snow still rumpled. Stars watched with me, Daniel climbing the north bank,
gone into the snow and woods. Last sight, him slipping round tree trunks.

I walked south. Met the Spring and then the Summer. Folks helped me again, and I saw some I couldn't help but would have if I could. A great drove of Indians walking west. They had dogs to pull their loads, hardly any horses. I saw a family stop, dig a hole, bury a child, knees to chest. I listen to the mourning song.
Torn from the side of suffering
was what I thought. The line walked around them while they buried by the trail. I was hid under a mountain laurel. Knees pulled up to my chest. Finally the family fell in with the line, walked on west. I cried.

I planned what to say if I was caught. “Please, oh do please, take me home. I was stole away.” But I wasn't caught. Everything looked right to me, farther on south I traveled, the kinds of trees, the bushes, the slant to the sunlight. It was all way too pretty, I thought, couldn't be all bad. One night the lightning bugs came up to meet me. One other night, though, I see this glowing that was too big for lightning bugs, and I wondered Baby Haints. All in a cluster, pale and bleary. They bobbed and swayed a little in a group. Scary, but I had to see what. When I got closer, I see this was a gourd vine over a blackberry bush. Those little gourds had whitish ends, and the ends reflecting moonlight. I decided to stop there, sleep under that glowing—you can find little rooms inside where blackberry canes curve over.

In the morning, hanging in the vine was a pair of shoes.

“Who left these shoes here?” I say to the woods.

“I did.” I see an old black man sitting on the ground, head screwed sideways, cheek on his knees, grinning.

“Haint?” I ask.

He shook his head No.

“Who?” I asked, and I wanted to laugh, like all this a big joke. “Why?”

“And how?” he said, mocking at me. “And when?” He had a high-pitch cracked voice.

I wanted to hear him talk, so I just kept my peace.

“I, the Shoeman.”

“You got many customers in these woods?”

“I gib away,” he said. His voice sink down so deep and muddy I could hardly understand him. “Bout here, long this stretch, where shoes gib out. I gib anybody a pair of shoes, if he need them. Them soles is polly-wally wood.”

I unhooked the sandals from the vine, slipped my foot onto them, nice shaped foot bed, tied the laces threaded through the ends of leather straps. “They fit.”

“Girl, you think I make something don't fit?” Voice all high. “I measure your footprint.” Voice sinking low. “But you headed the wrong direction.” Voice at the bottom, thick.

I told him I was going home. He just shook his head. He didn't say no more. I look away, I look back. He gone. Nothing but space where he was. But he didn't take the shoes.

When I walked the last mile home in the dark, a mockingbird commenced to sing. I knew that was a bad sign. Seemed like he followed me. I wanted holy quiet. But that bird just kept shooting off his mouth. When I looked in the window, I see a candle and a woman sitting at a table, sewing. My mam worked the field, she didn't sew. I saw she squinted her eyes, and my mam never did, and I saw she was stout, and my mam never was, but it was my mam.

The window was swung open on the side hinges and I just ducked down and stood in that little wedge space between the glass and the opening. I breathed home air. Saw children sleeping round the room, big quilting frame. Saw her skirt hem resting on the floor. Head bent.

She didn't look up, but my mam said, “Is that you?” still sewing. “Susan?”

Una, it was my mam, and she knew me without looking.

Oh, I sat on her lap, and she told me get the buttermilk pitcher, get the cornpone off the shelf, and it had her own handprint over the pone top. I knew she watched me stretch up to the bread shelf, and she said, “You come home to born a child into slavery!” Her words just burst out. Mean as sparks.

I said, “I come for you.”

“Look here,” she said, and she pulled up her skirt. I standing there with the pitcher in my hand. Where they should have been a foot was only a stump wrapped in rags. “Now you grow me a new foot while you grow that baby. Maybe then, we run.”

My heart broke. “You want me to kill 'em?” I said. My voice
sunk low like a growl I never heard. I heard the mockingbird sing, too, Una. So shrill. Like it want to scream but not got the throat for it.

She didn't answer me straight. “I try to run. They catch me. Take my foot.”

“You want me to kill 'em?”

I cried myself stupid, on her lap. “Sho. Lets think about killin em.” She rock me, spoke it over and over, like a lullaby song. “Lets think, lets think.” I listen to the children sleep. Some my own kin, some she must of been keeping. “Lets think bout it.” Finally I breathing with the younguns. My mam told me to get in bed, over against the wall. She said she was so stout now couldn't anybody see over her to see me. I got in, and then she used the ladder-back chair to help hop. Three hops. And her way too heavy to hop at all.

When morning come, my anger was melted down to sorrow. For her. Night melted me. I don't know how. I don't know why. Only a sorrow lump left. Grief was for me, too, cause I couldn't leave her.

I did what I had to do, her standing in the door calling “Wait now. Lets talk this over. Lets plan.” I went through the quarters to the overseers house. Knocked on his door. I looked at the ground like I was ashamed. Orange tigerlily blooming by his step. Door opened, I mumble so humble never looking in his face, “I was stole away, sir, but I done found my way home.”

He knock me down. “Reckon I best brand you,” that's what he said, “so nobody won't steal you off again. Get up.” I follow him inside his cabin.

He sat me on the three-legged stool by the fire, heated up the branding iron till it was white, and sunk it in my cheek. His wife gave me a wet, cool cloth, folded in a square. Walking home, there the mockingbird. Hopping in the dust. He see me, he jump quick into air, two white fans spreading out of his two wings. My cheek with an oak leaf. Burning. Burning bad. For Thousand Oaks. The name of this place where I am. But you mustn't use it for address, lest I be beat. I find you someday, Una. When freedom come. If you could buy us all, I would pay you back. And I got a baby. When she was born, I say to my mam, “This baby's name is Liberty.” I named her for yours. I shamed to born her to slavery, but that name helped, so I could smile a little.

My mam say, “Lets name her Liberty Lee, and we'll jus' call her Lee. Time being.”

She smiled so big, and so did I. So would you. All sneaky. We will have freedom, and we will have it right this time. I have no doubt. My faith is firm. My mam called in the children and holding up my baby girl to the sun in the window she said to all them what I say to you, “This is the day the Lord hath made. Let us rejoice, be
glad
in it.”

My girl is growing, and sometimes I whisper other names in her ear, magic names whose meanings I don't know. “Orpheus Eurydice,” I whisper, for she is the sweetest life I know.

In love and hope abiding,

 
Susan Spenser Oaks