An Unlikely Friendship (12 page)

While still in Springfield, the Lincolns' financial worth escalated. His fame, garnered from his speechmaking, and his influence were expanding. Mary had another floor built onto the house. In the winter of 1857 she threw a party for five hundred people, but only three hundred came because of the bad weather. She was, without knowing it, preparing herself to be First Lady.

But as always, when depressed, she shopped. On one occasion she spent $196.55 for clothing and one of her dresses cost the same as two months' pay for an ordinary Springfield family.

Lincoln continued speechmaking and came to stand for helping the oppressed. He addressed a large audience at New York's Cooper Institute, then traveled to New England where he gave eleven more speeches.

In 1860 he ran for president. War was looming. People predicted terrible results if he won.

In the blink of an eye, when her husband was elected, Mary's life in a fishbowl began. She was finally wife of the president of the United States, something she had wanted since she was a very young girl.

W
ITH ELEVEN-YEAR-OLD
Willie and eight-year-old Tad (Robert had gone off to Harvard), the Lincolns went to Washington. The boys, often called "the Lincoln brats," had the run of the White House.

The Civil War (or War Between the States, as the Southerners called it) broke out in April of 1861. But despite it, Mary continued with her gaiety and parties, which she became known for in the White House. Some of Washington's elite matrons were rude to her—the wife of the pioneer president, the First Lady from the backwoods of Illinois. Others attended her levees (receptions) but talked behind her back.

Those who hated her husband called him "that ape" or "a Black Republican."

As always, when depressed, Mary shopped. She bought a fancy carriage, a 190-piece porcelain dinner set, wallpaper from Paris, silverware, and many other items that overshot the allowance she was permitted to run the White House. To the White House she added furnaces, gaslight, and running water.

She shopped at New York importers, and in Philadelphia. And soon she was criticized for her self-indulgence in Northern newspapers by those who hated her husband.

She interviewed dressmakers to make her lavish gowns. But all those she hired she was displeased with. Fashion was of prime importance to her. On one particular occasion she wanted a "bright rose-colored moiré antique gown," and determined to find just the right dressmaker, she set out to interview three or four more.

Early one morning at the beginning stages of the presidency, a light-skinned black woman walked up to the front entrance of the White House. She wanted the position of dressmaker to the First Lady but didn't think she had a chance of getting it.

Already successful in her trade, and the favorite of Washington's elite, she was a free black woman who had purchased her own freedom.

The interview lasted only a few minutes, and in that time Mary Lincoln hired the free black woman.

Her name was Elizabeth Keckley.

Lizzy—Child of Aggy—Feb. 1818. Recipe for Muster Day gingerbread. As follows:

A
ND SO
I
WAS BORN
and my birth registered in the mistress's household diary. I was listed right above the recipe for Muster Day gingerbread. And right below the new shipment of household supplies. "Two bristol boards, a bottle of varnish, a varnish brush, and writing paper."

I was born into the household of Mary and Armistead Burwell of Dinwiddie County, Virginia, on Sappony Creek, south of Petersburg, Virginia's third largest town, where men made money in tobacco factories, mills, and stores.

My birth did not go unnoticed on the large plantation. With every birth of a slave child the master is that much richer. And I suppose that with my mother I would have sold for at least $1,300. Master always said that Aggy, my mother, was worth her salt. It was his favorite expression.

Master was my father, though that was not noted anywhere. For all intents and purposes, my father was a slave from a neighboring plantation, name of George Pleasant Hobbs. I never thought of anyone but Daddy George as my father, though he was allowed to visit us only two times a year, on Easter and on Christmas.

My face is fair and I am light of skin. Somewhere along the years Armistead Burwell got my mama alone, 'bout when his wife was carrying her tenth child, and so I got my fair skin and blue eyes.

Master Burwell inherited Mama and fifteen other slaves when he was only in his teens. She became a nurse for his wife and later their ten children, and so, worked in the big house, and I worked with her.

My mama never spoke to me about how she felt about Master. Or if she had any feelings at all. She did tell me how she grieved because I was a girl. How she regretted not taking the tansy, rue, roots and seed of the cotton plant, the pennyroyal, the cedar berries, and the camphor that could cause an abortion.

She regretted it because a girl child is destined for all sorts of mistreatment at the hands of her master. As it was, any child could be sold away from its mother if they weren't Burwell slaves.

Burwells have never yet sold their slaves off. The slaves on our plantation go back to early colonial days when Master's great-grandfather brought them in tenfold from the docks of New Orleans. Right off the ships from the west coast of Africa, from northern Senegambia. And even the more inland region of the Niger Delta.

Mama says my ancestors were hunters, fishermen, merchants, artisans, and farmers. All the slaves on this plantation have stories and history to tell.

Mama says that is all fine and dandy. And I should be proud. But I also have to make my own history. Which I have already set out to do.

I
F
I
WERE TO BE SOLD
at age four, the price I would bring, after being weighed on the scale, would be about $ 300. A little shady girl like myself isn't worth much. And then only if I sold along with my mother, whose price would be about $1,100 because she is such a good nurse and seamstress.

I already knew that at age four. I heard Massa talk about it, though I knew he would never sell off me and Mama. Only planters of no account sell off their own daughters, although some have been known to do it.

But no matter how much I am worth, here is how I lived and why.

Me and Mama lived in a cabin in the quarters, where all the slaves lived on this elegant plantation. We each had a bed, and the mattress was made of corn shucks, which was stuffed afresh about once a year. We had a fireplace with pots hanging in it, ready for cooking, but we never used it. We always ate in the kitchen of the big house because Mama was nurse to the Burwell children. And there were ten of them. And she was the one and only seamstress in the whole house.

At four I already knew how to ply a needle. Mama had taught me. I was stitching calico for a patchwork quilt. Mama allowed me to use long straight stitches because they were easier. By the time I was six, I was learning to put together a man's shirt. But I get ahead of myself.

I thought it magic what Mama could do with that needle and wished for the day I would be a seamstress for some grand lady.

But my regular work was not so special. I followed Missus Burwell around. I fetched for her. I stood by her side and fanned away the flies. I did her errands and even went on calls with her, dressed in my finest gingham.

We ate good. We had boiled greens and meat and fish, hoecakes made of cornmeal and cooked on a fire rake. Real butter and molasses. We had pot likker.

The negroes in the quarters got bacon and meal on Saturdays. All week they ate corn and ashcakes, with a little meat on the side. At Christmas they got fruit.

But they were allowed to fish in the creek, something they did at night while fires burned on the edge of the water, in what made the prettiest sight you ever did see. They were allowed to hunt. With dogs, not with guns. When Massa took a fancy to hunt, he would take his two oldest sons with him and some chosen slaves. They went out after possum, coon, and fox. And they took Massa's best hunting dogs to tree the animals.

My grandma was named Sarry. She was Mama's mama and she was the cook, which is part why we got such good victuals in the kitchen. She was also the mistress of the herbs that got given to the slaves when they were sickly. She fed all the little negroes in a trough in the backyard. Nothing fancy, but good rib-sticking food. They ate with oyster shells out of that trough, the oyster shells the only thing that kept them from acting like little piggies.

I ate at the kitchen table with a proper dish and spoon.

The negroes in the quarters get up at four to the blowing of a conch shell by the head overseer, Big Red. They went to the fields when it was still dark and came home after sundown. Or as they say, "From can't see to can't see." Lunch was brought to them in the fields.

We chilluns didn't have many chores, so we hunted for turkey nests and got a tea cake for every one we found. I don't know what those white folk did with those turkey nests. As I got older I pondered it out. They did it to keep us busy or when they wanted us out of their sight.

The slaves all had linsey-woolsey clothing for winter, all spun and made on the plantation's own looms. We house slaves had to make a better appearance so Massa purchased fabric from the Petersburg factory in checks and plaids, and it was soft and pretty to wear.

Sometimes poor white folk from the area would come and stand around the quarters and try to trade with the slaves. They'd trade their calico and snuff for slave food. That's how poor they were. The slaves in the quarters all looked down on them.

I tried not to get sick, 'cause if I did, Grandma Sarry would give me turpentine for a sore throat. As it was, in winter I had to wear a bag of asafetida around my neck to keep away all kinds of ailments. In spring I had to take Jerusalem oak seed in syrup for nine mornings. Grandma Sarry said nine was a magic number and by then I would be rid of the worms.

For headaches she gave me jimsonweed; for warts, nine grains of corn; for measles, corn-shuck tea; for mumps, fresh marrow from the hog jowl. Oh, she knew all the magic one needed to get well. And she was often down to the quarters attending to a sick slave.

I had friends, of course. Jane was one of them. So was Amos. And I can't think of a better way to tell you how things could go bad for us than to tell you their stories.

Oh, yes. We have three drivers on this place. Drivers, or overseers, keep the slaves in line and working. Massa has a rule. The ordinary driver is allowed to give no more than six lashes for an offense. The head driver, twelve, and Big Red, the overseer, twenty-four. Anything can be an offense. And we learn that fast.

I
BELIEVE THAT
Moses and Solomon in the Bible were negro, that lightning never strikes a sycamore tree because Jesus blessed them, and that springs of water in the ground come from the steps of angels. All these things my mama taught me. And I'll always believe them, because not to believe certain things is to die.

For the first four years of my life I believed in the Burwells. I stopped putting any trust in them after what happened with my friend Jane.

To begin with, it was a bad day on the plantation. When I came to breakfast in the kitchen, Grandma Sarry told me it was a day full of bad omens. "Somethin' about to happen," she said. "You mind yourself today."

I believed her because she was known to sense such things. And sure enough as I sat there at the table eating my hominy and molasses, who came through the door spreading the blue devils but Big Red, the head overseer.

Big Red is so called because of his fiery red hair. And he is over six feet. Mama says she would never want to have to make a shirt for him. He carried his rawhide whip all curled up in his left hand.

I'd never seen Big Red without that whip. I think he must sleep with it.

"It gives him his strength," Mama told me.

At that same time Robert came through the other door, from the corridor connecting the kitchen to the house. At fourteen, Robert was Massa's oldest son.

"Got some coffee, Grandma?" he asked. Everybody on the place called Sarry "Grandma." And she spoiled Robert so. I liked him. He paid special mind to me. Grandma said he spoiled me.

Grandma also said I was never to think of him as a half brother. "Make things more difficult when you both get older," she'd told me.

I'd noticed that Robert paid less and less mind to me of late. Even though he used to favor me when we ran and played in the yard. Robert had taught me to play stickball, checkers, even to know my letters, which I knew better than any white child on the place. He'd sat me on his knee and told me ghost stories.

But now he was fourteen and I was four. And I was a nuisance to him at best, and a trial at worst. He'd become embarrassed if I spoke to him in public, glower at me, and tell me to mind myself and leave him be.

I wasn't wanting to be a trial to any of the white folk. I'd leave him be if that was what he wanted. But I still looked up to him and worshipped him.

He and Big Red exchanged greetings as if Grandma and I did not exist.

"Mornin', Big Red," Robert said.

"Mornin', Master Robert."

So now. Something else had changed. Big Red, who answered only to Massa, had taken to calling Robert "Master." Well then.

"I got some bad news," Big Red said.

Robert nodded, as if bad news was to be expected and he could abide it without a wink.

"Sit down," Grandma Sarry told Big Red. "Have some coffee and put down that whip."

Big Red sat. He put down his whip. Grandma was the only negro on the place who could order him about, or order anyone about, for that matter.

Grandma put a dish of hoecakes in front of him. And some coffee.

"You found Basil," Grandma said.

Big Red nodded. Basil, an important negro on the place because he could do so many things, had gone missing last night. There had been a terrible rain during the night, the Devil's own, Grandma called it, cold and slashing and unforgiving.