An Unlikely Friendship (5 page)

"But you said whoever memorized the most Bible verses," Emily complained.

"That isn't the point. The fighting that has occurred is distasteful to me. Perhaps next year the girls from this county will learn to take this more in stride."

"She turned on us," Emily sobbed to me later in her room where she boarded. "I know I'm not pretty, but does pretty mean everything?"

I hadn't thought so. Until now. It was a distasteful lesson, but perhaps the most important one I was to learn at Ward's, the school where respectability and discipline lived. The school where emulation never slept. And virtue hadn't fled.

"An outsider from Nicholas County has been selected for Queen of the May," the newspaper reported. "Two young ladies held a canopy over her. Their names were Emily Todd from Boone County and Mary Todd from our own Fayette County."

What the newspaper didn't say was that Emily Todd from Boone County had tears in her eyes while she held her part of the canopy.

I
WAS NEARLY
thirteen years old and my desire for a hoopskirt hadn't dimmed. Every time I went with Mammy Sally to Cheapside, the marketplace that served Fayette County, and saw the ladies in their hoopskirts, I felt a stab of envy.

To wear a hoopskirt meant you were grown, and I wanted—more than to eat—to be grown like my sisters Elizabeth and Frances.

I didn't envy their lives. They'd had no more than five years of education each. I didn't want to stop learning after only five years. I wanted to go on with my education.

They did nothing but sew and make calls and ride in the barouche with Nelson driving them. And attend lectures, shop, and go to the university to listen to their dance partners' orations. If not that, it was cotillions and latenight suppers where they dined on Maryland oysters, Spanish pickles, and imported herring.

I did envy their slim waists, their bosoms, the way their hoopskirts swung when they walked.

By now Elizabeth was being courted by Ninian Edwards. He was first in his class at Transylvania Law School. His father was governor of Illinois. I considered him a snob, but I had to be nice to him because Elizabeth had told me that after she wed him they would move to Springfield, Illinois, and she would have first Frances come and live with them, and then me. After I had been introduced to Lexington society and taken my place in the social world, of course.

I didn't want to enter the social world just yet, though Elizabeth often reminded me how much my dancing lessons would help, as well as the way I carried myself. And how, being the younger sister of Elizabeth Todd mattered. "I am at the center of the social whirl," she reminded me. "To be a Todd and my younger sister is to carry a full dance card into that whirl when your time comes."

It would soon be necessary to move out of the house as far as I could see. Betsy Todd had had three children in four years and the house on Short Street was getting crowded. The first, Robert, died as a baby.

But before I moved out I wanted that hoopskirt.

F
ORTUNATELY
L
IZ
H
UMPHREYS
wanted one as badly as I did. So one day we decided just to make our own hoopskirts, without the help of anyone. I didn't want to drag Grandma into it, because no doubt it would bring trouble down on our heads when Betsy found out, and things weren't so good between her and Grandma Parker as they should have been in the first place.

"First, what will we make them from?" Liz asked. "We don't have any whalebone, and I don't see any whales available around Lexington anyway."

"Willow reeds," I said. "I've been thinking of it a long time. And I know just where to get them."

If, I told myself, Grandmother Jane could make a wedding dress out of weeds and wild flax, why couldn't I make a hoop out of willow reeds? I'd show Betsy Todd what it took to be a true lady. She wouldn't bad-mouth the Todd name when I got through.

Liz and I spent an afternoon at a nearby stream picking the willow reeds. Then we laid them out in the sun to dry. The whole business took time because we were still in school and were pretty much watched when at home, except for an hour or two before dinner when we had free playtime.

I prided myself on always being interested in dressmaking anyway. And so, with Liz watching, I carefully constructed a wide and billowing hoop over which to stretch my good Sunday muslin dresses. Then Liz and I made hers, and we smuggled them up into the house and into the cellar. Betsy never went into the cellar. She was afraid of it. And anyway, she was in a "delicate" condition again, expecting another baby, and so avoided stairs.

On Sunday morning we both put on our good muslin dresses and went down to breakfast. I could scarce eat for excitement, and I saw Liz picking at her food, too. Under the table she kicked me and giggled.

"What's wrong with you two?" Betsy asked. "Behave. It's the Lord's day."

"Behave, Mary," my pa repeated.

Over Pa's head, Mammy Sally looked at me knowingly and shook her head, then continued to pour seconds of coffee around the table.

Finally the meal was finished and we were dismissed to get ready for church. We went to McChord's Presbyterian Church, where most of Lexington's elite went.

Liz and I left the dining room and repaired directly to the cellar, where we struggled into our hoopskirts, then swayed and giggled as we made our way up the stairs and sought out Betsy in the front parlor where she was adjusting Ann's bonnet. She herself would not go to church. She was too near her "time."

The look on her face was worth a thousand words. It was priceless. "What?" she demanded.

"We made our own hoopskirts," I said. "Aren't you proud of us?"

She wasn't.

"What frights you are," she said. "Get those awful things off, dress yourselves properly, and go to church. I'll not have you disgracing the Todd name or your dear father."

Tears choked my throat. I held them back. Liz didn't. She cried openly and loudly.

"This instant," Betsy demanded. "Before I tell your father. Honestly, Mary, I had no idea you would go to such lengths to disgrace and upset me. Go, I said. Before your father sees you."

But it was too late. Pa appeared in the doorway. "What's all the commotion?" He didn't express surprise at the way we looked. He seemed to take it for granted.

I did a little curtsy. "Look at my new hoopskirt, Pa."

Well, he couldn't see the hoop, of course. All he could see was the muslin dress all puffed out. "You look nice, both of you," he said. "Now what's going on? Mary, are you upsetting Betsy again?"

"She isn't supposed to be wearing a hoopskirt," Betsy told him firmly. "She is too young and she knows it. I didn't buy it for her. She made it. And Liz's."

"Made it?" He seemed surprised.

"Yes, Pa. Like Grandmother Jane made her wedding dress. Grandma told me all about that."

He lowered his gaze. Was he smiling? Was he proud of me? Dare he tell Betsy?

"If your mother told you you can't have one, then you disobeyed her," he said. "And so you'll have to stay away from Grandma Parker for the next month."

"Pa!" I wailed.

Now he scowled. "No mouth," he ordered. "Now go take it off."

We went. Betsy personally destroyed our hoopskirts and burned the willow reeds. But I know that I could be like Grandmother Jane if I had to be. And I know Pa was proud of me.

I
T WAS IN MY LAST
year at Ward's that I awoke one night in November to hear
thump thump thum
ping coming from downstairs, likely the back door in the kitchen. As I lay warm and snuggly under my quilts, I then heard Mammy Sally shuffling around. Then the thumping stopped.

Liz heard it, too. "What's that noise, Mary?"

"I don't know." I sat up. "But I'm going to see."

"No, don't go. Maybe it's Indians attacking. Don't leave me, Mary." She was sleeping with her Pierre huddled next to her. Unfortunately, Pierre heard the thumping, too, because he sat up and woofed. Short little woofs, the kind he might give in a dream. I hushed him and patted his head and he settled down again. And when I saw that he had quieted, I put on my robe and crept downstairs, assuring Liz it wasn't Indians.

"They'd come to the front door," I told her.

As I peeked into the kitchen, I saw a candle lit, casting a peculiar light across the floor. I stood there trembling as Mammy opened the back door.

What huddled there could scarce be called a man. He was kneeling down, wrapped in rags, and looking up at Mammy appealingly. "You put the sign on the back fence, auntie?"

"My name is Mammy Sally. I ain't nobody's auntie. But yes, I put the sign on the fence. I'll feed you and clothe you and get you on your way to the Ohio River. But you can't stay the night. Master'll sell me down the river fer sure, he finds out I'm doin' this."

"Grateful, Mammy, grateful," the man said.

"Now you go on back to the barn. I'll bring out some victuals. Meat an' bread and somethin' warm fer you to wear," she told him.

Then she closed the door in his face and turned. And saw me.

"What you doin' there, chil'?" the harsh whisper came across the kitchen.

"I heard the thumping."

"Well you best forget what you hear, or you'll be hearin' Mammy wail at bein' sold downriver."

"Can I go outside with you to bring his food?"

"No. An' you ain't to go tellin' anybody else 'bout this. If your stepma finds out, I'll be horse fodder.

"Now go to bed," she directed. And I promised I would, as I watched her gather food in the kitchen. Then we both heard the stairs creak behind us in the hall and froze.

It was Liz.

"What you doin' here?" Mammy Sally said in a loud whisper. "What is this, a May Day parade?"

"I wanted to see," Liz stammered.

"See what?" Mammy asked.

"I don't know. I was afraid it was Indians come to scalp us."

"Only me," Mammy told her, "an' I'll scalp you if'n you doan get up to bed now."

Liz turned and ran. I stayed to watch Mammy Sally go out the back door to the barn with a single lantern in tow along with some victuals.

The next day I asked her, "How do they know to come to our house?"

She chuckled. "You invited them."

"Me?"

"Yes. 'Member the day you painted those flowers on the front of the fence?"

"You helped me, Mammy."

"Yes, but you didn't know why you were doin' it, did you?"

"I thought I was just painting some flowers on the fence."

"No. You were invitin' runaways to stop. You were tellin' 'em that here, in this place, if they wuz careful they could get food and clothes on their way to crossin' the Ohio River."

"You mean we're part of the Underground Railroad?"

"No," she shook her head vigorously. "We ain't. I just helps 'em move along. An's you better talk to that Liz girl. If'n she tells her aunt Betsy, we're all finished."

I just stared at her in wonderment. I was young enough to think it all exciting and to think of Mammy Sally as a negro Joan of Arc. To think, right in the midst of us all, this was going on. But I had a question.

"How long have you been doing this?" I asked.

"Not long 'nuf."

I continued staring while she kneaded some pie dough.

"Things ain't always what you think, little one," she told me. And then she chuckled. "The next time you paint some flowers on a fence, think what you might be really doin'."

"It was just a traveler who lost his way last night," I told Liz later that morning.

We were both knitting. It was Saturday. And I wondered if my "traveler" had gotten safely to the Ohio River.

"I'm not stupid, Mary. I know what it was. I know Mammy Sally is using this place as a safe house for runaways."

I was trembling inside. Would she hold this over me now? Make me do things I didn't want to do? She had every chance to lord it over me, and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.

"I looked out our upstairs window and saw her taking the food to the barn," she said. "What else could it be? We have people who do it in Frankfort, too."

"Liz, if you tell your aunt Betsy...," I started to say.

She leveled her blue eyes at me. "I said I'm not stupid," she repeated.

"But your people believe in slavery."

She shrugged. "Didn't they tell us at Ward's to think for ourselves?"

I breathed a sigh of relief.

"And Mary, I won't hold this over you. You don't have to worry. If you don't really trust me yet, I want you to know that."

Like Mammy Sally said, things ain't always what they seem to be. And the next time I went to paint flowers on a fence I'd remember that.

W
HEN
I
WAS THIRTEEN
, I got my pony.

At breakfast Pa said he had something to show me outside. I should have known what it was because of the looks and giggles of everyone at the table. And because of what Betsy said.

"Robert, you didn't."

"Yes I did, Betsy. Though it was forced on me. Payment for a debt I was owed. I thought, why not?"

"Because she's a little ruffian now. She needs no more encouragement."

He murmured something back to her. I couldn't hear what. Because by now Nelson was leading over to me the most beautiful cream-colored pony I had ever seen.

"Mary, this is Peaches," Pa said. "He's yours."

"Providing you behave yourself," Betsy put in. "Or I'll take away riding privileges."

"He's yours," Pa said again.

I embraced the little darling, who put his nose into my shoulder just as if he knew he belonged to me. I patted him, happier than I'd been in a long time. "Can I take him for a ride?" I asked. There was a regular saddle on him.

"Only sidesaddle," Betsy directed. "Like a lady."

"Go ahead," Pa said. And he helped me astride Peaches.

"I think I'll go to Mr. Clay's house and show him. He's been asking me when I'm going to get my pony."

My family waved me off. Senator Henry Clay lived a mile and a half outside town. His home was called Ashland. He came out on the front portico holding a dinner napkin, when I was announced.