An Unlikely Friendship (17 page)

He remained becalmed, but I saw his blue eyes go icy. "You've been given too many privileges," he said flatly. "I'm going to have to see that that changes."

I stared at him. What did that mean?

"Hasn't my father told you?"

I felt a numbness in my bones. "No."

"From here on in, I am your master. You're to come and live with me and Anna. Now I want those two dresses made. I'll handle my mother. And you're to come with us to Petersburg for the wedding, where you will attend Anna as she deserves to be attended. As your mistress. You'll fetch and serve for the both of us from now on."

I
T WAS ALL TRUE
. Massa informed me later that day. He had given me to Robert as a wedding gift.

"It's best all around, Lizzy," he said. "You're growing up. What will you do here? Think of me. It's getting too complicated for me to have my beautiful mixed-race daughter around anymore. My wife won't be kind to you in the future. Who will you marry around here? A field hand? I just don't know what to do with you. Robert will. He's a minister."

It was the first time in my life he ever called me his daughter. Was this supposed to make me feel better? It didn't.

U
S SLAVES ALWAYS
knew one truth. To be a slave was horrible. But to be a slave in a family without means or money was worse. It was lowering yourself. Every slave wanted to work for quality people. Robert was quality, to be sure, and so was Anna, but one soon learned that without money, quality got shoved in the background.

The name of the town was Ellerslie. It was in Virginia. Robert was pastor of the little local church. It was a coal mining town, as miserable as a place could be.

I was the only servant. And I soon learned that what had been done by three servants back home was all to be done by me. We settled in. I cooked and dusted and in a few hours the coal dust was back again, on everything. I washed clothes and dusted. I swept, scoured, milked the cow, and tried to keep the dust out of the milk. I kept the poultry fed and brushed the coal dust from the horses' coats. I attended Anna, brushed her hair, and dusted. I waited on Robert, and brushed the coal dust off his good frock coat.

Although she had already worked out in the world as a teacher, Anna was spoiled. She talked all the time about how she was descended from the Spotswoods, like I was expected to know who they were, or care. Her parents had died, she'd gone to live with an uncle, and he, too, died. She'd gone out teaching. But her parents once had money, and like everyone who'd once had money, she never let you forget it.

She became hysterical over trifles, she got bad headaches, and she was either flying up there with the angels or cast down with her own blue devils. I was expected to know the mood and work with it.

I'd say she needed a good serving of marrow from the jowl of a hog, that woman.

Did Robert love her? Who knew anything about Robert these days. We never talked except when he gave me orders, and those he expected to be followed quickly and without replies. He was all the time out of the house making his pastor calls, and when he was home he locked himself away, writing his sermons. To bother him you had to be the archangel Michael knocking at the door.

We stayed in that place for three years, during which Anna had two children, Mary and John. Carrying the children she was impossible, hysterical and crying most of the time. After they were born she drove me daft having me check on them every half hour lest they smother in their cribs. She courted disaster, that woman. She waited for it. Sometimes at night I heard her crying in their room and heard Robert trying to comfort her. These times I almost felt sorry for him.

Then finally, when Robert couldn't stand the coal dust anymore, when Anna said she didn't want her children breathing it in, he got another job and we moved.

I was almost eighteen and worn to the bone. Now, besides all my household chores, I was caring for two children. And Anna was in a childbearing way again. We moved to Hillsborough, in North Carolina.

A
NNA WAS NOT STUPID
. She could recite
Paradise Lost
by heart. But she did not know how to find Robert again after she lost him in the coal town of Ellerslie.

And that's what she had done. Lost him as sure as I'd lost my Daddy George. Only Robert was there, in front of her. They bumped into each other. They were expecting another child. But they scarce spoke to each other unless she complained to him about how bad she was feeling, about the other children, about me and what a vexation I was to her.

H
ILLSBOROUGH WAS MORE
to Robert's liking. He made more money, four hundred dollars a year. It was a lovely little town full of busy, happy people, all slaveholders, twelve miles west of Durham, North Carolina, which was the seat of something or other. The county, I think, though I never understood why a county needed a seat to sit down on. There were also some free nigra people, the likes of whom I had never seen before, who went about being in business for themselves, being barbers and craftsmen and farmers.

Anna and Robert moved into a two-story frame house, with big windows and two rooms on each floor, not counting the kitchen. It was surrounded by lovely trees and on top of a hill. Anna had a greenhouse. She had roses and all kinds of flowers. She had a meadow and a vegetable garden for which she got all kinds of compliments, though I did all the work. She had a swing and a white picket fence. And you could walk to town.

The town was full of doctors and lawyers and genteel, professional-quality people.

"You'll love it," Robert told her. "You'll love being the parson's wife there."

Anna hated it. She called it a mudhole. But then Anna hated everything in those days. Especially me.

F
OR SOME REASON
, that first year in Hillsborough, despite her husband's happiness, or mayhap because of it, Anna was determined to wreak vengeance upon me.

She blamed me for everything. For the rain when there was too much and the muddy water that came into the well so we couldn't do the washing. For the sun when it beat down on the quiet, sleepy streets.

We had another slave woman in the house, name of Mary Ann. She was the cook, so I didn't have those duties, thank heaven. Mary Ann was sure of herself but never cocky. She was proud of herself yet never arrogant. One day when she heard me and Anna arguing, she took me aside.

"Doan know who brung you up," she said, "but girl, didn't you ever learn the first rule of livin' with a woman like that?"

I shook my head no.

"Got one mind for the boss to see, got another for what I know is me," she quoted.

But I never could keep my anger private and put on a smiling face, as I was supposed to do. And worst of all, I never learned to humble myself to Anna's liking.

Robert let Anna rule the house, which was the problem. No matter what she decided, it was all right. Indeed, if she went to him for advice, all he would say was, "I don't know, figure it out yourself. I've my own work to do."

So Anna was left on her own to figure, to plot, to plan her sneak attacks on me. And she was like a fox in the henhouse. Still, she would bother Robert with stupid questions like, "Why does the egg man call me the Widow Burwell?"

I knew why. It was because Anna was the only one who went to the door to deal with the egg man, the milkman, the man who delivered our chickens. They never saw Robert, though they sure knew of his existence. They went to his church on Sunday. Still they called her the Widow Burwell and flirted with her. And to her shame she flirted back.

Robert spent his time being a minister. He preached twice on Sunday. He visited his people. He held Bible classes. Everyone thought him warm and generous, handsome and likely, holy and studious, and of quality. He never told any of them, "I don't know."

***

A
NNA HAD JUST HAD
her third baby, a girl, and was more moody and sad than ever. Though I am ashamed to admit it, we came to blows one day over a shell and wax wreath. To make extra money, she made and sold shell and wax flowers and wreaths.

One day she'd made a particularly lovely wreath and, as always, I was helping her to carry her flowers to church for sale. As always, she was fussing at me. I had a headache that morning, I recollect. I didn't feel well and I was in no mood for her Brer Fox, Brer Rabbit games.

I was afraid I was getting cholera. An epidemic was going around Orange County that spring. Two children had already died of it.

I longed for Grandma Sarry, for a serving of her corn pone soaked with peas and pot likker. For a slice of her side meat. Mary Ann could not cook like Grandma Sarry to save her soul. That morning I even would have welcomed a dose of wild cherry and poplar leaves mixed with black haw and slippery elm leaves. In other words, a dose of the bitters.

I suppose I wasn't the only one with the miseries that morning. I'd just brought Robert a cup of coffee in his study where he was practicing his sermon about sorrow and guilt, fear, sickness, and evil.

I dropped her lovely shell and wax wreath and it broke into pieces on the floor. Anna screamed and jumped on me like a frog on a lily pad. "You are a constant vexation to me. You are the cross in my life, the thorn in my side."

She shouted it, attacking me with slaps and blows about my head and face. What could I do? I had to defend myself. I couldn't let anyone treat me like that. I struck her back. My hand caught at the side of her face, leaving a red mark. I stepped back, horrified at what I had done.

"You dare!" she shouted. "You dare strike me? Mary Ann! Mary Ann!" She called out to the only other woman in the house. And Mary Ann came running.

"You two fussing again?" she asked.

"It's more than fussing," Anna told her. "She struck me. She attacked me in my own house. Go and get my husband, Mary Ann. Go and get Master Robert.

I
N LATER YEARS
, when God gave me wisdom, I would know that Robert was simply a man caught between his wife and his half sister. That day I saw none of it. I only saw Robert standing in front of me in his study. Furious.

In his hand he had a newspaper. And he pointed to an advertisement for a runaway slave named Betty.

He read it. "I burnt her with a hot iron on the left side of her face," the ad read. "I did it to break her. If you see her, you'll know her by this mark."

Robert shook the newspaper at me. "Do you see what some masters do?"

I did not answer.

"I am not a cruel man, Lizzy, but you must be taught a lesson. You must learn to acknowledge that Anna is your mistress. I cannot think what to do with you, so I am going to hire you out next door, to Mr. Bingham. You will do chores there and then come here. You will work between the two houses. Do you understand?"

I understood. Bingham was a nigra hater. He was a hard, cruel man who walked backward going to and from the school where he was principal, for fear a nigra might creep up behind him and knock him in the head.

He thrashed his students all the time. Everyone knew that he carried a pistol. He was on the local patrol to protect white citizens from a possible slave rebellion. After a man named Nat Turner conducted an uprising in 1831, many white people feared slave rebellions.

He was also known as a slave breaker. People sent their slaves to him to be broken, people like Robert, who were too genteel to do it themselves.

"I don't want to go there, Robert," I said, "please."

He paid me no never mind. And that night I reported to the back door of Mr. William J. Bingham, principal of Hillsborough Academy and local breaker of slaves.

I
T ALL BEGAN
proper-like. Mr. Bingham acted like a parson himself at first. His wife was a quiet, mousy woman who couldn't come up with an opinion if Moses himself asked her to. She treated her husband like her master. When I got to know him, I understood why. She had long since given up trying to be a person in her own right. If I had any smarts, I'd have taken lessons from her.

I was to stay at their place nights since they had a six-month-old baby who needed constant attention and cried a lot. The baby woke, fussing, at six in the morning. I got up then and carried it to its mother for nursing. Then I cleaned all the fireplaces and started fires in them. At eight we had prayers. I was to soon learn that he was the prayingest man I ever was to meet, that Mr. Bingham. I suppose he had a lot to pray about and make up for.

After prayers I served breakfast. I didn't have to cook, thank heaven. They had a cook, name of Jenny. After breakfast I cleaned up.

When Mr. Bingham left, I was to stand in the front hallway and hand him his hat and coat and say, "Have a good day, sir."

It was something he was persnickety about, and I was corrected many times before he allowed that I did it just right.

After he left I was to go home, next door, just in time to dress and feed the Burwell children. At home I cleaned up, I cared for the children, I mended and sewed, and I was at Anna's beck and call all day. Then it was back to the Binghams in time to serve supper and clean up and put the baby to bed.

I ran back and forth between the two houses like a chicken with its head cut off, for two weeks, until I was worn down in body and spirit. I slept when I could and ate when I could and didn't mouth off at anybody. I was too scared to.

A
LL THE WHILE
I felt Mr. Bingham watching me when I wasn't looking. He watched me all the time, that man, and it gave me the blue devils. I thought, if ever a man scared me like Raw Head or Bloody Bones of my childhood, it was him. He could pray all he wanted to and make me kneel when he prayed, but he was still evil, that man. I saw it in his small beady eyes and in the way he held his half-bald head. He all the time looked like he had the stomach miseries. Like he needed a good dose of scurvy-grass tea.

He was plotting something. That's what I saw when his evil eyes looked at me. Turned out I was right, too.

One evening when I'd been there two weeks and was putting the baby to bed, he stood outside the nursery door.