Stealing Freedom (16 page)

Her stomach growled and she remembered the corn bread.
It sat on a dainty blue and white china dish, with a line of ants happily serving themselves. Ann brushed the ants away. “That's mine,” she told them.

As she ate the corn bread and drank from the pitcher, a loud crack of thunder startled her. The rain started with a few drops pattering, then grew quickly to a torrent. It reminded her of nights in the sleeping loft back home in Unity, when late-summer storms would blow through the cabin, leaving puddles on the floor and making the roof sound as if it would fly off at any moment. She smiled, remembering how it was always Joseph, the youngest, who would tell the rest of them not to be afraid of the storm.

Thunder cracked again, but farther away this time. The rain settled to a constant thrumming. The room soon cooled, and the sound of the rain comforted her. She lay back down on her mat. By now they would know she was gone, she thought. Master Charles would be furious, no doubt, to find he'd been robbed. And Miss Sarah would want to know who would walk her to school and who would cook her breakfast now. Ann wondered if Mistress Carol would simply be relieved, and demand that her husband buy her some experienced household help for a change. Whatever they were thinking and feeling, they felt far away from this snug attic room, which was so removed from the rest of the world.

After what seemed like hours of looking up at the ceiling, she drifted off to sleep. It was dark again when she heard a door open below. “Miss Ann Maria, are you there?” asked Mr. Bigelow

Where else would she be? she wondered. “Yes,” she answered.

She heard knocking and fumbling as he set up the ladder. “I'm sure you're ready for a good meal,” he said as he helped her down. “And I must apologize, because you won't get one as long as you rely on me as your cook.”

Ann smiled. “The corn bread was fine,” she said.

Mr. Bigelow shook his head. “Baked by the wife of a good friend, and all gone.” The curtains were drawn, and the small sitting room was lit by an oil lamp. “I would employ servants, but I'm afraid any one of them, white or black, might be tempted to turn in a fugitive to collect the reward money. And so I manage on my own. Let's see what I have in the kitchen.”

He led her to the back of the narrow house and began rummaging through his cabinet.

“Cabbage,” he said, pulling out a wilted bundle of pale leaves. “There should be no one searching for you for a little while, as the newspaper ads won't appear for a few days yet. Carrots, though they're sprouting lovely flowers and they're rather brown.” He plopped the vegetables on the table. “So you might as well get a bath and a hot meal, because once the ads are out you'll be in hiding round the clock. Turnips. They've gone mushy. But I did pick up a nice piece of beef on my way home.” On the table he placed a brown-paper parcel with blood leaking through at the edges. He sighed. “But when I get through cooking it, it will be tough and stringy, I guarantee.”

Ann eyed the package. Fresh beef was something she'd seen only when a cow was slaughtered on the farm in Unity, and it was not something that was ever shared with the slaves. “I could make a good stew,” she offered.

“Nonsense. You're a guest, not a servant.”

Ann squinted, not sure she'd heard him correctly. Her, a guest of a white person? It was all so new, and she'd been so bored lying up in her room all day; she was anxious to have something to do, and longed to put her hands to the familiar rhythms of her old work. “I'd like to cook,” she said.

Mr. Bigelow finally agreed to her offer, admitting that they'd both get a better meal that way. But he insisted on helping. Ann had to hold back a smile as he rolled up his shirtsleeves and prepared to chop vegetables. She'd never seen a man cook before, and here was a white man, dressed in a fine suit, ready to make stew. She thought he looked as out of place as a goat in a henhouse.

As they chopped, Ann worked up her nerve to ask the question that had been on her mind ever since she'd learned she was in Washington City. “Will I see my family soon?”

Mr. Bigelow kept his eyes cast down at the turnips he was hacking at. “That's a delicate matter,” he said slowly. “You can't go to them. The home of a colored person can be searched any time of the day or night without a search warrant. If they were to come here, that would raise suspicion about my involvement with your disappearance; then you, and I, would be in danger.”

Ann felt herself crumple inside with disappointment.

“But I know how much it means to you,” He stopped working and looked directly at her. “I will work out a way if I possibly can.”

Ann fought against a lump in her throat. Might she really have to travel on to Canada without seeing them? She let out a ragged sigh. She'd known how dangerous the whole journey
would be when she told Mr. Bigelow yes to the escape. She would see her family in heaven if she could not see them before then. It was little comfort, but she forced herself to accept it.

As if to take her mind to other thoughts, Mr. Bigelow began to explain more of his plans for her. “I thought it best not to take you across the Mason-Dixon Line—that's the border between the slave states and the free states—until after all the uproar about your disappearance has died down. So you'll be my guest for a while.”

Ann looked up from the chopping board where she was slicing the beef into chunks. “How long?” she asked.

“Weeks, at least. Possibly a month or two. We'll have to see how much fuss Mr. Price makes over you.”

Ann ducked her head over her work so Mr. Bigelow wouldn't see the look of dismay on her face. Months of lying in that stuffy room, staring at the ceiling? She hadn't counted on freedom being so…so
boring.
She clenched her teeth and resolved to get through it without complaint.

As if reading her mind, Mr. Bigelow said, “Once things have settled down somewhat, you'll be able to come down for meals and such.” He looked apologetic. “To tell you the truth, it's the first time I've had to keep a child hidden for so long.”

Ann rose and dropped the meat into the pot hanging in the hearth. It sizzled loudly. “I'll be fine,” she said as lightly as she could. She stirred in water, the vegetables, salt, pepper, and sage, and put on the lid to start the pot boiling.

Mr. Bigelow brought paper, pen, and ink into the kitchen. He lifted the pen high into the air and, in a tone of mock formality, announced, “And now I must draft a letter to your former
owner, offering him that sixteen hundred dollars he was demanding for you.”

Ann let out a tiny gasp. “Just to frustrate him?” she asked, amazed.

“Yes,” said Mr. Bigelow. He dipped his pen into the ink. “And to throw him off a bit.” He drew the pen across the paper in graceful, curving lines. Ann watched carefully. She'd only ever printed on a slate with chalk. The quill pen and paper fascinated her, as did Mr. Bigelow's flowing cursive.

“When he set the price for you so high, we would have liked to simply pay the cash and skip all of this dangerous mess,” Mr. Bigelow explained as he wrote. “But the Vigilance Committee cannot give in to the exorbitant prices slave owners demand when they know a person's freedom is at stake. If we did, we would open ourselves up to blackmail, we'd soon be paying five thousand dollars a head, and our stores of money would be exhausted in no time.”

Ann stirred the bubbling stew. She pictured Master Charles reading the letter offering him $1,600 for her, and exploding in anger because he no longer had her to sell. She couldn't help letting out a laugh.

“Did we make funny stew?” Mr. Bigelow asked.

Ann giggled some more, covering her mouth. “No,” she said. “I think we made good stew.”

After a delicious dinner, Mr. Bigelow dragged a bathtub to the middle of the kitchen floor and hung a pot of water in the hearth to boil. “I hope you'll excuse a gentleman for preparing your bath, but, as you can see, I have no wife to do the service.”

Ann didn't mind.

“And here is a change of clothes, which has been waiting for you for quite some time.” He handed her a parcel.

Ann untied the string, folded back the paper, and held up the first item of clothing. It was a sunflower-yellow dress with a white collar, tiny white buttons down the front, and a sash around the waist. Her mouth hung open in awe. It was made of smooth cotton—the kind of cloth white people and free colored people wore—and though it was well worn, the yellow was still vibrant. She could scarcely believe it was hers to wear.

There was also a long white nightgown of cotton so soft Ann touched it to her cheek to feel its smoothness. There was a slip to go with the dress, and a pair of bloomers, which she tucked discreetly back into the paper wrapper. All of the clothing was neatly mended and patched, and freshly cleaned. At the bottom, wrapped in another layer of paper, were black stockings and a pair of black shoes with laces all the way up the front. She crinkled up her nose. Everything else was a dream come true, but she didn't like the idea of stuffing her feet into something so stiff and tight as a shoe.

“Those are all things that Catharine outgrew,” said Mr. Bigelow

Ann's heart leaped. Her hands began to shake. She hugged the parcel to her chest, then buried her nose in it and inhaled. The smell was of her mother's soap, the stitches in the mending were by her mother's and her sister's hands, done as they sat by the fire with her father. And Catharine had been the last one to make this dress move with grace. These clothes would help her feel their presence even if she could not be with them.

The days of coming down from the attic for meals were shortlived. Within the week, runaway notices appeared, Mr. Bigelow told her, in the
Montgomery Sentinel
and the
Baltimore Sun.
The reward offered was $500, and the city was crawling with slave catchers looking for her. Mr. Bigelow handed food and water up to her in the hidden room, emptied her chamber pot, and spoke with her briefly in the evenings when he came home from his job as a lawyer for the Washington Gas Light Company.

Then one evening, Ann heard a pounding on the front door and a man's angry voice declaring that he had a search warrant and was here to find that “blasted Weems girl.” Mr. Bigelow greeted the man as “Sergeant Orme” and calmly invited him to have a look around. Ann listened from her hiding place, scarcely daring to breathe. Sergeant Orme went stomping through the house opening closets and shoving furniture around. Ann prayed he would not figure out that she was just one thin wall away, behind a bedroom chest of drawers.

“What's this ladder?” Sergeant Orme shouted when he opened the closet nearest her trapdoor. “What the hell are you doing with a ladder in the house?”

Ann's heart pounded hard and she hugged her knees.
How could we be so stupid as to leave the ladder right there?
She bit down on a knuckle to keep from groaning in despair.

Mr. Bigelow's reasonable voice was the next thing she heard. “I'm not a particularly tall man, Sergeant Orme, yet my company does expect me to inspect a gaslight here and there. If you can suggest another way for me to reach the lights other than with a ladder, a way that would not irritate you so, then I'd like to hear about it.”

Ann bit down harder on her knuckle, waiting to hear Sergeant Orme's response.

The Sergeant grunted and shut the closet door.

“If you don't have the wench here, I think you know where she is,” he said menacingly.

“I wish I did,” said Mr. Bigelow. “I've been trying to buy her freedom for quite some time.”

“So I've heard,” the Sergeant growled, with disdain.

Ann was relieved when she finally heard the door shut behind him. When the house was quiet, Mr. Bigelow rapped three times on the trapdoor—their signal that all was safe. Ann lifted the board and peeked down through the opening.

“Just a short visit from our friend Sergeant Orme,” said Mr. Bigelow. “He was bound to come sooner or later.”

“Is he gone for good?” she asked.

Mr. Bigelow reached up and touched her hand comfortingly. “My dear, just make sure you are in your room when he comes.”

Ann rubbed the deep red tooth marks she'd made in her knuckle. She hoped Sergeant Orme would not come to visit again.

“The trouble is that huge reward Mr. Price is offering for you,” Mr. Bigelow said. He took off his spectacles to clean them on his handkerchief. When he looked up at her, his eyes had an unfocused gaze. “Every man and his uncle wants a piece of that five hundred dollars. You must have been very important to them. Were there children you cared for?”

“One,” said Ann. “A little girl.”

“That's it, then,” he said. “If there's one thing slave owners can't abide it's their children's bawling when they've lost a nurse and have to get used to a new one.”

At first, Ann couldn't imagine Miss Sarah feeling sad about her leaving. She herself had missed the child but thought Sarah's heart too closed for her to care much. Then she remembered how Sarah had snuggled in close with her that night before the county fair, and how she'd been so happy to help enter Ann's beets in the contest. Sarah had grown attached to her, after all. She was probably giving the master and mistress fits. Five hundred dollars’ worth of fits.

That night Ann was sorry she'd thought about the fair. She'd worked so hard to keep that day out of her mind—the memories of the picnic under the trees with Alfred, and of his gentle, apple-laced kiss. What plagued her most was the promise she'd made to him the day they'd gone to the Rock Creek. “I will never leave here without you, Miss Ann Maria, and please don't you leave here without me,” he'd said. And she'd promised him she wouldn't. Would he ever know it hadn't been her choice to leave without a word?

The days seemed to go on forever. She ate each meal slowly, alone in the stuffy room, trying to make it last as long as possible. And she took a long time dressing, changing into her nightgown each night and into the beautiful yellow dress each morning. It seemed a shame to wear the best clothes she'd ever owned with no one to see her in them except the spiders hanging in the corners.