The Secrets of Mary Bowser (12 page)

“Mary Van Lew, the youngest of my elder sisters, Gertie Overton.” Hattie’s introduction made her sister frown.

“Mrs. John Overton,” she corrected. “My baby sister ought to know the proper way to introduce a married lady.”

I always thought my older friend so world-wise. Hearing her own sister call her a baby, I couldn’t imagine what Gertie might make of me. Diana laughed and said, “Please excuse Mrs. John Overton. She’s only been married three months and remains quite taken with her newly elevated station.”

“And quite convinced it’s suddenly made her much more mature than a certain person who used to be her playmate not so long ago,” Hattie said.

“Hattie, a child in your state simply cannot understand how matrimony transforms a lady. And Diana, well, you’ve been married for ages, and have forgotten it all, I am sure.” Gertie turned back to chopping parsnips with such a pout that Hattie consoled her by suggesting she come up to the parlor to introduce me to the handsome Mr. John Overton herself.

Once all the introductions were done, I had a proper tour of the house, nine whole rooms in all. The bottom floor contained the dining room, the kitchen, and a washroom complete with a running-water bath tub. Not even the Van Lews had such a thing. “We got the yellow fever to thank for that,” Charlotte explained. “Hit Philadelphia so hard, the civic high-a-mucks put in a city-wide water system back when other places didn’t even imagine it could be done.” The middle story contained the front and back parlors, and a door Hattie didn’t open for me, which led to her father’s bedroom. And the top floor was all Hattie’s.

I was amazed. “I’ve never so much as had my own room, and you’ve got three.”

“These three held six of us, once. Then five, then four, then three—that’s when we each had our own room for the first time. Then for the longest while there were still two of us, till Gertie abandoned me for Mr. John Overton.”

Small wooden boxes, all different sizes but none bigger than nine inches per side, were placed all over Hattie’s rooms. I picked one up from the dressing table. “What are these?”

“My daddy’s scraps.”

“Scraps?”

“From the coffins.” I hastily put the box back down. Hattie smiled. “Don’t worry, I don’t keep any teeny-tiny dead folks stored away. Go on, open it.”

I drew off the lid. Inside was a small scene, constructed out of moss and seashells and dried flower petals. I lifted the cover from another box, and another. One scene was made up of pebbles and pinecones, another of honeycombs and robin’s eggs. Each was beautiful.

“Where do these come from? I’ve never seen anything like them.”

“I made them.”

“All of them?”

“Oh yes. Daddy always says every young lady needs a talent. Charlotte is the best voice in our church. Diana is brilliant on the pianoforte. Emily draws, Fanny paints, Gertie crochets. There wasn’t hardly anything left by the time I came along, so I sort of made this up myself. Gathering materials gave me my first excuse to explore the city.”

I’d hardly looked into a quarter of the pine boxes before a bell rang, calling us to dinner. The meal was worth coming for, too. Whoever said too many cooks spoil the soup ought to sample a meal prepared by a kitchenful of Hattie’s sisters. And the conversation across the dinner table was even more savorous. Whenever I sat through Mrs. Upshaw’s mealtime prattle, accompanied by Ducky’s grunts of discontent, I longed to eat in silence. But really I missed the mealtime gossiping of the Van Lew slaves, or the teasing and conferring when Mama and Papa took meals together. At Hattie’s, the conversation was more serious, but every bit as enthralling. The menfolk chewed over every political issue of the day, and the sisters chimed in just as adamantly, when they weren’t called from the table to tend the howls of the children, who’d already been fed their porridges.

I didn’t follow much of what was said, the names of white politicians and colored ministers all running together in my mind, until Mr. Jones turned his attention to me. “Tell us, what do you miss about Virginia?”

Gertie cut in before I could respond. “What’s there to miss about slavery?”

“I do believe I asked about Virginia, and not about slavery. And I believe I asked Mary, and not anyone else.” Mr. Jones kept his eyes on me.

I set my fork and knife down, to show I was giving his question my full consideration. “I miss my mama and my papa, very much. Lots of other people, too. And the food.” I blushed a moment, looking at Hattie’s sisters. “Not that this meal isn’t delicious, but in Richmond, every meal I ate was this good, even if the food wasn’t so fancy. I miss living on the Hill, smelling the flowers and fruit in the garden and looking out to see the James and all the trees across the other side of the river. I miss walking right on the earth instead of pavement, and having space between the buildings. I miss the soft way people speak.”

I hadn’t even thought some of those things to myself, and here I was saying them out loud to folks I just met. “I miss an awful lot, I guess.”

Gertie sniffed. “I don’t hear anyone saying they miss slavery.”

“Who could miss slavery? Only, at least in Richmond slavery’s the reason for why we’re treated so bad. What’s the reason here? Just pure hate is all I can figure. And in Richmond, I knew all the rules. But here, each time I want to try something new, I don’t know whether I’ll be allowed.”

Mr. Jones’s imperious eyebrow shot up a little farther, and he nodded at me to say more.

I hadn’t meant to tell them what happened with the omnibus, but the next thing I knew, the story was spilling out of me.

“Some of the conductors will wink and let you stay,” Charlotte said quietly. “But those aren’t the kind of men you want to be beholden to, if you know what I mean.” Her husband swallowed hard at the thought.

“Sometimes when an omnibus passes by, I imagine the horses rearing up and tossing the car over, smashing everyone on board,” Hattie said.

Emily, the most delicate of the sisters, frowned. “Hattie, don’t talk so.”

“Might as well talk that way, if I think that way.”

“Better not to do either,” Mr. Jones said. “If we wallow around hating, we’re not going to end up any better off. I always say, if negroes mean to be treated differently, we must organize and act rather than just fume and hate.”

I expected Hattie to resent the reprimand, but instead she beamed at her daddy as he launched into more talk about which politicians opposed the Fugitive Slave Act, and which were for returning the franchise to colored men. I hadn’t realized negroes could ever cast a ballot, until he explained how they lost their voting rights in Pennsylvania only a decade before.

Above Mr. Jones hung a painting of an eagle, its wings outstretched and its talons clutching a stars-and-stripes emblazoned shield. He nearly resembled that proud bird, he seemed so serious, even formidable. Not a bit like Papa, who teased and funned us through our hardships. Mr. Jones gave the impression he didn’t have time for joviality, he was so busy planning for the rights of the colored people. Papa couldn’t do any more than joke, when all his planning hit up against the brick-and-mortar fact that he was the property of another man. I wondered what Papa would be like, Mama, too, if they’d grown up free like Hattie’s daddy.

But free didn’t mean all we’d imagined back in Virginia. That was clear from how my story about the omnibus started everyone commenting on the various injustices colored people faced in Philadelphia. Higher rents, fewer jobs, being turned out of a store or chased down an alley. Mobs gathering from time to time, to harass negroes right out of their own homes.

The way Hattie’s family talked, I could tell they’d learned to live with these things, just the way my family lived with the Van Lews and Master Mahon, avoiding what they could, comforting each other over what they couldn’t. It was better than slavery, I could see that from looking around a home crowded with a whole big family gathered together. But still it wasn’t what freedom ought to be.

As soon as the dinner things were cleared, Mr. Jones eased himself from the table and consulted his pocket watch. “I must go to the shop. I am expecting a delivery from Chambersburg, which I must take to Bucks County.”

Hattie’s arched eyebrow curled down in disappointment. “But, Daddy,” she said. “It’s Sunday. And I—we—have a guest.”

“And this body has a family, waiting for it to arrive.” He smiled at me. “This business isn’t like the Philadelphia and Columbia Railroad, where they schedule regular arrivals and departures. I always say—”

Diana finished for him, “when the wind blows from the South, nothing you say or do can stop it.”

“And if you face it and spit,” Fanny added, “you’re just gonna end up covered with your own slobber.”

We all laughed at that, even Hattie. I thought it a grand joke, though it’d be years before I understood what they were saying.

Bet remained in Philadelphia for a month and a half, visiting with relatives. Before returning to Richmond, she took care to entrust her cousin-in-law attorney with a copy of my free papers, the originals of which I carried with me at all times. Though Bet wouldn’t say it herself, we both knew that if I were accosted by someone claiming me as an escaped slave, my own testimony and papers held in my possession would mean nothing in a courtroom without a white person’s word of guarantee. Every so often during my time in Philadelphia, there’d be a big ruckus about some free negro seized by slave-catchers. I always wondered how many were taken quietly, folks who were free but had no white person to raise a fuss for them.

As Bet and I rode home from meeting with the attorney, she told me about the farewell supper her great-aunt was hosting for her the next evening.

“I have spoken so highly of your promise as a scholar, I am sure they are all eager to meet you. The gathering will be a very intimate affair, only family and a few close friends, so it will give everyone a great chance to know you.”

Though I couldn’t refuse the invitation, I didn’t relish the idea of being the only colored person among a crowd of whites. Or not the only colored person, I corrected myself, the only colored person besides the servants—even worse. I dawdled all the way home from school the following afternoon, and when I arrived at the Upshaws’, the carriage was already at the curb. Bet was pacing the walk, red-faced.

“I apologize for keeping you waiting, Miss Bet. I didn’t expect you for half an hour yet.”

She waved away my words. “It is I who must apologize to you. There has been a great misunderstanding. No, not a misunderstanding, a mistake. You see, I was mistaken to assume, to believe, that you, or rather I should say that I, or that Great-aunt Priscilla—”

“She won’t have me in her home.”

I think I was as surprised as Bet at the way I broke in on her. Such outspokenness would have earned me a reprimand or worse, back in Virginia. But now it brought some relief to Bet’s agitated face.

“I’m so sorry, Mary. It never occurred to me that my family here would harbor such race prejudice, as bad as our neighbors on Church Hill. When Great-aunt Priscilla declared that she would cancel the supper before she would invite a negro into her home, I told her to do just that. I could not be guest of honor at such a gathering.”

We in the house always fixed Bet as fractious, a spoiled child who’d grown into a woman without the respect or decorum to obey either her mother or social conventions. Part of me wanted to think only of how thoughtless she was to invite me before consulting her great-aunt, how inconsiderate she was to detail the old woman’s antipathy toward me.

But another part of me made out a side of Bet I never much thought about until then. She seemed truly chagrined by her relation’s actions, genuinely hurt that anyone she cared about could treat me so. Without the commiserating roll of Mama’s eyes or cluck of Zinnie’s tongue, I found myself on a new footing with my former mistress.

“You’re upset just now because race prejudice has inconvenienced you. But it’s worse than an inconvenience to us negroes, every single day.” Making Bet understand me seemed important in a way it never did before. “I appreciate you saying how wrong it is for even your own family to carry on so. You see what other whites won’t, that we’re just as good as anybody, if white people will let us be.”

She looked hard at me. “Why, Mary, that is quite a little speech. Six weeks in a free state has already turned your head.” I feared I’d been too bold until she added, “If you continue at this rate, before the year is out you will be even more outspoken than I.”

It was Mama’s outspokenness, not Bet’s, that inspired me. But there was no need to tell her that.

She reached into the carriage, extracted a small package wrapped in brightly colored paper, and handed it to me. I pulled at the cord and the paper fell away, revealing a small book.

“Benjamin Franklin’s
Memoirs,
” she said. “Mother gave this very copy to Father for their first wedding anniversary, and Father gave it to me when I left Richmond to come here for school. Franklin was a remarkable man, a great model of what you can achieve through diligence and intelligence.”

I’d dusted the Van Lew library often enough to know the book occupied a place of prominence there. Mistress Van Lew would be sore as could be when she learned how Bet disposed of it. That alone made me treasure the gift.

“Thank you, Miss Bet.” I fingered the well-handled leather. “Please tell Mama that I miss her and Papa, but I’m pleased and grateful for all you’ve done for me.”

“You’re quite welcome. I shall let Aunt Minnie know that you are well established, and that we should all expect the very finest accomplishments from you.”