Douglass’ Women (2 page)

But I got restless staying indoors. Tired of having my sister, Lizbeth, pull my pigtails and Mam complain about my stitches. Tired of Mam singing about crossing the River Jordan when outside my door, there was a bay more beautiful in moonglow than in sunlight.

Free should mean doing things. Not just talking about free!

So, one June-bug night, I built me a trap out of sticks and fishnet. It wasn’t too steady. Lopsided on one end. Slats, too wide.

Everybody asked, “What you doin’, Lil’ Bit?”

“I’m going to catch crabs.”

Everybody giggled: “When you become fisherman?” “Where’s your boat?”

But Mam said I should be “encouraged.” That’s her very word:
encouraged
. She learned it from Miz Pullman when she cleaned her house.

I carried my trap to where I liked to play. A small cove
with moss, willow trees, and silver fishes. Mosquitoes sucked my blood, but I didn’t mind. I pushed my trap into blue-green water and prayed to them bones at the bottom of the sea. I prayed hard for them to bring crabs. Big Blue ones to sell.

First, I didn’t hear no sound. Then, I heard what I thought be music. Sweeter than Mam’s singing. No words, only sounds. Like children playing, clapping songs, jumping rope or eating sweet potato pie. My soul lit up. I was certain them bones be my friend. They be enjoying this free colored girl. Not jealous, but happy I was alive.

I raced home and asked Mam to make fritters.

Mam say, “Anna, now why? Why I wanna heat my stove tonight?”

I told her, “Them bones gonna bring Big Blues. I’m gonna sell fritters with my crabs. Them bones they promised. Promised me big, blue crabs.”

Mam looked at me funny. Her head sideways, her lips puckered. Her eyes squinting at me hard-like. “Did they sing?”

I nodded.

Then, Mam jumped up, scurried to the porch, and shouted for the boys to chop more wood. She sent my sisters to find every bowl we owned. Lu, she told to get the flour. Lizbeth had to collect well water.

Pa complained, “We need sleep. Time for bed. Not listening to Lil’ Bit.”

Mam say, “Hush. We cook all night. Tomorrow we sell crabs.”

Pa puffed his chest, going to complain more when Mam say, “The bones sang. She heard them.”

Pa looked at me with respect. He say, “Lil’ Bit, I know
you special. But just ’cause the bones sing, don’t mean they promised. Let’s go check that trap.”

I was scared. All my family looking at me. Lionel stuck out his tongue; I stuck mine back.

We all followed Pa down the steps, across grass, weaving between lacy willows and blinking fireflies to my special cove. All of us stopped and held our breath as Pa pulled my pitiful trap from the water. We couldn’t see. Pa’s back covered the trap. A minute. He say nothing. Another minute.

Then, he whistled low and deep. He turned, smiling like Sunday, and shouted, “Boys, chop wood for a bonfire. We’re frying fritters all night.”

So we did. All night, fritters gurgled in the pot. We drained and cooled them on a sheet stripped to rags. We all were hot and weary, but whenever we thought about quitting, Pa checked the trap. It was always full of Big Blues; Pa set them aside and laid my trap again and again.

Come morning, our rooster, Sid, crowed and Mam had six baskets stuffed with fritters. Pa had the buckets stuffed with crabs. In twos, like Noah’s Ark (Mam had the baby; Pa took the next youngest), we walked the lane to town.

I be with George and we headed down Charleston Avenue. George carried the ice-cold bucket; me, the basket. Both of us hollering,
“Fresh crabs. Fresh fritters. Crabs live. Fritters cooked. Two pennies.”

Noontime, nothing left. Everything’s gone. We be rich. Mam bought everybody new shoes.

Pa kissed me six times: on my nose, forehead, each eye, then, my lips and chin. Mam bought us licorice sticks. We were happy all summer long.

When September came, Mam say with so much
money she could spare some children to school. She say, “Lil’ Bit, you go. You learn reading and writing.”

I said, “Naw.”

If I’d of knowed how much Frederick was going to hold it against me, I would’ve said different.

Freddy didn’t mind my not reading. But it bothered Frederick Bailey Douglass, the ex-slave man. He say reading “freed him.” “Reading is the only way to light the corners of the mind.”

I be bull-headed. I was good enough when we married, why wasn’t I good enough after? And, for the longest time, it was Freddy not Frederick who met me in bed. So, I felt no need to read.

Then, when I wanted to learn reading and writing, there was no time. Freddy gone most times. Me, alone in a cold house. Left to raise four children. Bury one. Left to rebuild when the house burnt down. When those white men burnt it.

After Annie’s burial, Freddy didn’t touch me no more. But Frederick used me. Like a slop jar to wet.

This be true: I knew my brother and sister would enjoy school more. I was content by Mam’s side. Being her shadow. I dreamed one day I’d have a baby girl who’d want to shadow me. Hadn’t counted on my daughter being ripped away to boarding school. At seven, no less. Naw, I surely didn’t expect that. Tore me up inside.

My happiest days were spent with Mam. She taught me to crimp pie crust, braise greens, stuff and lace a hen. She taught me how to clean sheets by adding a teaspoon of lye, how lemon juice made a window shine, how turkey feathers
dusted finer than cotton. I never liked sewing much but she taught me when a seam’s been tugged too tight, when a hem has less than ninety stitches.

I loved my days in the house. It was me and Mam’s small kingdom.

Seventeen, I started service for the Baldwins. I treated their home like my own. I took care to make it a place for joy to happen in. But I still dreamed of my own home. My own clean, good-smelling world for my children.

Except I was having trouble finding the man to make my dream real.

When white men treated me with disrespect, I prayed to the Lord. He kept me safe from bad men. From colored men, too, who wanted my sugar without marriage.

I be wanting love. Wanting to open like a flower for the right man.

Problem was there weren’t enough good men. There were some kind men. Men who would sell fish, farm for white folks, some even shoe horses. But I wanted a man who could be more than that, more than me and inspire my children. I kept pure ’til it seemed like I was too old to have any choice. My blush of youth blushed itself away.

I almost made peace with lonely days. But lonely nights were harder. My passion didn’t bank down like it should. Prayers helped only some. I was needing, needy for love. Needing my own house. My own home.

I figured I’d be like water. Calm, floating, ever still. But them bones taught me about a world beneath water. Bones cried out, singing about desires unfilled. Lives unlived. Lovers untouched. Children unborn.

Just when I thought all hopeless, I got what I wished for. A man to inspire my children. Yet at a price paid. Price dearly paid.

I wonder whether my children—Rosetta, Charles Redmond, Lewis, and Freddy Jr.—be better for it? Whether my dead daughter cared her Daddy was Frederick Bailey Douglass?

Mam never lost a child like I did.

How explain that? Did them bones want Annie? Was that part of the price paid?

Past my prime, I get the man of my dreams. Miracle, don’t you think?

Freddy thinks reading and the sight of white-masted ships free him. But I freed him. Me and my bones. We made a harbor. A place to ease his body down.

When I first saw Freddy’s face, I saw the sun rise. My promised land. The bones made flesh.

And like flesh, everything dies. Everything goes bye and bye.

Baltimore

Late spring ain’t never sweet in Baltimore. Hot, slick. Sticky beyond dreaming.

I was twenty-eight, surviving as best I could. Had me a calico cat.
Lena
. I’d fan both her and me. Put ice chips in her milk. Ice on my head and wrists. May was as hot as July and there’d be no relief ’til November. Breezes didn’t cool no sweat.

Legs itching against cotton. Arms damp, staining crinoline. Beads of water draining into my hair, down my cheek. Nights just as bad. Laying in my shift, barely breathing, counting the tiniest stars I could see through the window-top.

I felt drained. Hungry for more water. For something to fill me up.

I’d growed. I wasn’t Lil’ Bit no more. Wasn’t cute no more, either. Just short, round, dark; beyond lonely.

Mam say, “Beauty lives in the heart.” But Mam was thirty miles away. Pa now dead, Mam had her own troubles living old. My trouble was forgetting the kind things she said, the words that made me feel special.

Now, I was Anna, Housekeeper. Got servant’s wages. Three dollars a month. Half sent to Mam. Got food, which I cooked. Milk for the cat. A room: clean but too small for a chair.

Eleven years, I worked for the Baldwins. A good position. Nobody slapped me. Or cursed. Or expected me to bed them. But there wasn’t much room for getting ahead. So I sewed and laundered on my off-day. Thursdays. Anna, Seamstress. Washwoman. Carrying baskets to the docks.

Baltimore, great city then. Harbor for all kinds of goods and people. French and China silk. Spices. Rum. You need a gold cage for a bird? Baltimore. Sugarcane from Haiti? Bananas? Whale oil? All in Baltimore.

Irishmen, New Englanders, Virginia planters, British, Spanish, free colored men, they all passed through that harbor. And women—some dressed fine as queens, some barely dressed—waited for them. Waited for the men to slip them coins. Some folks went off in carriages; some went to the tavern; some got no further than an alley.

Everybody mated, two by two.

Only new slaves—male and female—kept separate. Each had their own cage at the dock’s east end. When I could, I slipped bread and meat to the women (some just children). On Sundays, men with great buckets splashed water at the slave holds. Great buckets to wash away the dirt and smell. Nothing washed away the heat. Except when my Mistress ordered it, I kept clear of the docks on the Lord’s Sabbath and Slave Auction Days. Kept clear of seeing misery I couldn’t fix.

Still. 1841. Baltimore, a great city.

Except for colored folks, everybody a bit rich. Got pennies to spare for colored gals to wash their shirts, pants, and
privates. I worked for sailors stitching where a knife sliced, soaking tobacco stains and spit, cleaning where stew crusted on sleeves and collars. I starched jackets for Captains who brung tea, goblets, and Africans across the sea. Some I stitched gold braids for when they got promoted or won slaving treasure. But Captains be the worse. Mean, they say your work not good. Insist you buy brand new shirt. After I lost my profit once, I never worked for any Captain again.

This May that felt like late summer, I was working for Gardner’s men. Carpenters with lots of money and no respect. Their clothes, more grease and sawdust than cotton. Mister Gardner had a contract to build two man-of-war brigs for the Mexican government. They say, July, if Gardner be done, he’ll win a big bonus. All the carpenters win bonuses, too. So everybody work hard—black and white—building these great ships.

I made my deliveries at dinner break. Men eating be generous. Less likely to complain: “This not clean enough.” “This not ironed right.” Foolishness. They complained to make me lower my price. Eating men don’t talk much. Some even toss an extra penny.

I’d just finished giving William, the mast maker, his clean clothes when I looked up and saw this young man standing at the unfinished bow, the ship still on stilts, looking out across the water. Not more than three feet away. He stood there—legs spaced, solid. Like nothing tip him over. No waves. No wind. He was pitched on the edge of the horizon. Boat beneath his feet. Orange-streaked sky above his head. Endless water fanning out the harbor. Seem like nothing move him from that space he choose to be. He be a colored Captain, watching, waiting for some change to
happen. Some sign from the birds flying high. Some new streak of color in the sky. Some sweet odor of free.

His pants weren’t fine. Brown burlap. His ankles and shins poked out. Shirt gone. His back was broad, rolling mountains. Copper-colored. Trails crisscrossed his back. I knew then he was a slave or ex-slave. No pattern to the marks. Just rawhide struck, hot and heavy. Enough to know someone had been very angry with him. Once. Twice. Maybe more.

I think I fell in love with his head. He looked up, not down. Tilt of his head told me he not beaten. Not yet. His hair curled in waves, touching his shoulders. Thick, black strands. Made me want to reach out and feel. Made me wonder: what would it be like to bury my face in his hair? Would I smell the sea? Smell the oil they used to shine wood?

His hair made me think of Samson. God’s strength upon him. Something else upon me. Some wave of feeling I’d never felt. Made my feet unsteady. My heart race.

“Girl,” Pete, the iron maker, called. “Hurry your nigger self here.”

I scurried like a scared rabbit. This Samson man turned and saw me. Really saw. His eyes were golden, like light overflowing. I knew he saw me as a weak woman. Big. Too fat. Hurrying to this scum of a white man.

I couldn’t stop myself. Mam taught me: “Never irritate white folks. Do your work. Collect their money.” But this one time I didn’t want to scurry. I wanted to move slow, sashay my gown, and have this man I didn’t know, think I was pretty. No—
Lovely
. I wanted to be lovely.

Twenty-eight and never had a man look at me with love.
Passion. Desire
. Mam taught me not to say those
words. But I learned them as a woman. Learned them watching folks at the wharf. Learned them, too, listening to my Mistress’s friends—women promised to one man, yet mad about some other. They were mostly sorrowful. Passionate and sorrowful.

Mam said God made special feelings, ’specially for men and women. She and Pa felt them. I’d never felt one. Never ’til this man, this slave looked at me from the bow of an unfinished ship.

I hadn’t enough backbone to tell this white man: “I’m coming. Don’t hurry me.” I scurried toward him and away from those light-filled eyes.