Or Give Me Death (12 page)

Short of that, if I wished to salvage my own dignity, I must discover, and honor, my true self.

***

R
IGHT AFTER
P
ATSY
and MyJohn came home, Clementina Rind's husband died. They said it was apoplexy. And, just as Mama had predicted, he left Clementina in debt.

We went to the funeral in town, at Bruton Parish Church. John Pinkney held Clementina's arm. Her children followed the casket up the aisle.

Pegg accompanied me and Patsy. We had to represent the family because Pa was still away and MyJohn too busy.

Afterwards, in the churchyard, I wanted to stand with the Negroes. I liked the way they behaved at funerals better than white people behaved.

Negroes know how to grieve. They fling themselves on the grave of their own. White people just stand there all stiff-faced. And Negroes let their sorrow out in song.

And when they sang, they knew what I was feeling.

But Patsy whispered savagely to me. "Stay where you are. Don't you have any sense of place?"

When everyone went back to the
Gazette
after for a repast, Pegg pitched right in and helped Dick lay out the refreshments.

"Who is putting out the paper today?" Patsy asked.

"Isaac Collins."

Someone took my hand. "You want to see Mr. Collins set the type?" It was Maria, who was about the age of Betsy.

Clementina nodded her permission, and we went into the room where the press was to watch a young man in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, a red vest, and his hair tied back. He was sorting type, taking letters from little boxes. Then he would set each letter on an iron rule.

"He's going to put Mama's name on the masthead," Maria told me. "For the first time. My mama is the first woman in the colony to publish a newspaper."

I looked down at her beaming face and thought how open, how free, she seems in comparison to Betsy. And I felt a surge of guilt for my little sister.

And then I thought, how proud this child was of her mother. And I thought of my own.

Mr. Collins smiled at me. "Backwards," he told me. "The type must be set backwards."

When he had a few lines done, he set them in wooden cases that were tied with a string, then locked into an iron frame, and showed it to us before he secured it to the bed of the press.

There it was:
PRINTED BY CLEMENTINA RIND.

Then Dick stepped forward to help, using two long-handled, leather-covered ink balls to spread the lampblack over the type.

"Isn't it like magic?" Maria asked me. "Mama says I'm going to help, too, someday."

Behind us I heard Patsy and Clementina. "Who is writing those letters that are signed 'Junius'?" Pitsy was asking Clementina.

"I'm not allowed to say. It's part of the secret behind his pen name."

Mr. Collins put moistened sheets of paper in a large frame. "We use about two hundred pounds of pressure to get an impression."

Something was coming alive inside me. Some thought was forming. I nodded politely and smiled.

I'm not allowed to say. It's part of his pen name.

"Would you never tell?" Patsy was asking lightly.

Clementina Rind was solemn. "No. My loyalty is the duty of this paper. Else how could people express themselves about important matters?"

The platen was lowered by Mr. Collins. He held it down about fifteen seconds, then he held up the sheet with the masthead printed on it. Everyone clapped. Maria hugged her mother, who had tears in her eyes. Dick hung up the sheet to dry.

As we left for home Patsy invited, "Come see us whenever you feel the need."

I waved as we drove off, and watched Clementina standing in front of the newspaper office with her children surrounding her. I thought of her words.
Loyalty.
And
duty.
You seldom heard such words from a woman.

Oh, how I wished I had my mama!

My loyalty is thé duty of this paper. How else could people express themselves about important matters?

The words stayed in my head.

I
MUST CHOOSE
a name. I was fired with the idea of it. I would write a letter to the
Gazette
! Under a pen name, of course.

I had found a way to take me beyond the pale of Patsy's dominance, to salvage my own dignity. Even a way to discover and honor my true self.

Here was something she could not know about. She may be the mistress of the place, but with a few strokes of my pen, I could move outside her sway.

What would I write about? I hadn't decided. But the possibilities were endless. I would read the newspaper and become acquainted with the issues of the day. Mr. Chitwell was always admonishing us to read the newspaper.

My words would be in print for all to read and consider and pay mind to. My opinion would matter. Imagine the freedom of it! The daring!

Mayhap, I thought, as I took a new bay myrtle candle with me to my room that night, mayhap "Junius" is a woman!

***

"A
NNE, WHAT ARE
you doing up so late?"

Patsy stood in the doorway of my room. She never knocked. In her mind I was not in need of privacy.

"I'm doing some lessons."

She did not believe me. "Why so studious of a sudden?"

"I'm behind in my work," I said. "I don't want Will to get ahead of me."

"He is ahead of you. He has to be to get into Hampden-Sydney next fall."

How I wished I could go! Away from here, to live in a school! Hampden-Sydney was eighty miles away. But though Will was only eleven, a professor friend of Pa's was going to prepare him for college. Will was right smart.

"I'll miss him," I said.

"Yes. So will we all. Well, it's near nine. I want that candle out by ten, Anne."

I had an hour. I had decided upon a pen name. "Intrepid." It had a good solid ring to it. And it sounded like a man.

Now all I needed was a subject. The
Gazette
was full of news of the day. Should I write about love and courtship? Many did. About the colonists throwing the tea into the harbor in Boston a week ago?

As I was pondering the matter, a shadow fell across the floor. I looked up. It was Pegg.

"You workin' late. Who you writin' to?"

"I'm doing lessons."

She came in and sat down in a chair and sighed.

"What's wrong, Pegg?" I asked.

"My niece. My sister's girl. Neely. Awhile back she was sold to that Andrew Estave. You know that man your pa talks about? He be in charge of wine? An' the burgesses give him slaves and land and everythin'?"

I remembered. "Virginia's vintner," I said.

"Yeah. That him. She only fifteen. My husband tell me this Estave is a bad man. My niece, Neely, she like my sister. It doan take much to bring her to anger. She already run from this Estave once, and he whip her. Forty lashes."

My eyes went wide. "How do you know all this?"

"When I went with you all to the funeral t'other day. I hear the Negroes talk in town. I'se worried."

"Well, you should be."

"But what kin I do? If your pa was here, I know I could go to him. But he ain't."

Did I dare? Why not? It was better than writing another one about the tea in Boston Harbor. We had evil here right in our own town.

"Mayhap I can help you," I said. "But you mustn't breathe a word of what I am to tell you."

***

I
WROTE THE
letter that night. And I thought I did rather well.

It has come to this subscriber's attention that the colony's vintner, one Andrew Estave, having been granted land and a number of slaves to work the vineyards thereon, is none too appreciative of the value of what has been bestowed upon him. Would he tear up the vines of the grapes in the vineyard, because they grow not fast enough to please him? Or yearn to take a day just to bask in the sun? No! They are too tender and dear. Yet when a Negro servant of his, who is only fifteen years of age, ran from his brutal treatment, he had administered to her forty lashes.

Are grapevines more dear than a human being? Mr. Estave's villainy is truly alarming and this subscriber sorely laments his cruelty. Let his relations and friends be told he is not acting as a true son of Virginia. Signed: Intrepid.

***

I
SLIPPED THE
letter into the leather fire bucket that sat outside the front door, where we left the mail.

My letter was printed in the very next issue.

Since I never paid mind to the newspaper, I could not snatch it up from where it sat with the mail on a table in the corner of the dining room. I must wait for MyJohn to go through the mail when we had our noon meal.

MyJohn, who never sat in Pa's place at the table, would go through the mail quickly, hand all invitations, family letters, and the paper to Patsy, sit down, spread open his napkin, and say, "Well, young Henrys, and tell me what you all have been up to this morning?"

MyJohn was working harder than ever in helping Mr. Melton run the place now. And we children all still adored him. He was the one we went to when Patsy was unduly harsh. On occasion, I knew, he spoke to her of her harshness, especially with Betsy. But never in front of us.

"May I see the
Gazette
?" I asked him.

"Only Pa is allowed to read the paper at the table," Patsy said.

"As soon as we are finished, you may have it, yes," MyJohn said.

"You have chores this afternoon, don't you, Anne?" Patsy asked. "No paper until your chores are finished."

But when we left the room, MyJohn winked at me and handed me the paper behind Patsy's back. "Just put it back with Pa's mail," he said.

It was there, my letter. I sat on my bed and let the lines of
my words
bore into my brain. There they were. My own words! No one had questioned them, or my right to put them there. I had been treated, by the paper, like every other citizen.

I was so proud I thought I would burst. And somehow, when I could, I would show the words to Pegg. She couldn't read, of course, but she could understand. And she could be grateful.

***

T
HE LETTER CHANGED
nothing in my life. I did not really expect it to. Patsy still ruled the house with an iron hand. Betsy became ever more docile and solemn. John still stayed out in the barn most of the time working with his horses. Will buried his nose in his books and grew away from me because he must be ready for college.

No one responded to the letter in the
Gazette.

My spirit was cast down. "Why doesn't anyone write an answer to it, at least?" I asked Pegg one day in the kitchen.

She was chopping vegetables. "People saw it," she said. "You gots to be patient."

"Likely nobody even read it."

She stopped chopping. "I know that ain't true."

She knew things; I was sensible of that. If you thought the Negro servants weren't aware of what was going on, just because they didn't speak of events, you were a fool by half.

"Tell me," I said.

She slid her eyes around to make sure no one was in hearing distance. "You keep a still tongue in your head?"

"Why wouldn't I? Who would I tell to?"

"My husband, he say Mr. Estave be furious 'bout that letter."

"How would your husband know?"

But she just shook her head. "We know things, Anne. We keep in touch with Negroes in town and on other plantations. We gots to do this. Doan you worry; your letter did good." Then she picked up a tomato. "You see this. When was it planted?"

"Months ago."

"With what?"

I shrugged. "Seeds."

"Well then?" She smiled. "You just look at that letter of yours like a seed. It could take months to grow."

She was right, only it didn't take that long. Two months later, Pegg told me her niece had run off again. And how worried she was about her.

I scanned the next issue of the
Gazette
and read the notice about her to Pegg.

Run away from the subscriber, a mulatto wench, name of Neely. She is but fifteen years of age, about five feet high, and well made. Wearing, when she left, a good pair of pink-colored worsted stockings and good leather shoes, a Virginia cloth jacket, Kersey wove, and a striped petticoat. I will give a reward of twenty pounds to who delivers her to me. Andrew Estave.

"That be her," Pegg told me. "I pray nobody hands her over."

But they did. A week later Pegg told me she had heard at church that Neely was once again returned to Mr. Estave and once again suffered forty lashes.

I wrote another letter. Pa was not yet back. I made it strong. I asked, "What cruelty makes this young girl run?" And, "at what cost the wine from grapes grown in Virginia?"

I made bold to suggest that the House of Burgesses, that had provided Mr. Estave with his plantation and slaves to grow Virginia grapes, might do well to cast an eye on how he conducted himself.

I never thought Patsy would find out. Like as not, I'd have done it anyway, just to plague her. But I never thought she would find out, is all.

I
T WAS MRS. HOOPER
who told her. Old Mrs. Hooper, with a face like a ferret, who came around with her copy of the
Gazette
in hand just before Christmas, bearing the news that Neely was none other than the niece of our Pegg.

"How nice of you to call!" Patsy stood on the front steps as the carriage with the crest on the side pulled up in the roundabout. "Come in.
I
'll have Jane make some chocolate."

The ferret's footman helped her down. She was given to fat. Her stomacher was near bursting in front. "Isn't this a lovely day? Is your father home from Williamsburg yet?"

"No," from Patsy. "Do come in, the house is nice and warm."

She stepped inside and looked around with her beady eyes. I could swear she was sniffing.

"My, you do look handsome," Patsy said, admiring her gown.

Old Ferret Face pulled herself up straight, and silk swished. "This is an old gown."