An Acquaintance with Darkness (2 page)

"Where are you going?" I knew I shouldn't have asked.

He smiled. "Maybe I'll write. But not right away." He opened the door and peered out into the early-morning street, looking to see who was out there. Nobody was. How different he was now, having to sneak about. How different from the Johnny I'd known in Maryland, whose father's house had eleven rooms, who rode blooded horses, whose manner and bearing were so sure and elegant.

"Johnny!" I grabbed onto his sleeve. "Take care of yourself."

He hugged me again. "We must do the best we can, Emily. We have to find our own way, all of us. And do the best we can. At whatever comes along. Doesn't matter what side we're on. It won't be easy for anybody." He released me. "Things are going to be even crazier than they have been when the war ends. You don't want to go down-country to Richmond, Emily. Stay with my mother. Promise me that, so I know you'll be all right."

I nodded and gulped my tears.

"I've made arrangements with my friend David Herold, who works at Thompson's Drug Store. Whatever you need for your mother, he'll send over. No charge."

Herold was one of his scruffy friends. Johnny had been running with a lot of scruffy friends lately. Mrs. Mary was worried about him.

Then he kissed me on the forehead and went out the door. I watched him go. He turned in the cold rain and waved, then he hunched his shoulders and walked away.

I would never see Johnny Surratt again. I just knew it, the way I know things sometimes. Didn't I know Daddy's name would be on the list of those killed in the battle of Chancellorsville?

I knew, too, that something bad was going to happen to Johnny. I shivered, closed the door, and clutched the handkerchief that said
SUNDAY
, and went back down the hall into the tiny kitchen to start the stove for breakfast.

M
Y MAMA HAD MOMENTS
in her sickness when she rallied. Sat up, even walked around. Then she started talking. Mostly it was about Daddy.

"It was what he set out to do, get himself killed. Because he didn't want to come back and face things. Left me here to face them alone."

Or: "He failed at everything but war. Just like General Grant. No wonder he went to fight for the North. They belonged together, him and Grant." Never mind that Daddy never met Grant. That he was with General Hooker at Chancellorsville, a Union defeat.

There were days she said such mean things about Daddy that I had to make an excuse and leave the room.

Should I tell her Richmond was falling? I wondered. Her sister was there. I was confused. "Don't ever act on your thoughts if you're confused, Miss Muffet," Daddy had told me. "Wait until your mind clears."

And then, on April 4, Elizabeth Keckley came around and confused me more.

She came in the fancy barouche that the White House let her use, with the matched black horses. And with Jehu, the White House coachman.... She'd sent him around to take us to the inauguration in March. But Mama was too sick to go. So I went alone. It was raining. The streets were full of mud, but Jehu took me to the exact spot of the grandstand where Mrs. Keckley's "girls" who worked for her, sat.

Now she came bearing gifts: canned sardines and oysters, slabs of cheese, pickles, honeyed ham, bread. She was angry about the freedmen she'd just visited for her Relief Society.

"Living in shacks!" She drew off her kid gloves. I took her lavender cape and hung it on a peg in the hall. "They huddle together talking of the good old times on the plantation."

It wasn't as if she'd never seen them before. She visited them all the time on Murder Bay, on the lower stretches of the Washington Canal.

Mama said she was Mrs. Lincoln's confidante. She never left the woman's side when little Willie Lincoln died.

I took the foodstuffs into the kitchen. Elizabeth Keckley followed. "You shouldn't have brought food," I protested. But I was glad for it. Now I wouldn't have to dip into the twenty gold pieces Johnny had given me for a while.

"It's left from last evening's reception. Such a waste, all that lavish entertaining. The president eats nothing. Apples on occasion. He's wasting away. I take the leftovers to Murder Bay when I can. But this morning I thought of you and your mama. How is she?"

"No better."

"My best seamstress." She sighed.

My best mother,
I thought.

"The dress she was working on is finished," I assured her. "I stayed up late doing the hem. And I'll finish the flounces on the other Mama was doing if you want."

"Wonderful! You're getting to be a regular little dressmaker. Would you like to be in my employ when your mama passes on?"

I pulled out a chair for her and set down two cups.
The water was boiling for tea. I fetched it. I poured carefully and spoke the same way. "I never thought to become a dressmaker."

"What did you think to become?"

"Nothing yet. I'm only fourteen."

"When I was fourteen, I was sent from home to live with my master's eldest son and his wife. I was their only servant. I did the work of three."

But you had no choice,
I wanted to say,
you were a slave.
I didn't say it.

Elizabeth Keckley was nigra. But not like Ella May. There were two kinds of nigras in Washington. The contrabands, who came expecting forty acres and a mule. They were trained only "to the hoe," as people said. At first the white people welcomed them. But now there was a lot of bad feeling. There were never enough rations for them. In winter many died in their shacks. Nobody knew what to do.
We fought the war for this?
You could see it on people's faces.

Then there were the regular people of color who had been in Washington for years. Many of them now resented the contrabands, because they disturbed the order of things. And because the whites were beginning to mark no difference between the contrabands and the nigras who had education and jobs, like Elizabeth Keckley.

We learned about the problem in school. "Who will bear the increased taxes for schooling the contrabands?" Mrs. McQuade asked us. "When the war ends, who will get the jobs? Who will have a place in the new order of things? Think, girls, think!"

Girls who attended Miss Winefred Martin's School for Young Ladies were supposed to think. Mama said Daddy had always wanted me in a school like that and had set aside money for my schooling. "I honored his wishes," she'd said. "I just want you to know that."

Elizabeth Keckley was awaiting my answer. "Do you mean for me to come and work for you right away?" I asked.

"I fill my openings right away. I must. I have other important clients besides Mrs. Lincoln. And with the war ending—well, next fall will be a brilliant season."

"I have to finish school. My daddy wanted it. He paid for me to do so."

"A person goes to school to find a means of support. I am offering you that."

"Daddy said a person goes to school to learn how to think."

She stirred her tea. "I and my race have not had the luxury of that."

She'd had a hard life. Mama said she'd lost a son in the war, a half-white son, her only child. I knew, too, that she'd purchased her own freedom. That was no small accomplishment. Yet I knew she would never understand why I didn't want to become a dressmaker.

I didn't quite understand it myself. What would I do when Mama passed on? All I had were the many vague ambitions and desires that Daddy's lessons and my schooling at Miss Winefred Martin's had instilled in me. And Johnny's twenty gold pieces.

I knew there was more in life than taking up occupation with the needle. Mama had set out every day for work with no joy. And come home with less. I wanted to do something else with my life, something fine. I didn't know what it was yet, but I knew I could do it if I set my mind to it.

I felt the knowing in my bones sometimes. The surge of desire to accomplish. The opening up of possibilities. The connection to dreams. It pounded in my blood at given moments.

"You must harness those feelings," Mrs. McQuade had told me. "Focus them on your goals like you focus a telescope on a star. You must work hard and study."

"Where will you live?" Elizabeth Keckley was asking.

"I don't know yet."

Her yellow-green eyes fixed on me. Cannon from one of the many fortifications around the city would fix on you with less accuracy. "I can find you a room with the family of one of my girls, if you wish."

It would have been so easy to say yes, I'd take the job, I'd live with the family of one of her girls. I could always have got Daddy's tuition money refunded by the school. Then I'd have had that plus the money from Johnny. But then the rest of my life I'd have been unable to see beyond the seam I was working on.

"Did you notice how the sun came out just as President Lincoln got up to speak on Inauguration Day?" she asked.

I said yes, I did.

"Most people remarked on that. I saw something else. I saw the star that came out in the heavens. It was noon. It was a brilliant star. It was the noonday of his life at that inauguration. It was a sign, a summons from on high."

Now she sounded just like Ella May, who saw omens at the drop of a hat. The morning she left she'd said she was going not only because the government didn't give her two shifts but because there was a curse on the street. Bad things would soon happen here, she'd said. A curse on H Street? I'd laughed. The people here were so dull they would welcome a curse or two.

"We don't all get a star at noon," Mrs. Keckley went on. "The rest of us have to muddle through and find our summons from on high where we can. The trick is to answer it when it comes."

The trick for me right now was getting through Mama's death. I thought it a bit presumptuous that Mrs. Keckley thought her offer my star at noon.

"There is not always a star at noon, Emily. There is not always a star. But when a summons is given, we should take it."

"I appreciate the offer, ma'am. I would like time to study on it."

She set her cup down. She stood up. The broad shoulders in the black silk dress with the lace collar were straight. She was not accustomed to having her wishes disregarded, I could see that. "I hope you are not thinking of living with the Surratts," she said.

I stared at her. "I don't know yet where I shall live."

"That woman allowed her brother to take your mother's house. There is a serpent in the breasts of those people. Once serpents take up residence in a domicile, they do not vacate the premises."

I sighed. For
all your accomplishments,
I thought,
you are still like Ella May.

"And now I will pay a short visit to your mama. Is that tea for her?"

I'd fixed a tray. "Yes."

She reached for it. I handed it over. "Don't tell Mama that Richmond has fallen," I said. "Her sister is there. It would cause her needless worry."

The yellow-green eyes met mine. She nodded in compliance. "We are all people of contradictions," she said. And then she said something else. "We all, at some time in our lives, have an acquaintance with darkness. It will pass." Her silk gown rustled as she went out into the hall and up the steps.

Half an hour later, when she left, she kissed me. "You will always have me for a friend," she said. I watched her get into the barouche and drive off.
Another friend,
I thought.
Suddenly I have friends all over the place.

Standing on the front steps, I looked over at the Surratt house. Annie was just going up the walk. She'd been shopping. Her arms were full of bundles. She smiled and waved. I waved back.
Serpents in the breast,
I thought. And I laughed.

T
WO DAYS LATER
Mama was having one of her rallying days, so she said it was all right if Uncle Valentine came to call. He'd sent a note around. There were matters he needed to discuss, he said.

I got her out of bed, dressed her in a good morning gown, fluffed up her hair, and gave her a goodly supply of clean handkerchiefs. She was spitting up blood. I knew she would want to conceal this from Uncle Valentine, what with him being a doctor.

"A noted surgeon," Mama called him. She said it with mockery. I did not understand why. Uncle Valentine had gone to school at the University of Edinburgh, in Scotland. For most of the war he worked long hours in Washington military hospitals. He now taught at the National Medical College. And did experiments in his laboratory there.

For as long as I could remember he had been looking for a cure for the Wasting Disease. I did not know what this disease was. But he was obsessed with finding a cure for it. Mama said he sometimes took in people off the street when he thought they had it.

"He studies them," she said. There was contempt in her voice. Mama also said there was no Wasting Disease. Even while she coughed up blood and wasted away in front of me.

"He claims his wife died from it," Mama said. "What she died from was drinking rum distilled through lead pipes."

The day Uncle Valentine came to call there was a parade outside our windows. Washington paraded if President Lincoln got over a cold. Still, I couldn't very well keep the fall of Richmond from Mama. The day was clear and bright for the first time in weeks. From outside came the sounds of cannon firing, people celebrating, bells ringing, soldiers marching.

When I told Mama about Richmond, she sighed. "So the war will soon be over, then. I am glad I lived long enough to see it. Have there been any letters from my sister?"

"No. But I'm sure it's just that she's too busy, Mama," I said.

"You can't go to Richmond to live now. She'll have all she can do keeping her own body and soul together." She seemed resigned. "Where will you go?"

"Mrs. Keckley has offered to find me a place." I didn't tell her the Surratts had offered, too.

She nodded. "Elizabeth is a good woman. I'm lucky to have her as a friend ... Emily, you must promise me something. When I die, don't let my brother have anything to do with my body or the funeral."

I almost dropped the fresh daffodils I was arranging in a vase. "Mama, please don't speak of dying."