Stealing Freedom (9 page)

“Are we leaving, John?” her mother asked quietly. “Am I losing another child?”

“No!” Ann's father released her and tightened his fists. “We'll get her back as surely as we'll get the boys.”

Ann felt herself sink further away. She was as lost as her brothers in Alabama. She felt her mother's embrace and vowed to remember the softness of it. She tried to press back tears, but they flowed down her cheeks.

“Can't you stop them?” Catharine begged of their father.

Jacob Bigelow answered for him. “Your master took my offer very quickly, Miss Catharine. It was likely he already planned to sell you and your mother before the move to Rockville. If I leave you here with your sister, your fate can only be worse.”

At that moment Master Charles came down the hill, shouting that he'd heard enough weeping for one day. He stood between Ann and her family, his arms crossed, and ordered them to pack and leave at once. “And I don't want you coming to find us in Rockville, is that clear? I will send her to you at Christmas, but if I see
any
of you”—he looked hard, first at Mr. Bigelow and then at her father—”prowling around my home in Rockville, I will have you promptly arrested.”

“And what will be the charge?” Mr. Bigelow demanded.

Master Charles grew red in the face at this challenge. “For them, traveling without a permit. A nigger's travel permit makes excellent kindling, didn't you know?”

“And for me?” Mr. Bigelow lifted his chin.

Master Charles narrowed his eyes. “A gift of two dollars to the sheriff will inspire charges, I'm sure.”

Ann stood, clinging to the same tree Richard had hidden behind the day Joseph got whipped. From there she watched them pack. Their few possessions—cooking pot, ladle, candlesticks, chairs, blankets, and rags—were moved out of the cabin and loaded onto Mr. Bigelow's wagon. And then Ann's family was loaded in, one precious person at a time. No one dared try to speak to her or touch her again, but their eyes remained locked on hers as the wagon rolled up the hill. The sunset was a brilliant orange, with pink and lavender clouds, and a cool wind that chilled the backs of her knees.

Mistress Carol had come to watch, too. “Get your blanket,” she said to Ann. “I want you to sleep in the kitchen tonight so you can have breakfast ready early.”

Whether Mistress Carol made that demand for her own convenience, or because she knew that spending the night in the empty cabin would have torn Ann's heart into jagged pieces, Ann did not know. But she obediently wrapped her blanket around her shoulders and walked up the hill from her cabin for the last time.

And so, when the day to move to Rockville finally arrived, Ann sat alone in the wagon atop the crates she and her mother and sister had packed. She had a brand-new slingshot in her hand, a gift from Richard, and a wound in her heart so deep she felt it would never heal.

Sleep. Sleep was the only thing that brought her peace.

Ann moved through her days as if she were dragging a sack of rocks with each step. There was no rhythm now, nothing to “look out, look out, look out” for. All the worst had happened.

Mistress Carol demanded that a late garden be planted in the yard behind their rented frame house in Rockville. She wanted all of her belongings unpacked carefully, and the canned goods carried down to the dark, musty basement. And she expected the clothes and linens to be washed regularly, three meals cooked on time, and the small kitchen to be swept every day. Mistress Carol was used to the help of several women around the house, and seemed to think that Ann could do all of the work she used to share with her mother and sister. She complained constantly that if her husband wasn't so greedy he would have left her with some
real
household help instead of this ignorant child.

Not only was the work too much for one person, especially one person slowed by heavy sadness, but in addition,
Ann was not a very good cook. Burned porridge, oversalted stew, and meat as tough and stringy as a horse harness became common in the Prices’ kitchen. She'd always been a helper in the kitchen in Unity, but never had full responsibility for the meal.

All of Ann's offenses—her slowness, her mistakes, her ruining of precious food—made Mistress Carol as angry as a wet cat. She kept a short, fat stick next to the hearth, and used it regularly. “Wake up! Were you planning to sleep all day?” And down came the stick on Ann's head. “Watch that pot, you lazy wench! You burn it, and that's all you'll have to eat for three days.” A blow landed across Ann's shoulders.

Some days her shoulders and arms were so sore from the beating, she felt as though she'd been tumbled in a corn sheller. And her head had lumps that made it difficult to find a comfortable way to sleep on the kitchen floor—which, now that there were no slave quarters, had become her bed. Ann took the punishment in silence, too deadened inside to much care.

The first Sunday Ann was in Rockville, and every Sunday after that, her cousin Hannah came to call. Sometimes David came with her. Hannah was a few years older than Augustus, with long, straight hair she kept in a bright red head wrap most of the time. David was a little older than Hannah, with dark, serious eyes and strong shoulders from hard work.

Her cousins’ request was always the same: “Come on, now, Ann Maria. Come to St. Mary's with us. Church will do you good. And afterward we'll go visiting.”

But Ann would shake her head, her eyelids heavy. Sunday was the one day she could escape into sleep for all the hours she
was required to be alive. No promise of church singing or visiting could tempt her to give up that escape.

She would go to the edge of their yard and lie down under a tree. There, with flies and gnats keeping her company, she would drift off into dreams of sunny days in Unity, of skipping rocks with her brothers, cooking with her mother and Catharine, or gardening with her father while Benjamin played in the dirt nearby. The only thing that woke her from time to time was the ringing of the bell at St. Mary's Catholic Church up the hill.

One Sunday the bell woke her with a start and, try as she might, she could not sink back into sleep. There was a warm drizzle falling, and the dampness of her clothes made her skin itch. She sighed and sat up. The bell stopped, and it was quiet except for the late-summer chirpings of crickets and cicadas.

The service at St. Mary's was over. Soon Hannah and David and the other slaves and free blacks would be going to their afternoon gatherings. Likewise, the white worshipers would be leaving for their own Sunday dinners. Hannah had explained to Ann how St. Mary's was the only church in Rockville where whites and blacks worshiped together, though the whites sat in the pews in the main part of the church and the blacks sat in a tier in the back, up high where no one from down below could see them.

Ann was curious about the church. Too clammy and itchy to sleep anymore, she rose and walked up the hill.

By now, the churchyard was empty. The small white brick building stood quietly. Tall, wide oaks protected the gravestones from the soft rain. Ann ran her hand over one stone. It was rough and caught on her skin.

Suddenly she heard voices. She ran to the edge of the graveyard and lay down in the tall grass. She watched as a white man dressed in religious robes led a white couple into the graveyard.

“Thank you very much, Father Dougherty,” said the woman. “I know there must not be many people who make this request.”

“I'm happy to do it, Mrs. Fitzgerald,” said the priest.

“I figure I'll be resting here soon enough,” said the other man. “Might as well be sure I like the location.”

“Michael, please don't talk that way,” said the woman. “There's no reason to have one foot in the grave already.”

“Don't worry, Cecilia. You won't bury me until I'm good and ready.”

“Here it is,” said the priest.

They talked a little more about how nice the grave sites were, close to the church, under the shade of the grand trees. Mr. Fitzgerald teased his wife about how she'd be joining him there someday, and she shushed him.

When they left, Ann stood up from the grass and brushed herself off. Something about their conversation had fascinated her. They'd talked about death as “resting.” Hadn't that become her one respite from the heaviness of her life? Rest. Sleep.

She glanced over the small collection of gravestones and suddenly felt jealous of the peaceful souls lying under the damp grass. They never had to wake up to sadness or grief or blows from a mistress's stick. She kneeled in front of a headstone and traced the engraving with her fingers. She knew nothing of letters, but the numbers she could read: 1852. The person below her had been dead only two years. What did it
feel like to never have to wake up? What did it feel like to rest peacefully…forever?

Ann lowered herself to the ground and stretched out on her back with the top of her head against the headstone. She was lying, she realized, just a few feet above the corpse. Could she, too, feel the peace of death? She folded her arms over her chest, to make her body look like those she'd seen at funerals. She lifted her face to the gray sky and closed her eyes. Then she made her breathing as small as she could, and imagined that she was finding eternal rest…rest in peace.

She didn't hear the creeping footsteps and she didn't hear the pounding heart. But Ann did hear the terrified scream.

She leaped up from her imagined grave and raced out of the churchyard, quick as a rabbit. She glanced back only once, to catch a glimpse of chestnut arms and legs sticking out of a dress as shapeless and colorless as her own.

The county fair—the event that at one time had made Ann yearn to move to Rockville—came in September and was gone before she even roused in herself enough interest to peer through the gates of the fairgrounds.

On the first chilly night in October the field mice decided it was too cold outside. Ann fell asleep listening to them scurry around the kitchen looking for food. In the morning, when there were holes in the flour sacks and tooth marks in the salt pork, Mistress Carol applied the stick to Ann's shoulders, shouting that if she was sleeping right next to the larder she could at least keep the rodents from ruining their food stores.

In November the banging in the cellar started, with two very dirty, thin-nosed men arriving each morning with hammers and saws, planks of wood and clanking metal. Shortly after that, Master Charles left on a Monday and returned Tuesday night with a sleeping child.

Wednesday morning, Ann was awakened by a small bare foot pushing at her stomach. She groaned and opened one eye.

“I want something to eat.” A skinny white girl stood looking down at her. Her nightgown was patched and stained, and there was a thin white crust around one side of her mouth.

Ann sat up and rubbed her eyes. It was still dark outside, and the kitchen was lit only by the moon. Ann sighed, rose from the floor, and went to fill a pot with water to make porridge. So this was Miss Sarah. She was a niece of Mistress Carol's; her mother had died, and so she'd come to live with her aunt Carol and uncle Charles.

The girl positioned herself on a chair at the kitchen table and watched Ann as she prepared breakfast. Her legs were too short to touch the floor, and she swung them. Her face had a pitifully sad look to it. Ann guessed that it was the loss of her mother that had made her eyes sink into dark hollows and her mouth tense at the edges.

“Aunty says you'll do everything I want,” she said, and brushed her stringy brown hair away from her face.

Ann had been informed of the same fact. “Yes, miss,” she said.

“Miss
Sarah
, “ the girl corrected. “And I want a glass of water.”

Ann brought her the water and, when it was cooked, the porridge. The sky outside began to lighten, and the first carriage went by on the dirt road in front of the house.

“You have to walk me to school.”

“Yes, Miss Sarah,” said Ann sleepily.

“So put your dress on!” Sarah ordered her.

Ann looked down at her coarse brown shift. “This is my dress,” she said quietly. “I don't have a nightgown.” Miss Sarah sniffed.

The school was not far from the house, but it was the farthest Ann had ventured since she'd come to Rockville. The town itself was small, just a collection of houses and farms with a few shops and churches on dirt roads with dirt sidewalks. The muddiest places on the sidewalks had been covered over with boards, for which Ann was very thankful because the thick frosty mud made her bare feet ache. She knew her mother would not approve of the fact that she had not yet wrapped her feet this winter.

The schoolhouse was one room of whitewashed pine boards. When Sarah opened the door, they were greeted by a warm blast of air and a stern-looking young man in a gray suit. Both he and Sarah ignored Ann and closed the door in her face.

Ann stood on the front step. In the moment when the door was open, she'd seen the room: wooden seats with several children already sitting, girls on the right and boys on the left. She'd never seen a school before. Unity didn't have one, so Richard had been tutored in reading and numbers by his mother, and he'd hated every minute of it. But Miss Sarah had seemed happy to be going. Ann decided to ask her about it when she walked her home that afternoon.

“Teacher says I'm in the third grade.” Sarah tossed her head proudly as she handed Ann a worn gray book and a slate to carry home for her.

“Does that mean you know how to read?” Ann asked as they walked.

“Of course I can read. My mamma taught me that. I can do numbers, too.”

“So can I,” said Ann.

Sarah's eyes grew wide. “You can read?” she demanded angrily.

“No,” said Ann. “I can do numbers. My father is a freeman and he worked for pay, so he knows how to figure coins. He taught me.”

Sarah crossed her arms over her chest. “It's a good thing nobody taught you to read,” she declared. “It's the worst thing in the world to teach a slave to read.”

They walked in silence for a while. Ann had certainly heard how it was against the law to teach a slave to read. But this was the first time she'd heard it while holding a book in her hands.