THE BOOK OF NEGROES (33 page)

I hoped it would be Chekura.

SAILING INTO THE PORT AT THE END OF A NINE-MILE BAY, I felt the snow on my face and a film of ice gathering above my lips, and I saw the granite spilling onto the shores. There were mammoth pines and thick forests, and in this brand-new town, hundreds of people walked about. I had been told that we were sailing to Port Roseway, but the sign on the pier said SHELBURNE.

I paid two prices for taking the last ship carrying Loyalists from New York City: my husband had gone before me, and so had every other free Negro who was allowed to leave with the British. Six other Negroes disembarked from the
George III
, but they were all enslaved or indentured and were led off by the men who owned them.

Was this the promised land?

I stepped off the pier and walked about town, looking everywhere for Chekura. Maybe he had found out where the last ships from New York
had sailed. Maybe he had come for me to place his hand on my growing belly and greet the child we had made. But I saw no familiar faces. Most of the people were white, and they walked past as if I didn’t exist.

A white woman in a cap and a long coat approached me on Water Street.

“Is this Port Roseway?” I asked. She walked right by without stopping to look at me.

Nova Scotia was colder than Charles Town, and even colder than New York.

In that moment, I buried my thoughts of Chekura and set about finding a place to sleep and food to sustain the little person growing inside me.

Inside the Merchant’s Coffee House, I asked for information about lodgings and work. A big man took me by the arm and pulled me to the door. “We don’t serve niggers,” he said.

“I’m not asking to be served,” I said. “All I want—”

“Move along,” he said. “Birchtown is the place for your kind.”

Outside, standing again on Water Street, I looked left and right, wondering where I could get help. I had not thought about where to sleep or eat when I was first brought to St. Helena, Charles Town or even to New York. Here, I had nothing and knew no one to ask for assistance. But I had chosen freedom, with all its insecurities, and nothing in the world would make me turn away from it.

Something with the weight of a June bug struck me on the back of the head. But the December snow was swirling in the wind, so it was too cold for insects. I turned—and was struck again, twice in the face. I caught something on my cheek and held it in my palm. It was a peanut. And then I heard laughter. Two white men in the ragged remains of the British Redcoats were passing a bottle back and forth. When I stared at them directly, they stopped pitching peanuts in my direction, but spat, one after the other.

Two doors down, I passed under a sign for the shelburne crier and opened the door. A short white man was arranging letters on a metal stick.

“Morning,” he said, eyes fixed on his labours.

“And good morning to you,” I said.

He looked up immediately and gave me a little smile. “I thought I detected an accent from a place much warmer than this.”

It occurred to me then that nobody in the world had my exact accent, because nobody had lived with the same people in villages, towns and cities on two continents. I liked having my accent, whatever it was, and wanted to keep it.

“Is this Port Roseway?” I asked.

“Shelburne,” he said. “Are you just off the boat?” He didn’t seem to mind that I was black and unknown to him.

“Yes. But I thought we were sailing to Port Roseway.”

“You did. Recently, the name changed to Shelburne.”

“Those letters,” I said, nodding at his work. “They’re all upside down. Looks like a child tried to write them and got them wrong.”

“You have a sharp eye. The letters are made to go in that way, but when the machine is done, the words come out properly. Except for the mistakes.”

“I can catch mistakes. Do you need any help?”

He smiled. “I could use help of all kinds, but I can’t pay you anything. Where on earth did you learn to read?”

“Long story,” I said.

“I have time,” he said. “Some people will give you the cold shoulder in Shelburne, but I believe in treating each person on his merits. Can I offer you some tea?”

A gust of cold wind battered the door. “Thank you, but I can’t stay long. I’m looking for shelter and must find work.”

His name was Theo McArdle, and I drank his sweetened tea with gratitude. He offered to let me return to proofread the first impressions that
came off his printer, in exchange for biscuits, tea, free newspapers and whatever information he could share with me. And a helpful detail came with that first tea, even before I had done any work for him: free Negroes mostly lived in Birchtown, three miles around the bay, and I could find out more at the Land Registry Office. I thanked Theo McArdle for the tea and promised I would be back.

The only person in the Land Registry Office was an old Negro sitting on a stool near a sign that said OUT FOR TEA. His cheeks were pitted with scars from the pox, and he wore spectacles with only the frames—no glass. One of his eyes was milky, but the other was clear. In a hand that was creased and thick and thrice the size of mine, he held a white cane made of knotted birch. With this cane, he tapped my foot gently.

“Won’t you say hello to a broken-down old man?” he said.

“You’re not so old,” I said.

His lips turned up in a smile. “That’s mighty Christian of you. Call out another phrase or two, so this lame and blind man can hear your voice again.”

“Is this where they distribute land?” I said.

“That depends.”

“On what?”

He leaned forward and took my hand in his palm, which was dried and cracked. It was the widest palm I had ever side.

“On a whole mess of things,” he said. “Have you come in from New York?”

“I have.”

“And are you of African persuasion?” he said.

“I am persuaded,” I said with a smile.

The man guffawed. “I like a sense of humour in a woman.”

“I’ve got a little person to worry about, so I’ll be in better humour when we find a warm place to sleep,” I said.

“I didn’t hear anyone come in with you.”

“The little one is growing inside me.”

“Hallelujah, sister,” he said. “Don’t fritter away your morning. You don’t have time to waste. The man you want isn’t here and wouldn’t help you if he was. But you’re in luck, sister, because I am Moses Wilkinson. Some folks call me Preacher Man, but most just call me Daddy Moses. Have you been saved?”

“That depends,” I said.

“On what?” he said, grinning.

“Do you know where I can stay?”

“I surely do,” he said. “You’ve come to the right man.”

“Then I have been saved, Daddy Moses.”

I spoke with the preacher until a strong young man came by, said “I’m back, Daddy Moses,” and picked him up like a baby in his arms.

“Grab my stool,” Daddy Moses called out to me.

I picked it up and followed the two of them outside. The young man set Daddy Moses down on a two-wheeled cart.

“You can come along, but you’ll have to walk,” Daddy Moses said.

The young man hitched himself to the front of the cart and began pulling Daddy Moses. I walked beside the preacher as he bumped forward.

“Are we going to Birchtown?” I asked.

“Heard of it, did you?” Daddy Moses said. “It’s three miles that way, in the dog’s ass of the harbour.”

Along the way, he explained that slaves and indentured servants stayed in town with the white Loyalists who owned them. But if you were coloured and on your own bottom, he said, Birchtown was where you belonged. Nova Scotia had more land than God could sneeze at, Daddy Moses said, but hardly any of it was being parcelled out to black folks.

“But the British said we would have land,” I said.

“Get good and comfortable at the back of the line,” he said. “There are a thousand coloured folks waiting before you. And, ahead of them, a
few thousand white people. They call this place Nova Scotia, but folks in Birchtown have another name for it.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“Nova Scarcity.”

I thought of Chekura warning me to be realistic about the promised land. I wondered where he was at that moment, and if he had food and shelter.

“We have to go out hunting for you,” he said.

“Hunting?”

“We must get some furs for you. Good thing for deer, moose and bear, young lady, because the Loyalist office won’t save your soul or warm your back.” While we walked, Daddy Moses explained that the people of Birchtown were divided into companies, each having a leader to distribute rations from the British and—when they came—land allotments.

Daddy Moses led the Methodist church, which was also one of the companies. “Have you taken Jesus into your arms?” he asked me.

“My arms have been busy, and Jesus hasn’t come looking.”

“The good thing about arms,” he said, “is that you only have to open them. I lost my eyes and my ability to walk four years ago.”

“Smallpox?”

“That’s right. But I’ve still got my heart and my arms, and that’s good enough for Jesus. That boy right here? The one who is pulling me? I tend to his soul, and he and the others get me from here to there. Jesus tells us to take care of each other.”

Two poles stuck out from the cart. The young man stood between them, pulling one in each hand. He was about sixteen, already tall and muscled, and he was barely breaking a sweat.

“Hello,” I said to him.

He turned with a big smile, as if he had been waiting for permission to do so. “Good morning, ma’am, and welcome to Nova Scotia.”

“Thank you,” I said. “It’s good of you to pull the preacher.”

“Daddy Moses and me, we pulls each other.”

“We are travelling peoples,” I said.

“Amen,” Daddy Moses called out.

I looked again at the boy, and thought about how good it would have felt to have my own son alive and strong and taller than me, and to watch him helping another person. I wondered what Mamadu would have looked like, if he had been allowed to stay with me. If he had lived this long, he would have been just over twenty years old.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Jason Wood. And how do they call you, ma’am?”

“Aminata.”

“Ah—ah—ah. Sounds like one of them big words in the Bible.”

“Aminata,” I said again. “But you may call me Meena.”

Daddy Moses found the small of my back with the tip of his cane. He prodded me there, ever so gently.

“For a gal without Jesus, you talk like a preacher,” he said. “Your words sound like they were spoken five hundred years ago, and that you’re reading them off holy walls. I could do with a voice like yours in my church. You got rhythm and cadence, Meena, but as Jason here would say, ’a right funny sound jump out yo’ mout.’ We’ve got time right here and right now, so tell me all about yourself and where you done come from.”

Among strangers in the Thirteen Colonies, I had kept my heart and my soul cautiously locked. But Daddy Moses had an understanding, solicitous voice that slid like a key into that lock. I sensed that he would not hold me in judgment, and perhaps it helped that he was stone blind. For the first time since leaving my friend Georgia, I began to speak to a stranger about my mother and father and the things I had learned from them in Bayo. I explained how I had been walked to the coast, and spoke of crossing the sea. While he murmured “amen” occasionally, or gently called out, “God
has sent us on a long migration and he has seen to our survival,” I told him about how I had been taken to South Carolina, and what I had done there, and how I had come to lose my son Mamadu. I didn’t want Daddy Moses to expect that I would give something that wasn’t within me to give, so I explained that mine wasn’t a Christian soul, although I had seen a little of the Qur’an and the Torah and had many times read parts of the Bible.

“We are travelling peoples, as you say so well, and you are one of the travellest of them all,” Daddy Moses said.

“Amen,” Jason called out.

“Even travelling peoples need homes, and failing that they need hosts,” Daddy Moses said. “My wife and I live simply, but we will be honoured to have you stay with us until other arrangements have been made.”

“Thank you, Daddy Moses.”

His cane came to rest gently on my shoulder. “I’m not asking you to take Jesus in your arms,” he said. “Let’s just call your soul a work-in-progress.”

“With all that you’re doing for me, you can call my soul anything you want,” I said.

“It doesn’t matter what we call your soul,” Daddy Moses said, smiling at me. “What matters is where it travels and who it uplifts.”

After moving along in silence for a spell, we passed through a long corridor of fir trees. To my right, the forest seemed thick and impenetrable. To my left there were fewer trees, and in the spaces between them I could see the cold, grey waters of the nine-mile bay.

After walking a good distance, I asked Daddy Moses, “How long does it take to walk to Annapolis Royal?”

“We don’t even have you dressed for the winter, and you’re already talking about leaving.”

“My husband is there.”

“Perhaps when the winter is out, we can help you find him.”

“Can’t I go sooner?” I asked.

“It’s not walkable, girl.”

“I will walk as far as it takes to find my husband.”

“It’s not walkable. Not in the winter, for sure, and not with a baby. You would both perish. To get to Annapolis Royal, you have to take a ship. And if you’re like the rest of us, you don’t have money for ships. Right now you just need to keep yourself and that baby alive. Your husband will take care of himself until the two of you can catch up.”

I tried to ask if he had heard whether the
Joseph
had sailed into Annapolis Royal, but he got impatient.

“I don’t know about any ships coming and going elsewhere in Nova Scotia,” he said. “It’s the most I can do to tend to my own flock.”

WHEN WE ARRIVED IN BIRCHTOWN, I found a dusting of snow on the ground, and much more swirling about in the cold wind. About a thousand free Negroes lived in the area. Some had shacks, but others dug deep pits in the ground, covered them up with logs and evergreen boughs, and huddled together to stay alive through the winter.