Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt (28 page)

But while the events of that night brought me increased confidence and insight, they brought Anneke greater fear.

I did not know how she felt until later. If I detected anything unusual in her demeanor, any reluctance to help the fugitives or desire to forgo displaying the Underground Railroad quilt on the clothesline, I must have ascribed it to her condition. If she seemed fearful of our safety, I must have assumed hers was the ordinary preoccupation of a new mother nearing her time. Our days and nights were such a whirlwind of activity that I do not recall what I thought, or if, in fact, Anneke gave any noticeable sign of her increasing apprehension.

A certain occasion I do remember clearly: One afternoon, when I retrieved Anneke from Mrs. Engle’s shop, she greeted me in a distracted fashion and responded with little more than monosyllables and shrugs to my attempts at conversation. I attributed her mood to disappointment, as Mrs. Engle had recently begun urging Anneke to rest at home rather than come in for more sewing work, but suddenly Anneke said, “Does it not trouble you that we are breaking the law?”

“It is wrong to obey an unjust law,” said I. “Sometimes submitting to God’s law means we must disobey those created by man.”

“Yes, of course, but ...” She hesitated. “Is it not possible that slavery is also the will of God?”

“Anneke,” said I, astounded.

“I know what you and Dorothea say, but tell me, is it not possible? Slavery surfaces so often in the Bible—”

“So does sin, so does evil, but we are not meant to perpetuate them.”

“But there are directives given for how one is to treat a slave. Why would such things appear in holy scripture if there were not some divine purpose for them? Mr. Pearson says that the African races are the descendants of Ham, condemned by Noah to live in bondage to his brothers. If this is true—”

“It is not true. It is utter nonsense.” I hardly knew what to say, so bewildered was I by Anneke’s questioning of obvious truths. “I do not think it is wise for you to discuss such issues with Mr. Pearson. You know his views. He is a rigid, blind rule follower with neither the sense nor the judiciousness to decide matters for himself. He would turn his own mother in to the authorities if he thought her in violation of some law.”

“He might,” countered Anneke, “if he thought it was for her own good. In any event, you needn’t worry about me conversing with Mr. Pearson in the near future, for today Mrs. Engle told me quite firmly not to return until after my confinement.”

And thus, I thought, the true reason for her contrariness was revealed. I abandoned our argument in lieu of consoling her, reassuring her that she would return to her sewing work in no time, and mocking Mrs. Engle for her silly notions that a pregnant belly was an abominable sight best kept locked indoors where it could not cause offense. Ordinarily Anneke sprang to her employer’s defense, but that day, she was understandably receptive to my criticism, and to my great pleasure, she even joined in with a few pointed barbs of her own.

If Anneke conversed as often as I did with Joanna, she would not have entertained even for a moment the ludicrous idea that God intended any of His children to own another. The horrors Joanna described were beyond anything I could have imagined, and I marveled that she, that anyone, had been able to endure it. I yearned to ask Mr. Pearson if he had considered such brutality when concluding that slavery had been ordained by God.

As our intimacy grew, Joanna made it plain that, as I had surmised, her master was the father of her unborn child. Little wonder, I thought, that she displayed such indifference to it. Joanna had been taken by force more times than she could remember, the first when she was but a young girl. Her circumstances so differed from Anneke’s, who carried a child conceived in love and awaited with eager joy, that I could not fault her for her feelings.

And yet, over time, I began to notice a subtle shift in her temperament. She began to respond to Anneke’s tentative overtures to discuss the condition they shared; she asked for scraps to piece a baby quilt, which I gladly gave her. And as she sewed, if I had completed my chores or desired a respite from them, I would read to her.

I knew something had changed in her sentiments toward her child when she asked me to read again a passage from Douglass’s
Narrative,
which we had completed several weeks before, wherein Mr. Douglass describes how he was separated from his mother in infancy, and saw her but a handful of times before her death, and how slave owners conspired to destroy the natural affection a mother feels for her child and the child for his mother.

She sat in silence after I finished, her silver needle darting swiftly through the fabric scraps in her hands. “If I didn’t run off, they likely take my baby away,” said she. “Sell him off farther South, maybe. The missus don’t like seeing her husband’s babies from other women.”

“It’s hardly the fault of the women,” said I, indignant. Joanna regarded me with amusement. “Don’t you hear nothing I tell you about that place? You think it matter that we don’t want him? It easy to blame us. She can’t get rid of her husband, so she sell us farther South and get rid of the problem. Until the massa take a liking to another.”

“This will not happen to you,” said I. “You have escaped that fate. Your child will know you and love you, and your affection will make him thrive.”

“Freedom make him thrive,” corrected Joanna, but she allowed a smile.

Then she asked me to read a later, lengthier excerpt, the story of how Mr. Douglass learned to read and write. As I read his words aloud, I stole glances at Joanna. First she stopped sewing, then a faraway look came into her eye. When I concluded, she briskly took up the quilt pieces again. “This Frederick Douglass a clever man.”

“Ingenious,” said I. “There is perhaps no more powerful voice championing the Abolitionist cause than Mr. Douglass.”

“Maybe it’s true what he said, that learning to read spoil a slave, because it make him discontent and unhappy,” said she, “but I plenty discontent and unhappy already, and I can’t read.”

“You could learn. I could teach you.”

“Maybe a house slave don’t need to read, but a free woman in Canada probably do.” She placed a hand on her abdomen. “I’ll want to read to my baby, read him the Bible and Mr. Douglass’s book, so he know where he came from, and where he can go.”

My heart swelled with admiration and affection, and we began our lessons that very day.

So Elm Creek Farm passed from winter into spring, with furtive activity in the night, growing anticipation for the two
children who would soon be born, and danger always present, always lingering on the frontiers of our thoughts.

Only later did I realize our greatest threat lay much nearer, that it had crossed our threshold and lay curled up by the hearth, watching us unnoticed, and biding its time.

10

Sylvia’s sense of vindication that Elm Creek Manor had been a haven for slaves was tempered by the knowledge that her family had only unwittingly become stationmasters.

“But they did,” said Sarah. “That’s what matters. When Joanna knocked on the door, they sheltered her. They just as easily could have sent her away.”

“I suppose so,” admitted Sylvia. And even if they had felt they had no choice but to assist Joanna once she stumbled upon them, they had actively sought to help the later runaways. Sylvia ought to be glad for that, and that this newest revelation did not contradict any of the family stories passed down through the generations. The stories said only that the Bergstroms had run a station on the Underground Railroad, not how they had begun it.

“They continued even after that scare with the slave catchers,” said Sarah.

“Yes, indeed. They certainly could think on their feet, couldn’t they? Even Anneke. I must say that pleased me. From the way
Gerda described her, I feared she would fall apart and blurt out the secret the moment those two slave catchers arrived.”

Sarah laughed but added, “In her defense, remember we’re only seeing Gerda’s interpretation of Anneke, not the real person.”

Sylvia cast her gaze to heaven. “Our friend Gwen, the college professor, already gave me the lecture on ‘reliable narrators.’ Well, I for one believe Gerda is reliable, and I’m confident her portrayal of Anneke is accurate.” She paused. “At least, accurate within a modest margin of error.”

“I wonder,” mused Sarah. “Where was this hiding place she wrote about?”

“I have no idea.” Sylvia wasn’t sure which room had been Anneke’s sewing room. For that matter, Gerda had not even specified which room had been her own.

“Maybe she assumed her reader would be a more recent descendant, someone who would know whose rooms were whose.”

Sylvia shrugged. “Perhaps.” But if Gerda’s preface was any indication, she had intended her words to be read long after the principal participants in her memoir had passed on.

Sarah gave Sylvia her hand. “Come on. Let’s go find it.”

“Now?” Sylvia allowed herself to be pulled to her feet. “Don’t you think our campers will mind having their privacy invaded?”

“Are you kidding? They’ll probably be delighted to be in on the mystery.”

Sylvia conceded the point, and so she accompanied Sarah upstairs to the second floor, trying not to allow her hopes to rise too high. The manor had undergone so many changes since Gerda’s time, from the addition of the south wing to the extensive remodeling after the fire that occurred in her father’s day to the modernizations her sister, Claudia, had added a generation later. Not only might Anneke’s sewing room be unrecognizable,
it might be gone entirely, its place usurped by the hallway linking the original wing with the new.

They began with the unoccupied rooms, and since it was late August, there were more of these than there would have been earlier in the summer. But while the closets in the first four rooms were not very big, especially by modern standards, they were substantially larger than a “nook” or an “alcove,” the two words Gerda had used to describe the hiding place.

“The closets could have been enlarged in the renovations,” said Sarah.

Sylvia had no choice but to agree, and felt their chances of identifying the correct room dwindling.

She hesitated before entering the last vacant room. She allowed this suite to go unoccupied during all but their busiest weeks, and even then she had to resist the urge to ask campers to double up rather than assign someone to it. The pink, white, and yellow Grape Basket quilt remained on the wall where Sylvia had discovered it upon her return to Elm Creek Manor, but she and Sarah had long ago substituted a strip-pieced Trip Around the World quilt for the pink-and-white Flying Geese quilt that had once adorned the queen-size bed. Whether because of their estrangement or in spite of it, Sylvia could not bear the thought of someone else, even a friendly quilter, sleeping beneath the quilt her sister Claudia had used as her own.

Sylvia pursed her lips and opened the door. “This closet is certainly large enough,” she said briskly, to disguise the hesitation she always felt upon entering her late sister’s room. “Claudia wouldn’t have settled for anything else. I’m surprised she chose rooms in the west wing, since the south-wing suites are larger and more comfortable.”

Sarah led the way into the adjoining room. “I’m surprised there are any suites in the west wing at all.”

“There weren’t, originally. My father had doorways cut in
some of the walls to turn adjacent rooms into suites.” She looked around the room. “Well, there’s no closet here, large or small. I suppose we’ll have to disturb our campers after all.”

“Wait.” Sarah placed a hand on her arm to prevent Sylvia from leaving. “What about the loveseat?”

Sylvia eyed the floral tapestry cushions. “What of it?”

“It’s set into a nook. Don’t you see?” Sarah crossed the room and measured the depth with her hand. “I’d say it’s about a foot and a half deep.”

“That’s not a closet,” scoffed Sylvia. “In the room on the other side of the wall, there are two closets, there and there.” She pointed to the corners on either end of the concavity in turn. “They encroach on this room’s space.”

“All the more reason to believe there was once a closet on this side, too. This wall was a part of Hans’s original design, right?”