Missus Irene seed we had a ally in the Captain, so she pulled us right away from him. We landed back in St. Looey in her papa’s house, under his thumb and hers. They didn’t really need us and kept us busy doing chores what didn’t need to be done. I hated it. Soon they begun hiring me out around town—mostly at the docks, like I done before. It messed me up; I become jittery as a cat with new kittens. Every day I feared coming back to find my family gone. I couldn’t eat without feeling like my belly was gonna flop over. I couldn’t close my eyes without feeling like I was being drownded in that mighty Mississipp’. Onliest way I could sleep was to have my little gals and Harriet tucked beside me in the bed.
No question in my mind that my gals be in harm’s way so long as we be slaves, and soon my mind were full up on thoughts of running. At night me and Harriet whispered over it, looking on things different now than back ’fore Master Doc died, when thoughts of running looked to be too risky, ’cause of little Eliza. Now there looked to be more risk in not running.
One night we talked of getting over to Illinois, and I told Harriet how them Blow boys done tried helping me back in ’32. I begun thinking how maybe I should try to find Henry and Taylor. The old pharmacy were gone, but I was hopeful one or t’other of them boys might yet be living in the city somewheres. This much were clear: me and Harriet was gonna have to do something quick. I had to protect my family. I had to fight the Missus.
But I didn’t have no firepower, and I knowed it. I was at a loss till Harriet come skipping home from church meeting one day and put a cannon in my hands.
She come calling out to me ’fore she even got inside the gate. I hurried out to meet her but stopped dead still for the pure delight of seeing my Harriet run. She come lightly up the walk, with her Sunday skirts gathered in one hand and the other clapping her bonnet to her head. Oh, she was a picture. A pretty woman running toward you is a sight to fill your heart—that’s the sweetest kind of running!
She dropped her skirts, peeled her bonnet from her head, tossed it in the air, and grabbed my hands. “Honeydew, we done got us a way to get free, and get the girls free, too. Reverend Anderson’s been telling me all about what they call a ‘doctorin.’ The white folk got lots of doctorins but the one that helps us is called ‘once free, always free,’ and it means any slave what lived for any time in any free territory shouldn’t never have to go back and be a slave no more. Can you believe that?”
I was confused ’cause I thought she be talking about doctoring, like Master Doc done, and I didn’t see the sense in that. Only later did we learn it was a different word. Confusion didn’t stop me from laughing with her, though. She was as excited as a child at Christmas, and more beautiful than the angels I done seed placed atop the yuletide tree. That gal glowed.
Being Sunday, we had a little time to ourselves. We walked out away from the house, and Harriet explained how the courts stand by this doctrine. A slave what lived some time in free territory and gets took back into slave territory, like we done, that slave can go to the courts and ask for freedom. Reverend Anderson done told Harriet more’n a hundred slaves done got free this way! So Master Doc, when he brung us to live in Illinois and the territories of Iowa and Wisconsin—all that were free soil. Atop of that, the Reverend told Harriet how our Eliza done had a double protection over her, ’cause she got born onboard the Gypsey, north of Missouri, in free waters. Our Nzinga, child of the river!
This was wondrous news. Yet powerful strange, too—the things the white man done writ since he pulled the pencil and paper from outten the satchel! Sets me to wondering what other “doctrines” they got out there what might be to our good. No wonder the white folk don’t like us to read nor write nor congregate. If it weren’t for Reverend Anderson’s church meeting, we probably never would’ve heard of this “once free, always free.”
We talked it over all that week, hushed-like, careful not to tip our hand to the Missus. ’Course, with me working outten the house all day, we had precious little time for whispering over new plans. Then the more we huddled and hushed, the more risky it begun to feel to me. After I got past the first excitement, doubts begun nipping at me like bedbugs. By the end of that week, them bedbugs growed to be wolves, with fangs tearing great chunks outten my confidence.
My first worriment were the issue of money. We was gonna have to spank down a bond to cover the court costs. We had such little money to set our hands on, and Harriet said these cases could drag on a couple of years. Where was I gonna get enough money?
Next were the troublement of what Missus Irene might do once she learned what we was up to. That woman was a poison to us, no doubts about it. We just didn’t know what she might be able to get away with. Maybe it would spur her on to sell us apart quick, for spite.
Finally were the question of how was we gonna live iffen we did get free? I seed enough of these St. Looey free blacks, struggling to make a living against the poor whites and new immigrants. Times be harder now for the free black then they was when I first come to St. Looey. Any work not done by slaves went first to the relatives of the grandees, then to poor whites—and only last to free blacks.
My thoughts turned again to finding the Blow boys. I knowed they would help me iffen they could, at least help me to see what stretched out beyond slavery. I pure didn’t know what freedom really might be like. Could I live as a free man? Could I make it in the world that way? Could I be for my wife and children what they would need of me?
My heart stopped beating like a war drum. Fear muffled it. I lost the feeling I be rooted to my warrior kin. The more I dug at the root and branch of this court thing, the more it seemed I was planted in sandy soil. I felt ready to topple, like a tree on the banks of that muddy Mississipp’, and the current done ate away at the soil I stood on. Iffen I fell one way, on the rocky ground of slavery, Missus could chop us up and sell us apart. Iffen I fell the other way, into the churning waters of freedom, we could still get dashed to pieces.
I haven’t said this out loud to many people, but I’ll confess it now: I hold a powerful fear of that Mississip’. “The Great Sewer,” they calls it, though it hardly never stinks ’cause the water just flows too fast for a nose to catch an odor. It flows deadly fast, with a power like a great scythe, chopping away at whatever’s in its way. It’s a fact: there be people go to bed on the east side of the river what wakes up on the west side of the river, ’cause the Mississip’ decided to take a short cut on its way and slice through they bit of shore. And that’s how I felt about this doctrine: following its flow could be like getting sucked into the Mississipp’: maybe we’d be lucky and go to bed on one side of the law a slave, then wake up on the other side of it, free. But you never knowed what that river might do. I couldn’t be certain where it might carry us. It could sink us. It could smash us on the rocks. Or maybe it would carry us to that bright land so many songs promise. I had no way of knowing. I was a small thing swept up by a mighty force, and it trembled me.
Harriet, though, she be her own kind of force. She be like salt in water what makes you float easier. Harriet showed me the strength, got me moving in the right direction. And all along the way, right up to this very day, any time my fears sucks me down, Harriet lifts me back up. Oh, I knowed from the first I laid eyes on her, Harriet would change my life. She made me believe that the broken bundle of twigs that was my heart really be a fine-wove basket, just the right size and strength to hold her loving. Harriet changed my world, she did, and by the time she come running and talking about Reverend Anderson and the doctrine, about the courts and the free black folk walking around St. Looey today what was slaves just a few years ago, well, she swept me up.
I recollects we was sitting on our little, narrow bed, with our gals sleeping peaceful across the room. We done talked through all the ifs and mights, leaving me feeling like that tree about to topple. I had my arms crossed over my chest and my head hanged down. Harriet rubbed my back and set my spine straight, saying how we both knowed we was standing on the edge of the cliff , but we was standing together. She kneaded my shoulders and pulled them square, saying how together, we was the strength and protection for our gals. She smoothed my brow and set my sights looking deep into her sparkling brown eyes, till I believed. My hands was closed tight there on my lap, and she picked up one and then t’other. Caressed and kissed each fist, caressed the tucked thumbs, teased them out of their hiding places, eased my tension. Then she laced her fingers through mine, and our two hands together made a fist. “This be the fist we’s gonna fight back with,” she said. “We’s gonna give it the full might of both of us, never stopping till our gals be free.” Now I had two little gals, and the world was just as mean as ever. I was no bigger than I used to be, and I was no less scared. But holding my Harriet, looking over her shoulder at my two sleeping daughters, I knowed I was stronger. And right then I knowed I was just gonna have to change the world in which we was living, or die trying.
* * *
That evening after dinner, Dred told his family about the meeting with Henry. Harriet asked, “And Henry’s reason for helping us is for loyalty, too?”
The family was gathered about their little hearth, and Dred was packing a pipe—rather, Eliza was packing it for him, according to a nightly ritual that often accompanied shared stories about the day or reminiscences of the past. Dred pulled a stick from the kindling pile, set its tip aflame, and passed it to Eliza as she passed him the pipe. As he sucked on the stem, she heated the tobacco. Baby Lizzie was crawling at their feet.
To Harriet’s question, Dred replied, “Henry said it were to right a wrong.”
Harriet raised her eyebrows and nodded. Eliza, nearly eight, asked, “What wrong?”
Easing back into his rocker, pulling on the pipe steadily now, Dred hoisted Lizzie up onto his knee with a fake groan. “Wouldn’t you know I got just the right story to answer that question?” Eliza scooted over closer by her father’s chair. Sitting on a cushion, she leaned against her father’s leg. Harriet settled down in her rocker, too.
“It seems a long time ago,” began Dred, “in faraway Africa, lived two sisters named Lamusi and Mawusi. They father had bad luck with his crops for three year running, and he falled so bad into debt that he had to give over his two daughters as slaves.”
“In Africa,” said Eliza, drawing her baby sister’s attention away from the buttons on Dred’s vest and pretending to e ducate her, “slaves ain’t always slaves for life. Sometimes they just pays off a debt and then goes back to being free.”
“That’s so,” said Dred. “ ’Cept ’fore these gals got outten slavery, they father died, and so they be stuck with a master what was a awful, mean man. This master sold the sisters and split them up. Oh, how they cried and screamed at the parting.” Instinctively, Eliza reached up and clasped her sister’s leg, which was dangling over Dred’s knee.
Dred continued, “It taken two full-growed men to separate them, and each gal had to be tied down and carried away blindfolded, so they wouldn’t know where they was going or what direction the other one went in. They screamed to each other for miles—long after they couldn’t even hear each other no more—promising to find one another some day. ’Course, the new masters, to stop them from finding one another, both decided to give the girls new names, which they did.
“Well, the years rocked by. Turns out that Lamusi wound up in a good house. She worked hard, but she was treated with a easy hand and they even gived her some learning. She growed into a goodlooking woman, captured the heart of the young master, and by’n by they got married. Now she’s the mistress of the house, and she figures she needs slaves herself. So her husband, out on his travels one day, buys her a maidservant from a distant village. And though nobody knowed it—guess who he brung home?”
“Mawusi!” gasped Eliza.
“That’s right! Mawusi. Now, Mawusi all these years been living a hard experience. She been made to sleep in the dirt and eat bugs and leaves, and she worked like a mule and got beat for things she never knowed what for. By the time she come to Lamusi’s household, all the hard work and beatings she taken made her look like a old woman, even though she was the younger sister by two year.
“Well, things got much better for her in Lamusi’s household, ’cause she got a pallet to sleep on, enough food, and she didn’t have to work so hard. She just have to mind the baby and cook the meals. She thinks she got it pretty good, now. Only troublement is Lamusi treats her with spite and can’t seem to be satisfied with nothing she does. Mawusi don’t get beatings, though: just tongue lashings, every day: complain, complain, complain.”
“Is Lamusi like Missus Emerson?” Eliza asked.
Dred and Harriet exchanged grins over the girl’s head. “Yes, she’s a bit like the Missus,” said Dred. “And Mawusi, she early on thinks herself better off ’cause her body ain’t being tormented, but what she come to feel is that her spirit just can’t take this daily abuse from Lamusi. ’Cause Mawusi tries real hard to please. She wants to please. But nothing is ever good enough. Mawusi is all toughened like leather on the outside, but inside she a soft-natured gal. And in a few years, she feels just as miserable as she did before, and she gets to remembering how happy she was as a little gal with her parents and her sister, how they played and sang together in the sunshine. She about wears her soul out, longing for them happy days.
“Then don’t you know: one day Mawusi is cooking a soup. As she stirs the pot she gets lost in recollecting them long-gone good days of her childhood. She stands over the fire, just humming one of the little tunes she and Lamusi done made up theyselves when they was young and happy.
“Now into the kitchen comes Lamusi, and she hears that little song and exclaims: ‘Why, nobody knows that song but me and my sister! Where did you learn it?’
“Well, Mawusi can hardly believe it. She drops the ladle and stammers: ‘Me and my sister, Lamusi, made up that song when we was just babies together.’
“Lamusi understands and she cries: ‘Mawusi! My sister!’ And they run to each other’s hugs and hold tight for dear life. They hug till the soup boils over. They hug till the fire dies down. They hug till the sun starts to set. They can’t let each other go. They be laughing and crying and singing the old songs. Finally Lamusi apologizes for all the meanness she done heaped on her sister, and after that they live together just as happy as when they was babies, and each one agrees to share the work of the household and not buy no more slaves.”
Eliza, like an apt pupil, said, “So Lamusi got to make right the wrong she done to her sister.”
“Yes,” said Harriet. “And it ain’t often in life a body gets the chance to right a wrong.”
Eliza looked puzzled, though. She looked up at her father and put a small hand on his. “Did Mr. Blow wrong you, papa?”
“Mr. Blow owned me,” he answered.
“Like Missus Emerson own us?” Eliza asked.
“Yes.”
Eliza mulled this over. “That’s the wrong he done you,” she finally said. It wasn’t a question.
“Yes,” said Dred.
“So how’s he gonna make it right?”
Dred rubbed the bridge of his nose and looked at Harriet. She reached over and laced her fingers through his, making a fist. “Mr. Blow ain’t gonna make it right,” he answered. He reached down his other hand and laced his fingers through Eliza’s, making another fist. He continued, “Your mama and me is gonna see to that, sweetpea.” Eliza now reached out her free hand to Lizzie, making a third fist, and Harriet closed the circle by taking Lizzie’s other hand. As they raised their clasped hands, Dred said, “Your mama and me is gonna get us all free. Mr. Blow just gonna help, is all.”
Tucked in her bed, Eliza Scott was too excited to sleep. Free! She didn’t really know what it meant, but it made her mama and papa as happy as the sisters in the story. Eliza knitted her fingers together and wiggled them, reliving the feeling of their hands all connected in a circle.
Twice her mother had told her to close her eyes and sleep, and she really was trying. But sleep would not come. She scrunched her lids tightly, but still could hear her parents talking about Gran, who had gone back to Africa, back to their kin. Her papa murmured softly, a sad smile in his voice, “Wish I could’ve been there, to see her safely across.”
Gran was papa’s grandmother. That was kind of difficult to understand, too. Anyway, she was an old lady but she was one of the warrior women, so she never really got old.
All fell quiet, except for the snapping of the fire and the creaking of a rocker. Drowsily, Eliza heard her mama begin to hum. The tune seemed familiar, and she realized it was a song she heard the day they buried baby Joe. To Eliza’s ears it was a lullaby, not a dirge: a sweet, soft, simple tune, with words so soothing. With her papa singing those words, Eliza slipped off into sleep.
I am a poor, wayfaring stranger
Wand’ring through this land of woe
But there’s no sickness, toil or danger
In that bright land to which I go
I’s going home, to see Njeri
She said she’ll meet me when I come
I’s only going to my kinfolk
I’s only going to my home.
Black Ivory, 2003 21 x 27 inches, limited edition archival print Andrew Neighbour©, artist