The Secrets of Mary Bowser (5 page)

“Miss Bet, Lewis isn’t trained to house service. He’d be clumsy in front of your guests. I’m sure that Old Sam and I can manage without him.”

“Aunt Minnie, I don’t need anyone to tell me my own mind. If I say we must have Lewis, then I expect you to see that he will come.”

Trammeled by Miss Bet’s insistence, Mama play-acted meek. “I’ll let him know you want him, ma’am, when next I see him.”

That was Saturday, and by the time we entered Papa’s cabin the next morning, Mama was anything but meek. “That woman confounds me more each day. One minute she’s barking about the sins of slaveholding, the next she’s ordering around every negro in Richmond. I’ll tell her you’re busy for Marse Mahon. Maybe that will remind her that you aren’t her slave, too.”

“What use do Mahon have for his smiths on Christmas Day?” Papa cocked his head toward me and shirked his shoulders, a signal he gave Mama whenever he had something to say he didn’t want me to hear.

I turned my back to my parents and pretended to fiddle with the buttons on my cloak, listening hard for the near-whisper that followed. “That woman got presumption enough for ten white men, it’s true. But you know well as she do, I don’t got a thing to do Christmas Day, ’cept wait for you and Mary El. So don’t go giving off a lie so big you get caught for sure, and who know what she do then. What I gonna do with my whole week’s holiday, unless my daughter get her holiday, too?”

Papa came around to me, tipping my head up and smiling, trying to appeal to Mama through me. “Look like I’m gonna enter Fortress Van Lew at last. Scale them walls and race Mary El all through the house. Once we get done poking about, I got to ’prentice myself to Old Sam, who gonna teach me to walk and talk just so among them strange pale creatures. Quite a time we gonna have.” The way he winked at me, I wanted to believe we’d really caper and play, without a care for Miss Bet or any of her family. “And the ending gonna be best of all, when I walk my beautiful wife and daughter out that fortress and bring them home with me.”

Christmas morning, I woke before Mama, feeling the cold floor right through our cornhusk sleeping pallet. The garret quarters, stifling in summer, were always freezing in winter. When we went to sleep our room was warmed a bit by the heat from the fireplaces in the Van Lew family’s bedchambers below. But by daybreak their fires were long out, only to be rekindled once Mama and I set to work downstairs. The bricks we’d heated, wrapped in rags, and carried into our pallet the night before were stone cold to the touch by dawn, and the water in the chipped porcelain pitcher on the wooden table just inside our doorway was long gone frigid. We usually washed and dressed in near silence on winter days, our movements quick and deliberate against the bitter air.

But not this morning. I kissed Mama and wished her good morning, my voice loud against the sloping ceiling of our room. She smiled at me out of her sleep as I scrambled up to the washstand. “We go to Papa’s tonight,” I said, as if she could have forgotten such a thing. “We have to be ready.”

“Mary El, that’s not for hours yet. There’s work enough for us to do before then. And don’t you think we might take time for a prayer, today of all days?”

In my excitement over my imminent departure for Shockoe Bottom, I’d forgotten all about the baby Jesus’s long ago arrival in Bethlehem. That was just how the morning went, me trying to pull time itself ahead, only to have Mama or Zinnie or Old Sam remind me of some task or other I needed to do. The very minute the Van Lews left for church, I began peering out the window for Papa, not wanting to miss a moment of fun showing him about.

But Papa kept his eyes low and his thoughts to himself once he arrived. I led him from the cellar door through the warren of basement service rooms, then up the servants’ stair to the china closet. As we moved from the back of the first floor to the front, he didn’t care to leave the wide, long hall to romp through the dining room and library on the east side of the house, or the drawing room and sitting room on the west. Though he followed me up the main staircase, he barely nodded as I pointed to Mistress Van Lew’s bedroom and dressing room, and Young Master John’s and Miss Bet’s chambers across the hall.

Only when we climbed the narrow back stair to the third floor did his interest pique. Open doorways led to Old Sam’s room on one side, and the room Mama and I shared on the other. Papa had to stoop beneath the sloping roof to enter our garret quarter. Turning a complete circle to take in the space where his family slept, he came to a stop facing me. “You like this room?”

I thought for a moment, wanting to please him. “I like being here with Mama, when we don’t have to take care of the Van Lews. And I know some slaves live worse places than this, places I’m glad I don’t have to live. But I get so excited about spending a whole week at your cabin, I guess I like that better.”

He hugged me to him and whispered, “Merry Christmas, Mary El.” We walked hand in hand back down to where the rest of the slaves were gathered on the ground floor, waiting for the Van Lews.

When our owners returned from St. John’s, Old Sam was in the front hall to help them off with their hats and cloaks and boots. We’d laid the table for eleven, as Miss Bet had instructed early that morning. But after only a few minutes before the drawing room fire, Miss Bet rang for Mama and told her to begin serving the meal, although no guests had yet arrived.

Mama shook her head as she repeated the order to all of us downstairs in the warming kitchen.

“Putting fine food out to get cold at empty places.” Zinnie banged her pot lids as she laid the meal onto serving platters. “Miss Bet gone batty at last.”

Miss Bet stood sentinel in the dining room to oversee Lilly, Daisy, Old Sam, Mama, and me in our serving. Once the fine china plates and crystal goblets were filled, she sent Old Sam to the parlor to summon her mother and brother and told Mama to fetch Zinnie, Josiah, and Papa. When the Van Lews had taken their places at the table, Miss Bet wished us each Merry Christmas. Then she said, “Sit down and join us for dinner.”

None of us moved. She might have been speaking to eight specters only she could see, so unfathomable was the idea of slaves sitting beside their owners in a dining room on Church Hill.

Young Master John broke the silence. “You cannot expect the servants to—”

Miss Bet cut him off. “There is no need to lecture me on show and ought. Much that I could not expect has already come to pass.” She smiled and gave her mother a proper little nod. “For who would have imagined I should enjoy Christmas dinner as an owner of slaves in my own right?”

My breath caught at the idea. Miss Bet, with her own slaves? Who was she bringing into the household, to upset the routine we knew so well? How could she so capriciously reverse her feelings about slavery?

Miss Bet looked hard at us. “Why are you still standing there? Haven’t I told you to sit?”

We spent several awkward moments shuffling into the empty chairs, Old Sam hardly knowing how to get himself seated once he had adjusted everyone else to their places. Miss Bet turned to her brother. “Do you care to lead us in grace? Or shall I do it myself?”

Young Master John didn’t seem eager to grant his sister opportunity for any more of her odd declarations. As we bowed our heads, he gave thanks for such obedient servants, and asked God to preserve his delicate mother’s health and to give his sister and himself the wisdom needed for sound domestic management. We all muttered amens enough to show we understood the meaning he put into those words. All except Miss Bet, who was as determined as ever to have everything her own way, no matter what her brother or anyone else thought.

She took up her fork and began eating, glancing about insistently to make sure we did the same. I might have marveled at how different Zinnie’s cooking tasted, served hot in the dining room instead of snatched down cold afterward in the kitchen. But the heavy silver I’d spent my childhood washing and polishing felt so cumbersome here, compared to the wooden spoons and forks with which I normally ate. Mama, Old Sam, Lilly, and Daisy seemed to share my sudden trepidity over the china and crystal we handled so deftly when serving and clearing the Van Lew meals. Papa, Josiah, and Zinnie were rendered even more inept than those of us who’d long observed white people’s dining habits while waiting table. And Mistress Van Lew and Young Master John seemed just as uncomfortable as we were to have negroes dine beside them.

Miss Bet surveyed the table. “Yes, this year I celebrate Christmas as an owner of slaves in my own right.” She caught the eyes of Old Sam and Josiah, Zinnie and Lilly and Daisy, Mama and even Papa, and finally me, all in turn. “For my mother has consented to sell me her slaves, so that I may set them free.”

Bet’s outlandish pronouncements usually elicited a knowing cough or skirt rustle from the Van Lew slaves. But this time we were stunned still.

The news tied even Young Master John’s tongue. He stared speechless at his mother, who kept her own eyes low while Miss Bet pecked out her plan for us. She would write out our free papers come the New Year. We would be at liberty to leave the house and even the city then, although she suggested we remain in her employ for a few months, to earn enough to support our removal to a free state. For, she informed us, unlike the free blacks we knew—her words made me think of pretty Elly Banks and elderly Mr. and Mrs. Wallace—whose forebears were manumitted over fifty years before, newly freed negroes could remain in Virginia for no more than one year, or they would be seized by the authorities and resold as slaves.

The mouthful of Christmas goose I’d been savoring stuck in my throat.

“Ma’am? What about Lewis, ma’am?” Mama asked.

Miss Bet set down her cutlery before answering. “Aunt Minnie, I’m terribly sorry. I told Timothy Mahon I would pay whatever he thought was a fair price, but he will not entertain an offer of any size. He says as a blacksmith Lewis would be difficult enough to replace, but his work as foreman of the shop and supervisor of the apprentices is indispensable. He deems Lewis ‘invaluable property,’ and he will not sell under any circumstances.”

And so the finest meal we had ever eaten, the greatest present we could ever receive, were spoiled by the news that Mama and I would have to choose between Papa and our freedom.

Three

O
nce Miss Bet said her piece, we ate wordlessly. The noise of silverware scraping against china set me on edge as I sensed Zinnie and Josiah’s joy on one side of me, and Mama and Papa’s worry on the other.

It wasn’t much relief when at last we left the table and crossed the broad hall to the sitting room. Young Master John read Luke 2:1–20 from the family Bible, just as he and his father had during all the Christmases anyone could remember. Then Miss Bet took her place at the piano to play “Amazing Grace.” But even Josiah’s strong baritone could not bear the emotions loosed by Miss Bet. The strain of uncertainty hung in every note, sounding a choir of sentiment all its own.

As soon as we in the house said our farewells to the Van Lews and retreated back to the dining room, Zinnie nodded at Mama. “The girls can clear and wash, you go on with Lewis now.” Mama murmured her thanks, and as quickly as we could bundle up against the cold, Papa shepherded us out of the mansion.

Snow was falling, but I was too distracted to care for the wet, white flakes whirling around me. We set off in silence, me in the middle gripping tight to my parents’ hands. I wasn’t sure what it meant to be caught between them, now that I might really be free.

When we reached the end of the Van Lews’ lot, Papa let out a long, low whistle. “Sure are some memorable dinner parties them white folks of yours put on, Minerva.”

His teasing stopped Mama in her tracks. “What are we gonna do, Lewis? What are we gonna do?”

It scared me to see Mama so uncertain. Papa scooped me up, shifting the weight of my body onto his left arm, holding me in a way I thought I’d long outgrown. Then he wrapped his right hand around Mama’s waist and gathered us against each other, forming our family into a tight little circle at the edge of the street. “We gonna be thankful our daughter will grow up free. We gonna figure out a way to be together. And some of us gonna have to admit all your talk about Jesus has a plan for this child may not be so crazy after all.”

We stood there a long, long while. I felt the snow collecting on us, as it did on the trees and the buildings and the big yards of Church Hill. I wanted to stop time, to make Mama’s and my one year of allowed freedom in Virginia last forever. Finally, Papa kissed Mama and then me, set me back on the ground, and began to hum “We Will March through the Valley.” He remained between us, taking our hands as we started walking again. I felt not quite so scared and confused as before, but not like I really believed everything was going to be all right either.

I spent a good part of Christmas week pretending I’d dozed off early in the evening or hadn’t yet awoken in the morning, or feigning absorption with some solitary game, all the while listening close to every word my parents said to each other.

“And if we go North, where we gonna go?” Mama wondered that very first night.

“You got people in New York.”

“You my people now. Nobody in New York even recognize me, my mother dead and my sisters and brother scattered who knows where. They take the Van Lew name when they freed? Or our daddy’s? Maybe my sisters married, or they and my brother made up their own names when their freedom time came.”

“You ain’t gonna find them if you don’t try. Maybe Miss Bet help, least write her father’s family and see what they know.”

“I don’t expect a family knows much that gives out other people’s children as going-away presents.” That was how Mama had come to Richmond, gifted to her owner’s younger son when he moved South. But she was more than just angry at the memory of losing her family—she was frightened of going through that loss all over again with Papa. “No, Lewis. No New York for us without you.”

“You heard Miss Bet,” Papa said. “Mahon won’t sell. What you want me to do, if I can’t go legal?” We’d heard plenty of stories about bounty hunters finding runaways, especially since the new law said there was no safe harbor even up North. “I ain’t gonna be tracked like no animal, tore away from my wife and child. Maybe made to watch while some slave-catcher hauls you into court, claiming you is runaways, too. And after that, slavery ain’t come-and-go-as-you-please Richmond. Mahon’ll sell a captured runaway to the Deep South, same as any slaveholder.”