Blessing (24 page)

“Our main speaker tonight is Sojourner Truth.” The man introduced her with a gesture. “I hope you will give your attention to her.”

He was about to be addressed by a female
Negro
suffragist. Dumbfounded, he sensed the chair beneath him dropping as if an earthquake had shaken the foundation.

Then he felt Blessing’s gloved index finger gently lift his chin, closing his telltale open mouth.

He sent her a glance that asked why she hadn’t warned him. Being addressed publicly by a female was radical, shocking enough, but by a black woman? Were there no boundaries of decorum at these meetings?

Blessing smiled teasingly and faced forward.

On the platform, the tall, older woman dressed simply in black began her address. “I am speaking to you tonight about the rights of women. Some people say women don’t need rights; they just need good men to take care of them.” She paused for a wry grin that deepened the wrinkles on her face.

Her saucy words brought Gerard back to earth, his chair on solid ground again. Yet something unlooked for had
caught his attention. The woman’s inflection was not the Southern accent he’d expected. Rather, she spoke in a singsong pattern that he identified as New York Dutch. Some elderly New Yorkers who’d been born into Dutch families there still retained the distinctive speech pattern. Why would a black woman—no doubt a former slave—speak with a Dutch accent?

“Many of you are taken aback that I, a woman, a
Negro
woman, would speak in public. But I’ve been through many changes in my life and I have much to say. I was born a slave
in the state of New York
. That should prove to all how much our nation has changed within our lifetimes. So is a black woman speaking out about the rights of all women really so unusual?”

Gerard wanted to stand up and declare,
“Yes, it is unusual.”

But the woman continued. “I am always amazed how little men understand how the world looks to a woman or a slave or a slave who is a woman. Would any man wish to live completely under the will of another?”

For a moment Gerard considered his father with his will of iron and how he had tried to control Gerard with his purse strings. No, Gerard had refused to be controlled.
So why am I here? Under my own will I would never have come.
And something about this woman captured his attention. He tried to let go of his preconceptions and just listen to this bold woman.

Sojourner Truth continued, facing them with her arms outstretched. “I am standing here before you because of Jesus. But I knew little of Jesus when I was a slave. All I knew of God was the Lord’s Prayer my mother taught me
in Dutch as a small child before . . . before I was
taken
from her.” The woman paused, letting the impact of that simple yet devastating sentence roll through him, through them all.

Another unwelcome memory returned: watching his mother weep as she was driven away from him to go to a spa for her health. He’d come home on summer holiday looking forward to spending it with her. There had been no reason for his father to choose that moment to send her away. She’d been in poor health for as long as Gerard could remember, but his father had insisted. And he and his mother had been powerless to change that. He’d hated his father from that day.

The speaker sighed loudly. “That prayer was all I knew of God as I grew up. Yet somehow all I longed for was to please God, be acceptable to him. I made up my mind every morning to obey him, but every day I failed.” She stared at them and, it seemed, peered straight into Gerard’s eyes. “I could not please God on my own.”

Gerard had never thought of pleasing God. God didn’t enter into his life.

Sojourner Truth continued, gripping the podium with one hand as if for support. “So I was in despair. One night I fled from my master’s house into the woods and prayed to God. How could I reach him? He, high up and holy; me, sinful and lowly. Then a radiant figure appeared before my eyes. I did not know who he was, but he said, ‘I am Jesus. I will be your go-between to God.’ I had not even known the name Jesus!”

The stunned silence all around pressed in on Gerard, and he could barely draw breath. Nobody talked like this, did they?

“Soon I ran away and found a Quaker meeting in New York City. I began learning who Christ Jesus is and of his light. My life changed. That vision has given me power, Christ’s power—” she raised her fist—“to proclaim freedom, pursue freedom. How many people live in darkness? In bondage? Jesus wants us to be free—white and black, slave and free, male and female. Why should that be so strange?”

Gerard felt electrified. Freedom. Wasn’t that what he wanted? Didn’t everyone seek it?

On the way home, Gerard found himself unable to make small talk with Blessing. After Sojourner Truth’s speech, others had risen to speak, but his gaze had been riveted on the dark, wrinkled face of the woman who claimed to have seen God. She’d stirred his mind, not just his heart. New thoughts sprang up, challenging him. What
must
it be like to be a slave, to be a woman?

The carriage slowed in front of his boardinghouse. He still could not speak. He opened the door, but before he stepped out, in the darkness he searched for and found Blessing’s hand.

In that moment he fully recognized the power of this woman’s influence. His resistance to the new world of radical ideas she was opening to him was waning. The freedom it proclaimed beckoned him. Moved, he lifted Blessing’s hand to his lips, kissed the soft kid glove, and pressed it to his forehead. “Good night, Widow Brightman.”

“Good night, Gerard Ramsay.” Her voice sounded subdued, thick with emotion, as if she sensed his turmoil.

Gerard stepped down and shut the door, then watched the carriage roll away. He realized that though he’d attended church most of his life, he knew little of what Sojourner Truth had spoken of regarding her vision. Had God used a unique means of communication to speak to this unusual woman? However, he understood some of what she’d expressed. He’d met Blessing Brightman, and nothing would ever seem the same in his life either.

DECEMBER 13, 1848

The day had come for Tippy’s wedding. Dressed in her best blue-gray silk dress and holding a bouquet of pink-and-white hothouse roses, Blessing stood in front of the Fosters’ parlor fireplace, a step behind the bride. Tippy glowed with joy, and Stoddard’s expression was so revealing that Blessing felt as if she were intruding on the couple in a private moment.

Ramsay stood to her left, just behind his cousin. She forced herself to focus on the minister, who was leading Stoddard and Tippy through their vows—not letting her gaze roam to the gentleman from Boston.

In the weeks since she and Ramsay had attended Sojourner Truth’s lecture, they had met only in passing or when involved in the planning of this wedding. And she’d been grateful. She still felt the kiss he’d pressed onto her hand at the end of that evening at Lane. How could such a slight touch cause such chaos? Again her wayward eyes sought him.

Intruding into Blessing’s thoughts, Tippy’s voice trembled as she said, “I, Xantippe Elaine, take thee, Stoddard Albert, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this
day forward; for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer; in sickness and in health; to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part, according to God’s holy ordinance; and thereto I give thee my troth.”

As Blessing listened, she recalled Joanna’s recent wedding and heard Joanna’s lower and richer voice overlaying Tippy’s. Joanna’s wedding had taken place in Bucktown, a free black settlement near their hometown of Sharpesburg. Afterward Blessing’s parents had hosted the wedding dinner at their place. Their large barn, decorated for the occasion, had been filled with the wedding guests from Bucktown and Cincinnati. The next day Joanna and Asher had loaded their wagon and left for Canada. Remembering the last glimpse of her lifelong friend peeled back a layer of Blessing’s composure. She felt defenseless here.

Now Stoddard received the ring from Ramsay and slipped the gold band onto Tippy’s finger. “With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship, and with all my worldly goods I thee endow: in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen.”

Blessing’s unruly gaze wandered once more toward Ramsay, who stood very straight and stiff. Did he still think his cousin was making a mistake? Blessing had finally accepted that Stoddard was likely what he appeared: an honest man with a good heart. She hadn’t found substantial reason to doubt it, in any case. This conclusion eased Blessing’s concern in one way and caused her distress of another kind that she couldn’t or wouldn’t analyze.

The brief ceremony drew to a close, and the minister presented the new couple: “Mr. and Mrs. Stoddard Henry.” The
sound of the final words sent a pang through Blessing. When a woman married, she placed all her trust in her husband because she legally became invisible from that point onward. Even a good man was rarely worthy of such a sacrifice.

Blessing wondered if Stoddard realized the gift he’d just received and the responsibility he had assumed. Bitter memories of her own powerless state after she’d married Richard stirred, but she turned from them, scanning the small gathering.

Since Tippy had been unwilling to wait months for her wedding, the affair was a small one—just family and close friends. Blessing knew most everyone here at least by sight.

But two people were new to her. Stoddard’s mother, Frances Henry, and his uncle Saul Ramsay—Gerard’s father—had traveled from Boston for the occasion. As Blessing stood in the short receiving line with the bride and groom, greeting their guests and thanking them for their good wishes, she watched these two strangers, very aware of Ramsay at her side.

From all appearances, Stoddard’s mother seemed happy about the match yet a bit uncertain of herself among the cluster of strangers. Saul Ramsay looked as if he had descended from Mount Olympus and didn’t like rubbing shoulders with lowly humans. She listened curiously for what he would say to the happy couple.

“Congratulations, Stoddard,” Saul Ramsay said formally, shaking the groom’s hand. “Best wishes to your lady.” That was all—the polite phrases and nothing more.

As he approached Blessing in the line, she gazed at him. Even while bowing over her hand, he looked right through her as if she weren’t there. And she sensed that, in truth, she
did not want his notice. He was a man of arrogance, grasping for control.

Saul Ramsay then offered a hand to his son but said absolutely nothing—not in words. Nonetheless, the friction between the two was palpable.

As they shook hands, Gerard endured his father’s silent displeasure. Father would never make a public scene, but Gerard knew that, later today, he would have to suffer his father’s venting his spleen over his cousin’s “disastrous” marriage. Then the man would blessedly return to Boston.

“Gerard,” his aunt Frances said as he kissed her cheek, “I’m so glad you live here so that Stoddard will have family nearby. I plan on moving here too.”

“Oh?” He hadn’t known that. “I like Cincinnati, Aunt Fran. A very interesting city with great potential.”