WASHINGTON, LATE OCTOBER 1801
“Millie,” Samuel Clark said, “she ain’t going to make it.”
His wife had a stern look. “Don’t you write off Miss Danny. She know what she’s doing.”
“Woman, it’s
me
what’s hauling her about, and she ain’t making no headway. No one wants to deal with a woman. You know what that means?”
“That’s fool talk,” Millie said, but her voice was small.
“Means,” he went on, “she won’t survive in business, and sooner or later she’ll many. She’s a pretty woman. You ought to see how the mens look at her. And where’ll that leave us? With Mr. Carl dead—I tell you, Millie, him going off like that so sudden, that’s the worst thing ever happened to us.”
“Bad for Miss Danny too,” Millie said. His wife was sitting up in bed, the blanket drawn to her chin, and he saw she had that stubborn, half-angry look that told him to walk softly. But he’d been thinking hard on this and it needed to be talked on, she liked it or not. He was in his nightshirt and his old cloth slippers, pacing back and forth along the end of the bed. It was chilly, stars crackling out the window of their third-floor room with its view of the Capitol dome. The first norther had gusted in that afternoon, sign there’d be winter someday.
“This is a slave town,” he said, “and don’t you never forget it. You ain’t out a lot, you get treated real decent in this house; but I’m out every day and let me tell you, they treat niggers like dirt. Always eyeing you, always a chance some slaver’ll grab you, clap you in irons, sneak you away. Your freedom papers don’t mean a thing then. You hear about it all the time. Those slave auctions down on the Eastern Branch. I been driving Miss Danny to the docks down there and you can hear ’em chanting, see some poor black devil ain’t no different from you and me ’cept he ain’t free, he’s standing there trembling so his chains rattle, sold like a damned hog, got no more rights than a hog.
“And those bastards look at you. You can always tell a slaver; look at you like they was figuring a hog’s weight. Looking in the horse’s mouth—he still got his teeth? That’s what they think about a black man.”
“Oh, Samuel,” Millie said, tugging the blanket tighter to her throat, “you fixing for trouble.”
“Mr. Carl dying, that’s what fixed us for trouble. He was a figure in this town, everyone respected him; and yah, lots of ’em feared him too. He wasn’t a man to cross. You Mr. Carl’s man, slavers didn’t give you no trouble nor anyone else long as you didn’t start up a fuss. But it’s all different with him gone.”
“Well, she’ll keep the business going. That’s what she said, and who can stop her?”
“Who? Everyone! Damn, woman!”
“Don’t you curse in our home, Samuel Clark!”
Millie was fierce and it didn’t do to cross her. “I’m sorry,”
he said, softening his voice. “But you don’t know. A business can’t go on without customers, and Mr. Carl’s customers, they don’t want to deal with her. I take her to some office atop a wharf and she goes up the steps all perky and bright; she comes out in ten minutes looking like she done been whipped …”
“That don’t mean—”
“I hear it on the dooks. Slave dockhands know what’s going on, they listen, they don’t say much but they know—”
“Sure enough,” Millie cried, “they do, do they? They don’t know nothing!” She slapped her chest with her doubled fist. “I
know
this girl, and she ain’t going to be put down easy—”
“All right, all right, she ain’t. But the weight’s against her, and if she loses where does that leave us, here in this miserable city? I knew when Mr. Carl said we was coming here it was a big mistake. Philadelphia, it was different, black man didn’t walk around with his breath going short all the time.” He threw up his hands. “Imagine a great country like this, way it talks freedom and independence. You can look out the window of the Capitol itself and see slave auctions. Hear ’em too.”
“Well, what are you saying? She ain’t easy to beat, never was. Little girl she was already strong; stood up to her ma and pa—”
“We gotta think about going north, out of slave country, that’s what I’m saying. I been talking a little. They say they don’t have no blacks, or not many, and no slavery, you go far enough north.”
“How far?”
“North end of Massachusetts. What they call Maine.”
“That’s crazy talk, Samuel. We’d freeze to death.”
“But we’d be free.”
“We free now. That’s what Mr. Carl did for us.”
“That’s right, and I want to stay free.”
“Samuel, this is ugly talk. I don’t like to hear it. We ain’t leaving Miss Danny no matter what happens. Now you shut your mouth and come to bed.”
He judged he’d said enough—more, really, than he’d intended—he
should have broken the idea of going north a little more gently. He was downright cold now, arms crossed to hold a little warmth to him, and he climbed in beside her and pulled the blanket close. Her back was to him and she didn’t turn. After a while he put his hand on her hip. “I love you,” he said. She didn’t answer, but she covered his hand with hers. He was awake a long time and felt that she was too. At last her breathing steadied and he lay with hands laced behind his head, staring into the dark.
When Millie was sure Samuel slept, she got up cautiously and went to the kitchen. She thrust a straw into the banked fire, lighted a candle, and brewed a cup of tea. The house was very silent. She wondered if Miss Danny were crying herself to sleep, but it wasn’t something to ask. The moon had risen and light flooded into the kitchen. She snuffed the candle and sat in the dark, both hands around the cup.
Samuel had frightened her, opening dangerous vistas that she knew were true. This was a slave city. She saw the coffles, men and women in chains marched from ships and into auction barns, marched right along city streets, heavy white men with whips driving them. Made you shudder. But for the grace of the good Lord and Mr. Carl and Miss Danny, she and Samuel could be in those coffles, marching in chains. He was right about that.
But she couldn’t leave Miss Danny no matter how uncomfortable they might be. She’d been just ten herself when Danny was born on the plantation, and she’d been assigned as nurse and playmate and nanny and servant. The baby had seen a sight more of her than of her own ma and, Millie quickly divined, liked her a lot better. Indeed, she had to caution the child as the years went on—if it seemed she liked Millie better than Ma, Millie would be sent away. It was their own secret, like a little conspiracy that Ma never figured out.
Danny was six when Millie married Samuel. He was a field hand, big powerful man whose gentle manner was in contrast to the potency of his stare. No one wanted trouble
with Samuel. She’d seen an inner goodness in him, and the years had proved her right. He had a way with horses; and when Danny learned that, she’d talked her pa into assigning him to the stables.
When Danny was nine she was surprised to find that Millie couldn’t read and set out immediately to teach her. Millie was frightened but Danny insisted, and the process of learning proved easy and very pleasurable. Opened the whole world to her, slave woman though she was. At night she taught Samuel, and the speed with which he grasped it all amazed her. She taught him and her sister, Junie, as well. She warned Miss Danny to keep quiet about it, but after a while old Mr. Clark figured out what they were doing and he’d been some mad about it. She could still hear him yelling all over the house.
“Slaves ain’t supposed to read. Gives them ideas. They’ll go to putting on airs, next thing you know, you have to sell ’em.”
“Sell?” Danny’s slender little voice.
“Well, Daughter, you can’t keep a troublemaking slave …”
Millie had an idea it was the first time Danny had had a clear grasp of the separation of the races. Her daddy rattling on about how a black nigger was like a piece of livestock; you owned ’em, worked ’em, fed ’em, but you didn’t teach a horse or a hog to read. Millie in the next room, one part of her not wanting to listen, another part straining to hear.
Fairly soon after that Danny had lost her temper—she had a sharp temper then and did to this day—and shouted, “You’re just a nigra—you’re a slave. We
own
you. You
have
to do what I say!”
It had been a crucial moment. Millie remembered how she had stood still as a tree rooted in the ground, staring at the child, and then she’d said, words like pieces of falling stone, “Yore daddy can whip me, he can sell me, even kill me, I reckon, but he don’t own me.
I
own me. My heart, my mind, they are
mine
. Don’t nobody own them. Now you think on that.”
God surely knew how hard it was, Millie turning her back
on this child she loved like her own and walking away, back straight, shoulders squared—
“Wait! Wait, Millie.” The child’s voice was high and frightened. Made her heart bleed, but she didn’t turn.
“Millie—please!”
She turned then. “What?” her voice cool and remote.
“But—but you still love me, don’t you?”
Cool little smile. “I reckon I do, but that don’t mean—” but Danny ran into her arms and hugged her. “I love you, Millie.”
So when Mr. Carl showed up on the plantation and went to courting her, she said, “We can take Millie and Samuel, can’t we? I think Daddy would let ’em go. Like a wedding present …”
“But, Princess,” Mr. Carl said, and Millie, by chance in the next room, felt her heart freeze. He didn’t want no slaves. And Miss Danny was going to go off with him, you could see it writ all over her face, and she was like Millie’s own child. The more so, Millie understood, because no babies of her own had come no matter how hard she and Samuel tried. Wasn’t even that she swole up a bit and then lost ’em, that’d make you think that someday … but nothing. She bleeding regular as the sun coming up.
“You see,” Mr. Carl was saying, “This is slave country and down here I don’t judge folks, but I myself, I don’t keep slaves. Don’t hold with the practice.”
“But—but who does the work?”
“White folks, black folks, it doesn’t matter. I pay ’em a wage, they do the work, they don’t I get someone who will.”
Millie was edging closer to the door; she couldn’t help herself. Danny’s voice was so soft and hesitant that Millie could barely make it out. “We could set ’em free, couldn’t we? If Daddy gave ’em to us.”
“I don’t like it,” Mr. Carl said, and Millie near fell on the floor. Her heart was ripping and roaring in her chest. “Tell you what,” he went on. “See, no man should have the right to tell another he’s free or he ain’t free. Makes him like a god, don’t you see? Here’s what we’ll do. I’ll talk to your
pa; and if he’ll let ’em go, I’ll loan Samuel and Millie enough to buy themselves free. They’ll both sign on the note. When we get to Philadelphia I’ll hire ’em. Half of what they earn they’ll get; the other half will go to pay off the note they sign to me. They’ll be free, they can go, but I can come after ’em for the amount of the note. See what I mean? Then it’s a business arrangement; they’re working for what they get. And we won’t own them.”
And Millie heard Danny say, her voice stronger, “Well, nobody owns them, really,” and it was all she could do to keep from dropping her broom and rushing into the room to kiss that sweet girl’s cheek.
So it had been, she and Samuel had come to Philadelphia free man and wife, and three years later they’d paid that note and didn’t owe a red copper, and since then they’d been putting money away in the Bank of the United States, looking to when they might buy Millie’s sister, Junie, free. Junie had married Joshua, who was Samuel’s brother, and they already had three children and every time they had another the cost of freeing them went up some more. But children were a blessing from God.
She sat there in the dark, watching the moonlight track across the floor, cold but not wanting to move, thinking on the barrenness of her womb and wondering if it were some kind of punishment. The prophet Isaiah made it clear the Lord God could be as swift in vengeance as in generosity and you just had to love God and pray and do your best.
She bowed her head, hands clasped around the cold cup, and went to praying as she always did, for a baby, of course, but that said, asking Him to look after Samuel. You had to watch Samuel. Good though he was, his very strength led him to strong positions, the sort of thing a black man in today’s America just couldn’t afford. Take this business of Santo Domingo, this Toussaint person. Samuel was thrilled, for a while he couldn’t talk of nothing else, what a hero that great black man must be, pulling the slaves together, driving the whites away. Black men turning on their masters, coming in the night with machetes—way the slave folk here in
Washington talked sounded like the rebels cut off heads and gouged out eyes, taking revenge with blood flowing like rain in hurricane season. Made you shudder to think on it and yet it gave you a thrill down in your guts and down below that too, at the center of your being where your man came to join you, the idea of black folks rising up in the might of right, taking their own … .
Millie did much of the shopping and she talked to other black women on market day, some free, most slaves. Santo Domingo was frightening too. You wanted to hear about it, but at the same time you didn’t. There was fear in the way the women talked, looking over your shoulder, turning all around, making sure no white folks were near. Revolt, maybe it was good for blacks in Santo Domingo, but she’d long since decided it was bad for black folks here. Made the whites jumpy, watchful, suspicious. They saw slave conspiracies everywhere. Two black men talking about the weather or a horse or a woman and along would come a white man. What you boys talking about? You plotting some deviltry? You move along now. We have an eye on you black scoundrels and don’t you never forget it … . Samuel would come home shaking with rage, and it would be late before she could get him to sleep.