Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons (2 page)

He smiled dourly. "Surely you could share a memory from your past with
me
one of these days, couldn't you? Haven't we known each other long enough?"'

I nodded. "What would you know?"

"I'd be most honored, someday, if you would tell me of your mother. That is, if you have any recollection."

Do I remember my mother, he wants to know.

I not only remember, I can still
see
the deck of the ship we came on. I can
smell
the salt air, and the hot vinegar the crew uses to clean up the stench belowdecks.

I can still
hear
the clamor as the male slaves are being exercised, the fiddle music being played by the crew, the clanking of chains as the slaves commence dancing.

Once again I am with Obour, my friend. We have just finished our first meal of the day, our boiled rice and millet.

And I can still hear my mother's screams as she was thrown overboard. Dashed into the sea because, as I was told later, the sailors had found a sore on her face. And they thought it was smallpox.

"You could not bear my confidences, Nathaniel. I can scarce bear them myself," I said.

He nodded. "Don't underestimate me, Phillis. This meeting at the governor's mansion this morning could never have come about if you and I did not have an understanding of one another."

What is he saying?
My eyes went moist.
Does he know my feelings for him?

There is no telling what fool thing I would have said if Aunt Cumsee hadn't come into the room then, like some dark conscience, come to refill our cups with chocolate.

Come to hover over me, was what she was doing. I met her amber eyes.

Remember yourself
those eyes said.
Don't hold him in higher esteem than he holds you. Sweet talk is all u be. He is dallying with you because it amuses him to so. You're only a slave to him—chattel. Dally back, but no more. Or it will come to grief.

Aunt Cumsee knows I love him. I could never keep anything from her.

I glared at her. "No, thank you, no more chocolate for me. Excuse me, Nathaniel, I must make ready."

He stood as I rose from my chair. "Ask Prince to bring around the carriage, won't you?"

"He's cast his spell on you again," Aunt Cumsee whispered to me in the hall, "just like those witch doctors where you come from."

"Hush." I pushed her along into the kitchen. "What do you know about witch doctors? You've been here so long, you've forgotten the old ways. All you know is Massachusetts."

"We gots our share of witches. An' I know what he's doin' to you."

"He's doing nothing," I said. "And for your information, the witch doctors where I come from don't cast spells. The only magic they do is with herbs. To make people well."

"But he's castin' his own kinda spell over you. Always does."

I kissed her. "Don't scold. I know what I'm about. I know that right now, even as we speak, there is some noodleheaded white woman out there who is setting a snare for him."

She nodded. The look in her eyes was so old it unsettled me. "Still, he's castin' somethin' on you. An' you sit there, dumb as the sundial in the garden, waitin' for him to favor you with his light."

"Silly," I told her. And I ran for the door. "Wish me luck now, won't you?"

She shook her head and sighed. "Luck got nuthin' to do with it. Prayers do. An' I done all my prayin'."

I ran outside. "Prince," I called. "Prince! Master Nathaniel wants the carriage! We're going to Province House!"

"You goin', then, is you?"

"Yes, Prince."

He was bringing out the horse and hitching it to the chaise. I stood and watched.

"Sure she's goin'." Sulie pushed past me with a pan of chicken food in her hands and stood in the yard tossing it about. "Can't wait to take her little behind over to that governor's mansion and talk her fancy talk to all those mens." And she mimicked what I'd said to Nathaniel at breakfast. "'You couldn't bear my confidences, Nathaniel. I can scarce bear them myself! Oh!'" She slapped a hand against her forehead in a mock manner of a white girl about to faint. Chickens clucked around her feet.

"Shut your mouth, Sulie." Prince glowered at her. "Leave her be. She's doin' what the Lord intended her to do."

"The Lord intended her to scrub pots and iron the master's shirts," she flung back. "An' all her poetry be is a way to get outa doin' it."

"Least she's got a way," Prince replied.

"Ain't natural." Sulie spoke as she flung food at the chickens. "She's gettin' above herself. It'll bring the wrath of the Lord down on us all."

"Leave the Lord outa this," Prince told her. "You is just jealous, Sulie."

"Got nuthin' to be jealous about." She finished her chore and came up the back steps to stand beside me. Hatred runs deep in Sulie. She is thirty and blessed with a bosom and looks I do not have. Yet she outright hates me, ever since my poetry writing got me excused from household chores.

"Aunt Cumsee gotta work twice as hard since you ain't in the kitchen no more. Last year or two didn't matter none. Now she gettin' old."

"I said leave her
be,
Sulie." Prince came out from around the horse and chaise.

"
You're
the one best leave her be. 'Lessen you're plannin' on havin' her sit up next to you on the carriage seat agin today. I heard Mrs. Wheatley say you do that agin and you'll be sold off."

Prince moved toward her. I stepped down quickly, between them. It wouldn't have been the first time they'd come to blows. Both would be punished if that happened. The Wheatleys do not hold with servants fighting, as do many other families in Boston.

Yesterday I'd been sent to call on Mercy Otis Warren, who wrote plays. The weather took a turn for the worse and my mistress sent Prince to fetch me home.

"It was my idea to sit up on the front seat next to Prince," I told Sulie.

"Then you should know better." She spit at me. "Fool girl, got him in trouble. You heard what the Missus called him. 'Saucy varlet.' 'Impudent,' to have you sit next to him. You git him sold off and you'll answer to me," she hissed. "I'll kill you. I'll put poison in your chocolate. I know where to get it. I know Robin on the wharf."

"You crazy, you!" Prince lunged for her. "Doan even say such!"

To make matters worse, she was smitten with Prince. And he not with her. So she was jealous of me on that score, too. She hated me because Prince and I were friends.

Sulie pushed past me and went into the house.

"Doan mind her none," Prince said. "She's crazy!"

"Does she know Robin?" My voice shook.

"Everybody does. Doan mean nuthin'. Robin learned his lesson."

Robin does odd jobs for Dr. Clark, who owns the apothecary shoppe on the wharf. In the fifties, when the notorious slaves Mark and Phillis murdered their master, John Codman, it was said they got the arsenic from Robin.

Mark and Phillis were hanged and burned. People still talk about it in Boston. Mark's skeleton still hangs in a cage on Charlestown Common.

Robin has never been brought to trial. He still roams the wharves, dressed like a dandy.
What lesson has he learned?
I wanted to ask.

"She just takin' on 'cause she be jealous," Prince said. "You please these mens this mornin' wif your white people's learnin', and your words be in a book. She heard Aunt Cumsee say it."

"Maybe she's right, Prince. Maybe I am getting above myself. And it will bring the wrath of the Lord down on us all."

"She don't care a fig for the Lord, 'ceptin' when it please her."

"Surely Sulie's right about Aunt Cumsee. She
is
getting on." I minded how cumbersome she'd seemed while serving breakfast this morning. "Threescore and ten Aunt Cumsee is now. All that lifting and carrying could kill her."

"Only thing that'll kill her would be if'n you didn't make use of your mind. It's all she talks 'bout, Phillis, you makin' this book ... An' I do the liftin' and carryin' for her."

"If I make this book, everything will change, Prince."

He moved back to the horse and chaise. "I know. No more you'll be plain ol' Phillis. You'll be miss Fancy Phillis then, and you'll never talk to Prince no more."

He was making sport of me. But tears came to my eyes just the same. "I'll always be friends with you, Prince. And I'll always speak to you. I promise."

"Phillis!" Mrs. Wheatley came out the back door. "I slept late. Come, let me wish you well."

I ran to her. She embraced me in the folds of her sky blue morning gown. Her delicate face, like a flower about to open to the sun, closed with distress at seeing me talking with Prince. But all she said was, "Phillis, dear, do your best this day. My prayers are with you."

I smiled. "I'll make you proud," I said. Then I got into the chaise with Nathaniel, who had just come out behind his mother. And, two-faced wretch that I am, I did not look at Prince as he hopped up front to drive.

"I noticed you were conversing with Prince," Nathaniel said to me as we rode through Boston's busy streets.

"Prince is my friend."

"Be careful. For one thing, it displeases Mother. For another, he has unsavory friends. Need I say more?"

"No." I've long known that Prince is running with the Sons of Liberty. We all know. The Wheatleys do not question him about it. Though they keep their own counsel, it seems to me that they have leanings toward these new Patriots and countenance Prince's activities.

Nathaniel does not. As an upcoming merchant, stepping into his father's shoes, he is still not declaring himself.

"He's my friend," I said again.

Nathaniel sighed. "Just don't hurt Mother," he said.

Province House. The sight of it made me weak with fear. It is three stories built of brick, laid in English bond. It has great dormers and is topped by a tall weathervane that is a statue of an Indian with a bow and arrow. There is a brick walk in front. And sentries standing guard.

There is power here. The power of wealth earned through accomplishment and strength.

Yes,
I thought as the carriage drew up on the roundabout,
I want to be part of that power. I want my poetry published, so I can be a true daughter of Phoebus, Greek god of the sun. And not a shadow, existing forever only by the leave of someone else.

Nathaniel helped me from the carriage. A servant came rushing forward to see us down the path and through the English gardens.

Right into a courtyard we went, where there was much greenery and flowers. Never had I seen such a garden! I cried out with joy. And in the middle of it, a fountain. Water gushed. I started toward it.

Nathaniel put a restraining hand on my arm.

There were benches and a table nearby. All that was missing was the sun, for though it was mid-May the day was overcast.

The servant bade us sit. Another brought a silver tray of tea and cake.

"Are they ready to receive us?" Nathaniel asked the servant. I could tell he wanted me out of there, away from that fountain.

At that very moment a tall, elegantly turned-out young man came from the house. "Nathaniel!"

"John!" Nathaniel got to his feet. "Phillis, you remember Mr. Hancock," he said to me.

Indeed, I did. I stood up and curtsied.

He is tall, elegantly dressed, and possesses such grace of movement that the very air around him seems rarefied by his presence.

He is very rich. Everyone in Boston knows him on sight. He had been most kind to me on past visits to the Wheatley house. He took a chair and gestured that we should sit. "Phillis, how has this rogue friend of mine been treating you? Kindly, I hope."

I smiled and said yes.

"And are you ready, then, to walk into the lion's den?"

"I am ready in the most humble manner, sir."

"Are you." He leaned forward, resting his elbows on the knees of his satin breeches. "Phillis, before you go inside I would advise you of something."

His face is lean and has about it that look of quiet strength that bespeaks breeding. I have learned, by now, that it is a commodity only money can create, yet that no money can buy.

"Phillis, since the sixteenth century, Europeans have wondered whether or not the African species of man could ever create formal literature. Or master the arts and sciences. If it is determined that they can, then it will also be determined that they belong to the same family as the European variety of man."

"And if not?" I asked.

"Then it will be ascertained that they are destined, forever, to be slaves."

I studied my hands in my lap. His gaze was fixed on me. I raised my eyes to meet his. They were warm and brown.

"So you can see that a lot rides on your answers to us this day, Phillis."

I thought of Sulie, mean as a hornet, ready to kill me if I caused Prince to be sold. I thought of Robin, dressed in satins and roaming the wharves; Robin, who sold the arsenic that killed a man, and thrived from the doing.

Could
they
create formal literature? Master the arts and sciences?

For I am doing this for them, as well as for everyone else of my race.

"These men inside have power and far-reaching influence," Mr. Hancock was saying. "Mayhap, before you decide to come inside, you should have more time to reflect on whether you want to go through with this examination."

I looked at Nathaniel. He returned my gaze. "Whatever you wish to do, Phillis," he said. "No one is pushing you."

What I wished to do was throw up. My head was swimming. I felt nauseous.

Mr. Hancock stood up. "I would suggest we leave her alone to think, Nathaniel," he said.

It is not fair! Not fair that the whole future of my race should be put on my shoulders. I am only seventeen! How did it come to this?

I put my arms over my middle as I sat in the chair and bent over, as if taken with gout of the stomach.

All I ever wanted to do was write some words down on paper. The fact that I could do so never ceased being a matter of incredulity to me.

I love the way the words look, all of a piece on the parchment beneath my hands, weaving my thoughts into a tapestry, like a spider weaving a web.