Douglass’ Women

Critical acclaim for
Douglass’ Women

“[R]ichly imagined, haunting, and beautifully written. Bringing Anna Douglass and Ottilie Assing out from the prodigious shadow cast by Frederick Douglass, Jewell Parker Rhodes plunges the reader straight into the hearts of these two remarkable women. I have waited a long time to read this story. I will never forget Anna and Ottilie or their passionate history-shaping loyalty and love.”

—Marita Golden, author of
The Edge of Heaven

“[A]n electrifying account.”

—QBR Black Book Review

“Extraordinary … [Jewell Parker Rhodes] has put the history of American race relations into the mouths of the women. The first lines gave me that thrilling shock of recognition that you only feel when what the artist has created is absolutely true to what you know as a female human being.”

—Pearl Cleage, author of
What Looks Like
Crazy On an Ordinary Day

“I was completely captivated by these women… . Jewell Parker Rhodes has done splendid work in providing a new and completely plausible perspective on an important period of African American history.”

—Janet Cheatham Bell, author of
Till Victory Is Won

“[A] masterpiece of historical fiction.”

—
Black Issues Book Review

“A poetically imagined, intensely moving love story that transcends time and place. Rhodes writes like a dream.”

—A’Lelia Bundles, author of
On Her Own Ground

“Powerful and provocative; tragic and beautiful… .
Douglass’ Women
deconstructs an American icon to great effect.”

—Jervey Tervalon, author of
All the Trouble You Need

Also by Jewell Parker Rhodes

The African American Guide to Writing
and Publishing Nonfiction

Free Within Ourselves: Fiction Lessons for Black Writers

Voodoo Dreams

Magic City

Voodoo Season

Jewell Parker Rhodes

The sale of this book without its cover is unauthorized. If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was reported to the publisher as “unsold and destroyed.” Neither the author nor the publisher has received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”

1230 Avenue of the Americas
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2002 by Jewell Parker Rhodes

Originally published in hardcover in 2002 by Atria Books

All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Atria Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-7886-7
ISBN-10:        0-7432-7886-0
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1253-0 (ebook)

First Atria Books mass market edition December 2005

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Manufactured in the United States of America

I dedicate this book to my friends

Pam Walker Williams and Debra Bernstein
.

“I am married to an old black log.”

—F
REDERICK
D
OUGLASS,
IN A LETTER
, 1862

“Who else I got to tell? Who else but my daughter?”

—A
NNA
D
OUGLASS,
TWO DAYS BEFORE
HER DEATH
, 1882

August 2, 1882
Cedar Hill, Uniontown, D.C
.

I used to fill him. I used to. Time once he told me I was the only free he needed. Time when he didn’t want to get up from my arms. Time when I filled him. He filled me.

The world loves Frederick Douglass. But I loved Freddy.

I loved him when he had no name excepting “Nigger this, Nigger that.” When he looked at me—he was broken then—when he
needed
me, my flesh grew hot, and I opened myself, calling, “Freddy.” I thought the two of us would create a world.

I’m dying now. Freddy died long ago. Was that a good thing? No more Freddy. Just the great abolitionist. Was that a good thing?

See Mister Death sitting in the rocker, telling me to “Come on.”

I will. Once I speak my mind. Like Freddy did. He told his tale. Left me out.

Begin at the beginning. Tell it true.

Everybody knows Frederick’s story. This one here be mine.

Narrative of the Life of

Anna Murray Douglass

A Free Woman of Color
1813–1882

I was born near Tuck’s Creek in Carolina County, Maryland. My parents were freed a month before I was born. I be eight of twelve children. Never was a slave. Never had to escape dogs or a bad Massa.

But I seen my share of misery. It come rolling down, searing my back just the same. Come when I least expect it.

Freddy endured much. I appreciate that. I don’t appreciate his feeling that hurt makes a person finer. He was “forged,” he say, “forged like steel in the fire.”

I was forged by love. That’s what tore me up. That’s what I didn’t expect. How can something that causes the sky to be bluer than blue, sends warmth flooding your body, buckles your knees, and opens your soul to music … how can what feels
so
good, hurt ’til you want to scratch your skin off? Snatch out the heart that feels so much?

If love be true, you feel more than you felt possible. More everything. More glory. More pain at a touch.

Frederick wanted me prim and proper. Like white women seem to be. But I wonder if they is? Truly? I’m a woman and I feel everything. Even when I don’t show it, I feel.

Been feeling since the day I slipped out Mam’s body.

Life was good with my parents. Always felt like a smile was growing inside me. A smile wider than a river, deeper than a well.

My name be Anna but I was called “Lil’ Bit.” Wasn’t but four pounds when I was born. Mam had plenty kids but food was scarce. Mam didn’t even know she was having me. Didn’t know I was growing inside ’til almost the very end. She said her back ache. Low and deep. Not ’til her body say “push,” did she think to lay down. No time to get the midwife. Just Mam and me. Pa was in the fields. The other children were finishing chores. Even the youngest was expected to weed the garden and feed chicks. So Mam laid down and I “slipped out,” she say. The easiest of all her children. “Slipped out, swimming downstream with the birth water.”

Come dinner, Mam told the family she had a surprise. Instead of cake, she brought out me.

“Everybody smile,” Mam say, and I did, too. She said a bubble burst beween my lips, “glowing with a rainbow.” Everybody laughed when it floated high. Then, Pa held me. Called me “Lil’ Bit—lil’ black walnut.” I was no bigger than that. And I was just that dark.

Pa said I had sense to look like Mam. All the other children were a blend of Pa’s brown sugar and Mam’s dark coffee. He say, “Rudy and George and all the others turned out a fine colored. Sweet enough to drink.” But he say, “Dark coffee be best. Dark coffee be what I married. One day a good man be proud to marry you.”

I used to think Freddy be proud because dark coffee covered me. My mistake.

He thirsted for everyone but me. Sweet cream. Buttermilk. Milk-laced tea.

I always thirsted for water. Clear. Cold. Cup after cup.

Mam taught me Water be a spirit. “All things alive,” she say. “Earth. Wind. Fire. Water.”

The Devil be afeared of Water. Afeared of Water’s ghosts.

When they started carrying slaves from Africa, the Devil be delighted. “Good evil,” he say. “Plenty good evil.” Water be furious white men captured black men, women, and children. First Water thought to smash their boats. But Mister Wind wouldn’t go along. Said Water would smash innocents, too—
“What about their bones? The slave childrens’s souls?”

So Water swore any slave that died inside It would find a new kingdom. Not Heaven. Not Hell. But a new world.

Sometimes slaves died in storms. Most times slave catchers chained them, pushed them overboard. When slaves too sick, when pirates chased them, when the British come, Captains shouted, “Dump cargo.” And all these women, babies, and men crashed down, drowning in the sea. Lungs exploded. Flesh eaten away. But their bones and souls still live at the sandy bottom. They say there be an army of twenty million. An army that can’t be killed. Skeletons, hard and strong. Souls that blend invisible with water.

When Frederick travels by sea, I tell him, “Never fear.” Bones be keeping him safe. He don’t believe me. But ’tis true and he with all his trips to England, still live.

Frederick probably bury me in dirt. Thinking me a useless, black woman in a casket.

I’d rather be buried in water. Won’t go to Heaven or
Hell. Don’t care. Water good enough. I was born with it. Grew up around it. Swum in it. When I was six, I started making a summer living from it.

June-bug nights the air be crisp, smelling of salt. My brothers played, trying to catch fireflies. Pa would be on the porch stirring lumps of sugar in lemonade. Mam be rocking inside, teaching us girls sewing. Beside her in the cradle, be whatever youngest baby there be. When the baby cried, Mam sang sweet songs. Sang about how
all
her babies made it across Jordan. Nobody a slave no more. They be proud. Mam and Pa. Proud they had a farm which fed us just above starving.