Glory Over Everything (31 page)

Soon as I figure out what she's writing, I sit up! She got boys! I wonder where they is. When she sees I'm going to talk, quick she holds her finger to her mouth. “You got boys?” I whisper.

She nods and squeezes her eyes tight before she looks at me again. I look around, and even though everybody's sleeping, I whisper: “Are they here?”

She shakes her head.

“Are they slaves?” I ask. She nods again, but then she looks away and her chin starts wobbling like she's gonna cry. Before I can say something, she gets up and goes to her room and shuts the door, and then I think I hear her crying.

All night I wonder where her boys is at and what's going to happen to me.

P
AN KEEPS ASKING
if he's gonna be a slave. What he don't know is that he already is one. Now they're saying that he'll get sold. How's he gonna make it through that? I wonder.

He asks me about my boys, but I don't talk about them. It's hard enough to think back to the good times when I met their daddy at the preacher's farm.

A
FTER
J
ENNY DIES
and they sell me away, the preacher's nephew buys me and tells me he's bringing me to an old couple because they need the help. They have a small place and don't have no slaves but me, so I do all the cooking, and cleaning, and working in the garden.

The first while I don't say much, but I watch how they are with each other. All that old man does is try to make his woman happy, running around, trying to please, but nothing he can do is good enough. One day I ask her why she don't show him some kindness.

“You think that he was showing me kindness when he got that last girl—who you happen to be replacing—with a child?” she asks.

I don't know what to say to her, so I just stand there looking at her.

“That's right! That old fool!” she says. “We were never able to have children of our own, but he lays down with a servant one time, and when he gets up, she's with a child.”

Again I stare. The longer I'm quiet, the more she keeps talking. “He said he was with the girl only one time.” She snorted with disgust. “One time! Who would believe that?”

My face gets hot.

“Don't you worry,” she says, like she knows what I'm thinking. “I've told him that if he lays down with another woman, he'd best enjoy it, because the next time he'll burn up in his bed.”

Her eyes blaze with the thought, and I decide then not to tell her that her husband has already taken a liking to my bottom. He pinches at it whenever he thinks he has me alone, and I learn to move fast when I see him coming. In time, though, I learn to beat the old man at his game. As long as I let him have a pinch now and then, at night he lets me sit by the fire when he reads the Bible to his old woman. She always falls asleep, but he keeps reading until his eyes get tired. One night just when the reading was good, he starts falling asleep himself.

“You want me to read?” I ask, taking a chance.

“Sure thing,” he says, and hands me the book like he don't know any better. I start to read then, and every night after he hands me what he calls the Good Book. I read till they both drop off, and then I just keep going as long as I want.

I don't know how, but seven years pass this way, each year the two of them moving slower, him trying to please her while pinching at me, and her happy with nothing he does.

One morning the nephew shows up and sees how slow the old man is getting and that the farmwork isn't getting done. He tells his uncle that he's going to buy him a Negro man to help with the farmwork. The two old ones go along with whatever the nephew wants, so the next day the nephew brings over the man he calls Nate. When I go to the well to pull up water, that Nate man is already at work fixing a plough. The old man and his nephew are in the house, and when Nate sees me pulling on the rope, heaving the water up, he comes over to help lift out the bucket. I see his arm muscles working that rope, and from then on all I know is I want that man for my own. I could say it was his laugh that got to me, sweet and deep, but that isn't the truth. After I saw his working arms, what got to me was his eyes. He looked into mine and there was no way out.

A
FTER
I
TELL
the preacher's wife that I'm carrying Nate's baby, she tells her husband that it's only right that we marry, so there we are, September 1815, when I'm already twenty-three, standing in front of that old preacher, who reads from his Bible before telling us we're married.

I wear a blue calico dress that I sewed up from some new fabric that the old woman gave me. I made sure to cut it big so I could wear it right up until the baby comes. At least that's what I planned, but as time goes on, my stomach pushes out so far that Nate laughs every time I try to make that dress fit. When two babies show up, I get worried that the old man and woman will think there's too many to feed, but sometimes we don't know nothing. When the old woman holds first one, then the other, you'd a thought they was hers. She looks up at me and says they was the prettiest babies she's ever seen, and I have to say that she's right.

We had two boys, and they both looked just like Nate. I won't say too much more about that time except that we had five years where I forgot everything except how to be happy. The old woman and even the old man cared about our babies almost as much as Nate and me. They each had a favorite, and my boys knew which one to go to when they wanted something extra.

Nate and me ran the place, and we was good to those two old ones. The old man still pinched me if he could, but I never told my Nate, 'cause I was afraid he might do some pinching of his own. The nephew came every few months, but as long as things were moving along, he didn't have no complaints. Fact is, Nate had the place running better than I ever seen it, and the nephew saw it, too.

When the day came that the old woman dies, we were all standing 'round her bed, one crying louder than the next. Not one month later, the old man goes down too. All along he was telling us that he was gonna give us our freedom, but when the nephew came, he said he didn't know nothing about that and sold Nate and me to two different farms.

My Nate, a proud man, started cryin' and asked the nephew not to do it, but that nephew didn't care that we was a family. It takes two men to tie up my Nate and get him onto the wagon. That's all I's saying about that.

I
T WAS LATE
afternoon when our coach deposited us at the Hornblower Tavern in Edenton. There we spent the night, and in the morning the Spencers' driver awaited us with their personal carriage. The girls were excited to be going home, and as we made our way to their farm, they eagerly pointed out landmarks. The land, though heavily treed, was as level as any I had ever seen.

“Look! Look! There is the house!” Both girls looked eagerly out the window as their home came into view. We had traveled an hour or so, and as we neared the farm, the young Negro maid joined the girls in their merry chatter.

Clora had not been formally introduced to me, but through the girls I learned her name, her age of thirteen, and that she had early ties to the Southwood plantation.

“When Father bought Clora's mother for our housekeeper, he bought Clora as well, but of course he had to pay a substantial sum for her—”

Addy was interrupted by her father. “That is my business you are discussing,” Mr. Spencer said.

“Yes, Father, but this is about our Clora, and I am only telling of your generosity in watching out for her,” Addy explained. “I don't see how that—” Surprisingly, she stopped herself after exchanging a look with her father.

So they did sell slaves from Southwood! How helpful to learn! And surely this must mean that Mr. Spencer had a good relationship, or at least a working relationship, with those at Southwood. Yet I saw how upset he was with Adelaide for bringing up what appeared to be a sensitive subject, so I decided to rest any questions I might have put to him.

I
HAD EXPECTED
the Spencer house to look more like Tall Oaks, but though this white clapboard house appeared well built, it was much smaller in size. The terrain surrounding the home was flat, and the soil, I was told, was rich and fertile. Mr. Spencer was a farmer, but he operated on a small scale and owned, counting Clora, four servants. Although he appeared to be a kind and fair man, that he spoke of owning Clora in her presence did not escape me; nor, I believed from the lowering of her head, did the meaning of it elude her.

What a relief it was to finally arrive and leave the carriage, with one of us more travel-fatigued than the other. At the door, a middle-aged Negro woman welcomed all three girls with open arms amid exclamations of how they had grown in their two months away. Clora and Patricia wept in her embrace, while Addy encouraged me to follow her indoors, where I was soon shown around the house. While the other bedrooms were up a flight of stairs, I was led down a stairway to the simple but well-furnished bedroom offered me. What struck me—what pleased me—was that the room had its own entrance to the outdoors. Here I could come and go without question, and because I was uncertain what lay ahead, I welcomed the freedom.

After I was left to myself, tired out from traveling, I was tempted to lie down on my bed, but instead I opened my trunk. First I removed the soiled clothing from my travels and set it aside, hoping that the woman who had met us at the door would see to it. Next I set my leather traveling case atop the dresser. Finally, I brought out my jackets, pants, and shirts and made use of the pegs on the wall. On removing my last pair of boots from the trunk, I found the heavy packet of coins that Robert had tucked into a bottom corner. Next to it was a package, one he hadn't mentioned. I opened it curiously, wondering what Robert had included that warranted a double wrapping. Of course! It was my old jacket, the one with my grandmother's jewels still sewn in place. I fingered it to feel for the jewels, then tucked it back in the trunk. How well Robert knew me.

I lay back on the bed and closed my eyes. Was Pan really only a short distance away? Impatient to retrieve him, I reminded myself that I had one chance, and I must plan his rescue carefully.

And where was Robert? I wondered. Was he on his way to Williamsburg with the baby, and what kind of reception would they receive there? The thought that I was a father still surprised me, but it also made me feel uneasy. From the beginning I had questioned my ability to care for a child, but since I'd met the Spencers, any confidence I might have mustered was waning. After observing Mr. Spencer with his two daughters, I saw more readily what awaited me as a parent. The responsibility of raising a daughter on my own was beginning to feel overwhelming. I knew nothing of children, and the more immediate problem was that I had no home for her. How could I care for her when I was homeless myself? And yet she was all I had left. My throat tightened at the thought of Caroline, and a dark wave of grief threatened, just as whispers and then a knock sounded on my door. I leaped up to slip on my jacket before I invited my visitors to enter. When the door opened, the three girls presented themselves as one.

“Father is in his study, but he said we might invite you to take a walk with us, or would you prefer a rest?” Addy asked.

“Please, come in,” I said.

“Father said that we are only to stand at the door. It is not proper for young women to enter a man's bedchamber,” Patricia announced importantly.

Adelaide stepped in, pulling her sister along. “I'm sure he meant that we had to be invited,” she said, her eyes eagerly darting about. Clora waited outside the room, but when I waved her in, she did not hesitate to join the other two.

Addy tried to restrain herself as the two others gaped openly at the small oak table and my case of art supplies on the table. Then curiosity won out and Adelaide, drawn to my open traveling case, moved in to take a closer look. “Oh, what is in that one?” she asked. I withdrew the cut-glass bottle and unscrewed the silver top to let her sniff my Bay Rum cologne.

She closed her eyes. “Heavenly, Mr. Burton!”

I offered the experience to Clora, who put her face too close. She sputtered and coughed, then looked at me as though I had tricked her. “Here,” I said, showing her how to better take in the scent by wafting the bottle under her nose.

“You are a patient man,” Adelaide said. “I wish I shared that virtue.”

I chuckled at her outspokenness. When she smiled back, I reminded myself to use caution. The girl was immature and had lived an insulated life, and because of it I supposed that she might misinterpret much.

I threw on my old straw hat and slung a pair of field glasses around my neck. “But now you must take me for a walk,” I said. “Do you think we might spy a Carolina parakeet? Are we far from Southwood? I hear there are many in that area.”

“Oh, we don't have to go as far as Southwood. I have seen them everywhere!” Adelaide said.

“When did you see them? What do they look like, Addy?” Patty asked innocently.

Adelaide blushed as she scowled at her sister and then looked at me. “I believe they are . . . colorful, are they not?”

I took pity on her. “You are so right,” I said. “They are exceptionally colorful. Their forehead and upper cheeks are orange, while their neck and head are yellow. The rest of their plumage is green, and their legs and feet are a pinkish brown. Imagine that.”

“Exactly so,” agreed Adelaide. “Those are the ones I have seen!”

“But have you seen the purple ones?” I teased, and when the three looked at me in disbelief, I winked at Patricia. For the first time Clora spoke up. “We don't see no purple birds 'round here,” she said emphatically.

“I might have seen one or two,” Adelaide said.