The Good Lord Bird (21 page)

“She a spritely little package, Douglass,” the Old Man said proudly, “and has showed pluck and courage through many a battle. I reckon it is the highlight of her life to meet the man who is going to lift her people from the chains of the underling world. Onion,” he said, clapping Mr. Douglass on the back, “I has been disappointed many times in my life. But this is one man on whom the Old Captain can always depend.”

Mr. Douglass smiled. He had perfect teeth. The two of them stood there proudly, beaming there, standing on the train platform, white and colored together. It made for a pretty picture, and if I'd had one of them picture-taking contraptions that had just come out in them days, I'd have recorded the whole thing. But the fact is, like most things the Old Man done, his business didn't work out the way it was drawed up. He couldn't have been more wrong about Mr. Douglass. Had I knowed what was coming, I expect I'd have taken that little derringer I kept from my Pikesville days out my pants pocket and popped Mr. Douglass off in the foot, or at least cleaned him up with the handle of it, for he would short the Old Man something terrible going forward, at a time when the Captain needed him the most. And it would cost the Old Man a lot more than a train ticket to Rochester.

Meeting a Great Man

T
he Old Man laid up at Mr. Frederick Douglass's house for three weeks. He spent most of that time in his room, writing and studying. That weren't unusual for him, to set over paper and write, or walk about with a pocket full of compasses, scribbling notes and consulting maps and so forth. It never amounted to nothing, but three weeks was a long time for me to sit inside anybody's house, and for the Old Man, I expect it was worse. The Captain was an outdoor man. He couldn't sit at a hearth long, or sleep on a feather bed, or even eat food that was cooked for civilized people. He liked wild things: coons, possum, squirrel, wild turkeys, beavers. But food prepared inside a proper kitchen—biscuits, pie, jam, butter—he couldn't stand the taste of them things. So it was suspicious that he set there that long, for that's all they ate in that house. But he hunkered down in a bedroom by hisself, coming out only to use the privy. From time to time Mr. Douglass went in there, and I overheard them two jawing with raised voices. I overheard Mr. Douglass at one point say, “Unto the death!” but I made nothing of it.

Three weeks gived me plenty of time to get acquainted with the Douglass household, which was run by Mr. Douglass's two wives—a white one and a colored one. That was the first time I ever saw such a thing, two women married to one man, and both of 'em being of a different race. Them two women hardly spoke to one another. When they did, you'd a thunk a chunk of ice dropped into the room, for Miss Ottilie was a German white woman, and Miss Anna was a colored woman from the South. They was polite enough to each other, more or less, though I expect if they weren't civilized, they'd a punched each other wobbly. They hated each other's guts, is the real picture, and took their rage out on me, for I was uncouth in their eyes and needing barbering and learning of proper manners, ways to sit and curtsy and all them things. I gived them a lot of work in that department, for what few manners and ways Pie taught me out on the prairie was cow dung to these women, who didn't use an outdoor privy, and never chewed tobacco or used words like “haw” and “git.” After Mr. Douglass introduced me to them and retired to his own scribbling—he scribbled, too, like the Old Man, them two scribbled in separate rooms—them two women stood me before 'em in the parlor and studied me. “Take them pantaloons off,” Miss Anna barked. “Throw them boots out,” Miss Ottilie throwed in. I allowed I'd do what they asked but would do it in private. They fought over it, which gived me time to slip off and change alone. But that drove Miss Anna mad, and she made a comeback two days later by dragging me into her kitchen to draw me a bath. I scooted out to the drawing room and runned to the white wife, Miss Ottilie, who insisted
she
draw me a bath, and let them two wrangle over that. In that manner I kept them off me and let them catfight the whole business out.

Them two women would'a grinded each other up if I'd remained there long. But luckily they didn't have time to fool with me much, being that every inch of movement in that house, every speck of cleaning, cooking, dusting, working, writing, pouring of lye, and sewing of undergarments revolved around Mr. Douglass, who walked about the house like a king in pantaloons and suspenders, practicing his orations, his mane of dark hair almost wide as the hallways, his voice booming down the halls. I once heard the mighty marching band at Tuskegee in Tennessee beating at a parade, and that band of two hundred strong, with drums beating and trumpets wailing was an enjoyment. But it weren't nothing compared to the blasting of Mr. Douglass practicing his orations about the fate of the Negro race in his house.

Them women tried to outdo each other with the handling of him, even though he regarded them both like they was cooters and stink bombs. When he took meals, he took them alone at the big mahogany desk in his office. That man gobbled down more in one setting than I seen thirty settlers chunk down in three weeks out in Kansas Territory: steak, potatoes, collard greens, yams, sweet potatoes, cucumbers, chicken, rabbit, pheasant, buck meat, cake, biscuits, rice, cheeses of all types, and kneaded bread; he washed it down with milk, curd, peach juice, cow's milk, goat's milk, cherry juice, orange juice, grape juice. Neither did he turn away from alcohol libations and drinks of all sorts, of which several types was kept on hand at the house: beer, lager, wine, seltzer, even bottled water from various springs out west. That man put a hurting on a kitchen.

I was exhausted with being a girl a week into the stay, for a damsel out west on the trail could spit, chaw tobacco, holler, grunt, and fart, and gather no more attention to herself than a bird would snatching crumbs off the ground. In fact, your basic Pro Slaver found them behaviors downright likable in a girl, for there weren't nothing better to a feller out on the plains than finding a girl who could play cards like a feller and clean up the bottom of a bottle of whiskey for him when he was pie-eyed. But in Rochester, by God, you couldn't so much as doodle your fingers without insulting somebody on the question of a lady behaving thus and so, even a colored lady—
especially
a colored lady, for the high-siddity coloreds up there was all tweet and twit and whistle. “Where's your bustle?” a colored lady snapped at me when I walked down the street. “Un-nip your naps!” piped up another. “Where's your wig, child?” asked another.

I couldn't stand it and retreated back to the house. All that blitzing and curtsying pressured me, and I got the thirst, needed a jag, a sip of whiskey, to clear me out. Sipping blisters at Miss Abby's had whetted my whistle for tasting the giddy water when things growed tight, and once I got off the freezing trail and fell into the good-eating life, I growed thirsty from all that squeezed-up, settled-down living. I had the thought of cutting out from the Old Man at that time, slipping off and working in a tavern of some type in Rochester, but them taverns there weren't nothing compared to taverns in Kansas Territory. They was more like libraries or thinking places, full of old farts in button-down frock coats setting around sipping sherry and wondering about the state of the poor Negro not prospering, or drunk Irishmen learning to read. Women and girls weren't allowed, mostly. I thunk about getting other jobs, too, for every once in a while a white woman in a bonnet would saunter up to me on the sidewalk and say, “Is you interested in earning three pennies to do laundry, dear?” I was twelve at the time, coming on thirteen or even fourteen is my guess, though I never knowed to be exact. I was still allergic to work no matter what age, so washing folks' drawers weren't an idea I was game to surrender to. I had trouble enough keeping my own clothes clean. I was growing short of temper from all this treatment, and I expect them women would'a found out my real nature once something broke wrong and I drawed my heater, which I still kept. For I had come to the notion that on account of my adventures out west with the Captain, I was a gunfighter of sorts, girl or not, and I felt above most of them citified easterners who ate toast with jam and moaned and crowed about not having no blueberries in the winter months.

But the lack of woozy water chewed at me, and one afternoon I couldn't stand it no more. I decided to drown my thirst with a taste of muddle sauce that Mr. Douglass kept in his kitchen pantry. He had bottles and bottles of it. So I slipped in there and grabbed a bottle, but no sooner did I take a quick drinkie-poo than I heard somebody coming. I quick put the bottle back just as Miss Ottilie, his white wife, appeared, frowning. I thought she'd busted me flat-footed, but instead she announced, “Mr. Douglass asks to see you in his study now.”

I proceeded there and found him setting behind his spacious desk. He was a short man, the top of the desk was nearly as high as he was. He had a big head for such a tiny person, and his hair, standing on end like a lion's mane, loomed over the top of the desk.

He seen me coming and bid me to close the door. “Since you are in the employ of the Captain, I has got to interview you,” he said, “to make you aware of the plight of the Negro in whose service you has been fighting.”

Well, I was aware of that plight, being that I am a Negro myself, plus I heard him bleating it about the house, and the truth is, I weren't interested in fighting for nobody's cause. But I didn't want to offend the great man, so I said, “Well, thank you, sir.”

“First of all, dear,” he said, drawing himself up, “sit down.”

I done that. Set in a chair just across from his desk.

“Now,” he said, drawing hisself up. “The Negro comes in all colors. Dark. Black. Blacker. Blackest. Blacker than night. Black as hell. Black as tar. White. Light. Lighter. Lightest. Lighter than light. White as the sun. And almost white. Take me, for example. I am of a brown hue. You, on the other hand, is nearly white, and comely, and that's a terrible dilemma, is it not?”

Well, I never thunk of it that way, but since he knowed everything, I gived him my best answer. “Yes, sir,” I said.

“I'm a mulatto myself,” he said proudly.

“Yes, sir.”

“Being comely, we mulattoes have therefore various certain experiences that define our existence and set us apart from the other adherents of our racial congruities.”

“Sir?”

“We mulattoes are different from most Negroes.”

“We is?”

“Of course, my child.”

“I reckon so, Mr. Douglass, if you say so.”

“I deedy doody say so indeed-y,” he said.

I reckoned he said that as a joke, for he chortled and looked at me. “Ain't that funny?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Cheer up, little Henrietta. Where are you from, dear?”

“Why, Kansas, Mr. Douglass.”

“No need to call me Mr. Douglass,” he said, coming from behind his desk and approaching where I sat. “My friends call me Fred.”

It didn't seem proper to call a great man like him Fred, for the only Fred I knowed was dumber than doughnuts and deader than yesterday's beer. Besides, Mr. Douglass was stout as a porcupine about the rules of me calling him “Mr. Douglass” at the train station before. But I didn't want to offend the great leader, so I said, “Yes, sir.”

“Not sir. Fred.”

“Yes, sir, Fred.”

“Oh, come now. Get cheery. Here. Move. Have a seat here,” he said. He moved to a tiny couch that was as cockeyed and cocky-mamy as anything I ever seen. One side faced one way. One side faced the other. I reckoned the carpenter was drunk. He stood before it. “This is a love seat,” he said, motioning me over with his hands. He done it like he was in a hurry, impatient, like he was used to people listening to his thoughts, which I expect they was, him being a great man. “Would you like to sit here whilst I explain to you further the plight of our people?” he asked.

“Well, sir, I reckon that plight looks righteous bad now, till you furthers it.”

“What's that mean?”

“Well, er, with people like you leading the way, why, we can't go wrong.”

Here the great man laughed. “You are a country girl,” he chortled. “I love country girls. They're fast. I'm from the country myself.” He pushed me down in the love seat and sat down on the other side of it. “This love seat's from Paris,” he said.

“Is she a friend of yours?”

“It's the city of light,” he said, sneaking an arm around my shoulder. “You simply
must
experience the sunlight coming over the Seine River.”

“Sunlight over a river? Oh, I seen it come over the Kaw many times. Every day in Kansas, in fact. It rains out there every day sometimes, too, just like it do here.”

“My dear,” he said. “You are a waif in the darkness.”

“I am?”

“A tree of unborn fruit.”

“I am?”

“Yet to be picked.” Here he tugged on my bonnet, which I quickly pushed back in place.

“Tell me. Where were you born? What is your birthday?”

“I don't know exactly. Though I reckon to be about twelve or fourteen.”

“That's just it!” he said, hopping up to his feet. “The Negro knows not where he was born, or who his mother is. Or who his father is. Or his real name. He has no home. He has no land. His station is temporary. He is guile and fodder for the slave catcher. He is a stranger in a strange land! He is a slave, even when he is free! He is a renter, an abettor! Even if he owns a home. The Negro is a perpetual lettor!”

“Like A, B, and C?”

“No child. A renter.”

“You rent here?”

“No, dear. I buy. But that's not the point. See this?” He squeezed my shoulder. “That is merely flesh. You are natural prey to the carnal wisdom and thirst of the slave owner, that dastardly fiend of fiendishness. Your colored woman knows no freedom. No dignity. Her children are sold down the lane. Her husbands tend the field. While the fiendish slave owner has his way with her.”

“He do?”

“Of course he does. And see this?” He squeezed the back of my neck, then stroked it with fat fingers. “This slender neck, the prominent nose—this, too, belongs to the slave owner. They feel it belongs to them. They take what is not rightfully theirs. They know not you, Harlot Shackleford.”

“Henrietta.”

“Whatever. They know not you, Henrietta. They know you as property. They know not the spirit inside you that gives you your humanity. They care not about the pounding of your silent and lustful heart, thirsting for freedom; your carnal nature, craving the wide, open spaces that they have procured for themselves. You're but chattel to them, stolen property, to be squeezed, used, savaged, and occupied.”

Well, all that tinkering and squeezing and savaging made me right nervous, 'specially since he was doing it his own self, squeezing and savaging my arse, working his hand down toward my mechanicals as he spoke the last, with his eyes all dewy, so I hopped to my feet.