The Secrets of Mary Bowser (41 page)

McClellan may not have written the plan of attack, but I’d ensured he’d read it. I stepped forward to fill Davis’s glass a third time, but he waved me away.

“Shall I send a note to the hospitals, to expect the wounded?” Burton Harrison asked.

“And to Hollywood Cemetery, that they will need more gravediggers,” I heard Davis answer as I made my own retreat to the servants’ stair.

“Mary El look like the cat what got the canary,” Papa observed as he and Wilson dangled their fishing lines into Shockoe Creek the last Sunday of September.

“Your daughter doesn’t care about getting some old canary,” my husband said, “so much as she likes getting her way.”

Papa gave a harrumph of agreement. “What you let her get her way over this time?”

“Wasn’t me, Lewis. It was President Lincoln. And doesn’t she look glad about it.”

I grinned over at them from where I sat, mending Papa’s workshirt. I took frugal care with the thread, which had grown wildly expensive because of the blockade. But I wasn’t so parsimonious with my joy, which I was eager to share. “Wilson’s just sore that I’ve been right all along, and now everyone knows it.”

“Right about what?” Papa asked. “You two might stop talkin’ nonsense long enough for a person to make out what you got to say.”

“I’ve been telling Wilson that President Lincoln meant to free the slaves. And now Mr. Lincoln has finally announced it himself. A proclamation of emancipation, is what it’s called.”

Papa looked at us as though this were proof we were both mutton-headed. “What it matter what Lincoln is proclamating over to Washington, when I got to do Mahon’s bidding here in Richmond?”

“I know it doesn’t change anything right away, Papa. But it puts slaves in a new legal standing. As of the first January, all the slaves in the Confederacy will be considered free. Once the war is over—”

“As of the first January?” Papa cut in. “Once the war is over? Mary El, I see you mighty impressed with that Mr. Lincoln fellow for all this proclamating. But maybe somebody should tell him it don’t do much good to take out the bit if you leave on the bridle.”

“I don’t suppose it does.” Wilson spoke softly, worried Papa’s sharp words had hurt me. But they hadn’t. They just strengthened my resolve to shake the bridle off.

I knew full well the many ways that being free, or slave, meant more than just a word written out here or there on legal parchment in someone else’s hand. All those years apart from Mama and Papa in Philadelphia, I’d never felt my freedom quite the way I did these days in Richmond, play-acting at slavery as I worked to make Lincoln’s proclamation become true liberation for my papa.

Nineteen

T
here I was, a grown woman of twenty-three, looking forward to Christmas with the same delicious anticipation I had as a child. In my girlhood, Richmond always slowed its pace the final week of the year, hired-out slaves gone home to the plantations, whites and free blacks alike keeping to their families. Not so in 1862. The city’s population was swollen to three times what it was before the war, and you didn’t have to be a census taker to note the difference. White and colored, everyone was crowded in. The noise and press of the place wasn’t about to let up, no matter what the calendar said. But Papa would have the whole week off, same as always. And posing as a hired slave, so would I.

Spending Christmas week with Papa promised to be sweeter than all the molasses seized in the Federal blockade. I beamed as the days of December fell shorter and shorter still, knowing that as Papa’s holiday with us neared, so did the day Abraham Lincoln would proclaim him legally free.

I wasn’t credulous enough to believe the Emancipation Proclamation would change much of anything for Papa, so I took it upon myself to do for him what Mr. Lincoln couldn’t. The Monday between Christmas and New Year’s, I left him with Wilson, crossed Shockoe Creek, and turned south toward the Bottom, passing factories all along Franklin Street and Main Street that had been turned into hospitals. Blocks once fragrant with tobacco now wreaked of wasting flesh, the slaves and free blacks who manned the tobacco presses before the war these days tending wounded Confederates. Richmond newspapers made much ado over the white ladies who visited the hospitals, never mentioning that the nastiest work there was left to negroes.

Where the factories gave way to residences, I searched out Mahon’s house. Two stories topped by a half attic, the brick building was just wide enough to show that its owner had a successful business, yet plain enough to suggest he still worked with his hands. Only two steps separated the front entrance from Franklin Street, and when I mounted them and rapped the brass knocker, Mahon swung the door open himself. His face lengthened in surprise at finding a colored woman on his stoop.

“Marse Mahon, I’m Mary Bowser, Lewis’s daughter. If you can give me a moment, sir, I’d like to discuss some business with you.”

He crossed his arms and leaned against the doorjamb. I’d have to say my piece right in the street, if I wanted to be heard at all.

“My papa is too infirm now to be much good at the forge. My husband and I would like to buy his time from you, sir. We can pay in advance for the year, no guarantee of refund required from you in the case of—”

“Can’t be done,” Mahon interrupted.

I’d known he might well refuse, had schemed and planned about what I’d say if he did. But Mahon didn’t give me a chance to utter any of the persuasives I’d prepared.

“They’ve conscripted him, along with the rest of my slaves, to work for the defense of the city. He’s theirs as of next week.”

I could make no sense of what he was saying. “What use could Papa be to the government? He can barely cross a room, how is he supposed to—”

“No one asked your opinion of it. No one even asked mine.” His voice rang with the angry rhythm of anvil blows. “Man can’t make a living without trained laborers to work his smithy. But President Davis and Governor Letcher don’t give a good goddamn about an honest man’s ability to provide for his family.”

I bit my lip, thinking of all the years Papa had provided for Mahon’s family rather than for me and Mama. Thinking, too, that there’d be no appeal, no bargaining over the conscription. Wilson and I might have had every dollar in the Confederate Treasury, and still we couldn’t have bought Papa’s time. I pulled my shawl tight and turned to go.

“Lewis don’t know yet,” Mahon called after me. “You might as well tell him yourself.”

One more chore a negro can do for you, I thought as I headed back to Broad Street.

I hadn’t told Papa I was going to speak to Mahon. Wilson and I agreed to hold it for a surprise, neither of us saying what we both feared—best not to raise his hopes in case Mahon refused. Now the news I bore was worse than a refusal. Mahon had reason enough to look after his slaves, property as they were to him. But what did the city of Richmond or the Confederate military care for the well-being of an aging bondsman, when with an order of conscription they could call up a dozen more to replace him?

Wilson saw with a single glance that I hadn’t succeeded with Mahon. Prevaricating came so easy to me by then, I didn’t even have to think before the words came out. “I got all the way to the market, only to realize I’d forgotten my purse. Would you go back to get the things we need for dinner while I warm up before the fire?”

He nodded at my falsehood, understanding that I wanted to be alone with Papa.

Once Wilson left, I pulled two chairs up before the hearth. Sitting beside Papa, every ounce of joy I felt over the Emancipation Proclamation seeped away. Conscription laid bare the one truth I wasn’t able to make untrue. So long as we lived under the Confederacy, my own flesh and blood remained a belonging to change hands among white men, same as a mule or a hog.

I held my gaze on the fire, unable to meet those eyes that were so like mine. “What was it like for Mama, knowing she had her freedom but had to act like she didn’t?”

“Minerva always was one to follow her own mind, slave or no,” Papa reminded me. “She figured out long before then how to be one thing in her heart, though she was something else in the eyes of them Van Lews.”

“Was she sorry she wasn’t living free, though?” What was I asking? Did she die a bitter, regretful woman? Did she berate herself for the decision she agonized over for so long? Was she sorry she chose Papa over me?

“Every damn day of her life. ’Course she was sorry, we both was. I still is. What kind of fool wouldn’t be sorry to be a slave?”

Marking how heavy his words fell on me, Papa gave out a “Look here, Mary El,” in that tone I’d heard all through my girlhood. The one a father takes when he needs to convince his daughter of something he fears she is too much a child to understand. “The greatest hurt of Minerva’s life was when she got took from her family. They didn’t know then freedom time was coming for slaves in New York, just that Virginia was far off, and they never seed anyone go that far and come back again. But much as that hurt her, Minerva never said a word on losing her family to me, till after you was born.”

This revelation caught me in surprise. I wouldn’t have guessed there was a thing in the world my parents didn’t share with each other. At least that’s how it seemed when they carried on together every Sunday, me scheming to make out what they were saying.

“You come just past dawn on a Friday,” Papa said. “I didn’t even hear about it till after. Josiah brought word to me down at my cabin, but it weren’t like I could leave off from the smithy and appear on the Van Lews’ doorstep, asking to see my wife and child.” He shook his head at the memory. “After all them years we didn’t have no baby, I was crazy for them first two days to pass, till I could see you. Minerva was late coming on Sunday, worrying me the whole while. Mistress Van Lew didn’t want to let her away, say she take sick walking so far right after her lying in. Minerva throwed a fit, saying she was well enough to bring her baby to its Papa.

“When I seed you that first time, it were like seeing how much I loved Minerva and she loved me, all add up to a whole new person. She was sore from the nursing, sent me to fetch her some sugar of Saturn for the pain. When I come back, I heard crying from the cabin. Not a baby, a grown woman, howling with grief. I went wild, thinking something happent to you. Thinking maybe we wasn’t getting a child to raise up after all. I bolted inside and saw you was fine, setting right in her arms with a look of perplexation on your face, like you was trying to make sense of what was happening.”

He swallowed hard, living it all over again. “Minerva was sobbing for her own mama, her sisters and brother, too. Sobbing at the thought she was gonna lose you like she lost them. Sobbing at the thought she wasn’t, and you’d live and die slave to the Van Lews, just like her.” Tears welled his eyes, mine, too. “Ain’t a slave in the world don’t wanna be free. But there ain’t one wouldn’t rather stay slave to know their baby don’t have to.”

“But she was free, Papa, those last five years. And come next week, you will be, too. Union troops are two days ride down the James River. Wilson could bring us out there in his cart.”

He frowned at me. “Mary El, I don’t know what all you got yourself mixed up in since you come back here. Don’t know if you got Wilson in it, maybe even that Miss Bet you still running off to see so much. I don’t ask ’cause I see you don’t wanna tell. But I know you come back for that as much as for me.”

I ducked my chin, ashamed I hid so much from him. Even more ashamed that he guessed the pull of my work was just as great as the pull of loving him. He leaned over and kissed the top of my head, just like when I was a child.

“I don’t lose no love for Mahon, but I can do my work for him till the good Lord take me home. Got you to comfort me till then, and Minerva waiting to welcome me on the other side.”

I curled my fingers around his rheumatic hand, steeling myself to the task of relating what Mahon wasn’t man enough to tell Papa. “You aren’t going to work in the smithy anymore. You’ll have to work for the Confederates. Digging trenches maybe, or building earthworks. Tending the soldiers at Camp Lee. Could be anything. Maybe harder even than what you did for Mahon.” Though it made my heart ache, I knew the choice I had to make. “So maybe we should think on leaving Richmond after all.”

He went quiet a long moment, weighing the full measure of what I’d said before he spoke again. “Whatever you up to here, you believe it’s Jesus’s plan for you?”

I sidled my way toward all that was contained in that question. I never knew how much true heed Papa gave Mama’s talk of Jesus’s plan, though she professed it loud and long and strong enough for all of us. I still wasn’t sure how much heed to give it myself. “If He has one, then I suppose this must be it.”

He stared hard at our entwined hands, like he didn’t quite recognize which was part of himself. “Seem like I lost Jesus, somewhere back when Minerva passed. But I ain’t no husband to betray the one thing his wife prayed on most. Ain’t no father to tell his daughter not to do what she meant for. Seems we best stay.”

I might have argued it with him, but instead I loosed my fingers from his and rose to lay another log on the hearth fire, watching it catch flame as I settled back in my chair.

After Papa reported for conscription, I hounded McNiven until he somehow discovered that Papa was assigned to the blacksmith shop at the Confederate Arsenal. The Arsenal was eight blocks from our house, down Seventh Street on the south side of Kanawha Canal, just above the James. But Papa, held behind the heavy walls that enclosed the Armory, might as well have been a thousand miles away. There’d be no more Sunday visits, no supplementing his meager rations, no remedies for his rheumatism. No way for me to tell if he was faring well or ill.

Wilson tried to comfort me, saying we were lucky even to know where he was, when most families of conscripted slaves didn’t have that much. Lucky he had a skill worth something to the Confederates. Lucky he wasn’t worse off than he was.

But none of it seemed lucky to me. Papa was likely working sixteen hours a day before the forge, making bayonet stocks for Confederates to use to impale the very men who were fighting to make him as free in fact as he was by law. It was like a cruel joke, the way everything turned worse for him once the Emancipation Proclamation was signed. His liberation seemed to be slipping ever further away, like a trick of light refracting along some distant and unreachable horizon.