The Secrets of Mary Bowser (7 page)

“No, Lewis, I’m not.” Mama didn’t seem sad exactly, though her voice held a dim sort of sorry over not even quite knowing what she was giving up. “I remember how lonely it was when I first came to Richmond. I’m not ready to be that lonely in Philadelphia now. Or to leave you to it here. Child grows up, leaves her parents, that’s natural. Wife leaves her husband, though, that’s something else.”

“You know the law,” Papa said. “Only got one year, and then you be sold off to the highest bidder, who know where you end up. I won’t allow it.”

“We have one year, but not one year from now. One year from the day the state of Virginia knows I’m free. What if nobody knows, nobody that doesn’t have to?”

And so Mama outlined the rest of the plan. She’d remain in Richmond, working for the Van Lews, earning wages just as Josiah and Zinnie and their girls were doing. But she’d stay as long as need be, until Mahon agreed to sell Papa to Miss Bet or free Papa himself. Miss Bet would write out free papers for Mama, but she wouldn’t file them with the state, nor would Mama register as a free negro. She would be free, but no one in Richmond besides her, Papa, and the Van Lews would know it. She wouldn’t have to worry about leaving the state or facing re-enslavement so long as Miss Bet remained alive and well. Every month Miss Bet would make the free papers over again with the new date, destroying the old ones, so if something happened to her, Mama would still have a year, more or less, before she’d have to leave Virginia.

“I don’t like my wife posing as a slave, that’s for sure,” Papa said. “But I never been wild about my wife being a slave, neither.” It was the first joke I’d heard him make in weeks. He turned serious again before he continued. “Minerva, I been searching for the strength to let you go, but I ain’t found it yet. If you sure you want to stay this way, I ain’t about to stop you.”

“I’m sure,” Mama said. “If I go North now, I’m gonna work hard for some white family or other, who knows how they treat me or pay me, where I’m gonna live, or any of it. I stay in Richmond, I stay with you. I’ll make Miss Bet give me leave to spend nights here, instead of the Van Lew house.” Mama’s mouth tugged down with the weight of all she was considering. “I’m hard-pressed to trust any white person, but she’s trying to do right by my daughter, I think she’ll pay me fair, and I’ll have my freedom papers the whole time. I been a slave wishing for freedom my whole life. Being a free woman play-acting at slavery can’t be harder than that.”

I was so used to pretending I wasn’t listening to such conversations that I forgot Mama’d given me leave to participate. When I remembered, I spoke up. “If I go to Philadelphia for school, I can’t come back to Virginia.” The excitement I’d stoked all week long was instantly tempered as I thought on everything I stood to lose. “I’ll never see you and Papa again.”

Mama squeezed my hand so I felt all the love and fear and hope passing between us. “No one besides Miss Bet needs to know where you’ve gone to, and if they don’t know, they can’t keep you from coming back.” Her voice caught. “Listen enough to white people talk, seems like none of them agree about slavery at all. I hear Miss Bet read to Mistress V from those abolitionist papers how whites and negroes up North even work together to end it. Smart girl like you, living free in Philadelphia, maybe you be the one who figures out how to get rid of slavery once and for all.”

That day Mama taught me that what other people see you as doesn’t determine who you really are. She could let people think she was a slave, if that meant she could be free and live with Papa. We could let them think I’d been sent to work the Van Lews’ market farm or rented out to a family friend in Petersburg, if that meant I could go to Philadelphia without imperiling any chance of coming back to Richmond. And who knows what I might do—not just for myself but maybe, like Mama said, for all the slaves—if I could have my education and still pass between North and South. Miss Bet always howled and raved against show and ought. But for colored folks in Virginia, survival meant biting our tongues and biding our time, while scheming like Mama did all the while.

As soon as Mama gave her the nod, Miss Bet began sending letters off to Philadelphia to secure a place for me. Miss Bet wouldn’t think of sending me to the city’s lone colored public school, in which two hundred students met with a single teacher in a broken-down building over a mere dozen books. But it was no easy matter for her to find a private school that would enroll me. A few Quaker-sponsored institutions existed to educate negro boys, but they were just as closed to me as the white academies. Yet Miss Bet kept at it, the way she always did when something fueled her ire. As weeks passed, then months, she tried to distract us from the delay by tutoring me herself, insisting it was preparation for my formal schooling.

It was nearly Easter when word arrived of Sarah Mapps Doug-lass, a colored woman who kept a small academy in her home. When Miss Bet annouced that Miss Douglass had agreed to accept me, Mama negotiated for me to stay in Richmond a bit longer, to spend my birthday with her and Papa. It was always a sore point with Mama that neither she nor my father knew their own dates of birth—Papa wasn’t even sure what year he was born, separated as he was from his family so early on—so Mama was mighty careful to remember the day I came into the world, May 17, 1839. With my twelfth birthday approaching, Papa determined to outfit me for my new life any way he could.

Miss Bet, eager to ensure the success of her personal experiment in negro improvement, provided me with the basics of a new wardrobe—two summer day dresses, both fine enough even for Sundays, and one evening dress, plus a night-shirt with matching sleeping cap, new shoes, hose, and my first real set of lady’s undergarments. To Papa were left the purchase of items “necessar-y to a free young la-dy,” as he called out in sing-song. Unlike the whimsical just-becauses of my childhood, these gifts came deliberately chosen, talismans of all Papa wanted me to be and do, once I was far from him. A toilet set and matching combs, my own Bible, even a bonnet as fashionable as any white girl my age wore—each gift appeared to his merry rhyme. My favorite of all was a sewing kit. Not any old rusty needle and scrap of thread but a proper tortoise-shell box containing a whole case full of new needles of every size, along with a plump satin pincushion, a worked-metal thimble and matching scissors, and a rainbow’s array of spooled threads. All of it meant not just for mending but for the kind of fancy needlework I didn’t yet know how to do.

Richmond’s slave markets supplied human goods to much of the upper South, and I was old enough to understand the horror of families ripped asunder, with no idea where a child or parent auctioned in the city would eventually be taken. As foreign as Philadelphia was to us, we knew it wasn’t slavery and it wasn’t the South. Knowing I was freedom bound, we savored that time when the future was a promise that had not yet come to pass.

As I blinked my eyes open my last morning in Richmond, I made out the iron cross hanging on the wall of Papa’s cabin. Most Sundays of my childhood, I spent half an hour or more tracing over its whorls and flourishes, fascinated that my papa had created such a beautiful thing. But this morning I was ticking too full of emotion to lay gazing at his cross.

In just a few hours, Miss Bet and I were to take the train North to Washington, where we would transfer to the rail line to Philadelphia. Miss Bet had fussed about how cramped boat passage was, but Mama harrumphed at her protestations, informing me in private that Miss Bet just had a tendency for seasickness. Though I had never been on either a boat or a train, the latter seemed more modern and formal to me, with all the noise and smoke, so I felt glad for Miss Bet’s infirmity.

I thought my excitement would have me up earliest of my family, but Papa and Mama were already dressed in their workday clothes and seated at the table, a small pot of coffee between them. I quickly rose and readied myself, splashing water on my face and rinsing my mouth. Undoing the plaits I normally wore, I swept my hair back from my face, securing it with my new combs. Stepping back from the doorway to preserve my privacy, I reached for my pile of new clothing.

I slipped into the knee-length chemise that would protect my undergarments, then struggled into my new corset. As I labored to lace myself in, the stiff fabric pulled my shoulders down and back, causing my rib cage to poke out and constraining me so, I could barely bend and wriggle my way into my new petticoat and corset cover, and then my crinolines, followed by another petticoat. At last I pulled on my dress, a green-and-yellow-striped silk. Unlike the loose frocks I’d always worn, this dress had a lady’s fitted bodice. The double-row of covered buttons down the front followed the lines of the corset, and the elegantly formed sleeves began inches below my shoulders, tapering down to my narrow wrists. The collar, trimmed with green lace, was fashioned broad and low in anticipation of the summer heat, leaving a scoop of skin below my collar-bones exposed for all the world to see.

Mama and Zinnie always wore unadorned blouses and skirts, no sewn trim, with underblouses and underskirts only when needed to guard against cold weather. The lively patterns of the gingham from which their garments were cut quickly grew dull with wear and washing. As I slipped on my hose and then my new ankle boots, I ruminated on how the shaped undergarments and the tight cut of my dress created the effect of a figure I hadn’t yet developed. Though I could barely move for the weight of all those layers, I tried to carry myself as I believed Mistress Van Lew or Miss Bet or any real lady would, as I stepped into the next room.

Papa stood, his large eyes blinking at me. “Philadelphia lucky to have such a fine young lady, pretty as she is smart.”

Most days I would have beamed with pride at such a compliment, but the thought of leaving him caught my mouth closed. I crossed the small room and held him tight, surprised at how tall my new shoes made me against his large frame. He kissed the top of my head, as he often did, but he no longer had to stoop to do so.

“I hope you saved room in that satchel for one final gift, necessar-y to an-y free la-dy.” He gestured to the table, where two wrapped packages sat. “One for each of my free ladies,” he said, handing one to Mama and the other to me. We opened them in unison, to find identical stacks of cream-colored writing paper, each with a set of a dozen steel pen nibs on top. “My ladies be writing each other furious often I bet, and be through these piles in no time. Why, if Minerva gonna write down all she got to say, I best be saving for the next pile of paper already.”

Mama scowled in mock disapproval of Papa’s joke. I was ready to tease him back, asking where his stack was. But just before speaking I caught myself. Papa had no use for letter paper. He wasn’t literate.

Six days out of seven during my childhood, Mama enjoyed a connection to me that slavery denied my father. Now that I was going North to freedom, he couldn’t even share the solace of writing to me and reading my responses.

We left the cabin and made our way up Church Hill, arriving just as Josiah pulled the larger of the Van Lew carriages, drawn by four of the family’s six white horses, to the front of the mansion. As Papa helped him load the trunks, Zinnie came out to bid me farewell, flanked by Lilly and Daisy. The sight of their family together brought a tremble to Mama’s lips, and after speaking only a few low words wishing me well, Zinnie hustled her daughters back into the house.

Papa marked how high the sun was in the sky, and we both knew his good-bye couldn’t be put off any longer. “We always knowed you was special, Mary El. Now you got to prove it to the world. Mind how your mama and I raised you. And remember, some folks mighta been born to more than you, but none been born better than you.” Comforting as those words would be in the months and years ahead, I was startled by what came next. “And don’t let none of them Northern colored gentlemen run off with you, without asking your papa’s leave first.” Before I could object that no gentleman would be interested in me, he added, grinning as best he could, “Since you Minerva’s daughter, only fair I warn any suitor what he be up against. Now go along and make us proud.”

“I will, Papa,” I promised. He kissed me and Mama and then turned back toward Shockoe Bottom, hurrying to his day’s labor at the smithy.

I couldn’t bear to watch Papa disappear down Grace Street, so I turned to the mansion. Josiah was holding the door as Miss Bet emerged to stride down the curving stairway. She wore her slate gray traveling suit, and the gray hat sitting atop her golden ringlets brought out the icy blue of her eyes.

“Hardly appropriate garments for a servant traveling two days by train,” she said when she saw me. “But I suppose there is nothing to be done for it now.” The feather in her hat wagged as she spoke, reminding me of how Mama shook her finger at me whenever I did wrong. We took our places inside the Van Lew carriage, Mama and me riding backward as we faced our former owner. I spent all of my first-ever carriage ride fretting about how I’d fare traveling alone with Miss Bet.

Once we arrived at the train depot, Josiah handed us down from the carriage, directed a porter to unload the trunks, and secured our tickets. Miss Bet nodded to Mama. “Mary will be fine with me, Aunt Minnie. Don’t worry about a thing, and do look after Mother while I’m away.” She turned to me. “Shall we go?”

Mama answered before I could. “Please, Miss Bet, can Mary El and I have a minute to ourselves?”

Her subdued tone seemed to catch Miss Bet off guard. “Yes, of course. I shall wait on the train. But mind the time. You’ve got only a few moments.”

As Miss Bet walked off, Mama took me in her arms, holding me so close our hearts pounded one against the other. “I’ve been hoping and praying for this day all your life, longer even. Was enough to imagine you free some day, but off to get some fancy private academy education? Your life gonna be different, special, not just from mine but from most colored folks’. You got to learn enough up there for all of us, hear?”

The truth of leaving home caught me quick, rendering me as immobile as one of Papa’s wrought iron creations. “Mama, I can’t leave you and Papa. Don’t make me go.”