An Acquaintance with Darkness (23 page)

"Tomorrow. On the ten o'clock train to Richmond. I have to leave, Annie. I can't live in that house anymore. Something bad has happened."

Her eyes darkened. "It's Robert, isn't it? You've been seeing a lot of him. He hasn't been playing free with you, has he? You're not in trouble?"

"Oh, God, Annie, no."

"Well, what else could be so bad?"

I stepped inside the hall. Immediately I felt dizzy. Memories can do that to you, make you dizzy. It was all too familiar—the textures, the light, the smells. "It smells good in here," I said.

"I'm baking," she said. "Come into the kitchen."

"Are you having company?"

"No. I'm baking to keep from going insane."

We sat in the kitchen. She reheated some coffee and gave me a cup, then went back to kneading her bread. "Now tell me," she said.

"You must promise not to tell anyone."

"Oh, in heaven's name, Emily, who would I tell? Who talks to me?"

"Well, you were right. About Uncle Valentine. He is stealing bodies."

She went on kneading. I told her the story about Myra, the trip to the college, the burn victims. She kept right on kneading. I sipped the dark, sweet coffee. For a moment or two after I stopped talking, she said nothing. A clock chimed somewhere in the far reaches of the house. Puss-in-Boots came into the kitchen and rubbed against my skirt, recognizing me. I picked her up.

"And so that's why you're leaving?" Annie asked dully.

"Yes," I said.

"You want to know what I think?"

"You know I do, Annie."

"I think you're spoiled and selfish, Emily. I think you don't know when you have it good. I think you're like your mother."

If she had slapped me, I couldn't have been more shocked. "Annie," I said, "don't you understand what I just said? He's a body snatcher. All of them—Robert, Maude, Marietta."

She never stopped kneading that bread. "Have you ever had a burn, Emily?"

"Not really."

She picked the bread up, threw some more flour on the board, and slapped it back down. She wiped her hands on her apron and poured herself a cup of coffee. She was getting thinner than ever, but her back was very straight in the old calico dress, and she did not turn around from the stove as she spoke. "Wouldn't you like to think that if you were burned someday, doctors would know how to treat you?"

I did not know what to say. "Yes."

"I've seen my mother suffer so with her migraines. Wouldn't it be wonderful if someday doctors knew what caused migraines? I understand Mrs. Lincoln gets them. And wouldn't it be wonderful if the next time a president got shot in the head they'd know what to do for him? Think of it! If they could have saved him, Mama wouldn't be in jail."

"Maybe she still would be," I said.

"But not in danger of being hanged."

I could say nothing to that.

"What's so bad about what your uncle has done? How do you think doctors got to know everything they now know? By working on dead bodies. My God, Emily, stop being a child. Look how your mother died. Coughing her lungs out. Maybe he'll cut into these men while he's at it and find out about lungs!"

"It isn't that," I said. "It's that they all lied to me. I can't live with people who have lied to me."

"Oh, my Lordy." She raised her eyes to the ceiling and gave a bitter laugh. "They lied to you, did they? Well, what do you think my brother Johnny did to us? What do you think my mother did to me? But I still love her. I'd give my eyes to have her back here in this house living with me right now. And Johnny, too! My God, Emily, they're going to hang my mother! They've got all the evidence against her. This trial that's coming up is just a formality. They want to hang people and they're going to hang them. Now,
there
is trouble. Not the fact that your uncle Valentine is trying to find a better way to treat burns and lied to you."

Silence in the kitchen. Except for Puss-in-Boots. She was purring.

"You're measuring everybody else's problems by your own," I said.

"That's right, I am."

"It isn't fair. The yardstick for measuring doesn't work anymore if you do that."

"That's right," she said. "If they hang my mother we're going to have to throw the yardstick away. Because nothing will be more unfair, Emily. So I would advise you to thank God there are men like your uncle Valentine and Dr. Mudd, who care so much for humanity that they are willing to take chances and break the stupid laws."

I set the cat aside and stood up. "There's no talking to you anymore, Annie. You don't care about anyone else. All you care about is your own problems."

"Because I
have
problems. And they aren't imagined."

"Other people do, too, Annie. Next to yours they may not seem important. But mine are. And I'm sorry you can't see them as I do."

She shrugged and started kneading the bread again. "I've been through too much," she said.

"Does that mean you don't want to be my friend anymore?"

"No. It means I've been through too much. Johnny's gone. My mother's in prison. Alex is dead. My home is up for sale. I have to sell it."

"I lost my daddy in the war and my mother died. I don't
have
a home."

"You have your uncle!" she snapped. "And a good home, and Robert paying court to you. You want advice? Go home. And forget about what those noodleheaded girls at school are playing at. Your whole life is ahead of you. Mine is finished."

"Annie." I moved toward her. I touched her arm. "You're still young. Your life isn't finished."

"Isn't it?" She drew away. "I'm a Surratt. I have to live with this name forever. Who will want anything to do with me?" Her face was taut, white, ugly.

For a moment I felt sorry for her. Then in the next moment I didn't. She hadn't listened to me, to my troubles. And they were real. She didn't care about anybody but herself. "No one," I said, "if you continue on as you are."

Then I left the house.

I felt bad about Annie, but there was nothing I could do. I'd helped her. Robert had helped her, and so had Uncle Valentine. It wasn't my fault if her mother went and got mixed up with John Wilkes Booth, was it? Besides, I'd needed Annie. Always in the past she'd been there for me. Now she just wasn't anymore. I went home.

There was one more thing I had to do. Tonight, before I went to bed. The idea of it was so gratifying it put all the other bad feelings out of my mind.

Maude was waiting for me in the kitchen. "Well, I was ready to send for the Metropolitan Police. Where have you been!"

"I had an errand. And the streets are crowded. For the Grand Review tomorrow."

"Exactly. Which is why you shouldn't be out alone, with all those soldiers hanging about."

I filled my plate at the stove. Leftover chicken and beans. She'd made fresh muffins, though. I was hungry. "I'll just take it to my room," I said. "I have some studying. You deserve the night off. Why don't you leave now? I'll put the food away."

"I have to bring a plate up to Addie."

"I can do that."

She looked doubtful. "All right, but don't forget to lock the doors. I'll be over in the morning to make breakfast for you and Addie."

I'll be gone by then, I said to myself.
And so will Addie.

***

"Leave?" Addie wiped the gravy in her plate with a muffin and put it in her mouth. Her old eyes were wary. "You wouldn't be funnin' me, would you, little missy?"

"I wouldn't do that to you, Addie. It's what you want, isn't it? So you can have a chance to do something with the freedom Mr. Lincoln gave you?"

"Xactly," she said. "But you always say no. You get inta that shed out there? You find out what's in them barrels that say pickles? You find out they be dead bodies in them barrels?"

Dead bodies! Pickles! Of course! How could I have been so stupid? I could hear Robert's words to me that night in the shed. Rum,
arsenic, and corrosive sublimate.
It was what they preserved specimens in. Likely what he'd used to preserve the bodies from the
Sultana
disaster.
Not from out of state, I hope. The doctor wants no out-of-state pickles.
Of course not. Except for the
Sultana
disaster they did not want to traffic in out-of-state bodies. It was too risky.

"Yes, I found out, Addie," I said sadly. "And so now I'm leaving. And I want to help you leave, too. If you want to. You're better, aren't you? No more coughing?"

"Medicine make me better."

"Well, then, do you want to go, or don't you?"

"I wants to go."

"Good. We leave in the morning, early. I have some money. I'll give you some. But you must promise to use it to get settled, and not for rum."

"I doan drink no more. Fer sure."

"Where do you want to go? I'll take you."

"Go?" She stared at me. She got dreamy for a minute. "I gots a place," she said.

"Where?"

"Can't tell."

"Then how can I take you there in the morning?"

"You take me to the Relief Society. Twelve an' O Streets. So's I kin pick up my things."

My God,
I thought,
the outskirts of the city. How will I get her there? But I must.

"Reverend Nichols," she said, "he runs it. I wuz workin' fer him before. Gotta let him know I's arright. He think I's dead. Gotta let him know I's arright and pick up my things."

"All right," I said. "You get some rest now. I'll be up to wake you at first light. I'll hire a carriage. And take you to Twelfth and O Streets. Tomorrow you'll be a free woman, Addie."

E
VERYTHING WENT WRONG.

Addie had to wear two petticoats, two skirts, an apron, two blouses, and one vest. She would have worn her shawl, too, but I said it was too warm. I got her downstairs for a quick cup of tea.

"We really goin, little missy?" she must have asked me a dozen times while we sipped our tea. Birds were already chirping outside. I heard the
clop-clop-clopp
ing of the milkman's horse down the street. The light was a soft gray now outside the windows. And, of course, it was foggy. For once I welcomed the fog. I counted on it to shield us.

"Yes," I said, "we are really going, Addie. Hurry now, finish your tea and biscuit. Last evening I arranged for a hack to meet us down at the corner."

"One thing I wants afore I go," she said.

"What? What is it?" She wasn't going to balk on me now, was she?

"I wants one o' them flowers." She smiled sheepishly. "I always wanted one o' them flowers. The kind that hangs down like bells at rest. And turns right up at night."

"I suppose I could get you one before we leave, Addie."

So there I was, stumbling around in the fog in Marietta's eerie garden. I cut a yucca flower on a long stem. Addie stood waiting. Beside her on the stone walk was my portmanteau, a basket of food, and another basket with Ulysses the cat. At least he was cooperating. He'd curled right up in the bottom of the basket and gone back to sleep.

I wrapped the flower in wet paper and presented it to Addie. "Come on, now, let's go."

We must have made a strange procession going down the street, me with my bundles and Addie with her flower. I heard church bells chime across the city. Six o'clock. I heard and smelled the horses before they appeared out of the fog, waiting at the head of the carriage.

"Twelfth and O Streets," I told the driver.

"That's a long way, little lady. Across town."

"I know. It's the Relief Society."

"It ain't a good neighborhood. And the way the streets are clogged with the Grand Review today, I'll have to charge extra."

"How much?"

"Twelve dollars."

I sighed and settled my things. The war was over, but people were still price-gouging. "All right," I said. "Just get us there, please." Thank God for Johnny's gold pieces. It seemed like a hundred years since the morning he had given them to me.

To get to the Relief Society we had to travel through the most terrible areas, past shanties and swampy land along the lower stretches of the Washington Canal. People were just getting up, bending over cooking fires outside their shanties. In the fog they seemed like creatures from another time. I knew that these were the freedmen who had tried Elizabeth Keckley's patience so. There were forty thousand of them in Washington now, needing schooling and homes and jobs.

Sometimes Addie gave one of the figures a wave of recognition. And they'd wave back. Then she told the driver where to stop, in front of the old army barracks.

I got out. I helped Addie down from the carriage.

"Best do your business quick and get outta here," the driver was mumbling. "These places are known for breeding disease. 'Specially smallpox."

"I'll be right with you," I told him. "Wait." Would they want Addie here? Suppose they didn't and I had to find someplace else for her. What would I do?

My worries were short-lived. A figure came out of the fog. "Addie? Addie Bassett, is that
you?
Lord awmighty, we thought you were dead!"

"Well, I ain't. I's alive."

The old, white-haired Negro reverend embraced her. "You look good, Addie," he said.

"I's better. Been livin' wif a doctor. He take care o' me." She chuckled. "I's free. And gonna use my freedom right that Mister Linkum gave me."

Others came forward to greet her. The fog gave an unreal quality to the voices and scenes. I saw a woman in the distance stirring something in a huge pot. Another stacking clothing on a table in some kind of order. I smelled breakfast cooking.

"Are you staying with us, Addie?" the reverend asked.

"I come to let y'all know that I's alive and kickin'. And to pick up my things. Then I aims to git myself to the depot and be on my way. This very afternoon."

"Where?" the reverend asked.

"Home. I's goin' home, Reverend. To help my people, now that the war be over."

There was much murmuring over that. Then the reverend thanked me for bringing Addie. I took two gold coins and gave them to her. "This will get you a hack to the depot," I said, "and buy your ticket. Where is home, Addie?" I was thinking that if it was Richmond she could come right along with me.