Glory Over Everything (25 page)

“Whatever you decide, I will be there to assist you.”

“Even now?” I asked. “With everything you know?”

“I'd already guessed at your burden,” he said.

I stared over at him. “How did you know?”

He met my eyes. “I recognized in you the struggle I have within myself.”

I looked at him with new eyes. Of course! Why had I not seen it before? “Are you half white?” I asked.

“I am,” he said. “I am also half Negro.”

“You speak of this as though you carry no shame,” I said.

“There is no shame in who I am,” he said. “There is only shame in how I came to be, and that is not my burden to carry.”

“So you don't blame me for—”

“Your road is one I might easily have taken, given your coloring. Your choices are not for me to judge.”

I might have stood to embrace the man, so grateful was I to him. Instead I offered him the only words that came. “Thank you, Robert, for being my friend.”

E
ARLY THE NEXT
morning a sealed envelope arrived. Inside was a card with only two boldly printed words: “Day One.” There was no question that Mr. Cardon meant to carry out his threat. A message from the museum came later in the day to inform me that my funding for the excursion was withdrawn. I doubted not Mr. Cardon's involvement.

Though I was desperate to get word to Caroline, I could think of no safe way to reach her. I had no choice but to leave and get myself settled elsewhere. In a few months I would send funds and a carriage in hopes that Caroline and the child would come to me.

It was Robert's suggestion that he stay on until the house was sold. After the sale, he would release the staff and join me. New York seemed the most likely destination.

W
E MOVED QUICKLY
and purchased a small house nearby in Robert's name. There we stored some of the best furniture, the portraits of the Burtons, and the finest of the china and silver.

Mr. Cardon's envelopes continued to mark the days, but on the morning of day four, the usual morning message did not arrive. In the late afternoon, a black-edged note came from Mrs. Cardon, stating that both Caroline and the child had died.

I took the note into my darkened study, where I sat throughout the night, holding tight to the printed words, too shocked to make sense of it.

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING,
day five, I was still in my study, staring about the oak-paneled room, now stripped bare but for the dark blue draperies shielding the sun and the worn leather chair in which I sat. I could not believe that Caroline was gone. Surely it was a lie. But it had come from Mrs. Cardon. I wanted to go to Stonehill to see for myself, but I remembered only too well Mr. Cardon's threat, and I dared not chance it.

There came a quick rap on the door, and from behind Robert, Henry rushed in. “I jus' found him! Pan down in the Car'linas! I's right! They sell him for a slave! But I found him! He at a place in the Car'linas,” he said excitedly. “Place called Southwood.”

Caught up in my own tragedy, I had forgotten about Pan. “Henry, I'm not—” I began, but in his wild enthusiasm, he cut in.

“I find out where my Pan is at! He at a place called Southwood in North Car'lina, up from a place they call Edenton. Here,” he said, handing me a brown piece of paper with a hand-drawn map. “They show you here.”

I roused myself enough to study the piece of paper and recognized a clearly drawn map of the North Carolina coastline. How had Henry obtained it?

“Henry, I've had a man working on this for weeks, and he's come up with nothing. How do you know that this is not someone taking advantage of you?” I asked. “For the right amount of money, some people will tell you anything you want to hear.”

“I know it's my Pan by the things they sayin' 'bout the boy!”

“Henry,” I said reluctantly, “I won't be traveling down there. My trip has been canceled.”

“What you sayin'? You say you not going after my boy? Then who gonna bring him back?”

“Henry. Surely you know it is not that simple.”

“I know that my boy gone and we got to get him back!”

“I have funds. We can send someone else—” I began.

“No, no! How they gonna know it my boy? You the one who got to go for him! They sell him back to you. You got to go get him!”

“Henry . . .” I began, trying to find the best words to reason with him. Unlike before, when he would not look me in the eye, now he stared at me, his eyes overflowing.

“I's askin' you for help. I's comin' to you 'cause you know what it mean to be a slave. That boy think more a you than he do a me, but I don' mind. You can't jus' leave him be!”

I walked over to the window and held back one of the drapes. The light from the spring sun was so bright. Was it possible that the redbuds were actually in bloom? On the street, a couple strolled by, she laughing up at him. How could this be? Over and over the thought struck me like a blow: Caroline was gone. What was the point of anything?

Henry's voice broke through my dark thoughts. “Mr. Burton, I got nothing left. I already give everythin' I got. If you not goin' to get him, will you give me the money to go get him?”

I turned back from the window. “You propose to go by yourself?” I asked, taken aback. I knew the terrible fears that governed him, yet he meant to face even those. I met Henry's desperate eyes, and in the determination shining there, I recognized Pan. I spoke before I could dissuade myself. “All right, Henry,” I said. “I will go for Pan.”

“And you take me with you? I don' have no money, but you gives me the papers sayin' I's your slave, we come back with my boy, an' I stay your slave till the day I die.”

“You owe me nothing, Henry. But coming with me—do you think it is safe? Aren't you afraid of being taken again?”

“Far as anyone takin' me, we tell them I your slave, that I belong to you.”

“But all of these years you feared that—”

“I got to get him out!” His eyes filled. “That boy don' have it in him to be no slave!”

I made another quick decision. “All right. Then we will go together.”

It felt good to have a purpose, and I began to plan aloud. “I will take my supplies and travel as an artist,” I said. “You will come as my manservant, and we will go on the pretext that I am there to paint birds. That will be our reason to travel to the area, and once there, we can find our way to the plantation. Then we shall see.”

W
HEN
I
COME
to, there's a colored woman sittin' over me. She got her hair tied up in a brown rag and she got a nice round face but her mouth is set and she don't look none too friendly. It hurts when she starts working on my head, but when I go to touch it, she catches my hand and gives me a dirty look, then shakes her head. Why don't she talk? I wonder. Then I remember Randall and try to sit up and look around for him, but my heads hurts too much and I drop down again.

“Where is he? Where's Randall?” I ask. Last I saw of him, he was holding on to—And then I remember.

We was in the wagon. He kept throwing up and throwing up until it was red. His head was hot when he put it in my lap, and he didn't even cry no more, just made noises like a puppy when the wagon bumped over those ruts. I tried to tell him to hold on, but I guess he couldn't. When I knew he was gone, I just keep talking quiet to him, telling him to go look for my mama 'cause she'd watch out for him. Skinner turns around to tell me to shut up, quit my talking, but when he gets a look at Randall, he starts cussin'.

“We got to bury him,” I say, and when they stop the wagon, Skinner hops down. He comes back for Randall, grabs hold a him, takes him to the side of the road, and drops him there.

My hands are free, but they got one of my legs in a metal ring that's hooked to the side of the wagon. “Take this off my leg. I won't go nowhere. Just let me down,” I say. “We got to say a prayer over him before you cover him up.”

Skinner comes back, and I'm thinking he's coming for the shovel that sits in a pile of work tools next to me, but he jumps up on the wagon. “Boy, you got to pray all right, but you better start prayin' for yourself. You get to Thomas's place, you're going to be needin' those prayers,” he says.

When the driver slaps the reins, the horse starts moving again.

“Hey!” I yell. “Hey! You forgot to bury him! You forgot to cover him up!” They don't say nothing. It's like they don't hear me. “Hey!” I say. “Hey, you got to bury him! You got to bury him!” I start crying then because I can't get loose and go back to help Randall.

Skinner looks back at me. “You shut up! What you crying for? I'm the one who lost my money!”

“You can't leave him there,” I say. “The dogs will get at him!”

Skinner snorts and turns around to look at the road in front of him. Before I can stop myself, I get hold of the shovel and use everything I got left in me to shove it into Skinner's back. It feels good when he tips right off the wagon.

“Whoa!” The driver pulls the horse to a stop, and after Skinner gets himself back in, he grabs the shovel away from me. When he swings, I duck, but the shovel gets me in the head.

T
HE WOMAN TAKING
care of me comes over a couple times a day. My head's not right, and it takes a long time before I can stay awake. When I start feeling good enough to look around, I see that I'm in a big room made out of wood with no paint. There's no pictures hung, but it got windows and is filled with beds, maybe five along each side of the wall. Most of the Negroes in the beds are women having babies. I wonder where I am and what's going on, and I ask that woman who looks out for me, but she don't say nothing and I don't know why.

The woman is built big, like my mama's friend Sheila, but Sheila liked to laugh and this one don't. When she's working on my head and it hurts, sometimes I tell her to quit it, but it's like she don't even hear me.

I got a long cut down the back of my head where the shovel hit me. When the woman's not looking, I touch it and can feel it drying up. When I'm awake, I try to figure out how to get back home, but then I go to stand up and everything gets shaky and I got to lay down again.

One night after I've been there a while, the big woman comes to work on me and sits on the side of my bed heavy, like she's tired. She always moving around, but this time she looks done in. She works on my head, but in between she keeps rubbing on her belly. I see it's round and I wonder if she eats a lot or if she's having her own baby. Her hands are so dried out that they rub rough on my head.

I try to get her to talk to me. “If you use some lard on those hands, they'll smooth right up,” I say.

She looks at me and then at her hands like she don't believe what I just say.

Across the room there's a man they brought in last night who got beat up so bad that all he does is moan. I'm glad that he isn't calling out like he did before, but a woman who's having a baby is startin' some yelling of her own. The big woman goes over to her, and when I see how that baby comes out, I felt like yelling myself. Thing is, after the baby comes, the mama starts to love on it, and that makes me cry. I want my own mama, and I wonder if she and Randall is together yet. And what's my daddy gonna say? When I get home, he's gonna whoop me good, but I don't care. I just want to go home.

T
HEY BRING IN
a boy that looks so much like one a mine that I can't hardly stand to look at him. His head is so cut up I don't think he'll make it, but I stitch it and clean it up, all the while trying not to think of my own boys.

For a couple weeks this one don't move, don't do nothing, until one day when I'm cleaning his head, his eyes open and he gives me such a pretty smile that it hurts to see it. Then he goes right to sleep again. Next time he wakes up, he stays awake longer. He's scared and he keeps asking me to come sit with him. But I got my work to do, and besides, I don't let myself favor no boy like this when I know what's coming down the road.

Every time I get around him, he asks questions. “Where am I?” he asks, and when he talks, I can tell he has schoolin', maybe as much as me. I don't say nothing, but that don't stop his questions. “They gonna sell me for a slave?” I got to look away because he got those big eyes, and sometimes they still got a smile left in them. But he keeps talking. “I'm no slave. I'm free and I got took from Philadelphia. My daddy was a slave and it was bad for him. He's gonna whoop me for sure when I get back.” I put my finger up to my mouth to shush him. Everybody I'm caring for in this sick house has big ears. That's how Thomas keeps everybody in line, paying off the ones with the biggest mouths. Keeps everybody scared of everybody else.

“My head hurts and I want to go home,” the boy says, and then he turns away like he don't want me to see him cry.

One night he tells me to bring over my can of lard, and when he starts rubbing my hands with the grease, I just sit there staring at him. Where'd he come up with that idea? I want to ask, and no sooner do I think it than he tells me how his sick mama liked to have her hands rubbed. He is some kinda chil'!

“Are you a slave?” he asks.

I nod.

“My daddy was born a slave. You born a slave?”

I don't say nothing and he don't ask again, just keeps rubbing my hands. I close my eyes and think about how, for the first years of my life, that word didn't mean nothing to me.

I
WAS BORN
at a tobacco farm in Virginia where the mistress, Miss Lavinia, raised me from a baby and was like my own mother. We'd go out riding together, me dressed smart as her. She had me reading some and writing, and I had my own bed in her room. That's how close we was, with me living up at the big house right there with her. She always kept me away when Master Marshall was around because he had no feel for slaves, but then he was mean as a snake with everybody, even her, and he was her husband. That last day when he come in all fired up, in all my thirteen years, I never see him mad like this. I was sure he was settin' to kill her.