Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons (7 page)

"I don't have any beaux. And likely, I never will!" Mary burst into tears. "Even Nathaniel's friends think that."

"Who thinks it?" her brother demanded.

Mary wiped her eyes. "Josiah Thornton, John Hitchbourne, all of them. Hitchbourne even said once that I was not likely to come to much. That I was not pretty enough."

"I'll call him out for that," Nathaniel said.

"You'll do nothing of the sort," his father told him. "You know I despise dueling. Do you wish to break your mother's heart even more?"

Mary commenced weeping again. Her father did not know what to do. He turned back to attend the fire.

In that moment I felt a mixture of sorrow and fear. Sorrow for Mary. And fear for myself. For if Mary, the daughter in a well-placed family, was not allowed to learn, why should I be? A slave?

Clearly, Nathaniel was moved by his sister's distress, too. "You'll have beaux, Mary," he said huskily. "I promise." Then he looked at his father. "I think I'd like to have Reverend Lathrop tutor me. He's nearer my own age, he's known to be a masterful tutor, and he could use the extra money."

Mary looked up, surprised. She dried her tears.

Their father scowled, seemed about to object, then softened. "Very well, Nathaniel, I'll speak to Lathrop tomorrow."

"And I don't mind if Mary sits with us. Part of the time, anyway."

"Didn't you just hear me?" his father asked. "I've forbidden Mary to go to Old North to hear Lathrop's sermons."

"Greek and Latin aren't sermons, Father." Nathaniel grinned. "If Mary can abide Greek and Latin, I can abide her being there. It will make it more pleasant, Father."

"Study is supposed to be not pleasant but serious."

Nathaniel stood up, walked to his father, put an arm on his shoulder, and whispered something in his ear. Mr. Wheatley turned to look at Mary, then turned quickly back to the fire.

"No," he said in disbelief.

"Yes," Nathaniel whispered.

"Very well then, providing everyone behaves," Mr. Wheatley agreed.

Reverend Lathrop came every afternoon to tutor. And I was allowed to sit in on the sessions, too, as long as I completed my kitchen chores.

He was a tall, amiable man with a long nose, blazing blue eyes, a ruddy complexion, and a passion for speechifying. I thought him most wonderful. His voice was deep, yet becalming. It rose and fell with passion as he paced: the passion of Greek and Latin, of poetry and truth. I might not understand all the words themselves, but I understood the feelings behind them, as the candlelight cast his shadow, larger than life, on the wall, the fire crackled cheerfully, and the cold wind howled outside.

Sadness, power, death, betrayal, loss, fear, guilt.

All these things I had witnessed, was still witnessing. But I was astonished to realize they had been felt by others, hundreds of years before my time.

Reverend Lathrop's measured New England cadences were like struck flint lighting a spark in my soul, awakening its rhythms, its moods; setting its juices flowing.

He obviously affected Mary, too. She sat there and gazed at him with a look of pure rapture on her face.

"She's smitten with him, Phillis," Nathaniel told me. "And he feels about her in kind. But he knows I am the only one who can help him make progress with Father. Because Father isn't sure about him yet. So I am going to enter into a pact with him. If he will convince Father I would make a terrible minister, I will convince Father to allow him to press his suit. Isn't that brilliant?"

I said yes, it was.

"Then I will become a merchant And when I do I will buy you a new frock. Many frocks. And you are going to read. I am going to teach you. Do you know why?"

I waited.

"Because I have some things to prove to Father. I believe in the common man. And his ability to take part in the current boom, to better himself. Why, he's doing it now! Which means he will soon need to buy more things to live in a proper manner. My father can sell those things. And get richer!"

I did not understand all this; I heard only one thing. I was going to learn to read!

"And as part of all that, I believe in you! That you can be taught. You are going to be my proof that people can better themselves. By spring you will be reading."

I jumped up and down.

"Of course, I must do more to convince Father I can be a merchant. I must do something clever. I'll think on it."

He started me with the
Lively Lady's
manifest. By that Christmas I could recognize the words "scented soap," "gold watch chains," "scarlet silk."

We told no one. It was our secret.

He brought home many ships' manifests, including that of the Wheatley ship,
London Packet.
By February I could read "ladies' toupees and braids," "silver-plated shoe buckles," "Bohea tea."

Nathaniel was so proud of me he was ready to burst. We told no one but Aunt Cumsee.

Now Sulie started to bedevil me in earnest. Not because I could read. She did not know that. But because I was being favored so by Nathaniel.

If I swept the hearth clean, she would mess it again, so it looked as if I had not set myself to the task.

Once Aunt Cumsee asked me to fetch the dry clothes in from the gooseberry bushes in the yard Sulie tripped me. I fell, and the clothes got dirtied on some muddy ground.

She laughed so hard, she near cried. "That'll teach you! Who do you think you are, you little skinny black worm, sittin' up there wif' Master Nathaniel?"

I had to be wary of Sulie. She was out to do me harm.

By February Nathaniel had taught me about Jupiter, king of the gods. And Lathona, the moon goddess. I learned that Apollo was born on an island in the eastern Mediterranean. Nathaniel showed me the place on his globe. By March he was so proud of my progress that he decreed I must learn to hold a pen.

This was no mean feat. Using his quill pen in itself was a chore that I labored over. But as I learned to write, first my letters, then my name, it came to me that the words looked like birds. The black trail of the ink made up their wings.

They carried me outside myself. They released me from my ignorance.

I could fly.

One day, when I had finished my recitation, Nathaniel jumped up and pounded the fist of one hand into the palm of the other.

"I know what I am going to do, Phillis. I have a plan to convince Father I should be a merchant."

Again his plan was brilliant. He had some money of his own, left to him by his grandmother Wheatley. He would purchase some merchandise from a ship that had just docked, advertise it in the
Boston Evening Post,
and get one of his father's trusted workers to stock it in the shoppe on King Street.

"Come on, Phillis, put on a warm cloak. I'm taking you with me to the wharves."

Besides the thriving shoppe on King Street, Nathaniel's father owned several warehouses on the docks, much wharfage, other fine houses over on Union Street that he rented, and a two-hundred-ton merchantman,
London Packet.

So Nathaniel knew his way around the wharves. Workers and merchants greeted him. He knew what coffeehouse to drop into to get information, what ships were due and from where, and who would be at what alehouse.

"Likely, Prince, this time of day young Hancock is at the Cromwell Head on School Street, having a late repast of fish and chips and striking a deal to split the cost of a cargo of South Carolina rice."

Prince drew the chaise up outside the Cromwell Head.

"Wait here," Nathaniel told us.

Across the street was Hancock's Wharf. There were things to see aplenty, and Prince pointed them out to me.

"There's old Mr. Hancock's countinghouse. He's uncle to John. They say he's worth seventy thousand pounds."

"Is that a lot of money?" I asked.

Prince laughed. "Enough for him to have bought Clark's Wharf and have plenty left over ... There's a lady there on the wharf what makes waxworks. She makes kings and queens and dresses 'em like they was real. Name of Mrs. Hiller. Ask Master Nathaniel to take you there someday."

I nodded solemnly. Prince knew everything.

"Old Mr. Hancock just gave young Mr. Hancock a three-masted schooner, the
Liberty.
Young John be only four-and-twenty and they say he gonna inherit everythin'... There's another shoppe owned by Mr. Fletcher. He has toys. A little town wif houses you can fit in your hand. And he has little moons and suns and he shows how they go 'round. It takes four shillings sixpence to get in there."

For an hour, Prince pointed out sights to me. I felt the excitement, the bustle, the mystery, and the sense of purpose. Then suddenly my fancy was caught by a young nigra dressed in a blue satin suit trimmed with yellow. He even wore a wig.

"Who is that?" I asked Prince.

"Robin. You doan wanna know 'bout him. He's a bad one."

"He looks like a peacock." The Wheatleys had peacocks in their yard. The birds made noises when intruders came around.

Prince chuckled. "Fine feathers doan make fine birds." And then he told me about Robin and how he'd supplied the arsenic to Phillis and Mark, ten years ago.

"One of these days I'm going to have fine clothes, too. Nathaniel said he'd buy them for me when he becomes a merchant."

His face went solemn. "What you want fine dresses for?"

"So I can be somebody."

"You ain't never gonna be nobody, little one. You is always gonna jus' be little Phillis the slave."

"That's not true, Prince. I'm learning to better myself. Master Nathaniel said I could."

"You kin strut around in fancy clothes like Robin there, but it won't matter none. You still be a nobody. No matter what you do."

Even if I learn to read?
But I couldn't ask that Because that was our secret, Nathaniel's and mine.

"Only way to be anybody is to be free," Prince told me. He seemed so sad. This was not like him. He was always happy, cheering everyone else up. He took life as it came.

"How can I do that, Prince?"

"They can do it. It's done alla time. Master writes a paper and you is free. You wanna better yourself, get them to write that paper and make you free. If'n they don't, you be like Robin all your life, a slave struttin' 'round in fancy clothes."

A cloud seemed to darken the sun of a sudden. I shivered. "Does Robin still work for Dr. Clark?" I asked.

"Uh-huh. Dr. Clark still owns the apothecary shoppe. It be bad, that apothecary shoppe. Dark. Damp. He mixes things. They smell. Like eye of cat and tail of dog. But people go there and he knows what to give 'em when they be sick."

"Do you think he'll ever free Robin?"

"He'd. sooner drink his own remedies," Prince said.

I pondered all this as we waited for Nathaniel.
Masters can make their slaves free. All they have to do is write a paper.

I pondered it in silence until Nathaniel came back. He returned jubilant. "I'm in luck. The
Liberty
just dropped anchor this morning. I had some flip with young John and he's agreed to sell me some merchandise. And to use his influence to get me good space to advertise in the
Post.
"

I just stared at him. I felt betrayed. Why had he never told me it would do no good to read if I would never be free?

"You want to be what?" Nathaniel scowled fiercely.

We were in his room the very next day. He was overseeing my reading.

"Free." I had displeased him. He was angry. He was fearful when angry, but his anger had never yet been directed at me.

"Wherever did you get such a notion?" Then he laughed. And it was worse than anger. "Free! Of all the flapdoodle! Do you know the
meaning
of the word?"

"Yes."

"Then tell me."

"It means that when you buy me my lovely new dresses, I'll be someone. And not just poor little Phillis the slave forever. Because fine feathers don't make fine birds."

He was peering at me intently. "Go on."

"Only way to be anybody is to be free. Even if I learn to read, there's no profit in it, unless I'm free."

"You can read now. Is there no profit in it?"

I hung my head. "Yes, sir, there is."

"Who told you this nonsense?"

I should not have said, but I did. "Prince."

"Well, if that's the kind of folderol that rascal is filling your head with, then I say you are no longer to speak to Prince!"

Fear gripped me. "But he's my friend."

"No friend counsels a little girl to such sentiments. Tell me, Phillis, what you would do with this freedom if my parents were to give it to you? Where would you live? For then you would be free to leave here."

"I don't want to leave." My voice shook.

"Ah, but you would have to. Did Prince tell you that?"

"No, sir."

"Did he advise you of how you would earn your living? How you would buy your bread? Where you would sleep at night?"

I was near tears. "No, sir."

"Well, that is what being free is all about, Phillis." He knelt in front of me and dropped his voice to a whisper. "Being free means you must take responsibility for yourself. And ofttimes for others. Are you ready to do that?"

Tears streamed down my face. "No, sir."

"Do you see me running about these days, doing everything I can to plan my future? I'm free, Phillis. I want to be a merchant. I'm well placed, schooled—and yet, I'm near daft trying to get out from under the yoke of my parents. How do you think
you
would fare?"

I did not answer.

"Phillis"—his voice grew even more gentle—"my parents will be panic stricken. Is this what my teaching you to read has wrought?"

I shook my head no.

"You have so much to learn, Phillis. And you have such a fine mind. I thought this was an agreeable arrangement. But if you persist in this nonsense about being free, I shall have to stop teaching you to read. Do you want that?"

I told him no, I didn't.

"Then let me hear no more of the matter," he said.

It was May, and Mrs. Wheatley's birthday. I was in the kitchen. Aunt Cumsee was helping me ice the golden cake.