Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt (26 page)

“No one would ever mistake any of my quilts for fancywork,” said I, dryly. “It keeps off the chill, and that’s about all.”

“That’s plenty. Even missus be mighty grateful for it if she ever be cold as I was.”

It was the highest compliment anyone but Dorothea had ever given my handiwork, and despite my distaste for needlework, including my own, especially this quilt with its humility block, I was pleased. “My name is Gerda,” I told her. “Gerda Bergstrom.”

Her name was Joanna, and as I tended to her that day, I pieced together how chance and misunderstanding had brought her to our door. After leaving her last place of refuge, she had become lost in the snowstorm that had struck the day after I discovered the handbill on Mrs. Engle’s store. When the January Thaw brought fair weather, she had tried in vain to resume her previous course and, in her wanderings, encountered Elm Creek. She followed it, knowing she could cross the waters if need be to throw pursuing dogs off her scent, until it led her to an abandoned cabin near a barn. Too fatigued to go on, she slept the rest of the night and all the next day. When she rose at sunset, determined
to continue her journey despite her increasing sickness, she spied a house on the other side of the creek. Near it was a clothesline, upon which hung several quilts, including one pieced in the Underground Railroad pattern—the signal her previous benefactors had told her would indicate the next station on her journey north.

I hid my astonishment as best I could and quickly deduced the rest: The signal Joanna referred to was the quilt Anneke had made of squares and triangles arranged in vertical stripes. In copying Dorothea’s design, Anneke had inadvertently created an echo of the message. Now I understood why Dorothea had not responded when Anneke had asked her the name of the pattern—and I also discovered Joanna’s intended destination.

The Nelson farm was a station on the Underground Railroad. Knowing the depth of their feeling for the Abolitionist cause, I was not surprised by this revelation, but I was astounded that Dorothea had managed to conceal the truth so well, and, I will admit, somewhat hurt that she had not confided in me. Upon further reflection, however, I realized that because of the inherent danger to both runaway and stationmaster, she could not have entrusted the truth to even the closest friend. The less others knew, the less they could reveal through accident or under duress. Even Mr. Frederick Douglass himself had faulted some stationmasters for concealing their activities so poorly that they allowed slave owners and slave catchers to discover their methods, thus helping to perpetuate the very institution they sought to undermine. Dorothea and Thomas would never allow themselves to be included in their number.

One deduction quickly led to another: Dorothea would know the next destination in Joanna’s flight north. By the time Joanna was prepared to continue her journey, I intended to tease that information from my friend without revealing why I sought it, for I needed to maintain secrecy just as the Nelsons did.

Days passed, and as Joanna recovered from her illness, our expectation that the slave catchers would arrive at any moment began to ebb. Or so it was with Hans and me; Anneke seemed never to forget her anxieties. She took little consolation in knowing Hans had devised an ingenious hiding place in her sewing room, nor in his repeated assurances that no ill would befall our family.

“Hans does not wish to alarm us, but I know the truth,” confided Anneke to me when we were alone. “Mr. Pearson says anyone assisting fugitive slaves will be prosecuted under the law. We may be fined, or even sent to prison.”

“We will face no punishment,” said I, “because we will not be detected.”

Anneke looked doubtful, and my own heart was full of misgivings when I wondered how that particular subject had come up in a conversation with Mr. Pearson.

Joanna’s care fell almost entirely to me, as Anneke was burdened by her duties for Mrs. Engle as well as the fatigue of her condition. Even when she did assist me, however, she shied away from Joanna, avoiding her gaze and speaking to her through me, if at all. I can only guess why Joanna made Anneke so uncomfortable: perhaps because she knew few colored people, perhaps because of the danger her presence put us all in, perhaps because her dialect, which I have but poorly reproduced in these pages, was difficult for Anneke to comprehend.

“She want me gone,” said Joanna to me, unexpectedly, after Anneke stopped by the room on some errand and left as quickly as it was completed, with scarcely a word for either of us.

“She wants you safe in the North” was all I would concede. “As do we all.” And then, as a way of making her seem more sympathetic, to show that the women shared a common experience, I added, “She, too, is in a condition. You know what it is to worry for the fate of your child.”

“I don’t know nothing about that.”

“Of course you must,” said I, confused. “Or am I mistaken? Are you not . . . expecting?”

From the shock and emotion that came into her eyes then, I first thought she had not surmised her condition, and then I knew she had indeed suspected it but had not allowed herself to believe it.

“You must be well into your fifth month, at least,” said I, gently.

Her voice was dull. “Sixth, more likely.”

I nodded, mute, for although Anneke was only a few weeks further along, her condition was significantly more apparent, for she had never lacked sufficient nourishment. “Your child will be born in a Free State, and you will raise him in freedom.” I expected that to cheer her, but it did not, and I thought I understood the reason why. “His father, I assume, is still in the South?”

She snorted. “That where he likely be, all right.”

I placed my hand upon hers, and said consolingly, “Do not despair. Perhaps someday your husband will follow you North to freedom.”

She jerked her hand away. “I ain’t got no husband.”

“Well . . .” I hesitated. “Your man, then.”

“No man of mine gave me this baby.” Her voice stung with contempt. She rolled over on her side on the bed, putting her back to me. “I don’t care if it live or die, so long as I get my freedom.”

Shocked, at first I could only gape at her. “Be that as it may,” said I, when I found my voice. “You should remain with us until after your time, when you and the baby are strong enough to travel again. For your sake, if not for your child’s.”

She said nothing, and with nothing more to say myself, I left her alone.

As Joanna gradually regained strength, she began to grow restless. She was still too weak to take any exercise but for slow walks the length of my room, but she could sit up in bed well enough. When she told me of her desire for something to occupy her time and distract her from her worries, in my thoughtless way, I offered her one of my books.

“I can’t read,” said Joanna. “Massa don’t allow it.”

My cheeks flamed, and I busied myself with the sock I was darning. “Oh. Of course.”

“Don’t matter none.”

It matters a great deal,
I almost replied, but instead said, “Perhaps I could read to you.”

She shrugged, dubious, but said, “That be nice.”

I set my mending aside, went to my room, and scanned the titles on the bookcase Jonathan had made for me. When my gaze lit on a certain volume, I pulled it from the shelf. “Here’s one,” said I, returning to my chair by Joanna’s bed. “It was written by a man who was once himself a slave, but acquired his freedom, and has fought to win the same right for others.”

At that, her interest was piqued, and thus I commenced reading the
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave.

I had almost finished William Lloyd Garrison’s preface when Anneke entered, made curious by the sound of my voice. Not quickly enough, I set the book aside and snatched up the sock and needle, for I had promised Anneke to help with the darning and had long put off the task. When Anneke said, in a teasing manner, that she could always count on me to shirk my household duties, Joanna spoke up: “I can do the darning.”

Anneke and I exchanged a stricken glance. “Anneke is only teasing me,” said I. “You are our guest. We don’t expect you to work for us.”

“It ain’t for you, it for me,” said Joanna. “I go out of my head
sitting here in bed all day and all night, nothing to do but listen for the slave catchers’ dogs. You read, and I’ll darn.”

She insisted, so reluctantly I agreed, but I was greatly disturbed that this woman, so recently near death, and so recently forced to work for white people, now found herself darning white people’s socks. I cannot commit to paper why this troubled me so; it simply felt wrong. But unable to articulate an objection, I wordlessly handed her the pile of stockings.

Joanna asked for her bundle, and Anneke, who was nearest, retrieved it from the corner, not quite able to conceal her distaste. Joanna untied the coarse blanket of homespun, upon which every mile of her hazardous journey had apparently left its mark in sweat and grime, and withdrew two shining objects. Anneke gasped, and I nearly did, too, so markedly did the elegant silver needle case and thimble contrast with the bundle that had carried them.

“You
are
the woman from the handbill,” exclaimed Anneke. “You stole those things from Josiah Chester.”

A dangerous glint appeared in Joanna’s eye. “I didn’t take nothing that wasn’t owed me.”

“Be reasonable, Anneke,” said I, hurriedly. “The trifles are a poor recompense for the lifetime of suffering she endured at his hands.”

“I didn’t mean to steal nothing,” said Joanna to me. “I was in the sewing room—I was a house slave. The missus have me do all her laundry and sewing and quilting. Massa Chester come after me when I alone there. He always come after me, but this time—that time I just couldn’t. I hold the scissors, cutting silk for a dress, and when he grab at me, I point those scissors at him and tell him to leave me be, or I tell the missus he be coming to my cabin when he tell her he going riding. He bring his fist down on my hand, and I drop the scissors, and then he grab me and put his hand over my mouth and push me against the wall. I try
to get free, and my hand touch something—I don’t know what, but it hard, so I grab it and hit him with it. It scratch his face, his scalp, and draw blood. The blood run all down his face, down into his mouth, and he stand there screaming at me, the blood and spit flying. I try to crawl away, but he take the flat-iron off the fire, and then he do this.”

Her hand went to her scarred cheek.

“I be too hurt to fight him no more. I don’t remember when he finish and go. My mind just went out my body, and when it came back, he was gone, and I still be on the floor. I didn’t think about it, I didn’t plan nothing, I just got up and left. Middle of the day yet, and me with no idea where I going. I just up and left. I pass other slaves working in the fields, I even walk right by Missy Lizabeth, the massa’s daughter, on the road, but no one stop me. They all think I do an errand for the missus. She always have me going here and there, sewing for her friends.

“I walk all day. Only when night come and it get too dark to see do I stop. That when I realize what I done, run off, and how it too late to go back, unless I want a beating that like to kill me. So I hide in a haystack.”

She looked down at the gleaming silver objects in her hand. “Before I fall asleep, I open my fist and find Mrs. Chester’s needle case, with a little bit of blood on the corner. That what I grab without looking, that what I hit Massa Chester with.” She looked at Anneke, unflinching. “So you see, I didn’t mean to steal nothing. It just happen.”

Anneke, white as a sheet, made no reply. Joanna calmly slipped the thimble onto her finger and began darning one of Hans’s socks. Anneke watched her for a moment, then turned on her heel and left the room.

I wanted desperately to apologize for my sister-in-law, or to at least explain her way of thinking, but her condemnation of Joanna’s thievery shamed me, especially when I compared it to
her tolerance for Mrs. Engle’s posting of the handbill. So instead I cleared my throat and resumed reading Douglass’s
Narrative
.

Whether out of anger with me, or fear that she might reveal our secret, Anneke chose not to attend the next meeting of the Certain Faction. We met irregularly during wintertime, as the weather would permit, and thus I had spent two impatient, anxious weeks since Joanna’s arrival longing to speak with Dorothea.

I was the first to reach the Nelson home, for I knew once the others arrived, I would have little opportunity to speak with Dorothea alone. As we set up her quilting frame, she shared the latest news from her household, and I bided my time until I could casually remind her of the handbill. She smiled and said, “Dear Gerda, are you still plotting some dire revenge against Mrs. Engle?”

“I cannot forgive her as easily as you, but no, I am not,” said I. “I was merely wondering about the unfortunate runaway. She might have been driven from her intended path by the storms, or was forced to change direction when the slave catchers passed through town. They must have, don’t you agree?”

“I suppose they must have,” said Dorothea, “if only to deliver their handbills. We can only pray she was able to elude them.”

I learned more from my friend’s expression and the mournful note in her voice than she had intended to tell me: After seeing the handbill, Dorothea had anticipated the runaway would soon appear at her door, and when she had not, Dorothea had given her up for lost. Perhaps she thought Joanna had wandered the Pennsylvania countryside until she froze to death, or had been recaptured, or had suffered another equally dire fate, and perhaps Dorothea wrongly blamed herself.

My heart went out to her as I imagined her anguish. “I’m certain
she did elude them,” said I, ignoring, for the moment, the need for secrecy. “But perhaps circumstances forced her to seek an alternate refuge.”

Dorothea’s eyes darted to mine. “I suppose that might have been necessary.”

I busied myself with smoothing the back layer of a new quilt in the frame, and said in a careless manner, “I do hope that isn’t the case, however.”