The Secrets of Mary Bowser (14 page)

For once, Mrs. Upshaw made no answer.

I hurried down to the sidewalk, striding along Gaskill to Fourth and then crossing up to Lombard. Only four long blocks separated the Upshaws’ from the Fortens’, but they might as well have been an ocean apart, for all the buildings said about the fortunes of their respective residents. The Forten house sat squat and certain, three stories tall and even broader than it was high, with a low brick wall along one side enclosing a private garden. The marble stairs leading up to the double front door were nearly as wide as the Upshaws’ whole building. Pulling myself tall, I gathered my skirts and trotted up the steps.

Before I even rang, an elderly butler opened the doors. “The ladies are in the sitting room,” he said. He hung my cloak and bonnet among the others on the ornately carved hallstand, then led me along an elegantly carpeted hall. Though I longed to peer in as we passed the drawing room and dining room, I held myself to curious glances at the gilt-framed mirrors and marble-topped mahogany chests lining the hall. The furnishings were prim and old-fashioned, as though everything, even the servant, was preserved from the earliest era of the family’s wealth.

The butler paused before the third doorway and whispered, “Your name, miss?”

My heart thrilled. I’d never been announced in company before, and certainly not to a room full of society ladies. “Mary. Mary Van Lew.”

But when he proclaimed, “Miss Van Lew,” to the two dozen or so women gathered inside the large parlor, all I could think was, that ain’t me. It’s Bet.

I blinked in the harsh glare of the gas lamps, which glowed brightly all through the lavish room. Even the Van Lews didn’t have gas lighting inside the house. Nobody in Richmond did.

One of the ladies stood and walked toward me. She moved with the same confident manner as Phillipa Thayer, her dark skin nearly glowing against her emerald muslinet gown. “I’m Margaretta Forten. I’m so glad you could join us, Miss Van Lew.”

Seeing how all those ladies sitting in intimate clusters of twos and threes stopped their chatting and sewing to turn their inquisitive faces toward me, it put me in mind of Bet’s abolitionist friends. Quick to condemn slavery but slow to recognize the colored people they relied on every day. I didn’t want to be such a person. Didn’t even want to spend an evening with them. I just wanted to skulk back to the Upshaws’. But then I remembered I didn’t fit in any too well there either.

One of the white ladies rose and crossed the parlor. She was younger than the rest, though older than me, a grown-up lady for sure. Dressed in a plain gray frock with the broadest collar I’d ever seen, white without a stitch of lace on it, and a sheer cap over her hair. She had lovely gray eyes, sweet without pretension.

“Mary, isn’t it? My name is Cynthia Moore, but everyone calls me Zinnie.” Her eyes twinkled. “As I like to say, to take the
sin
right out of
Cynthia
.”

You could have bowled me over with a feather at the thought of this thin, tall, pale lady sharing anything with the Zinnie that I lived with my whole girlhood. Zinnie who was dark, and short, and about as broad as a woman could be, every piece on her—mouth and nose and bosom, cheeks so round you could barely find her eyes above them.

Not at all like this Miss Moore. It made me truly understand the expression rail-thin just to look at this woman, who had scarcely more to her than there was to a narrow wooden post. Lips so light and small they hardly seemed to be there at all, no bosom to give even the slightest rise to that white collar, and barely enough nose to get the business of breathing done. Then again, all that plainness gave those kind eyes all the more room to stand out.

And they did, still warm as she said, “Miss Douglass has told us all about thee. If thou will sit by me, I’ll show thee what we have made, so thou may choose a project.”

With the strangeness of it all, me a colored Miss Van Lew and her a white Zinnie and her bizarre Quaker way of speaking to boot, I couldn’t bring myself to answer.

Miss Douglass shifted ever so slightly on the settee. “Perhaps you would be more comfortable here by me?”

Zinnie Moore’s face flushed, and I realized that she thought I was spurning her. I didn’t want my teacher to think I was scared of this white woman, or any white person—I didn’t want to think it myself. And I didn’t want to be intimidated by Margaretta Forten’s fancified house, any more than by Phillipa’s snooty airs.

Searching out the room, my eye caught on an oil painting hanging on the wall, larger even than the one in Mr. Jones’s dining room but bearing the same proud eagle. I breathed in so deep, I might have been readying myself to loose one of that great bird’s chirring caws. “So long as there’s no sin in it,” I said, “I’d be happy to sit beside Zinnie Moore.”

She smiled and led me across the length of the parlor to a small worktable displaying a number of pincushions, aprons, bookmarks, and other finished wares. Much of the needlework—beaded purses, muslin caps, crocheted collars—was more advanced than I could manage. While the other women around the room returned to their sewing and conversing, I searched through the pattern case until I found a punched-paper pattern for a wall motto with the passage
REMEMBER THEM THAT ARE IN BONDS, AS BOUND WITH THEM. HEBREWS
13:3. Nothing could be easier for me than that, the remembering and the stitching both, so I laid the pattern onto the worktable and drew a needle from my sewing box.

Zinnie nodded at my choice. “Thou hast picked wisely. The labor goes quickly that speaks to the heart.”

As I selected colors from the store of Berlin wools, vanity got the better of me. Keeping my voice low so that none of the other groups of ladies might hear me, I asked, “What did Miss Douglass tell you about me?”

“That thou hast come from slavery only this year, and hast already made great progress in school. She is very proud of thee, for proving that neither blackness nor slavery is an impediment to intellect.” Miss Douglass wasn’t one to flatter, so hearing her praise secondhand made me shine. “She tells us that thy parents are still in Richmond, in the condition thou lately left. I pray this may be the last Christmas thy family spends apart, and that when thy mother joins our sewing circle, we may sew only for our pleasure, because our struggle will be won.”

The thought of Mama sitting quietly among the ladies in the group amused me quite a bit. But I let Zinnie Moore think my smile was agreement with her sentiment, as we settled into our needlework.

I stitched a good half hour before summoning the courage to ask Zinnie Moore the question that was gnawing at me, as I considered how primly my teacher sat among the ladies on the far side of the grand parlor. “Miss Douglass dresses simply, but she doesn’t speak like you do. Is she also Quaker?”

“Grace Douglass, her mother, attended Arch Street Meeting every week, though she never applied to join the Society of Friends. Sarah often came with her, but I do not believe she attends anymore.” I wondered that Zinnie blushed as she added, “Most of the Friends in our sewing circle attend Green Street Meeting.” Before she could say more, the butler brought supper in.

I was disappointed that he set only a plate of buckwheat cakes, fruits, and cheeses on our worktable. Zinnie peeked out mischievously from beneath her funny cap. “Margaretta will fret that thou may think her miserly for providing such simple fare. She does it out of respect for the Friends, who keep to modesty in all things, even eat and drink.”

“Zinnie Moore, are you gossiping?” I only meant to tease, the way Hattie and I always did, but as soon as the words came out, I feared they might offend this strange lady.

She pursed her lips a moment but then grinned back at me. “ ’Tis not gossip to compliment a lady’s good nature. Nor sinful if I preserve thy high opinion of my generous friend.”

Friend
. I’d never head a white lady address a negro so. This Zinnie Moore was something. A pale, slender, Quaker something.

I was up into the wee hours that night writing Mama and Papa, and I slept mighty late the next morning. When I rushed downstairs, Hattie was stamping her feet against the cold. “At long last. I was beginning to wonder whether Mrs. Upshaw had fussed you to death once and for all.”

“Sorry to keep you here freezing.” We began walking, arms linked, toward Arch Street. “I forgot you’d be waiting.”

“Forgot? Aren’t I here every morning?”

“I stayed up so late last night, I don’t think I’m quite awake this morning.”

That caught her concern. “How come Miss Douglass kept you after session? I wanted to wait, but I had to get to Emily’s right away.” Hattie’s sister was just about on her third confinement, and Hattie was fairly living at her house, helping look after Emily’s two boys. “What has our schoolmarm ordered you to?”

“Not ordered, invited. To—let me see if I can get the name right—the Philadelphia Anti-Female Slavery, I mean Female Anti-Slavery, Society.”

“You went to a Society meeting?”

“Oh no, just the sewing circle. They have a gift fair every year and—”

“Yes, I know it. Everyone knows it. Funny, I didn’t think Miss Douglass invited girls your age to her sewing circle.”

Hattie didn’t usually make much of the age difference between us—two years that, like the difference between Baltimore and Richmond, between born free and born slave, didn’t seem to add up to much, given how close we felt to each other. I looked over at her, but she held her gaze straight ahead.

We were about to cross Market Street, and suddenly I remembered my letter. “I need to stop at the post office.”

“We can’t stop. We’ll be nearly late as it is.”

For weeks I’d been too glum to eke out a word to Mama and Papa. Now that I had a proper letter, I didn’t want to delay posting it. “You go on, I’ll be there right off.”

Hattie withdrew her arm from mine. “Just remember, even Phillipa Thayer doesn’t dare come tardy to the schoolroom.” Her voice was as frosty as the morning air. “I’d hate to see you lose your new favor in Miss Douglass’s eyes.” With that, she walked off.

I hurried to the post and then up to school, barely slipping into my seat before Miss Douglass called the class to order. Hattie wouldn’t even wink or nod to me. Though I couldn’t understand what had her so ornery, I figured we’d make up as we walked home for dinner recess. But mid-morning, a knock came to the classroom door. It was Susan, the Jones’s housekeeper, with a note for Miss Douglass. When our schoolmarm read it, she instructed Hattie to gather up her things. Emily’s confinement had come, and Hattie was needed to help with the children.

The sewing circle didn’t meet but twice a week, so I sewed at the Upshaws’, too, starting that very night. As soon as we finished supper, I pulled my sewing case out and, knowing there weren’t but three rooms to the whole apartment, headed to the parlor.

Ducky eyed the case. “What’s the matter, that white lady cut off your allowance?”

Ignoring her, I smiled my contrition at Mrs. Upshaw. “Since sewing is such a fine ladies’ pastime, I’ve joined a sewing circle. I need to finish some pieces, so they can be sold at our charity fair.”

Mrs. Upshaw lit all over the idea. “A charity fair, dear, ain’t that something. Perhaps Dulcey and me can help some, too.”

Ducky squawked. “We start trying to give charity, we’re gonna end up needing to take charity.”

For once, I saw the truth in what she said. Mrs. Upshaw could outsew just about every lady I’d met at the Fortens’. But taking even a half hour a day away from her paid work would be more than she could afford.

“Mrs. Upshaw, you’re very kind to offer, and we’d do well to have such fine things as you can make. But none of these ladies sew nearly as well as you, and I think it might shame them a bit to have their work laid up next to yours.” I could tell by the way she nodded my tack was working. “You know how some people just aren’t happy if they don’t feel superior.”

Ducky snorted.

Over the next fortnight, I grew so lonely for Hattie, I bundled up against the bitter cold come Saturday and walked all the way down Shippen Street past Eleventh, to the little cottage that Emily’s husband rented for his family.

I knocked and waited, then waited some more, until Hattie finally swung open the door. She was wearing a worn dress topped with an old apron, her hair covered by a head-wrap. “What are you doing here?” she asked.

“Aren’t you even going to invite me in? I’m a regular icicle out in this cold.”

“You’ve got to mind the floors if you come tramping in here. I’ve only just washed them.”

I applied myself carefully to the boot scraper and lifted my damp skirts high before stepping inside. “I’ve missed you so, I can’t wait to tell you all that’s been happening at my sewing circle. And of course I want to hear what you’ve been up to.”

“What I’ve been up to is drudgery and nothing but. Cinderella to my sisters, who order me here and there like I’m a servant with five mistresses. And two demonic little masters.” She crossed her arms in that tired-of-being-tired way that Mama got whenever one of the Van Lews took sick so quick they didn’t have time to ring for a slop bucket or haul themselves to a chamber pot. “My nephews will be up from their nap any minute, ready to tear the house apart, so I’ve got no time for your silly little stories.”

Hattie was never so cross with me. “I know you’re working hard, but so am I. Zinnie Moore says my sewing has already improved a bundle. I’ve finished two wall mottoes, and I’ve even started to embroider a tea cozy.”

“That is cozy, for you, playing at being a snob like Phillipa.”

“What’s Phillipa got to do with it?”

She rolled her eyes, like I was some kind of fool. “All this time you act like you’re making fun of the better sort of colored Philadelphia, then first chance you get you run off and join them and their white ladies. You may be falling all over impressed by yourself, but I’m too busy to sit about sipping tea and listening to your nonsense.”

“It isn’t nonsense at all. The fair raises loads of money for abolition. You have to understand why that’s important to me. My father is a slave, my mother is—”